Moonlight Surrender (Moonlight Book 3) (41 page)

Very carefully she retraced her steps and went to her
room, where she spent the night crying.

Chapter Forty-one

Sylvia approached quietly behind Amy in the kitchen.
The cook set the tray she had carried upstairs two hours ago angrily on the long wooden table.

Hardly anything had been touched.

Sylvia glanced at it and shook her head. This could not keep up, she thought sadly. Since her wedding to Samuel
more than a month ago, she had blossomed, cocooned in
the folds of her happiness and newfound love. It dis
tressed her doubly so to see anyone else’s misery, especi
ally when it was tied to affairs of the heart.

As Duncan’s plainly was.

Since Beth had left, he had become a changed man. He never laughed heartily the way he had before, and his eyes were preoccupied, as if his mind was somewhere else. He was still a fair man, but he had given himself up to brooding the way he never had before. Samuel was clearly worried about him.

Sylvia cleared her throat and Amy turned to look at her. Sylvia touched the tray shyly. “How is he today?”

Amy shrugged her wide shoulders in disgust, then sighed.

“Same as yesterday. Same as all the other days since she left.” She cleared the dishes from the shield she still used as a tray. “I’ve never seen him so disagreeable.” Amy turned to look at Sylvia. She pressed the shield to her breast with both hands as she confided. “He like to bit Hank’s head off the other day for forgetting to cut wood for me. Hank’s a lazy lout, but still . . .”

The older woman shook her head as she laid the shield aside. “He apologized, of course, but that doesn’t go changing the fact that he just isn’t our Duncan anymore.”

Amy continued talking aloud, more to herself than to Sylvia. She never even noticed when Sylvia left the kitchen.

Sylvia slipped from the room, lacing and unlacing her
hands as she labored over a thought.

She was not a brave soul, she never had been, but someone had to speak with Duncan. It seemed that everyone at the manor was tiptoeing around the subject that was weighing so heavily on his heart.

Who better to raise it than someone who knew Beth?

She caught sight of herself in the reflecting glass of the window as she passed and braced her shoulders. Who better, indeed?

Gathering her courage to her like a threadbare, invisible cloak, Sylvia marched to the library where Duncan buried himself these days and knocked on the door. At
first she knocked timidly, but when that received no an
swer, she knocked harder.

“Go away. I’m busy.”

The words were growled so deeply, Sylvia almost retreated. Then, placing a hand over her fluttering heart, she opened the door and forced her feet to enter. Dark, brooding eyes looked up at her.

“This will take but a moment, sir.” Her voice squeaked in the middle of the sentence.

He sighed and slammed the account book shut. It wasn’t making much sense to him at the moment anyway. At any moment. These days, he couldn’t read, couldn’t eat, couldn’t think.

And it was all her fault.

Damn that woman for ever appearing in his life. He
had never been this way before. No woman had ever be
deviled him, ever haunted his nights and echoed about the corners of his days before.

It was like a sickness, one he couldn’t seem to recover from.

He’d even gone to the town, seeking out Elaine at the tavern. But when she pressed herself to him, eager to please, eager to couple with him once more, he had pushed away her firm, supple body, made some excuse
like some wet-behind-the-ears urchin and left her naked
and cursing in her room.

Beth.

Every thought was Beth, every breath was Beth, every prayer was Beth.

There was no one for him but her.

And she was not here.

He dragged both hands through his hair and looked at
the wide-hipped, good-natured woman before him. She had been a blessing for Samuel, a gift from the gods in his old age. For that Duncan was grateful to her. But he did not feel like being charitable toward anyone right now. He felt more like a bear who had been mortally wounded trying to gather honey.

“If it is some complaint about the way Samuel is treating you—“ Duncan began wearily, not wanting to hear it.

Her eyes grew wide in surprise. “Oh, no,” Sylvia assured Duncan quickly. A smile rose to her lips, and there were stars in her eyes. “Samuel and I are very happy. I have never been so happy.”

At least someone is. “That is good.” Duncan opened his book and realized that it had been upside down all this time. “Then there is no reason for you to seek me out.” He pretended to look engrossed in his work.

