Moonlight Surrender (Moonlight Book 3) (29 page)

“I can’t—“ she began to murmur, her voice scarcely a whisper, even to her own ear.

In the next moment, she discovered, as he began to kiss her ear, that she could.

And did.

Stunned, with a need to bring him into the swirling chaos he had created for her, Beth reached for Duncan.

As her fingers dipped low and touched the hardened
shaft, she heard him moan her name in helpless surprise.
Satisfaction curved her mouth. She knew that she had caught up the essence of his pleasure in her hand.

With instincts that came from she knew not where, Beth feathered her fingers over him slowly. His groan told her that her instincts had been correct.

Duncan caught her wrist to stop her before it was too late. Breath came heavily to him.

“Where have you learned these skills, Beth, to drive me mad so?”

She moved and felt him against her, heated and ready.
“You have taught me everything.”

“Then the teacher has become the student. And willingly so.” Twining his fingers through hers as he held both her hands above her head, Duncan covered her mouth with his and entered her.

And then they were bound for glory, leaving far behind them a world gone mad.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Beth rolled over onto her side in the large bed. Slowly she dislodged herself from the tight cocoon of sleep that was wrapped around her. In the distance there were birds singing, greeting the day, just as there might
be back home. It seemed, she mused, still hazy, as if all
should be peaceful, rather than in a state of turmoil.

Her eyes still closed, Beth reached out for him.

But the place beside her was empty and cool. She opened her eyes to confirm what her fingertips had already ascertained.

A momentary pang of regret at being left alone drifted through her, to be nudged aside by the comforting warmth of memories.

She had fallen asleep in Duncan’s arms, fallen asleep exhausted and contented after a night she would never forget. Never had she dreamed that it could be this way between a man and a woman. Her mother had never even hinted at the subject, and while she knew the basic motions and what was required within a coupling, Beth had not even fantasized about the emotions involved.

She would have never believed the incredible sensations had someone attempted to tell her.

Beth arched, and her body stretched along the sheets. They lay, rumpled and bunched beneath her, a tribute to last night’s lovemaking. A tribute to Duncan and the power he could unleash within her.

Beth sighed and remembered, hugging herself.

Birds called to one another more urgently. It was past
dawn, and time to be up. Time, she thought, to go about the business of why she was here to begin with.

Completely awake now, eager to be about, Beth rose and dressed quickly. It took her but a few minutes to arrange her hair and pin it up, out of the way. The clothes she donned were the same ones she had worn yesterday. Tommy’s baggy linen shirt and britches were far more
to her liking now than the skirts she knew her great-aunt
would have preferred to see on her.

She wanted to be able to move quickly, if need be. Duncan could have no reason for leaving her behind today. If he hadn’t already, she thought suddenly with a start.

Pulling her boots on, she made plans. She would greet her great-aunt and grandmother, then hurry to see about finding Duncan.

There was an unease in the air, and she knew not what it was, or why, only that she felt it.

The birds, she realized, had suddenly stopped singing.

Beth knocked on her great-aunt’s door, but there was no answer. She knocked once more, then slowly opened it, only to find that Cosette was not there.

Though there was no reason for it, the feeling of fore
boding grew greater, like a dark shadow spreading upon her soul.

She pulled the doors shut, attempting to calm her fears. Her father had said that his aunt was an early riser, often leaving her bed just when the moon retreated to its lair.

Still, the feeling that something was wrong persisted, gripping her heart.

Beth turned toward her grandmother’s room as if she was being drawn there by some unforeseen hand. As she knocked, she heard a muffled sound from within. Beth took it to mean that she was allowed to enter. She pushed open the double doors and walked in.

Unlike yesterday, the draperies at the window were pulled back, admitting the dawn and the light. Denise had requested it.

Beth saw her great-aunt kneeling by the bed.

Her heart constricting within her breast, Beth imme
diately rushed to the other side of the four-poster. Anxiously, she looked from her great-aunt to the wan form in the bed.

Her grandmother’s eyes were closed.

“Is something—?”

