Moonlight Surrender (Moonlight Book 3) (27 page)

Cosette entered the kitchen, drawn by the sound of Beth’s voice. There were no angry shouts, no sound of a pistol being discharged. That meant, hopefully, that there was no thief here, but only Duncan returning, as he had promised.

Her eyes grew as wide as her niece’s when she looked at the table.

“A goose, a chicken, vegetables. Carrots,” she declared in wonder, as her hand passed over each item in turn. Cosette whispered the last as reverently as if she had said “rubies.”

She looked at Duncan in amazement. “How did you find all of this?”

There was pride in Beth’s eyes as she turned toward Cosette. “He has a talent.”

Duncan shrugged it away. “I do not like being invited to supper unless I can bring something to add to the meal.” He looked at the old woman’s joy and it heart
ened him, wiping away some of the sorrowful scenes he
had witnessed today. “I am invited to supper, am I not?”

She would have gladly married him if it had come down to that. “To supper and breakfast, and as many meals as you like.” She caressed the goose as if it were a beloved friend come to visit.

“Oh, we’ll have such a feast tonight!” Cosette promised gleefully, as giddy as a young girl once more. She turned and looked at the others. “Out of my kitchen, all of you,” she ordered, tapping her cane on the floor. “I will call you when it is ready.”

Beth looked at the old woman in surprise. She did not
want to leave her to face all this work. “I did not know you could cook.”

“Young ladies in my time were taught to do many things.” Cosette regarded the pistol at Beth’s side. “Of course, we had no knowledge of pistols, but that was a different time than now.” She rallied from memories past and present. “Go, go!” Cosette shooed her out.

Duncan took Beth’s arm and led her to the hall. “You
were wonderful,” Beth told Duncan.

He laughed and held her to him. “Ah, finally I am acknowledged for my true worth.”

She hesitated, but she had to know. “Did you find out
anything?”

He looked past her head toward the kitchen and watched the old woman working happily. “Much more than I wanted to know.”

The breath caught in her throat. “About my father?” Beth pressed.

She looked to Jacob, for she could read his expression more readily than Duncan’s. But there was nothing there for her to see.

“No, not yet.” Duncan draped an arm around her shoulders. It felt good just to have her close. He inhaled deeply of the scent that always seemed to cling to her and felt himself renewed, cleansed. It would always be this way, he thought. “But I will return there in the morning, never fear.”

“We will return,” Beth insisted, lest he forget that she had a right to be there as well.

Impatience creased his brow. “I do not want to argue
about this, Beth.”

She nodded, pleased. “Good, then it is settled. I am going.”

Duncan struggled with his patience, knowing that it would always be this way with Beth, one moment good
and a hundred moments spent in aggravation. He arched
his brow as he saw Jacob laugh behind his hand.

Duncan waved him on his way. “Go chop some wood
for the old woman, Jacob. She’ll have need of it. For
God sakes man, make yourself useful to her.” Jacob was
already on his way. “And mind she’s not to carry anything heavier than a carrot,” Duncan called after him.

“Aye, Duncan,” Jacob threw over his shoulder, as he
hurried into the kitchen.

Beth placed a hand on his arm. “You are a good man,
Duncan.”

He smiled and winked. “Perhaps later, I will show you how good.”

“In my grandmother’s house?” she pretended to be shocked.

“In any house at all.” He leaned and whispered in her ear. “And soon, Beth, soon, for I have great need of you.”

Beth felt a warm shiver travel down her spine.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Duncan had not wanted to eat nearly as much as he did, but Cosette had urged food on him with the solemnity of a mother trying to fatten up her starving child.

Finally, he could eat no more. He pushed himself from the table with both hands and looked at her with a contented, sleepy-eyed manner of one who had eaten far more than his fill.

“The meal, mademoiselle, was heavenly.”

Cosette inclined her head and took the praise as her due. But Beth could see there was a special glow in her eyes, one lit in response to Duncan’s courtliness. It had been a long time since kindly words had been tendered to this dear old woman, Beth thought in sorrow.

