Seduced by a Stranger (5 page)

The possibility was both infinitely disturbing and utterly absurd.

Turning her face to the window once more, Catherine leaned close and gazed out while from behind her came the scraping and scratching of the maid’s efforts to light the fire.

Below, on the drive, St. Aubyn mounted the great, black beast, his movements elegant and spare. The horse tossed its head and lifted one massive hoof before clopping it down once more, but St. Aubyn settled it with a practiced hand, leaning forward a bit as he spoke to the animal. Whatever he said, the horse appeared to like the sound of it.

Abruptly, St. Aubyn twisted in the saddle, looking up, his face tipped to her window. She felt the weight and intensity of his gaze. The irony of that did not escape her. A moment ago, he would not have seen her standing here, for the chamber behind her would have been completely dark, making her form in the window only shadow on shadow. But now the maid had come with her candle, leaving Catherine backlit by the glow. Vulnerable to his gaze.

She knew St. Aubyn saw her here, watching him.

He made no overt sign of that, did not incline his head or raise a hand in a farewell wave. But he
did
see her. How confounding that the thought both rattled and pleased her.

Holding her place, she watched him ride away.

“Sir Gabriel takes his leave of the abbey at a late hour,” Catherine murmured, turning from the window at last.

“Yes, miss.” The kindling had caught under the maid’s deft hand and a small blaze already flared to life. The girl stoked it expertly.

Catherine stared at the flames, entranced. She wanted to move closer, to hold her fingers outstretched until the fire danced toward them, but not close enough to singe. She had no desire to court injury. Dragging her gaze away, she smiled at the maid as she rose from the place she knelt.

“I am sorry, miss,” the girl said again. “Sorry there was no fire. Of course, the master knows of it, but he’ll forget by the time he returns. He’s like that. His mind ever on other things. But Mrs. Bell is one who never forgets.” Reaching up, she adjusted the skewed mopcap on her limp brown hair. “Please, say nothing to Mrs. Bell. I won’t let it happen again. I promise.”

“What is your name?”

The girl gnawed at her lower lip, then said, “Susan, miss. Susan Parker.”

“There is no reason for me to mention it to Mrs. Bell, Susan.” Especially since Catherine suspected that the housekeeper had planned it this way and would take particular glee in Catherine’s acknowledgment of any inconvenience.

Susan sagged with relief. Taking up her candle, she held the flame to the wick of the one Catherine had set down after the wind snuffed it. The wick caught and flared. With her free hand, she again fixed her cap and chewed anxiously at her lower lip, then said, “Thank you, miss. Mrs. Corkle—she’s the cook—she’ll make a supper tray for you and I’ll bring it up straightaway.”

“That would be lovely. Oh, and do you have a key to this room? There was none in the door.”

The maid frowned, and reached for her apron. She had a small ring of keys similar to Mrs. Bell’s larger one. Carefully, she toyed with one, then hesitated and reached for another. “Mrs. Bell don’t like to come to this wing, so she gave me the keys to all the rooms…Is it this one? No…this one? One of them’s the master key for this wing,” she said, and frowned down at the two. “Not this one”—she let the key drop and lifted the first—“this one”—then she dropped it and lifted the other once more to slide it free of the ring as she gave a decisive nod—“this is the one for your door.”

Catherine accepted the key and offered her thanks, then waited until the girl was nearly to the door before she spoke again. “Where does Sir Gabriel go at this hour of the night?”

The maid paused but did not turn. “I couldn’t say, miss.”

A twinge of guilt speared Catherine as she contemplated her next words, but she ignored it and said in a gentle voice, “I could ask Mrs. Bell. I am certain she would enjoy a chat.”

The unspoken implication sent the maid spinning back to face her, the candle dish trembling in her hand. Catherine felt low indeed for perpetrating such a foul trick. Of course, she would never report the girl to the housekeeper. And of course, the girl had no way to know that.

“Tell me,” Catherine said softly. “Where does he go?” Even as she repeated the question, she could not say why she felt such urgency to know the answer.

Susan made a moan of distress. Her eyes were wide, her brows raised. Catherine noted that the right one was bald in the center, bisected by what appeared to be an old scar.

More lip chewing, and then Susan blurted in a rush, “To London. He goes to London, miss. He says he likes to travel at night. I heard Mr. Norton, the butler, say once that the way is not safe and is riddled with thieves. Sir Gabriel laughed. I remember it clear as day because the sound of it was off. Harsh and ruthless. Sir Gabriel said he would like to meet a thief on the road, that it would justify any actions, and Mr. Norton went white in the face and said nothing more.” Susan dropped her gaze, and Catherine thought that was the end of her story, but then she whispered, “There was a man found dead by the road the following day. People say he was a thief.” She shook her head. “’Course, it’s all talk. No one hereabouts ever saw the body. It was all just talk.”