Cosette raised her bowed head and Beth saw the tears
that stained the shallow cheeks. Beth placed her hand upon the withered shoulder in silent comfort.

Cosette sighed heavily, desperately fighting for control.

“It is her time.”

Beth looked upon the face of her grandmother once more. It was so still, yet not devoid of life, though the eyes remained closed.

“Grandmere?”

The sightless eyes opened, and there seemed to be a lightness there, as if she could see what no one else was able to.

Her dried lips lifted in a smile. “Still here, little one. Waiting to say goodbye. I knew if I but tried, I would remain long enough for you to come.”

Beth looked at her great-aunt. “Why didn’t you send for me?”

But Cosette only shook her head, her eyes fixed upon the face of her sister. “I was afraid to leave, afraid that if I but turned my back—“

The shallow chest moved heavily with each breath. “I said I would wait.”

Denise Beaulieu groped for her granddaughter’s hand. Beth was quick to seal the fragile extremity within her own hands. The smile widened slightly, stretching skin across her cheeks until it looked as if it would tear.

“You said that you would find your father.”

“Yes,” Beth murmured, her voice thick with tears. “I shall. I promise, Grandmere. I won’t rest until I find him and bring him home.”

Denise nodded, though even the slightest action took much from her.

She sighed, relieved. “Then I can die happily, assured that you will.” Her fingers tightened slightly. It was all she was capable of managing. “I know he is still alive. I feel it in these cumbersome old bones of mine.”

The thin smile sagged into the corners of her mouth, unable to remain for long. The effort was too much.

“I will do what I can for you, once I have crossed to the other side.” She said the words wistfully. “I will be
much lighter then. And there are many I know who are
waiting for me.”

For a moment, she fell silent, gasping for air that would not come. A panic edged in Beth. She tightened her hold on her grandmother’s hand, as if that would tether the old woman to life a little longer, to her a little longer.

Denise turned her head toward the direction of her sister’s voice. There was not much time now. She knew it.

“Cosette?”

“Here.” Cosette grasped the dying woman’s other hand, her tears spilling freely and without pause. “I am right here, Denise.”

Denise’s lips moved once without sound. Cosette inclined her head nearer. This time, the words were aloud, a whisper in the wind. “Je t’aime.”

“Je t’aime, aussi.” Cosette replied, tears choking the words until they were almost unrecognizable.

But it was too late.

The old woman had slipped away from them as silently as smoke. Her hand slackened in her sister’s. With the last bit of strength Denise Beaulieu had possessed, she had strived for dignity and willed her eyes closed before she left them.

A flood of tears rose within Beth, hammering at her
throat and chest. But she could not indulge herself by releasing them. This was not the time to allow herself to
give vent to the grief she felt. Her great-aunt needed her strength, not her sorrow.

Cosette buried her head in her arms upon the bed. Her frail body shook with sobs as grief sliced her heart in two.

Slowly, Beth raised the woman from her knees and held her to her breast. Cosette’s grief was boundless, and Beth was at a loss as to what to do. She stroked the
bowed gray head and murmured small words of comfort
that she knew fell on deaf ears.

Perhaps it was more for herself that she said, “Grandmere will be better this way. Where she is now there is no more pain, no more suffering, no more sorrow or cause for it.”

The words were muffled against her shoulder. So distraught was she that Cosette could not even lift her head to speak. “I know, I know, but I shall miss her so. There is no one left for me who remembers anymore. Everyone is younger, and now I am a stranger in a land I once knew.”

She sobbed for a long time.

Duncan found them this way when he came to the bedroom to bid Denise good morning. He noticed it all in one sweeping glance, the draperies thrown open, as if to let a spirit free, the still woman within the bed, the sobbing old woman supported by Beth.

He crossed to them with no hesitation. He was no stranger to death, yet he could never meet with its handiwork easily.

Duncan placed a hand softly on Beth’s shoulder. “She is gone?”

Beth raised her head, the tears she could not shed shimmering in her eyes and on her lashes. She nodded mutely.

