“Yes. He is.” Miss Minnie did not so much speak as decree, and she entered the room like a frigate under full sail. “Good evening, Dougald.”
Dougald bowed at her, then at the lady with twinkling eyes and a mouth made for smiling who had so loudly doubted his masculinity. “Good evening, Miss Isabel.”
Her dark skin and spiny features made Hannah suspect she was Spanish or Italian, and indeed when she spoke Hannah heard the faintest of Latin accents in her low, smoky voice. “Dougald dear, I’ve told you. You must call me Aunt Isabel. Everyone does.” Tweaking his ear, Aunt Isabel winked at Hannah. “You, too, dear.”
Hannah contained the bubble of amusement that rose in her chest. They were either giving her time to regain her composure, or they were always overwhelming in their impetuosity.
The white-haired lady whipped about the room at the speed of lightning. Stopping at the vase that Charles had rearranged, she restored the flowers to their original position, talking all the time. “Dougald, did you see my rosebush? I told you if we moved it to that sunny corner it would bloom, and today, even in this wretched weather, there was a most handsome blossom of yellow.”
“Good evening, Miss Ethel.” Dougald bowed.
“Aunt Ethel, please. The petals are pointed, you know.”
She seemed to require an answer to her botanic conversation, but Miss Minnie had already turned to Hannah, “Is this the gel who’s supposed to take care of Spring?”
“She is,” Dougald said. “Aunt Spring, Miss Hannah Setterington will be your new companion.”
Hannah curtsied. “An honor to make your acquaintance, ma’am. All of your acquaintances.”
Aunt Spring trotted over, her heels clicking on the hardwood. “My, you’re a pretty thing.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Hannah murmured.
“Call me Aunt Spring.” She placed her hands on either side of Hannah’s face, turning it down toward her. “Aren’t you tall?”
“I am, ma’am.” Almost a foot taller than Aunt Spring, two inches taller than Miss Minnie, and about five inches taller than the other ladies, and they were of average height.
“When I was a gel, I wanted nothing so much as to be willowy like you.” Aunt Spring patted Hannah’s cheeks. “But Lawrence loved me as I was, and he was quite a handsome man.”
“Lawrence?” Hannah had assumed Aunt Spring was a maiden aunt, one of the legion of girls who grew up not blessed by a dowry, never plucked by a suitor.
“My dear love. He was killed in the Peninsular Wars before we could marry.” Aunt Spring’s cheery face dimmed. “It was a long time ago, but do you know I still miss him? I think I hear him call my name, and I turn around, but he isn’t there.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” Miss Minnie said.
“No, it’s not.” Aunt Spring didn’t hesitate to contradict her formidable friend. “He is with me always, I’m sure. I just can’t see him. Isn’t it amazing and wonderful to think that love can last forever?”
Hannah looked up at Dougald. Hard satisfaction bracketed his mouth as he watched her with Aunt Spring. “Some love lasts forever,” Hannah corrected. “Some love gets bruised and neglected and spoils like an apple.”
“You’re too young to be so cynical,” Aunt Isabel drew near. “How’d you develop such a trait?”
“She’s probably been married,” Aunt Ethel said. “Women get cynical when they’ve been married.”
“Men get cynical when they’ve been married, too.” Dougald replied.
“What have you got to be cynical about?” Aunt Isabel asked. “You murdered your wife.”
Shock rippled through Hannah. For the first time she heard the charges spoken—and she had never expected to hear that from such an inoffensive source. She looked at Dougald, but he appeared impassive. Had he been accused so many times he no longer cared? Did his stoicism hide a need to defend himself?
Had he threatened her because he had so many times been threatened?
“You have disconcerted Miss Setterington,” Miss Minnie said.
“Besides, Isabel, dear, you know we decided it made a marvelous tale, but that he didn’t do it.” Aunt Spring patted Hannah on the arm. “You don’t have to worry that you’ll be murdered in your bed. It’s really quite safe here with Dougald at the helm. All the killings happened before he came.”
“The killings?” Hannah replied faintly.
“She’s referring to the deaths of the previous lords,” Dougald informed her.
