Was he there in the shadows? Was it my imagination?
Finally, I turned and went back to my room. If he’d been there and didn’t reach out to me, it wouldn’t do any good to go chasing down the corridor after him. I went to bed feeling worse than I had the night before. I much preferred Sean’s harsh words to his silence.
Other than to comment that hunters used the stones as a cutting board on occasion and that the problem had been taken care of, Stuart didn’t say anything else about the blood at the Stone Virgins when I asked him on Monday. I knew that whatever the cause, it wasn’t a sight or a feeling I would ever forget.
The week seemed to be passing much too slowly, winding tension around me as tightly as a spider’s web. I’d given thought to my sisters’ odd behavior on Sunday but had come to the conclusion that if there was anything wrong, Aunt Lavinia would have contacted me. I’d couched my questions about where Mary’s sketchbook and paintings might be under the guise of collecting material for the class I planned to teach for the servants. So far I had found no trace of Mary’s artwork. Rebecca continued to worry me; I’d only been able to see her once since Friday, and she’d been very quiet, more withdrawn than usual.
Sean had made no contact with me and I didn’t venture to the library again, fearing the silence more than whom I might see. Neither had I heard any noises from his round room. A misty fog had blown in from the sea and hovered over the castle, dampening the air, as well as the spirits of those in the castle.
On Wednesday evening I set up my classroom in the kitchens. None of the upper servants appeared, but slowly all those I ate the evening meal with every night came, with the exception of Stuart. He brought Jamie to the class, seated Jamie at the far end of the table from me, then left.
Jamie didn’t look at all happy. He sat there glaring at me the entire hour. Between Mr. and Mrs. Murphy’s laughs and the Oak sisters’ giggles, I managed to set Jamie’s antagonism from my mind. The fact that Bridget had already learned enough about reading and writing to be my assistant rather than my pupil impressed everyone. Bridget practically glowed with her growing confidence. The class went so well that I held one on Friday evening as well. Jamie came, but his demeanor hadn’t changed. I approached him at the end of class, catching sight of a paper he’d written his name on.
“That’s very good work,” I said.
Holding the paper in his hand, he studied his name. “J-A-M-I-E.” He said the letters out loud.
“Yes,” I said softly, touched by his determined effort.
He held the paper out to me. “For you.”
Unsure of what to do, I took the paper, trying to decide what to say. I felt compelled to at least bring up the subject of Mary, a thorn in this giant’s hand. I’d wanted to speak to him about Mary since arriving at Killdaren’s Castle, but feared seeking him out alone. “You are learning your letters quickly. Mary taught you well.”
“No!” he shouted. Pulling his paper from my hands, he thrust me aside so hard that I fell back over a chair as he ran out the door.
“Blimey.” Bridget rushed over and helping me up. “What happened?”
Mr. and Mrs. Murphy hurried over as well. “Are you all right, lass?”
“Yes.” I gathered myself. “It…it was an accident. I tripped moving away from Jamie. He is still upset about Mary.”
“He loved her,” Mrs. Murphy said. “She treated him with a kindness most folks don’t. Spoke to him like he was a normal person, she did.”
“It was a sad day for us all when she drowned,” Mr. Murphy said. “We loved the lass. Everyone did.”
I swallowed, forcing back the emotion crowding over me. Perhaps my search for answers to Mary’s death was truly a fruitless one. So why couldn’t I seem to let it all go? Why had Mary come to me in a dream about Rebecca? The darkness hovering over me only seemed to grow more and more obscuring, like that of a cloud turning into a violent storm. I didn’t think I would try and ask Jamie about Mary again. Had Mary said or done something to upset Jamie? If a mere question could turn him violent, what would he have done if Mary had rejected him in some way? What if Jamie had tried to show his affection for Mary physically? What would have happened then? Could her kindness to the giant have caused her death?
That night after Bridget fell asleep, I dressed and stole downstairs again, but the rooms lay silent and empty. I even ventured to the doors leading to Sean’s rooms and pressed my hand to the wood, debating on whether to honor his privacy, or to force him to see how he was throwing his life away by believing what he did. The earl, too. I didn’t understand it.
