Page 22
Gareth still felt them. Keenly.
You are unwell and unfit for company, he told himself. He blurted out his next thought anyway. “You rest. I’ll keep watch.”
Her bright eyes found him, burning in the lamplight. “You are the one with a head injury, Your Grace—”
“Gareth.”
Her chin dipped. “Fine. Gareth, you are the one who needs rest. I have been the source of your strife ever since we met. First, by nearly killing you with a chestnut, and now by taking refuge in your home without permission in the middle of the night. Go and seek your bed. Take a spoonful of this first. You, too, Gran.”
She uncapped a brown bottle of that disgusting patent medicine laced with laudanum. Carefully, she doled out a large spoonful of the stuff and fed it to her grandmother, then rinsed the spoon under the gooseneck faucet and held it out to him. He snatched the bottle from her hand.
“Fine. Have it your way. We’ll find a room for you in the morning.” Clutching his prize, he staggered back up the stairway and down the darkened hall, gulping three long swallows directly from the bottle, emptying it with a grimace. “Nasty stuff. Habit-forming.”
Too much, he realized a moment later when he collapsed into his nest of bedclothes piled on an old mattress, and the room began to spin.
Evaine
“The duke is a forceful character,” Gran commented carefully from the chair beside the stove. Evaine unrolled a pile of their dry clothing and laid an old tablecloth over them. It was the best she could do for a bed under the circumstances. A bundle of kitchen towels served as a pillow, and a second tablecloth doubled over—it was sized to fit that enormous table in the dining room—would have to do for a blanket.
“You mean, exceptionally rude?” Evaine clarified, still seething over the way he had absconded with the medicine.
“When I was young, women swooned over rich, titled, men. Scars and all. Handsome was optional. He is arresting to look at but not unappealing.”
“Gran, the duke is a pauper raiding his ancestral home for anything of value to sell at auction.”
“He is still one decrepit mansion, a Rembrandt, a Caravaggio, and an Imperial Peachbloom Vase wealthier than we are.” Gran lay on her pallet and smiled serenely. “You have him all to yourself for a few days. Unlike those boys at Cambridge who flirted with the poor girl on scholarship but always married their childhood sweethearts from their own class. Why not see where things go with Lord Lucan? No one else has to know if it doesn’t work out.”
Heat prickled down Evaine’s neck. She had gotten her hopes up more than once about a young man she’d met at Girton, and Gran knew it. She sidestepped the question by saying, “Do we still have the spare bottle of medicine?”
“Back in the cottage. We shall have to clean up the mess tomorrow. Hope it’s not too ruined.” The old woman nodded off.
Evaine lowered the wick on the oil lamp, dimming its brightness. Though she was physically exhausted, she was far too keyed up to sleep.
Here, in this enormous old kitchen with cobwebs in the corners of its high ceilings and dust on the windows, she could not shake the sense that there was a presence other than herself and her Gran.
Had she truly latched the door? Firmly? She should check it to be certain.
As silently as she could, she slid open the drawer she had put the knife into earlier. She pocketed the blade, took the hurricane lamp by the handle and ventured out into the hall.
Empty.
She made her way to the foyer where the enormous chandelier barely sparkled from all the dust covering it. In the scant moonlight filtering through the front windows the house had a melancholy, contemplative air. Evaine picked her way over to the front door. Steeling herself, she checked the latch.
Locked.
Firmly closed.
Thank heavens.
A sigh of pure relief gusted out of her. Whatever had pursued them out in the forest was not getting in tonight.
Outside, the wind howled.
“One might almost believe those wolf statues had come alive,” she muttered, turning back the way she had come. Then she paused. Since she was going to lose much of tomorrow to moving out of the cottage they had just moved into, and she was going to burn their lamp fuel either way, being awake, she might as well use this time to try and find any more salable antiquities.
Feeling rather foolish from her overactive imagination, she placed her foot on the lowest step of the grand staircase that led to the upper floor. There wasn’t much to see. More dust. A console table stood in the center of the landing where the stairs split off to either side. She would inspect it, and then she would return to the kitchen to check on Gran. Evaine clutched the knife in one hand and held the lamp high in the other. Only the sound of her own footfalls and the howling storm beyond the solid walls of the mansion reached her ears.
She placed the lamp on the marble top and crouched to inspect the carved legs. There were no makers marks that she could find in such poor lighting, but that wasn’t unusual. The serpentine shape looked French, probably mid-eighteenth century. An American collector might covet its (rather hideous, in her estimation) design.
