Beauty and the Duke

by Melody Thomas

  He saw his engineering foreman at the trail’s head just as the man looked up and spied Erik almost in the same instant. Startled, Hodges stepped forward in a fluster. “Lord Sedgwick.”

  All at once, others turned. The glade grew silent as people moved away from the trail to open a path for him. “We did not receive word you were returning,” Hodges said.

  “Where is Lady Sedgwick, Hodges?”

  “Inside the cavern. We have done our best to keep people away. But you must understand everyone is curious. No one has ever seen the like of what has been found here.”

  There was no easy way to reach the falls. The ground around this part of the cliffs was treacherous and slippery. A small path had been carved in the side of the rock, and a narrow rope bridge affixed to one side of the overhang just beneath the falls, which took him beneath a wall of water and into a narrow cave hidden by the falls. One could not get inside without becoming soaked.

  Rubble had been painstakingly extricated from the entrance to the cave, which was now shored up with timbers and braces, an engineering marvel, as far as Erik was concerned. He removed his sodden cloak and left it on the rocks behind the wall of water he had just walked through. Hodges said his men had been responsible for the work.

  Torches lit the damp walls inside. Water ran in streams around his feet. Lower down the noise grew louder and a platform had been built over a body of rushing water. Erik suspected this was part of the lava tube to which Christine had referred. There was not much to see but the wall of rock on all sides of him as he worked his way down the steep slope. Steps had been cut into the stone, and even he recognized the work was not recent. Raiders fighting the king’s armies all the way back to William Wallace’s time had probably used this cavern.

  Once deeper inside, Erik looked up at the ceiling covered in cone-shaped stalactites, and all he could think about at that moment was the weight of all that rock precariously perched above his head. He did not like it down here. Then he turned…and that was when he saw it.

  Imbedded in the hill like some macabre carving cut from stone and polished by eons of ice, wind, and water, was a massive skull from a beast he could not have conceived ever existed. It was similar to the one already brought out, only ten times larger, with plate-size vertebrae stretching six feet before disappearing into the rock. He could only imagine that the rest of it extended up the side of the hill covered by centuries of dirt and loose scree.

  “Can you imagine living near the shores of the loch with a monster like that swimming about?” Hodges said. “Darlington said a millennium ago this entire countryside was part of the sea.”

  Dirt trickled over their shoulders. Hodges held out his hands, palms upward. “Darlington has kept most everyone out.”

  Even Erik could tell that water rushing through these caverns had compromised the integrity of the walls. They were standing in a tomb. Literally, he thought. Water seeped from the surface through cracks and disappeared into equally elusive cracks in the floor. Much work would have to be done inside here to make this place safer for excavation.

  “Your grace,” Darlington said from behind him, working his way up the incline. “Chrissie…Lady Sedgwick will be beside herself to see you. She and Hampton are farther back in the tunnel. Isn’t this magnificent?”

  Erik turned toward the tunnel. The ceiling was at a lower height as he descended. Halfway down the incline he was already sloshing in water. He grabbed a torch from the wall and noticed that the shoring above his head seemed sound.

  “This cavern stretches a half mile in all directions,” Darlington said behind him. “There is an underground river running beneath us and it comes up about a half mile from here, beneath the cliffs.”

  Erik held the torch out in front of him. “You are the one who discovered this find?”

  “The credit is not all mine. Lady Sedgwick had an idea where to look first. We found the first beast buried in the rock near where you fell into the river. We both found this cavern. A landslide had buried part of the opening probably hundreds of years ago. I was the first inside.”

  Erik turned and shined the torchlight in Darlington’s face. Already they were both hunching over. “Is that right?”

  “She injured her ankle. I would have taken her back, but she refused to go.”

  “She injured her ankle,” he repeated. “Yet you brought her in here.”

  “She was thinking only of saving you, your grace. You needn’t worry. She is much better now.” Darlington stepped around Erik. “A larger grotto is in this direction. That is where she found the body. Part of the ground above the cavern collapsed and the body fell through. The woman she found had been wrapped in canvas. Lady Sedgwick has already discerned from the remains that the body was female. By the way she was wrapped, someone had buried her not realizing her gravesite was atop a sinkhole. Lady Sophia will make a final examination.”

