The Hidden Heart (23 page)

“It was so long ago,” Jessica said, smoothing back her hair and straightening her dress, fussing over nothing to give herself time to recover. She straightened and looked Cleybourne in the eye, hoping that she appeared once again calm and under control. “It is foolish to even think about it still. And even more foolish to bother you with it.”

“You did not bo—”

“I am feeling quite tired,” Jessica went on quickly, interrupting him. “If you will excuse me, I think I will go up to my room now.”

Cleybourne looked at her, frowning, then gave her a little bow. “Of course. As you wish, Miss Maitland.”

Jessica turned and left the room, her steps moving faster as she went, until by the time she reached her room, she was almost running. Inside, she knew, she
was
running—from the very real danger that the Duke of Cleybourne represented. If she was not alert, if she was not careful, there was the very real possibility that she would find herself falling in love with Richard. And that would be the greatest folly of all.

J
essica awoke with the sort of headache that she got from crying herself to sleep, which, she supposed, was only natural, given that that was what she had done. She dipped a washrag in cold water and lavender, and lay for a few minutes with it on her eyes to bring down the puffiness. Then she arose and dressed, feeling that she would like nothing so much as to return to her bed and lie in it all day, wallowing in self-pity, but she was determined not to. She refused to live her life in regrets and what-ifs. Her life was as it was, and she could not change the fact that she would never be considered a proper candidate for a duchess any more than she could change the fact that the Duke of Cleybourne was still in love with his dead wife. All she could do, she told herself, was go on with her life, enjoying it as it was and making sure that she did not make the mistake of allowing herself to fall in love with Richard.

To that end, she avoided him most of the day, spending the bulk of her time in the schoolroom with Gabriela or in the sickroom with Rachel. When she unavoidably came face-to-face with him because she was in Rachel’s room playing a game of cards with her and Gabriela, and he entered the room to check on Rachel, she quickly turned her hand over to him and excused herself, saying that she had to check on the guests.

She caught the odd glance he sent her way, but she pretended not to notice as she slipped out of the room and made her way downstairs. To avoid having lied, she did look into the various public rooms to make sure that none of the visitors needed anything. She soon wished that she had not. Except for Darius Talbot, who turned pale and left the room as soon as she entered it, everyone seemed to have something to say.

Miss Pargety had had trouble sleeping because, as she put it, people had been parading in and out of their rooms all night, closing the doors. Lord Kestwick was petulant and bored, having grown weary of playing games of chance with Lord Vesey and, Jessica presumed, of flirting with Lady Vesey. Mr. Goodrich wanted to know when they would be able to leave, and Mr. Cobb, as always, seemed vaguely threatening. Mrs. Woods was restless, drumming her fingers on the arm of her chair and turning peevish when Jessica tried to engage her in conversation. Even Reverend Radfield, usually a person one could count on to supply pleasant conversation, seemed subdued. Only Leona, oddly enough, had no complaints. She looked like the cat who had got into the cream, which led Jessica to believe, cynically, that she had spent the night with someone other than her spouse.

Jessica was glad to leave the uninvited guests and return to her room. She was surprised when she walked into her bedchamber to find one of the maids there, a freckle-faced girl named Flora, sitting on the edge of a straight chair, a small sack in her lap. Flora jumped to her feet as soon as Jessica entered, and the worried look on her face grew deeper.

“Miss Maitland,” she began. “Baxter said as I was to bring this to you.” She extended the bag to Jessica, looking apprehensive. “I found it in the music room, tucked down behind a chair. This is the way I found it.”

Her curiosity aroused, Jessica took the sack from the girl and opened it, peering down into it. There were several pieces of wood inside, broken and splintered, as well as bits of metal and pieces of jewelry. She stared, then let out a little cry of distress. “My jewel case!”

Flora nodded unhappily. “Yes, miss. I recognized it from cleaning your room, but I don’t know what it was doing there or why—why it’s all to pieces like that.”

Jessica reached inside and pulled out a handful of the objects inside—a brooch, a necklace, an earring, two or three pieces of wood that had once been part of the decorative box. She walked over to her bed and dumped the rest of the contents out onto the mattress. She bent over the pieces, separating her meager jewels from the broken bits of the box. It did not take long to see that only one earring was missing.

