To Beguile a Beast (23 page)

She looked out the window now. Outside, green hills rolled by with white sheep dotted here and there as if dropped by a giant hand. Maybe they wouldn’t see Mama again. The duke hadn’t said much to them, besides telling Jamie to stop crying. But she’d heard him tell Mr. Wiggins and the coachman that they were on their way back to London. Would he take them to live with him in his house there?

Abigail wrinkled her nose. No, they were bastards. Bastards were to be hidden away, not taken to live with their fathers. So he’d hide them away somewhere. It would make it very difficult for Mama to find them. But perhaps Sir Alistair would help. Even though she’d not minded Puddles and he’d ruined Sir Alistair’s bag, he’d still help Mama find them, wouldn’t he? Sir Alistair was tall and strong, and she thought he would be very good at finding things, even hidden children.

She was very sorry now that she hadn’t minded Puddles better. Her lips turned down, her face screwed up, and a sob escaped before she could stop it.
Stupid! Stupid!
She scrubbed angrily at her face. Crying wouldn’t help anything. It’d just make Mr. Wiggins happy if he caught her at it. That thought should’ve made her control the tears, but they wouldn’t stop. They ran down her face whether she wanted them to or not, and she could only muffle the sound in her skirts, hoping Mr. Wiggins wouldn’t wake. And some part of her knew why she was crying, even as she wiped at her face.

It was her fault, all of it. When Mama had taken them from London on that awful journey north and she’d first seen Sir Alistair’s castle, she’d wished in a secret part of her heart that the duke would come and take them back with him.

And now her wish had come true.

“We’ll share a room,” he said.

She glanced at him distractedly. “What?”

“It’s not safe for you to be in a room by yourself.”

She gave him an odd look. “It’s a small country inn. It seems perfectly respectable.”

He could feel his face heat a bit, and his words were rather gruff as a result. “Nonetheless, we’ll present ourselves as Mr. and Mrs. Munroe and stay in the same room.”

And he ended the discussion by descending from the carriage before she could protest farther. The inn did look respectable. A row of old men sat outside the main door, which was blackened with age. There were a fair amount of hostlers and stable boys milling about and gossiping, and in a corner of the yard, a little boy with tousled brown hair played with a kitten. Alistair felt a pain in his chest at the sight. He wasn’t very similar to Jamie, but the boy was of an age.

God, let the children be safe!

He turned back to the carriage to help Helen down, moving his body between her and the sight of the little boy. “Come inside and I’ll see if there’s a private room to be had.”

“Thank you,” she said breathlessly.

He offered her his arm in a husbandly way, and the hesitation before she laid her fingertips on his sleeve was so small that in all probability only he saw it. But he did see and note it. He covered her gloved hand with his and led her into the little inn.

As it turned out, there was indeed a small—very small—private room at the back of the inn. They settled at the rustic table next to a tiny hearth, and very soon thereafter a hot meal of mutton and cabbage arrived.

“Are you sure Lister’s headed to London?” Alistair asked as he cut into his meat. The thought had begun to bother him the last half hour or so; they might be on a wild-goose chase, haring off to London when Lister might have an entirely different destination in mind.

“He has a country estate—several, in fact,” Helen murmured. She was pushing at the food on her plate, but hadn’t taken a bite. “But he spends nearly all his time in London. He hates the country, he says. I suppose he might decide to hide the children elsewhere, but if he came in person to get them, I think he’d want to return to London first.”

Alistair nodded. “Your reasoning is good. Do you know where he might take them in London?”

She shrugged, looking weary and depressed. “It could be anywhere. He has a main house, of course—a huge town house in Grosvenor Square—but there are several other properties that he owns.”

An unwelcome thought intruded. He carefully broke apart a crusty roll and, with his eye on his task, asked, “Where did he keep you?”

She was silent a moment. He buttered the piece of roll without looking up.

Finally, she said, “He gave me a town house to live in. It was on a small square, quite nice, actually. I had a staff to look after the house and serve me.”