  “Lady Sophia is down here?”

  “We are working to bring the body through the collapsed part of the cavern. I would not have recommended that you come down here. We have not finished shoring up the ceiling in this section.” Looking down at his feet, he said, “And the water is rising.”

  Turning, Erik ducked into the tunnel and sloshed through water. “Go on and get everyone out. I will find my wife.”

  A moment later, Erik was following the sound of Christine’s voice. He heard the words, “Move to the left, pull, careful,” resonating through the narrow corridor. He entered the chamber and stopped. Fifty feet above Christine, part of the ceiling and wall had collapsed, exposing a five-foot-long horizontal crack of torchlight. The jagged opening was partially concealed by a fallen tree and backed up against a rock overhang.

  The ropes attached to the shroud had been wrapped around a pinion of sorts in the wall and in the ceiling above the opening. Someone from above pulled. Christine managed the belay. He knew at once what the shroud contained. No matter what Elizabeth had done, she had never deserved this.

  The shroud disappeared through the opening, bringing Erik back to the present and to Christine. As if sensing his presence, she suddenly turned. She wore a pith helmet to protect her head from falling debris. A long braid trailed down her back. Wearing trousers, she was coated head to foot with sticky mud. Hampton peered over the ledge.

  “Your grace,” Hampton said.

  Erik’s mouth crooked at the startled tone in the groomsman’s voice. They had just brought up the corpse of a woman Erik had long been accused of killing. “Do not worry yourself, Hampton. I have been cleared of murder. Take the body to Lady Sophia. We are on our way up.”

  “Aye,” Hampton said. “Not a one of us doubted you would be cleared.” He ducked his head out.

  Erik wanted to laugh at such new-found optimism. But when he returned his gaze to his wife, he suddenly did not know what to say.

  “Your grace,” she said as he approached her.

  He still held the torch in his hand. With his other arm, he wrapped her to him and kissed her hard.

  Erik’s intent when he’d entered the cave to drag her out of this deathtrap had been fervent and selfish. Not just because he had raced like a lunatic to get back here and save her—when she clearly needed no one to save her. Indeed, she had never been the one needing saving. But because he loved her. She had changed something inside him from the man he was before to who he was now. He loved her more than he had ever loved anything or anyone, and that feeling had spread outward like the ripples in a pond, building momentum to finally crash like a cyclonic breaker against all his rigid perceptions of life. No one else had done for him what she had done.

  Now, all he could think about was that she had come to Scotland to find her dragon, and that he had somehow been the one to fail her. A dream he’d once believed unimportant next to his own goals because it had seemed insignificant and odd to him. Because his view of the world had been handicapped by his own self-preservation, now altered forever, the instant he’d realized someone else woul
d claim her beast.

  He felt her gentle smile against his lips. “Oh, Erik, you goose.” She pulled back and looked into his face. “We are standing ankle deep in bat guano and you want to get romantic?”

  Looking in disgust at his feet, he grimaced. “I thought it was mud.”

  Christine took a steadying breath and held her gloved palms to his stubbled face. “It isn’t.” Her expression sobered. “You look as if you haven’t slept in a week.”

  He cupped his palm beneath her chin. “I would have slept a lot less if I had known you were down in a hole like this, my love.”

  “Did you see the loch beast? Is it not magnificent? I believe Joseph will become famous.”

  “Christine…what happened? I thought you wanted—”

  “I am all right, Erik. I really am.”

  And she was, she realized.

  She had found what she had come to Scotland searching for.

  They spoke for a moment about her week and he told her about his, neither really saying much when their eyes said far more, and when she would rather touch him than talk. They would speak later when they were away from this tomb. Christine asked him if he remembered how to belay the rope.

  She climbed the slick rock. One hand over the other, she worked her way up the wall, when suddenly the rope went slack.

  Alerted, she anchored her hands and turned to look over her shoulder as a shadow passed across the light above her. Johnny Maxwell squatted in the mouth of the opening next to the shoring beams. He’d cut the rope. Christine froze as he lowered a pistol at Erik. There was nowhere Erik could run.