Then as I stood there, in the dark of the night, I found myself considering the impossible. With all of the earl’s talk of being cursed and killing everything he loved, and Sean’s nocturnal life, could they really be vampires? And dear God, could Mary be in a crypt beneath the black shrouds in the round room? I owed it to her and possibly in some twisted way to Sean, too, to discover the truth. But not tonight. I went back to my room. I didn’t write a single word about my new thoughts in my journal, I couldn’t—they were too fanciful. But neither could I dismiss them.
Saturday dawned and with it a sense of expectation that something would happen, a feeling I had little affinity for, given anything likely to happen wouldn’t be good. But I’d had no warning dream, so I faced the day on edge.
Bridget and I were given the task of dusting the two rooms of eclectic art I’d discovered when looking for Rebecca a couple of weeks ago. We started with the statue room. After dusting off twenty nude figures then coming to a couple, nude and intimately entwined, I had to sit back and rest. Bridget had done as many statues as I, and we weren’t finished yet.
I thought I would scream if I had to wipe another man’s privates. At least these statues followed the miniscule precepts of the great masters when it came to such matters, but for whatever sophomoric reason, I couldn’t seem to dismiss the anatomy from my mind. Having to dust so many kept me thinking about Zeus in the garden and Sean. And the entwined couple now had me thinking many things I shouldn’t. “My word, but this is a bit much to take.”
“Makes a person’s arms ache, it does.” Bridget swiped her sleeve across her forehead.
“Someone surely had an obsession with naked statues. It’s almost obscene to have so many.”
Bridget laughed. “Is that what you’re so flustered and huffing about this morning? Ack, Cassie, don’t you realize that all over the world males are male and females are female? Just like horses and pigs and cows and bulls and dogs. We got the same parts and are wanting to do the same thing. It’s what God gave us the parts for. Nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I’m not ashamed.” Horses and pigs? Bulls and dogs? The same? Good Lord, I hoped not.
“If you’re not ashamed, then you aren’t very comfortable with the notion.”
“Well, such things are not proper material for thought or discussion.”
“If you can’t think about it, and you can’t talk about it, and you can’t do it, then you might as well end the world tomorrow ’cause there won’t be nobody around to be living in it. Now does that make any sense at all?”
I sat back and sighed. “No.”
“My mum says it’s what keeps the world going.”
I nodded, thinking that Bridget and I truly had come from two different worlds. My mother would faint before saying something like that, and I think my sisters and I would have fainted to hear it. But in all honesty, Bridget was right, except for one thing. When it came to Sean, he didn’t make the world go around. He stopped it in its tracks.
We finished the statue room and I went back to the kitchens to get more rags and lemon wax to tackle the next room, while Bridget made a head start.
Clutching clean clothes in my hands as I left the laundry, I heard voices coming from the second kitchen and moved closer to hear. Mrs. Murphy and Mrs. Frye were talking.
“Stuart says the Killdaren left for the village an hour ago. He hasn’t been
there in eight years. This is big trouble. I wonder if it has something to do with Mary’s drowning. I didn’t know the Killdaren was so well acquainted with her until the magistrate questioned everyone and he mentioned they’d had a number of conversations.” Mrs. Frye sounded almost fearful, which puzzled me, until I realized that if Sean, Jamie or Stuart had had anything to do with Mary’s disappearance and she knew about it, then she would be afraid.
“Whatever gave you that idea that he was seeing the magistrate again, Clara? I’m hoping that it’s a lass that has him about. Something needs to change around here. The way the Killdaren and the viscount are wastin’ their lives is what ain’t right.”
My mind had latched on to one fact: Sean had spent time with Mary and he was presently out of the castle. Now might be the only chance for me to see what secrets he kept in the round room. And if, God forbid, my thoughts after midnight were true and Mary did lie in a vampire’s crypt, well, maybe I would find that out, too.
