Читать книгу Taming The Beast - Heather Grothaus - Страница 10

Five months later

Tornfield Manor

“My lord, Lady Juliette of Osprey!”

At the announcement, Michaela’s and Elizabeth’s heads swiveled to look at each other, both with similar expressions of dread and distaste. Then they giggled silently and turned their faces back to their meal.

The woman came rushing into the hall, interrupting supper with her clicking, stiff slippers and swishing skirts. “Lord Tornfield, my apologies for bursting in on you without warning, but I felt I must come to you immediately!” She stopped before the dais, panting, and made a quick curtsey before smiling sweetly in Elizabeth’s direction. “My dear.”

On the opposite side of Elizabeth, to Michaela’s left, Alan stood, wiping his mustache with a cloth. “Lady Juliette, you are always welcome at Tornfield Manor. You must tell me, what is the nature of your distress?”

Juliette gave a great, dramatic sigh and held forth her fist, gripping a wrinkled piece of parchment. A manservant ferried the piece from the lady’s hand to Alan’s, who shook it open with an intrigued frown on his handsome, kind face and read it silently.

Michaela and Elizabeth exchanged looks from the corners of their eyes.

The dark-haired woman had wandered down the table. “Miss Fortune,” Lady Juliette at last acknowledged. “I trust you are enjoying your boon?”

Michaela nearly lost her good humor, being reminded of the fairly won gown. Juliette had kept her word and sent the green velvet to the Fortune hold, but when Michaela had opened the package, the gown was nothing more than a pile of strips, having been cut through all the seams and down the skirt and bodice with a very, very sharp blade.

“Oh, I’m enjoying it very much, Lady Juliette,” Michaela agreed. Then she lowered her voice to nearly a whisper. “Why, just his morn, I marveled at how soft it feels against one’s bare bottom.”

Alan Tornfield let loose an abrupt, disbelieving laugh and raised his eyes from the missive. “I can scarce believe it. How did you come by this, my lady?”

“It was sent to Osprey by Cherbon’s messenger only last month,” Juliette supplied, rushing back to stand before the lord. “And I can assure you by my own vow that it is true—I have just come from Cherbon, and can attest to its sincerity.”

Michaela saw one of Alan’s noble, sculpted eyebrows raise, as if in sarcastic question.

Juliette fidgeted and blushed. “Only to see if it was true, of course. And it is!”

“I knew he sought a—well, no matter,” Alan said mildly, folding the missive carefully and tucking it into his belt. “Although I would learn more from your visit.” He turned to look at his daughter and then Michaela. “If you will excuse me, ladies. I’ll return before your bedtime, Elizabeth.”

“My lord,” Michaela acquiesced, and watched him go, she knew, with longing in her eyes. He was so handsome. And kind, as well, to give that nasty Lady Juliette audience during his mealtime. The very epitome of nobility. And he was so handsome….

Elizabeth elbowed her sharply in the ribs.

“Ow! Minx,” Michaela whispered, and gave the girl a pinch on the arm.

Elizabeth grinned and then threw her head pointedly in the direction of her departing father. She shrugged her shoulders and raised her eyebrows, looking very much like Alan in that moment.

“I’ve no idea,” Michaela answered.

Elizabeth pushed her plate away as if the sudden appearance of Lady Juliette had spoiled her appetite.

Michaela could not help but agree, and dropped her eating knife onto her own platter. Immediately, a servant appeared to sweep away the remains of the meal, and Michaela marveled at her new station in the Tornfield household. Although the Fortunes of course employed servants, they were few, with only a handful of people filling a multitude of positions. Many were the times that Michaela had cleared the Fortunes’ table of the mealtime dishes and delivered them to the overworked and frazzled kitchen staff herself. She did her own cleaning of her chamber, and often helped with the monthly washing. She had no lady’s maid at the Fortune home.

At Tornfield, she had two. And she’d not so much as stepped foot in the kitchens or wash house since she’d come. They frequently ate meat with every meal. There was even a garderobe on the second floor, near the sleeping chambers. She wondered if such rich living would make her slothful at times, but she sincerely did not care. The skin on her hands was growing soft and smooth, and no one here dared speak poorly of her, under warning from the lord himself. Except when Lady Juliette came to visit, of course, but what could kind Lord Alan do with such a spiteful woman not under his direct rule?