  “Let her finish the climb,” Erik’s tone sounded as dangerous as it was forced.

  “I had heard they let you go, Sedgwick,” Maxwell said.

  “Did you think they wouldn’t?”

  The ground where he trod was unstable. Debris rained from the ceiling over Erik. “I was wondering how long it would take for everyone to figure out it was me your sister saw that night and not you. Everyone always said we looked alike from a distance.” Maxwell rose and began to pace. He glared at Christine. “You should have let her stay buried.”

  “She deserved more than this, Johnny,” Erik said.

  “I didn’t kill my sister. I swear it. I didn’t kill her.”

  Christine’s gaze tilted slowly to the sagging wall of earth above them. Even Maxwell must know he could bring this section of the cavern down on their heads. “You do not have to do this, Johnny,” Erik said.

  Back and forth, Johnny walked. “Do you think I care what happens to me? I can never go back now. Whether I live or I die here, I am dishonored. My own family thinks me a murderer.”

  “What happened?” Christine asked, desperate to pull Maxwell’s attention from Erik. Make him stop pacing. Her arms had begun to burn. “What happened to your sister?”

  Maxwell murmured that it was not his fault. Everything had been a tragic accident. “She asked for my help. I denied her.” He wiped a sleeve across his nose. “We argued. She struck me. I swear, I warned her not to strike me again. I shoved her just to keep her off me. That was all. She fell and hit her head. Just like that. She was gone forever.”

  “If you say you did not kill Elizabeth, I believe you, Maxwell,” Erik said.

  “Why? Why would you or anyone believe me?”

  “Because killing her would have made no sense,” Erik said simply. “I think everyone has discerned that already. You speak of honor. What is the honor in doing this? So far you have not managed to murder anyone.”

  “Murder?” He waggled the gun. “I have waited patiently for the curse to do that for me. You have always had the devil’s own luck. You with your money and your titles. Your bloody prestige. My entire life I have watched you lord over the world like a king. Do you know how many years it took to get you out of my father’s heart? You, his favorite one. Elizabeth never wanted to marry you. But he forced her. No one despised you as much as she did.”

  He glared at Christine. “Why did you have to find her? Why could you not allow her to stay buried?” He kicked out at the support piling beside him.

  “Keep climbing, Christine,” Erik told her. “Now.”

  “Why are you still alive, Sedgwick? Every other Sedgwick duke in the last century has succumbed. Why not you?” He raised his arm and aimed the gun at Christine. “Why not her? Hmm?” His eyes searched the shoring beams. “Why not the both of ye? Together?”

  “Like hell, Maxwell!” Erik flung the torch in his hand.

  It missed Maxwell, but just barely. He fell backward against a shoring post, sending scree tumbling over Erik. Part of the ceiling crumbled when the braces sagged.

  Then silence. Christine held her breath in horror. Even Maxwell froze where he had fallen.

  At first, she thought nothing happened. Then vibrations shivered through the air as if something around them shifted. Cold fear crawled over her skin. She looked up at the juncture in the crossbeams braced against the wall of rock above them. Maxwell scrambled away from the opening. Panic engulfed her. She realized what was about to happen. Erik must have realized it as well.

  “Climb!” he shouted and hit the wall below her.

  A long diagonal cleft to her left cut upward and she climbed into it, anchoring her grip on old tree roots. She didn’t look down but kept climbing. The rock crumbled as she moved. Left hand in. Grip. Right hand pull. Her arms ached and burned. There was a sudden echo inside the curving stone wall above her where the air shifted, and the wind funneled out through a hole suddenly opening in the ceiling, which continued to grow as larger chunks of stone crashed to the floor. If she stopped, she would fall and die.

  If she fell, so would he.

  “Faster, Christine!”

  Erik was already at her feet. She stretched forward to grip what she could of the ledge as rocks hit her arms and shoulders and the sound of the earth moving rumbled around her. Her foot slipped. The ceiling above the opening sagged.

