Too Wanton to Wed: Gothic Love Stories #4

by Ridley, Erica

  A loud fluttering thundered past her face toward the curtains.

  A bird. A bird. Her choking laugh was tinged with almost hysterical relief. Those hadn’t been fingers against her ankle, but the soft weight of robin’s wings. And of course there were robins—hadn’t she just noted the warmth of the sun and the softly blooming flowers and the distinct scent of outdoors? Why, it was a miracle the abbey wasn’t overrun with robins. God knew, she had never been able to prevent any kind of creature from entering any place she called home. All it took was an open window, and the next thing one knew—

  Her breath caught again. This was Waldegrave Abbey. There were no open windows. There weren’t even windows. Just layers of crisscross boards hidden beneath reams of heavy curtains. There was no way a robin could have squeezed through a gap that even sunshine couldn’t slip through.

  Slowly, she crossed step by step to the dark curtains hanging on the other side of the empty chamber. A faint hint of light seeped from beneath. Hands shaking, she shoved the curtains apart.

  Colored sunlight blasted her in the face. She stumbled backward in surprise.

  Iron-framed stained glass stretched from knee height almost to the ceiling. A semi-opaque view of the abbey grounds spread before her, from a height of perhaps twenty feet. Not all the boards had been removed from the windows, but enough had been cleared to allow the smallest pane to be unlocked and lifted. She did so now. The robin seized its opportunity for flight, leaving her alone once more.

  She stood there, gazing out an artisan window that should not be visible, until the sun began to set beyond the edge of the neighboring woods.

  With his daughter’s sunsickness—and his own—Mr. Waldegrave would never have condoned the de-boarding of a window. But then, neither would a servant dare be so presumptuous. And yet, the room was free of dust, and someone had clearly begun to expose the stained glass design. Even the missing boards had been cleared from the room. But who? And when? And why?

  Violet shoved the curtains closed with trembling fingers. Perhaps she and Lily weren’t the sole captives of Waldegrave Abbey after all.

  Chapter 23

  By the following noontime, Alistair had lost his appetite.

  His eyes were streaked red from studying through the night, his fingers were cramped and swollen from copious note-taking during the day, his throat was sore and his voice raspy from shouting over the din of theories and postulations. It should have been a glorious turning point for the future of the Waldegraves.

  Except all he was hearing was “no.”

  No, they had never come across such a disease in their lives. No, there was no research on the subject, and therefore, no, there wasn’t the faintest path toward amelioration. No, they couldn’t imagine what might cause nor cure such a queer allergy. No, their busy schedules did not permit a second such gathering anytime this year, much less frequent house calls. No, there would be no way to treat an unknown disease through mere correspondence. No, they could not guarantee that experimentation in their faraway laboratories would not exacerbate, rather than solve, the problem. No, they could not study the symptoms without causing additional pain to the subject, or perhaps accidental death. They were physicians and scientists, not miracle workers and magicians. They were not God.

  When the subject turned for the hundredth time to whose laboratory and bright young assistants would be more suited for physical research of this nature—despite Alistair’s repeated pleas that they focus on preventing the symptoms, not documenting them—he could bear the frustration no longer.

  Rude as it may be, he leapt from his chair and strode from the wall of “Would the reflection of sun on snow deepen or lessen the severity of the burns?” and “Once enough scar tissue had formed, might not a few seconds of sunlight be tolerated?” and into the blessed darkness of his empty office. Silence... but not peace. He collapsed into his chair, crisscrossed his arms over a stack of worthless notes, and lowered his head to his desk.

  His prayers had not been answered. He was not on the path to saving Lily. He was destined to disappoint her yet again. And life would trudge on as it always had.

  A knock sounded on the office door. “Master Waldegrave?”

  His housekeeper. Sighing, Alistair lifted his heavy head. He plodded across the room without registering much of anything and mechanically opened the door. “What is it, Mrs. Tumsen?”

  “It’s tea. I thought you could use a pot.” She bustled right past him as if in-office tea service were an everyday occurrence rather than an unheard of presumption.