Catherine stared at her, amazed by such an outpouring of information. She had wanted only to know where St. Aubyn went. She had not expected such panoply of fact and opinion.

“Thank you.” She smiled, and felt lower still when the girl did not smile in return, but stared at her with frightened dark eyes, and said bitterly, “Does that buy your silence then, miss?”

“Yes.” Catherine wanted to say more, but could summon no appropriate words, and so she held silent as, with a huff of despair, Susan scooted out the door and away.

Interesting that Susan Parker thought her master ruthless. Catherine had heard some similar gossip in London. That Gabriel St. Aubyn had run to ground a thief who had dared to pick his pocket and dragged him to the gaol himself. At the time, she had thought the story exaggeration, but having now met the man, she wondered if the outlandish tale held a kernel of truth.

Later, it was a different girl who brought the supper tray, and Catherine regretted how unkind she had been. But she did not regret the information she had gleaned. In knowledge lay safety. That lesson was hard learned.

She lifted the cover from her supper plate. Roasted beef and cauliflower in cream and a ragout of some sort. The food did not appeal, though it was prettily arranged and aromatic. Catherine left the meal untouched, thinking it was the exhaustion of the journey that stole her appetite and left her with an aching, dizzy head and a dry, tight throat.

But late in the night, when she awoke with a pain in her belly, so hard and sharp that she gasped and pressed her hands tight against the shock of it, she realized she must have eaten something that was off. She recalled the underdone mutton from the coaching inn, and the recollection of that greasy fare was enough to make her moan.

Then the pain twisted even tighter and she recalled Madeline’s wild fears of poison and the faint, bitter taste of almond that had flavored the tart. She recalled too the revulsion on Gabriel St. Aubyn’s face when she had offered him the plate.

Horror chilled her as she lay panting in her bed, unable to believe that Madeline was right, that someone in this house was trying to kill her, but unable to discount it out of hand in the face of her current suffering.

Mutton or poison.

As Catherine tossed and turned through the endless night, her head swimming, her belly cramping, she was hard-pressed to choose the more likely culprit of the two.

St. Giles, England, March 1828

Martha Grimsby sat alone in a shabby little room in Church Lane, St. Giles. Her tiny chamber was at the very top of a decrepit three-story building that was so ancient and broken it was forced to lean on the building next door to keep from toppling over. There was a window directly across from where she sat, the glass blackened and cracked, with a board nailed over half of it to keep the rain out.

A piss-poor job it did.

The sleet and rain beat on the glass sending a frigid torrent through the crack at the edge where the board met the window. The night was colder than it ought to have been at this time of year. Martha drew her patched and mended shawl tight around her shoulders and huddled on the soiled bed that was putrefied with old sweat and damp rot. Her single tallow candle burned low, the flame dancing and swaying, painting silhouettes of monsters and gnomes against her wall. Once, in a time long past, she had fancied the shadows as ponies and swans. She knew better now.

With a sigh, she tipped her head back and stared at the candle-darkened ceiling as she pondered the life that was hers. The instant her thoughts swayed toward the dangerous slope of regret, she dragged them back and forced herself to think of nothing at all. A different girl had grown up in Yorkshire where her father was head groom at a nearby estate. A different girl had been foolish enough to run off to London. A different girl lived this hell on earth.

Not her. She could not think of that rosy-cheeked innocent and imagine it had ever been her. That was a sure path to madness.

Pushing her palms against the mattress, she heaved herself from the bed. She was low on funds and down to the stub of her last candle and a dry crust of bread. She would have to brave the weather and try her luck at finding a willing gent on the nearest streets, close to home. She had little choice, not if she wanted to eat.

The decision made, she moved briskly lest she be tempted to change her mind. She left her sad chamber and went down the flights of creaking, rotted stairs to a narrow corridor at the back of the house. The door there was skewed on its hinges and she had to put her shoulder to it to make it open, then turn and put her shoulder to it again to force it shut.

The wind slapped her, a cold, brutal hand, but the rain had eased to a trickle and she was grateful for that. Head bowed, she made her way to Carrier Street and lounged against a building, glad to see there was only one other girl out, far up the street. Competition on a night like this was unwelcome, for the pickings were slim with people driven indoors by the chill and the damp.

For a long while, no likely candidate arrived. There was a group of drunken laborers who spewed from the alehouse, but they were the type of laborers who never did much work and so had little coin. Martha suspected that what funds they had had were already spent on drink, so she shrank into the shadows and let them pass.

