Lord Beast (19 page)

Dani shook her head, warding off
a blush with every ounce of her being. “No, of course not.”

“Very well. So long as Victoria
is there, it shouldn’t serve as a problem.”

Fiona had scarcely completed her
sentence before Danielle was back up the stairs and compiling a note to Victoria.

When Dani walked down the long
gravel drive that lead to the front gates of the castle, she noticed a luxurious-looking
phaeton parked to one side. She decided that Rhys must be plagued with visitors
again and continued to walk.

Coming out from one of the outer
courtyards was a woman Dani hadn’t met before, a thunderous expression on her
face. Hoping to avoid any unpleasantness, she quickly scanned the wall for an
alternative entrance but saw none. Sighing resolutely, Dani realised that she
would have to cross paths with the other woman coming towards her.

She was quite short but dressed
finely in an expensive, olive green gown with a swooping neckline and strands
of exorbitant pearls draped across her bosom. “Save yourself the time,” she
practically snarled when she saw Dani, “he isn’t accepting today.”

Ah, so that would be the cause of
the vicious sneer on her face. She might be quite pleasant to look at it if she
didn’t contort her face like that. “Oh,” Dani said. “Well, I’m sure with time
he will warm up to the idea of visitors again. You surely understand that he
hasn’t had them in a while.”

“And
you
are?” this said
with such an expression of disdain that Dani nearly took a step back.

“Danielle Carmichael,” Dani told
her, trying to smile but sensing the skin around her mouth barely managed to
twitch into some semblance of one.

The woman stared at Dani’s
outstretched hand as if it were covered in slime or some other offending
substance. After a moment, she accepted it and said, “Patricia Pennyworth.”

“A pleasure,” Dani intoned,
feeling that this encounter was anything but. “Have you travelled far?”

Patricia folded her arms and
glared at the high walls surrounding them in the courtyard. “From London. And
you, Miss Carmichael, where are you from?”

“Oh, just up the lane, actually,”
Dani supplied, waving a hand ambiguously back up the drive. “I’ve been living
in Falmouth for some time now.”

Patricia’s head swivelled to her
so fast that Dani feared for its stability upon her shoulders. “You have?” she
repeated, her eyes narrowed intently on Dani’s face. “Do you know the earl…
personally
?”

Feeling uncomfortable under such
direct scrutiny, Dani wondered what this woman wanted with Rhys in the first
place. She was certainly acting as if she had every right to be here. One of
his past lover’s maybe? The thought filled her with vile, painful jealousy.
“No,” Dani told her tautly. “We are acquaintances.”

“Acquaintances?” Patricia
laughed, a shrill sound with little mirth behind it. “Come now. We are both
grown woman. You can tell me just how close the two of you are.”

“I beg your pardon. I am not sure
I understand your meaning. Lord Ashcroft is just an acquaintance.”

Patricia’s eyes gleamed. She was,
Dani realised, quite an intimidating woman for one that was so short. She was a
full head shorter than Dani and probably somewhere in her late twenties.
Although she wasn’t conventionally beautiful, Patricia wasn’t lacking in good
traits. Albeit somewhat on the nondescript side, her eyes were quite pretty and
framed with thick black lashes that fanned her cheeks. It was just a pity that
the woman always wore a scowl to mar the good features so that one only really
noticed the bad.

“Have you seen him, then?”
Patricia asked, almost eagerly, but Dani doubted she was the type of woman
capable of that much sincerity. “Lord Ashcroft?”

“Uh… no. You see he, uh, wears a
cloak-”

“So you
have
seen him!”
Patricia interrupted. “You’ve seen him recently?”

Dani stifled the urge to roll her
eyes. This was growing tedious. “Look,” she said simply, “I have
seen
him, yes, but I haven’t seen
seen
him.”

Patricia gave Dani a startled
look.

“He wears a hood,” she said
flatly. “To cover his face.”

“Oh!” Patricia grinned and Dani
swore it was a little bit malicious. “I see. But you have
seen
him, in
person, on occasion?”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“So
you
must be the girl!”

“Uh…”

“The girl he went to the
Worthwell affair for!
The
girl! The
girl
!”

“How,” Dani began suspiciously,
“do you know all that?”

Patricia rolled her eyes
impatiently. “It’s only been in every paper since the night,” she explained.
“The only thing everybody doesn’t know was the identity of the girl.” Her dark
eyes sized Dani up from head to toes, cynically and invading. Dani fought off
the urge to cross her arms self-consciously. “I guess we do
now
. I must
say, you are not his lordship’s usual tastes. His mistresses used to be far
more beautiful-”

“How dare you!” Dani gasped,
outraged, and loathing the blush that inflamed her face and neck. “That is the
most vicious thing anyone could ever say. I am
not
his mistress and
you’d be wise not to convolute the gossip mills with such claptrap!”

 Without waiting for a response
and realising that she had been unforgivably rude, Dani walked hastily to the
entrance of the castle and was ushered inside by a harassed-looking Grayson,
feeling Patricia’s eyes on her back the whole time.

With a deep, calming breath, Dani
attempted to eradicate the offending encounter from her mind but she couldn’t
quite stop herself from feeling a little bit hurt. Nobody had ever accused her
of something so scandalous. Throughout her life, she had been the pinnacle of
wholesome goodness. Nobody would even dare to assume that plain and simple,
woebegone wallflower, Danielle was somebody’s
mistress
. It was shocking.
Shocking and absurd.

Not that shocking, if she thought
carefully about it. Hadn’t she on numerous occasions offered her body to Rhys?
Not in so many words, but the intent was there nonetheless. She sighed. It was
vexing. It didn’t help that the man had rejected her.

