Chapter Twelve
C arys tried desperately not to glance over her shoulder as she crossed the great hall to deal with the dead mouse. She did not want to be caught looking longingly after Dunstan as he fled the room. She could not help herself, though.
The second she peeked, she regretted it. Even though he was walking away from her, she could see Dunstan’s look of broken-hearted confusion. He looked as though he didn’t know what to make of the conversation they’d just had.
“Give the mouse to me,” she said, taking a discarded serviette from one of the tables that had contained refreshments during the ball and crossing to take the mouse from Iris. “I’ll dispose of it.”
“It’s horrid and vile,” Ruby said, close to weeping. “It’s all part of the Curse of Godwin Castle. It must be.”
“Mice expire daily,” Carys said with a huff as she folded the serviette around the dead thing. “They do so whether curses exist or not. Now please return to the tasks you’ve been charged with doing.”
Ruby’s tears spilled in earnest, then, and Carys was certain it was because of her curt manner and not the mouse.
It wouldn’t do. None of it. Carys sighed to herself as she crossed back through the great hall, her heart pounding faster than it should have as it struggled with what her mind knew was right.
The trouble was, Dunstan had been more than just confused by her words during their interaction. He had been baffled and hurt by her dismissiveness. He’d been hopeful, and she had crushed his hopes.
She could not help but imagine the deceased mouse she carried through the hall and down to the kitchen, then across to the courtyard so she could throw it on the midden heap was Dunstan. She’d been the one to do that to him. He’d clearly believed the two of them could have some sort of future together, but that was madness.
Wasn’t it?
The December air was bitter and unforgiving, but Carys took a moment to stand in the kitchen courtyard, letting it bite at her. Perhaps if she stood there long enough, the cold would slice through the misery and indecision that seemed to freeze her from the inside. Perhaps it would dampen the ardor for Dunstan that she couldn’t suppress, no matter how hard she tried.
“Cousin, are you quite well?” Edgar’s voice cut into her thoughts, causing Carys to jump.
She recovered from her shock quickly and moved straight into the agonizing frustration of Edgar poking his nose in once again. The man had no shame and three times as much stubbornness as an ass.
“Yes, I’m well,” she said, shaking out the serviette she still carried, then heading back into the house, hoping he would leave her be.
Edgar had apparently been to either the stables or one of the other outbuildings. He fell into step with her when she was halfway across the courtyard.
“You’ll catch your death out here without at least a shawl,” he said, circling his arm behind her, as if to keep her warm.
Carys’s heart sank, despite the kindness of the gesture. She should not have given Edgar so much as an inch when he might make it into a mile and believe she was coming around to his hopes for the two of them. But for a change, there was genuine concern in his expression that went beyond his usual unwanted persistence.
“I only just stepped outside to dispose of a dead mouse Iris found in the great hall,” she said, stepping ahead of Edgar to enter the warm kitchen. It was a relief she wasn’t certain she deserved.
“You appear chilled through,” Edgar said, rushing ahead of her to where tea for the servants was set out on the table. “Here, drink some tea.”
“I do not want any,” Carys said, marching through the kitchen and into the servants’ hall.
Edgar kept up with her.
“Not wanting tea. Standing out in a cold courtyard with a bereft expression. I can only imagine what that adds up to,” he said.
Carys paused at the base of the stairs leading up to the rest of the house and frowned at him. “I cannot imagine what you mean.”
“Why, I mean Lord Dunstan, of course,” he said, still apparently sympathetic. It was a highly suspicious change from his usual pestering. “He has obviously disappointed you in some way,” he continued on.
“It is none of your concern,” Carys said, turning away from him.
“The hearts of young ladies are so easily bruised,” Edgar stopped her with his comment. “They should be treated with the utmost kindness, but fortune so often has other plans for them.”
The sympathy in his voice startled Carys. She was not accustomed to Edgar behaving with any sort of consideration for anyone other than himself.
