Chapter 4
“Ishall give you a week…”
Charity got startled to wakefulness, and for a moment only lay rigid, heart pounding, eyes fixed on the dark ceiling above her, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.
“Oh,” she said, sitting up in her bed. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, which had now garnered a thin layer of sweat on its surface. “It was only a dream.”
Disturbingly, it had been a little too close to reality. In her dream, she had been transported back to her drawing room. It was the close of the six months, and she was having the marriage conversation with her uncle and Robert.
Nightmare-inducing stuff, really. But as she looked around the room, she was unsure if her current reality was any better.
Charity threw back the blankets and swung her legs over the side of the bed.
Her feet hit the floor, and she steadied herself against the mattress.
She was still weak, but not helpless. Moving as quickly as her body allowed, she grabbed a robe from the chair and pulled it around herself.
The fabric was thick and not hers, but it covered her properly enough.
I must get out of here. I cannot wait till morning.
She crossed the room and went to the door. Her hand closed around the latch, and she yanked it open…. and stopped short.
Malcolm stood directly outside, leaning against the stone wall with a relaxed posture.
“Evenin’,” Malcolm said, and the way he said it suggested it was long past evening. “Or mornin’, dependin’ on what you call it when the day’s nearly finished.”
Charity was irritated to see him.
“Are you guarding my door?” she asked, putting her hands firmly on her hips.
“Aye,” he said, his grin easy. “The duke sent me. Said I was to bide right here outside yer door, in case ye needed anythin’ at all.”
“He stationed you here?”
Malcolm shrugged lightly.
“He said ye’re still weak, and the castle’s unfamiliar to ye, and if ye tried to wander about on yer own ye’d end up lost, or ye’d pitch yerself down a stairwell.”
Charity sighed, as though she had been snapped back to reality. He was not wrong, as she wouldn’t know how to navigate this place. She didn’t even know what direction the stairs were.
Still, Malcolm standing guard outside her door made her uneasy.
“So you’re my jailer?”
“Jailer?” he repeated, sounding genuinely amused. “I’m nae keepin’ ye in, lass. If ye wanted to walk out the front gate, I’m nae sure anyone would stop you. They’d only think ye’d lost yer sense.”
“Don’t call me that,” Charity narrowed her eyes.
“Call ye what, then?” Malcolm asked, still smiling. He was an oddly cheerful lad. “Lass? English lady? Half-dead stranger? I’ve only a few options.”
“I need to see the duke,” she announced, thinking to herself that he was the only person who might be able to tell her anything. Everyone else in the house answered to him, so it would make sense to go to the source directly.
“Do ye?” Malcolm’s expression shifted.
“Yes,” Charity replied, “I’d like to go now, actually.”
She could not imagine herself falling back to sleep, no matter what the hour was. Malcolm glanced down the corridor then looked back at her with something that might have been teasing in his eyes.
“It’s late,” he said, drawing out the words. “Most folk who want to see the duke at this hour are either bleedin’ or very bold.”
“I’m not here for your opinions,” Charity stared at him, pulse quickening with irritation. “I need to speak to him.”
“Aye, I can see that,” Malcolm’s smile widened. “And what, exactly, do ye need from His Grace at this hour? He told ye he’d send ye home in the mornin’.”
Charity’s cheeks warmed as she realized that there was something in the way he said it that made her suddenly self-conscious.
“I need to talk to him,” she said firmly.
“I’m only wonderin’ what could be so urgent that it cannae wait until daylight. It would cause less gossip that way…”
“Gossip about what?” Charity’s brows drew together.
“About a young woman goin’ to a man’s bedchamber in the middle of the night.”
Was he… implying… God, no.
It clicked then, though she did not understand the implication fully. Only that it was not something desirable or respectable.
“That’s….” she began, “I only need answers, and I need help, and he’s the only person here with authority. I do not know what you are on about, but you must dispel any sort of wayward thought from your mind.”
Malcolm sighed dramatically, like a man surrendering to a foregone conclusion, but still appeared rather amused. “If he gets cranky, I’ll tell ye now, I warned ye.”
But Charity did not seem to have much regard for consequences right now.
