Beauty Tempts the Beast (17 page)

He shrugged then stood. “Whatever the reason, you waste your time.”

“Because of Miss Suttley?”

At the mention of her name, Ashworth had the urge to see if she had returned. Instead he straightened his shoulders and poured himself a splash of brandy and ignored her question. “I feel nothing for you anymore.”

With a rustle of her skirts, she was behind him. Her gloved hands moved down the sides of his arms.

She leaned against his back, but the feel of her breasts did not tremble his heart or stir his groin. It was true: he held no passion for her.

“Oh, Charles, you loved me once. I’m certain there must still be something for me inside of you.”

He lifted the cup to his mouth and swallowed the liquid in a gulp. “I don’t believe you’d spend more than one extra day at Silverstone.”

“Once we are married, why would I need to?”

Ashworth moved away from her clutches to the rain spotted glass. “Because this is where I live.”

“You can come back with me to London.”

But even as she said it, he saw the panic in her eyes. Catherine didn’t want him. He curled a lip. “I’m not fooled, you know.”

Her cheeks bloomed scarlet. “Fine then. Marriages do not have to be for love. There can be a mutual benefit for both of us.”

“Oh? Do tell.”

“I am in need of funds. You are in need of a bride. It’s a simple as that.”

Ashworth crossed his arms and leaned his shoulder against the mantel. “You forgot one thing in your simple plan.”

Her delicate chin lifted. “Oh? Do tell.”

“Miss Suttley. We are already engaged.”

Her laugh tittered in the dark room. Wind moaned around the corner of the house. “Yes, that’s what you said. But she has no chaperone, no family, no decorum. I cannot fathom why she is truly here unless as your mistress. But I do not expect her to become your wife.”

Ashworth wheeled around and faced the small window. With a shuddering breath he inhaled the cool draft. He wanted to say that, yes, Vivian would be his wife just to prove Catherine wrong. And yet it would only further the lie. He’d not wed Vivian. She deserved far better.

“I see the truth.” Her voice was softer now, not scornful. “She was only a ploy to keep me away. If that is the case, why do you not force me to go?”

Because he needed Catherine here to remind him what happened when he gave his heart to a woman.

He needed Catherine to remind him what people outside of the manor still believed about him.

Ashworth caught sight of a carriage climbing the wet drive to the manor. His nerves danced, mouth dried.

He shrugged a shoulder. “I’ve no need to force you to leave, Lady Wainscott. As I said, it is only your time you are wasting.”

“Can’t you remember the times we shared?” Desperation crept into her voice. “Remember when your friends John and Martin bet on whether I would snub you that first night we met? You told me about it months later, laughing at how sure you were of yourself.”

He watched the vehicle lumber over the ruts and puddles until it disappeared to the front of the house.

“I have done my best to forget those memories.” Ashworth turned to look at her. She was still beautiful, like an exquisite china doll. “There must be a number of men in London who would gladly have you.”

Her lips flattened. “As a wife? You forget I have a child already.”

“And debt?”

“Yes, and debt. I’m not quite the prize I was as an eighteen-year-old virgin.”

“You think too little of yourself.”

She rushed over to him and pressed her cheek against his chest. “Then why do you deny me? We can live together or apart. Certainly you’d not turn me away when I have a child to raise.”

A child. Yes, he knew all about raising a child. What would Catherine think of his son? How welcoming would she be to the truth of Harry’s real parents?

Catherine could find herself another husband, but he must not take a wife. Harry meant more to him than anything or anyone else.

Besides, as he’d learned well enough, The Monster was doomed to live alone.

Vivian requested dinner be sent to her room and collapsed on the crimson bedspread.

Each trip she took to the village brought more and more turmoil to her thoughts. She believed with certainty that Lord Ashworth would cause her no harm. And, yet, the villagers were so sure he was a menace.

Was she truly such a poor judge of integrity? Certainly the young man who had risked his reputation on a stranger could not be evil. Despite what gave him the scar, despite years of isolation, his true character must survive. Lord Ashworth was once her hero. He would be so again.