True to form, he continued with, “But you are not young anymore, dear cousin. A woman of your advanced years should have more fortitude and greater strength to resist wicked men when they go hunting for prey.”
Carys hardened her expression. “I am barely more than halfway through my thirties, Cousin. And no one is preying upon me.”
“Precisely,” Edgar said, as if she’d agreed with him in every particular. “It is cruel for Lord Dunstan to toy with your tender feelings. I am convinced you should be done with him at once, particularly as he will soon depart for London.”
Carys so desperately wanted to give her cousin a piece of her mind for his transparent meddling. Before she was given a chance to, one of the exhausted under-maids came slowly forward holding an enormous tea tray that was clearly too much for her to manage.
“Eleanor, what are you doing?” Carys asked, gratefully stepping away from Edgar and taking the tray from the young woman’s shaking arms.
“Lady Muriel has asked for tea to be taken up for her and her friends,” Eleanor said, looking miserable for having been asked to deliver it. “They are too done in to come down for breakfast with the others.”
Carys nodded. “I shall take their tea up,” she said, adjusting her hold on the tray. She surveyed its contents, then asked, “Is Cook sending more breakfast to them?”
“Yes, Mrs. Weatherby. But I believe it is not ready yet.”
“Well, bring that up when it’s done, or have someone stronger than you bring it,” Carys said, then turned toward the staircase.
Edgar was still standing there, but even he looked as though he had a thousand other things that needed his attention.
“Do take what I have said into consideration, my dear,” he told Carys with far too much familiarity as she began to mount the stairs. “And remember that you are surrounded by those who would advocate for you and give you succor if you should need it.”
Carys wrinkled her nose at his choice of words, then continued on up into the house. If she were to wager, she would have said that Edgar was attempting to woo her with honey now instead of fear. That only made her worry more, however. It was as if her cousin had grown desperate and believed he was out of time in some way.
She crossed near to the breakfast room on her way to the stairs, but did not hear Dunstan’s voice amidst the conversation taking place there. That was something of a relief, because she was certain if she heard Dunstan now, particularly if she heard sadness or disappointment in his voice, she would not be able to contain her own misery.
She continued up to the family’s rooms and was unsurprised to find not only Lady Muriel in her room, but Lady Katherine and Lady Bernadette with her.
“Good morning, Carys,” Lady Muriel greeted her with a happy but sleepy smile as Carys carried the tray into the room. “You appear far too lively for the morning after a ball.”
“It is nearly eleven already, my lady,” Carys said, setting the tray down on the side table near where Lady Muriel and her friends were lounging. “And there is so much to do after the ball.”
“Yes, balls require three times as much effort to clean up after than they do to prepare,” Lady Bernadette said, getting up so that she might help Carys pour the tea. When Carys sent her a curious look, she added, “I spent years before my marriage arranging balls and other social events for members of the ton . I have set up and taken down more balls than you have, I’d wager.”
Carys blinked at the woman in surprise. “But are you not a noblewoman?” She did not think noblewomen engaged in employment.
Lady Bernadette laughed. “I am, but I am also a graduate of Oxford University. It was my choice to work before I was married.”
“Before you were married which time?” Lady Katherine teased her, accepting a cup of tea when Carys handed it to her.
Lady Bernadette astounded Carys by laughing. “The real time,” she said. She turned to Carys and added, “It is a long and improbable story, but for years, I believed myself to be married to a man who lived in the Kingdom of Norway. My father deceived me into believing we had been married by proxy. It was distressing, when I met Alden, to believe that I could not have him, despite how much we loved each other.”
Carys caught her breath, suddenly emotional. She would not be as lucky as Lady Bernadette. She truly could not have Dunstan, no matter how much she wished it were otherwise. She was no lady attempting to work because she wished to, she was a woman genuinely beneath Lord Dunstan’s standing.