With a Latin relish for the dramatic, Aunt Isabel ignored them. “You ladies are the ones who decided Dougald was innocent, not me. I think it’s wonderfully mysterious that he killed his wife. It lends him an air of foreboding. Things are dull around here without a bit of danger.” Her tone changed from ominous to matter-of-fact. “Anyway, he probably had reason. Heaven knows I wanted to slay the old dragon I married often enough.” She turned to Hannah. “Never marry a man who will take you away from your family, for then he can do whatever he wishes to you and there is no one to stop him.”
“I can safely promise I will not do that,” Hannah said.
“My old dragon divorced me.” Aunt Ethel’s eyes swamped with tears. “Do you know how much trouble and money it takes to get a divorce? It’s an act of Parliament you know.”
“So I’ve heard,” Hannah murmured.
“But he wanted to get rid of me so much that he gladly paid.” The tears dried, and her eyes snapped. “Now he’s living with that little miss who used to be my chambermaid. He’ll probably die in bed, and the undertaker will never get the smile off his face.”
Miss Minnie nodded and proclaimed, “No fool like an old fool, I always say.”
“You ladies may rest assured I have never yet given in to murderous tendencies”—Dougald bent a glare on Hannah—“no matter how much the person I am dealing with deserves it.”
“There you go, dear,” Aunt Spring said comfortably. “He didn’t do it.”
“He wouldn’t admit to murder, now, would he?” Aunt Isabel demanded.
Aunt Ethel viewed him thoughtfully. “He’s never denied it before, and he really looks like a murderer.”
The other ladies cried a denial.
Hannah remembered the amused cast to his features when he had suggested he could kill her and solve his problems.
“Yes, he does,” Aunt Ethel said stubbornly. “Just look at him brood. He’s been brooding since the day he got here. Not that I’m complaining, of course, Dougald dear.”
Dougald just nodded as if he’d heard it before.
The ladies talked in front of Dougald and Hannah as if they weren’t there. It was as if the aunts had been fixtures in the castles for so long the usual graces and manners no longer applied to them. Or perhaps they considered the others nothing but short-lived interruptions in the long stretches of their lives. Certainly Dougald acted as if nothing were out of order; he seemed used to the overtalking and the contradicting and the absolutely appalling bluntness the old ladies employed.
“I’m a fool for a man who can brood really well,” Aunt Ethel said. “He could come and brood in my bedchamber any day.”
“Ethel!” Miss Minnie sounded sincerely appalled.
Miss Minnie was the elder. For all of her impressive size and upright posture, she was probably ten years older than the others, and Hannah would judge Aunt Spring, Aunt Ethel and Aunt Isabel to be well into their sixties. The age difference set Miss Minnie apart, perhaps not just in years but because of outlook.
“Just because there’s snow on the roof doesn’t mean there isn’t fire in the furnace!” Aunt Ethel retorted.
Hannah didn’t know whether to giggle or faint, so she did neither, pretending that she was regularly party to such conversation.
“Yes, but you know these children don’t want to hear that.”
The old ladies paused and looked at Dougald and Hannah.
Apparently Dougald decided there had been demonstration enough of the challenges Hannah faced
, for he leaped into the gap. In a deadpan tone, he said, “Miss Setterington has told me she used to design clothing.”
Hannah glared at Dougald. She didn’t like to think of that, to remember how her simple dream of owning a dress shop had been used as bait to trap her into marriage.
The train rumbled beneath her, and Hannah sat very straight on her seat, ignoring Dougald’s recumbent, shirtless form. Hannah’s memory replayed Miss Blackmoor’s dire warnings about what happens to girls who relaxed in a man’s presence, much less one that went so far as to lie down.
Which was very tempting, after the meal and the wine and the rocking of the train…When Hannah was twelve and had started her menses, her mother had calmly and explicitly told her all the dry facts of human reproduction. But Hannah could not remember hearing anything about this jumpy, nervous flush Dougald had induced with his sea-green eyes, deep voice and careless etiquette. Because she scorned girlish talk as silly, she had no real idea why she felt little chills crawling under her skin, why her chest was heavy and hard to lift, why she suddenly had the urge to bite every one of her well-manicured nails to the quick.
