Chapter 15 #2
When Gillian still regarded the floor uneasily, Rose took one of the discarded sheets and draped it over the markings.
After a quick inspection of the entrances to the servants’ corridor, they set off into the west wing, Gillian and Rose holding candles.
“We have to be careful,” Gillian whispered. “Sir Evan meets women here.”
“They’ll never see us,” Stephen said, entering a room, with Rose and Gillian trailing behind. “But we can watch them.”
He pushed on a panel, and it swung open, revealing a dark rectangle.
He gestured for them to enter first. Gillian stepped in cautiously and held her candle high.
There wasn’t much to see. It was a rough wooden corridor, just like in the dollhouse.
It smelled musty and disused. They wandered through the corridor, popping in and out of rooms. Gillian neither experienced headaches nor saw any specters.
As they wandered, she noticed that every so often a slab of wood at about eye level was mounted on the wall. Thinking this odd, she pointed it out to Stephen.
“Not odd at all.” He found the catch to a door and sent Rose into the room. Then he slid the piece of wood aside to reveal two holes in the wall. “Spy holes,” he said. “Have a peek.”
Gillian pressed her eyes to the wall and watched Rose putter about the room. “Some servants’ corridor. They can spy on their masters.”
Stephen chuckled. “Well, I daresay they’re more for the masters to spy on guests or young ladies.”
Gillian’s jaw dropped. “That’s disgusting!”
Stephen laughed again.
“Come look at this,” Rose called.
They joined her. She gestured around the room, eyebrows raised. There wasn’t a sheet covering anything in this room. In fact, it looked inhabited.
“This must be Sir Evan’s tryst room,” Gillian said.
Rose opened the cupboards and wardrobe. “Someone is living here.”
Gillian wandered over. A half dozen gowns hung from pegs in the wardrobe, and slippers and shoes lined the bottom. Shifts and stockings were folded neatly in the cupboard.
“These are verra nice,” Stephen said, fingering the material of the shifts.
Their discovery made Gillian nervous. She wondered how often Evan and his lover met here.
It made her worry that he would move the sheet in the solar and see the markings on the floor.
Her stomach clenched tightly, and she wished she’d insisted that they clean the floor before going on this expedition.
“Come, let’s go.” With some urging Gillian induced Stephen and Rose to leave. On their way back to the solar, Gillian noted that Stephen’s limp was more pronounced and lines of pain bracketed his mouth. She’d also noted how hard he’d worked all day to hide it, with his jests and amusing stories.
When they returned to the solar, Nicholas was there waiting for them. Gillian’s heart stuttered, and she nearly tripped over her own feet. He stood by the window, staring down at the circle drawn on the floor. The sheet dangled from his fingers.
Gillian gave Rose a look of wide-eyed alarm. She couldn’t think of a single thing to say in her own defense.
Rose blurted out, “I did that. It’s mine.”
Nicholas looked up from the floor, a black brow arched.
“Gillian told me not to,” she added.
Stephen pulled on Rose’s braid to shut her up. “But Rose listens to no one, does she?”
Nicholas didn’t reply to any of this. He dropped the sheet, obscuring the markings again, and crossed to the dollhouse. “Been exploring?” he asked, opening the section Stephen had discovered that revealed the servants’ corridor.
Gillian felt the tension running through both Rose and Stephen as they watched him warily.
Gillian didn’t know what to make of his calm behavior.
Was he angry? She knew he didn’t believe she was ignorant of the magical circle on the floor.
No doubt he was merely being polite and would treat her to another lecture when they were alone.
She joined him at the dollhouse, her racing heart finally slowing. “Aye, my lord. It’s like a wee map of the castle.”
“I told you to stay out of the west wing.”
“But . . . we were just looking at this corridor. . . .”
With a quick move he revealed another servants’ corridor in the east wing. He raised a brow expectantly.
Gillian swallowed guiltily. She’d not thought there was another one. “I didn’t see that,” she finished lamely.
“If you’ll notice,” his voice took on an instructive tone, “the east and west wings are nearly identical, with small variations. Here, you have a great hall. There’s not one in the west wing, but there is this room”—he indicated the solar they currently stood in—“which the countesses of Kincreag often used for dancing and music.”
Stephen and Rose drifted near. Gillian moved to the other side of the dollhouse to see Nicholas’s face better. His expression was implacable, eyes guarded. He was very angry. She was certain of it. Her belly clenched so tight that she became queasy from it.
