Chapter Nine
D unstan made the decision in an instant, without pausing to consider anything besides his feelings. If anyone was going to treat Carys as though she were something other than Godwin Castle’s housekeeper, it would be him, not Lord Joseph Flirtface.
And yet, he could feel every set of his family’s eyes turn in their direction as he led Carys out to the center of the array of couples who had bravely stepped forward to partake in the scandalous new dance. He could already hear their whispers and feel the effects of their knowing grins and looks of triumph.
He might regret this.
But then again, perhaps not.
“Have you danced the waltz before?” Carys asked him in a quiet, tremulous voice as they reached an empty spot on the dance floor.
Ah. That was another minor detail Dunstan should have considered before taking action.
“No,” he answered hesitantly. “But it cannot be that difficult.”
Carys snorted into a smile, then covered her mouth with her hand as if she could push the sound back in. The way her eyes shone with mirth when she glanced up at him had Dunstan’s heart soaring.
“We shall simply follow the others,” Dunstan said, glancing to the side to ascertain how other men had positioned their arms to hold their dance partners, then doing the same.
“Come now, my lord,” Carys said, her grin pleasingly wicked as she peeked at the other women, then slipped into Dunstan’s arms in a similar manner to how they stood. “We have never simply followed the others.”
Good God, he was in love with her.
The truth hit Duntan with the power of Carys’s clever smile, and with the sudden scent of honeysuckle that wafted toward him as she stepped into the circle of his embrace. She fit so perfectly in his arms and, as he began to see with startling clarity, she fit perfectly into his life.
How had he ever imagined that the feelings that had grown between the two of them were anything other than the deepest of love?
Those thoughts were as fleeting as they were startling. Within moments, the orchestra had reached the end of the waltz’s prelude and set off into the dance itself. Every couple around them swayed into motion, and Dunstan needed every power of his mind and body to imitate what they were doing enough so that he and Carys were not trampled.
It was close going at first. The other couples all seemed to have had instruction in the waltz, and they closed in on him and Carys as if the two of them were under an attack of some sort. It was all Dunstan could do simply to move Carys out of the way of the others, though they seemed in no direct hurry to ram into the two of them.
“Oh, I see,” Carys said, pulling at Dunstan to help him move as she adjusted her feet according to the music. “The song in three-quarter time. The steps are simple, really. One-two-three, one-two-three.”
Dunstan glanced down to watch both his and Carys’s feet, glancing to the side now and then to ascertain how the others were proceeding. Carys was right. The steps were far less complicated than most others he had learned. In fact, they were so simple that once the two of them fell into rhythm with the lilting music, he did not need to think about his feet at all.
He glanced up to Carys with a wide smile the moment he felt confident in his mastery of the simple dance. And he immediately missed a step when he saw Carys smiling proudly back at him.
How had he not seen the truth sooner?
“Whoever is it that gives birth to new dances such as this?” Carys laughed, the subtle shift and tug of her half-embrace setting him back into rhythm.
“I suppose there is a council of dances somewhere that sets every new one out,” he answered, forcing himself to think only of the dance and the conversation, not the reasons for his pounding heart.
Carys laughed. “I should like a seat on that council,” she said. They turned slightly, as many of the others were doing, while maintaining their steps and began to travel around the dance floor as part of the other dancers as well. “Then again,” she continued, “I am pleased with the simplicity of this particular new dance.”
“I cannot see it ever replacing the country dances and reels that have become so popular,” Dunstan said, easing slowly away from the intensity of his feelings. “That would be a waste of all the dance instruction we have all been subjected to over the years.”
Carys hummed. “And it would be a desperate shame to see the spritely village dances the other half of us were raised with fade into obscurity.”
Dunstan suddenly found himself wondering if the dances of the working classes were similar to those of the nobility. He wondered which was more enjoyable, which allowed the dancers to hold each other and be as close to each other as he and Carys were.
Immediately, the emotions he’d been trying to keep at bay filled him again.
“Thank you for rescuing me,” Carys said, her countenance and the heat in her eyes shifting as well. “I promise you, I did nothing to coerce that gentleman into inviting me to dance.”
“Oh, I know,” Dunstan said. “Lord Joseph is a notorious flirt. I was indeed rescuing you.”
Carys’s open, affectionate look dampened slightly.
