Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
“I… think you can set me down now,” Valerie said, despite the frost-melting safety of the duke’s strength.
They were inside the castle once more, a relieved Mr. Jarvis wielding a lantern and a nervy smile as he welcomed their return. But the duke ignored Valerie, saying nothing. Silent, he continued on with her in his arms.
“I am perfectly… capable of walking,” she tried to insist, her words stilted, for her mouth still had not thawed and the full-body shivers had not abated at all. “It is my wrist… that hurts, not my… ankle.”
“Your wrist?” the butler interjected with a wincing gasp, like he was the one who had injured himself.
Valerie nodded. “I… stumbled in the… s-snow.”
“Heavens, how awful.” Mr. Jarvis shook his head. “What a relief that His Grace went after you. I couldn’t have rested if I had known you were out there by yourself.”
The duke flashed the butler a discreet, warning look that Valerie just managed to catch.
In an instant, Mr. Jarvis clamped his lips shut and hurried ahead with his lantern.
Evidently, while she had been wading through the snow, they had already discussed where to put her; the butler seemed to be following instructions that she had not been around to hear.
Can he really be as bad as all that, when he came out into the snow to make sure I was safe?
Valerie wondered, peering up at the duke’s handsome profile: his jaw sharp, the shape of his lips just as compelling from the side, his cheekbones so defined that she wanted to rest her thumb in the hollow.
A peculiar impulse, but then she had never quite been normal.
Growing up at Gramfield, no one stood a chance of being normal.
Is he truly a beast? A… oh goodness, what are they called?
She could only remember the French term of ‘loup-garou.’ Her brother, Cecil, was the one who had first introduced her to the word.
Obsessed with grisly stories, the more terrifying the better, he had heard the tale of the Beast of Gévaudan from a schoolfriend with the same taste for the dark and mysterious: a story of a creature, supposedly man by day and wolf by night, that had terrorized the mountains of that French province some fifty years ago, killing over a hundred people.
Is that where you gained your scars? Are you the Beast of Cumbria?
In the reasonable light of the entrance hall, she noted more of those scars.
One sliced through his left eyebrow, just missing the corner of his eye in its diagonal trajectory toward his earlobe; another formed a curve, as if he had been wearing spectacles too long, on the bridge of his nose; a vertical scar marked those beautiful lips, cutting from his nostril to his chin, partially hidden by that shadowed stubble.
The rest were smaller: short, thin slashes across his skin.
“I really think I can walk now,” she said. “You have done more than enough for me.”
The duke’s eyes narrowed.
Making no attempt to set her down, he carried her up the left-hand stairwell that branched off from the entrance hall. Mr. Jarvis was still ahead, lighting the way, and though there were now endless stairs to contend with, the duke was not the least bit out of breath.
After what seemed like an hour of ascent, they passed through an arched door into an unlit hallway. Even without any windows to see out, Valerie could tell they were high up; she could feel it, somehow, like a pressure in her skull.
“Here,” the duke said.
The butler opened a door, though he did not cross the threshold. Instead, he stood there like a guard while the duke walked into the room with Valerie.
“You will not roam this castle without an escort,” the duke said, carrying her over to the shadow of a bed, illuminated by a sliver of moonlight.
He dropped her unceremoniously onto a surprisingly soft mattress. “You can wander this floor, but no further without someone accompanying you,” he ordered. “That being said, it would be for the best if you just stayed in these chambers. You came here to rest, after all.”
“But… it is just my wrist,” she tried to protest, a little breathless at the sight of him standing at the end of the bed. A place no gentleman should have been.
She caught the shine of his eyes in the dim light of the room as he replied, “Goodnight, Miss Wightman.”
With that, he left, giving instructions to Mr. Jarvis to light a fire before vanishing back into the darkness of the hallway. This time, the butler tended to his duties without a word, no pleasantries exchanged as he lit the fire and hastily departed.
Apparently, there was to be no soup or unnecessary hospitality.
Even with the fire beginning to warm the room, a chill lingered in Valerie’s bones that she sensed had nothing to do with the cold at all.
“Saxby was right,” she murmured. “I should have stayed with the carriage.”
Gray skies and muted daylight gently awoke Valerie from a surprisingly restful slumber. A dreamless sleep, where no handsome, scarred men had transformed into fanged beasts, prowling the northern countryside.
But the duke sprang into her mind shortly after waking, as the events of last night slowly awakened with her.
