The Wicked Duke Takes a Wife

Chapter Twenty-seven

Edlyn stared out the cracked window at the gin shop on the corner. It was dark outside, and she doubted anyone could see her from the street.

“I tell you, Rosalie, that girl is a witch. The picture did not fall off the wall by itself. She made it happen.” The man wiped a dribble of wine from his chin. “It’s the Welsh blood that makes her wicked.”

“And the Boscastle blood that makes her wealthy,” his companion, a woman in her thirties, said in a flat voice. “Remember that, and pray do not spit when you talk.”

Jonathan Harvey watched Edlyn from a safe distance across the room. He wore an ill-fitting jacket, with a soiled cravat and fustian trousers. He and his lover, Rosalie Porter, lived in this unappealing tenement off what Edlyn had deduced was Hanging Sword Alley.

If she was going to be held for ransom, Edlyn vowed to wreak the revenge that only a girl of her age could carry out.

Rosalie Porter gave her a narrow glance. “You aren’t a witch, dear, are you?”

Edlyn smiled.

The gray cat preening on the hearth stretched suddenly and sauntered to Edlyn’s side. She knelt to stroke his ears. His purrs vibrated in the silence of the shabby parlor.

“What did I tell you?” Jonathan sputtered, moving behind the oak settle for good measure.

“Get away from that window.” Mrs. Porter rushed across the room, the hem of her dressing robe disturbing the dust on the floor. “You don’t want anyone to see that pretty face. Might give our neighbors some ideas.”

Edlyn pressed her bitten nails down on the windowsill. Mrs. Porter might not want anyone to see her face, either, smeared as it was with her Parisienne pomatum that promised to remove freckles, warts, and spots. Before she went to bed, Mrs. Porter would discover her costly elixir had removed something else, too. When sent to fetch the pomatum, Edlyn had come upon another jar of salve in the cupboard, which claimed to be Cleopatra’s secret formula for lifting off hair.

She swallowed bitterly. She had been a fool to believe Mrs. Porter’s story about her mother. She’d been a fool to sneak out of the castle one night to watch a troupe of traveling actors perform in the village. How the woman must have laughed at her naïveté, a duke’s daughter asking over and over if any of the players had met a woman who could be Edlyn’s mother during their travels.

She had given Rosalie Porter the idea for her abduction. She had believed the letters Mrs. Porter had sent from London convincing her that she had found Edlyn’s mother but that it must be kept a secret from the Boscastle family.

Edlyn’s entire past seemed to be a secret, which had begun the night her mother rowed her across a choppy lake to land on the shores of Castle Glenmorgan. She barely remembered the older man in the boat, her grandfather, his bearded face solemn. He had kissed her before lifting her out of the water. And Edlyn had stood, her teeth chattering with the horror of being abandoned. She had tried to believe she was only going to stay at the castle for a short while, and that in the sunlight it looked like heaven.

She had stared up, clutching her cloak.

The turrets of the castle touched the evening clouds, but it didn’t look heavenly at all, only dark and imposing. Still, gold light shone in the windows. And as she trudged up the drawbridge, she heard laughing voices, warm and lilting, and smelled the enticing fragrance of griddle cakes and leek soup. But then her mother had turned away.

She panicked. “You’re coming back for me, Mama?”

Her mother’s face looked ghostly pale. “When I can,” she’d whispered, and squeezed Edlyn’s hand so tightly they both started to cry. “Mama?”

“Edlyn, I will find you again.” “Please, don’t make me go.”

“They’ll be good to you. These people are kind, I promise. One day I’ll find you. I promise.”

Six years. And then nine. Edlyn looked from the tower first thing every morning and last thing at night for her mother to keep her promise. She was afraid that Mama and her grandfather had drowned rowing back across to the cove. No one had heard of the man and woman she described, not even when the duke, her alleged father, had ridden with his brothers and guards into every border town to find out who had left a little girl with unearthly-blue eyes at the castle drawbridge.

Had her mother been a gypsy? A debutante? A vicar’s daughter? A love-struck girl at a masquerade ball? Liam Boscastle had made pleasure his life’s pursuit. He fell in love with whomever happened to be in his bed. And forgot her in the morning, riding off into the woods without a thought.

Whether or not Edlyn was his love child, he had accepted her. But after a while, he said he did not want to hear another word about Edlyn’s mother. Ever. And Edlyn had to forget her, for she had obviously done the same.

Now, because she had disobeyed him, she’d walked into a trap. She cringed as Mrs. Porter came up behind her, smelling of grease and greed. “You didn’t open that window, did you? It was never so cold in here until you came.”