“But I would have invited you to dance all the same,” Dunstan rushed to say, lest she think he’d taken her hand more out of obligation than desire.
Heavens, there was far too much desire pulsing through him at the moment as well. He wanted her. He wanted his dearest friend.
Which was the most dangerous feeling Dunstan had experienced in as long as he could remember.
“Thank you all the same,” Carys said, inching closer to avoid a couple who had swayed too close to them. “I…I am happy to be in your arms,” she added when they were in such tight proximity that they might as well have been embracing.
Dunstan caught his breath, her words giving him strength and heating him from the inside.
“That is to say,” Carys continued, flustered, glancing away from him, “I like dancing with you.”
Her face pinched, as if she was chastising herself for speaking out of turn. Dunstan wanted to wipe that look away and tell her that he was never happier than when he was with her.
He wanted to whisk her away from the dance, out of the great hall, and off to somewhere he could sit with her and discuss his new awareness of his feelings for her. He was almost certain that she felt the same for him, but the doubt that lingered made him feel as though a frank discussion was necessary. And that was without considering the terror of love and the mortal peril of exchanging a cozy friendship that worked very well for both of them for something that could destroy any chance of happiness that either of them had.
“Carys, I think we should—”
Dunstan’s heartfelt words as the dance ended and the dancers applauded were cut short by a firm tap on Dunstan’s shoulder.
At Carys’s sudden puzzled look for whoever stood behind him, Dunstan turned.
He came face to face with an elderly couple, all grey hair, pinched, wrinkled faces, and towering fury. They were dressed in last year’s fashions and even Dunstan could tell the woman’s jewels were paste, but they presented a formidable picture of angry disapproval all the same. It was the same look of disapproval they and their daughter had worn every day of his tortured life all those years ago.
“Lord William. Lady Alexandra,” Dunstan said, letting go of Carys so that he could turn completely to address his former in-laws. “What in heaven’s name brings you to Godwin Castle?”
He recognized immediately that his greeting could have been construed as rude, and he shook himself.
“That is, welcome to Godwin Castle,” he corrected himself. “It has been so long. You look…you have not changed.”
“Insolence as always,” Lady Alexandra said with a sniff. “What our Charlotte saw in you is beyond me.”
Dunstan could have answered the woman right then and there by telling her that what Charlotte had seen was money that did not exist and social standing within the ton that he could not have provided.
The orchestra had begun the strain that called guests to the next dance, so with a quick glance around, Dunstan gestured for Charlotte’s parents to walk with him to the side of the room. Dunstan caught the curious stares of Cedric and Alden and their brides as they walked passed and was relieved when his kinsmen dropped what they were doing to venture closer, as if they would be needed.
Carys walked with them as well, but Dunstan was less certain of whether he wished her to witness whatever horrible things Charlotte’s parents likely had to say to him.
His fears were proved founded when Lord William dove right into things with, “How dare you flaunt your unexpected inheritance when you know full well all of this should have been Charlotte’s?”
Dunstan could only blink at the man at first, his claim was so outrageous.
“This is my family’s ancestral castle,” he explained as calmly as he could, keeping his voice down as other curious guests seemed deeply interested in the entertainment of overhearing an argument. “It currently belongs to my father, Lord Gerald Godwin.”
“But word has reached us that you will inherit all of it,” Lady Alexandra said. She laughed sharply, then continued with, “You deceived us, sir. You made our poor, dear Charlotte believe you were a penniless beggar with nothing to your name.”
Dunstan continued to gape as the shape of Lord William and Lady Alexandra’s argument remained obscured to him. Charlotte had died more than seventeen years ago. What could possibly convince these two to venture all the way from London as if they felt he owed them something?
“At present, I continue to have nothing to my name,” he said, shaking his head and desperately attempting to reason things out from their side. All he could come up with was that, because he had never remarried, they still believed they had some sort of claim on him.
“Word has reached us, sir, that you will be in receipt of quite a bit as soon as your uncle passes,” Lord William said.
“We have been told that you will be wealthy beyond measure,” Lady Alexandra added. “That wealth and that privilege should have belonged to our daughter and to any children she might have given you.”
Dunstan pressed his lips together to keep himself from informing them that the likelihood of Charlotte ever giving him a child had been nipped in the bud by her decision to withhold her affections from him after the first week of their marriage, when she discovered the true state of his finances.
