Seduced by a Stranger

by Eve Silver

  Tension permeated the cousins’ exchange. Catherine wondered if Madeline’s unease was justified. Time enough to ask her later, when St. Aubyn left them and she was more relaxed. Closing her fingers over Madeline’s, Catherine stilled her movements and sent her a reassuring smile, though a tumult of questions danced through her thoughts.

  Another stack of books slammed to the floor, and for an instant, Catherine was tempted to laugh at the bizarre nature of the situation. Here she was, ensconced in a dim chamber filled with dusty books and unspoken—but poorly concealed—enmities. Her introduction to Cairncroft Abbey verged on the ridiculous.

  “Your trip was pleasant?” St. Aubyn asked, and it took Catherine a moment to understand that his low-voiced query was addressed to her.

  “Pointless discourse, sir?”

  “Genuine interest,” he replied. His tone was polite, but there was an undercurrent of solicitousness, as though he actually cared whether or not the journey had passed in comfort. His attention and consideration disturbed her far more than his thinly veiled disdain had. He seemed able to don the countenance of sincere regard at will. Such a skill was common in the polite world, but St. Aubyn managed it with uncanny talent. Somehow, he imbued his query with sincerity, though he had already made it plain that such dialogue did not interest him in the slightest.

  He was either addled, or an excellent actor.

  Had she even tuppence to spare, she would bet it on the latter.

  “My journey was most pleasant, thank you.” If one enjoyed the smell of stale sweat and damp rot and a swaying, jolting ride that brought about a steady wave of nausea. “Most pleasant, indeed.”

  St. Aubyn dragged the table close to the bed. The pedestal’s feet shushed across the carpet.

  “You prevaricate well,” he leaned in and whispered as he passed her, his arm brushing her side, his breath fanning her cheek, his low-voiced observation telling her that he had intended the query as a means of finding out something about her.

  Her heart stuttered.

  Yes, she did prevaricate well, but she was not pleased that he had noticed, nor that he was so wily as to have discovered it with such ease. She was even less pleased that the scent of his skin lingered after he passed, faintly citrus. Fresh. Quite lovely.

  She pressed her lips tight. There could be no doubt that he had deliberately set out to unnerve her, but she was clever enough not to let him see any sign of his success. Had she not been trained by a master… a monster?

  She glanced at Madeline to gauge her response to their interplay, but her eyes were closed, her head tipped back on her pillows.

  “So you see, Miss Weston,” St. Aubyn said, straightening from his task, “you disprove your own assertion and prove mine. Your prevarication prevents all hope of intimacy.”

  He turned and stalked to a chair in the corner and began removing the stack of books from the seat, saving Catherine from the need to reply. As if there was any appropriate reply to that.

  With his attention otherwise occupied, Catherine was free to study him from beneath her lashes. He was neither clean-shaven nor bearded, but rather had a disreputable, dark gold stubble glazing his strong jaw.

  His hair was damp, falling in an attractive tumble of thick, messy waves, honey-hued and overlong. The front strands fell to his cheekbones, accentuating their high, curved line; the back strands were longer, the ends curling slightly outward at his nape.

  His hair is damp.

  A fleeting recollection of the shadow in the woods touched her, and she wondered if it was Gabriel St. Aubyn she had seen upon her arrival at the abbey, if his hair was wet from the rain. If he had stood hidden by the tangle of trunks and limbs and watched her. As she now watched him.

  He was beautiful. Alluring.

  Distrust flickered and bloomed. In her experience, handsome men were neither pleasant nor good.

  He removed a stack of books from a second chair, then dragged both to the table.

  “Please,” he said, resting his hands on the back of the chair closer to the bed. The tone of his voice made a queer unease flip in her belly. Not a request. An order. Catherine sat, and St. Aubyn settled his long frame in the seat closest to the door, knees splayed in a posture that was anything but proper.

  He blocked the only exit.

  Her gaze flashed to his. His eyes were liquid topaz with thick, curled lashes, his nose straight and narrow, his mouth a hard, masculine line, the lower lip slightly fuller than the upper. There was a complete lack of expression in his features.