“What have I been telling you, woman?” Jonathan asked with a grim nod. “We’ve been bewitched. We can’t keep her. She’s gonna bring us down, I swear it.”

“She is only a girl,” Rosalie said, turning toward him. “And she is going to bring us a fortune, unless you ruin-”

He reared back, blinking rapidly and making gurgling sounds in his throat.

Rosalie sighed in exasperation. “What is it now?”

“Your-your-” He gestured at her forehead.

“Yes, it is my cream. You’ve seen it on my face a hundred times before.”

He nodded, finally recovering his power of speech. “Maybe so. But I’ve never seen your face without its eyebrows before.”

Griffin came home to find Harriet asleep on the sofa in his library. He bent and lifted her into his arms. She nestled closer to his chest, hooking one arm around his neck. “Did you find her?” she whispered, opening her drowsy eyes.

He swallowed. The warmth of her body stole over him. He wanted to hold her until he could think again. His mind was exhausted.

He carried her upstairs to her bed, glancing around the room to make certain no chambermaid sat in wait for news of Edlyn’s abduction. Would she be found? Would it turn out to be a hoax? He knew the questions being asked. Unfortunately, he did not know the answers.

“It must be five o’clock in the morning,” Harriet whispered as he sat down on the bed beside her. “Did you learn anything at all?”

He shook his head, staring across the room until she sat up and wrapped her arms around him.

“It’ll all be fine.” She put her head on his shoulder. “I know it will.”

He meant only to kiss her. But then she drew him down beside her, her eyes inviting him. He circled his hand down her back, over her hips, to the hollow behind her knees. “I should know that I can’t help myself whenever I touch you-”

“I want you to touch me,” she whispered. “I don’t want you to be able to stop.”

He closed his eyes, sinking onto the bed beside her. Her skin smelled of soap. He reached for her again, his fingers loosening her heavy braid.

Marry me, he thought as numbness crept over him, not knowing whether she was awake or not. When this is over, please be my wife. It was light when he opened his eyes. With concern not to disturb her, he furtively slid one stockinged foot to the floor and repaired his attire as best he could. He found his boots at the door. He hoped that Harriet would sleep another hour. He hoped she at least would be refreshed this morning. But as he stole into the hall, he heard such a bone-chilling scream come from her room that he dropped both of his boots on the floor.

Damn propriety. Damn what would be said. He returned without an instant’s delay to her side, taking her into his arms with an instinct that would not be denied.

“Harriet, what is the matter?”

She stared over his shoulder with a vacant detachment that raised the hairs on his nape. He shook her gently. “Harriet, was someone here?” he asked when he knew it was impossible.

He heard doors opening in the house, voices talking all at once. “You screamed,” he said under his breath. “What happened?”

“I screamed?”

He shook her again. “Don’t you remember?”

Her gaze came into focus. She regarded him in panic. “Why are you still here? We’re going to be found out.”

The door flew open. He leapt up and went to the window, searching the garden below for the cause of her disturbance. “What is going on?” Primrose whispered in a trembling voice behind him. “What are you doing in here, Griffin? What happened to make Harriet scream like that?”

Harriet drew the bedcovers up to her chin, wide awake and whispering in a sorrowful voice. “Oh, madam, please, I didn’t mean to scare everyone. It was a nightmare. I haven’t had one in ages. But I must have been so tired and worried and-I’m sorry.”

“A nightmare?” Griffin said with a relief he could not conceal. “A nightmare?”

She put her face in her hands. Griffin went to her side, his aunt watching in distress.

“What were you dreaming about, my dear?” she asked.

“My father,” Harriet whispered. “I was standing over the mean sod’s grave-” She paused. “I mean, I was praying for his poor departed soul, and there was a gravedigger flinging sod in every direction.”

“How awful, but not uncommon,” Primrose said in sympathy, “to dream of one who has recently died.”

Harriet shook her head. “I wasn’t screaming because he was dead. I thought he’d come back to life from the grave. I felt this cold hand catch me by the ankle, and when I looked down-you know how you can’t stop yourself from looking at something horrible-I saw him grinning up at me like a ghoul.”

She lowered her hands. Griffin thought he might expire himself. “It’s too much to bear, Harriet,” he heard his aunt say like a dirge. “It is all too much to bear.”

He walked from the bed toward the door. His aunt reached for his hand.

“I forgot until now,” he said. He turned back slowly. “You left a string of glass beads in my carriage. I kept them, not knowing what they might mean to you.”

“They’re nothing. Toss them.”

He frowned. “They were from your father?”

He wondered if she might be crying. But when she looked up, she was composed. “He never gave me anything but grief in his life. Go back to bed, the both of you.”