That handsome, kind, noble man…

“What shall we do before your father returns and you’re off to bed?” Michaela asked, even the appearance of Lady Juliette unable to shake her feelings of contentment.

Elizabeth made the now-familiar pantomime for sing as the two girls made their way to a grouping of chairs near the large hearth, but Michaela shook her head, glancing the way Lord Alan had disappeared with the land’s worst singer. She had no desire to push the limits of her and Lady Juliette’s tense civility.

“Not tonight, Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth crooked her arms and flapped her elbows.

“I am not a chicken,” Michaela protested, giving the girl another fond pinch before flopping in a plush armchair—it was the lady of the keep’s chair, a miniature of Alan’s—which the lord had designated for Michaela’s use.

She found it quite, quite comfortable.

“What of a tale instead?” Michaela suggested. “A fable? Perhaps a bible story—you’ve not heard Daniel in the lion’s den for some time.”

Elizabeth shook her head. Then she pointed to Michaela and then did the motions of pulling back a bow string.

Michaela groaned. “Not that silly one again.”

Elizabeth clasped her hands before her chest and batted her eyelashes.

“Oh, very well. Such nonsense, though. Pull your chair closer so I’m not forced to shout.” When Elizabeth’s chair was nearly touching Michaela’s, she began the story originally told to her by Agatha Fortune, one Michaela knew she must have recited to Elizabeth a score of times in the past five months.

“It was Yule’s Eve,” Michaela said, “and my mother and father had had a terrible row, although you would hardly think that’s possible, looking at them now, would you? My father is said to have at one time been a very hard man, again, difficult to believe, I know,” Michaela added, at Elizabeth’s expected skeptical look.

“He’d been into his cups that night, and was entertaining a band of rowdy soldiers in the hall—shouting and breaking things and carrying on quite dreadfully, according to Mother. She was heavy with me at that time, and the great noise was keeping her awake. Well. She decided that she had had quite enough of Father’s merriment and went into the hall to request that he bid his friends good night. She saw that they had the demesne’s meek friar cornered near the hearth and were using him as a target to throw bones and rocks and bits of my mother’s pottery at.

“Of course, she rescued the friar first by flying to his side—getting hit by a half-eaten leg of lamb for her trouble—and then demanded that my father’s guests leave that instant. She told them all that they should be shamed of treating a man of God so poorly and that, were they not all careful, they’d be taken up by the Hunt as punishment. Well, my father was not agreeable to being ordered about his own hall by his wife, not to mention threatened with what he perceived as superstitious drivel, so he told my mother that if she did not care for the way he was entertaining his guests, she could be the one to leave.”

Elizabeth was rapt, her knees drawn up in the seat beneath her gown, her fists before her mouth. She nodded quickly. Go on, go on.

“Well. It being night, Mother was in her rail and robe, but she had slipped on some old shoes to come into the hall and take the men to task. It was brutally cold, snow was deep outside the keep door, but so incensed was she that she thought to teach my father a lesson by going to the stables for the night, where the shepherdess kept a warm and comfortable shelter. She bid my father farewell and left the keep.

“She was no farther than the road when she heard the terrible calling of the hounds, and the sound of hoofbeats like thunder in the snow. Ever firm in her belief that God would protect her, Mother stood her ground, determined to get to the bottom of the legend that had everyone in the village terrified. Then the riders were upon her, and there was no time to hide.”

Elizabeth covered her eyes for an instant, but then looked once more with merry excitement at Michaela.

“The next morn, my father, feeling the ill effect of his overindulgence, and no little remorse for his poor treatment of his wife, went in search of my mother. He looked in the stables first, as although he was—by his own words—a bit thick at the time, he knew it was the only place my mother could and would go where she and I would be safe. But the shepherdess stated that she had not seen sign of Agatha since the day previous, and she had not ventured out of her hut the whole of the night, for she had heard the baying of the hounds beneath her covers and was fearful of the Hunt.

“Well. At this, my father became concerned. As he left the shepherdess, he wondered where on earth his cumbersome and oft troublesome wife could have hidden herself away. That is, until he found the shoe in the center of the road. Mother’s footprints led up to where the shoe lay and then simply…vanished.”