  No one had ever been allowed in Alistair’s office but him. No maid, no housekeeper, no one. His office was the repository of an entire decade of research into his daughter’s sunsickness. Nine long years he’d kept this oasis of knowledge, this haven of hope, sacred. Books, notes, his sweat and blood and essence on every diagram or model or scrap of parchment. And for what? Just to make the bitterness of disappointment all the more severe?

  Tea would not erase his woes. Only a cure for Lily could do that.

  Rather than return to his desk, he stepped into the passageway and headed back toward the large refectory they’d been using as a meeting room. He did not bother to shoo Mrs. Tumsen from his office or bid her close the door behind him. So what if she spilled tea over nine years of notes or mistook yellowed parchment for forgotten rubbish? He was never going to devise a cure on his own. He needed help. He needed the experts arguing animatedly on the other side of the abbey. While there was still air to breathe, he was not willing to give up.

  Nearly to the refectory, he spied Roper heading toward the servants’ quarters. Alistair called out to his manservant, who started as if he’d been caught sneaking biscuits.

  “Master! Good afternoon.”

  “Not particularly. Is Miss Smythe about? I haven’t seen her, and she promised to lend her mind to the meeting.” He would explain her presence as a visiting relative. “Could you escort her to the refectory for me?”

  “She’s... not in her chamber, master.” Roper dropped his gaze suspiciously. “Or speaking to me.”

  “What?” Alistair’s eyes narrowed. “Why not? Where is she?”

  “She hasn’t left Miss Lillian’s side since yesterday afternoon, master. I’m certain she’s there still.”

  Alistair’s stomach dropped. “What happened to Lily? Has she sickened? I must go to her at once. I must—”

  “Miss Lillian is fine, master. The problem was not with her.”

  His heart still beating rapidly, Alistair raked a hand through his hair. “Then what?”

  His manservant sighed. “I caught Miss Smythe by the kitchen exit with a young boy yesterday. She had a gown and a loaf of bread wrapped up in a mantle. He was raving about coming to rescue her, that they were leaving.”

  Alistair’s heart slowed to a stop, then sped up twice as fast as before. She had been planning to leave. Abandon him and Lily both without so much as a fare-thee-well. And if that’s what Violet wished to do, how could he stop her? He’d have to let her go. And never hear her voice or see her face again.

  With spreading surprise, he realized it wasn’t the lack of goodbye that had skewered him. It was the realization that he did not want her to leave his side. Ever. She was indelibly a part of his life now. A part of his heart.

  Even if that made him a monster.

  He let out a slow breath. Why did his undeniable affection for Miss Smythe make him feel so guilty? Was it because he couldn’t reunite his daughter with her birth mother?

  He had spent Lily’s entire life telling her she was the child of the most perfect angel that ever walked the earth. And now what? He wanted his skeptical daughter to believe her father had managed to ensnare not one but two angels? Did he even believe such a thing were possible?

  He would have to puzzle it out later. This might be his last chance to find a cure for Lily, and the hourglass was running low.

  “I can’t concern myself with Miss Smythe right now,” h
e said, ignoring the tumult in his brain. “I cannot afford the distraction. I have a roomful of scientists and physicians attempting to put their minds toward a cure, and that is where my focus belongs.”

  “But master... if she should try to leave again?”

  Ignoring the thundering of his heart, Alistair forced himself to do the right thing. “Then let her.”

  Roper’s usually emotionless demeanor was an unfamiliar mixture of surprise and disappointment, as if he, too, felt Miss Smythe’s attempted departure to be a personal betrayal, and had fully expected his master to employ whatever means necessary to get her to stay.

  But what was Alistair to do? Drop to his knees and bare his soul? He wasn’t entirely certain of where, precisely, his heart stood, but he did know where his focus needed to be. Until he could give Lily the life she deserved, Alastair did not deserve a life at all, much less a romance. Only a cure could save them. With his guests leaving on the morrow, the hours remaining to devise a reason to hope dwindled fewer and fewer. And he wanted more than mere hope. He needed success.