“The life of a duke’s mistress sounds very elegant. I’m not sure I understand why you bothered to leave him.” He raised his eyes as he bit into the buttered bread.

Her face was flushed, but her blue eyes sparked with anger. “Don’t you? I don’t think you understand much about me, really, but I’ll endeavor to explain. I’d been his plaything for fourteen years. I’d borne him two children. And he didn’t love me. He never loved me, I think. All the jewels in the world, all the servants and the town house and the beautiful dresses were not enough to make up for the fact that I’d let myself be used by a man who didn’t really care for me or my children. In the end, I decided that I was worth more.”

She shoved back from the table and stalked from the room, fortunately refraining from slamming the door behind her.

Alistair thought about following her immediately, but some innate male instinct told him it was safer to wait just a bit. He finished his meal in higher spirits than he’d begun it. The knowledge that she no longer loved Lister—if she ever had—was a salve to his soul. He took the plate that Helen had abandoned and went up to the room he’d procured for the night for the both of them.

He tapped softly at the door, half expecting her not to answer—she was very mad at him, after all—but the door cracked almost at once. He pushed it open, entered the little room, and shut and locked it behind him. She had moved across the room after letting him in and now stood at a tiny gabled window, her back to him, in her shift with a shawl thrown over her shoulders.

“You didn’t eat any of your dinner,” he said.

One elegant shoulder rose in a shrug.

“It’s a long journey to London,” he said gently, “and you’ll need to keep your strength up. Come eat.”

“Maybe we’ll catch up to Lister before London.”

He looked at that slim, brave back, and the tiredness that he’d been holding in check all day nearly overwhelmed him. “He’s got a head start. It’s not likely.”

She sighed then and turned, and for a moment he thought he saw tears sparkling in her eyes. But then she ducked her head and came toward him, and he could no longer see her eyes. She took the plate of food from him but then didn’t seem to know what to do with it.

“Sit here,” he said, indicating a small chair before the fire.

She sat. “I’m not hungry.” She sounded like a small child.

He squatted before her and began cutting her meat. “The mutton is quite good. Have a bite.” He proffered a piece on the tines of the fork.

She met his eyes as she accepted the bit of food from him. Her eyes were wet, harebells that’d fallen in a stream.

“We’ll get them back,” he said softly. He stabbed another piece of meat for her. “I’ll find Lister and the children, and we’ll get them back, safe and sound. I promise.”

She nodded, and he carefully, tenderly, fed her almost all of the plate of food before she protested that she could eat no more. Then she climbed into the single bed, and he stripped to his breeches and snuffed the candles. When he got into bed, she lay facing away from him, still and lonely. He stared at the dark ceiling and listened to her breathing, aware that he was hard and pounding with want. They lay thus for a half hour or more until her breathing roughened, and he realized that she was weeping once more. Then he turned to her without a word and pulled her stiff body into his arms. She shuddered against him, her sobs still muffled, and he simply wrapped his arms around her. After a bit, her body slowly lost its rigidity. She softened and relaxed and cried no more.

But he still lay awake, hard and wanting.

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

He held out his arm to her, and she placed her fingertips on his sleeve, amazed at how accustomed she’d become to this in the last week.

“It’s a waste of time,” she muttered in a feeble attempt to quell her clamoring nerves.

“If I thought that Lister would merely hand over the children, then, yes, it would be a waste of time,” he murmured as they mounted the front steps. “But that is not my sole aim today.”

She stared up at him. His hair was neatly clubbed back, and he wore a black tricorne and reddish-brown coat. Both were newer than any other article of clothing she’d seen him in before, and she had to admit he looked rather nice—an imposing gentleman.

She blinked and focused her thoughts. “Then what is your aim?”

“To learn my adversary,” he replied, and let the knocker fall loudly. “Now hush.”

From within the house, footsteps approached and then the door was opened. The butler who stood within was obviously a superior servant, but his eyes rounded when he saw Alistair’s face. Helen bit back a sharp exclamation. Why did people have to stare so rudely when they saw Alistair? They acted like he was an animal or an inanimate object—a monkey in a cage or a bizarre machine—and gaped as if he had no feelings.