Michaela had told this tale to Elizabeth many times since coming to Tornfield Manor, and she never embellished from the version told to her by her own mother, but it was here that the story deviated from the original version. Michaela still recounted the truth, but omitted the part where Agatha claimed to have been taken up on the horse of the Hunt’s fearsome leader and lifted away into the sky.

This was a child’s tale, after all. No need to frighten the girl with details that were—in Michaela’s opinion—likely stretched to contain some sort of twisted moral. Michaela herself had lost enough sleep over the dreadful story, until she’d grown old enough to determine what was true and what was likely dramatic embellishment.

“It is said that my father and the villagers searched for sign of my mother for the next pair of days, without ceasing. On the third day, father took to the village chapel and fell to his knees, begging God to return his wife and unborn child to him. He prayed that he would perform any penance if his request was granted.”

Elizabeth swept both palms away from her stomach in a wide mound.

“That’s right. It was just then that my mother entered the chapel, nearly scaring the life out of my father. She was unharmed, but missing both shoes, and she said to him, ‘Walter, you must never fight again. You must give your life to God as a meek and obedient servant, lest you and this child be taken from me as punishment for your wickedness.’”

Elizabeth held her palms up, a questioning look on her face.

“So he did. Father dismissed the men of the village who were reserved for fighting, hung his own weapons on the wall of our hall, and set to seeing only to the comfort and happiness of his wife.”

Not willing to let even a word of the retelling slip, Elizabeth pointed to Michaela’s bodice.

“Yes, and this, I nearly forgot.” Although she hadn’t truly forgotten, she simply didn’t wish to bring it out. Michaela reached into the neck of her gown and withdrew the chain that held the small piece of metal, like a link from a chain shirt. She held it up for Elizabeth to see. It was blackened with age, thin and bent, but unbroken. Michaela had oft wondered, if it was a link of mail, how it had been connected to its mates, being whole and unbroken with no visible seam of weld. But she had never asked.

“This was the only thing my mother carried with her upon her return from her three-day absence. She kept it with her always and then, when I was born, placed it around my neck. When I was old enough to understand, she made me swear to never take it off, lest the Hunt return for me.”

Elizabeth pointed at Michaela, and then hooked her index fingers on either side of her head.

Michaela rolled her eyes. “Yes, this is what the villagers say makes me the devil. Are you content now?”

Elizabeth nodded with an impish smile.

“Good.” Michaela took Elizabeth’s small, pale hand and kissed it. “Do you think I’m the devil?”

She shook her head and pulled her hand free. Elizabeth circled her crown with one finger and then flapped her hands near her shoulders.

“An angel, am I? Oh, I daresay that is the right answer.”

Elizabeth made the sign for angel again and then spun her arms in wide, crazy circles before falling out of her chair with a look of feigned surprise.

“Oh, you little—!” Michaela screeched in a mockery of outrage, and fell upon the girl in an attack of tickling.

A masculine clearing of throat interrupted their play, and both girls looked up to see a smiling Alan Tornfield standing over them.

Michaela was completely humiliated to see Lady Juliette smirking at his side.

“Well, I must say that you were right, Lord Tornfield,” Juliette said sweetly. “Miss Fortune does make a jolly nurse for your Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth got up from the floor and fled the hall, leaving Michaela to struggle to her feet alone, her hand slipping off the arm of the chair but once.

“Oh, she’s not Elizabeth’s nurse, Lady Juliette,” Alan said, and Michaela wanted to think there was a bit of chastisement in his tone. “They’re…friends.”

“Friends. Of course,” Juliette accepted. “How fortunate for Elizabeth that her father has found such a generous…friend.”

Michaela bit her tongue until she tasted blood. She would have chewed it off at the root with her own teeth rather than say something mean and petty in front of Lord Tornfield. Any matter, Lady Juliette continued.

“I hate to leave such entertaining company,” she simpered, “but I have a long journey to my own hearth. Good night, my lord. I hope my visit has been informative.”

“Enlightening, certainly. I will be in touch with you very soon. Good night, Lady Juliette.”

“Miss Fortune.”

Michaela kept her tongue firmly between her teeth as Juliette swept from the hall.