“Yes, and the provider was heaven sent.” She leaned over her grandniece to squeeze Duncan’s hand.

Cosette looked over the dishes spread out on the table in the dining hall. She had taken a serving to her sister earlier, and they had all eaten well, but there was still much that remained.

“This is the most I have had on my table since before poor Philippe was taken from us.” She wiped her lips delicately and then sighed as she folded the treasured napkin in her lap. She appeared annoyed at her own lapse. “But I am making noises like a bitter old woman.” She looked at the circle of young faces around her, the sum of whom probably did not begin to equal her age. “I am, you know, but there is no point in making the noises to attest to that before the young.”

She laid the napkin on the table and moved her chair back. Her eyes held Beth’s.

“You have, God willing, a future before you. I have nought but the past.” She raised her chin proudly, lifting the head that would never be bowed. “Which they cannot take from me. So, if you will excuse me, I will look in once more upon my sister and then this tired old woman is going to bed.”

She struggled to her feet, leaning heavily upon her cane, eschewing the hand that Beth offered her.

Duncan rose quickly to his feet and indicated with his eyes that Jacob should follow suit, which Jacob did after an awkward moment.

Duncan bowed slightly upon Cosette’s passing. “Good night, mademoiselle. Jacob and I will take turns standing watch.”

His words brought a smile to her lips. “Then I sleep well tonight.” With spidery fingers, she touched his cheek. “Thank you for all you have done.” She glanced toward her grandniece. “And for all that you will do.”

Cosette moved slowly out, like a shadow receding upon the wall.

Beth rose as well. “I will see if she needs anything,” she told Duncan, as she hurried after the old woman.

Duncan nodded, then turned toward his companion. There was the business of details to see to. “Jacob, the table needs clearing, and it appears that there are but two of us left.”

Jacob pouted slightly as he gathered Duncan’s meaning. His small, bright eyes looked about the table sadly. He was more than happy to forage for the food and eat it, but to clear away the remains was another story entirely, and one not to his liking.

He raised his eyes to Duncan’s face. “We should have brought a woman with us,” he muttered.

Duncan looked over his shoulder toward the doorway through which Beth had gone only a moment before.

“We did.” He laughed at the very thought. “But she would be no more inclined to do this sort of thing than you or I, Jacob.”

Jacob heartily agreed. That was why he had be
moaned their not having brought someone with them to
begin with. He could not envision Beth about a menial task such as cleaning.

Resigned, he gathered up the empty plates, stacking them carefully. He need not be told that they were delicate. “She is different, is she not? The mistress, I mean, not the old one.”

Like a man with molasses in his veins instead of blood, Duncan slowly placed one dish upon another, his mind elsewhere. “So different, Jacob, that I do not even know where to begin to address the matter.”

“But you like her,” Jacob prodded, like a child who wanted to hear aloud the answer he already knew to be true. He scooped up the dishes and, bracing them against his breast, carried the lot of them into the kitchen.

If there were cats about, Duncan thought, shaking his
head, they would be following Jacob about for the better
part of the evening, just for the chance to run their coarse tongues along his shirt.

Duncan looked into the patient eyes and nodded. “Yes, Jacob, I like her.”

Jacob stopped, three feet shy of the kitchen table. “A lot?”

Duncan pointed a finger at the work. “Scrub the pot
for Mademoiselle Delacroix the way you would if Amy
was here, and ask me no more questions I do not fully know the answers to myself.”

The meandering reply puzzled Jacob. Duncan was always so straightforward with him and the others. Could it really be that he did not know?

“I like her a great deal,” Jacob volunteered, his grin splitting his face in two.

‘That is easy.” Duncan clapped his hand on Jacob’s back. “She has not railed at you.”

“Yes,” Jacob’s voice was sad as he agreed. Amy had told him that if you aroused a woman’s temper, you aroused her heart as well. “I know.”

