Seducing the Beast (19 page)

The earl’s rooms, she discovered, were in the east tower. She knew they were his at once. They were austere and masculine, nothing kept purely for aesthetic reasons. Fully expecting padlocks on his private apartments, she was shocked when his bedchamber door opened easily, not even the shyest whine of a hinge in protest. Here the walls were darker, the furniture heavier. No extra pillows littered his bed, but piles of books leaned precariously from the table beside it, and an extravagant profusion of fat candles stood poised in wait for him to come back. Thick drips of beeswax hung suspended in time. The entire east tower was quieter, more serene, inspiring a respectful awe for the absent master of the house.

Gregory appeared again, this time with two sturdy fellows in tow. At first she thought they’d come to remove her bodily from the earl’s chambers, however, they had more important work at hand. She watched as they moved furniture, swept and dusted, then replaced all the pieces in exactly the same place. Marks on the floor showed where his furniture stood for years and Gregory pointed to them with pride, explaining how this spring cleaning had proceeded in the same unswerving way for generations of earls. “His Lordship dislikes change,” he said gravely. “He likes things to be as they were when he left them. As they were, exactly.”

They were deadly serious in the task, even measuring with a notched stick if they thought anything was put back at the wrong angle. Madolyn watched in amusement. Old folk like the earl, of course, didn’t like change, yet this surely took the idea to extremes.

When she made some suggestions for altering the furniture placement, Gregory looked as if he would like to tap her knuckles with his measuring stick, only restraining himself because of her importance in the house. Enjoying the wicked and unusual sense of power, she concluded she must indeed be a wretched sinner, now lost beyond all hope of saving, as Grace always warned her she would one day become.

“These chambers could be much brighter if that wainscot press didn’t block the window,” she offered pleasantly. “And his bed faces the wall, when it might face this spectacular view. I wonder no one has thought of it. And these books should be on shelves, not here, cluttering up his little table. I’m surprised they never fall on him when he sleeps. He can’t possibly read all these at once. Why are there so many here? He has a library, does he not?”

“My lady,” Gregory explained tightly, “his lordship likes his books left where they are in case he cannot sleep. He likes his bed facing the wall because the sunrise in the morning would surely wake him too early if the windows weren’t blocked.”

“I should think he’d like to wake and see the sunrise over that hill. I would.”

“Yes, my lady, but that is
you
, not his lordship.”

She shrugged. “I suppose he must have his little foibles. Men have their peculiar ways and I daresay he’s worse than most, being pig-headed and spoiled,no one ever daring to say ‘no’ to the rotten beast. Well, hey ho, he’s in for a surprise when he meets me.”

Jennet giggled, until she caught Gregory’s stony eye and then she looked down at her toes. Maddie laughed too. Gregory shook his head, muttered under his breath that he hoped the earl knew what he was getting himself into, and continued unhooking the bed drapes so they could be brought outside and the dust beaten off.

“Does his wife not live here too?’ she asked.

“The countess lives in Leicestershire, my lady,” Gregory replied, a low tone of relief shadowing his words.

She lifted a lidded pewter dish to see what was inside, only to have it taken from her immediately and placed, with reverence, back upon the bedside table. “Is this where he keeps his wooden teeth at night?” she asked, causing another snuffle from Jennet.

“Indeed not,” Gregory exclaimed. “Wooden teeth, indeed. Please mind yourself now and make way for the chairs.”

“Why not set his chairs here, by the window? For the summer.”

They all looked at her, annoyed.

“He won’t need his fire at night in the summer,” she explained. “If his chairs are here, by the window, he might look out at his view and remember how unfairly fortunate he is.”

The chairs were put back according to Gregory’s measurements on either side of the fireplace.

Since her goodly counsel went unheeded, she decided to go outside in the sun. From the windows of her chamber she’d watched men at work around the grounds and thought they might need her help. As her mother would say, the devil makes work for idle hands. She might get into real mischief if she found no useful employment.

“Where are you going, madam?” Jennet whined.

She hurried on, passing some men trimming yew trees. Almost falling off their ladders, they responded to her merry greetings with bemused, curious expressions. The appearance of a stray young woman, walking freely around the earl’s estate, plainly unprecedented.

