by Yasmine Nash
“What is the baron’s favorite meal? Perhaps we could add it to next week’s menu as a surprise for my husband?” Amanda said, feeling a spark of excitement at the thought of pleasing him.
The housekeeper sniffed, but she did not disagree with Amanda outright. “It is very difficult to get my hands on a fresh duck at this time of the year, but I’ll try my best,” she said. “If there is nothing else, my lady?” she added, looking as though she wanted to leave.
“Would you give me a tour of the castle before you return to your duties?” Amanda asked. “I haven’t seen anything of it, except for this room and my bedroom. It would be nice to get my bearings.”
The housekeeper’s mouth formed into a grim line. “I’m afraid I don’t have time this morning. My lady,” she added, as an afterthought. “I’ll get one of the girls to come up here and show you around the castle and the grounds.”
Without waiting for Amanda to agree, the housekeeper curtsied and left.
Amanda watched Mrs. Hughes walk away, anger and embarrassment mixing in her heart. The woman clearly had no respect for her, even though Amanda was now her mistress. That did not bode well. Amanda should have spoken to the woman with more authority, rather than asking her for permission. She would not make that mistake another time, she vowed.
Sara was the servant the housekeeper chose to show Amanda around. At least she was a friendly face. The two spent the rest of the morning walking through the castle, seeing more rooms than Amanda could count. There was even a ballroom, although it looked as if it hadn’t been used in quite some time.
“Does his lordship ever entertain guests?” Amanda inquired curiously. She barely knew her husband, but he did not seem to be one who cared much for social engagements.
“No, my lady,” Sara said. “The baron has only had guests over a few times since I’ve been employed here, and none at all lately. I believe it’s been several years since this ballroom has been used.”
That was interesting, although not surprising. His aloofness was probably what contributed to his mysterious reputation among the rest of the gentry.
They continued on their tour and Amanda’s head began to spin.
“I don’t know how I’m going to remember them all,” Amanda confessed after Sara had shown her the third parlor.
“It does take a while to become familiar with everything,” Sara admitted. “But you’ll get there before too long, my lady,” she added with an encouraging smile.
It was nearly lunchtime when the tour ended in the portrait gallery. By now, Amanda had seen the baron’s study (he was absent from it), the gardens (whose gardener had seemed to be under free reign to do whatever he liked as the gardens were quite wild), the servant quarters, the kitchen, and more bedrooms than Amanda could count.
Although Amanda was tired from spending all morning walking, her weariness lifted as soon as they entered the gallery. She took her time wandering among the paintings, examining each one for signs of resemblance to her husband.
Eventually, she came to the most recent portrait, a man and a woman who must have been her husband’s father and mother. Amanda gazed at them eagerly. Perhaps she could ascertain some clue into who her husband was by staring at these paintings long enough.
The former baroness had been very pretty, with a pale heart-shaped face and big black eyes. Perhaps Amanda was imagining it, but those eyes seemed to gaze mournfully back at her. The late baron was several decades older than his wife, although the resemblance to his son was still evident in his face. His mouth was set into a stern line underneath a pair of cold gray eyes.
Amanda took in everything. There was some detail there that would help her understand her husband; Amanda was sure of it.
“How long ago did my husband’s parents pass away?” Amanda asked finally, turning to Sara, who had been waiting patiently behind her.
“More than a decade ago, my lady,” Sara said.
“And were they…happy together? Do you know?” Amanda asked as casually as she could.
She did not know why the answer was so important to her. But if these two had been happy, then perhaps there would be a chance for Amanda’s own marriage not to be a miserable one.
“I’m afraid I don’t know,” Sara said apologetically. “I wasn’t employed by the family at the time.” She must have seen some of the disappointment flash across Amanda’s face, however, for Sara added gently, “From what I have heard from the other servants, he was not a kind man.”
Amanda’s heart dropped. There went that foolish hope.
“But his wife was a good woman,” Sara went on. “And a kind mistress, by all accounts.”
Amanda forced a smile. There she was, dissolving the boundaries of etiquette again. A proper baroness would not be engaging in gossip about her husband’s family with the household staff. But Amanda had no other alternative if she wanted to know about the family she had married into. And she still had questions. In for a penny, in for a pound, as they said.
Amanda took a deep breath, wondering how to broach the question she wanted to ask next. It was a matter which had been weighing on her mind from the first moment she had stepped in the doors yesterday.
“Are there no portraits of my husband’s late wife?” Amanda asked.
There were those in town who spread foolish rumors about the baron. That everyone in his life had fallen victim to some accident or another—and that these mysterious accidents had all been by design.
An older brother who had taken ill as a child and passed away, leaving Fitzwilliam Descamps the titleholder and sole heir. His parents, who had been burned to death in a fire a few years later. Never mind that the fire had occurred at an inn while they were traveling 20 miles from the castle; there were those who were convinced the baron had been behind his parents’ deaths, impatient to get his hands on his fortune. Amanda had not dared to broach these subjects with her husband.