She was sure she didn’t know.
Not that he was doing it deliberately. He just didn’t realize how seductive his attention could be to a girl with no prior experience with men. He could not be such a swine as to seduce her on purpose. He wanted to marry her, and her mother had said all men wanted to marry females untouched by the baser instincts. So he couldn’t be interested in luring Hannah closer to him, using her own curiosity and ignorance against her.
Why hadn’t she thought to buy a blanket? Then Dougald would be using it for a pillow, and she wouldn’t be vigorously studying the landscape to keep her traitor eyes from sliding over that chest, carved and shaped by work and exercise, and those lovely, broad shoulders. He was bare and brown and very, very tempting for a girl who had spent her childhood and adolescence deprived of all but the most basic affection.
Who, until thirty minutes ago, had laughed at irresistible temptation.
It was good, for her own peace of mind, that she did not see those treacherous eyes open just a slit to check her discomfiture, and then close with satisfaction. “What work is it you want to do?”
Hannah jumped and rubbed her sweaty palms against her pants. Mumbling, she answered, “I want to open a dress shop.”
“What? I can’t hear you.” He was craning his neck, trying to catch the words she threw away.
“I said, I want to open a custom dress shop,” she shouted, suddenly furious.
“Oh.” He dropped his head back, and grumbled, “There’s no need to yell. It isn’t that spectacular an ambition. The way you were cringing I thought you wanted to design kilts for the bare-arsed Scottish laddies.”
“Not enough demand,” she snapped, though a second later she was appalled at her response.
He smiled, an attractive, crooked smile. “There would be if you were doing it.”
Which was almost a compliment, she supposed.
“And here I thought your biggest ambition in life was to be part of a family.”
She froze. “What do you know about that?”
“You were a quiet girl, but when you looked at the families sitting together in church, you had longing in your eyes.”
She hated for him to know that. She hated for anyone to realize how deeply she desired parents, grandparents, siblings—anyone she could call her own. In her experience, people laughed at bastards who wanted the unattainable.
But Dougald wasn’t laughing. His lethal green-and-gold eyes were closed, his muscles lax. He didn’t act as if he thought it odd for her to dream of family. He patted the cotton beside him. “But I guess you really want a dress shop. Why don’t you tell me about it?”
Her courage began to bubble again.
Crawling across the splintering boards, she sat cross-legged beside him—although not too close—and told him her plans. Faltering at first, then with greater strength she told him how good she was with all kinds of sewing. She could take wool from the sheep to the loom. She knew how to make or alter a pattern, how to mark and cut, how to sew the finest seam. She loved to do needlepoint and embroider, how to crochet and tat. The gowns she created, the stitchery she did: All were works of art, and she loved them.
She saw him relax, and she saw him grin. That couldn’t be good.
“Would you come back with me if I let you get your shop?” he asked.
Placing her hands in her lap, she prepared to repulse the devil. “I can work. I can save. I can get my own shop…eventually. I don’t need you for that.”
“I’m a good businessman, and you’ve got the enthusiasm and knowledge to make a success of your endeavors. What if I gave you the money?”
She brightened and sat up straight. “Would you? I’ll pay you back with interest, I assure you.”
“My wife does not need to pay me back, even if the shop should fail.”
She should have known that was the catch. She did know that was the catch, but she had hoped she was wrong. “My shop won’t fail. I have contacts in my classmates and their parents, and I’m such a proper lady, they’ll brag about coming to me. I have design ability and a good business head.” Fiercely, she finished, “But I will not prostitute myself for a dress shop. I’m in debt over my head to you already.”
“I’m not asking you to prostitute yourself. I’m asking you to marry me.” Exasperation rasped in his voice like a file.
“I’m not afraid of hard work. I know how to live on almost nothing, and I will open my own shop. I see no reason to compromise my principles for money.”
A slight, sinister smile tilted up one corner of his mobile mouth. “Don’t you?”
