Moonlight Surrender (Moonlight Book 3)

by Ferrarella, Marie

  “Jacob, stay with her. I’ll see what I can do about getting us a coach.”

  He was back within the half-hour, riding beside a coach driven by a small man with flaming red hair. He looked more like a gnome than a man. His shoulders were hunched as if he were perpetually seeking shelter from the cold. He looked pleased for the business and guaranteed them a ride, “as soft as if you were being cradled to your mother’s bosom.”

  It was argument enough for Beth.

  She rode within the coach with her father and Andre as Jacob rode alongside and Duncan rode on top, with the driver. Duncan’s horse was tied to the back. Beth heard the endless murmur of the driver’s high voice and didn’t envy Duncan the position he had chosen.

  She smiled to herself, thinking of the care he had given her and everything he had done. She could not wait to put all this behind her and pick up the thread of the new life she had found, a life with him.

  All he need do, she thought, was ask her.

  Two days later, they came to the outskirts of Shalott. As they approached the manor, word spread quickly from cottage to cottage that Duncan had returned. It was, Beth thought, as she watched people in the fields wave at them as they passed, a little like being in the company of returning royalty. Despite the goings-on she had endured, the notion made her smile.

  Duncan watched as he saw the manor rise up before him. A feeling tugged at his gut and he recognized it for what it was: a feeling of homecoming. He was home.

  Shalott was home now, far more than any other place had ever been. Even more than the sea. And as long as Sin-Jin remained in America, it would remain so for him and his family.

  It was a good feeling, and he cherished it the way only an orphan could. He thought of the boy within the coach and wondered if Andre would wish to remain here with him.

  It was a foregone conclusion that the others would be leaving. But Duncan chose not to dwell on that now. It would distill the joy he was experiencing.

  Samuel was at the coach before the horses had been brought to a complete stop. His small eyes glowed with relief and happiness as he looked up at Duncan. “You made it back.”

  Duncan leaped gracefully from the driver’s seat to the ground just as Jacob pulled up behind him. “I told you I would, old man.” He laughed heartily to see that nothing had changed. God, but it felt wonderful to be here. “Have I ever lied to you?”

  Samuel pretended to look at him somberly. “More times than there are fingers and toes in Shalott.”

  “Now who lies, you old bastard?” With a cry of joy, Duncan found himself engulfed in a bearhug, though he was by far the larger of the two.

  “Good to see you, boy,” Samuel murmured, his voice getting lost against Duncan’s brawn. It was just as well. It was in danger of cracking, he thought. “Good to see you.” He released Duncan. “And even you.” Samuel laughed as he turned to Jacob.

  The old man looked up just as Beth stepped down from the coach. He was quick to present his hand to her. “Mistress, did you—?” Samuel raised tufted eyebrows to silently end his question.

  Beth nodded. “We did.”

  She looked about at the smiling faces and felt the same odd tug at her heart that Duncan had. Sylvia stood sobbing her relief in the doorway.

  Same old Sylvia, she thought with amusement.

  Her attention returned to Samuel. “We need a litter, or some way to carry him inside.”

  Samuel was already turning on his heel.

  “Forget the litter, Samuel,” Duncan called.

  Duncan nudged Beth aside. Reaching within the carriage, he took her father gently into his arms. He instructed Jacob to take the boy.

  Duncan looked down into her face. “All you ever need, Beth,” he told her quietly as he turned on his heel, “is me.”

  Beth looked at Duncan’s departing back and her heart quickened.

  I know.

  With Amy’s good food and her tender care, her father and Andre mended far more quickly than Beth thought it was possible. The very fact that they were free of the shadow of the Bastille did much to aid their recovery.

  Time seemed to pass her on winged feet as she saw to their care.

  It was the other matter that troubled her. It seemed that ever since their return, Duncan had gone out of his way to avoid her. For three days he was not to dinner when she came down, or in his room when she went to speak to him.