  “You must be talented at cards, Sir Gabriel,” she murmured. “I suspect you never betray your advantage.”

  He inclined his head in acknowledgment. “I suspect the same of you, Miss Weston.”

  “Touché,” she allowed with a small smile.

  A quick glance at Madeline showed that she yet reclined on her pillows with eyes closed. Catherine doubted she was asleep, and wondered if she simply played at slumber as a means to avoid conversation with her cousin. She pondered an appropriate way to ask him to leave, and stumbled upon none.

  A faint rattling announced the arrival of a maid carrying a tray laden with a silver teapot, cups, and a plate of small cakes. The girl paused, stared down at the tabletop, still marked with dust, and hesitated with the tray hovering above the surface.

  With a sound of impatience, St. Aubyn took the thing from her and set it down himself. She gave a nervous squeak, bobbed a quick curtsy, and departed in quiet haste. Behind her came a footman with a tea caddy, hot water urn, and a heater. After putting these in place, he followed the maid, closing the door behind him with a soft snick, leaving the room gloomy and silent as it had been a moment past.

  A crypt would have more warmth and cheer.

  St. Aubyn rose with lithe grace, stalked to the door, and flung it open once more. Startled, Catherine wondered what it was about closed doors that distressed him.

  “I dislike the scent of old liniment,” he said as he resumed his seat. But she thought that was not the reason he had opened the door. She suspected it was a dislike of the closed door itself. No, not suspected… she was certain of it.

  No longer feigning slumber, Madeline made a mewling sound of distress and wriggled back on the bed, as far from St. Aubyn as she could. Shadows hugged the corners and fell across her face, accentuating angles and hollows until she appeared a ghostly incarnation of herself, with blue eyes burning in a chalk white face.

  The tension in the room, Madeline’s distress, the fatigue from her own lengthy journey, and her dislike of close spaces all combined to fray Catherine’s composure. She gestured toward the single candle that battled the gloom, turned to St. Aubyn, and said, “Oh, do light more candles.”

  He blinked.

  “Please,” she added as an afterthought. ’Twas a word she despised, but polite conversation could not be had without it. Ask nicely, my cat. Say please.

  She suppressed a shudder at the memory, reminding herself that he was gone. Dead. She was free of him now, and she would never again allow herself to be in a position where she would be forced to plead.

  St. Aubyn rose from his seat and did as she bid while Madeline made soft sounds of dismay that were merely noise without form. The tiny, freshly lit flames did little to ease the dimness. They only served to make the dust more apparent and lend the stacks of books a faintly menacing cast.

  Taking his seat once more, St. Aubyn leaned forward and warmed the silver pot with hot water, his actions competent and sure. He had done this before, and that in itself amazed Catherine, for it was a hostess’s duty to brew the tea, not a host’s. But then, Madeline did not appear up to the task, so perhaps St. Aubyn had had some practice. She found it both unsettling and oddly appealing to watch him make his selection from the tea caddy, discard the water from the pot, and pour fresh boiling water over the leaves.

  Catherine made several attempts to engage Madeline in conversation, but they only earned her monosyllabic replies and hasty glances
. In the end, they sat in stilted silence as the tea steeped… five minutes… seven… an agony of uncomfortable quiet. And all the while, St. Aubyn’s gaze was fixed upon her. Catherine suspected that he orchestrated this fraught interlude to elicit her response. Perhaps he wished to see her squirm. He would be disappointed, then. Awkward silence was a mere inconvenience when measured against so many other possible trials.

  “Shall I pour, Sir Gabriel?” Catherine offered when the tea was steeped, choosing not to wait for him to make the request, preferring to take control of the situation.

  Madeline shifted restlessly, casting nervous glances at her cousin from beneath her lashes.

  “Call me Gabriel,” he said, his tone cool and bored. But he watched her with a peculiar interest. Not lust. She was familiar enough with that to recognize it. No, it was something else, a puzzled intensity, as though he wanted to study the parts that made up the whole. One side of his mouth lifted in the hint of a smile. “Or St. Aubyn, if you prefer.”