And of course, there was his first wife. Some said she had fallen from her horse and broken her neck. Others said she had died from consumption. What everyone agreed upon was that, regardless of the method of her passing, the baron had been behind it. The stories went that he had grown tired of his wife, who had been unable to bear him an heir.
The baron himself did nothing to deny the gossip, leading even more to suppose it must be true.
Amanda refused to believe these foolish rumors. Her husband, though cold and reclusive, did not strike her as a murderer.
And no matter how powerful a man he was, England was still a country of laws. One did not murder four people and simply escape justice in this day and age. Even so, she couldn’t deny that there was something strange about the way Sara did not meet her eyes.
“I’m not sure we have any portraits of the late baroness,” Sara said quietly. She was definitely avoiding Amanda’s gaze now.
Amanda did not let the subject drop, however. “Did you know her?”
Sara nodded, still not looking at Amanda.
“And what did you think of her?” Amanda prodded.
“She was friendly,” Sara said reluctantly. “When she first came here to the castle, she was always laughing.”
“Did the baron love her?” Amanda asked, not sure she even wanted to know the answer.
“it’s not for me to say, my lady,” Sara demurred.
“But surely you must have noticed something,” Amanda pressed, throwing all propriety to the wind.
“I believe he had very strong feelings for her when they were first wed,” Sara said, sounding very apologetic now. “He took her death very hard. He ordered the footmen to take down every sign of her and burn it,” she said in a whisper.
Amanda’s heart dropped. So her husband was capable of falling in love, he just could not fall in love with her.
She tried to compose her features, but she knew her dismay must have been written across her face. She didn’t want Sara’s pity, however. All Amanda wanted right now was to be alone.
That wasn�
��t to be, however, for the baron chose that moment to walk into the portrait gallery. He looked as cold as ever. Sara jumped at the sight of him.
“This is where you have been passing your time?” he asked, taking in what must have been guilty looks on both their faces. “I have been awaiting you in the drawing room for the past 20 minutes. The tea has gone cold.”
“I’m sorry, my lord,” Amanda said quickly. “I was getting a tour of the castle and I must have lost track of time.”
The baron’s face remained impassive. “Sara, you may leave us,” he said dismissively. Without another word, the maid scampered off. Descamps came to stand beside Amanda.
“I see you’ve found my parents’ portrait,” he said.
Now that her husband was standing beside his father’s painting, Amanda could make out the differences in their appearance. Although they shared the same cold gray eyes and handsome features, the man in the portrait had a look of cruelty that her husband did not possess.
“Yes,” Amanda said, unsure of whether she should say anything else. “Your mother was beautiful,” she added, figuring that was the safest comment she could make.
“He married her for her beauty,” Descamps said, his mouth curled in hatred as he stared at his father’s face.
Amanda stared at her husband in shock for a moment. He had never once offered any unsolicited information about himself to her.
“My father was not a good man,” the baron said simply. “He did not treat my mother well. I know you probably find me cold and heartless, but I cannot change that aspect of who I am. Take comfort, at least, in knowing I will never abuse you with my words or cause you any physical harm.”
Amanda shivered at this brief explanation of his family history. What a strange, depressing intimacy to share with her, but she was grateful for his honesty, nonetheless.
Descamps didn’t seem interested in receiving an answer, so Amanda merely nodded, then followed along behind him when he finally turned and left the room.
4
Chapter 4
Descamps examined his new wife while they took their tea. What had possessed him to open his mouth and admit those things to her? He was not a man prone to sharing confidences, but for some reason, he had felt compelled to give that explanation to her.
Perhaps his unexpected openness had nothing to do with Amanda at all, Descamps assured himself. He tried to avoid the portrait room as much as possible because he hated seeing his father’s face. Although so many years had passed, and his father was now long dead and gone, the same surge of hatred ran through Descamps at the sight of the man, even as an oil painting. That portrait had unsettled him, which is why he opened his mouth and said those things to Amanda.
He would have burned the painting had it not also been the only remaining image he had of his mother.
Descamps knew the rumors that spread about him, but he had never been bothered by their existence. The Ton would say whatever they liked, regardless of whether he denied it or not. So he chose not to play into their games.
That was why he avoided society as much as possible. Too many poisonous whispers. Too many false friends.
And yet, no one cared about the true villains: the people like his late father, a man who had alternated between hurling insults at his wife and hurling punches at her. But his father had played the game, courting the favors of the Ton, and so they had rewarded him with a blind eye. The entire system disgusted Descamps.
What he hadn’t shared with Amanda was that, as he had grown older, his father had taken out his anger on his rebellious sons, rather than his meek wife. Descamps’ mother had eventually learned how to hold her tongue and hid herself behind a shield of emptiness in an attempt to not provoke her husband’s frequent rages.
She had walked the halls of the castle with bruises on her arms and black eyes. He even remembered the day this likeness of her had been captured, she had had a swollen eye from a beating her husband had given her the night before. The artist had been diplomatic enough not to include that in the final image.