“I wish you’d come in,” Jennet said, catching up.

“Oh, look.” Maddie pointed. “What is that place?” It was a great glass building on the south lawn, directly placed to catch the full heat of the sun.

“’Tis the hothouse. Where the earl keeps the plants he collects on his travels.”

Ignoring the maid’s plaintive cries for her to go back to the house, Madolyn ran across the lawn to explore the place. She opened the door and entered before Jennet could follow.

Immediately the heat slowed her progress, the heady fragrance filled her until she was almost drunk with it. The air was thick and steamy, the plants reaching their great, glossy, dark green fronds to each other and to the sun, like prisoners missing their home, wanting to know what this place was to which they were brought, like her, out of their natural element. There were flowers of extravagant, brilliant colors, like ruffles of scarlet and apricot petticoats. Other, even stranger looking trees covered in thickly clustered yellow spines, bent their arms to the sky like eager preachers. And between them, fat leaves, taller than she, created an arch of shadow under which she passed.

Suddenly she heard a young man’s voice raised in anger.

“It en’t right. ’Tis a bloody hypoc…hypoc…you know what I mean…hypocossity. My brother Matthew were the best man he ever had, right loyal he were. Just because he wanted to marry, he got tossed out on his ear. Oh no, we don’t want none o’
that
going on--so says his bleedin’ lordship. Couldn’t stand for my brother to be happy and have another life to go to at night. His lordship didn’t want that, in case it might take Matthew away from his duty. But now
he
gets to have his little--” He broke off, catching sight of her striding between the nodding fronds.

At first she thought he was speaking to someone else, until she saw he was alone, addressing the leaves of a plant.

“What are you doing in ’ere, missy? You ain’t supposed to be in ’ere!” He was a short, thickset fellow with a shock of pale golden hair. “The earl wouldn’t like it.”

She smiled. “Never mind that.”

He thrust his head forward on that thick neck. “But you--”

“And you mean hypocrisy,” she interrupted jovially. “When someone says one thing and does another. What’s your name?”

For a moment he simply stared at her, then he answered, “It’s Luke.” He shook his head rapidly. “But I can’t be talkin’ to you, missy. Got work to do.”

“You have a brother named Matthew?” she pressed. “He used to work here?”

“Beg pardon,” he said briskly, “can’t hear you, missy.”

She raised her voice. “I heard you say he was mistreated by the earl and dismissed from his post.”

“Go away. Ain’t you got nothin’ else to do?”

She felt like a child being sent off to amuse herself so the adults could talk of important matters, but at least now she knew she was not the only one disgusted with the way the earl bullied people.

In Luke, she and Griff might have an ally.

“You ain’t supposed to be in here, missy. Get out!”

“No need to be rude.”

“Can’t hear you, missy.”

“I said,” she shouted, “there’s no need to be rude!”

He shook his head again and smacked his hand to his left ear. “Not a word you’re bleedin’ saying, missy,” he said, promptly turning away.

She left the hothouse and found Jennet waiting outside. When she asked the maid about Luke, she learned that he was the head gardener. He and his brothers had worked on the estate since they were boys. The mysterious Matthew was once the earl’s loyal valet, dismissed two years ago because he fell in love with a housemaid, and romance between staff was strictly forbidden. He was also, apparently, accused of stealing some valuable pearls from the Swafford treasury. Madolyn thought this crime was probably entirely made-up to justify the valet’s dismissal.

Familiar with injustice, of course, she knew how noblemen treated those they considered inferior.

Suddenly she remembered the night she was abducted from her cousin’s house, standing before the looking glass with those beautiful pearls at her throat, and Griff’s angry exclamation as he tore them from her hands. “
The Swafford pearls! This is what became of them
.
It wasn’t Matthew
!”

Gabriel must have taken the pearls and given them to Eustacia without telling his brother. Meanwhile, in haste to find a culprit, the beastly Earl found a scapegoat in his valet and poor Matthew was punished unjustly. As Griff would be, if she was not there to defend him.

In her chamber that evening, she was writing a letter when Jennet returned to help her dress for dinner.

“You write to your family, my lady?” the girl asked.

