Moonlight Surrender (Moonlight Book 3) (40 page)

“In the past, Beth,” her father whispered, slipping in and out of consciousness, though he fought hard to stay awake. “It’s all in the past. There is the future still before us.”

Beth clung to that, for both of them.

Andre fell into a fever. She did what she could for him and perforce left the rest up to God.

And all the while, she thought of what Duncan wouldn’t tell her, of the horrible death her proud great-aunt had met. It was hard for Beth to keep hope in her heart with thoughts of all she had just seen lurking in the back of her mind like a festering, dark secret that threatened to overwhelm her.

*
 
*
 
*

Through the daylong journey across the Channel, Duncan remained on deck and on his guard. Though they had more than paid their way, Duncan wanted to ensure that the captain would not attempt to exact re
venge on them for the way they had gained his acquies
cence.

It would not have been a difficult matter to turn the ship around and head back to France.

Duncan kept his eye on the ship’s wheel and his hand on the hilt of his sword.

The captain needed no more than Duncan’s presence to understand the silent message being given him. Though in his heart, he would have enjoyed handing his passengers over to the new order that haunted the realm in France, he knew that he would not live out the day such an occurrence came to pass.

He took them to Dover. And lived.

When he saw the English coastline shimmering on the horizon like a woman waiting for her man to return from the sea, his heart was filled with joy. Duncan hurried below deck and knocked on Beth’s cabin door.

She was quick to open it. Her apprehensive look softened slightly when she saw his expression. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I want you to see something with me.” Taking her hand, he led her topside to the deck. Positioning her against the railing, he placed his hands on her shoulders. “Look,” he pointed. “There. England.” There was a proud echo in his voice.

Tears glistened in her eyes and spilled freely down her cheeks as she looked.

He heard the change in her breathing and turned her around to see for himself. He thought she’d be happy. “Beth, what’s the matter?”

“I never thought I would be so grateful to see English
soil.” She covered her mouth to keep back the sob of re
lief that welled in her throat.

He laced his arm around her in silent comfort. Yes, he
thought, he had forgotten how much she’d disliked the British and how she had initially felt about the things that had stood between them.

There was a world of difference between them. And half a world that would yet come.

But now was not the time to think on that, though the
emotion tugged at him both urgently and sadly.

They were the first to disembark from the ship, getting off before the cargo was unloaded and only moments after the ship had docked at the harbor. The captain stood off to the side and glared as he watched them leave his vessel.

“We could stop at the inn,” Duncan suggested, though he would have preferred to be on his way.

Beth was of the same mind as he.

“No, I want to get to Shalott as quickly as possible,” Beth told him. She looked at her father and Andre. “They need bed rest.” She raised her eyes to Duncan’s. “Duncan, can we get a coach?”

A coach would be slower, but he doubted that the boy
would survive another long ride on horseback. And it would be easier to transport her father inside a coach as well.

“Jacob, stay with her. I’ll see what I can do about getting us a coach.”

He was back within the half-hour, riding beside a
coach driven by a small man with flaming red hair. He
looked more like a gnome than a man. His shoulders were hunched as if he were perpetually seeking shelter
from the cold. He looked pleased for the business and
guaranteed them a ride, “as soft as if you were being cradled to your mother’s bosom.”

It was argument enough for Beth.

She rode within the coach with her father and Andre as Jacob rode alongside and Duncan rode on top, with the driver. Duncan’s horse was tied to the back. Beth heard the endless murmur of the driver’s high voice and didn’t envy Duncan the position he had chosen.

She smiled to herself, thinking of the care he had given her and everything he had done. She could not wait to put all this behind her and pick up the thread of the new life she had found, a life with him.

All he need do, she thought, was ask her.

Two days later, they came to the outskirts of Shalott. As they approached the manor, word spread quickly from cottage to cottage that Duncan had returned. It was, Beth thought, as she watched people in the fields wave at them as they passed, a little like being in the
company of returning royalty. Despite the goings-on she
had endured, the notion made her smile.

Duncan watched as he saw the manor rise up before him. A feeling tugged at his gut and he recognized it for what it was: a feeling of homecoming. He was home.

Shalott was home now, far more than any other place had ever been. Even more than the sea. And as long as Sin-Jin remained in America, it would remain so for him and his family.

It was a good feeling, and he cherished it the way only an orphan could. He thought of the boy within the coach and wondered if Andre would wish to remain here with him.

It was a foregone conclusion that the others would be leaving. But Duncan chose not to dwell on that now. It would distill the joy he was experiencing.

Samuel was at the coach before the horses had been
brought to a complete stop. His small eyes glowed with relief and happiness as he looked up at Duncan. “You made it back.”

Duncan leaped gracefully from the driver’s seat to the ground just as Jacob pulled up behind him. “I told you I would, old man.” He laughed heartily to see that nothing had changed. God, but it felt wonderful to be here. “Have I ever lied to you?”

Samuel pretended to look at him somberly. “More times than there are fingers and toes in Shalott.”

“Now who lies, you old bastard?” With a cry of joy, Duncan found himself engulfed in a bearhug, though he was by far the larger of the two.

“Good to see you, boy,” Samuel murmured, his voice
getting lost against Duncan’s brawn. It was just as well. It was in danger of cracking, he thought. “Good to see you.” He released Duncan. “And even you.” Samuel laughed as he turned to Jacob.

The old man looked up just as Beth stepped down from the coach. He was quick to present his hand to her. “Mistress, did you—?” Samuel raised tufted eyebrows to silently end his question.

Beth nodded. “We did.”

She looked about at the smiling faces and felt the same odd tug at her heart that Duncan had. Sylvia stood sobbing her relief in the doorway.

Same old Sylvia, she thought with amusement.

Her attention returned to Samuel. “We need a litter, or some way to carry him inside.”

