Simply Love (4 page)

And then something—a flutter at the corner of his eye, a footfall, perhaps—had brought awareness crashing back and he had sensed that he was no longer alone.

And when he had turned, there she was.

Or perhaps the crash back to awareness had come a moment after he turned to look.

For that moment before it happened the woman standing on the path had seemed a part of the beauty of the evening. She had looked tall and willowy slender, her cloak flapping in the breeze and revealing a dress of lighter color beneath. She had not been wearing a bonnet. Her hair was fair, perhaps even blond, her face oval and blue-eyed and lovely, though truth to tell he had seen it one-eyed from twenty feet away in the dusk and could not be sure he had observed accurately, especially as far as the color of her eyes was concerned.

She had looked like beauty personified. For one moment he had thought…

Ah, what was it he had thought?

That she had walked out of the night into his dreams?

It was embarrassing even to consider that that was perhaps what he had thought before he had come jolting back to reality.

But certainly he had taken a step toward her without speaking a word. And she had stood there, apparently waiting for him.

And then he had seen the horror in her eyes. And then she had turned and fled in panic.

What had he expected? That she would smile and open her arms to him?

He gazed after her and was again Sydnam Butler, grotesquely ugly, with his right eye gone and the purple scars of the old burns down the side of his face, paralyzing most of the nerves there, and all along his armless side to his knee.

He was Sydnam Butler, who would never paint again, and for whom no woman would ever walk beautiful out of the night.

But he had left self-pity behind long ago, and resented moments such as this when his defenses had been lowered and it crept back in like a persistent and unwelcome guest to torment him. He knew that it would take him days to recover his equilibrium, to remind himself that he was now Sydnam Butler, the best and most efficient steward of the several Bewcastle employed to run his various estates—and that was the duke's assessment, not his own.

He was Sydnam Butler, who had learned to live alone.

Without a paintbrush in his nonexistent right hand.

Without a woman for his bed or his heart.

He did not linger on the promontory. The magic was gone. The silver had gone from the sea to be replaced by a heaving gray, soon to be black. The sky no longer held even the memory of sunset. The breeze had turned chilly. It was time to go home.

He headed off along the path, in the direction from which the woman had come. After a few steps he realized that he was limping again and made a determined effort not to.

He was more glad than ever that he had moved out of the house and into the cottage. He liked it there. He might even stay after Bewcastle and all the others had returned home. A cottage, with a cook, a housekeeper, and a valet, was all a single man needed for his comfort.

Belatedly it struck him that there had been nothing grand about either the woman's cloak or the dress beneath it, and her hair had not been dressed elaborately. She must be just one of the servants who had come with the visitors. She
must
be. If she were indeed Lady Alleyne, she would be at dinner now or in the drawing room with the rest of the family.

It was a relief to realize that she was only a servant. There was less of a chance that he would see her again. Whenever she had any free time from now on, he did not doubt that she would stay far away from the cliffs and the beach, where she might encounter the monster of Glandwr again.

He hoped he would never see her again, never have to look into that lovely face and see the revulsion there.

For an unguarded moment he had yearned toward her with his whole body and soul.

He thought resentfully that she would probably haunt his dreams for several nights to come.

If only he knew exactly how long Bewcastle intended to stay, he thought as he let himself in to the cottage and closed the door gratefully behind him, he could begin counting down the days, like a child waiting for some longed-for treat.

“She simply disappeared off the face of the earth,” Joshua
explained. “She was not in her room, she was not in the nursery, and she certainly was not in either the drawing room or the dining room.”

“I daresay,” Gervase, Earl of Rosthorn, Morgan's husband, said as he cut into his bacon, “she is intimidated by us—or by all you Bedwyns anyway,” he added with a chuckle.

“Oh, but she need not be,” Eve, Lady Aidan Bedwyn, said. “We are really quite ordinary people. But you may be right, Gervase. I can remember a time when
I
was intimidated.”

“So can I,” Judith, Lady Rannulf, added fervently.

