Moonlight Surrender (Moonlight Book 3) (14 page)

“Is it—connected to the other room, by any chance? To the earl’s?” Beth couldn’t bring herself to call it Duncan’s room. It made her question much too intimate.

Her eyes swept over the wall which separated her room from Duncan’s. She saw no door, but old manors were known for secret passages that lovers might use in the dead of night for trysts.

Samuel shook his head vigorously, the straggled gray locks whipping through the air like tiny gray serpents.

“Oh, no, mistress. I heard that she was a virago.
Beautiful, but deadly.” He inclined his head, his voice
lowering even more. “She went about her own way a great deal.” His expression sobered. “Had lovers, so the stories went.”

He’d heard tell of that in the town. The barkeep there liked to number himself among the woman’s lovers, but Samuel had his doubts. No woman could have had as many as they said she had, but he would have dearly loved to verify that on his own.

“A woman like that would not have permitted her room to be connected to her poor, cuckolded husband’s.”

It made perfect sense. Still, would a husband with a wife like that not want somehow to confirm his suspicions discreetly?

Beth bit her lip, knowing that Samuel might take umbrage for Duncan.

“And there are no . ..” she waved her hand airily, “. . . knotholes, perhaps?”

Samuel cocked his head. Was she asking him if there
was a way to observe Duncan without being seen?

“Why? Were you hoping to—?” He saw the shocked
expression seize her features. Quickly he retreated. “Oh,
you mean the other way of it?” He shook his head, the
picture of piety. “Oh, no, mistress. There’s no way that anyone can look in on you.” He crossed his heart, as if that was the end of it. “Unless, perhaps, it might be a bird.” With a flourish, he gestured toward the partly open window. “Though there’d be none flying in this sort of weather, I’d wager.”

He nodded benevolently as Jacob deposited the last bit of hot water into the tub.

“You’ll have your privacy, mistress, I swear it upon my mother’s grave. And I’ll even post a guard for you at the door, so none can enter by accident.” He winked at her. “Or by design.”

She was a winsome lass, and he could well see her concern. There were those in the house who would profess ignorance of the room’s occupation and pretend to
stumble in just for a look at her pleasing form. Were he
younger, he might have used the same excuse himself. As it was, the more settled, ample figure now tempted
him. A man enjoyed having something to hold onto. He
thought of Sylvia and smiled to himself.

She breathed a sigh of relief. “That would be greatly
appreciated, Samuel.”

He beamed at her words of thanks. “Consider it already done, mistress.” A stubby finger beckoned Jacob forward. The younger man had been loitering in the room, searching for an excuse to remain a little longer. “You, there, Jacob. You’ll stand at the lady’s door until such time as she wishes you to be gone.”

Jacob straightened his shoulders like a soldier standing to attention. His obvious pleasure at being singled out was evident in the foolish expression he wore.

Beth wondered if perhaps it was a little like having a fox guard the henhouse. She leaned toward Samuel, lowering her voice.

“And he won’t—?”

There was no need for her to finish her question. He
understood her meaning. Samuel moved his head solemnly from side to side. “Not unless he wishes to have his eyes put out.”

It was a gruesome image, but it did make Beth feel safer. “Thank you.”

He didn’t want her to misunderstand. Samuel would never rob Duncan of his due. “”lis Duncan you should be thanking, mistress, not me. While you are here, you are under his protection.”

Yes, she thought, but what or who was to protect her
from Duncan?

Beth pushed the thought from her mind as she looked
down at the tub. The water called to her seductively. Her inclincation toward caution began to slip away, lulled by Samuel’s promise.

She’d been won over, Samuel thought, reading her expression, and he was pleased to have her trust. She had done well by Duncan, and thus had earned his loyalty. He clapped his hands together once, signaling that the others were to depart from the room.

He herded them out, then turned and backed away himself. He gave Beth a reassuring smile as he placed a hand on each of the open double doors.