It was clearly a dismissal, but Beth would not be dis
missed. She took a step forward, though she kept the desk between them. “Oh, but that is just the reason to seek you out.”

Typical woman: she made no sense like the rest of
her breed, he thought in exasperation. Duncan strove for
patience.

Samuel and Jacob had attempted to talk to him, as had John at the very beginning. He had tersely ordered them all from his business. But politeness kept him from employing the same means to disengage himself from Sylvia.

“Yes?”

She saw no other way to say it. She looked at Duncan, her eyes urgent. “Go to her, sir.”

Very quietly, he closed the book once more and raised
his eyes to hers. His men knew enough to retreat when
faced with that black look. Sylvia quaked, but remained
where she was.

“To whom?”

Her throat felt dried and parched, but she forced the name out. “Beth.”

Manners only went so far. “Madam, I believe you overstep yourself.”

She had come this far, ventured this much; she had to continue until it was done.

“No, I do not. Everyone else in this household is afraid to tell you, or perhaps they feel if they say nothing, this will all pass.” The soft dark eyes, filled with compassion, met his and held. “But your agony grows each day, festering like some sort of poison in your body.”

Genteel woman or not, he would not sit here and be
lectured to by someone who had no idea what he was going through.

“It is none of—“

“My business?” she concluded. “No, but seeing your
pain is, especially when there is such an easy solution to
it.”

This time she moved behind the desk, empowered with the strength of her feelings and beliefs.

“Go to her,” Sylvia entreated. “She loves you.”

For a moment he stared at her, dumbfounded. “She told you?”

Sylvia smiled and shook her head. “Beth is not so open-mouthed. You know that yourself.”

She had lost him. He narrowed his eyes. “Then what are you saying?”

Sylvia had grown much since the first time she had
lain in Samuel’s strong arms. It was as if there had been
blinders on her eyes until then.

“That there are ways to hear things without words be
ing said. It was there, in her voice. And I saw it in her
eyes whenever she looked at you. Even from the very beginning, when she tended to your wound, it was there.
Beth loves you, sir.”

These were the fanciful imaginings of an old woman, Duncan thought. He rose and crossed to the sleeping fireplace. He wanted no cheer, no warmth about him when his heart felt so cold.

“If this is true, then why did she leave?”

It was so simple, she couldn’t understand why he didn’t see. “Did you ask her to stay?”

Duncan threw up his hands in exasperation. It hadn’t been his place to ask, to beg. “No, but—“

Sylvia drew herself up to her full height. For a moment, she took on the bearing of the teacher she had once been, leading a child into enlightenment.

“Sir, as much as she might love you, a woman cannot very well throw herself at a man. Not even Beth.” She raised her brows. “What if, she fears, he does not want to catch her? Then she falls and more than her heart is bruised.”

Sylvia leaned forward. “I am not very wise, sir, but I have known her since she was a child. I know her loyalties and her emotions. When she feels strongly, it is always there in her eyes.” She smiled. “As it was when she looked at you.”

Because he was silent, Sylvia hesitantly continued. “Samuel tells me that you keep strict accounts for the earl.”

“Yes.”

“And that the earl resides now in Virginia.” Her eyes
filled with sympathy. “Is in fact, a neighbor to the Beaulieus.”

Their eyes met and held. “Yes.”

Slowly Sylvia trailed her finger along the outer rim of
the account book. “Would it not be possible to perhaps bring him the annual reports yourself, rather than to send them to him by some sort of courier?”

She did not wait for him to answer. Instead, she merely smiled as she left the room.

Her suggestion lingered in the air long after she had closed the door.

Duncan stared at the book before him. He began to thumb through the last report, the one he had taken far too long to finish. He saw not a line, not a single word that he had penned.

Without thinking, he closed his hand over the pouch at his waist. He felt the shape of the ring that Cosette had entrusted him with. Beth’s grandmother’s wedding ring. Beth’s ring now.

And he had it.