Vivian slipped off her shoes and removed her bonnet. If she didn’t have dinner arriving soon, she would strip off everything to find comfort in her nightdress.

A rustling sound pulled her attention to the tapestry. Did someone lurk behind the wall? Vivian tiptoed across the room, her stomach prickling. She pressed herself against the far wall and waited for the fabric to move aside.

Finally her mystery would be solved!

Cold air swirled from around the frayed edges. The fire across the room dipped then brightened.

Vivian held her breath. She waited.

Impatience and curiosity overtook her fear. She reached a hand out and pushed aside the cloth.

Darkness.

No. A flicker of light. A flame.

The light cast its illumination on a white shirt.

Vivian gasped. Someone
was
there!

In an instant the light disappeared and blackness consumed its void.

No! Vivian pushed aside the tapestry and slipped inside the opening. The glow moved down the dark hallway, vanishing around the corner. She could never catch up in time, especially if she turned back to get her own candle.

Damn!

Darkness swallowed the dim light and Vivian was left with nothing but the crushing blackness of inside a tomb. Her throat closed, lungs seized.

Pulse roaring, she patted the walls surrounding her until she could find the opening of the stones.

Pushing the tapestry aside, Vivian stumbled into her bedchamber and gulped in mouthfuls of air.

She’d been so close to uncovering the mysterious visitor. Perhaps in even discovering if there was a child in the house.

Vivian headed toward the bed but stopped midway across the floor. She was never told not to go upstairs. No one forbade her from exploring the house.

Without bothering to put her shoes back on, Vivian left the bed chamber in search of the rear stairwell.

Ashworth fidgeted as if he’d been sitting on an ant hill all throughout supper. His knees bounced, collar itched, fingers tapped. He could not have sat there another minute.

A few weeks ago he ate alone or with Harry or with John. His meals were simple and without pretense. There was no need to dress, no formality to entertain.

Then Vivian arrived. Suddenly with a visitor in the house, he had the need to eat in the dining room, have dinner prepared with several courses.

And then came Catherine.

She sat across the table tonight dressed in a fine mint-green gown, her hair piled high and curled. She commented upon eating turtle soup back in London and the delicacies she enjoyed at her late husband’s estate.

Ashworth wouldn’t have minded so much had Vivian been present. But she never came down. Mrs.

Plimpton finally told him she was exhausted and requested dinner be sent to her room.

Exhausted from being fitted for dresses? Women confused him more than he was willing to admit.

Especially when Catherine insisted he stay to hear her play the piano. He wanted to dismiss the thought and disappear into the hidden rooms of his lair, but he also knew the piano was out of tune and so it amused him more to watch her grow infuriated.

Catherine tried to play a few notes but her cheeks grew more flushed by the minute. Ashworth held his grin as she wheeled to face him.

“I am assuming that no one has tuned this piano in years.”

“Nor has anyone played it.”

Her hazel eyes flashed with fire. “Why do you let this house go to ruin? Do you not have a care for anything beautiful anymore?”

He crossed his arms. “I do not have a care for
anything
anymore.” Except Harry.

Her lips curled into a smirk. “Not even Miss Suttley?”

Ashworth yanked at the collar tight around his neck. Damned woman had caught him in her trap. Did he care for Vivian? If he did, he must stop. He had nothing to offer her. Just a man marked as a monster.

Catherine smoothed down her dress. “I am curious, Charles. You do not wish to spend your income on the upkeep of this house, nor on servants, nor do you travel. What do you do with it?”

Some he saved for Harry’s future. Some he sent to a certain London charity. He didn’t see the need to keep servants who had no purpose or keep a house presentable for visitors.

“Lady Wainscott, you have plainly seen where I do not care to spend my money. And I guarantee you I won’t spend it to forfeit your late husband’s debts, nor to buy you new dresses.”

“As you bought them for Miss Suttley.” She was like a bloody hound on the hunt today.

“We are engaged.”

Catherine brushed a layer of dust off the piano. “Yes. And you are planning to marry her because she does not ask you to spend your funds?”

What was she looking for? For him to proclaim an admission of love for Vivian? Is that what it would take to have Catherine leave Silverstone? If so, he must lie.