“Anything you need, you’ve but to ask,” he reminded her, a moment before he rendered the doors shut.

“This’ll do very well, thank you,” she murmured.

Hurrying to the door, she locked it, then tested its strength. The lock was secure. But to put her mind at ease completely, and to prevent Jacob from taking any action they might both regret, Beth dragged a heavy chair over and set it against the door.

That done, she surveyed the room slowly with a critical eye. Walking toward the wall that separated their two rooms, she pushed aside tapestries and ran her tapering fingers along the frames of the portraits. But there were no suspicious indentations in the walls, no knotholes that might be unobstructed at will.

It appeared as though she was indeed safe from prying eyes.

The water had cooled somewhat as she had conducted her search, but her heart was finally at ease.

Quickly, not to waste any more time, Beth shed her
garments and then eased her body gratefully into the tub. A sigh that was nothing short of ecstasy escaped her lips as the waters embraced her.

Without, standing guard at her door, as Samuel had instructed him to do, Jacob smiled to himself. He wished with all his heart that he were braver. If so, he would crack the door but a little and steal a glance at the woman.

As it was, he had to content himself with the multitude of fantasies that were racing through his young mind. Though what Samuel had told the lady was a lie—for Duncan would never put out an eye for such an offense—Jacob still knew that if he did look upon the woman’s form, even for half a breath, there would be consequences to face. Duncan did not look favorably upon the breaking of one’s word, especially not if it involved his as well.

To incur Duncan’s displeasure was enough to trouble the heart of any of his men. Jacob’s most especially, since he worshipped the man.

So he sighed in secret and stood his guard. And let his mind drift.

In the next room, Duncan smiled to himself as he stretched out on his bed. He had heard Beth’s sigh as
well. Both of their windows were open, despite the rain,
and the sensual sound that had escaped her lips had carried. Someday, and soon, she would sigh that way beneath him, a moment before she cried out his name. A moment before they were joined.

Anticipation heated his blood.

For now, Duncan told himself, he would act the genial host and proper gentleman.

Or perhaps, not too proper. He would render to her no
less than she required. And no more.

The hunt, he smiled, had assuredly begun.

Chapter Fourteen

Duncan hated the idea of being weak, even temporar
ily. The very thought imprisoned him in a state of mind in which he did not wish to be.

While Beth took her bath in the room beside his,
Duncan pushed himself out of bed, restless to test his strength. It was in shorter supply than he had been given
to believe. Grasping the bed post with a sweaty palm, he forced himself to take a few steps.

His head spun like a downy-faced lad taking his very
first swig of ale. Gritting his teeth together, sweat pour
ing from his brow, Duncan forced himself to make an
incomplete circle about the border of the bed, going from post to post and then back again. His legs felt a bit steadier, but his head still spun, and he cursed it for its lack of loyalty to his command.

With a mighty sigh, he dropped back against the pillows, taking care not to unduly jar his shoulder. An in
valid. He felt like a bloody invalid.

“Damn!”

Though he was in charge here at Shalott, in charge anywhere his men were with him, the ghost of years past rose up now to haunt him. Years past when he had been but a young whelp of a lad, to be ground under any gentleman’s boot if the whim took the man.

The way it had the man who had given him seed
within a night, his mother had recalled, filled with great
suffering and pain.

The very memory of the man who had sired him had
Duncan clenching and unclenching his hand at his side in controlled rage. It did not help quell the rage to know
that the man had paid, paid dearly for his brutality, both
then and later, to the woman he had raped . . . Duncan’s mother.

This frustration drumming within him would aid nothing, Duncan told himself, willing the hot blood from his veins. He would be up and about soon enough. He needed but dip a little into the pot of patience Samuel was continually babbling about.

His dipper, Duncan thought with a rueful smile, had a hole in it.

Once more about, he thought, his bare feet touching again upon the dark wooden floor. He’d push himself a bit more, and then be done with it for a while. He needed his strength to return if he was to be of any use as a man to the fair creature that the winds of fate had seen to blow his way.