“And now she is taking breakfast in the nursery?” Christine, Duchess of Bewcastle, grimaced. “Oh, I do feel ashamed for having let it happen. I ought to have made far more of an effort yesterday to find her and welcome her to our home. We both should have, Wulfric. I'll go up there immediately.”

“Perhaps,” Lord Aidan Bedwyn suggested, “she should be given time to finish her breakfast first, Christine. You are the
duchess,
you must remember, and the sight of you might take away her appetite.”

Most of those gathered about the table chose to find that remark worthy of laughter. The duke grasped the handle of his quizzing glass and half raised it to his eye, but he lowered it again when he saw that his duchess, far from being offended, was laughing too.

“It was remiss of Freyja and Joshua to lose one of our guests yesterday,” he said. “I would encourage you to find Miss Jewell, Christine, and invite her to dine with us this evening.” He indicated to a footman with the mere lifting of one finger that his coffee cup needed replenishing.

“And you ought to explain, Christine,” Lord Rannulf said with a broad grin, “that an invitation from Wulf is the equivalent of an imperial summons. Make it clear that the poor woman really has no choice at all.”

“And speaking of empty chairs at the dinner table last night,” Lord Alleyne said, “whatever happened to Syd? I have been looking forward to seeing him again but have not yet so much as set eyes on him.”

“I think, Alleyne,” the duchess said apologetically, “he must be afraid of me.”

That pronouncement provoked another burst of merriment from those gathered about the breakfast table and a haughty lift of the eyebrows from the duke.

“He behaved most properly when we arrived,” the duchess explained. “He was out on the terrace waiting to greet us. But I have not seen him since, and last night, well after dinnertime, he sent an apology for not coming. He had apparently just arrived home and found our invitation.”

“A bouncer if ever I heard one,” Alleyne said.

“I suppose,” Rachel, Lady Alleyne, commented, “it would not be the most comfortable thing in the world to dine out in company when one has only one arm—and that the left arm.”

“If that was his reason for not coming,” Freyja said, frowning, “then he needs a good talking to. Syd was always the quiet one among us, but he was never a coward.”

“As witness the way in which he acquired his wounds,” Aidan said dryly.

“I can remember watching him learn to ride again after he had recovered his health,” Rannulf said. “On the morning I was there at Alvesley he must have mounted thirty times and fallen off twenty-nine before finding a secure seat. But he would not allow either a groom or me within ten feet of him. And
that
was only learning to
mount
.”

“Oh, the poor gentleman,” Rachel said. “I remember my lessons when Alleyne insisted that I learn to ride—and I had two arms. I was convinced every bone in my body would be broken before I was finished, though I never did actually fall off.”

“I enjoyed catching you too much, Rache,” her husband said, waggling his eyebrows at her.

“Never call Sydnam
poor
in his hearing, Rachel,” Freyja advised. “Do not even
think
it.”

“Wulfric,” the duchess said, leaning eagerly across the table in his direction, “you will be seeing Mr. Butler this morning on estate business, will you not? Do invite him to dinner again. He really must not think of himself as a servant even if he is your steward. You told me that he took the position only because he felt he must do something useful with his life.”

“Your wish is, as ever, my command, my love,” the duke said.

“He will be invited. Or rather, if Rannulf is to be believed, he will be issued a ducal summons.”

“And so we will have two reluctant guests at table tonight,” Rannulf said with a grin. “Perhaps they should be seated side by side, Christine. They can commiserate with each other.”

“You will be putting ideas into the ladies' heads, Ralf,” Gervase said with a theatrical grimace. “You will be having them matchmaking again.”

Aidan groaned.

“The last time we tried it, though,” Alleyne added, “we were remarkably successful. If we had not been, Christine would not now be at the table with us. Neither would she be the Duchess of Bewcastle.”

The duchess laughed.

The duke set down his coffee cup and raised his quizzing glass again.

“The knock on the head that once robbed you of memory for a few months appears to have left you with a tendency toward occasional delusions, Alleyne,” he said. “The Duchess of Bewcastle is at the table here because I wooed her and won her.”

He viewed his spouse severely along the length of the table through his glass while his family indulged in another outburst of merriment and his duchess smiled tenderly back at him.

