Patricia Rice (12 page)

But he needed the cash from selling off that useless land in Scotland. Christina’s dowry had paid a substantial portion of the mortgage, but the balance was due in a few months, and he apparently still had debts all over the kingdom, including some right here in Sommersville.

Taking a deep breath and girding himself for whatever lay ahead, he kneed his horse into a trot down the hill and into the village.

As Harry rode into the yard, the blacksmith spit on the ground, turned his back, and walked into the cottage, slamming his door behind him.

“Well, that was not an auspicious beginning.” Harry debated stalking after the man, but he preferred an amicable solution, not a fiery argument. People liked him. Or they used to. He wasn’t ready to accept that he’d become an object of hatred for no reason known to him, or that he must learn to rule with an iron fist.

“Maybe the missus set him off on a wrong foot this morning.” Peter wheeled his horse out of the yard and toward the tavern.

“Shouldn’t I stop and speak with the squire first?” Harry studied the disreputable tavern he didn’t remember being there last time he’d visited. “I saw Basil in town, and he didn’t seem friendly. Perhaps I could go to his father and find out why.”

“Chumley took his daughter into London for the season. The women were all atwitter about it last Christmas. That must be why Basil was there. He’d never go elsewise. I heard he’s fixed his interest on a lady hereabouts but her parents don’t approve ’cause he hasn’t the wherewithal to keep her. Makes the chap surly. I’d avoid him if I was you. How about the vicar?”

“Excellent thought.” Harry made a mental note to see if the estate owed the Chumleys. That might explain some of Basil’s attitude. “The Reverend Abbott’s a bit stiff, but a good fellow.” Harry nudged his horse past the tavern to the village green. On the right, set back from the shadow of the inn, stood the aging rectory with its Tudor framework.

“I’ll leave you here, then,” Peter called. “I ain’t been to church in a month of Sundays, and the vicar’s likely to read me the riot act. I promised Meg I’d bring her back some thread.”

Waving him away, Harry tied his horse to the hitching ring in the fence post and proceeded up the brick walkway between rows of lettuce.

A young woman with demurely downcast eyes and a cap covering her hair answered the door. Harry remembered the vicar’s adopted daughter, but he struggled to remember her name. She had never been one for joining the parties of young people he’d enjoyed while growing up here. He knew her as quiet and bookish and devoted to her elderly parents.

“Miss Abbott?” he inquired, staying safely with the family name.

He thought he saw a hint of wariness in the way the corners of her eyes slanted, but she sounded perfectly pleasant.

“Yes, Your Grace. How may we help you?”

“Is your father home? I’d have a word with him, if I might.”

“He’s abed, Your Grace. He’s not been well this winter. Mother is visiting the parish poor, of which there are a great many this year.”

More than wariness in her voice. In fact, he’d say she was barely concealing biting sarcasm. “I am sorry to hear that.” He hesitated, wondering how much he could safely say to this woman he barely knew. “I have noticed there isn’t as much activity here as I remembered. I thought to ask your father’s opinion on the problem.”

Instead of studying his boots as she had been doing, she glanced up. Her eyes were a striking blue-green. If she’d been Christina, he would swear she was ready to bite his head off. To his relief, she spoke with firm precision.

“No opinion is necessary, Your Grace. It is obvious. If the duke cannot pay his debts, we cannot pay ours. I trust you’ve returned with a substantial sum to restore what’s been stolen from us.”

With that, she closed the door in his face.

“Mora? You have a vicar’s daughter named Mora?” Christina did not look up from the dusty journal she was studying but flipped a page, fascinated with both the history of Sommersville as well as the village gossip Harry had brought with him.

She’d discovered this particular book open on a ledger desk in the archival room behind the kitchen. Several pages had been neatly marked with dried sprigs of thyme, and from its contents, she’d say one of Harry’s ancestors had written this household history about the sixteenth century.

“What’s wrong with her name?” He sipped his tea and tore at a piece of toast, apparently still annoyed at his treatment.

“It’s one of the old names. Gaelic, at least. Maybe Celtic. It’s a corruption of something else, I vow.” Reading the passage of how Harry’s ancestor—she thought it was the fourth earl—had cozened Queen Elizabeth into financing his grand architectural plans, Christina glanced up from the journal to see everyone at the table staring at her.

“Mora?” Meg asked in disbelief. “I thought it simply a fancy way of saying Mary. The vicar and his wife dote on her.”

“She’s quiet as any mouse, and almost as invisible,” Peter added. “The village thinks she walks on water. She should have been a nun.”

“What’s that to do with her name?” Harry asked grumpily. “And I didn’t see anything quiet or holy about a woman who slams a door in my face.”

“She slammed the door in your face?” Amused, Christina studied her husband’s irritated features. He grew more like a lion with every passing day. She missed her jolly companion, but she admired the strength and command of the duke equally well—when he wasn’t shouting at her. “That’s certainly nunly behavior. Moral outrage and the courage to blast a duke.”

“I’m glad you find it amusing. I barely even know the woman. If I’ve offended her, I’m not aware of it.”

