Page 34 of Who’s That Earl

In the end, Thomas had decided not to confront Jane with his suspicions. Instead, he’d walked twice around the outer bailey before returning to his rooms in the gatehouse, no less restless than he’d been when he started. Esme had come while he’d been out, straightened the sitting room and aired the bed. While he appreciated the maid’s efforts, the present orderliness was ill-suited to his mood. Like his mentor, he found it difficult to think when things were too neat.

Though the sun was shining, its brightness amplified by the snow, in the gatehouse all was dark. He lit a lamp and began to poke into the corners he’d been too tired to explore last night. He found old estate records that ought to have been sent on to Mr. Watson and never had been, a few coats, and a tricorn hat twenty years out of fashion, packed in camphor in the clothespress. And in a corner cupboard, the complete works of Robin Ratliff.

Tracing a finger along the row of spines, he considered what, if anything, the books might reveal either to confirm or deny his theory of their authorship. Though General Scott had made clear Ratliff’s work was widely read and wildly popular, it felt like an invasion of Jane’s privacy to be thinking of reading them himself, now that he’d begun to suspect her of writing them. He’d already learned some of her secrets today; would he discover more between the covers of her novels? Then again, if he meant to find out anything about the writer of that horrible letter, perhaps it would be useful to know what had stirred his ire.

He lit candles from the lantern until the room glowed, then settled on the sofa, one leg stretched along the seat, the other foot on the floor, and opened the first volume of The Necromancer’s Bride.

Some hours later, he was nearing the end of the second volume, fully absorbed by the story of poor, orphaned Ophelia, found in the forest and raised by peasants, though obviously not of their stock. He’d toed off his boots to sit with both feet on the sofa, knees propped up to hold the book, as he had not done since he’d been a lad—if then. Even the laden dinner tray Esme had brought him earned only a scant share of his attention, what little he could spare from hair-raising accounts of the myriad cruelties Ophelia had been forced to endure and the frequent eruptions of strange sounds coming from Lord Ruthveyn’s castle, in whose shadow they all struggled to survive. The rich, sensual voice on the page, far different from the sometimes prim and always proper one with which Jane spoke, almost made him second-guess his belief that she was really Ratliff.

From time to time, he paused to try to understand what had angered the letter writer, as if there might be some logic to his position. Certainly, if one presumed that it was dangerous to form an attachment to fictional characters, to the point of distraction from one’s other duties, then the book did indeed pose a serious risk to its readers.

Then, of course, there was the looming castle and its mysterious lord who did little to fulfill his duties to the people of his estate. For the inspiration there, he hadn’t to look any further than Dunnock and the failings of the late Lord Magnus.

Perhaps also the current one.

Mostly, though, in those moments of reflection, he found himself remarking on how much the heroine’s experience mirrored Jane’s—both young women with gifts that put them entirely out of step with everyone who surrounded them.

In chapter twelve of the second volume, Ophelia’s foster family agreed to a proposition so shocking, Thomas found himself sitting bolt upright, both feet once more on the floor. Lord Ruthveyn, known to meddle in dark magic—hadn’t his intended bride died at his own hand the night before their wedding?—offered a large sum of money in exchange for the hand of the lovely, innocent young woman, and without even a show of reluctance, the destitute couple renounced their parentage and sold her to him.

More and more, Thomas was forced to conclude that his surmise had been the correct one: Jane had been moved by her own family’s cruelties to pen this tale. Like her heroine, she had been betrayed by those she had trusted and forced to make her own way in a hard world.

Pages fluttered beneath Thomas’s fingers as he sped through them. Ophelia’s proud ascent to the castle, unwilling to shed a tear. The apparently empty castle, with no sign of the necromancer. The shrieks and groans from the dungeons that broke her slumber. He owed Ross an apology for his silent mockery this morning in the pub. Expecting any moment to come across the fateful scene when Ruthveyn and Ophelia met, Thomas too would have resented an interruption.

Given freedom to wander the castle, for she saw no one to stop her, Ophelia discovered no instruments of torture, no frightful laboratory. She found herself most often in the vast library, staring up in amazement at the great walls of books. One evening, as she walked along the shelf, trailing a fingertip across a row of dusty spines, a voice spoke.

“Why do you never open any of them?”

She located the figure in the shadows, standing beside the chair in which he must previously have been sitting, watching her. By his words, she knew it had not been the first time he had done so.

It could only be Lord Ruthveyn, though he was younger than she had imagined and not half so frightening to look upon. His features were sharp and his skin sallow, with a curtain of dark hair framing his face, but he was not altogether unhandsome.

She curtsied. “Because I never learned to read, my lord.”

Over the next few chapters, Ruthveyn dedicated himself to teaching her, in increasingly intimate scenes between the unlikely pair that kept Thomas’s eyes skating over the pages. Eventually, Ophelia had learned enough to be able to read to Lord Ruthveyn every evening before she retired, while he quaffed what he called a forgetting potion—strong liquor the young woman was too naïve to recognize as such. Just when Thomas felt certain that the rumors of sorcery would be disproven in the scant pages of the volume that remained, Ruthveyn entered the library with a brimful goblet for Ophelia.

“Cupidio,” he explained, ordering her to drink it.

Lord Ruthveyn had been too thorough a teacher for her not to understand the implications of the brew’s name. But she required no love potion to fulfill at last the wedding vows she’d made. Her fascination with him, however unwise, was strong enough already. Nevertheless, she drained the glass as she’d been told, licking the last honeyed drops from her lips.

“Well?” He stood with arms crossed, his expression stern yet hopeful.

With undisguised eagerness, she dropped to her knees before him, though in truth, nothing had changed. The tremor of desire that stirred deep within her belly had naught to do with what she’d drunk. “Teach me to please you, my lord.”

End of Vol. II

In his haste to reach for the third volume, Thomas upset what remained of the pot of tea, grown fortunately cold, as most of it landed in his lap, the rest of it dripping onto the sofa and carpet, narrowing missing the books he’d left lying about.

He was still sopping up the mess when someone knocked.

Muttering curses under his breath, he stomped through the office in his stockinged feet and dragged open the heavy outer door. All was in darkness; the hour must be very late. When cold air hit his wet clothes, the curses ceased to be muttered. “Damn and blast. What now?”

Elderly Mrs. Murdoch looked up at him reprovingly from beneath a hooded mantle. “Well, I never,” she snapped, shoving a folded piece of paper at him. “Mrs. Higginbotham sent me tae give you this.”

She was gone before his words of apology could reach her ears. He stood in the doorway looking after her, letting the cold air seep through his wet clothes as a punishment for his ill-mannered behavior. Once she had disappeared inside the castle, he retreated into his rooms. Before the fire, he unfolded the note, a ragged scrap on which an unsteady hand had scrawled

Robin Ratliff is in the castle and wishes to speak with you tonight.

An unexpected message, to be sure—and oddly cryptic. The few words, the rushed delivery, hinted at a state of distress. The hand that had held the pen had shaken too much for him to feel certain it had been Jane’s. Perhaps his surmise had been wrong. If she were Ratliff, why would she choose this moment to reveal the connection?