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And she would be beautiful and wealthy and would depend upon no one but herself.
Strangely, her usual daydream felt rather grey and she trudged up the stone steps and through the Sea Gate and into the tunnel leading to the great stairs. It took her a while to realise she was lost. She finally stopped walking and raised her eyes from the flagstones. There was just enough light coming in from the narrow open slits on either end of the corridor, and she could hear the surf outside, so she did not feel particularly alarmed, just hungry and weary. Had she turned left or right at the Sea Gate? She retraced her steps, but the silence only deepened and so did the gloom.
She could not have come this way because at the end of the ill-lit tunnel with its vaulted ceiling there was nothing but a spiralling staircase heading downwards, which made little sense to her unless she had reached an entrance to the cellars? The Duke’s words came back to her—the cellars were closed off so surely there was no point in going down. Unless by coming in from the side door on the cliff side they had entered higher than the main entrance and by going down she would find herself some place familiar?
Utterly confused, she considered calling out, but stubbornness or pride held her back. At least now she was paying attention. She would go down and if it led merely to the cellars she would come directly back and try something else.
A dozen steps down she paused and, as she watched the darkness below her, it began to shift, moving closer, carrying with it a whisper of sound, like a great beast sighing in its sleep. She took an involuntary step back up the steps, her body gathering and her breathing quickening.
‘It is only a trick of the light and the wind.’ The strange sensation subsided as if chased away by the sound of her voice. Still, she hurried up the stairs, laughing a little at herself. Finally, she found herself at the familiar staircase inside the castle and sighed with relief.
‘Just like a child,’ she said aloud as she reached the ground floor.
‘What is?’
Her heart skittered at the Duke’s deep voice and she turned to see him descending the main staircase.
‘I am. I thought I was lost.’
He frowned and stopped two stairs short of the bottom.
‘Were you frightened?’
‘A little,’ she admitted. ‘Just for a moment. Angus and Jamie went ahead and I wasn’t paying attention and took a wrong turn.’
His frown went from cloudy to thunderous.
‘This is precisely why I told you to take Angus with you. He and Jamie should not have left you.’
‘Nothing happened, Your Grace. It was only a moment’s confusion.’ She certainly would not tell him about the stairs. That would probably convince him to lock her in her rooms for her own safety.
‘Nevertheless, I shall have a word with them.’
‘Oh, please don’t,’ she said impetuously. ‘We had such a lovely time finding treasures on the shore and Jamie was hungry and ran ahead and Angus told me to take my time... Please do not be upset with them. I do not require mollycoddling.’
He descended the two remaining stairs and she wished he had remained where he was. It brought him far too close, and with his superior height and breadth of shoulders, she felt frail which was a sensation she was not in the least accustomed to. He had made her ill at ease six years ago and there were still times she felt as tense as a filly being rushed down a cliff path. Perhaps it was his own tension communicating itself to her—the closer they came to his home the more evident it became, and she felt it vividly, like wasps in jar—humming, angry. She doubted she was its cause, but she did feel she was adding to his burdens instead of alleviating them. She wished Jamie was with her so the Duke could see how happy his son was after their visit to the beach, but perhaps that would make it worse.
She searched for a distraction and her eyes alighted on a portrait just beyond his left shoulder of a smiling young woman with dark hair and a lovely face that radiated curiosity and light. On the frame there was a worn inscription of a name: Marguerite. She had glimpsed it last night as they climbed to the nursery and even then it had struck her tired mind.
‘Who was Marguerite?’
‘Marguerite?’
