Chapter Fifteen #2
Now Lisle was gasping. She couldn’t tell what reaction Betsy had.
Her ears were too full of what had to be her heart pounding as it got harder and faster, and she was very afraid that was exactly what it was.
Then her eyes closed, reopened…narrowed.
His throng was down to twenty, maybe less.
She knew then exactly what he was doing.
He was making certain all eyes were on him, and not anything else.
And, with an audience of three women, he must not think it presented much of an issue.
She just couldn’t believe he was as good as he was.
“You can cease this,” she said.
“What?” he asked easily.
“You’re a very handsome man, Monteith…very. Manly. Strong. Virile. Good to look at.” Lisle made her voice purr the words.
His smile fell. His eyes widened. Betsy choked.
“And I believe I’ve seen enough.”
“I beg your pardon?” he replied. Betsy’s reaction wasn’t describable as it sounded like she couldn’t catch any breath, let alone choke on it.
“It’s nae longer necessary. They’ve gone.” Lisle knew she was right, because she’d moved close to him to whisper it, and those dark brown, ale-colored eyes had sparked.
He looked over her head. Lisle felt the bubble of mirth as he swallowed, and the lump in his throat moved. “Mary?” he asked.
“My lord?” the servant woman answered.
“You have strange ways of serving your mistress.”
“B-but…Her Ladyship wished to see the chapel,” Mary MacGreggor continued, her voice unsure and sounding like she would rather cry than have to answer.
“I see.”
Lisle’s back straightened. She was being treated like she’d been at the convent school, back when she’d transgressed. She hadn’t liked it then, and she didn’t like it now, especially when it was turned on someone other than her.
“Mary is accompanying me. I wanted to see the Bible, my lord,” she said loudly.
“I would have shown it to you.”
“I have two feet.”
He looked down to them, and back. It felt like a caress, and she didn’t know much what one felt like.
Lisle told her own body to hush, but her lips parted to allow the pant of breath she didn’t want him to see.
It was ridiculous! She was in a hall, outside locked chapel doors, with two servant women watching, and he wasn’t being genuine, anyway.
It was for show. Everything he did was. He’d been truthful to her only once.
He’d said he was living a lie, and he was very good at it.
“True,” he said.
“What?” she asked.
A smile tipped his lips again as he looked back to her. “You have two feet,” he answered.
“Oh. Aye. And I can use them to walk. By myself. Unescorted.”
“This is a very big castle,” he responded.
“I ken as much. ’Tis also a very interesting castle.”
His lips lost out. He smiled again. This time, it looked genuine.
“How so?”
“’Tis full of secrets.” She whispered it.
His smile dropped. He looked over her head at Mary again. “You followed my orders this morn?” he asked.
“Aye.”
“Her Ladyship had a bath?”
“I smell like I had a bath, doona’ I?” Lisle said before Mary could reply.
He bent his head toward her and sniffed. “Aye,” he replied.
“Well, you doona’,” she said.
“Nae?” he asked, pulling back a bit to look down at her.
“You smell like a horse. Make that two horses.”
His smile was back. “I see. If I ordered a bath, would you assist me with it?”
Betsy was going to break into tears if she listened much longer. Lisle looked at the poor girl’s red face, and turned back to Monteith. “Why doona’ you instruct my maids to see to it, and we’ll negotiate for such a thing while they’re gone.”
“We will?” he asked. He waved his hand, and Lisle listened for the steps as the women left. She knew they were, too. They were almost running.
“Ah, aye. After you show me where your first wife is, of course.”
“My first wife?” he asked.
Lisle thought she saw real confusion behind those amber eyes. It was an exhilarating feeling to know she was the one causing it. “You doona’ even have her listed in the family Bible. For shame, Lord Monteith.”
“The family Bible?”
“I was in the chapel for a reason. I was looking for the entry of your first marriage. It isn’t there, but you know that already. You probably ordered it that way.”
“I did…did I?”
He had his self-assurance and the personae he was showing back in place. Lisle watched as it dropped, like a film across his features. She shivered despite herself.
“I was in the chapel for a reason, Langston. I was checking for this woman.”
He grinned down at her. She couldn’t fathom the cause, but a moment later he answered it.
“You’ve just called me Langston,” he said.
“So?”
“Without being prompted. Without any hesitation.”
“So?”
“I’ll save further words for our negotiation. What is it you’re offering, again?”
“An assist…with your bath. Tonight. In your chamber.”
His eyes shut and she could have sworn a tremor ran through his frame, but it couldn’t have, because when he opened them and looked back at her, nothing looked like it had changed.
“And what is it you want for such a momentous thing?”
“Your first wife. I want to know where she is.”
“Why?”
“Because if she’s wed to you, I am na’. That has merit.”
The brown ale color of his eyes all but disappeared as blackness colored over any hint of personality not only in them, but everywhere on him. He had a stone look to every feature, too.
“You want me to show you this thing?”
Lisle moved another step closer, almost touching him.
He caught his breath at it, and if he didn’t want her to see such a thing, he shouldn’t be running about his estate with nothing on to hide it.
She reached out and traced her index finger down the center of him, halving him, and following the bumps of his abdomen before reaching his belt.
She removed her finger and touched it to her lips, parting them so she could touch her tongue to it.
He tasted salty, very salty, and she’d never felt so wicked.