She began to shrug out her dark
coat and automatically handed it to Grayson who had been standing to one side
while she did so. The butler looked at the garment before turning on his heel
and walking away, leaving Dani gaping after him. Horrible man, that.

Searching for a place to hang or
store her coat and finding none, Dani settled on placing it neatly on a table
close to the entrance’s double-oak doors. It had just crossed her mind about
where she should start looking for Rhys, as his rude butler had failed to do
just that, when the man in question appeared sauntering down the stairs.

“Danielle,” he said in greeting.

When he was being pleasant, Rhys
Ashcroft had a very nice-sounding voice- a deep, sensual baritone that could
make the most experienced woman blush. Disappointingly, he wasn’t always
pleasant and more often than not Dani was the cause of a snarl or a growl that
was positively animalistic.

Pinning a cheerful grin on her
face, she pretended to survey his dark cloak from top to bottom. “That cloak is
starting to look old,” she told him teasingly. “Perhaps you should burn it and
get a new one.”

“You’d like that,” he snorted
dismissively.

Her eyes lit up. “We can do it
right now,” she said excitedly. “Show me to the nearest fire place.”

“I have more cloaks, Danielle.”

“Drat.”

Rhys allowed himself a smile at
her cheerfully petulant expression whereas a moment ago, when she had entered,
he could have sworn she was about to burst into tears. The woman was a
confusing mass of volatile and interchangeable emotions and he wondered what
had caused the discomfort.

“You looked distracted when you
came in,” he broached suggestively.

Dani pursed her lips and gave him
an assessing look. Lord, she was adorable when she pretended to be stern,
especially in a dress that fit her so snugly every sensuous curve of her was
placed to their best advantage. Rhys was glad that she seemed to be phasing the
black mourning colours out of her attire. Her dress today was broken with bits
of white around the swooping, square neckline and thin strips along the bodice
and hem. He could admire her with uninhibited audacity, thanks to the hood. It
was a sight he adored, felt completely enamoured with, and very privileged that
he had such liberties when admiring her.

“How long have you been watching
me?” she demanded, hands on her hips.

“Since the moment you came in.”

She made a small, reproachful
sound and shook her hand. “I suppose you were just going to let me fend for
myself against your butler?”

“A bear is no match against
Grayson,” he drawled.

She gave him a peeved looked but
said nothing further on the topic featuring Rhys’s ornery butler. “Are you
going to invite me in or must I just make myself at home?” she asked him
irritably.

“You were quite happy to make
yourself at home all the other times you’ve trespassed and not until you tell
me what had you so worried when you came in.”

Dani sighed impatiently and
crossed her arms under her breasts. “Nothing of import,” she told him. “One of
your many callers.”

“Ah.” Having placed himself on
the bottom stair during their brief conversation, Rhys now took the required
steps to close the distance between them. “Then I’m sure a tour of the gallery
will improve your mood.”

She gave him a brilliant smile
that made his gut clench with longing. She should
not
look at him like
that. “What mood? I am quite well, I assure you.”

He deigned to remain silent and
began to walk towards the wing of the castle where the gallery was nestled,
Dani silently falling into step beside him. The halls were dark and quiet as
they went, the only light emitted from interspersed, ornately arched windows.
The tapestries along the walls were archaic and faded, having not been well
tended to, and depicted long-past scenes of battle and chivalry in illustrative
detail. Dani absorbed it all silently and wonderingly, occasionally having to
be reminded to continue walking.

“You must love living here,” she
breathed, craning her neck to examine the tapestry solely depicting a knight
wearing bright, liveried armour. He didn’t say anything, couldn’t say anything,
his thoughts awash in the wonder on her face, the utter contentment at just
staring at a piece of art. Rhys suddenly knew that Dani could be happy at
Falmouth. It was obvious, blatantly so. But was that enough?

When he was silent too long, she
turned to him. “Don’t you?”

“At times.”

Her head bent towards the
tapestry for one last perusal before she began to walk again. “I would love
it,” she sighed blissfully. “It’s so… full of character and history.”

“And history interests you?”

She nodded her head emphatically.
“Absolutely. Could there be anything as wonderful as understanding how our
ancestors lived?” Dani gestured with a wide arc the tapestries surrounding them
up and down the passage. “These are how your ancestors lived.”

Rhys frowned. He didn’t like to
consider the Ashcroft name part of his history, but the girl did have a point.
Just because his father was a downright ass, didn’t mean the rest of his
lineage were too.

“Couldn’t you just spend all day
looking at these, wondering what your great-great-great grandfather must have
been like during these times?” she sighed adoringly, her eyes harbouring a
far-away look. “Or what your great-great-great-”

“I get it, Danielle.”

Her look was sharp but the
corners of her mouth were bent in such a way that Rhys could tell she was
suppressing a smile. “Well,
I
think it’s fantastic.”

He thought that
she
was
fantastic but he wasn’t about to say so. Her absolute adoration with literature
and history made her intelligent and witty, a rarity among a society of
nitwits. The innocence and enthusiasm she consistently expressed, especially
with the castle, was phenomenally refreshing compared to Rhys’s jaded
perspective of the world at large.

Unable to restrain himself, he
reached for her arm and slipped it into his. The look she gave him he
endeavoured to ignore.

They reached a fork between two
passages and Rhys swerved to the left without haltering, drawing to a slow stop
before two elaborate wooden doors which he pushed open.

They led into the lengthy wing of
the gallery, portraits and paintings adorning the walls on either side of them,
broken by large, paned windows. The wing was placed as such so that it received
an abundance of golden sunlight during the peak of the day and into the
afternoon, illuminating the chamber in an ethereal, almost dream-like haze.
Although today was slightly overcast, a dim light from outside streamed in and
hinted at the same effect.