  With a quick nod to dismiss Roper, Alistair sprinted back to the refectory where the intellectual debate still raged at top volume. When he entered the room, however, the voices stalled.

  “What?” he demanded, his skin sticky with foreboding. “What happened?”

  “We have drawn a conclusion,” Mr. Knightly announced somberly. “But you will not like it.”

  His stomach dropped. “There’s no hope? None at all?”

  “There is always hope,” Mr. Knightly corrected with a smile. “But there is only one possibility for success.”

  Alistair sagged as relief washed over him. “Anything. Anything at all. Just tell me what I must do.”

  “Submit yourself to one of our laboratories for examination. We must have a live subject.”

  “What? No!” Alistair’s fingers clenched at the thought of his daughter strapped to an examination table. “Not even for a day.”

  “We’re not asking for a day,” Mr. Knightly said softly. “But for life. Or until the disease can be cured, whichever comes first. It’s the only way.”

  “There is no cure,” Dr. Hughes spoke up from the opposite corner. “Not without extensive research and experimentation.”

  Alistair desperately shook his head. “There will be no experimentation.”

  Mr. Knightly rose to his feet and donned his hat. “Then there will be no cure.”

  Chapter 24

  The following day, Jenny and Elsa—the maids who brought each meal to the sanctuary—also carried the news Violet had been waiting for.

  “They’re gone.” Jenny slid her heavy tray onto the top of Lily’s escritoire. “Master Waldegrave is taking his leave of the last one right now.”

  “And he is not in a good humor,” Elsa added under her breath as she arranged the milk and tea.

  Marvelous. Violet thanked them for the food and bade them good afternoon. As she nibbled at a bite of boiled potato, her gaze was continually drawn to the hands of the clock. As much as she enjoyed Lily’s company—and a warm meal—she could not stay here forever. Visiting his daughter would undoubtedly be Mr. Waldegrave’s first stop after seeing off the last of his guests, and Violet was not up for a confrontation over her conspicuous absence.

  She did need to address having been forcibly restrained from leaving the abbey, but that particular argument seemed disingenuous at the moment, given there was nowhere to go. And what did that say about her current turn of affairs? Well, she certainly couldn’t claim to be unwanted.

  She snorted softly. “Be careful what you wish for, I suppose.”

  Lily glanced up from her meal, one cheek smeared with orange marmalade. “Hrmph?”

  “Nothing, Tiger Lily. Except I have to go back to my own chamber now. We’ve been in this room together for nearly three straight days. Aren’t you tired of me yet?”

  “Huh-uh.” Lily threw her arms around Violet’s waist and let herself hang on dead-weight, smearing orange marmalade across Violet’s morning dress and nearly toppling her over in the process.

  “All right, you,” she chastised good-humoredly as she plucked the giggling little girl from her skirts. “Now I definitely need to bathe and change. Your papa should be by before too long, and I’ll see you soon. Try to behave, please.”

  The answering look of mischief in Lily’s eyes lent no hope whatsoever to proper behavior, but Violet secretly could not have been more pleased.

  Lily was finally misbehaving as a nine-year-old girl ought. No table manners, a disinclination for mathematics, frequent snits over the brushing of her hair or whether she must eat boiled vegetables—all of these were far more welcome than the frightened animal of a child who had attacked anyone who entered the sanctuary and scratched and bit her own father out of a desperate bid for attention. Lily was slowly maturing. She might never see the sun, but she was blossoming all the same.

  Violet kissed the top of Lily’s head before hurrying to her bedchamber.

  A long bath helped, at least on the surface. The tea tray that arrived shortly thereafter after also did not go amiss. After toweling her damp hair, she lay back against her pillows. First thing tomorrow, she needed to do some reconnaissance. A chill crept over her. Finding a trapped robin in a room that should have been long since boarded over had well and truly discomfited her. She could not claim to have caught any evildoers red-handed, but something was definitely not right inside the abbey.

  She drifted in and out of troubled dreams until a knock upon her door startled her awake. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she crossed slowly to the door.

  “Yes?”

  “Miss Smythe, it’s me,” came Mrs. Tumsen’s familiar voice. “I’ve come to check on ye.”