  Everywhere she was, he was not—by design, she both sensed and feared.

  A chill began to cover her heart.

  So on the eve of the fifth day, when she heard his voice coming from the study, Beth was quick to enter. She did so without knocking, fearing that if she hesitated, she would lose her courage. The courage that was quickly waning.

  Duncan looked surprised to see her and immediately restless, as if he wanted to be gone.

  What happened? she wondered. This wasn’t the man who had held her in his arms, or ridden at her side in France. What had happened since they had docked on this English soil?

  She measured her words and her steps as she entered. “Hello, Duncan. We seem to be missing one another these days.”

  Duncan dismissed Hank. “I’ll talk to you presently,” he said. The lanky man swept from the room, though his eyes remained on Beth until he was out in the hall.

  Beth laced her hands together, suddenly feeling afraid, though there was no name to her fear. “We’ll be leaving soon.”

  She watched for a sign that the news disturbed him, but her words seemed to have no effect on him.

  Don’t you care?

  “My mother has been living in hell all these long months, worried about my father. I want to set her mind at ease.”

  He looked at her and told himself that she was just another thing he could not have. It should not make a difference. He did not even come close to convincing himself. “I’d imagine that she is worried about you as well.”

  Words were difficult now between them. Why? They never had been before. Is it so hard to speak to me,

  Duncan? Have I displeased you somehow? “Yes, I suppose there is that, too.”

  He looked at her, as if to memorize each feature, each expression and press them between the pages of a book within his mind. “You’ll be happy to go.”

  Beth stared at him, wondering if he was attempting to put into her mouth the words that he wanted to hear. Was he sending her away? Was it just a matter of sharing her bed a few times and then being done with her?

  Or had all the dangers they had been through left a bitter taste in his mouth, after all?

  But if that wasn’t the case, why wasn’t he asking her to remain? He had but to say it, to ask. She couldn’t very well throw herself at him. Not if the chance existed that he didn’t want her.

  Because he couldn’t resist, Duncan allowed himself the pleasure of touching her once more. Very lightly, he sifted her hair through his fingers and watched the moonlight cast it in gold as it rained down.

  Moved, it was on the very tip of his tongue to ask her to remain with him. To beg her to stay, the way he had never allowed himself to beg for anything before.

  But what could he give her?

  For the first time in his life, his legacy and his heritage, or rather the very lack of it, stared him in the face.

  She was descended from bluebloods and he was the son of a stablemaster’s daughter and a bastard to boot. She was returning with her father to a vast plantation, while he had nothing to call his own but the loyalty of his men. And while he was rich in that, rich in spirit, he was poor in everything else. In all the things she had flowered into womanhood enjoying.

  What could he offer her in place of a life at Eagle’s Nest? A home in some other man’s manor?

  It wasn’t enough for someone like Beth.

  Feeling increasingly more awkward, she looked at the floor. “It will be good to see my mother and my sisters again.”

  She was anxious to leave, and who could blame her? “So when will you leave
?”

  Are you that anxious to see me go? Very well then, I shall.

  “I thought, perhaps, tomorrow . . .” Her voice trailed off as she looked up, hoping to see something within his eyes that asked her to stay. “Or the day after.”

  There was nothing there. His eyes were flatter than the piece of paper she had seen Duncan looking at when she entered.

  He nodded. “I’ll have some of my men take you and your father to the harbor.”

  “And the boy,” she told him. He raised his brow. “Andre. He’s coming with us.”

  This was news. He had just assumed that the boy would remain here with him, to fit in as best he could. “You’re taking him?”

  Beth moved restlessly around the room, as restless now as she had been in that tiny room at the inn in Paris, but for an entirely different reason.

  “My father has adopted him in a manner of speaking. The boy is an orphan with no family left now.” Beth shivered though the room was warm. She ran her hands along her arms. “Robespierre thought to break the line that came down from King Louis himself.”