Descamps’ mother had shielded away her emotions as an armor to protect herself from her husband’s assaults, but Descamps and his brother had been left out of her warmth as well as a result.
Growing up, the two brothers had only had each other to rely on. Even when their father hadn’t been present, their mother would lock herself in her room alone, taken to her bed with nervous fits. The servants, all wary of his father’s infamous temper, had taken care not to engage with the children except when necessary.
Aside from his brother, Frederick, Descamps had hardly experienced a warm touch growing up—except for the rare times when his mother would seem to come out of a stupor and call the nursemaid to bring her sons to her in her room. There, she would gather her two sons into her lap, and she would tell them stories while she brushed their hair from their foreheads. Those memories, memorable as they were, were uncommon.
More often than not, their mother would call her two sons into her bedroom to criticize them for not making enough progress in their studies or for not looking presentable. Now that he was grown, Descamps saw these as her attempt to protect her children from their father’s cruel whims. If she could make her children perfect, then there would never be any reason for her husband to hurt her sons as he had hurt her.
Their father had never needed an excuse to hurt anyone, however. Frederick, who was older than him by five years, took most of the abuse from their father. His brother would encourage him to hide in the nursery whenever their dad had one of his rages, taking the blows for him. As they grew older, Frederick did his best to protect their mother as well.
And then, when Descamps was 12 and Frederick 15, the accident happened.
Descamps still didn’t know what had set their father into such a rage that day, but it was one of the worst he had ever seen. The familiar signs had been piling up all day long that their father was getting into one of his moods. By supper time, he had been completely drunk and had shouted insults at both his sons.
When his wife had cowered away in her room, the furious baron had gone upstairs and pounded on her locked door until it burst open. By the time he found his wife, shrinking in her bed, he had been apoplectic with rage. The first blow was hard enough that it sent her unconscious, which made the baron even more furious.
Frederick had run forward to stop their father from hurting her more, and the man had exploded on his son, his fists sending the boy flying. Frederick cracked his head on the stone fireplace and that had been that.
The story his father used later on when the physician arrived was that Frederick had hit his head while out on his horse. The physician didn’t seem concerned with the veracity of that tale. It was too late for his services to be of any help, anyway. Frederick was already dead.
Frederick’s death seemed to cause a shift in their father. He was as hateful as ever, but perhaps some sense of guilt lingered in him. Whatever the reason, after that event, his father was rarely in residence, spending most of his time in London.
That meant Descamps and his mother were left alone most of the time. Since Frederick’s death, his mother had become a shadow of a woman who never told him stories or brushed his hair anymore. But Descamps was too old for that anyway. He might as well have been all alone.
Many years later, when Descamps was away studying at Oxford, the news arrived that his mother and father had burnt to death at an inn. They had rarely shared the same space together in the decade or so since Frederick’s death, but they had both been requested to attend some social event required by the peerage in London. It was on their journey home that the fire had broken out.
Descamps could never know exactly what had happened, but some part of him wondered whether his mother had set the fire herself, perhaps trying to escape the man who had tormented her for so long.
This castle might as well have been cursed. Perhaps it was. That would explain all the misery these walls had seen in the centur
ies since the Descamps family had first built it. Or perhaps the curse was in the blood running through his very veins. Generations of cold hearts and unhappy lives, hidden behind the veneer of gentility.
And God knew Descamps had played his part in that cycle as well. He may have had no heart left in him, but at least he was not a monster like his father. That was where he broke the cycle.
Descamps had tried to be a better man with his first wife, Caroline. He had even tried to love her, difficult as it had been for him to open his heart to anyone after a lifetime of abuse and neglect. Caroline had been a beautiful woman, smiling and vivacious. Her effervescent charm had felt like a balm to his wounded heart.
But Caroline had been more taken in by his title than Descamps had realized. She despised the cold, gloomy castle and the distance from the fashionable society in London. She soon grew impatient with her husband’s disdain for social status and the falsities that it required. She wanted to be popular and envied by all, and her husband’s reclusive nature didn’t allow her that. So she became bitter and resentful.
Through it all, Descamps had tried to make her happy. He would send away for the latest fashions from London, hire the best chefs, and arrange for little presents to gift her on odd occasions in an attempt to keep her satisfied. He even pushed himself out of his comfort zone and tried to host balls and parties, everything he thought she would like. He disdained every minute of those events, but as long as Caroline was happy, he was willing to put up with the inconvenience.
In the end, it wasn’t enough. He wasn’t enough. She took to spending long visits with friends in London for months at a time.
Eventually, on one of the rare times she was home, she spitefully told him she was pregnant, and he wasn’t the father. She had been carrying on an affair for months, and Descamps had never known.
“Since you care so little for what society thinks, I’m sure this won’t bother you,” she had said scornfully. “I could tell the entire world you’re a cuckold.”