The Secret Rose (6 page)

She had found a safe haven, and if she were smart, she would settle in gratefully and never hope for and think of the possibility of anything else. After all, what else could there be?

Love.

Aisleen spun about. “Who said that?” she demanded angrily of the room. The chirping of the canary in the wicker cage in one corner of the nursery was the only reply.

“Foolish whims!” she murmured in an imitation of Miss Burke’s acerbic voice. “Foolish whims, Miss Fitzgerald, and well you know it!”

She wanted nothing more than to make a success of her post. That, and nothing more.

But the young queen would not listen,

She rose in her pale night-gown;

She drew in the heavy casement

And pushed the latches down.

—The Cap and Bells

W. B. Yeats

Chapter Three

Yorkshire, England: 1856

Aisleen slammed the door to her attic room and twisted the key in the lock an instant before a fist hammered upon it.

“Open up, Miss Alice! You know you want our company!” The latch was tried, and then the sound of masculine laughter exploded in the narrow hallway beyond.

Aisleen pressed her weight against the door, silent but for the pounding of her heart. She had made a grave error in visiting the kitchen after dark, but she had thought the house empty except for the Maclean servants. That was her mistake. Nicholas Maclean, the elder son, who was home from Oxford on holiday, had returned unexpectedly and with him was a male companion.

“Alice! Pretty Alice,” Nicholas called in singsong fashion.
Drunk
,
Aisleen thought as her lips tightened in disapproval. It seemed it was a detestable habit that many men shared in common with her father.

“Go away!” she whispered in an angry hiss.

“Ah! She abides therein!” the second man voiced in amusement. “Shall we serenade her?”

“Nay, she’s not the sort of lass a man woos with songs, are you, Miss Alice?” she heard Nicholas ask just before the latch was tried again.

After checking the key to make certain it had made a complete turn, she stepped back and folded her arms across her bosom, only to notice her left sleeve gaped away at the shoulder, where an aggressive hand had torn it.

Righteous indignation fired her resolve. She had waited and prayed for this post for more than six months after the Beetons had been forced to let her go in the wake of a reversal in their finances. She was not about to lose it because of a drunk young lordling. “Step away from that door, Mr. Maclean,” she said in a stern voice, “or I shall be forced to call for aid.”

“She sounds serious,” the companion cautioned. “There’ll be Roberts to deal with if he hears us.”

“Roberts is a servant and knows his place,” Nicholas answered, but whether it was real doubt or merely the slurring effects of too much whiskey, Aisleen thought she heard hesitation in his voice.

“Good night, Mr. Maclean!” she said in a tone that brooked no defiance.

“Silly old bitch!” she heard him grumble under his breath before retreating footsteps sounded on the narrow stairwell.

A sudden blast of winter wind rattled the shutters and despite her outward calm, Aisleen jumped and turned toward them. All at once, her shoulders drooped, and she brushed from her face a strand of hair.

“Fools!” she muttered and crossed the room and picked up the poker to stir new flames from the dying fire. She would not be able to sleep now. The unsettling effects of having been attacked must have curdled the warm milk she had consumed, for she felt decidedly queasy.

When the flames had licked into the new scoop of coals she placed in the fireplace, she turned away and began to undress. She pulled the bodice from her shoulders and paused to inspect the tear. Luckily the threads had given way at the seam, and the damage could be easily repaired.

When the young gentlemen had first entered the kitchen she had seen their disappointed expressions. No doubt, they had hoped to corner younger, prettier game. After all, she was not a silly young scullery maid of eighteen but a twenty-five-year-old spinster who had been the Maclean governess for well over a year. She had not truly believed that they would touch her. But then, Nicholas had winked at her and offered her brandy while his companion reached out to stroke her sleeve as if she were some—some strumpet!

“Really, it is too much that a woman is not safe beneath the roof of the house she serves!” she muttered, so furious her hands shook. She stepped quickly out of the dress and hung it up on a peg, adding her petticoats and corset to hang from the others. Frigid drafts swept over her as she hurriedly slipped her nightgown over her head.

The Maclean estate was situated on the cold, barren flats of northern Yorkshire. Outside her window, the storm of the previous day had passed, and the velvet-black night was lightened by an iridescent white blanket of snow. Drifts pillowed the house and changed the familiar landscape into an eerie, white-duned scene. The weather was the reason none of the Macleans had been expected to return this night. Roberts, the butler, had informed the staff at supper that the
Macleans would extend their Boxing Day visit with the Ventnors until the treacherous weather abated.

After tying a rough wool shawl over her nightgown, Aisleen pulled off her white cap, plucked out the combs that held her hair in a tight bun, and reached for her brush.

In the dimly lit room, the firelight struck bright red sparks from the billowing cloud of red-gold hair she brushed out. One and all, people were struck by the color. When she first came to work here, the younger of her charges, three-year-old Michael Maclean, had dared to touch a curl, expecting it to be warm like a candle’s flame, he had explained. She had noted in displeasure the gleam of interest in Nicholas Maclean’s eyes, but he had left almost immediately for college and she had not seen him for months, until this night.

Aisleen set her brush aside to massage her brow. For five years, she had been her own mistress, and never in that time had she been assaulted.

She shook her head. She had taken this post out of desperation. Though the Beetons had been generous in their recommendation of her, she had been turned down repeatedly, often without explanation. Gradually, after countless interviews, she began to understand why. Being Irish and Catholic were handicaps, but her youth and striking appearance were greater impeachments to cautious wives. The Yorkshire Macleans had offered her employment at a time when she faced starvation. They were country-bred gentry with little respect for her excellent education beyond the status it gave them in the community. Yet until tonight, she had never been afraid to live on these desolate moors.