Some time later, the rain stopped altogether and a stocky gent sauntered along. He wasn’t a swell. Not by half, for his coat showed shabby at the sleeves with a patch on the elbow, but he looked like he might have a coin or two, so Martha stepped forward with a smile.

Then he turned his face toward her, and she shrank back. He had small eyes, mean eyes, narrowed in contemplation. She knew what sort he was right off.

“Fancy some company?” he asked with an ugly grin, offering the greeting she usually used.

She shivered and backed up a step. She was a smart girl now. She’d learned after a broken bone or two how to be a smart girl. Some men liked it rough, and she had no doubt he was one of ’em.

“Not tonight,” she murmured. She spun on her heel and hurried off, skidding and sliding along the wet street, anxious to be away.

Heart racing, she rounded the corner and let one shoulder sag against the wall. He had not followed.

“Hello.” The voice came from behind her, low and rich.

With a squeak she jumped and turned, her eyes widening in amazement. A swell stood there, looking at her questioningly. A
real
swell such as one never saw here, for the whores on these streets were not the sort a gentleman would deign to touch. But there was no question. He
was
a gentleman with a fine coat and polished boots and spun gold hair that framed a truly wonderful face.

“Hello,” she managed to reply.

“Had a fright?” he asked with a small smile.

She pressed her palm to her chest and nodded. “I have.” For an instant, she felt shy, an odd, overwhelming emotion that she hadn’t known in years and years, an emotion she had thought never to know again. Then she summoned her courage and grabbed hold of her opportunity and asked, “Up for some company, sir?”

He studied her in silence, his gaze traveling leisurely from her crown to her toes, and back again. His perusal made her feel both terrible and wonderful. She held her breath, waiting.

Then he smiled, and she thought the sun had come out, though the night was black as Old Mag’s rotting toe before they hacked it off.

“You’ll do,” he said, still smiling. With a twirl of his fingers he offered her a gleaming gold coin. “Come with me.”

And like a lamb, Martha followed where he led.

Cairncroft Abbey

A week after her arrival at the abbey, Catherine sat with Madeline on a cold stone bench in the south garden. The sun peeked from between the clouds and the breeze made stray wisps of her hair dance. With her face tipped down, she watched the hem of her dress lift and billow, then settle once more as the gust died. There was little else to watch here at Cairncroft, where time moved at a languid pace.

Madeline’s mood had improved with the passing days. Catherine wondered if it was St. Aubyn’s absence or her own presence that contributed to the lightening of her friend’s spirits. Probably it was some combination of the two, but she did not ask. She had no wish to hamper Madeline’s progress or distress her in any way, for Madeline had become almost reasonable. No longer did she turn her face aside when food was brought to her, but instead ate a bite or two, providing that Catherine sampled the fare first and assured her of its palatability.

On Catherine’s first morning at Cairncroft, Madeline had refused to eat. With the memory of the previous night’s torment—the way her stomach had knotted and cramped, the pain a jagged knife slicing through her—fresh in Catherine’s mind, she had been hard-pressed to fault her. In the clear light of day, she had assessed the matter of her nocturnal illness and determined that it was the horrid meal at the coaching inn that had made her unwell rather than the tart she had taken from the tea tray. Nonetheless, that afternoon the sight of a plate of small crumpets and cakes had made her wary. She had thrust aside her qualms, convinced the stomach pains had been mere happenstance, and she had sampled an iced cake, thrilled to detect no hint of almond. Madeline had followed her lead.

But Catherine had avoided the tarts on the tea tray that afternoon and the next, and the following day, Mrs. Corkle left them off entirely.

Madeline had noticed their absence. “My cousin despises raspberry tarts,” she had said. “I wonder that Mrs. Corkle does not know it, that she serves them when he is here and leaves them off when he is not.”

Her observations made Catherine conjure an image of Gabriel St. Aubyn’s expression of revulsion when she had offered him the plate that first day in Madeline’s chamber. As though he had known there was something off about those tarts. The memory continued to nag at her like a stone in her boot.

“Are you very bored?” Madeline asked now as a cloud drifted across the sun.

“Not at all,” Catherine replied with a smile. She was both surprised by Madeline’s perceptiveness—she seemed far too buried in her own misery to notice aught around her—and dismayed that she had lowered her defenses enough to allow Madeline to peek through. “I am very pleased to be here with you, Madeline. These past days have been restful, and your companionship a balm to my soul.”

She
was
pleased to be here. She owed Madeline a debt she could never repay and she was grateful to have the opportunity to offer her a kindness, even if it was only the hand of friendship. Besides, the alternatives to Cairncroft Abbey were few, so in effect, Madeline was doing
her
a service.