I am really in a castle. I am truly his guest… just as long as I do not cross paths with him or, presumably, say another word to him.
She got up and braced for the unpleasant chill of emerging from the warmth of her coverlets.
So, it was rather confusing to find that the room was still toasty warm.
Indeed, glancing over, she realized that the fire was still ablaze in the hearth.
Someone must have come in while she was sleeping, to tend to it.
The stone floor, however, was as bitingly cold as a frozen lake as she put her bare feet down. Flinching but determined, she padded over to the window to see what the world beyond looked like in the daylight.
A scene of pristine white greeted her eyes, the gray skies continuing to relieve their burden of snow.
Blackbirds and robins pecked at the powdery snowfall to find their wormy breakfasts, while the rest of that perfect blanket of white remained untouched.
Not a soul had disturbed it, and she was filled with a sudden, child-like desire to go dancing through it.
“Oh, heavens,” a startled voice gasped. “You must excuse me, Miss; I didn’t know you were awake.”
Valerie whirled around in equal fright, her arms crossing over her bosom to maintain some dignity. There had been no nightdress provided, so she had slept in her shift; not at all appropriately attired for receiving visitors.
A pair of women stood in the doorway, one older, one younger.
The older woman was perhaps fifty, with brown hair flecked with silver beneath the covering of her lace cap.
The younger could not have been older than sixteen, her hair the same shade of brown, her pretty face carrying more than a passing resemblance to the older.
Indeed, it was like seeing the past and the future standing side-by-side.
“I… only just woke up,” Valerie replied awkwardly.
The older woman held up a basket of wood. “Do you mind if we carry on with our duties? Only, we’ve got to be back downstairs shortly to help with breakfast.” She paused. “Or, I could leave my daughter to tend to you? I don’t suppose you’ve got a lady’s maid with you.”
“Do not let me distract you,” Valerie replied. “And thank you, but I am not in need of a lady’s maid. I have but the one dress, and as I managed to take it off by myself, I daresay I shall manage perfectly well putting it back on.”
She laughed to let the women know she was trying to be humorous.
The younger woman stifled a chuckle, the older woman’s face cracking into a grin.
“Well then, we’ll hurry ourselves so you can have your peace,” the older woman said. “And if you should need aught else, I’m Kate Mullens, the housekeeper here, and this is Esther.”
Valerie blinked. “The housekeeper? Surely, with such a prominent position, you should not be bothering yourself with my fire.”
“Nonsense, Miss,” Kate replied cheerily.
“It has been so long since we had a guest in this castle that I insisted on being permitted to take care of you. Besides, it’s my hope that Esther here will one day go on to the manor of a good family, so the sooner she can learn how to behave around a lady, the better. ”
“I am no real lady,” Valerie said, a note of shyness in her voice. “I am but a Baron’s daughter. Miss Valerie Wightman.”
And I am not certain you would call my family ‘good.’ Society does not.
Kate bustled over to the fire and began shoving some more logs on. “That’s lady enough, Miss; I assure you,” she replied as she worked. “Did you sleep well? Would you care for more blankets? I know it can get rather cold in these rooms.”
“I slept very well, thank you,” Valerie replied, discreetly reaching for one of the blankets on the bed to drape around herself.
“Oh, but what a night you had,” the housekeeper continued animatedly, her hand flying to her chest. “Mr. Jarvis was telling me all about it. He keeps threatening to go and check on your carriage to see if the driver has returned, but I told him, “Mr. Jarvis, there won’t be anyone coming back from town in this. The roads won’t be clear for days, and it’s still snowing. ” So, he has relented for now.”
Valerie swallowed tightly. “Days?”
“Not even the physician can make it through,” Kate replied with a nod. “But there’s a lass coming from the cottages to see to your hand. There’s no one around here who’d trust anyone more than her with their ailments and injuries, so don’t you worry; she’ll have you healed in no time.”
Absently, Valerie rubbed the sore wrist and glanced down to note the faint swelling.
It did not feel as bad as it had done last night, and she wagered that just lying it in the snow for an hour would probably get rid of the swelling, but she was a guest; she would abide by their way of doing things.
Their way of doing things…
She realized with a start that there was a ripe opportunity right in front of her. No one knew the goings-on of a household better than the staff, and no one knew more about a residence’s owner than the housekeeper. Indeed, that was what they dangled between the keys on their chatelaines: secrets.