Even so, she wondered how she would tolerate another year in the north, where in winter nature succumbed to the colors of death: black, brown, and white. Winters in Ireland were cold but not bleak. She had never ached with chilblains until she came to Yorkshire. Now her fingers were blue and swollen, and she tried to warm them by working
them in the folds of her shawl. When she had saved enough money, perhaps in a year, she might be able to afford the luxury of seeking other employment. The old restlessness was never far away.

She had not heard footsteps, but all at once there was a jiggling of her key in the lock. Even as she rose to her feet, the key fell to the floor on her side with a distinct
clink
.
Moving toward the door with a look of disbelief, she heard the scrape of another key and realized too late that someone was unlocking her door from the outside. She turned and ran toward the mantel to pick up the poker as the door swung open.

“There she is!” Nicholas cried triumphantly as he reeled across the threshold.

Ordinarily, she would have credited Nicholas Maclean with more than an average measure of handsomeness, with his fair hair and tall, slender form, but his unwelcome presence made him repugnant to her. She addressed him as though speaking to a boy of six. “Your cravat is askew, sir, and your collar is unbuttoned.”

He smiled crookedly, putting a finger to his lips as he came forward into the room. “Sh, mustn’t wake Roberts, Miss Alice. Yo-you’re—My God!”

She lifted her weapon, unaware as she did so that she was backlit by the fire, which threw into silhouette her figure beneath her nightgown.

Nicholas’s smile deepened into a leer as he took in the fiery halo of hair and enticing outline of her body. “Bloody hell! You ain’t as plain as you seem! You’ve a right fine figure!”

She was prepared for his lunge but did not strike him a hard blow. After all, he was the son of her employer. The blow caught him on the tender flesh where the shoulder and neck meet. He went down hard on one knee with an “Oof” of pain, and she backed away. “Go away, Mr. Nicholas, or I shall strike you again! I swear it!”

He looked up, the firelight reflected in his hungry gaze. “Stewart?” He glanced back over his shoulder to the doorway. “Stewart!” he called more impatiently. A flushed young man appeared in the doorway, and Aisleen recognized him as the one who had torn her sleeve. Lifting her poker again, she faced him as he came in.

It was a mistake. Nicholas grabbed her ankles and with a jerk pulled her feet out from under her. Aisleen screamed as she fell, and then her head struck the corner of the hearth, stunning her.

“Got her!” she heard Nicholas cry triumphantly as he dragged her across the floor toward him.

“Not on the floor, old boy,” Stewart said disapprovingly. “’Tis devilishly cold for such sport. On the bed. There’s time enough for the amenities.”

Caught between shock and pain, Aisleen could not protest as she was lifted from the floor.

“A bit old for virgin flesh,” Stewart suggested skeptically, “but I’ll do the honors if you’re certain she’s game.”

Nicholas’s laugh came out as a snort through his nose. “Look at her! With hair that flaming color she’s as hungry for a man as any strumpet! You can go first, but hurry!”

The lifting of her nightgown brought Aisleen back to reality, and she reached up with screams of rage, scratching and clawing at the men who held her.

“What is this!”

Miraculously Aisleen heard Roberts’s gruff voice from the doorway.

“Please! Please help me!” she cried, scrambling away from the hands that suddenly freed her.

Nicholas turned toward the doorway, piqued that his game had been spoiled. “What the devil brings you here, Roberts? You’ve no business in the governess’s room.”

Clutching her shawl to her, Aisleen turned pleading eyes on the butler. The slight, balding man refused to meet her
gaze as he said in quiet dignity, “Neither, Mr. Nicholas, do you.”

Nicholas shrugged and rose from the bed. He glanced back over his shoulder at Aisleen. “Do invite me again, Miss Alice,” he said with a sneer. “Come on, Stewart. Events have come to a sad end when a man cannot find a friendly bed beneath his own roof.”

Aisleen did not move until both young gentlemen had withdrawn, and then she rose from the bed “You are a witness, Roberts,” she said forcefully. “You saw what happened. I am innocent!”

“What I saw will not make much difference to the outcome.” Roberts’s neutral expression did not alter, but she thought she saw sorrow in his eyes before he turned away.

As he started to close the door he paused to add, “I’d lock the door if I—”

She saw that he was staring at the key inserted in the outside lock. He took and pocketed it. When he looked up at her again, his expression had softened. “You’ll not be troubled again this night, Miss Alice. I’ll see to it myself.”

When he was gone, Aisleen poured water into her basin, stripped off her gown, and began to wash herself. Water ran in chilling rivulets over her thighs and arms, but she did not care that she shivered so hard that her teeth chattered. Any sensation was preferable to the shrinking revulsion of moments earlier. They had dared to touch her, the pair of them, had put their hands on her legs and waist and thighs. If Roberts had not appeared when he did…

“Oh, God!” she moaned. Dropping the cloth, she sank to her knees, her body trembling in the aftermath of the assault.

The tears did not last long, and soon she retrieved a handkerchief from her belongings and mopped her face.

Long ago, she had accepted the fact that one’s life was seldom ordered to one’s desires. To be powerful, one must first be born a man, like her now-dead father or Nicholas Maclean. Yet physical assault was new to her. Never before had she felt so vulnerable, so helpless, so utterly useless in the face of a threat.

“Well, it’s done,” she murmured, but as she climbed into her bed she knew it was not. Only minutes earlier she had considered seeking a new post. That was not the same as being discharged for misconduct and without references. She was a spinster without recourse and without support. Her situation was not unlike the plot of some tawdry melodrama. If it were not so pathetically real, she would scoff at her circumstance.

With a sinking feeling, she realized that she was once more at the mercy of forces beyond her control. The Macleans were likely to believe Roberts, but they might also, like most people conscious of their position in society, be quite willing to deprive her of employment in order to keep scandal from beneath their roof.