Beauty and the Duke

by Melody Thomas

  If the ring were magic, she’d be able to fly or turn invisible or possess some other power that would allow her to transcend mere human frailties. She would be invulnerable to doubts, her intellect intact, and she’d be perfectly cheery, like a dollop of warm sunshine on cobbles.

  Taking in their determined expressions, she recognized the futility in glossing over reality. A reality born from the wisdom that came with age and experience, a wisdom that rebelled against a concept charged with fanciful notions. A wisdom acquired through life experience, and that refused to make her a co-conspirator with her students. And then she folded.

  How could she be so cruel as to tell them the truth?

  “It is not wise to believe in sorcery and fairytales,” she told them instead.

  “Why, Miss Sommers?” Babs asked.

  “Because…” For a moment, Christine was at a complete loss as she sought to explain her logic. “Because we are sensible, and sensible people do not waste time on such piffle.”

  She started to step past them when Dolly spoke. “But Miss Sommers…”

  Christine stopped. Something in her chest tightened. They looked so crestfallen, she felt a compunction to explain. “Lord Sedgwick and I used to know each other a long time ago,” she said gently. “He and my father were in contact and we met again last night at the Fossil Society gala when Mr. Darlington introduced us. His grace then came to talk to me about…” she thought of the need for secrecy about his find, “something private. That is all.”

  Relieved to feel the first plop of rain against her shoulders, Christine looked up at the thunderheads. She told all of them to get back to their rooms.

  “Go on now, get to shelter.” She smiled encouragingly.

  But watching them shuffle away, she didn’t understand why she felt as if she had just crushed their hearts.

  Christine could not remove the ring.

  She used lard, tallow, ice, steam, Aunt Sophie’s cod-liver oil. Nothing worked. In the end, Christine resorted to wearing gloves during class the next week and pleaded hard work in the laboratory to get Mrs. Samuels, her housekeeper, to deliver her meals in the evening while she studied Erik’s tooth fossil.

  She had not seen him since his visit to the abbey a week before. Not even a minutia of gossip appeared in the rags. Every day she had looked, expecting to see news that some aristocrat was offering up his poor virginal daughter to the devil duke of Sedgwick for perpetual bondage in the name of matrimony. But she’d read nothing.

  Christine spent the last week evaluating Erik’s find, poring over every detail in every book in her extensive library and that of the museum’s, perusing every drawing depicting every documented fossil found. Today had finally been the last day of classes and, after collecting the students’ books, she hired a hack and traveled a mile west to the church to see her father.

  The old cathedral was a magnificent affair with seventeenth-century stained-glass windows and pillars carved from granite. It was the church where Christine had been baptized. Every Sunday since she had come to live at the abbey, she attended services at this cathedral with due diligence. Even Christine’s father, who had been a free thinker for his time, and Aunt Sophie, who definitely held a particular bent toward one’s spiritual freedom, had never risked their mortal souls. Still it had been a surprise to Christine that Papa had requested in his will to be buried here instead of the abbey. Aunt Sophie told her later that this cathedral had been the place her father had married her mother.

  A wrought-iron fence enclosed the cemetery. Christine’s father was buried near the rose garden. In all that time since Papa had passed, she had never seen another visitor to this sacred place. Today was no different. She removed the spent flowers she had placed in the urn next to his stone marker last week with a new bouquet she’d bought from the young flower girl hawking her wares outside the church. Then she sat on the stone bench.

  What she wouldn’t have given to show him the fossil tooth.

  “We should have talked more, Papa,” she whispered. “Why didn’t you tell me you were corresponding with Erik?”

  She suspected Erik had written to Papa about the discovery of the bones on his property. Then after her father had passed away, Erik had gone to Edinburgh and found Joseph. All of which had played a part in bringing Erik to Sommershorn Abbey…at the exact moment she had put on the ring, she’d reminded herself for days now.

  The sunlight suddenly vanished briefly behind the clouds. She peered up at the sky as a voice behind her spoke. “Good day to you, Christine.”