  There it was again: lineage. All his life, Duncan had hated the class system, and now he found himself trapped by it, for she belonged on one side of it and he on the other. And he knew that better than she.

  “Now it won’t be broken.” He moved away from her as if standing so close was painful to him. “Well, I’ve some things to see to.”

  She had hoped that perhaps they could walk in the moonlight one last time. Even this was denied to her, she thought. “So late?”

  “Yes,” he snapped.

  The frustration of wanting her and knowing that for her own good, he could not have her, was rubbing him raw. He had forgotten himself and his station. He had enjoyed her body, not knowing that he would fall in love with the rest of her as well.

  Duncan knew he could not bring her down to his level. And someday she would thank him for it. Though right now, he damned the God who’d made him for that very thing.

  Beth stood in the study and watched him leave her. She had thought, would have sworn, that he cared for her. That he loved her the way she loved him.

  It was a mistake.

  An illusion.

  She pressed her lips together. It had been her mistake, not his. A mistake that had driven a dagger through her heart. She could feel it bleeding even now.

  Well, she wasn’t a fool; at least, not completely. She would not let him see her cry for him. If he didn’t want her, then it was his loss and he the fool, not she.

  Very carefully she retraced her steps and went to her room, where she spent the night crying.

  Chapter Forty-one

  Sylvia approached quietly behind Amy in the kitchen. The cook set the tray she had carried upstairs two hours ago angrily on the long wooden table.

  Hardly anything had been touched.

  Sylvia glanced at it and shook her head. This could not keep up, she thought sadly. Since her wedding to Samuel more than a month ago, she had blossomed, cocooned in the folds of her happiness and newfound love. It distressed her doubly so to see anyone else’s misery, especially when it was tied to affairs of the heart.

  As Duncan’s plainly was.

  Since Beth had left, he had become a changed man. He never laughed heartily the way he had before, and his eyes were preoccupied, as if his mind was somewhere else. He was still a fair man, but he had given himself up to brooding the way he never had before. Samuel was clearly worried about him.

  Sylvia cleared her throat and Amy turned to look at her. Sylvia touched the tray shyly. “How is he today?”

  Amy shrugged her wide shoulders in disgust, then sighed.

  “Same as yesterday. Same as all the other days since she left.” She cleared the dishes from the shield she still used as a tray. “I’ve never seen him so disagreeable.” Amy turned to look at Sylvia. She pressed the shield to her breast with both hands as she confided. “He like to bit Hank’s head off the other day for forgetting to cut wood for me. Hank’s a lazy lout, but still . . .”

  The older woman shook her head as she laid the shield aside. “He apologized, of course, but that doesn’t go changing the fact that he just isn’t our Duncan anymore.”

  Amy continued talking aloud, more to herself than to Sylvia. She never even noticed when Sylvia left the kitchen.

  Sylvia slipped from the room, lacing and unlacing her hands as she labored over a thought.

  She was not a brave soul, she never had been, but someone had to speak with Duncan. It seemed that everyone at the manor was tiptoeing around the subject that was weighing so heavily on his heart.

  Who better to raise it than someone who knew Beth?

  She caught sight of herself in the reflecting glass of the window as she passed and braced her shoulders. Who better, indeed?

  Gathering her courage to her like a threadbare, invisible cloak, Sylvia marched to the library where Duncan buried himself these days and knocked on the door. At first she knocked timidly, but when that received no answer, she knocked harder.

  “Go away. I’m busy.”

  The words were growled so deeply, Sylvia almost retreated. Then, placing a hand over her fluttering heart, she opened the door and forced her feet to enter. Dark, brooding eyes looked up at her.

  “This will take but a moment, sir.” Her voice squeaked in the middle of the sentence.

  He sighed and slammed the account book shut. It wasn’t making much sense to him at the moment anyway. At any moment. These days, he couldn’t read, couldn’t eat, couldn’t think.

  And it was all her fault.