Christina could tell Harry was truly hurt. People generally liked him, and he had no notion of how to handle dislike. She could tell him that some people simply despised anyone with more power or money or beauty than they, but she thought he’d work that out on his own.

Instead, hoping to smooth the rocky path between them, she appealed to the Harry she knew. “Tell me how I can help. Meg is much more effective at dealing with the servants than I am. Give me something to do.”

Still in a dudgeon, Harry scowled. “Stay out of the old parts of the house, so I won’t have to worry about finding your bones in the cellars. Choose menus, mend linens, whatever it is women do all day. I’ll try to be home early. I need to ride out to a few of the tenant farms this afternoon.”

“Why don’t I come with you?” Desperate to find the connection between them again, Christina stood up, prepared to don her riding clothes and follow Harry into hell if need be. It certainly looked as if that’s where he’d spent the morning. Whatever he’d been doing hadn’t improved his aura.

“Some other time.” Harry dismissed her offer with an impatient gesture. “I don’t have time for family visits. I’ll simply be talking business with the men.”

Hurt and angered by his casual dismissal, Christina grabbed the journal and stalked out.

She didn’t need Harry to make her life complete. If he didn’t want her to be part of his life, then she would do fine on her own—which meant she didn’t have to listen to his silly warnings about the old parts of the house. She knew how to test for rotten boards and carry spare candles and flints so she wasn’t caught in the dark. She had lots of experience at exploring.

In her room—hers and Harry’s—she glared at the bed they’d shared last night. If he continued to play the part of Duke Dunce, she wouldn’t be responsible for her actions if he tried to make that a marital bed. A man who couldn’t learn to love his wife would never love his children either. She wouldn’t subject a child of hers to that heartlessness. Harry would have to remain without an heir.

Maybe that was what the blue lady was trying to tell her, although she thought it far more likely the ghost merely warned the scullery maid was about to set fire to the bird’s nest. The chimney and the house could have easily gone up with it.

By the time she’d stripped off her good clothes and donned her shabby boy’s breeches, Christina’s ire had faded but her determination had not. She might not be a proper duchess, but Harry could hire people to run his household. He didn’t need her for that. She had intelligence and gifts that placed her far above the common mold. She would simply have to prove her worth to him.

She should have known that a man who laughed at her ability to see ghosts didn’t take her seriously. She’d thought he
understood
. Her adoration of Harry had gotten in the way of common sense. Well, she could correct that.

Finding the page of the journal that mentioned an enormous bed built especially for the visit of Queen Elizabeth upon the completion of the manor, Christina memorized the description of the room and set out in search of it.

The state rooms were all on the first floor. Perhaps that would ease Harry’s concern of her falling through rafters or ceilings. Although she supposed if the manor had cellars, that possibility still loomed.

She was tall but light boned. She didn’t think she would fall through anything easily. Locating the once elegant stairs to the Tudor manor’s foyer, she tested each step on the way down. They seemed solid to her. Harry was just an old worrywart. This would be a perfectly lovely entrance once it was cleaned a little and the drafts were sealed up.

Someone had cleared the debris from the falling lintel and boarded the front door. Jeweled colors danced on the parquet floor through the stained glass transom above the boards, so it took a moment before she noticed the purple and white aura flickering in the corner. Delighted that she’d located another ghost, she hurried across the foyer.

“Please, don’t run away,” she called when it drifted toward a back hall. Her only strong example of a ghost had been Aunt Iona. She had no way of knowing if the other spirits she occasionally saw meant to warn her or frighten her or if they simply existed without purpose. But this one seemed to have a specific goal in mind. “I want to help if I can,” she called after it.

She couldn’t tell if the ghost heard or responded, but it stayed within sight as she followed it into a drawing room draped in linen and cobwebs. At the far end of the room were double doors leading into a gallery and ballroom. Why did the new wing need a ballroom if the house already had one?

Filing away that question for later, Christina continued following the purple aura into a large, unfurnished gallery that led toward the rear of the house. Peeking in doors as she passed, she discovered the room Harry had slept in their first night here. Next to it, to her delight, was a beautifully refurbished chapel—except she could swear it was after a medieval style far older than the Elizabethan structure. Had she wandered into the castle part of the house already?

Even she recognized that old castles could be exceedingly dangerous—especially if they’d been neglected. Trying to place her location, she didn’t enter the chapel but remained in the relative safety of the gallery. Hurrying onward, she glanced through a hall on the end. It appeared to be a back entrance into the ballroom, possibly for the servants to enter with refreshments from the kitchen, which would have been outside the house in earlier days.

Now that she studied it, the ballroom could very well have been the great hall of the castle. It had soaring ceilings covered in heavy dark wood and expensive oak molding instead of the current fashion of ornate plaster. The massive fireplace on this end could hold an entire haunch of venison. She’d wager the third earl—or was it the fourth?—had simply converted the hall of the castle keep into a ballroom rather than build a new one in his elegant Elizabethan manor.

So the chapel could very well be a medieval chapel. Delighted, Christina wanted to linger, but the ghost’s aura was displaying a degree of agitation where it waited at the end of the gallery. Against the dark backdrop of wainscoting, she thought she saw the shape of priestly robes.