  Reverend Simms stood beside the bench. She rose. He was a big man with gray hair and a gentle smile, the only man of the cloth Aunt Sophie ever tolerated lecturing her on the evil of smoking tobacco and drinking bourbon. Smiling, she held out her hand. “I thought you were in Westchester.”

  “I returned yesterday.” He suddenly lifted her hand into a blade of sunlight. The ring shone nearly blue and warmed her finger. Raising his eyes to hers, he lifted his brows. “ ’Twas a gift,” she said. Only a half lie. Her students had given her the ring. “The markings are some form of Gaelic,” she offered to the silence, having already attempted to research the inscription.

  “The words inscribed are Gaelic, the markings are Arthurian.” He lowered her hand. “Sadly, even today, legends, and superstitions still surround the saga of Arthur and Merlin.”

  She brought her hand nearer to better study the ring. “You might know your seventh-century paganism. But not your metallurgy. This ring is not seventh century.”

  “I knew your papa,” he said quietly. “The ring belonged to him.”

  Startled, she met his penetrating glance. “I thought the ring belonged to Aunt Sophie.”

  “Perhaps.” His forehead wrinkled in a frown. “Your papa did give it back to her shortly after you were born. He told me he bought it from an old Gypsy trader who promised that the ring would give him whatever he wanted most in the world. What have you wished for, Christine?”

  She smoothed her velvet skirts with suddenly nervous hands and laughed around the tightness in her throat as if he were being silly.

  “You have always been able to put distance between yourself and others when it suited you, Christine. I would be more inclined to believe you have charmed yourself with your wishful thinking. Whatever that may be.”

  “Have you never believed in such nonsensical superstitions?”

  He softened his tone as if he were speaking to a child. “Of course I have. For years when I was a child I never stepped on a crack for fear of breaking my mother’s back.”

  She peered down at the braided silver band on her finger. Just looking at the ring filled her with a sense of purpose. And something akin to confusion.

  After a moment, she unclenched her hand. “You married my parents to each other. Did you know my mother?”

  “She was an actress,” he said. “Your father defied common sense and his family to marry her. It was what he thought he wanted more than anything until it came to his next big discovery.”

  “Then in the end, the ring did not give him what he wanted most.”

  “Your father never considered that he gave more of himself to his studies than to his marriage.”

  Perhaps it is not enough just to want a thing,” she said. “You have to be willing to sacrifice everything else to have it.”

  His brows lowered. “I have long since concluded that if someone believes something will happen, by their own actions, they can actually cause that event to occur, thus reinforcing their superstitions. No good ever comes from the belief in sorcery, Christine. Even if it is a figment of one’s imagination.”

  And hadn’t Aunt Sophie taught her how important it was to be sensible and logical? Persistence reaped its own reward. Isn’t that what Papa had always promised? Though she hadn’t always listened.

  She’d told herself other things as well, as she spent last week evaluating Erik’s find. Six days she had examined the evidence, daring to conclud
e that Erik was indeed sitting on what might be the greatest find of their age. Not since William Buckland discovered the first reptilian-like fossil bones at the Stonefield quarries near Oxford had such a discovery rocked the paleontology field.

  She may have spent the last days of class teaching her students about the merits of hard work, but even she could not deny that Erik’s arrival had occurred less than five minutes after she put on the ring. Christine had always thought she was too sensible to believe in such twaddle as spells and charms, but then her father had believed in the existence of dragons—to the dismay of all academia—and now she had a tooth in her possession that belonged to a beast at least thirty feet tall.

  Christine spent the rest of the afternoon at the museum. By the time she reached the abbey, the sun had already set and a drizzle fell. Passing the caretaker’s cottage, she picked up her step, her shoe heels clicking on the damp cobbles as she followed the stairwell down to the basement. She pulled her key from her pocket. A statue of Cerberus, the mythical three-headed dog that was said to guard Hades, sat in an alcove to the right of the doorway.