  Violet swung open the door in relief. “The excitement has ended?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Mrs. Tumsen answered soberly.

  Frowning, Violet took a small step backward. “Did something happen?”

  “That’s the problem. It seems nothing has happened. Again. When ye got the master praying for miracles and human gents unable to make any... Saying he’s disappointed is kind of like saying Bonaparte was a mite competitive. If ye pardon the comparison.”

  Violet nodded in understanding. Whatever one might say about Mr. Waldegrave, his devotion to his daughter was wholehearted and absolute. If the respected scientists he’d been so eagerly anticipating had been unable to provide any hope whatsoever... Her heart twisted. He would be devastated, and doubtlessly twice as determined as before.

  “That poor man,” she murmured.

  Mrs. Tumsen gave her an odd look. “Poor gel, don’t ye mean?”

  Violet shook her head. “I wish Lily were healthy, of course, but every day brings her a slightly greater measure of peace. I doubt her father has ever experienced such a thing.”

  Mrs. Tumsen chuckled. “Ye’d be right about that. Not in the past decade, anyway. Oh, and before I forget, I’ve got that key ye asked for.”

  Violet pressed a hand to her unadorned throat.

  Mrs. Tumsen nodded, and held out her hand. “I won’t ask why ye wanted another copy, but I hope it was worth the eight pence.”

  “Peace of mind is always worth every penny.” From Mrs. Tumsen’s outstretched hand, Violet plucked the worn skeleton key on its chain and a shiny new key forged in its image. If she were truly a prisoner here in the abbey, a spare key would not go amiss if Mr. Roper chose to divest her of her old one. Since it was common knowledge she kept her key about her neck, she’d tuck the new copy deep in her pocket.

  “Oh, one more thing, if you would be so kind.” Violet turned toward her escritoire. “Can I give you a bit more correspondence to post for me, please?”

  “Of course, dear. None of them barristers worked out for ye?”

  “Actually, yes. There’s one who seems both personable and affordable. When the first of the month comes, I’ll have enough saved to engage his services. The preliminary investig
ations and court fee, I believe it was.”

  Rather than congratulate Violet on her impending freedom, Mrs. Tumsen’s face fell. “So that’s it, then? First of the month and ye’re out of here?”

  “Just to meet him, and likely sign some sort of contract,” Violet answered, then caught herself. Would she be going anywhere at all if she were physically barred from stepping foot outside the abbey? “You saw what Mr. Roper did the other day, didn’t you?”

  “I saw ye tumbling from atop his shoulder, if that’s what ye mean, but I didn’t ask him, and I didn’t ask you. Yer business is yer own.”

  “He wouldn’t allow me to leave,” Violet admitted quietly.

  Mrs. Tumsen’s expression of surprise was genuine. “He what?”

  “He thought I was leaving, and took it upon himself to—well, you saw him. Tell me the truth, Mrs. Tumsen. Am I prisoner here?”

  “If ye are, nobody told me,” the older woman said stoutly. But her brow creased in worry. “What did the old goat have to say for himself?”

  “There wasn’t much opportunity for conversation,” Violet said dryly. Besides, what was there to say? He must have been ordered to keep her inside the abbey walls at all times. Why else would he have kept her from leaving? Her eyes widened as an alternate explanation sprang to mind. “Did you tell him about... about the sketch?”

  “Yer wanted bill, ye mean?”

  Violet smiled politely. “That’s the one.”

  Mrs. Tumsen shook her head. “Haven’t breathed a word. Of course, I’m not the only one what goes to town from time to time, you know.”

  “Of course,” Violet echoed weakly. Keeping a secret that large was truly hopeless. She bade the housekeeper good day, then slumped against her closed door with a sigh.

  How was she meant to stay safe? If the only souls who never went into town were herself and the Waldegraves, likely every single servant both above and below stairs had seen her face in pen-and-ink infamy. Which meant leaving Waldegrave Abbey by hook or by crook would end up being the easy part. Getting from Shrewsbury to London without being trussed and gaoled along the way would be the delicate bit.