“Bridget,” I called, dashing into the art room. “Hurry. Take these and dust as fast as you can. I’ve got something to do that can’t wait, and I don’t want anyone to know that I’m not in here with you, all right?”
“Blimey, Cassie. What is it?”
“I can’t talk now. I’ll tell you later.” I quit the room before she could ask any more questions. Looking carefully over my shoulder and taking a moment to make sure no one was about, I went directly to Sean’s private door, grasped the dragon handle and ducked inside. In moments I was in the round room with my heart pounding and my palms perspiring. The books surrounding the room passed in a blur as I went right to the blinding swathe of sunshine centered on the huge, shrouded mass sitting in the middle of the room.
Once there, I froze a moment, almost fearful to know what lay beneath. Slowly, I reached out and set my fingers upon the black cloth. Heat radiated into my fingers and I snatched my hand back, remembering what had happened to the woman in the vampire book when she touched the crypt.
“Cassie, you fool. There are no such things as vampires.” The whisper of my voice echoed upward, drawing my gaze in that direction. Through the grated iron floor above and the huge center hole, I could see the sky as if I lay upon a sunny hill on a picnic. Clouds drifted overhead and the graceful swoop of a raven passing over the glass dome left his shadow dancing over me. It was amazing. I knew as high as the round room went that if I were to climb the stairs to the top and walk the rim, I’d most likely be able to look out at the sea and the forest and be able to see almost everything for miles around. The only thing that could keep me from that view was still sitting unknown before me.
I set my hand back upon the shroud, this time pressing down and feeling something very hard and warm beneath it. Fisting my fingers in the cloth, I pulled, but the material caught upon something underneath. Before I could tug hard, thick arms suddenly wrapped around me and a heavy hand covered mine. Sean. I could feel, smell and taste him immediately.
“Remember what I said I would do if I found you in my rooms again without an invitation? What price should you pay for your insatiable curiosity today?” He whispered softly into my ear as he pressed his hard body firmly against my bottom and into every curve and dip from my calves to the nape of my neck. Heat erupted everywhere as my pulse raced as fast as my mind ran through and from the consequences he intimated.
“Oh God,” I whispered, dropping the cloth. “I’m sorry. They said you went to the village.”
“And so I did. But I’m back and just in time, it would seem.”
“Uh, perhaps a few minutes early. Do you think you could leave and come back in just a moment?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Would you shut your eyes and count to ten, then?”
“Not a chance, my wandering rose. You made a choice. Are you brave enough to see it through?”
I swallowed hard and squeezed my eyes shut. “Do your worst, and let’s be done with it.”
His chest heaved as his laughter rumbled. “Do you think that’s how it’s done, lass? Vampires have a much better way.”
Embarrassment that he’d clearly heard my whispered comment moments ago added more flame to the fire raging inside of me. “There are no such things as vampires.”
“Aren’t there?” he whispered. “You make me think differently. There are many places I’d love to put my mouth on you, Cassie. I’m feeling very hungry for your flesh and the heat of your blood.” His lips, then his teeth, brushed the side of my neck and gave a little nip to my skin. I shivered all the way to my toes.
I tried to ignore what he said, tried to ignore how he made me feel. Surely, practical logic would see me through this blunder. “No. There are no vampires. I said that because of the heat. When I touched the shroud it was hot just like the crypt in the book and I, well, it gave me pause.”
“Book? Crypt?” He stepped away and swung me around to face him. I could tell he’d been out riding. His dark hair was windblown, issuing an invitation to touch and tame in much the same way the pain I’d seen and heard in him had urged me to soothe. But there was no soothing the fire that glittered in his green eyes, least none that a gentle hand could accomplish. “You’re reading Powerful Vampires and Their Lovers?” He spoke very slowly and distinctly, making the deed sound so risqué that I couldn’t own up to it alone.
“Certainly not. I’m teaching Bridget to read, and that’s the book she chose.”
