Till Next We Meet

by Karen Ranney

  She began coughing, and he eased off of her, brushing away the worst of the dust from her face.

  “Are you all right?”

  She nodded, reaching up and threading her fingers through his white hair. Her hand rested against his forehead in an almost tender gesture until she realized what she was doing.

  “And you?”

  “Better than I expected,” he said, looking over his shoulder at the roof.

  One of the lions that guarded Balidonough was gone. Instead, the stone fragment was now embedded in the gravel, not far from where they’d stood only moments earlier.

  Catherine looked at Moncrief in horror. “It would’ve killed us both,” she managed to say between coughs.

  He stood and brushed himself of the worst of the dust. She expected him to give her a hand so that she could rise, but he bent down and scooped her up in his arms as he had so many times in the last few days. She looped her arms around his neck and closed her eyes.

  “You really needn’t carry me,” she said, whispering against his ear.

  “I’ll put you down as soon as you stop trembling.”

  “I don’t think that’s just me.”

  “A brush with death has a deleterious effect on me.”

  The door was opening, and Wallace was at their side, his words as unintelligible as Glynneth’s a few moments later. Catherine held on to Moncrief’s neck and ignored them both.

  Instead of climbing the stairs to their chambers, Moncrief walked into his library, turning and addressing Wallace before closing the door behind them.

  “What did you say to him?” she asked, as he sat her down on one of the leather chairs.

  “That no one should be allowed on the roof until I inspect it.”

  “You can’t think of going up there, Moncrief. Wouldn’t it be dangerous?”

  “No more so than having part of the roof fall.”

  “Why did it fall? Is the castle in that much disrepair?”

  “Perhaps not,” he said, walking to the sideboard. “It could as easily have been deliberate.” He poured two glasses of whiskey and returned to her side.

  “Do you truly think so?”

  She took the tumbler he handed her.

  “Good Balidonough whiskey.”

  “I’ve never had any.”

  “I think you’ll find it a remarkable restorative.”

  Catherine took one sip of it and thought that she would never be able speak again. Her throat was rimmed with fire.

  “You’ve changed the subject,” she said, when her eyes stopped watering. “Do you think someone meant to harm us?”

  “Not us,” he said. “You.”

  Her eyes widened as she stared at him. “Why me?”

  “We’ve never yet found the person who knocked you down in the keep.”

  “I didn’t know you were looking.”

  “Do you think I would allow my wife to be injured without investigating it?”

  “That was simply an accident,” she said.

  He looked dubious. “Until I investigate further, I don’t believe a stone lion falling from the roof is an accident.”

  “You could be in danger as well, Moncrief. Who would inherit the title if you perished?”

  The word was not easily said. In fact, the idea of Moncrief dying was entirely unthinkable. He was such a force, so much himself that it was impossible to think of a world in which he didn’t exist.

  She gripped the tumbler so tightly she was surprised it didn’t shatter, but the multifaceted crystal only produced a pattern on the heel of her hand.

  “A second cousin inherits, a man I’ve met only once. He is a sober gentleman, who spends most of his time cataloging his library.”

  “He would enjoy the library here.”

  “I don’t intend to allow him the pleasure.”

  “No, but you might, if you insist on going up to the roof.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  She eyed him, thinking that he looked entirely too confident to be climbing the steeply pitched roofs of Balidonough. A little fear wouldn’t be amiss. Fear kept people safe.

  “Do you promise, Moncrief?”

  “If I do, may I elicit a promise from you as well?”

  She nodded cautiously.

  “Remain in the public rooms. Don’t explore Balidonough unless there are at least two people with you.”

  “You really do think the lion’s falling wasn’t an accident.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “And if it wasn’t?”

  “I’m going to interview the staff, regardless, something I should have done right after the incident in the keep.”

  “May I be present?”

  “It should be a tedious task, but you’re welcome to join me.”

  “Very well,” she said, standing and limping to the door. Her crutches were still in the courtyard unless Wallace had brought them inside. “I will go and wrap my ankle and join you back here in, what, an hour?”

  His smile had an edge to it, one that prompted her to add, “If you survive the roof, that is.”

  “Dare I hope that you have a modicum of worry about me, madam?”

  “If you fall and break your foolish head, Moncrief, I will inherit all your money. Or does the family fortune go with the title?”

  Moncrief’s smile dimmed somewhat. “It does. Except for a widow’s portion. A very substantial amount.”

  “Then do take care on the roof,” she said. “Unless you wish to make me an heiress twice over.”

  Chapter 20

  The part of the roof Moncrief wanted to inspect was only accessible through the smaller of Balidonough’s attics. He took Peter with him. Both he and Catherine trusted people from their pasts. In her case, Glynneth, and in his Peter.

  He’d not been up here since he was a boy, intent on exploring every inch of Balidonough. He had not obtained permission, but it was one of the few occasions in which his father had not learned of his misadventures and, consequently, had not punished him either.

  “Wallace has had a great deal of the furniture moved, sir. We’ve been shuffling it back and forth so Glynneth and Her Grace could look it over.”