Her grandmother was already asleep when Beth and Cosette tiptoed in. Beth removed the tray, then left it in the hall as she accompanied her grandaunt to the latter’s
room. The old woman was tired, and Beth felt guilty at
having kept her up so long.

“No, no, my child, it has been wonderful to speak with someone, with something other than shadows and memories. There was a time when I could have stayed up and talked to you until dawn, but those days are gone.” She shuffled about the bed and with practiced moves, turned it down. “Now, I fear I must to bed, lest I do you the insult of falling asleep in the middle of one of your words. Good night, my dear. Sleep the sleep of the just.”

With that, Cosette eased her door closed.

Beth stood for a moment, staring at the dark wooden door as if transfixed. She felt far too restless to go to the room her great-aunt had provided for her.

It was not worry for their immediate safety that pricked at her, but a despair for all that had happened here. Like a ghost, she roamed the hallway, examining portraits of ancestors whose names she did not know. Ancestors who would be as shamed as her great-aunt by the events that were transpiring.

Her father had spent many a night sitting upon her bed as the hour grew late, telling her tales of his child
hood home in lieu of a fairy tale. He told her how beau
tiful it was. Eventually, her grandmother’s house became almost like an enchanted land for Beth. And since she had seen it for herself when she was young, the magic was not dispelled.

It was now.

Now, it reminded her of the castle in the story of the sleeping princess, overgrown with brambles and weeds.
And though it was not a witch who was responsible for the curse, the people who had caused all this to happen were far more frightening to Beth than any witch could be.

Beth sighed as she crossed the long, somber hallway once more, treading lightly so as not to wake the two old women. Restlessness stirred within her to even a higher pitch. She silently made her way past her room and to the backstairs.

She took care to make no noise as she descended.

Jacob had his back to Beth as she carefully eased by him in the kitchen. He heard nothing, grumbling softly to himself as he placed dishes into the water he had fetched from the well.

For a moment, she hesitated when she saw what he was about. This was her grandmother’s house, and she should be the one doing what Jacob was occupied with. But needs greater than duty tugged at her.

She was not in the mood for conversation, even with a soul as simple and good as Jacob. For the moment, Beth wished to be alone with her thoughts and the ghosts of times gone by.

Quietly, she opened the back door and slipped into the garden.

Here and there, in the moonlight, she saw that a rose still bloomed upon bushes that were sagging. But by
and large, the bushes had all either been trampled or cut
away by cruel, hateful hands belonging to envious souls.

She thought of the rabble who had come here to seize
her father and had killed the old servant as if he were nothing more than another flower in their path.

“Was it frightening for you, Father?” she whispered to the dark. “I wish I could have been here with you, to help defend you.”

It was a foolish wish, she knew, but she was full of
foolish wishes tonight. She wished for the power to save
her father. She wished for a magical event that could make everyone lay down their arms and take up the plow in harmony.

Most of all, she wished for the tranquility she had known as a child, with her father by her side to guide her every step.

Beth felt tears weighing heavily on her lids, and since she was alone, she let them come, hoping to purge herself of this oppressive feeling of despair that was threatening to seize her.

He couldn’t find her.

Duncan fully expected Beth to be in her room when he went upstairs. He had spent many precious minutes
securing the house and checking the security of the win
dows. His mind was as much at rest as it could be, given the circumstances. He made his way to Beth’s room, anticipating the faint scent of her perfume filling his senses.

The room was empty, untouched.

Since Beth was as unpredictable as any woman he had ever known, Duncan thought perhaps that she had taken the initiative and gone to his room. Smiling to himself, he hurried down the hall in the opposite direction.

But that room was empty, too.

His heart quickened. Perhaps she was still with her aunt or grandmother. Hoping that was the case, he listened intently as he passed before the rooms of the two old women, nestled together like two morning doves on a branch. He heard not a word. Though he loathed to disturb them, it was necessary.

Candle in hand, he opened the door to Beth’s grandmother’s room. The woman was asleep in her bed. There was no one else in the room. Quietly, he eased the doors shut once more, then went to the other.