Fascination -and- Charmed (20 page)

Mortimer stared at her.

“He will not want a bride who has made a gift of her maidenhead to you.”

He smiled and ran his tongue over his lips. “What if the girl doesn’t cooperate? She could be determined to accomplish the match. After all, the rewards will be considerable.”

As if she were not considering those rewards above all else. “I’ve thought of these things. I shall help you, Mortimer, my love.
I
shall befriend her. She will not question a short,
pleasant
outing to a place upon which we settle. You will be there. I am a very strong woman, remember. Between us we shall carry our task to its conclusion.” She shuddered again. “The thought is not without appeal. In fact, a most exciting interlude should be ours, don’t you think?”

“Yes, I
do
think so.”

Melony rose to her toes and wrapped her arms around his neck. Gazing adoringly into his steel gray eyes, she contemplated her personal plan—to provide the dear, cuckolded marquess with solace. His fury at his betrayal should make him a willing recipient for the solace Melony understood best. Then she would have to see, but with good fortune she might find herself the new Marchioness of Stonehaven.

That was her goal.

She reached up and drew Mortimer’s bottom lip between her teeth—and filled a hand with his heavy manhood.

Mortimer groaned, and broke free like a crazed animal. As always, his strength frightened and thrilled Melony. It thrilled her more.

“Long enough,” he ground out. “Over there.” He hurried her to a divan strewn with satin pillows, turned her from him, and threw her over the seat. She heard his rasping breath and tried to push herself up.

A hard hand between her shoulder blades sent her facedown again.

“This is what you want, lovie. What I want.”

She hated him calling her what he called Theodora. “Yes,” she said. “What I want.” He would pay for that mistake soon enough.

Fabric scraped over male skin.

“Scream, Melony. I like it when you scream.”

He pulled up the chemise, ripped apart the fragile red silk drawers, and hammered his shaft into her.

Melony screamed.

“Kitchens is no place for those who dinna belong here,” Mrs. Moggach said. Ferociously wielding cutters, she labored over a large sugar cone atop a great, scrubbed wood table.

Making the staff puddings at which she “wasna a good hand,” as Mairi put it, Grace decided. The housekeeper hadn’t as much as greeted Grace when she’d emerged from what felt like miles of confusing, dark stone passages that led from the castle’s upper reaches.

“Far too much comin’ and goin’ if ye ask me,” Mrs. Moggach said, pushing away a wisp of gray hair with the back of a hand. “I’m all topsy-turvy. Nowheres near enough staff for all this extra work.”

Grace would not mention that a household of this dimension should scarcely notice the arrival of two women, and a priest who evidently used to live here all the time. She would also hold her tongue rather than point out that a great deal more labor seemed to be expended on
staff
puddings than anything put before Grace or her mother. Father Struan had never eaten with them, and she assumed he preferred to take his meals with his ailing old brother.

“I’ve not enough staff for all this, I can tell ye.” Mrs. Moggach’s voice had a droning quality. “If ye’re wantin’ to do somethin’ useful, ye can see to gettin’ more bodies for me. Not that I suppose there’s aught ye can do about anythin’.”

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Moggach,” Grace said firmly, and thought,
Grumpy
, with a good deal of satisfaction.

Grumpy grunted. “Too much t’do an’ not enough hands.”

A woman sitting before a roaring fire in the range had to be the cook. She drank tea noisily and rocked and appeared oblivious to Mrs. Moggach’s monologue. Florence, the upstairs maid, sat opposite cook, chopping carrots into a bowl between her feet. Grace counted eight additional maids of various ages. Two applied jiggers to pastry rolled out with a glass pin by a third, cutting piecrusts and laying them in earthenware dishes. Three more maids grated, ground, and squeezed nutmeg, apples, and lemons, respectively.

“I came down to discuss the business of your instructions to Mairi—regarding those areas of the castle into which my mother and I are not supposed to go. Mairi seems unclear about your message.” Grace stiffened her spine. The annoyance she felt must not show if she was to preserve what little authority she might have here.

“I’ve enough t’do without the added bother.”