  “Let’s hope they made this section a little easier to navigate,” Moncrief said, squeezing past a bureau and what looked to be another bed of ducal dimensions.

  Moncrief wondered if his ancestors had been like Juliana, thrifty to the extreme. If so, he was the exception. The money in Balidonough’s coffers should be spent on not only protecting the past, such as repairing the crumbling curtain wall, and the west wing foundations in need of repair, but on easing the conditions of the present, like providing a decent place for the servants to live and fires in the fireplaces.

  Nor was he going to spend Balidonough’s fortune to fuel a foolish dream. Funding the Jacobite cause was not only ridiculous but a century too late.

  The attics in this section were built as baffles; one opened into the other. By the time he and Peter reached the end of it, below the edge of the roof, dust was thick in the air.

  The trapdoor on the ceiling might have been inaccessible except for one thing—furniture was neatly stacked in a pyramid below it.

  “Looks like someone was already up there, sir,” Peter said, holding the lantern higher.

  “It does.” Moncrief climbed up on the large bureau that formed the base of the structure. “When we get downstairs, remind me to ask Wallace who he sent up here.”

  He reached the top of the structure and easily pushed open the trapdoor. The hinges didn’t squeak, and the opening was large enough for him to pull himself through. The door led to a small cupola, shielded from the rain and the sun. An ideal place for someone to wait patiently until his victim was standing below in the courtyard.

  A dozen stone lions marched across the front part of the roof, an ornamentation added to Balidonough during the last century. A previous duke, no doubt, had thought them regal and imposing. Now they looked mostly sad, discolore
d from the elements and stained from bird droppings. Less than an arm’s length away was an empty spot where one of the weathered lions had sat. Beside it were several gouge marks in the roof, proof enough that it hadn’t fallen accidentally.

  Someone wanted them injured, or killed.

  He lowered himself, shut the door, and dismounted.

  “So it was done on purpose,” Peter said, correctly interpreting his look. “But who, sir?”

  “Who indeed?” He gave Peter a set of instructions before returning to the library, where he would interview the servants.

  As a backdrop, the chamber was a perfect representation of the grandeur of Balidonough. If the room didn’t awe the people he would soon interrogate, then his position should. Not only was he Duke of Lymond, but the title carried with it the responsibility of acting as sheriff. As such, he could convene a court wherever or whenever he saw fit. The only true check to the abundance of his inherited power was the essence of his character.

  He leaned back in the chair and stared at the vista of Balidonough spread out before him. A weak winter sun bathed the faded grass and sparkled on the surface of the river. Winter had always been a time of sadness to him, as if the world stopped and reflected upon the year just passed. If he did the same, he would laud himself for some decisions and fervently ask forgiveness from a merciful God for the others.

  In which category would he place his marriage? A foolish act, but one he could not regret. Especially after last night. I fell in love with Harry through his letters. Of a certainty, his life would have been so much simpler if he had just been honest from the beginning. But he had dug a hole so deep for himself he despaired of ever being able to climb free of it.

  It would be easier to confess his duplicity if she felt something for him. Gratitude? For destroying her illusions? Until he’d come into her life, she’d made a hero of Harry. For saving her life? She still had no idea how close she’d come to death. For making her a duchess? She was already an heiress and Colstin Hall a prosperous estate. Granted, Balidonough was larger, and her responsibilities greater, but she never seemed awed by her new title or by the castle itself. Friendship? All well and good, perhaps, but the last emotion he felt in her presence was that of friendship.

  He wanted her. He wanted her in his arms, in his bed, and in his heart, in an old and dusty place that had been carved just for her. She’d created the spot herself, with her wit and her charm from her letters, and in her person. These last weeks at Balidonough had been both heaven and hell, and he was tired of living in the limbo of his own uncertainty.

  She wore a perfume that reminded him of rain-filled spring mornings, and she had a habit of placing her hand on the back of her neck and lifting her hair, a gesture that drove him mad. He wanted to replace her hand with his, and kiss her on the neck, encircling her throat until she tilted her head back and waited, impatiently, for his kiss.

  He’d kissed his own wife only twice, and he couldn’t forget the promise of it.

  Through these last weeks, innocent as a virgin, she smiled at him and came close to flirting. If challenged, she would deny it, he was certain. But her brown eyes peeping out from beneath her bonnet or a wisp of curl when she was formally dressed for the evening were as enticing as any he’d ever seen.

  A woman shouldn’t look so alluring in mourning. Black suited her, a perfect shade for the creaminess of her skin, calling attention to the curves and hollows of her breasts, and leading him to think of other places he would have given half his fortune to touch.

  He had managed to be celibate in the regiment for quite some time. This was a similar exercise. But in the Fusiliers, he’d been surrounded by men, not a beautiful woman who had no idea of her desirability. Or of his desire, for that matter.

  Only a day had passed since he’d told her the truth about Harry. Only a day. It was too soon to expect more, to wish for more from her. Not too soon, however, to imagine it.