It was Carys who stepped in to ask the obvious question.
“What could possibly make you believe you have any sort of claim to Lord Dunstan’s good fortune when your daughter passed more than a decade and a half ago?” she asked.
Lord William and Lady Alexandra did not look half as flustered as they should have.
“We received a letter detailing our right to make a claim,” Lord William said. “It stated that because you have not taken another wife, you are still, in the eyes of God, our daughter’s husband.”
“That is preposterous,” Dunstan said. He was baffled as to why the couple believed such a fantasy.
Because they were the sort to cling to any claim to wealth they had not earned, he answered himself right away. That was why.
“Who, may I ask, sent you such a letter?” Carys asked.
Before Lord William or Lady Alexandra could answer, there was a cry from the other end of the great hall. One of the garlands that had been hung near the door had come loose at one side and swung down to smack into a young lady who had just returned to the room.
“I must see to that,” Carys said with a sigh.
She glanced one last time to Dunstan, as if the two of them had a myriad of things they still needed to say to one another, then marched off across the hall.
“And who was that?” Lady Alexandra snapped, her eyes wide with offence and her face going pink with indignation, and perhaps worry.
“She is Mrs. Weatherby, Godwin Castle’s housekeeper,” Dunstan said, though as soon as the words were out, he wished he’d said something else.
“Oh, so now you are dallying with a housekeeper instead of honoring the memory of our daughter?” Lord William demanded.
Again, Dunstan could only gape at the man. There was no law in any of the kingdoms of the New Heptarchy that gave the parents of a deceased wife any sort of right to inherit from the widower. Especially not so long after the fact. And yet, it appeared as though someone had written to the couple telling them otherwise.
It suddenly occurred to Dunstan that Mr. Isaacson had arrived at Godwin Castle believing taxes to be unpaid as well, and that the two bizarre occurrences could very well be related. It further occurred to him that someone might have been working behind the scenes to sabotage him, the family, and Godwin Castle.
He was all but certain he knew who that some was, but how Edgar had the power to cause so much harm was a bit of a mystery.
“There has been some grave misunderstanding here,” he said, shaking his head. “If you would but give me time, I am certain we could—”
He was cut off by a ferocious yowl from Napoleon. He’d only vaguely noted that the cat had somehow found its way into the great hall earlier. Now, however, it appeared the poor thing had just been trod on by one of the dancers.
That was not the end of things, though.
“Napoleon!” Lady Kat shouted, rushing after the terrified creature as he darted across the room, winding through the legs of the guests and upsetting a few of them in the process. “Napoleon, come to Mummy.”
Lady Kat was not the only one chasing the cat. A few of the more inebriated guests thought chasing Napoleon was a game designed to delight them. They pushed and staggered their way through startled guests, only frightening Napoleon more.
“You must excuse me,” Dunstan told Lord William and Lady Alexandra with a heavy sigh. “My attentions are needed elsewhere.”
He left Charlotte’s parents where they were and raced across the room to join Lady Kat and Waldorf in attempting to rescue Napoleon. Unfortunately for all of them, Napoleon had decided that the best way for him to save himself from the hoard of ball guests was to climb one of the decorated trees in the corner of the room.
That unhappy circumstance caused the tree to shudder and sway in its somewhat inadequate stand, and when one of the drunken guests tried to climb into the tree as well, the entire thing toppled to the side. It hit the tree standing next to it, which also fell, straight onto a small table where glasses of punch had been discarded.
Half the guests gasped with shock and worry. The other half laughed as if the entire thing were part of the evening’s entertainments.
“It’s true, then,” a young lordling laughed as Dunstan attempted to right one of the trees. “Godwin Castle is cursed.”
“You think this is the curse?” the young lady with him asked, looking terrified.
“Of course it is,” the lordling said. “Why else would so many things go wrong within the space of one evening?”
Dunstan was too busy attempting to right the trees, whose branches had swayed far too close to some of the lanterns placed around the room for his comfort, to answer the young couple. Carys had rushed forward from where she’d been working to repair the garland, and that did nothing to aid his concentration.
It was Cedric who approached the young people, but rather than saying something comforting, he growled, “How dare you make light of my family’s misfortune?”