Samuel was already turning on his heel.

“Forget the litter, Samuel,” Duncan called.

Duncan nudged Beth aside. Reaching within the carriage, he took her father gently into his arms. He instructed Jacob to take the boy.

Duncan looked down into her face. “All you ever need, Beth,” he told her quietly as he turned on his heel, “is me.”

Beth looked at Duncan’s departing back and her heart quickened.

I know.

With Amy’s good food and her tender care, her father and Andre mended far more quickly than Beth thought it was possible. The very fact that they were free of the shadow of the Bastille did much to aid their recovery.

Time seemed to pass her on winged feet as she saw to their care.

It was the other matter that troubled her. It seemed that ever since their return, Duncan had gone out of his way to avoid her. For three days he was not to dinner when she came down, or in his room when she went to speak to him.

Everywhere she was, he was not—by design, she both sensed and feared.

A chill began to cover her heart.

So on the eve of the fifth day, when she heard his voice coming from the study, Beth was quick to enter. She did so without knocking, fearing that if she hesitated, she would lose her courage. The courage that was quickly waning.

Duncan looked surprised to see her and immediately restless, as if he wanted to be gone.

What happened? she wondered. This wasn’t the man who had held her in his arms, or ridden at her side in France. What had happened since they had docked on this English soil?

She measured her words and her steps as she entered. “Hello, Duncan. We seem to be missing one another these days.”

Duncan dismissed Hank. “I’ll talk to you presently,” he said. The lanky man swept from the room, though his eyes remained on Beth until he was out in the hall.

Beth laced her hands together, suddenly feeling afraid, though there was no name to her fear. “We’ll be leaving soon.”

She watched for a sign that the news disturbed him, but her words seemed to have no effect on him.

Don’t you care?

“My mother has been living in hell all these long months, worried about my father. I want to set her mind at ease.”

He looked at her and told himself that she was just another thing he could not have. It should not make a difference. He did not even come close to convincing himself. “I’d imagine that she is worried about you as well.”

Words were difficult now between them. Why? They never had been before. Is it so hard to speak to me,

Duncan? Have I displeased you somehow? “Yes, I sup
pose there is that, too.”

He looked at her, as if to memorize each feature, each expression and press them between the pages of a book within his mind. “You’ll be happy to go.”

Beth stared at him, wondering if he was attempting to put into her mouth the words that he wanted to hear. Was he sending her away? Was it just a matter of sharing her bed a few times and then being done with her?

Or had all the dangers they had been through left a bitter taste in his mouth, after all?

But if that wasn’t the case, why wasn’t he asking her to remain? He had but to say it, to ask. She couldn’t
very well throw herself at him. Not if the chance existed
that he didn’t want her.

Because he couldn’t resist, Duncan allowed himself the pleasure of touching her once more. Very lightly, he sifted her hair through his fingers and watched the moonlight cast it in gold as it rained down.

Moved, it was on the very tip of his tongue to ask her to remain with him. To beg her to stay, the way he had never allowed himself to beg for anything before.

But what could he give her?

For the first time in his life, his legacy and his heritage, or rather the very lack of it, stared him in the face.

She was descended from bluebloods and he was the son of a stablemaster’s daughter and a bastard to boot. She was returning with her father to a vast plantation, while he had nothing to call his own but the loyalty of his men. And while he was rich in that, rich in spirit, he was poor in everything else. In all the things she had flowered into womanhood enjoying.

What could he offer her in place of a life at Eagle’s Nest? A home in some other man’s manor?

It wasn’t enough for someone like Beth.

Feeling increasingly more awkward, she looked at the floor. “It will be good to see my mother and my sisters again.”

She was anxious to leave, and who could blame her? “So when will you leave?”

Are you that anxious to see me go? Very well then, I shall.

“I thought, perhaps, tomorrow . . .” Her voice trailed
off as she looked up, hoping to see something within his
eyes that asked her to stay. “Or the day after.”

There was nothing there. His eyes were flatter than the piece of paper she had seen Duncan looking at when she entered.

He nodded. “I’ll have some of my men take you and your father to the harbor.”

“And the boy,” she told him. He raised his brow. “Andre. He’s coming with us.”

This was news. He had just assumed that the boy
would remain here with him, to fit in as best he could.
“You’re taking him?”

Beth moved restlessly around the room, as restless now as she had been in that tiny room at the inn in Paris, but for an entirely different reason.

“My father has adopted him in a manner of speaking. The boy is an orphan with no family left now.” Beth shivered though the room was warm. She ran her hands along her arms. “Robespierre thought to break the line that came down from King Louis himself.”

There it was again: lineage. All his life, Duncan had hated the class system, and now he found himself trapped by it, for she belonged on one side of it and he on the other. And he knew that better than she.

“Now it won’t be broken.” He moved away from her as if standing so close was painful to him. “Well, I’ve some things to see to.”

She had hoped that perhaps they could walk in the
moonlight one last time. Even this was denied to her, she thought. “So late?”

“Yes,” he snapped.

The frustration of wanting her and knowing that for her own good, he could not have her, was rubbing him raw. He had forgotten himself and his station. He had enjoyed her body, not knowing that he would fall in love with the rest of her as well.

Duncan knew he could not bring her down to his level. And someday she would thank him for it. Though right now, he damned the God who’d made him for that very thing.

Beth stood in the study and watched him leave her. She had thought, would have sworn, that he cared for her. That he loved her the way she loved him.

It was a mistake.

An illusion.

She pressed her lips together. It had been her mistake,
not his. A mistake that had driven a dagger through her heart. She could feel it bleeding even now.

Well, she wasn’t a fool; at least, not completely. She would not let him see her cry for him. If he didn’t want her, then it was his loss and he the fool, not she.