  She would prefer that he leave her alone with Madeline and take his masculine presence elsewhere. He made her uncomfortable. But she said none of that. Instead, she said in an equally cool, even tone, “I shall take that response as an affirmative.”

  She left off the address altogether and grasped the handle of the pot before he could make his preference known one way or the other. She had neither the patience for nor the interest in whatever game he played.

  “By all means, do.” St. Aubyn’s straight brows rose and his smile edged a little tighter.

  She lifted the tea strainer to hold it atop the china cup, then poured and passed out the tea. Madeline’s hand trembled as she accepted the saucer, but Catherine was glad to see that she managed to steady it and even raise the cup to her lips for a sip.

  “Raspberry tart?” she offered.

  St. Aubyn stared at the plate of small cakes and tarts, revulsion crossing his features so fleetingly that she thought she must have imagined it.

  “No, thank you,” both he and Madeline murmured, their replies so well timed as to overlap in perfect synchrony.

  In the silence that followed, a dull thud sounded against the window, a blow from without, hard enough to rattle the pane. Catherine’s head jerked toward the sound.

  “Oh, no. Not another,” she exclaimed, setting her cup on the table.

  “Another?” St. Aubyn inquired.

  “There was a blackbird on the drive, its wings spread wide as though frozen in flight,” Catherine replied as she rose and crossed to the window to draw the heavy draperies aside and peer down to the drive below. Of course, she could see nothing from this distance. “It must have flown hard against the window and fallen. I wonder if the blow we just heard was another such unfortunate creature.”

  “No! A bird? A blackbird? Posed in flight?” Madeline’s cup rattled in its saucer. Catherine hastened to return to the bedside and take it from her. “Was it dead?”

  “Yes. I mentioned it to Mrs. Bell.” Catherine could not imagine why a bird would cause such anxiety. Her gaze flashed to St. Aubyn. He sat in his stiff-backed chair exactly as he had a moment past, his teacup held in an easy grasp. There was nothing to make her think he regarded them with anything but meager interest. Yet, something… He was too posed, too controlled, his topaz eyes veiled by thick lashes, betraying nothing. It was the very lack of expression that made her wary.

  Madeline was breathing hard, her shoulders and chest moving with each inhalation. She stared straight ahead and then her head jerked to the side and she looked to her cousin with wide, horrified eyes.

  “Gabriel, why?” she cried, her skin paler than the bleached sheets, her eyes shimmering. “It has been so long. Do not deny—”

  “Do you make a formal accusation, cousin?” St. Aubyn cut her off with soft-voiced menace and she fell into abrupt silence, dropping her gaze.

  Baffled and dismayed, Catherine watched the interplay, wanting to intervene, uncertain what she could possibly say. She had no understanding of the history and undercurrents between these two, could not be certain precisely what Madeline’s implication was.

  Did she think St. Aubyn had killed the bird? And what if he had? Though it was not an activity she herself preferred, people hunted all the time. But why leave the thing on the drive?

  The air hummed with tension.

  “More tea?” Catherine asked as she resumed her seat, her skirt brushing St. Aubyn’s knee as she passed.

  He studied her for a moment, then set his cup on the tray and rose. His expression did not change, yet Catherine recognized something dark swimming just beneath the surface. It gave her pause.

  “No, thank you. I have overstayed my welcome,” he murmured, his voice taut. “Please excuse me.”

  There was something frightening there, something at odds with his controlled manner and golden good looks. He appeared for the moment to be a creature of mystery and shadow, and Catherine watched him with the caution she would afford a predator, half expecting him to burst into a tumult of energy and power.

  But her expectations were not met. Instead, he strode from the room without a backward glance, leaving her alone with Madeline. She had wanted exactly this, yet she felt oddly out of sorts as she watched him depart. His presence had been a stimulant, though in all truth, not a pleasant one. She was left wondering why in heaven’s name she would regret its loss.

