Miracle (11 page)

"Quite the contrary. I'm simply accustomed to people looking at me when we converse."

"My apologies, Your Highness."

"Your Grace," he corrected her with a dry smile.

"Your Grace," she returned, the tone so condescendingly sweet it might have stung like a slap had he not found the flash of belligerence in her outrageous eyes so mesmerizing.

"Where are your companions?" she repeated.

"Yet snoring away, I presume," Clayton replied.

"I don't mean
that
companion. I mean
the others
." She wrinkled her sparsely freckled nose. "Those detestable men who followed you about like adoring puppies."

"Mira!"
scolded Johnny.

"You thought them odd yourself, Johnny. Don't deny it. You thought the duke rather odd as well."

Blustering and turning five shades of pink, Johnny squirmed
on
his chair and grabbed for his cane, a gnarled
stick
of driftwood with a handle carved into the likeness of a horse head.

"In what way?" Clayton asked.

Her countenance coming to life, Miracle leapt gracefully to her feet. "After you were coughed up from the sea, we brought you into the bosom of our family, offered you all the comforts of our home, and you treated us as if we were little more than your servants, barking orders, whining about your 'less than agreeable accommodations.' And when you and your thoroughly detestable friends departed, you didn't so much as offer a shilling for our troubles. If you, sir, are any indication of what aristocracy has come to, I thank God that I was fortunate to be brought up here, a world away from such flagrant pretension."

"Are you finished?" Clayton said, his eyes narrowed slightly, a sardonic curl on his lips.

"No, actually." Grabbing up her skirt, she stepped over a row of frilly carrot tops, allowing Clayton a generous display of
stockinged
leg, and planted herself before him. She wagged one dirt-encrusted finger in his face. "I cannot conceive of how you would have the audacity to return here and think that I would harbor the least inclination for you. I don't care if you
are
a duke. There is much to be said for humility, not to mention civility. The most gallant hero is made all the more valiant by his ability to offer a simple thank-you to his inferiors. You, sir, are gauche."

"Great goose!" gasped Hoyt, and swooned in his chair, legs flung open, his cane falling to the ground with a thump.

"Johnny!" Miracle cried, and jumped to his aid.

Clayton quit his chair in one fluid movement, grabbed the old man, as did Miracle, and righted him on his cushion. Upon digging in her skirt pocket, Miracle withdrew a tiny vial of liquid, and once removing the cork stopper, proceeded to wave it beneath the beleaguered servant's nose. He sputtered and coughed. His eyes watered. Frantically, he shoved it away with a snort. "Good goose, gal, you'll kill me yet with that disgusting medicament."

"Are you all right?" Miracle asked him softly, the anger on her face now replaced by deep concern for her friend and companion.

"Hardly," he snapped rubbing the stench from his nose with the back of his liver-spotted hand. "How should I act when you insult the only man who has shown any inclination toward courting you? Good grief, I swore to your mother that I would see that you were taken care of and kept as happy as possible, considering the circumstances, but you are obviously intent on thwarting my every intent to do just that."

She blinked her enormous aquamarine eyes and set her jaw, rocked back on her heels, and frowned.

"Don't give me that look, miss. You know it's the truth. And don't deny that you've not grown a little moon-eyed over the possibility of winding up a spinster. I've heard you chanting to those bleeding acorns of yours, casting ridiculous love spells taught to you by some old witch named Ceridwen."

"She's a
wisewoman
, Johnny."

"Horse hockey! If she were so wise, she'd have found her own self a husband. Give me my cane."

"Why?"

"I'm off to the lighthouse."

"I'll fetch you the cart."

"I'll walk."

"Don't be daft."

"Need I remind you about civility, or does that not apply when addressing your elders?"

Her cheeks went bright red, and Miracle fixed her attentions again on Clayton. "Now see what you've done."

"What
I've
done?" he replied.

"You've been here only a few short hours and already you've brought dissension to this place."

"Basingstoke!" came the unexpected cry from the door.

All heads turned as Benjamin stumbled into the garden, his face bloodless, his knees wobbly as clotted cream.

"My lord!" he croaked as the strength melted from his legs and he sat down with a painful grunt.

"Good God," Clayton and Johnny said in unison.

Clayton and Miracle reached the manservant at the same time. His white hair sticking out from his head like ruffled feathers, he clutched at Clayton's suit coat with trembling hands. His eyes were wide and wild.