She would come back and study the chapel later. She wanted to see where this new ghost would lead her.

A bit of dust drifted down from the timber and plaster ceiling of the gallery, but old houses were given to crumbling. She hastened past a small cascade of dirt and aimed for the doorway where the purple had disappeared.

She jumped in startlement at a loud crash behind her. Ahead of her, the purple aura beckoned urgently.

Glancing over her shoulder and seeing only a fallen panel, she caught up her skirts and raced down the remainder of the corridor to follow the ghost.

Beneath her feet, uncanny laughter reverberated against the floorboards.

***

“Christina, what the devil are you doing?” Simmering after a disastrous tour of the estate, Harry’s humor did not improve when he entered their shared bedchamber to find his wife in breeches.

Once upon a time, he’d enjoyed seeing her splendid legs in breeches, but contemplating what she could have been up to in this moldering structure while wearing them would turn his hair prematurely gray. She had cobwebs in her hair and her boy’s shirt was smeared with dirt.

“I’m washing so I might dress for dinner.”

Unself-conscious of her attire—or lack of it—she wiggled out of her shirt and dropped it to the floor, leaving Harry lusting after the lovely pale curves of her bare shoulders and arms. She wore no corset, and her shift scarcely concealed her breasts as she leaned over the washbasin.

“I am not a eunuch, Christina.” Irritated that he had so little control over his physical response to her, Harry dropped down in a chair to pry off his boots. Maybe he shouldn’t have insisted they share a room.

He took back that thought when she turned to stare at him. Her hair cascaded in golden waves to her waist. He definitely wanted to see her in any manner available. She added color to his dismal day.

“What’s a eunuch?” she asked.

“At least your mother curtailed some of your reading material,” he grumbled. “Never mind. I don’t suppose you were wearing breeches because you were digging a vegetable garden, were you?”

“Whyever would I do that? Don’t you have gardeners?”

He might wish. Cook had complained to Meg, who had passed on the request for fresh vegetables to him. He’d had to tell her to buy them from local farmers and then had to provide more coins for doing so.

What little money he had left would run out soon. A household the size of this one couldn’t live cheaply, and the grain harvest was months away. He’d added figures in the books until his head spun and hadn’t found a hole in them yet, but it would take weeks to painstakingly comb through and total all the income and expense of an estate this large. He was operating on gut instinct alone when he believed his father couldn’t possibly have spent as much as the land earned, no matter how much he’d tinkered with the house. The father he had known might have been losing his mind, but he was far more likely to have hidden funds for a rainy day than to have spent them all.

If his gut was wrong or he couldn’t figure out where his father had squirreled away his money, they would be reduced to living off Christina’s family shortly. The possibility gave him cold shivers.

“No, I don’t seem to have gardeners,” he grumbled. “Or a garden. But I don’t expect you to dig one either. I’d just like to know that you were doing something perfectly harmless while wearing those clothes.” He eyed her shift with more than a degree of interest.

Christina had always been perceptive when she applied her mind to it, Harry reflected, as she grabbed a towel and darted behind her wardrobe door to dress. “I was searching for Queen Elizabeth’s bed,” she called from her hiding place.

Harry wasn’t certain if he was relieved that she was out of sight so he didn’t burst his breeches, or disappointed that he couldn’t continue watching her dress. Shedding his own sweat-soaked shirt, he washed in the other basin Luke had carried in.

“It’s downstairs, in the Tudor state rooms near the castle. I don’t want you over there!” He glared in the mirror, wondering if he had to shave for dinner in his own home. Then thinking of the bed he would share with Christina tonight, he reached for his shaving soap.

He couldn’t ask his valet to shave him while Christina was in here. Perhaps he ought to rethink sharing a room. Not a chance. He lathered his face and watched the mirror for a reflection of his wife emerging from the wardrobe.

“Too late to tell me now. I don’t think you need to worry about anyone wandering about over there. The ghosts have their own warning system,” she called from behind the door.

“Do I want to know what that is?” Harry asked, scraping his jaw. Christina’s lively imagination always caught him by surprise and made him smile, even when he knew he should give her a sharp scold for disobedience. He shivered at the thought of Christina in the castle where his father and brother had died, but he was more interested in her story than scolding.

“They laugh and drop paneling. Very effective. I need to see how they do it. Or why.”

Harry squinted at the mirror, but she still hadn’t stepped out. The reflective tone of her voice very much sounded like Christina on a brownie hunt. “Because it’s dangerous, that’s why. Stay out of the castle.”

“I’d thought to have the bed carried up here, but it doesn’t appear as if it will easily come apart. I don’t suppose you would be interested in moving to the first floor?”

Christina emerged from the wardrobe wearing a blue silk gown unfastened in the back. Harry almost swallowed his teeth when her reflection revealed the generous cleavage produced by her corset.

“No, I don’t suppose I would,” he answered because that seemed to be the smartest reply to anything Christina asked. “Of course, if you’re interested in sharing that bed as we were meant…” He turned an inquiringly lifted eyebrow to her.

She studied his half-lathered face with interest, then swung around and presented her back to him. “I’m interested, but
you
don’t seem to be yet. Fasten me up, Harry. We’re late.”