“I’ll wear my chemise for this bath…and naught else.” She tipped her head up to say it. This time she knew a tremor scored him, and it was followed by a groan.
“Why are you being like this?” he asked in a rough voice.
“Like what?”
“Vixen. Wanton. Jezebel. Reckless.”
“I’m a very quick student, Langston,” she replied, watching as the mask slipped slightly. “And you’re a very good teacher.”
His jaw tightened, and then he had a hand on her upper arm, tightening it, too. Then he was marching her along the hall, beside him, everything about him looking closed and angry, viciously angry. Lisle couldn’t imagine what she’d done to cause it.
“You want to visit my first lady?”
They reached a door, Lisle didn’t know from which hall, or which floor. Langston had stopped, one hand on the doorknob, the other still gripping her.
She nodded.
“Badly?”
“The chemise I’ll wear,” she replied softly, “’tis made of softest lawn. Very insubstantial when wet. Very.”
He shook completely. Then he twisted the doorknob with an effort that should have pulled it from its moorings and they were outside, marching through perfectly groomed lawn on perfectly fitted stepping stones, and then they were at the entrance to the family crypt.
He let her go, and Lisle swayed in place for a moment before she caught herself.
“She’s dead?” she asked.
“I could na’ wed with you otherwise, could I?” he answered roughly.
“Show me. Doona’ touch me. Just show me.”
He pushed on the gate. It opened with a well-oiled, well-maintained efficiency that was just like everything else on the estate.
“You’ll follow?” he asked.
She nodded.
The world behind the gate was slower, darker, and now that twilight appeared to be descending, it was more quiet and muted and had an air of mystery about it.
She followed Langston’s bare back as he walked, in that side-to-side fashion of his, and tried to keep her mind completely blank.
Lisle knew she possessed too much imagination.
Her stories had kept the girls enthralled for years.
It was a gift. It was also a curse. She glanced once to both sides, to make certain no mythical creatures accompanied them, and then forced herself to keep her eyes on the man in front of her.
It wasn’t difficult. Langston Leed Monteith was a handsome specimen, especially since he’d decided to display all of him in little more than a kilt and tasseled socks.
Lisle looked down him and back, sighed, and then had to put her mind back on what they were doing.
Langston was extremely beautiful, and he knew how to use it to best advantage.
She hadn’t been exaggerating earlier. He knew exactly how to use it to negotiate, and she was a very good pupil.
She just didn’t know what she was supposed to do with any of this when it came time to pay her part of their bargain.
He approached a door that was attached to a strange Grecian-looking building.
It looked too small to house a statue in, let alone a coffin.
Lisle watched as he twisted the handle down, and then he reached up to lift a lit torch from the entrance.
Then he was going down steps, taking her into a yawning cave, although it had carved rock to both sides and the floor.
“My own crypt.”
He’d stopped and Lisle barely avoided smashing her nose into the middle of his bare back by the sense of it. She hadn’t heard or seen any of it. The place was full of creatures and noises and whispers of time, and every hair from every pore along her neck seemed like it was standing up in reaction.
“And this is my wife, Shera.”
If she gave the relief sound, he’d have heard it, and Lisle was pretending there wasn’t anything frightening or intense about any of this. He was holding the light over a slab that couldn’t hold anything like a wife.
“This is her marker. This is na’ her grave. She was buried at sea. On the journey over.”
“She died during the voyage?”
“I dinna’ toss her overboard, if that is your question,” he answered.
She moved forward and read the inscription, and then everything was swirling in a whirlpool of black.
This Shera had been born in 1736, and perished in 1745.
Nine. His first wife had been nine. Lisle reached out for the first thing on which she could stabilize herself, and didn’t even care that it was him.
He didn’t ask if she was all right. He simply lifted her into his arms and carried her, and took her back to the twilight-littered gardens that they buried their dead in.
She didn’t even realize she was crying. Someone else was crying.
Lisle Monteith couldn’t have been. She’d rather die than let him see that.
“She was a child,” he informed her.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered.
“She was the only sister he had left to sell.”
“Oh, my God,” she whispered again.
He looked down at her once and kept walking, past the gate and out into the gardens that hadn’t such evil attached to them. Or, if they did, it was well hidden.
“Her older sister by two years was already wed and carrying a child. Solomon apologized to me for it.”
“Doona’ say any more. I beg it.”
“I told you life was cheap in Persia. It is. Still is.”
“Damn you, Monteith. You wed a bairn. ’Twas probably that which killed her.”
“I dinna’ consummate it,” he said.
She was choking. It didn’t make it better and he kept talking.
“She was frail and she was sickly. She’d had the best of care, Solomon assured me, but she was all he had left to offer.
He kept apologizing to me for that. I didn’t let the disgust show.
It was nae surprise. Women are of little value in that part of the world.
I plied her with food. I made her swallow broth.
I forced her to move from her bed. I hired her playmates.
I hired the best physicians. She never got well. She still died.”
“Oh, my God,” Lisle said.
“That door leads back to the main hall. Follow it. Go to your chamber. Wait for me there.”
“Wait for you?” Lisle asked. Everything about her was swirling still, and there was a handsome, black-haired man at the center of it, beckoning to her, owning her…enthralling her…frightening her.
“I’ve got things to see to a-fore we finish our bargain.”