Dougald made Hannah nervous, examining her face, her chin that trembled with an attack of belated caution, her fingers laced with a steady tremble. He stared at her neck, at the flush that disfigured the clear skin of her chest where her worsted shirt sagged unexpectedly low. He observed too well. She blurted, “I don’t want to marry you.”
“Don’t you?” he asked again. Holding her trapped by his unhurried, unflagging regard, he sat up. He reached out, so slowly, and caught her upper arms in his cupped hands. Gently, slowly, he shifted her so she lay in the warm place in the cotton that he had just abandoned, so her head nestled in his shirt. Then slowly, slowly, he lay down, his chest on hers, his hip beside hers, his thigh thrown across her legs, his face close to hers.
“You’ve never been kissed,” he said, his face so close she could feel his breath as he spoke.
How had this happened? It was those glorious jade eyes that mesmerized and beckoned and reassured. It was his way of moving, sure and cautious, never a sudden motion to startle her. No other man could have brought her from sitting to lying, from angry defiance to angry anticipation, from breathless fury to breathless curiosity.
Aunt Spring shook Hannah’s arm lightly to get her attention. “Dear, are you good with a needle? Because we, I and my friends, have a lovely workroom. The west wing tower room where I promise no tragedies have taken place.”
Hannah had no idea what she meant. “That’s good, I’m sure.”
“I would think so! The light’s good there, too.”
“Very important,” Hannah said.
“Yes, I can’t see half the time,” Aunt Spring answered.
Miss Minnie sighed. “That’s because you need to wear your eyeglasses.”
Aunt Spring’s eyes widened. “I don’t wear eyeglasses.”
No one said anything, then Dougald leaned forward and lifted the eyeglasses that hung on a string around Aunt Spring’s neck. “Here they are, Aunt.”
With a vague expression of surprise, Aunt Spring took the frames between two fingers. “Oh, thank you, Dougald. I’ve been looking for them everywhere.” She smiled at her nephew. “Have I told you how happy I am to have my nephew here at last?”
This, Hannah realized, was the vagueness that had sent Dougald in searc
h of a companion for his aunt. Aunt Spring wasn’t demented or even senile, but forgetful and perhaps capricious.
“Indeed, Aunt, I am happy to be here with you.” Turning gracefully to Hannah, Dougald used her to distract attention from Aunt Spring. “I told the aunts that you were an expert seamstress.”
How Hannah resented him when he used his knowledge of her to manipulate her. To Aunt Spring, she said, “I am good with a needle, ma’am, but I don’t design clothing anymore.” She sent a meaningful glare his way. “My main criterion for fashion is that I wear nothing that itches.”
If the thought of her in plain clothing repelled him, he hid it—with an exquisite bow.
He truly needed to be taught a lesson. Several lessons. Lessons about women, about wives, about respect and philanthropy for its own sake.
But she disdained to enlighten him. No matter that she prided herself on teaching the unteachable, no matter that the concept of Dougald obeying her wisdom enraptured her, she would realize he was obdurate and not give in to the temptation to instruct him.
“That is so clever of you.” Aunt Spring fastened her large brown eyes on Hannah. “Right now, I’m wearing garters with ruffles, and they itch abominably. And for what, I ask you? No man has looked on my stockings for thirty years.”
A sputter of laughter caught Hannah by surprise.
“But I shouldn’t tell you that, should I? I am a spinster, and my duty is to set a good example for you youngsters.”
“But if you lied about your garters, that wouldn’t be a good example, either, dear.” Aunt Ethel’s hands fluttered to her mouth. “Lying is a sin.”
“Spring doesn’t have to lie about her garters,” Miss Minnie said. “She shouldn’t speak of them at all.”
“Yes, but dear, I was just making conversation with Miss Setterington. I have to say something to the dear girl to make her feel welcome.”
“Miss Setterington shouldn’t have mentioned scratchy clothes at all.” Miss Minnie lifted her lorgnette and surveyed Hannah. “It’s obvious her breeding is not the best.”
Hannah flinched as the old wound was poked.
With a pronounced chill in his voice, Dougald said, “I assure you, Miss Minnie, I would only allow a gently-bred woman to care for my aunt.”