He touched the shallow cheeks and felt the old woman’s hands. They were still warm, but even now, they were cooling.

“When?”

Beth raised one shoulder and let it fall. “Just now. Within the half-hour.” She shook her head helplessly. “I do not know.” She looked down at the woman she held in her arms and pressed her lips together. “Time has slipped away from me.”

As if her words touched off something within her
great-aunt, Cosette raised her head and pulled her shoulders back as far as she was able. Dignity returned as she
wiped away the last of her tears, though her eyes were red-rimmed and deeply swollen.

She swallowed twice before she was able to speak. “We must bury her beneath the oak. It was her wish. And quickly.”

“But why—?” Beth began uncertainly. She didn’t understand why there was this sudden look of urgency in her great-aunt’s eyes.

There was no time to explain.

“Just do as I say,” she told them.

Cosette laid a hand to her breast. It was as if she felt a quake there. There was no time for sorrow now, only action. This, above all else, she owed to her dear sister.

“Quickly, quickly. There is no time to lose.” She looked at Duncan as thoughts frantically collided with one another. “There are shovels in the shed at the far end of the garden. We’ll have need of them.”

Turning on the point of her cane, Cosette shuffled to
ward the doorway as if something vicious was but a few
steps behind her.

Beth was completely mystified. There was a dignity
to death, a tradition to follow. Her great-aunt, of all peo
ple, should know this. Had her grief somehow caused her mind to come unhinged?

“But a coffin, a wake,” Beth began helplessly. “The priest—“

Cosette shook her head, cutting short the protest. “There is no time.” Her hand braced on the doorjamb,
she leaned forward on her cane and peered toward her
grandniece’s face. “Do you know what they do to members of our class when they find them dead?”

Beth slowly moved her head from side to side, unable to voice any of the thoughts that were suddenly sprouting in her mind. They were all unspeakable and macabre, though she had heard some hints of it.

But civilized people did not behave in the manner she
had heard whispered. That was for savages who knew no better—Indians, heathens, not people in a country centuries old.

Duncan knew what Cosette was driving at. He wasted no time in argument and saved her the trouble of explaining the indelicacies to Beth.

“They cut off their fingers and wrists to get at the jewelry.”

Beth’s eyes were wide with revulsion as her stomach turned. “How horrible.”

“It doesn’t end there,” he assured her. “After they have what they want, they mutilate the bodies until no one can recognize them, doing unspeakable things with them. When they are finished, they burn what is left.”

Duncan lifted the lifeless body into his arms. In death, as in life, Denise Beaulieu felt as if she weighed almost nothing.

Beth covered her mouth to keep back the gasp that screamed within her lungs. How could people do this to one another? She didn’t understand and wanted not to believe, but Duncan wouldn’t lie to her.

Cosette merely nodded as she moved into the hall. “Quickly,” she urged again. “Quickly.”

Beth grabbed up the sheet from her grandmother’s bed and followed them out of the room.

Chapter Thirty

Jacob was in the kitchen, whistling tunelessly as he attempted unsuccessfully to brew some tea for the morning.
He knew that Beth was partial to tea, and he was partial to Beth.

He looked up in surprise as the solemnly driven en
tourage came down the backstairs and poured into the kitchen.

The tea was forgotten as he looked upon the lifeless body in Duncan’s arms.

Jacob bolted to his feet, upsetting the stool upon which he sat. “What’s happened?” he asked Duncan.

“Madam Beaulieu has died, Jacob,” Duncan informed
him tersely. “Mademoiselle says that there are shovels
in the shed in the garden. Fetch them. We have to bury
Beth’s grandmother quickly.”

It was not in Jacob’s nature to question why. It was
enough that Duncan bade him do it. He hurried from the
house.

They worked as swiftly as they were able, two men
digging the hole that was to be Denise Beaulieu’s final resting place.

As they worked, Beth solemnly wrapped the small body in the sheet that she had taken from her grandmother’s bed. Beth’s hands shook, but she managed to keep back her tears. They would not do her grandmother any good now, and the show of despair might weaken her great-aunt’s resolve.