To Grace there appeared to be far more servants than could possibly be kept busy by the disgracefully lax standards at Kirkcaldy. The seventh and eighth maids, very young girls, carried dirty dishes and utensils into the scullery. In the doorway to another passageway lounged a footman swathed in a canvas apron. He polished a silver dish cover upon his braced knee and spoke through the doorway to someone Grace couldn’t see. Through a window into the butler’s pantry there was a clear view of Mr. Shanks poring over his books whilst another footman dusted crystal decanters and passed them to yet another to replace on shelves.

“Mrs. Moggach, I should appreciate your full attention.” Inwardly Grace quaked. Her mother had insisted that she confront Mrs. Moggach, a task for which Grace felt completely unprepared. “Why would you send such messages to us?”

“For your own good,” Mrs. Moggach muttered. “Wee upstart.”

This woman felt quite secure in her position, which meant she knew something Grace did not know—maybe a great many things. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear you say that. I should like an answer to my question, please.”

“All o’ her ladyship’s things are to be left exactly where they are.”

Grace dropped her hands to her sides.

“Not a thing’s t’be touched.”

“Her ladyship?” Grace screwed up her eyes.

“Aye. His lordship gave orders after she died. Shut her rooms, he said. Dinna move a thing—not ever. That’s what he said.”

“But—”
She
was
living
in those rooms.

“Amber necklace gone,” Mrs. Moggach muttered. “And earbobs. And now there’s her little ruby ring.”

Grace realized her mouth was dry, and swallowed. “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.” There wasn’t and never had been any jewelry in the Delilah room.

Mrs. Moggach sniffed and raised pale gray eyes to Grace’s. She wiped her large hands on a cloth and slapped it down in a wad. “I was an upstairs maid when she died,” she said, and nodded toward one of the younger maids. “I started in the scullery. I’ve grown up in this great hoose. Her ladyship was verra fair. Tall and dark with black eyes and a laugh you could hear through many a room. Those days were different, I can tell ye. Back then this was a live place, not a dead one.”

Grace swallowed again. “Times change. I’m sure the marquess mourned—”

“She was a great deal younger than him. She dinna deserve t’die so young. It’s my job to make sure her things are kept the way she left them—the old marquess charged me wi’ the job. And now there’s her little treasures disappearin’, and me mournin’ for the lootin’ o’ her grave.”

Grace could only stare.

“Someone’s goin’ into the Eve Tower and gettin’ into her rooms. She chose them because she could see for miles. The whole of the road leading to Kirkcaldy. She liked to watch for visitors. Before a party or a ball, she’d dress early and stand up there like a wee girl on her birthday.”

“Taking things from a room could hardly be termed ‘looting a grave,’ Mrs. Moggach.” The
Eve
Tower? The road leading to Kirkcaldy? The Delilah room was in the west wing, with the Adam Tower separating it from Eve. And a grove of old spruce trees obscured any view of the approach to the castle.

Mrs. Moggach heaved a sigh that raised her impressive bosom inside the gray woolen dress she favored. “A tender heart, she had. When the old king died, she cried for days.”

“But ... but that was only two years ago!” The words were out before Grace could contain them, then she didn’t care. “King George died in twenty.”

“King George?” The name rang out as if the housekeeper sought to rid it from her lips forever. “I was speakin’ o’ the king over the water, o’course. Bonnie Charlie.”

“But ... but ...” Grace looked around and found several pairs of eyes watching her with interest. “But Prince Charles died ... He died in ...”

“Eighty-eight,” Mrs. Moggach said dolefully.

“In 1788,” Grace echoed. “Your late mistress could not have died
that
long ago.”

A few titters were hastily smothered.

“I was speakin’ o’ the present marquess’s mother,” Mrs. Moggach said haughtily. “Someone’s makin’ off with her precious things, and it’s t’stop.”

All hands stilled.

“Goin’ through locked doors. Whoever heard the like o’ it?”

Grace’s heart thudded. “You cannot be suggesting that
we
are responsible for breaking into locked quarters?”

“They’re not broken into. There’s some as has a way o’ gettin’ in, though. And gettin’ out wi’ out anyone knowin’ until it’s too late.”

“If nothing’s to be touched, how do you know things are missing?”

Mrs. Moggach raised her chin and narrowed her eyes.
“
I
’
m
to keep her ladyship’s rooms dusted, that’s how. It was a trust left me by her husband.”

They were speaking about her so-called fiancé’s parents. They were speaking of people who died long before Grace was born. She knew the answer to her next question. “Has the marquess—the current marquess been informed of the thefts?”