  A solid twist opened the door. She blustered into the basement vestibule and slammed the door against the wind. She paused, leaning her forehead against the door before noting someone had lit the lamp. As thoughts tumbled through her mind, she turned.

  Her scapegrace cousin leaned in the archway separating the corridor from the vestibule. “Hello, coz,” he said.

  His cologne overpowered her and she waved her hand in front of her nose. “What are you doing here, Gordy?” She adjusted her hat.

  “Papa is in London. Parliament is in session. Your trust fund needs to be managed. All manner of business brings us to London.” He suddenly laughed. “What is that on top of your hat? A nest?”

  A lock of blond hair fell across his brow. He was considered by most to be dashing. He wore a shirt with a stand-up collar, silk cravat, and blue-and-white-checked trousers. He dressed like a deranged peacock. Christine possessed no inkling how they could possibly share the same grandparents.

  She swept past him down the corridor to her laboratory. The door to her laboratory was open. A lamp burned on the table to the right of the door. Gordy had been inside!

  Dear God.

  She must have left the door unlocked.

  She made a quick visual assessment of her workspace. The packet Erik had brought her remained wrapped in cloth beneath the top shelf where she had left it. Her research books lay open beneath where she had left them. It took all her will not to shove Gordy out of the room and lock the door in his face. “What are you doing at Sommershorn, besides trying to steal something?”

  “This will all be mine someday. What is the difference if I sell bits and pieces of this room off now as later? It’s only rubbish, old gel.”

  She swept past him and down the dais to her workbench. “Quit calling me that.” She closed the books she’d left strewn over her workbench.

  When they were children, he had taken great pleasure in throwing paste in her hair and tormenting her. Christine had been so grateful to her grandmother for leaving her a trust fund that would help her maintain her independence. She had used it to support Sommor-shorn Abbey.

  Lounging a hip against the countertop, her cousin leaned over her shoulder and picked up her C. A. Sommers’s book. “Chasing dragons like your father, old gel?

  “Why are you here?”

  He sobered. “I heard Sedgwick was at the Fossil Society gala. Word travels. I also heard the bastard came here. Where have you been spending your time all week? No one can seem to find you.”

  “Perhaps because I have been teaching classes.”

  “Why was Sedgwick here?”

  “He was in contact with Papa some months before he passed away. He merely came to offer his condolences.”

  “Is that all Sedgwick came for?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The man has a reputation. He is dangerous. Just look at what happened to my poor sister who made the fatal mistake of marryin’ the bastard.”

  “Charlotte died of scarlet fever. Don’t be an ill-informed ass. Besides, I don’t recall hearing you complain when you thought there was a profit to be made. You and your father liked him enough when you believed he was going to make you rich.”

  “What about his second wife?”

  “Go away, Gordy. Annoy someone else. The night is still young. I am sure you can find someone receptive to your attentions. I am not.”

  “I only find it interesting that he came to see you.” He slid her spectacles up the ridge of her nose before she could slap his hand away. “It ain’t as if you are the crème of London’s new crop of socialites, old gel.” He shoved away from the counter. “Though you probably wouldn’t be a half-bad looker if you took off those spectacles and did something different with your hair. Got rid of that hat.”

  Christine strode past him up the dais to the door. “Don’t come down to this laboratory again without my permission. Nothing in this room belongs to you. I’ll donate it all to the museum before I let you put your hands on anything.”

  He laughed. “You always did have airs, coz. I will tell Papa his control of your trust fund is still intact. He worries so for our security.”

  “Good night, Gordy.”

  After he left, Christine locked up the laboratory and walked upstairs to make sure he left the house entirely before she returned downstairs and worked another hour, carefully cleaning Erik’s fossils with a small knife and brush. After supper, she grew tired and went upstairs to her room. Aunt Sophie was already in bed, so the house was quiet. Christine sank to the tufted bench in front of her vanity. It always bothered her when Gordy called her old gel.