The stupidity of his decision to nobly let Beth go shimmered before him, like heat rising from the cobblestones of London on a scorching summer’s day. He had
always hated the class system that had frowned on him since the moment of his birth, that choked society as he knew it. He had fought his way above it, like a sailor
outswimming a shark bent on having him for supper.

And now, when it involved the most important aspect of his life, he had allowed himself to be mired by it once again. And by his own volition. He had allowed the class system to doom his and Beth’s relationship by agreeing to have his mind and his soul shackled by it.

He who had always been so free.

Well, no more. No more.

“Jacob,” he shouted as he strode into the hall, “pack your things. We are going to Virginia.”

When the halls echoed with whoops of joy and relief, he realized that Sylvia had not been alone in her feelings in the matter.

“Mother, you have to do something about Beth.” Mary pouted, as she flounced down upon the settee in
the morning room. “She was always headstrong, but she
has become utterly impossible.” Mary rushed to continue, lest her mother take up Beth’s case. “I know she rescued Father and was very brave and all,” she said the words as if she was reciting a boring lesson, “but she has become a veritable hellion since she returned.”

Dorothy laid down the needlepoint she had been working on so diligently and sighed. Of all her children, it was Beth who had always given her concern. Still, a little leeway was allowed, given the circumstances. Philippe had only hinted at the atrocities that had befallen him, but it was enough to make her mother’s heart congeal with cold.

For now, Beth needed an extra dose of understanding.
Dorothy patted her daughter’s hand in mute sympathy.

Philippe, however, was a little less tolerant. He overheard Mary’s words as he walked in. “Now, Mary, that is no way to speak about your sister.”

She had not seen him, or else she would have kept her silence. Mary curtsied deeply.

“A thousand pardons, Father, but I am only giving voice to what everyone else is saying.” She turned her eyes toward her mother, waiting for the woman to come to her support. “Even Mother knows it to be true.”

Dorothy spread her hands helplessly, torn between duty and feeling. “Philippe, I could never speak to the girl. If you would but say a word.”

Philippe smiled indulgently. “Perhaps more than a
word is necessary.” He believed he knew what was trou
bling his oldest daughter’s heart. “But I shall do what I can.”

Mary beamed. “Thank you, Father.”

Philippe found Beth in the garden. He had but to follow the tail of resounding oaths. Beth’s skirt had gotten snagged on one of the bushes, and she was swearing both impatiently and royally at the bush, the thorns, the roses, and everything else in her path.

“Elizabeth!” Philippe chided, but his heart was clearly not in it. Beth had gone through a great deal in order to rescue him and deserved more than her share of understanding, at least for a while. Everyone tiptoed about him and Andre, but no one seemed to comprehend what Beth had been through as well.

She turned and flushed, embarrassed at being discovered this way. Her words rang out childish and petulant to her ear. It was a sentiment worthy of Mary, not of her.

She managed to pull her skirt free. “Sorry, Father, I’m not myself today.”

“You have not been so since we set sail from England.” He lowered himself onto the marble bench before the azaleas and patted the place beside him. “Do you miss him that much?”

Beth took the place, but appeared to perch, like a sparrow ready to take flight at the least provocation. “Miss who, Father?”

He drew his brows together. “There have never been secrets between us before.”

Beth looked away, not wanting to meet his eyes. She didn’t want to talk of what was ripping her heart into tiny pieces. What good would it do? The bastard didn’t care. “There is none now.”

Philippe nodded slowly. “Then there is a secret between you and your heart.” He placed his hand over hers and drew her eyes to him. “Why did you not remain in England, Beth?”

“My home is here, and I belong with you and the oth
ers,” she replied quickly. She looked down at the ground and sighed deeply. “And he did not ask me to remain,” she added in a small voice.

He had been ill then, but not too ill to see the way Duncan looked at his daughter. Not so ill that he didn’t
understand the depth of the passion that was there. Dun
can had bidden them goodbye at the manor, refusing to ride with them to the ship. And Philippe had seen the ache in the man’s eyes. He had not realized at the time that it mirrored the one in his daughter’s soul.