And then it was only Michaela and Lord Tornfield in the large, quiet room, lit by the hearth at her back. The flames bathed him in a golden glow and his hair, his mustache, his skin, looked like they were cast from that precious metal, even if his expression appeared unusually tense and preoccupied.

Lord Tornfield held his hand out toward her, and Michaela’s favorite part of each day began as she wrapped her fingers around his forearm.

“Amen,” Alan said in a quiet smiling voice, and then kissed the top of Elizabeth’s head before rising from the edge of the bed. Michaela stepped to the pair and added her own kiss to the little girl’s face.

“Happy dreams, my love,” she said, and went round to the opposite side of Elizabeth’s bed to help pull the embroidered coverlet over the girl.

Elizabeth blew kisses to them both as Alan carried the candlestick from the room, allowing Michaela to precede him through the doorway and then closing the door softly.

Michaela was filled with warm contentment as she and Alan walked side by side down the corridor to her own chamber—easily twice the size of her room at the Fortune house. In this comfortable, loving routine, Michaela liked to imagine that she was the Lady of Tornfield, that Elizabeth was her daughter, and handsome Lord Alan was her own husband. She gave a heavy sigh as she came to a halt before her door, a reluctant good night on her tongue.

“Lady Michaela,” Alan said before Michaela could speak. “Would you indulge me a few moments of your time before retiring? There is something of importance I would speak with you about.”

“Of course, my lord,” she said immediately, her stomach aflutter at what could be so pressing that Lord Alan would retain her company after Elizabeth was abed.

“It is rather private. Would it be terribly untoward of me to request we converse in my apartment?”

Michaela’s hand slid off the door latch and she fell—hard—into the door frame. Alan’s arm shot out to steady her and a concerned frown creased his handsome brow.

“Are you all right?”

“Oh, yes!” She laughed. “I just…My hand slipped, is all.” She shrugged, and felt like an idiot. “We can converse anywhere you wish, my lord,” she said, trying to gather her posture and what was left of her pride.

“Thank you. Shall we, then?”

She followed him farther down the corridor to his door and stepped inside when he swept his arm toward the portal.

It would have been obvious to any stranger who entered that these were the lord’s rooms by the masculine décor—dark burgundy draperies hung at the large window and around the bed, and rich fabric of that same hue covered the pair of tufted stools nestled under a small table along one wall. There were few frills, and the plush velvet seemed to breathe leather and musk. But Michaela did see a handful of signs that the chamber had once housed a female—a gilded hairbrush on a side table, a pair of dainty embroidered slippers at the foot of a painted wooden trunk—and her heart broke a little at the bittersweet feelings evoked by seeing such objects the husband had retained from his wife.

Several candelabras had been lit by servants earlier in the eve in preparation for the lord’s retirement, and the fire crackled private secrets.

A perfect setting, in Michaela’s mind, for what she hoped would be an intimate conversation.

“Please,” Lord Alan invited, dragging one of the stools out for her and then setting the candlestick on the small table. “Forgive me if I seem a bit…foolish. I’ve not had a lady in this room since…”

“I understand,” Michaela rushed to assure him as she sat. Thankfully, her bottom connected securely with the upholstered seat. “No need to apologize.” The lovely, lovely man…

Lord Alan joined her at the table with a quick, boyish smile. It fled his face in a blink. “I want to tell you why Lady Juliette visited me this evening.”

“Oh, must we talk about Lady Juliette?” The almost whining plea was out of Michaela’s mouth before she could stop it, and she was mortified, even when Lord Alan smiled charmingly. “I am sorry. Do go on.”

Alan seemed to relax a bit then, and pulled from his belt the rolled parchment Michaela had seen earlier, and handed it to her.

Michaela unrolled the missive and let her eyes scan over the thousands of tiny, intricate letters covering the page. It would take her an hour to read it in its entirety.

Lord Alan took pity on her. “The gist of the thing is this: Lord Roderick Cherbon, my cousin, has a stipulation he must fulfill in order to fully inherit Cherbon demesne.”

“This says that?” Michaela questioned, and her eyes went to the page. She thought it odd Lord Cherbon would want such a private matter served up to his people for gossip.