  Then suddenly, hands from above wrapped around hers, pulling her upward and over the ledge. She briefly glimpsed Hampton and Hodges as they dragged her out. Then Erik slammed her from behind and they were all running. Behind her, the ground shuddered, roared, and finally collapsed into itself, sending rocks and debris billowing upward. She tumbled sideways to the ground. Erik covered her body. The dirt in her mouth told her she was alive. The sound of voices and shouting all around them told her they weren’t alone.

  “Are you hurt?” Erik asked urgently.

  Over the din in her ringing ears, she continued to hear shouting. She opened her eyes and peered through lopsided spectacles at his streaked face. Both of them rose on their elbows and looked behind them. The cave was a depression of rocks and dust. Debris continued to rain down upon them like a puff of volcanic ash. Hysteria nearly made her laugh. She’d lost her hat. The rope had, thankfully, come off her waist.

  She frowned. “I hope the collapse does not extend farther.”

  “I told everyone to get out,” Erik said. She suddenly saw Joseph and a dozen people running toward them from the woods. Aunt Sophie and Becca stood a few feet away, next to Maxwell’s prone figure on the ground. Becca clutched a stout branch. Clearly, Maxwell had been whacked senseless over the head.

  Hampton was kneeling beside him. “What do we do with the bloke?”

  Maxwell groaned and stirred. “Bastard.” Erik climbed to his feet but Becca threw herself into his arms.

  “No,” she said against his cheek, “he can no longer hurt us.”

  Christine placed her hand on his arm. “Becca is right. He is irrelevant to our lives, Erik.”

  Erik looked over his sister’s shoulder at Hampton. “Is everyone accounted for?”

  “It looks as if only this part of the cavern collapsed,” Joseph said. “Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.”

  For moment as they all stared at the depression, Christine knew everyone was thinking the same. It had been a grave for seven years. Then Hampton and Hodges
dragged Maxwell to his feet. He saw Erik and began to struggle. “No. It wasn’t my fault! No!”

  Becca smashed him over the head again with the tree branch.

  “Bloody hell!” Maxwell groaned.

  “Bloody hell back to you!” Becca would have smashed him again, except Erik stopped her. “You have very nearly ruined our lives!” she shouted as Erik held her back.

  Taking the weapon from her hand, Erik told Hampton to escort Johnny to Dunfermline. “Let his father deal with him,” Erik said, and they all listened as Maxwell was dragged off yelling and cursing before Hampton tossed him to the ground and trussed him like a boar ready for the spit.

  Erik turned his attention to Aunt Sophie and the weaponry still clutched in Aunt Sophie’s hand like a medieval warclub. “You would have been proud of your sister,” Sophie said.

  “Aunt Sophie is the one who felled him first,” Becca deferred.

  “I merely helped, dear.” To Erik, she said, “I have faced down cannibals. I would go into battle with her anytime.”

  Hodges came out and said you had returned. Then we saw Johnny Maxwell. “I thought he had killed you.” She pressed her cheek against his chest. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Are you, Elf?”

  Her mouth turned up into a smile. “Yes. Yes, I believe I am.”

  With his other arm, Erik reached around Christine’s shoulders, while Becca took Aunt Sophie’s arm and they started walking. “Then let us go home to Erin.”

  After a moment, Becca asked, “Now that no one can think bad things about us any longer…maybe we can open the ballroom for my debut,” she said.

  Erik chuckled. “I think I will, Becca,” he said, then brought his gaze to Christine’s. “But I have something I want to do first.”

  Chapter 22

  Erik and Christine tore up their contract that night. They were married a week later, repeating the same vows they had spoken months earlier.

  No bargains. No contracts. A ceremony sealed by the love they shared and the promise that light shone on their future. Warmed by his strength, Christine faced him and repeated the words mirrored in his eyes. Aunt Sophie, Joseph, and Amelia and Becca stood around them. Erin her flower girl. Erik’s mother had missed the proceedings, but only because she had taken her first trip out of the country in thirty years and did not return for months. But everyone else was present to share this moment. Christine had found new purpose. Or it had found her. She no longer cared to discern the difference or to sift through the logic of her happiness when nothing had turned out as she had originally planned. And, yet, nothing could have felt more right. More perfect.