What did he know of love? His parents barely paid him any mind as a child. His sisters never had much to do with him. The one time he thought he found love, it was ripped away from him in brutal force.

Ashworth clenched his teeth against the twisting in his gut.

Vivian intrigued him, aroused him. But he did not love her. In a few short weeks, she would be gone from here and he would not think of her again.

Just as he’d not thought of Catherine. Until she barreled back into his life.

His mouth watered for brandy. Instead of satisfying the thirst, he stared into Catherine’s scathing gaze. “What transpires between Miss Suttley and me is none of your business.”

She laughed and the sound echoed off the walls. “I find it hard to believe anything transpires between the two of you.” She stood and made her way across the room to him. “Since I’ve arrived, it seems that I’ve spent more time with you than she has.”

True, Vivian had once again not come to dinner. She had not made it to breakfast for a few days either. In fact, she spent more time out in her garden than inside the manor.

Still, Catherine had no idea what else took place up in Vivian’s bedchamber. When night fell and darkness invaded the house, somehow he ended up in Vivian’s arms.

“There you are wrong.” He glanced down at Catherine with a raised eyebrow. “I see Miss Suttley
far
more than you realize.”

Her blanched face brought a grin to Ashworth. “And now I must check on the welfare of my betrothed.”

Waning daylight still struggled to find its way through the manor windows. As Vivian climbed the spiral staircase to the third floor, the lit candelabras danced with the drafts.

Her nerves jumped as she reached the top step. She looked both ways down the long hallway but found she was alone. All doors were closed.

Certainly there must be a schoolroom up here. She’d heard a child. It was not a trick of the wind or the cry of a cat. Unless ghosts truly roamed these grounds, a child lived in Silverstone Manor. And what child would live here other than the master’s own?

Instinct told Vivian to turn left. She was certain it was the way the hidden passage had gone. And it would also make sense that the windows facing her garden would be at the center of the house.

Without shoes she could quietly tiptoe down the hallway. The first door on the right, just past the small alcove with worn chairs, had light shining from beneath it.

Vivian pressed up against the door. A chair scraped along the floor. Then, she heard the rumble of a man’s voice. She could not make out the words, but she did not think it was Lord Ashworth. No, the tone and inflection were different. Yet it was definitely a grown man. Was it the one she’d seen on the landing by the warped door? The man who’d told her to kick the bottom?

Her heartbeat thudded in her ears, palms grew sweaty. Who was the man talking to?

More movement of chairs and other sounds she couldn’t recognize. She held her breath and prayed they would not come to this door. There would be an adjourning door to the nursery, wouldn’t there?

The man’s voice called out again, this time farther away. He must be over near the windows.

“Yes, sir, I understand.”

Vivian’s heart stopped. This voice was clear, loud, beside the door. And it was clearly a child. A boy, perhaps about seven or eight.

Dear God, she had been right. A child did live here. The man must be his tutor.

Vivian moved back from the door and ducked into the alcove in case they came out into the hallway.

She should be running down the steps but she couldn’t force herself to go yet. Too many thoughts raced through her brain.

Who was the boy? Was it Lord Ashworth’s son, or perhaps a nephew? Why would he keep him hidden away, never speak of him? Lord Ashworth had never married, so who was the boy’s mother?

Certainly it wouldn’t be Lady Wainscott. Or was that the real reason she came? Did they share a son? No, she didn’t believe it. Wouldn’t believe it.

Tingles raced up her spine. Goosebumps sprouted on her skin. Outside, rain tapped gently at the window, reminding her of the day she heard crying against the outside wall.

Had that been the boy, after all? He might have slipped from her grasp just seconds before she arrived.

Vivian curled up in the chair, where shadows sprawled across her like a warm blanket. She stared across the hall to the opening of the spiral stairwell.

Somewhere around here was the opening to the secret passage. Was it in the schoolroom?

Dear Lord, was it the boy who had entered her room the other night? She blushed, remembering lying on the bed naked and flushed from her release. The memory curled heat in her belly but also brought shame to her cheeks. It couldn’t have been the child. Please, no.