“God damn Dorchester’s bloody eyes,” Duncan gasped, as his knees suddenly buckled beneath him.

Had he not been holding onto the post, he would have
surely found himself eye to eye with the knotholes on the boards in the floor.

Beth stifled the urge to run to his aid. She had just now come to see him, to thank him for the tub, and been in time to witness the display of weakness on his part. Men were such prideful creatures, and though it made little sense to her, she knew accepting her help,

except under the most dire of circumstances, or upon his
own conditions, would shatter that fragile shell known as manly esteem.

She purposely hung back in the doorway and made her presence known. “You’re up, I see.”

Her voice floated to him, as sweet as any spring
breeze scented with blossoms. He turned to look in her
direction.

“Not nearly as much as I would like.”

Silently cursing his legs, and the wound that had rendered them to the consistence of Amy’s runny gruel, Duncan lowered himself upon the bed. Pride or no, he held onto the bedpost. It would be far more embarrassing to fall before her than to admit to a need for assistance.

Sitting, he turned and arranged himself on the bed, then looked in Beth’s direction. He regarded her with intense enjoyment. She had changed again, and wore a dress of light pink. Pink, like the color which rose so easily to her cheeks.

“Do you always enter a man’s room unannounced?” Amusement highlighted his ruggedly handsome face.
“If so, you might just see more than you bargained for.”
His eyes glinted as a smile entered them as well. “Unless, of course, that is what you bargained for.”

It seemed, she thought, her mood still deliciously mellow from the bath, that she could not readily expect a leopard to change its spots.

“I see your tongue seems none the worse for your injury.” She spread her dress as she took a seat on the chair beside him. “And to answer your question, I knocked.”

“I did not hear.” Though in truth he was not listening for the soft rapping of knuckles upon his door. He was too busy silently chastising his own weakness.

“I shouldn’t wonder,” she agreed. “You were grumbling too loudly to hear anything but Gabriel’s trumpet, and perhaps not even that.”

Duncan shrugged, letting it pass. He hadn’t been aware that he was speaking aloud at all.

Beth leaned forward, curiosity poking rigid fingers at her. He had worn a particularly angry expression when she had entered. “Who is Dorchester?”

He was not about to let her pry into his affairs. “No one you would want to hear of.”

She hated that firm, distancing tone, that tone that separated men from women, the very young from the old. She always had. It was a tone that meant to keep her from opening knowledge’s door.

Her face hardened with an accusation. “I see. My secrets are open for examination, but yours are not.”

Their eyes met. There was no room for argument within his. “Exactly.”

He was like all the others, save her father. Anger flashed in her eyes at being so dismissed.

“That is not fair, sir.”

He meant to divert her from the subject that was hurtful to him, even after all these summers had passed.

“The only fair thing in this room is you.” His tone belied his intense feelings. Duncan’s eyes swept over her in delighted appraisal. “You seem refreshed.”

Beth locked her temper away. It served no purpose, arguing with the man. What did she care if he shared his
thoughts with her or not? They meant nothing to one another and never would.

She inclined her head in acknowledgment of his words. “That is why I came, to thank you for your kindness.” Because it felt too confining to remain so close to him, she rose once more and moved about the room, though there was nothing to take her attention there, save him. “It was unexpected.”

He watched as she moved, sheer poetry embodied in a supple, tempting body.

“It should not have been. I can be very kind.” His voice was gentle and coaxing, whispering promises without forming any. “But you will come to learn that.”

Why was it that a single glance from him could make
her mouth so dry and the rest of her body hum with anticipation? She drew herself up and turned toward the window. The scene had not changed. Rain, nothing but
monotonous, annoying rain.

“That will take time, sir, and I do not have that to spare.” In her heart, she cursed this foul weather. “It cannot rain forever.”

The laugh was deep and sultry. It pleased him that it no longer hurt to laugh. “The English countryside might surprise you.”