  For a few moments, he indulged in a fantasy of longing. When she entered the room, he would place her on his lap, and if she protested, he would simply silence her with a kiss. One hand would trail below her skirts, not to test the swelling of her ankle but to measure the long line of her shapely legs. He would place his hand gently on her knee and allow his fingers to explore higher, perhaps to test the holding power of a garter before rolling down her stockings.

  Even the idea of her stockings was giving him an erection.

  Catherine entered the library on that thought, causing him to sit up. A gentleman would have stood at her arrival, but then a gentleman wouldn’t have found it difficult to do so right at this moment.

  He made a mental note to spur the seamstresses on to finish her wardrobe with a monetary reward. But perhaps he should drop a hint as well that the bodice of any future dresses should be made little differently. They shouldn’t be quite so tight.

  There was entirely too much woman for the dress.

  Or perhaps he wouldn’t say anything at all, because he so enjoyed the sight. This morning she’d worn a shawl, but now she didn’t. He was absolutely certain she’d dispensed with it on purpose. Her breasts were lifted high, almost as if they were an offering, and he, a pagan god, was more than willing to touch them, to measure them, and to gauge the suitability of the sacrifice.

  He was losing his mind.

  A result, no doubt, of restless nights in which he couldn’t sleep, in which he paced the length and breadth of his chamber, only to stop and glower at her closed door. Unrequited desire was a painful experience. In the last few weeks he had taken more horseback rides, and cold baths, than in all the months he’d spent in Quebec. He ached for war, some reason actually to be belligerent. He wanted to fight someone or destroy something or otherwise act as aggressive as he felt.

  A pity Juliana was being so amiable of late.

  At that moment, Catherine smiled at him with virtue pasted on her face. He should warn her that it was not wise to goad a hungry beast.

  She sat in the chair opposite him and he was grateful for the distance and the depth of his desk between them. At the same time, he wanted her close to him so that he could smell her perfume or reach out to touch her hand. Small impersonal, almost friendly, touches that would keep the raging beast at bay.

  He stood and moved the other chair next to his and invited her to sit there. She gave him a quizzical look, but otherwise did not demur, coming to sit beside him with a gentle grace that he found unsettling.

  “Are you warm enough?”

  “I seem to have left my shawl somewhere.”

  He pulled on the bell rope behind the desk and immediately Wallace was at the door.

  “Yes, Your Grace?”

  “See if you can find Her Grace’s shawl. If you can’t, fetch her another.”

  “I don’t have another,” Catherine said softly.

  “Then find one.”

  After Wallace had closed the door, he turned to her. “I know you came to the marriage with your own money, Catherine. More than enough to furnish your own wardrobe. What do you mean, you don’t have another shawl?”

  “My wardrobe has not been my primary concern of late, Moncrief.” She frowned at him. “And before you accuse me of being addicted to laudanum, it was not that.”

  “Then what was it?”

  “Planning the next season’s clothing didn’t seem important, when I missed Harry so much. But I thank you for your concern.”

  “I’m your husband, madam, and it is not necessary to thank me so often, as if any kindness I offer you is a surprise. Do you want to know what I found on the roof?”

  She gave him a crooked smile. “Of course I do. Every time the wind blew hard I worried it might pitch you to the grass.”

  He wanted to kiss her just then, for no special reason than she’d smiled at him. Instead, he said, “The lion fell because it had been dislodged from the parapet.”

  “Deliberately?”

  “Deliberately.”

  She shivered and o
nce again he wished she had her shawl. He stood and removed his jacket, placing it over her shoulders.

  “I’m not cold. At least not on the outside. But I am horrified at the thought that someone might have wanted us hurt or killed.”

  She caught his glance and smiled softly. “Very well, if not us, then me. But why me? As Juliana is fond of saying, I am only a farmer’s daughter. The only change to my life of late has been my marriage to you. Perhaps the second cousin should be investigated a little further.”

  “Or perhaps I should have an heir at all possible speed.”

  He watched as her cheeks pinkened and wondered if he had embarrassed her with such frankness.

  “I’m going to call the servants in one by one,” he told her, changing the subject to spare her any further embarrassment. “We’ll see if they know anything at all. Shall we begin with Glynneth?”

  “Do you think she would have anything to do with this?”

  Of all the people at Balidonough, he thought Glynneth might bear watching the most, but he kept that thought to himself.

  “She might have seen something.”

  She nodded.

  He summoned Wallace again, and when the young man entered, handed him a list of names. “Call them in one by one. When one leaves, send in the next.”

  In a few moments Glynneth stood in front of them, dressed in her dark blue housekeeper’s uniform. Her golden hair was tucked beneath a small lace-trimmed cap, and she wore a blue apron, spotless as usual.

  “Your Grace.” She stood with hands clasped and head slightly bowed. Her gaze was on the desk, not on Moncrief, a pose that managed to convey respect and independence at the same time.

  At her waist was a large ring of keys that had once belonged to the Duchess of Lymond. Over the years, however, Balidonough had become too large for one person to manage, and the duties of chatelaine had been entrusted to the housekeeper and her staff.

  “Did you hear about the accident this morning?”