“Indeed.” He flashed a devilish smile and cocked a querying brow as he advanced toward me. Good Lord, my heart took flight at the predatory look in his eyes as my stomach fell into a bottomless pit, wrenching everything in between. “So, it was of little interest to you when Armand lured his woman to his crypt?”
Reaching out, he tugged off my cap then slid his finger down the side of my neck, spreading fire to places inside of me that I didn’t even know existed. My breasts seemed to swell and grow heavy and wanting. My breath caught when he skimmed along my collarbone to the center of my chest and stopped at the buttons of my dress.
He deftly unbuttoned the top two. “You read how Armand wanted to feast upon his love as Solomon feasted, and you thought or felt…nothing?” A third button fell swiftly beneath his determined advanced.
I was sure that I would faint at any moment, or erupt in flames as he undid two more buttons. It seemed I was tied to a stake and burning. I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t move. My dress gaped, leaving only my gossamer chemise to cover my heated breasts like a whisper of mist trying to hide the sun. I wavered on my feet.
“Breathe, Cassie. I’ll not let you off so easily.” He pulled the edges of my dress further apart. Grasping my hips, he drew me to him, looking down at what he’d uncovered. I sucked in air, desperate for it, and winced as I felt the silk of my chemise stretch tightly over the sensitive tips of my breasts.
“You make me hungrier than I have ever been.” He stared deeply into my eyes.
Whatever fears this man generated, whatever doubts he fostered, disappeared as my desire coalesced into a dark, almost obsessive need for his kiss. My lips parted. He bent his head and I felt the fire of his mouth upon mine. The power of his want consumed me as each kiss went deeper, demanded more, and gave more. Then he left my lips, kissing his way down my throat and bending me over his arm. Stepping impossibly closer, he pressed the bulk of his leg between mine, holding me captive as his mouth closed over the tip of my breast through the silk of my chemise.
“Oh, God,” I groaned, falling more into his arms as my knees gave way. Leaving one breast, he claimed the other, groaning deeply as he suckled until my breath rasped and my body shuddered with the need for more. Then suddenly he pulled back.
“What?” I whispered, trying to think, trying to remember why I shouldn’t give myself over to this unbelievable pleasure.
“You’re mine.” His voice was fierce. He scooped me into his arms and walked determinedly out of the round room, despite his hitched stride. Cool air brushed over my dampe
ned chemise, tingling my breasts, and sending an urgent warning to my mind.
“I think…we…need…to…talk about this.” My speech lasted the length of a short corridor where armor and weapons passed in a blur. Then he backed his way through double doors and tossed me on to the biggest bed I’d ever seen, with the softest counterpane I’d ever felt. He followed me onto it, pinning me down before I could even bounce.
“You should have thought about that before you walked through the dragon doors, lass. No maid comes to a man’s rooms without this crossing her mind. You’ve done it twice, almost three times since coming here, and I think it’s time I help you find what you’re looking for.”
“What did you say?” Outrage wiped any fear or desire from me. “You think I deliberately entered the round room to entice my way to your bed?” I pushed against his shoulders, trying to escape, but made little progress. Finally, I looked him directly in the eye and planted my finger in the middle of his nose, pressing him back.
“Do you think you’re the only reason a woman might be tempted to go where she shouldn’t? You’re no different from that odious fairy, prancing about seducing unsuspecting virgins. Let me up immediately!”
Staring at me, as if confused, his green eyes shadowed with want and something deeper, a loneliness I didn’t want to see. He slid to the side, letting me go. I rolled from the bed and stood staring at him a moment, oddly feeling as if I didn’t want to go.
“I’m sorry.” I ran for the door.
“Cassie!”
I halted with my fingers wrapped around the dragon handle.
“You might want to button your dress before leaving. And if you’re daring enough to come back at midnight tonight, I just might show you what I do in the round room.”
My fingers fumbled on the buttons of my dress as my ire grew. “I know exactly what things you’d like to show me. Well, not exactly, but you’ve given me a pretty good idea today. Whatever you may think of me, Sean, I’m not that.”
Midnight Secrets Page 17