That distressing thought, coupled with Carys’s already frayed nerves, had her so unsettled that when she went to pour a cup of tea for Lady Muriel, she nearly stepped on Napoleon, who was there with his mistress, Lady Katherine. That sent her careening forward, and in her desperation not to fall, she caught the corner of the tray, sending the whole thing spilling as if she were Ruby.
Unlike Ruby, and very much unlike herself, instead of begging the ladies’ pardon and working immediately to pick up the pieces and save the carpet from being stained with tea, Carys burst into tears.
“Oh, dear!” Lady Bernadette said, handing her teacup off to Lady Muriel, then rushing to Carys and sliding an arm around her. “Oh, no. Whatever is the matter?”
Lady Kat had rushed to retrieve Napoleon from the corner, but she rounded Carys’s other side and steered her and Lady Bernadette over to the small sofa where Lady Muriel was seated.
“This is far more distress than a bit of spilled tea warrants,” Lady Kat said, exchanging a look with her friends.
“It’s Lord Dunstan, isn’t it?” Muriel asked, taking Carys’s hand once she was seated by the woman’s side.
Everything within Carys cautioned her to stay silent and not to burden the noblewomen with her paltry problems. They were not her sisters, nor were they her friends. Minnie might have insisted the two of them were friends, but she was not present. She was likely still in bed with her husband, a nobleman far above her, Dunstan’s cousin.
Her tears increased at the thought. She would never have the sort of sweet, lazy morning that Minnie was likely enjoying. Not with Dunstan, and if not with him, not with anyone.
“You left the ball with Dunstan last night, did you not?” Lady Bernadette asked softly, dragging the chair she’d been sitting in closer to the sofa so she could hold Carys’s other hand. “Minnie told us that the two of you have a very special friendship.”
“I love him,” Carys sobbed.
It was absolutely not what she had intended to say. A part of her had wanted to take that secret with her to the grave. But surrounded by kind women the way she was, women who felt as if they could be sisters, even though they were far from it, had broken whatever resolve to suffer in silence that she had.
“We know, dear,” Lady Katherine said, moving a footstool so that she could sit directly in front of Carys.
Carys shook her head. “I should not be so careless with my affections,” she said. “I have no right to love someone who is so far above me.”
“But he loves you in return,” Lady Bernadette said. “We can all see that.”
“Dunstan is my friend,” Carys wept on, fighting like mad to make sense of her predicament and her feelings. “He is a nobleman and I am the housekeeper. Friendship is the most we should ever be allowed. Even that is pushing the boundaries of propriety.”
“I do not think propriety matters when love is at stake,” Lady Muriel said.
Carys turned to her with a look of incredulity. “How can you say that? You are a noblewoman yourself. What would your family say if you suddenly took it upon yourself to marry a footman?”
Lady Muriel’s mouth twitched into a wry smile. “Well, considering Arnold is my family and that he quite frequently takes up with footmen and butlers, I do not think he would say much.”
Part of Carys wanted to laugh, but Lord Arnold was in no way an adequate comparison to her situation.
“Dunstan has made it clear that he has no wish to put himself through the ordeal of marriage again,” she said, shaking her head. “He was injured by love once before, and I’ve no wish to torment him with something that is meant to be precious.”
Lady Kat huffed. “I did not know this late wife of his, this Charlotte woman, but everything I have learned about the female hound makes me dislike her intensely. She was a selfish cow, and she did not deserve a husband as sweet and good as Lord Dunstan.”
“Lord Dunstan does not deserve to lose his heart to a woman who will only cause him shame and scorn,” Carys argued, lowering her head. “Can you imagine what the ton would say if he married a housekeeper ?”
“I can imagine what they would say if it was known he married a woman he loved and admired deeply, especially after so many years of being alone,” Lady Bernadette said.
Lady Muriel stayed wisely silent, looking as though she agreed with Carys, at least to a degree.