  Damn that woman for ever appearing in his life. He had never been this way before. No woman had ever bedeviled him, ever haunted his nights and echoed about the corners of his days before.

  It was like a sickness, one he couldn’t seem to recover from.

  He’d even gone to the town, seeking out Elaine at the tavern. But when she pressed herself to him, eager to please, eager to couple with him once more, he had pushed away her firm, supple body, made some excuse like some wet-behind-the-ears urchin and left her naked and cursing in her room.

  Beth.

  Every thought was Beth, every breath was Beth, every prayer was Beth.

  There was no one for him but her.

  And she was not here.

  He dragged both hands through his hair and looked at the wide-hipped, good-natured woman before him. She had been a blessing for Samuel, a gift from the gods in his old age. For that Duncan was grateful to her. But he did not feel like being charitable toward anyone right now. He felt more like a bear who had been mortally wounded trying to gather honey.

  “If it is some complaint about the way Samuel is treating you—“ Duncan began wearily, not wanting to hear it.

  Her eyes grew wide in surprise. “Oh, no,” Sylvia assured Duncan quickly. A smile rose to her lips, and there were stars in her eyes. “Samuel and I are very happy. I have never been so happy.”

  At least someone is. “That is good.” Duncan opened his book and realized that it had been upside down all this time. “Then there is no reason for you to seek me out.” He pretended to look engrossed in his work.

  It was clearly a dismissal, but Beth would not be dismissed. She took a step forward, though she kept the desk between them. “Oh, but that is just the reason to seek you out.”

  Typical woman: she made no sense like the rest of her breed, he thought in exasperation. Duncan strove for patience.

  Samuel and Jacob had attempted to talk to him, as had John at the very beginning. He had tersely ordered them all from his business. But politeness kept him from employing the same means to disengage himself from Sylvia.

  “Yes?”

  She saw no other way to say it. She looked at Duncan, her eyes urgent. “Go to her, sir.”

  Very quietly, he closed the book once more and raised his eyes to hers. His men knew enough to retreat when faced with that black look. Sylvia quaked, but remained where she was.
/>
  “To whom?”

  Her throat felt dried and parched, but she forced the name out. “Beth.”

  Manners only went so far. “Madam, I believe you overstep yourself.”

  She had come this far, ventured this much; she had to continue until it was done.

  “No, I do not. Everyone else in this household is afraid to tell you, or perhaps they feel if they say nothing, this will all pass.” The soft dark eyes, filled with compassion, met his and held. “But your agony grows each day, festering like some sort of poison in your body.”

  Genteel woman or not, he would not sit here and be lectured to by someone who had no idea what he was going through.

  “It is none of—“

  “My business?” she concluded. “No, but seeing your pain is, especially when there is such an easy solution to it.”

  This time she moved behind the desk, empowered with the strength of her feelings and beliefs.

  “Go to her,” Sylvia entreated. “She loves you.”

  For a moment he stared at her, dumbfounded. “She told you?”

  Sylvia smiled and shook her head. “Beth is not so open-mouthed. You know that yourself.”

  She had lost him. He narrowed his eyes. “Then what are you saying?”

  Sylvia had grown much since the first time she had lain in Samuel’s strong arms. It was as if there had been blinders on her eyes until then.

  “That there are ways to hear things without words being said. It was there, in her voice. And I saw it in her eyes whenever she looked at you. Even from the very beginning, when she tended to your wound, it was there. Beth loves you, sir.”

  These were the fanciful imaginings of an old woman, Duncan thought. He rose and crossed to the sleeping fireplace. He wanted no cheer, no warmth about him when his heart felt so cold.

  “If this is true, then why did she leave?”

  It was so simple, she couldn’t understand why he didn’t see. “Did you ask her to stay?”

  Duncan threw up his hands in exasperation. It hadn’t been his place to ask, to beg. “No, but—“

  Sylvia drew herself up to her full height. For a moment, she took on the bearing of the teacher she had once been, leading a child into enlightenment.