  As the faint shush of his footfalls on the carpet faded away, she had the incongruous realization that his hair had dried and lightened during their strange, tense time together. It was not so dark as honey, after all.

  Madeline stared at St. Aubyn’s now empty chair and shuddered. “I am glad he is gone. We…” She shook her head and sighed. “We do not get on well.”

  An understatement. It was apparent that they loathed each other, could not bear to be in the same room. The question was, why? A mystery Catherine meant to investigate. But now was not the time to force inquiry on Madeline. She would wait for a moment of calm and amiability.

  Striving for normalcy, she arranged a choice of small cakes on a plate and attempted to entice Madeline to sample the fare. Her friend looked at her in somber silence, and then shook her head, a tear trickling from the corner of her eye.

  “I dare not,” she whispered.

  “Dare not have a tart?” Catherine asked, instilling the question with cajoling good humor. “Not even one? I thought I recalled a fondness for sweets…”

  Madeline cast a glance at the open door, and lowered her voice further still. “Poison. They lace my food with poison. Some days it is there, the bitter almond taste so strong on my tongue that it makes me retch. Other days, there is nothing. They only try to keep me guessing, to confuse me and make me question my own perceptions.”

  A chill crawled across her skin, but not by word or manner did Catherine betray her shock. Surely such accusation was fueled by fiction rather than fact. What had happened to make Madeline so afraid, so distant from the world, so lost in her own terrible imaginings?

  “But I would like more tea,” Madeline murmured.

  Catherine set the plate on the bed and turned to pour Madeline another cup of tea. Madeline accepted it with thanks, and Catherine lifted the plate once more. Determined to show Madeline that there was nothing to fear, she lifted a tart from the plate, sniffed it and, sensing naught amiss, took a dainty bite.

  “No!” Madeline reached out, her hand fluttering weakly, the cup rattling, tea sloshing over the rim onto the saucer.

  Catherine took the cup from her and set it aside, then took another bite of the tart. She was not particularly hungry, but she thought perhaps seeing her eat the offered cake might entice Madeline to do the same. She looked so small and frail and weak lying on the wide bed. So afraid. “It is quite tasty,” Catherine said. “There is nothing to fear.”

  With a sharp cry, Madeline crushed the coverlet in her curled fingers. “Oh, but there is. I tell you, there is.”

  Her gaze holding Madeline�
��s as she chewed and swallowed, Catherine finished the tart. It tasted of raspberry. Only after a moment did she wet her lips and frown, wondering if a faint bitter taste of almond did, in fact, linger on her tongue. Resisting the urge to cross to the washstand and rinse her mouth, she silently remonstrated herself for allowing her thoughts to follow this path. She schooled her features to display none of her concern. No good could come from feeding Madeline’s desperate anxieties.

  After a brief consideration, she rose and rang for the maid and once the girl arrived, gave her instructions in clear detail. The maid gazed at her in confusion, but lifted the tea tray and took it off with her as she set out to fill Catherine’s request.

  Some time later, she returned with a bowl of apples and a knife. These she set on the table, then bobbed a quick curtsy and left the room with only a single quizzical look sent back over her shoulder.

  “Come, Madeline,” Catherine said, taking up an apple and a knife. Madeline watched her warily. “There can be no threat in this apple. You see me peel and slice it before your eyes, and here”—she popped a bit in her mouth, chewed it and swallowed—“you see there is nothing but apple to be tasted. No almonds.” No poison. But this last she did not say aloud, for she could not see the benefit of giving voice and power to Madeline’s fears.

  “You ate the tart,” Madeline accused, her voice soft and childlike.

  “I did. And you see me hale and hearty before you.” She took another bite of apple, then offered a slice to Madeline, who studied her for a long moment, and at last reached out and took the bit of fruit from her hand. She ate that slice, then another and another until the first apple and a second were consumed.

  “I am sorry,” Madeline whispered, turning her face away. “Sorry that I drew you here to this miserable place, sorry that I am such a poor excuse for a hostess. Tomorrow. Tomorrow will be better. The clouds will ease and my mood will shift.” She pressed her lips together. “Tomorrow.”