“I don’t understand….”

“Nor me, miss. I’m right sorry that happened to the little box. It was a pretty thing.”

“Yes.” Tears filled Jessica’s eyes. “My father gave it to me when I was Gabriela’s age.” She sighed. “I noticed yesterday that it was gone from my room, and I could not imagine what had happened to it.” She looked back at the mess on the bedcover. “I still cannot. Obviously no one took the jewelry, or at least nothing but one earring, and I suspect that just got lost somewhere. Why would anyone steal a jewelry box and then take none of the jewelry? And why did they smash it up like this? It was not even locked.”

“I don’t know, miss. It’s that strange. I couldn’t understand it, neither—or why it was in the music room like that. I took it straightaway to Baxter, it being so odd, but he couldn’t make heads nor tails of it, so he told me to bring it to you.”

Jessica turned back to the box, trying to arrange the pieces of wood back into a recognizable form. It was impossible. The thing had been smashed beyond repair. It made her shiver to think of what anger had lain behind the destruction of such a small and innocuous thing.

“I suppose that someone must have stolen it and then, when they found out how little of value was in it, they were furious and smashed it,” she mused.
Or had it been destroyed out of sheer hatred for her, taken and broken for no other reason than because it was hers?
That idea made her feel decidedly uneasy.

“Mayhap, miss,” Flora replied, then added, “’twasn’t none of us, miss. All the servants like you, they do, and none of us would steal anything, anyway.”

“No, I never thought it was one of you.”

They looked at each other, considering the alternative, that it was one of the guests. Finally Flora said, “It was a wicked thing, miss.”

“Yes, I am afraid you are right.”

The maid bobbed her a curtsy, reiterating how sorry she was, and left the room. Jessica sat down on the bed and looked thoughtfully at the remnants of her jewelry box. There were some decidedly odd things going on around here. She could not help but wonder what lay behind it all. She remembered Miss Pargety’s words about people going in and out of their rooms the night before. The duke had said something similar to that the night he had found the intruder in his study. She did not understand what any of it had to do with the rest of it, including her destroyed jewelry box, but she would certainly like to find out who had entered the schoolroom that night, as well as who had ruined the jewelry case that was dear to her heart.

The first thing to do, she decided, was to sit up tonight and keep watch, see exactly who was leaving their rooms and where they were going. She could sit at her door with it cracked open, but then she decided that she would be able to see better if she was farther down the hall. There was a spot near the stairs where she might be able to hide well enough between a large potted plant and a table, and she would have a better view of all the rooms from there. She would wear a plain dark blue dress, she thought, and soft slippers, so she would be neither seen nor heard. If only there was some way she could keep her pale face from showing. She thought a little wistfully of tying a dark scarf over her face as the intruder had, then discarded the idea. If someone found her, she might be able to explain being in the hall; if she was found with her face masked, it would be rather difficult.

The more she thought about it, the more she liked the plan. Jessica was always one who preferred to take action rather than sit around waiting for things to happen to her. She spent the evening in anticipation, doing all the things she normally did with her mind only half on them and the rest of it on what lay ahead. She listened to Gabriela’s chatter about the day and Lady Westhampton and how much fun it had been to play cards with her and the duke, then dressed for supper and stopped by to look in on Lady Westhampton before she went downstairs.

The meal was much the same as always: the food excellent and the dinner guests less than pleasing. But tonight Jessica paid more attention than usual to the conversation, studying each of the guests and wondering what, if anything, they had to do with the mysterious events. She could feel the duke’s eyes upon her now and then, but she did not look at him, for fear he might read something in her face that gave away the fact that she had something planned for tonight.

Afterward, she slipped away and went to her room, where she tried to lie down and catch a little sleep before the others went to bed and she could begin her watch. However, she was too excited to be able to sleep, and after a while she got back up and dressed in the darkest dress she had. She brushed her hair out and left it hanging loose about her shoulders, reasoning that if she kept her head down and let her hair fall around her, she could keep much of her white face hidden behind the darker curtain of her hair.