Madeline made a face. “I know you are pleased to be here, but you are so careful with your words, as though you fear overexciting me. I do wish you would tell me something. Anything.” She paused. “What was London like? Certainly more exciting than this.” She made a vague gesture toward the looming gray face of the house. “What was your life like
before
?”

For an instant, Catherine could not speak, the question triggering a moment of horror.
Before
. Before her parents died. Before the horrors of the years that followed their loss. Before the fire.

Memories surged in a sickening, swirling tide that grabbed hold of her and threatened to pull her deep. With rigid determination, she gathered the frayed strands of her control.

“My life was…” Her life had been a type of death, cold and dark and bleak, and each time she had been raised up with hope, she had been dashed back against the ground. How many times could hope be squashed beneath a heavy, booted heel before it raised up no more?

But Madeline would not wish to know of that.
What was your life like before?

She did not mean before the fire, she meant
after
…in London, before coming here to Cairncroft Abbey.

“My life was busy,” Catherine continued in a carefully modulated tone. “My employer, Mrs. Northrop, spent a great deal of time at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital ministering to the less fortunate. As her paid companion, I was expected to spend my time there, as well. And she was very involved in the opening of a lodging house for the deserving poor in St. Giles. The hours we did not spend at Bart’s, we spent working toward the opening of that house.”

“And was that a great success? Were there speeches and crowds and baskets of food handed out, all with much fanfare and glee?” Madeline asked, her eyes sparking with uncharacteristic animation.

Catherine had not the heart to squelch her excitement. The venture—in Mrs. Northrop’s opinion—was a wretched failure. More than once after the house had opened, Mrs. Northrop had bemoaned the fact that there were only disreputable creatures in St. Giles and not a single deserving soul in the bunch. But Catherine was a far less rigid judge. She understood that desperation could force one to make all manner of horrific choices.

Had she herself not been poised on the razored edge of just such a sword?

“And do you mean to say you actually went to St. Giles?” Madeline continued.

“I did, almost every day. And I met some lovely women there. Strong women and kind.”

“Other women of good works. I recall you mentioned one woman in your letters…she runs a school, does she not?” Madeline murmured.

“Yes.” Among other pursuits, for in St. Giles, running a school was not something that put food in one’s belly or a roof overhead.

“But what terrible wretches you must have seen, as well! Fallen women who are surely bound for Hell.”

Catherine cast her a glance through her lashes, and saw that Madeline’s pale cheeks were bright with two spots of color, her eyes sparkling and clear. Religious fervor? She had not expected such. But perhaps it was only simple conversation that brought liveliness to her words.

“Is there a Hell that is worse than what those women have endured?” she asked, thinking of the girls who were pale and broken, dying of vile disease, their every word and action laced with clear regret that ever they had been born.

Did their transgressions truly destine them for damnation? If so, then she shared their fate, for her crimes were far worse.

Madeline’s brows rose at Catherine’s somewhat heretical question. “Do you not believe in Hell?” she whispered, leaning close to peer into Catherine’s eyes, her expression intent.

For an instant, Catherine recalled an enormous, bright fire, smelled burning wood and flesh, heard the screams that carried, high and piercing, through the night. She had seen a version of Hell, felt its heat, known the endless despair that surely those wretches thus consigned felt. All the more reason to grab what she could of life, to make what she could of any circumstance.

“I do not know,” she temporized. “Perhaps death is all there is.”

Madeline recoiled as though struck, and Catherine immediately regretted allowing their conversation to travel this thorny path. She cast about for some other topic to introduce, but Madeline unexpectedly filled the breach.

“Tell me, then, about your time in the hospital,” she urged. “You tended to the sick at…Bart’s, was it? Oh, how awful that must have been.” She shuddered. “I had imagined you accompanying Mrs. Northrop on rounds of afternoon visits and walks in Hyde Park. Perhaps a carriage ride or a shopping excursion…”

“No.” Catherine laughed in a short burst of genuine humor. “
That
would have been awful. I enjoyed working with her at the hospital.” She had not liked Mrs. Northrop, with her sour demeanor and ever-woeful predictions, but she
had
liked the way the woman ensured that Catherine’s hours were consumed by the needs of the desperately poor and ill. It gave her less time to dwell on her own sorrows, and she preferred that. What value was there in bemoaning the past?

Madeline was silent for a long moment, two faint, vertical lines drawn between her brows. Finally, she whispered, “Did you see many people die in that hospital? Were you there by their bedsides when they breathed their last?”

There was something dark and desperate in her tone.

“No. Never,” Catherine lied, determined not to distress Madeline further.
Yes. Far too many times
. And each time, in her mind’s eye she had seen different faces, different deaths, ones that would haunt her until she herself went to her grave.