She didn’t look up. “No. I write to the damnable Earl of Swafford.”

“Oh.”

“I’ve a tendency to let my temper run away with me and forget what I meant to say, so I’ll write it all down, just in case.”

“I see, my lady.”

A few minutes later, hearing some intriguing sighs and rustling, she looked up from her letter. The maid was lifting clothes from a box, laying them out carefully across the large bed and stroking each garment wistfully. At first determined not to show any interest, curiosity soon got the better of Maddie. She set down her quill and walked to the bed.

There were three new gowns, exquisitely made, finer even than those her cousin Eustacia wore, but youthful and not too fussy. Silk petticoats with lace trim, and stockings embroidered with little flowers, nestled there, waiting for her touch. The final garment was even a bed robe of fine ivory lawn and lace with cascades of ruffles along the hem.

Beside her, the maid ran her hands reverently over this haul of luxury.

“Look away, dear Jennet,” Maddie warned. “You’re too young, too innocent.” These things, she thought angrily, were all his property in the same way he meant her to be. “His lordship thinks I might be tempted, I suppose. As if I might be bought, like any other possession.”

Jennet reminded her shyly that the Earl of Swafford was never refused.

“Had he been refused once or twice in his life,” she replied curtly, “he might not be such a wretched ogre. Never fear, it will all be in the letter.”

The maid nodded solemnly, hands behind her back, resisting the lure of those sinful, lacy garments.

“Remember, Jennet, as I told you earlier, if Swaffords had to work for a living, there might be a pleasanter face among the long line of shriveled, miserable old prunes in the gallery.”

It had surprised her, but even with a fortune at their disposal, none of the previous earls bothered to bribe an artist into making them look handsome. The current earl had no portrait yet in the family gallery. She supposed he at least had the good sense not to expose himself to future critics. He was, she’d heard, heinously scarred, dreadful to look upon.

“Think of everything he would buy for you, madam,” Jennet whispered, “if you
were
his mistress. There’s nothing you could not have.”

“Money? If I had a fortune, I wouldn’t know what to do with it, I daresay. No. I’m quite content to be poor and happy. It costs naught to make love.”

Jennet flushed scarlet.

She clarified. “Unless one must procure one’s partner, that is, then I believe it costs sixpence.”

Still the little maid was mute.

“Has this wealth bought the Swafford earls much happiness, Jennet?” Maddie continued, getting into her stride. “How can anyone with this much wealth ever be sure the people at his side care for him, rather than his coin? People like my darling Griff and I are far luckier than the earl, you see, because we have each other. We may not have material wealth, but we are rich--far richer than the Earl of Swafford.”

Jennet nodded. “If you say so, my lady.”

She frowned. “Indeed I do. And stop calling me
my lady
.”

“Very good, my lady. Shall I dress you now? The earl waits below.”

Her heartbeat rattled and lurched to a halt. “He…he’s here? Now?”

“Yes, my lady. And he doesn’t like to wait.”

Sweating palms clasped tight, she walked to the window for a breath of fresh air. It was almost dark out. Rush torches were lit around the outer walls of the house, casting long flickering shadows like the wings of giant bats.

This was it then. Time to confront the Beast at last.

* * * *

He prowled into the hall, and servants scattered like mice from a tomcat. Things seemed in order, he noted. A comforting fire burned in the great hearth, the table was arrayed with candles and the mouth-watering scent of roast beef drifted through the corridors.

Gregory appeared at his side, gray head respectfully bowed. “Good evening, my lord.”

“Hmmph.” He removed his riding gloves, passing them along with his hat to a nearby footman. “What of the roan mare? No problem with the pregnancy I hope?”

“No, my lord.”

“Good.” He turned in a tight circle. “Where is she?”

“The comely young lady, my lord? I…could not say. I find it best to let her do as she will. I daresay she’ll come down in good time, when she’s ready.”

“You…
what
?” he exploded. The idea of any woman being left to do as she would around his precious, beloved estate was completely unacceptable and Gregory, having served him thirty-five years, should know that by now. “Did I or did I not give instructions that she’s to remain in the blue chamber, until I want her? I fail to see why keeping one abbreviated wench confined should test our resources.”