They walked through a turn in the corridor, then down a short set of steps, then into another hall that felt wider and darker.
Charity tried to keep track of the route, but the castle was a maze of stone and turns.
Even if she wanted to leave, she wasn’t sure she could find her way back alone.
That made her even more determined to speak to Duncan now, while she had Malcolm to guide her. If she waited until morning, Duncan might arrange her departure in a way that kept her blind.
Finally, they reached a heavier door at the end of a corridor that seemed quieter than the rest, and Malcolm stopped.
“Here.”
Her stomach flipped as the situation suddenly became very real for her. She was about to knock on a man’s door in the middle of the night.
Charity felt heat creep up her neck.
“Go on, then,” Malcolm said. “Knock.”
Charity forced herself to face the door fully. It was too late to turn back now, in any case. So she knocked, but nothing happened.
Charity frowned, irritation rising quickly because she’d already come this far.
She knocked again, a little harder.
Still nothing.
Malcolm leaned back against the wall, arms crossing loosely. He looked entirely at ease, like he could stand here all night if he pleased.
She knocked again, harder. Again, it was the same.
Malcolm didn’t move, but Charity could see the mirth in his eyes.
“Maybe he’s asleep.”
Charity shot him a look. She did not derive the most pleasure out of waking a sleeping man, but she did not quite have a choice either. She began knocking without a break.
Finally, there was movement, and the door swung open.
Duncan stood in the doorway with his hair slightly disordered and his expression carved into a glare. For a moment, he just looked at Charity with a face that clearly said who dares wake me like this.
Charity gulped and hoped that he would not yell at her.
But his gaze dropped to her robe, and the expression on her face.
“What’s wrong?” Duncan asked, his voice rough with sleep. It was not a happy to see you tone, but it was less lethal than what his initial reaction had suggested. “Are you ill again?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I’m not ill, I just need to talk to you.”
“At this hour?” Duncan seemed taken aback.
“Yes, now. Please. You must not deny me.”
Behind her, Malcolm cleared his throat with exaggerated politeness.
“If you’ll forgive me, Your Grace,” Malcolm said, grinning, “I’ll leave you to it for yer privacy.”
Duncan’s eyes cut to Malcolm with a glare, and then immediately back to Charity. Somehow, though, the interaction puts her a little at ease. There is something warm about how both men react around one another, that could only be achieved by familiarity.
“Come in,” he said curtly.
Charity shyly followed him inside, now suddenly feeling Malcolm’s absence. Never before has she been in a room alone with a man, and never did she think it would be under these sorts of circumstances.
In the dim light of the room, she noticed that he was not dressed as he had been earlier.
He wore a loose shirt, unbuttoned at the throat, and trousers instead of a coat.
The shift in clothing made him look even larger, because there was less structure hiding his body, and her attention went to the line of his collarbone, and then his chest, which peeked through.
Charity’s face heated again, immediately.
But she stole another look and spotted a scar that was peeking out from beneath the open collar, thicker than the scars on his face. Her gaze fixed on it without permission.
How had he survived that?
And then, before she could stop herself, another thought followed the first:
If he had survived something like that, maybe he could help her.
No, he definitely could. The question was whether he would. Charity realized she had been staring at his chest for too long when Duncan spoke.
“Are you finished?” he asked, and Charity’s gaze jerked up to his eyes. A blush crept up her face again, hot and immediate, and she wanted to throw herself out the door just to escape the humiliation. “What do you want to talk about that you can’t wait until morning?”
“I was suspicious of you,” she blurted, “and I know I shouldn’t have been, but I didn’t know where I was, and I didn’t know who you were, and I woke up in the woods and you were standing over me and…
.” She cut herself off only because she realized she was rambling, then forced herself to continue more clearly.
“I was suspicious because I’m an heiress, I have wealth, and a great deal of it.
And when you wake up drugged and moved across a border, your mind goes to the simplest explanation, which is that someone wanted what you had… ”
“Go on,” he said, not giving her much of a reaction.
Charity swallowed.
“My uncle,” she continued, “inherited my father's title. He is a viscount. He looks respectable, but he has no money. He came to York six months after my parents’ funeral and told me I would marry my cousin so that my dowry stays in the family.”
“And?”