“No. I say that, in confidence, to you,” Alan clarified. “It is why I announced months ago that there is a possibility that I could inherit in his place.”

“Oh,” Michaela said, giddy that Alan considered her enough to confide this bit of close information.

“The stipulation is that he must marry a lady of good family before his thirtieth birthday.”

“Oh, my,” Michaela gasped, not really caring, but wanting to show Lord Alan that she found anything he said riveting.

“The problem is in this missive, and is clear to anyone who would read it, especially in light of Lady Juliette’s information. Apparently, my once-sought-after cousin is finding the bride search a bit more of a challenge than he likely thought it would be. May I?” Alan took the missive from her, shook it open, and began to skim with squinted eyes.

“Announcement this day of…yes, yes—ah! ‘Any unmarried lady of good, titled family who is in want of a husband should immediately report to Cherbon Castle. If Lord Roderick Cherbon finds such a woman agreeable after a period of no more than ninety days and can come to a mutual agreement of marriage, upon their wedding she will be legally granted one-fifth of Cherbon’s holding to use at her own discretion. Please see Sir Hugh Gilbert upon arrival.’”

Michaela felt her eyes widen. “That certainly is strange,” she said carefully.

“Don’t you see?” Alan said, leaning forward on his stool, and Michaela caught her breath at his closeness. “No one will marry him now—he’s a beast! He’s trying to bribe his way to the inheritance!”

“A beast?”

“A beast,” Alan reiterated. “He slinks about the castle with a walking stick and in a long black cloak, keeping his face hidden. He’s frightened away each woman come to court him since his return to Cherbon. This missive only proves how close he is to losing the demesne.”

“I see,” Michaela said, although she did not. “What has this to do with me?”

“Your parents’ taxes aren’t the only ones in the land which can not be paid, Michaela,” Alan said with a wry smile, and her heart stopped beating for an instant when he used her given name. “If I do not inherit Cherbon, Roderick will demand my dues and I cannot pay him. This manor—your parents’ land—will be forfeited, and Elizabeth and I will lose you.”

“Oh my heavens!” Michaela gasped. “Oh, no! I can’t…” She stopped, took a deep breath. “What shall we do? You must inherit!”

He gave her a smile that nearly made the shock of his dire announcement worth it. “I know. And I have come up with an idea that will allow you to stay with us forever, if you wish.”

“Oh, yes! Of course, I wish! Do tell, my lord.”

“I have already set in motion plans for a grand feast at Tornfield in one month, and after that night, regardless of whether my cousin is successful in his search or not, we will be safe.” He paused. “Do you trust me, Michaela?” His words were like a caress.

“Yes,” she whispered.

Alan leaned even closer to her over the tabletop. “Elizabeth can not lose you. I can not lose you. You do wish to stay with us, don’t you? Truly?”

“I do, certainly, I do.” She leaned in as well, her bosom biting into the table’s edge, but she scarcely felt it. “More than anything.”

His lips hovered a scant inch from hers. “As do I.”

Alan’s head moved closer.

Michaela leaned more heavily on the table and tilted her head.

The table toppled onto its side, knocking both would-be kissers to the floor and spilling the candle onto the rug.

Alan shouted, jumped to his feet nimbly, and stamped out the flames.

Michaela wanted to die, right there on the floor.

He helped her up with a shaky laugh. “Ah, well. Best not to get carried away in an improper manner, eh?”

“Ha-ha! Yes,” Michaela agreed. No! she screamed inside her head. No, no, no! Let’s get carried away. Please, let’s!

But he was already walking her to the door. “Shall I escort you to your room?” Alan asked politely.

“There’s no need for that,” Michaela reluctantly declined, trying not to let her eyes stray to the big bed at the far end of the room. “I know the way.”

“Of course you do.” Alan smiled. He paused, took her hand, and then leaned in to press his lips—his warm, soft lips!—to her cheek. “Good night, Michaela. I wish you the sweetest dreams.”

She gave him a genuine smile this time as he ushered her from the chamber. “Good night, my lord,” she sighed around her dazed smile, too late for Alan to hear though, as the door had already closed behind her.

Michaela skipped the whole way of the corridor to her chamber, and only tripped once.

But it didn’t count because she was alone.