"For the love of God, man, speak up and tell me what's happened," Clayton demanded.

"I saw it with my own eyes, sir."

"What?"

"The beast. It was there beyond my door, its cloven hooves clattering on the stones like bones in the wind."

"A beast." It wasn't a question.

"Huge it was, and white as a dozen ghosts, its black eyes flashing with fire and smoke rushing from its nostrils. It were awful, my lord. Wretched. Leering at me from the darkness. And the sound it made .. ." The manservant shuddered. "A roaring, blowing sound. A growl deep in its throat. And if that weren't enough—"

"Don't tell me there's more," Clayton said.

"A specter with black skin and half a face. A man draped in robes that dragged the ground. He babbled at me in tongues."

Miracle gasped and covered her lips with her fingertips. She glanced up at Johnny, who peered at Benjamin, wide- eyed, over Clayton's shoulder, all evidence of his own seizure having miraculously vanished.

"He babbled, did you say?" Hoyt queried.

Benjamin frantically nodded.

"In tongues?" Miracle ventured.

"You've seen them?" Benjamin said, his voice rising with fresh trepidation.

"No!" Johnny exclaimed.

"Certainly not!" Miracle agreed.

Clayton allowed his manservant a compassionate smile and a slap on the back. "Relax, Ben. No doubt you were

only dreaming again. I'm certain our kind hosts will attest to the fact that Cavisbrooke Castle is without ghosts."

"I wouldn't go so far as to promise that," Miracle declared under her breath, causing Benjamin's gray brows to shoot up again, and Clayton to briefly close his eyes in frustration. "Rumor is, that the previous gentry who resided here, having determined to investigate every secret dungeon and passageway in the castle, happened upon a heavy iron door securely fastened. He forced it, passed through a narrow passage hewn out of solid rock, forced another door, and found himself in a small, dim room, at the opposite extremity of which he made out the figure of a man of gigantic stature, seated on a stone and holding his head between his hands; at his feet was a small wooden coffer. The gentleman made a step forward, but as the outer air came in contact with the body, it crumbled into dust, and the secret of its identity perished." Lowering her voice slightly, she added effectively, "Ever since, unwelcome guests have sworn they heard the poor departed wretch banging on the walls and wailing for release."

Lips pressed, jaw locked, Clayton snatched the vial of foul-smelling oil from Miracle's hand, and as Benjamin's eyes rolled back in his head, Clayton growled, "Thank you."

"You're welcome." Miracle smiled.

Experience teaches us that love does not consist

of two people looking at each other, but of looking

together in the same direction.

ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY

Chapter Four

Often she had anathematized her own susceptibility. She had been cursed with the inability to remain angry at anyone who showed the least amount of contrition for their dirty deeds, a trait she had obviously inherited from her mother, considering the dear woman had forgiven Miracle's father for virtually abandoning them to Cavisbrooke Castle. But she wasn't about to forgive his dukeship, no matter that he had shown such concern over Johnny (a mere groom) that morning in the wall garden. No matter that he had spoken to her in a far less offensive and abasing tone. No matter that his gray eyes, so cold and reprehending before when he had looked at her, now reminded her of smoldering peat ash. No matter that his hands were no longer cold.

She couldn't be certain, of course. He had only touched her briefly, first the evening before at her threshold (when they had definitely been cold), then his hand on hers when he seized her vial of eel bile oil in hopes of recovering his manservant from a dead swoon.

How dare he make her feel guilty for frightening his ridiculously gullible valet! She tore the crust from a round of stale bread and tossed it out the window to the pigeons that perched on the windowsill, cooing and hungrily watching with tiny black eyes.

"I was simply telling the truth," she said aloud to the birds, yanking out the spongy center of the bread and flinging it the way of the crust.

Snatching up a ladle, she dipped it into the simmering pot of curried mulligatawny soup swimming with turnips and carrots and peas, spooned the stew into the hollowed bread, then piled it high with yellow cheese. She shoved the lot into the stone oven, where the heat from the hearth beside it puffed the cheese and toasted it to a gold brown, sealing the heat and soup within the hollowed loaf of bread.

Miracle wrapped the bread in a warmed cloth and tucked it into a basket. She left the castle at a quick pace, swinging the basket at her side, humming to herself, and trying her best not to think about
Duke . . .
What's-His- Name. Salterdon. Something Hawthorne.