“He has indeed. Ye might o’ charmed Mr. Innes, but he’d not risk keepin’ anythin’ from his lordship.”

“And did his lordship give you leave to issue orders to my mother and myself?”

Mrs. Moggach smiled. Not a pretty sight. “Aye, in a way. Ye’d not have to ask that question if the marquess had welcomed ye. But he hasna. Young Calum Innes has overstepped himself, just as he did so many times when he was an upstarty laddie. What can ye expect from a man with his beginnings? He’s tryin’ to push the marquess into doin’ what he

doesna want. The marquess doesna want
ye,
lassie. And ye know as much, don’t ye?”

“This is none of your—”

“He doesna. And ye and that mother o’ yours—uppity madam—ye’ve decided ye’ll not go away empty-handed. Aye, we know what ye’re about.”

“How dare you!”

“Och, I do dare.” The woman threw down the sugar cutters and gathered up a toasting fork. “I’ve but one more thing t’say to ye. There was another who came to Kirkcaldy and found a way into those rooms. Don’t ye forget it.”

“Forget what?”

“We’ll not speak more o’ that.”

“Tell me,” Grace said, her anger overcoming dread.

Mrs. Moggach pointed the long, evilly pointed toasting fork at Grace. “Gladly. Isabel Dean got herself married to the marquess and then she crossed him.”

“And?”

The fork came an inch closer. “No divorce has ever sullied the name of Rossmara. And
ye
’
re
here, aren’t ye?”

“Y-Yes.”

“Well, then, we both know what happened, don’t we?”

Niall was the only person she could talk to.

And he was the one person she absolutely must
not
talk to.

Grace ventured forth through the daunting vestibule and left the castle. Despite her efforts to be stealthy, the doors clanged shut with a bong that resembled a mighty, long-unused church bell.

Catching her breath in the cool air, she hesitated in the shadow of the castellated porch, then fled swiftly toward the back of the west wing. Keeping

close to the building, she didn’t stop running until she’d turned the corner and dashed past tall hedges to a lawn that stretched to the edges of a lake.

What was she to do?

How could she have been so foolish as to agree to Calum’s proposition?

What was she to do?

Mama wasn’t strong. Grace didn’t dare to as much as mention Mrs. Moggach’s accusations—or her threats. They had been threats, hadn’t they?

The reed-fringed lake was large and glossy green in the overcast late afternoon light. Willows, their leaves still tightly budded, drooped silently into the water, and on the far shore stood a white marble pavilion flanked by white marble statues of nymphs—kelpies, as Mairi had told Grace they were called in Scotland.

There was simply too much to be confused about here. Grace trailed to the water’s edge and looked down at her own reflection, wavering on the almost still surface.

The truth was that there was one thing bothering her more than any other—although there were certainly others that should be confronted first.

Niall.

Her reaction to him.

What had passed between them.

The fact that she ... Grace plucked a reed and swished it in the water. She had never been in love, so how could she know that what she felt now, for this man, was love?

Love.

Grace walked toward the willows. She felt something she had never felt before. She felt it for Niall. It was a sweetly painful sensation. A tightness in her throat. A lightness in her head. A tingling thrill that climbed her spine ... and curled in those nameless places.

Love, or whatever caused her present condition, held such potential for ecstacy—and despair.

She hardly knew him. Grace picked up her pace. Then she began to march, pushing aside willow branches as she went. The problem was that she knew absolutely nothing about what was correct between a man and a woman. She’d been warned against the evils of spending time, alone, with a man to whom she was not married.

So that, then, was all of it—the underpinning of her dilemma. She, Grace Wren, a single woman, had
Spent Time
with a man to whom she was not married. And she had
Sat With Him!
Pausing, she closed her eyes, hunched her shoulders, and gave herself up to the delicious and obviously wicked shiver that darted over her skin.

Grace opened her eyes. What she had done, and allowed Niall to do, was wrong, and it was all her fault. Although she knew nothing of the particulars, she had been warned that it was a woman’s task, a woman’s responsibility, to ensure that no occasion for sin occurred. After all, it was a female who was the potential Vessel for Sin, the temptation for the male. Grace shuddered afresh. On the nights when she’d been with Niall, she had certainly proven a temptation for him.