Dunstan winced. Of everyone in the family, Cedric had taken the curse most to heart. The outcome of the confrontation would not be good.
“Hang on there, old man,” the lordling bristled, turning to Cedric like he would ask for pistols at dawn. “It’s your curse, not mine.”
“The curse is not a joke,” Cedric insisted, raising his voice and his hackles. “You would do well to show a modicum of respect, you jumped-up jackanapes.”
“What did you call me?” the younger man demanded, glowering at Cedric as he moved closer to him.
Dunstan sent Carys a wary look, then stepped away from the tree to intervene.
“Enough of this,” he said, grasping his cousin’s arm and tugging him back. “This is a ball, not a country fair. Let the young men think whatever they want. We know better.”
For a terrifying moment, Dunstan imagined the cheerful ball transforming into a street brawl. He tightened his grip on Cedric’s arm and asked, “Is it truly worth the spectacle fighting would create?”
Cedric dragged his eyes slowly away from the young man, turning to frown at Dunstan instead. “No,” he admitted at last, then gave the lordling one last glance before marching away.
The lordling snorted. “What a—”
“Do not finish that sentence,” Dunstan told him in no uncertain terms. “And I would advise you to depart the ball this instant. If my cousin has time to plot a way to lay in wait for you outside or if he has one of the footmen sabotage your carriage, you will not enjoy the experience.”
That was enough to drain the color from the lordling’s face and to send him scurrying for the door.
If those had been the only incidents of the evening, Dunstan might have been satisfied. But troubles kept coming.
“I’ll fetch more punch,” Carys said when the two of them finished tidying the table that the trees had fallen on.
“Is that not Ruby’s responsibility?” Dunstan asked as the two of them swept pine needles to the side of the wall with their shoes.
Carys sighed. “Ruby is currently indisposed.”
Dunstan rolled his eyes.
As soon as the pine needles were cleared, everyone’s attentions turned to shooing a distressed Napoleon out of the great hall. In the process, someone claimed to have seen a mouse, which caused another sort of furor.
Dunstan and Carys worked to calm a young lady who had been convinced of the rumor, then brought refreshments to the orchestra members, who were disgruntled that everything else had gained the attention of the guests instead of them.
There were decorations to tidy, guests to soothe, and servants to direct, all of which required a monumental effort. And then Dunstan received word that a few guests had infiltrated the library, even though they’d been warned not to.
“This is outrageous,” Dunstan said, marching out of the great hall and down to the library, Carys following him. “Do these people have no respect?”
In the library, they discovered two matronly women giggling over one of the family diaries that had been left out on a table. The second they were discovered, they fluttered and fussed and made every sort of excuse for being there until Dunstan’s glare chased them from the room.
He was ready to forge back into battle in the great hall once the two were gone, but as he turned to invite Carys to go with him, she stood her ground.
“That is enough!” Carys cried out, heaving with upset. “When Lord Gerald said he wished to host a Christmas ball, I believed it was a fine way to open Godwin Castle to the family’s friends and neighbors. But since this afternoon, we have been subjected to indignities, made fun of, and had our private things interfered with, all in the name of sport for the undeserving.”
“I could not agree with you more,” Dunstan said, stepping back over to her.
Carys looked up at him, focusing on him alone, though her emotions were still running high. “You deserve better than this, Dunstan,” she said. “You deserve a cheerful yuletide season and the calm comforts of home. You do not deserve this sort of spectacle.”
“Neither do you,” Dunstan insisted, the indignation he felt on her behalf swelling to something that felt like a match to the emotions he’d experienced while dancing with her. “You have outdone yourself to accommodate people and to make this event a shining light in an otherwise dark season. You should not spend the entire evening being tormented and running yourself ragged while others laugh.”
“I wish every one of these guests would go home,” Carys said, her chest heaving with the force of her passion as she inched closer to him. “I want nothing to do with any of them. I want nothing more in the world than to spend a quiet, cozy evening with you, only you.”
“Let the rest of the world be damned,” Dunstan agreed, ardor welling in him. “I only ever wanted you.”
He acted before he let himself think, grasping Carys and pulling her into his arms. It was so much more than their feigned embrace while waltzing. This was the real thing, and real desire thundered through him. He clasped Carys close with one arm, caressed the side of her heated face with the other, then slanted his mouth over hers in the kiss he’d waited his entire life for.