“The east wing houses the original keep,” Nicholas said, indicating a rectangular section of the east wing, encompassing the great hall, kitchens, and several sets of apartments.
“It was added onto over the years. The west wing is only about a hundred years old. It was built on the insistence of my great-great-grandmother. She couldn’t stand her husband and insisted she have her own space to live in.
Most of the countesses since have liked that arrangement. ”
“What happened here, my lord?” Stephen asked, pointing to the part of the dollhouse that was damaged.
Nicholas ran his finger over the buckled floor. “That’s where the carpenter fell when he died.”
Gillian started violently, looking from the aghast expressions of her sister and Stephen, back to Nicholas.
“What do you mean?” Gillian asked softly.
He watched her from beneath black lashes.
“My late wife brought him with her, her personal carpenter, then gave him enough employment to last him many years. Making this and all the furniture inside. Our son never had a chance to play with it. They were always too busy working on it. All the time. Or so they claimed.”
He’d barely mentioned Catriona before, and though part of Gillian was glad he seemed ready to share with her now, she did not like his demeanor, nor the fact that he was sharing this ghastly tidbit in front of Rose and Stephen.
Gillian put a hand on his arm. “Perhaps we should talk of this later, my lord?”
Nicholas looked around at Rose and Stephen—both of whom contrived to look disinterested, though they were clearly anything but—then back to Gillian. “Very well.”
“We’ve missed supper,” Gillian said with false brightness. “Shall we dine together?”
Rose and Stephen were quick to agree, and Nicholas came along with them. They ate in Gillian’s chambers, and though conversation flowed between Gillian, Rose, and Stephen, Nicholas was not talkative. He reminded her of how he’d been when she’d first met him, taciturn and inscrutable.
Stephen drank a great deal of whisky and Nicholas’s mulled spirits, despite Rose’s barbed comments about his consumption and the dark looks Nicholas gave him.
Gillian assumed the lad did it to ease his pain, for he was obviously in great discomfort.
He’d shifted about throughout the meal, the lines that pain had etched in his face finally relaxing when his speech grew slower and he enunciated his words in an exaggerated fashion.
When their supply of spirits ran dry, Stephen discovered Gillian’s decanter of wine.
He’d only taken a few swallows from the enameled goblet when Rose finally dragged him away and bid them good night.
Nicholas remained at the table, swirling his wine about in his goblet, not looking at her, lips curved moodily.
Part of her was angry with him. She’d wanted to prove to Stephen and Rose that he was not the evil brooding earl everyone thought he was, and yet he’d done his utmost to act the part all evening.
Another part of her was worried that it wasn’t an act. He was furious.
Gillian held out her hand to him. “Come to bed.”
He regarded her hand for a long moment, then raised his dark eyes to her face.
After what seemed an eternity in which she trembled with uncertainty, he took her hand and let her lead him to the bed.
He watched her silently as she removed his boots and unhooked his doublet, without the smile or conversation they usually shared.
In the past few weeks, she’d grown accustomed to him and his moods.
Although he was often quiet and thoughtful, he’d never been so austere.
Setting his boots aside, she straightened before him, flustered and unhappy. “I’m sorry about the marks on the floor. I will clean them up tomorrow.”
He said nothing, his gaze fixed on the floor between his feet. When he finally looked at her, his eyes were on fire.
“Damn it, Gillian.”
The air crackled.
She swallowed. “I said I was sorry.”
He stood and paced away. “Aye, I heard you. But what does it mean? You’ll just do it again the first opportunity you get.”
He was right. She should be honest with him. She took a step toward him, her hands twisting in her skirt. “It’s what I am, Nicholas. I’m a witch . . . it’s in my blood.”
He swept his hand across the cabinet before him, sending the silver tray, along with the enameled decanter and goblets, crashing to the floor. “No, it’s not!”
Gillian’s hands flew to her mouth. She stared at the broken decanter. A puddle of wine seeped rapidly into the fine Turkish carpet.
There was a knock on the door, and Gillian jumped.
Nicholas swung around to the door, hands fisted at his sides, latent violence emanating from him. “Go away!”
Fingernails scratched at the wood. “Uh . . . I left something in there.” Rose. “I need it.”
Gillian’s face flamed. Why did her sister have to overhear Nicholas railing at her? Gillian dropped her hands from her face and smoothed them over her skirt.