  For even at eight and twenty, she still suffered girlish freckles on her nose. After removing her spectacles, Christine took the pins out of her hair and let the length fall down her back. Her dark wavy hair defied the subjugation found in the soft feminine styles popular among the blond, fashionable set. She turned her head from side to side and tilted her chin. Her mouth was too bold and wide, perfect for shouting at rude hackney drivers but not necessarily pretty. Christine well knew she wasn’t the embodiment of the classical beauty, but her imperfections had never bothered her before.

  Papa once told her in a moment of whimsical intoxication that she looked like her mother, though Christine would not know. She barely remembered her mother and no one ever spoke of the base-born actress Papa had married and who had died somewhere in Italy with her lover. Christine turned down the lamp. She had not let herself think about her mother in years.

  “Mum, will ye be needin’ anything?” the housekeeper asked from the doorway.

  Christine looked around the room. She relaxed a little when she found Beast asleep on her windowsill. She wanted only to be alone with her cat. “Go to sleep, Mrs. Samuels. I’m sorry I kept you up waiting for me.”

  Mrs. Samuels remained in the doorway. “Is Miss Amelia all right, mum? We’ve not heard from her in a week.” Mrs. Samuels looked at Christine in the mirror, her gray eyes anxious as they met Christine’s in the cheval glass.

  “I’m sure she is enjoying herself and will want to tell us everything when she returns.” Joseph would want to return as soon as possible to begin all necessary preparations for his trip to Perth.

  After Mrs. Samuels shut the door, Christine twisted around and located the scratch paper Erik had given her with his instructions to have Joseph contact him upon his return to London.

  She knew with the condition of the roads, a trip to Gretna Green and back could take over a week.

  Christine studied Erik’s missive she was supposed to give Joseph upon his return. Then she looked at the clock and saw that it was half past eight. Guilt over what she was about to do pulled at the strings of her conscience but only for a moment as she rose and walked to her dressing room to find her cloak.

  Joseph had Perth, she told herself.

  He had the museum’s
backing and support. He had entry into the Royal Geographical Society. The Edinburgh Scholars welcomed him with open arms.

  Christine, on the other hand had sadly reached an impasse in her life where if she didn’t do something brilliant soon, she would become irrelevant. Since her return to England two years ago, her prospects had already dried up, like a well in the Sahara. Her funds were not endless. She didn’t want to live the rest of her life never venturing far from Sommershorn Abbey and die of old age without another single, solitary discovery—or friend. Her life and her work were unfinished. She needed Erik’s find.

  More than anything in the world, she wanted the beast of Sedgwick. And though her pride balked at the idea of pleading with Erik to put her in charge of the dig, she could not allow him to give this discovery to Joseph Darlington.

  Chapter 4

  Rain pebbled against the windows of the hack Christine had hired to take her to Mayfair. Lightning flashed in the distance, bringing a frown to her brow, but the brunt of the storm had yet to reach this part of London. Absently, through her kid gloves, she fingered the ring on her finger. A dozen times, she had fidgeted with the band of ancient silver only to pull her hand away. She leaned forward and stared out the window. She usually never did anything impulsive.

  Streetlamps marked the shiny pavement as the hack turned off a busy street. It wasn’t as if she were going to a bachelor’s residence in the dead of night, she told herself. Lord Sedgwick’s sister lived with him—and it was not yet nine o’clock. Any meetings he might have had during the day would be over. If he wasn’t at some club, she hoped he was home reading in the library or playing chess with his sister. He had always enjoyed playing chess, she thought. A game of give and take that rewarded the best strategist with a satisfying win. Tonight felt a little like that chess game of old. She had to win.

  After a few minutes, the hack finally rolled to a stop. Ignoring her racing pulse, she tugged the hood of her cloak over her head and stared out the window. A grove of knotty oaks and a rather large brick wall shielded most of the huge stone manse from the street. She glanced down one more time at the address in her hand to confirm she was indeed at the right residence in Mayfair.