“It is not as if Dunstan is in any danger of inheriting the Godwin family’s title,” Lady Katherine said. “Lord Gerald is the Duke of Amesbury, and it is his sons and grandsons that will continue the Amesbury line. Dunstan is merely a nephew who is addressed as ‘Lord’ without bearing any real title. Why, I am certain there are branches of the Godwin family that have faded into the ranks of ordinary people, their claim to the trunk of the line is so distant. Why shouldn’t Dunstan be allowed to spend his life with whomever he wishes?”
“He is to inherit Godwin Castle,” Carys argued. “And I can see now, in so many ways, that he has already inherited the curse with it.”
“The bloody curse,” Lady Muriel huffed, shaking her head. “The entire Godwin family and those close to it put far too much stock in that supposed curse.”
Carys snapped her head to gape at Lady Muriel. “You cannot tell me that you do not believe in the curse, my lady. Your husband believes in it more than anyone else.”
“Yes, which is how I am able to see what poppycock it is,” Lady Muriel said. “We have had nothing but good fortune since we’ve married.”
Carys wasn’t certain that luck would hold, since they’d been married for less than a year, but she held her tongue on the subject.
She stood, stepping around Lady Katherine to free herself from the circle of kind noblewomen who seemed determined to lift her up above her place, despite the inherent troubles of doing so.
“I thank you for your kindness and the care you’ve shown me,” she said, “but surely you must see how impossible the situation is. Love is one thing, but class and history are another. As close as we might be, Dunstan and I are not equals, and Dunstan has no wish to marry again.”
“We’ll just see about that,” Lady Katherine muttered.
Carys gulped as a burst of frustration hit her. It was so easy for members of the aristocracy to assume life should fall into whatever line they wanted it to, but she knew better.
“If you will excuse me,” she said, stepping toward the door. “I have much to tend to downstairs. I will have one of the maids bring up more tea for you, as they will already be bringing your breakfast once it is prepared.”
She left the room before any of the well-intentioned ladies could stop her. It did not help matters at all when she passed by the door to Minnie and Lord Lawrence’s room only to hear a distinctive, repetitive squeaking and twin cries of pleasure from the room.
Carys squeezed her face tight and hurried on, her heart responding too quickly to the echo of what she and Dunstan had shared the night before. She would have given anything to have more moments of bliss with him. She would have sold her soul for just the chance that the two of them could have their happily ever after, like everyone else in Dunstan’s family.
She hurried down the stairs, nearly tripping over her feet as she did. She was certain her face was a mess from crying by the time she made it to the bottom of the stairs. Her intention was to run straight to her own bedroom belowstairs so that she could weep until her tears had run dry, then clean herself up and return to her duties and her life as usual.
A knock on the front door just as she passed distracted her from those plans. As no one else was around to answer, she shifted direction and walked straight to the door.
A blast of cold air filled the front hall, sending a swirl of light snow flurries with it as Carys opened the door. She frowned in puzzlement when she found an elderly couple who had been there the night before standing in the doorway.
“Can I help you?” she asked them, wariness filling her.
“We demand to see Lord Dunstan Godwin at once,” the older man said, scowling as though he had already started a fight.
“I am not certain the family is at home this morning,” Carys said, intending to send the couple on their way, perhaps suggesting the return on the morrow.
“He will see us at once if he knows what’s good for him,” the old woman said. “He put us off last night, but he will not put us off twice.”
“I—”
“Do you know who I am?” the old man demanded. Carys snapped her mouth shut as he went on with, “I am Lord William Carhill, and this is my wife, Lady Alexandra. Lord Dunstan is our son-in-law.”
Carys suddenly remembered. She was stunned that she had forgotten Charlotte’s parents, but so much had happened since the confrontation in the great hall the night before that they had been consigned to a forgotten place in her mind.
“We demand to be given what is ours,” Lady Alexandra said.
Lord William pulled himself up to his full height and said, “Take us to Lord Dunstan at once.”