Alistair, meanwhile, simply ignored the man’s rudeness and asked for the duke. The butler recovered himself, inquired after their names, and showed them into a small sitting room before leaving to ascertain if the duke was available.

Helen sat on an ornate gold and black settee and carefully arranged her skirts. She felt wildly out of place here in the house where Lister lived with his legitimate family. The room was done in golds and white and black. On one wall was a portrait of a boy, and she wondered if it was a relation of the duke, a son perhaps. He had three sons by his wife, she knew. Quickly she looked away from the small portrait, feeling shame that she’d once slept with a married man.

Alistair was prowling the room like a cat on the hunt. He stopped before a collection of small porcelain figurines on a table and asked without turning around, “This is his main residence?”

“Yes.”

He moved to peer at the boy’s portrait. “And he has children of his own?”

“Two girls and three boys.” She stroked one finger gently over the embroidery on her sleeve.

“Then he has an heir.”

“Yes.”

He was behind her now, out of her sight, but his voice sounded quite near when he asked, “What age is his heir?”

She frowned a little, thinking. “Four and twenty, perhaps? I’m not sure.”

“But he’s a grown man.”

“Yes.”

He came back into her sight, wandering to the tall windows overlooking the garden in back. “And his wife? Who is she?”

Helen stared at her skirt. “He’s married to the daughter of an earl. I’ve never met her.”

“No, of course not,” he muttered, turning away from the window. “I suppose you wouldn’t have.”

He didn’t say it with any condemnation in his voice, but she still felt heat climb up her throat and face. She wasn’t sure how to reply and thus was rather relieved when the butler returned.

The man’s face was impassive now as he told them that the duke was not receiving visitors. Helen half expected Alistair to demand to see the duke and push past the man. Instead he merely nodded and escorted her to the waiting carriage.

She looked at him curiously after the carriage pulled away. “Was that helpful to you?”

He nodded. “I think so, although what he does next will be more so, I hope.”

“What he does next?”

“How he reacts to our presence in town.” He looked at her, a corner of his mouth twisting up. “It’s like poking a hornet’s nest to see what will happen.”

“I’d think you’d get a hoard of angry hornets swarming you,” she said dryly.

“Ah, but will they attack immediately or wait for another poke? Will they come all at once or send out scouts first?”

She stared at him, bemused. “And poking Lister like a nest of hornets tells you all that?”

“Oh, yes.” He looked quite satisfied as he held the curtain open with one finger to gaze out the carriage window.

“I see.” She believed him, that somehow he was gaining knowledge in a masculine war, but such Machiavellian mechanisms were too complex for her. She merely wanted her children back, pure and simple. She chided herself to be patient. If Alistair’s methods could bring back the children, she could wait.

She could.

“I need to make another errand,” he said.

She looked up. “Where?”

“I have to see about a ship at the docks.”

“What ship? Why?”

He was silent, and for a moment she thought he would not reply. Then he frowned and glanced away from the window to her. “There’s a Norwegian ship that’s docking the day after tomorrow, or at least it should be. On it is a friend, a fellow naturalist. I’ve promised to see him.”

She watched him. There was something more here that he wasn’t saying. “Why can’t he come to see you?”

“He’s a Frenchman,” he said. His voice was impatient, as if he didn’t like her questions. “He can’t leave the ship.”

“You must be very good friends, then.”

He shrugged and looked away from her, not answering.

They rode in silence until they made the hotel where Alistair had purchased a room for them both.

“I’ll return shortly,” he said before she descended the carriage. “We’ll talk then.”

She watched as the carriage pulled away, her eyes narrowed, and then she glanced at the hotel. It was quite nice, an expensive establishment, but she had no wish to sit in the elegant room and twiddle her thumbs waiting for him.

She turned to one of the hostlers lounging about the front of the hotel. “Can you find me a sedan chair?”

“Aye, mum!” The boy took off like a shot.

She smiled. Alistair needn’t be the only one to keep secrets.