Once she was ready, she sat down in the straight-backed chair close to the door and opened it a crack to keep an eye on the hallway. It was silent out there, and before long she saw one of the footmen walk by on his evening round, snuffing out the candles that lit the hallway during the evening. The corridor grew dark behind him. Jessica continued to wait, leaning her head against the wall and peering out through the crack of the door.

She opened her eyes, blinking, and realized, with some chagrin, that the sleep which had evaded her so successfully earlier had come upon her. She was not sure how long she had dozed or exactly what had awakened her. The hall outside her door was dark and still, with no sign of anyone moving through it.

Jessica opened her door wider and stuck her head out, looking up and down the hall. She saw no sign of anyone, so she stepped out of her door and closed it silently behind her. Head down to hide her face, she glided noiselessly down the corridor. She had almost reached her hiding spot when she thought she heard a noise behind her. Just as she started to turn her head to look, an arm went around her tightly from behind, pinning her arms to her sides and pulling her hard against a man’s body, and a hand clamped down over her mouth.

Fear shot through her, and she stiffened. In the next instant she felt someone’s breath against her ear, and a low voice murmured, “It is I, Richard. Don’t scream.”

Jessica sagged against him in relief and nodded her head. He released her and took his hand from her mouth, and she turned to find him watching her with a wry expression. He was dressed all in black, his usual white shirt and ascot replaced now by a simple black shirt, collarless and open at the throat. Taking her by the hand, he pulled her back a few steps along the hall and into an alcove. There was a padded bench stretching across the width of the alcove, almost filling it, and above it in the wall was a narrow window set with the thick opaque glass popular in Tudor times. Moonlight filtered in through the glass, lighting the small recess dimly. Cleybourne gestured toward the bench, and Jessica sat down on it. He sat beside her and reached out to either side of the doorway in front of them and pulled two pocket doors out of the walls, closing them across the open doorway of the alcove. The doors were made of open woodwork, creating a grill through which one could see, but which kept the alcove hidden.

Jessica glanced around her in surprise. “I didn’t even know this was here,” she whispered. She had walked past the wooden grillwork many times but had not realized that anything lay behind it.

Richard nodded and leaned closer. “It was part of the castle’s defenses originally, a place for an archer to stand and fire out.” He indicated the narrow window above them. “Later they filled it in with glass and made this embrasure a place to sit. Later, some secretive soul put in the doors.”

Jessica nodded. She glanced at him; he was looking back at her. He raised his eyebrows questioningly. “Are you going to tell me what you were doing?”

Jessica sighed. “I was going to hide close to the stairs, by the potted plant, and keep watch.”

“For what?”

Jessica arched one eyebrow at him. “For the same thing you are watching for, I imagine. There is something strange going on, and I want to find out what it is.”

“I suppose there is no way I can convince you to go to your room and allow me to keep watch.”

Jessica could not hold back a grin as she shook her head. “I have something at stake here.”

He raised an eyebrow, saying, “And what might that be?”

Before she could answer, there was the sound of a door opening in the hall, and both Richard and Jessica leaned into the screen, gazing through its carved curlicues, first one way and then the other. Two doors down, a woman dressed in a dark dressing gown stepped out quietly into the hall and closed the door behind her. It was Leona Vesey, her tawny hair loose and curling invitingly over her shoulders.

She looked up and down the hall, then moved quietly along it, stopping at a door and tapping so softly that Jessica could not hear it, only see the movement of her hand. The door opened to reveal a man dressed in breeches and a shirt, the shirt open and hanging outside his pants. The man was the Reverend Radfield.

He reached out, smiling at Leona, and took her by the wrist and tugged her inside. Leona went willingly, with a little giggle, coming up against his chest. He closed the door behind her.

Jessica turned, astonished, to Cleybourne. He looked back at her, then shrugged. They returned their gazes to the hallway. For the next few minutes, nothing happened. Jessica, keeping her eyes straight ahead toward the doors, was very aware of Richard’s presence beside her. His large body filled the little room, his shoulder so close to hers they were almost touching. She could feel his warmth, smell the scent of shaving soap and male body that was uniquely his, hear the sound of his breath.