“I really must go up now to disturb poor Miss Jewell's appetite,” she said, getting to her feet. “But I hope only for a moment. You are quite right, Eve. We are really just ordinary people. And she has every right to be here with us. Her son's father was Joshua's cousin.”

“A fact you would be wise not to mention in her hearing, Christine,” Joshua warned her. “Albert was never her favorite person. Or mine for that matter.”

“And with very good reason,” Eve said. “I will come up with you, Christine, if I may. I met Miss Jewell when we went to Cornwall the year Freyja was betrothed to Joshua.”

“So did I,” Morgan said, pushing back her chair with her knees. “I remember rather liking her. I'll come too.”

“The poor woman,” Aidan observed. “I'll wager she has been hoping to hide away in the nursery for the whole month.”

                  

When a maid arrived to help her dress for dinner, Anne greeted her with some embarrassment, not knowing quite what to do with her. She had never had the services of a personal maid, and she had already donned her best green silk.

“I'll do your hair, mum, if I may,” the girl offered, and Anne sat obediently on a stool before the dressing table mirror.

She had spent a not entirely unpleasant day, all of it indoors, since there was a drizzling rain outside. She had helped organize games for the children, though she had not by any means been the only one doing so. In the course of the day she had met most of the members of the Bedwyn family except for the duke himself. They all had children and most of them had turned up in the nursery at some point in the day and stayed to play—or to be played with.

They had all treated her with courtesy, though she had stayed as far away from them as she was able.

But she had not been able to avoid taking dinner with the family this evening. The duchess had issued a personal invitation and it really had been quite impossible to refuse.

“You got lovely hair, mum,” the maid said as she brushed it out after removing all the pins.

It was honey-colored, thick and slightly wavy when it was down. Her crowning glory, Henry Arnold had once called it—not very originally—with admiration and something more shining in his eyes. And later someone else had called it the same thing while twining his fingers in it…She had hacked most of it off with small embroidery scissors the day she had realized beyond all doubt that she was with child. It had not been cut since except for an occasional trimming of the ends.

She looked different with her hair down out of its usual neat, prim knot. She knew that and usually avoided using a mirror while combing it and putting it up. With her hair down she looked…voluptuous. Was that the right word? She thought it probably was, though it was a word she hated. She hated her shining fair hair, her oval face with its large blue eyes and straight nose and high cheekbones and soft, generous lips. She hated her full breasts, her small waist, her shapely hips, her long, slim legs.

She had once loved to be called beautiful, and she had been called it often. But her beauty had become a curse to her.

“There, mum,” the girl said at last, stepping back to admire her handiwork in the mirror, having curled and coiled and twisted and braided and teased Anne's hair into a wonderfully artistic creation. “You are lovely enough to attract a lord. A pity all the ones at the house here are spoken for. But there
is
Mr. Butler, and he is the son of a lord even if he is only a mister himself.”

“If Mr. Butler falls passionately in love with me on sight this evening,” Anne said, “and offers me his hand and his heart and his fortune before the night is out, then I will have you to thank, Glenys.”

They both laughed.

“And who
is
Mr. Butler?” Anne asked.

“He is the steward here,” Glenys said. “He is…Well, never mind. But I am not even sure he will be here this evening. I may have done all this work for nothing.” She sighed aloud. “But no matter. I can do it again another time. And there are bound to be outside visitors on other evenings, Mrs. Parry says. There always are when the duke comes. Perhaps there will even be parties this time, with the duchess and all the others being here too. I will do something
very
special with your hair if there is a party.”

“And this is not special?” Anne asked, indicating her coiffure with a laugh to hide her unease. Dressed thus, it emphasized her features and the long arch of her neck.

“You wait and see,” Glenys said saucily. “You had better go down now, mum. I have taken a bit longer than I ought. Mrs. Parry will be mad with me if you are late, and won't let me come here again.”

Anne felt very conspicuous as she descended the stairs to the drawing room, though she guessed that she would still look remarkably plain in comparison with the finery the other ladies were bound to be wearing. She also felt very reluctant to keep on putting one foot ahead of the other as she walked. But what choice did she have?

Perhaps after this evening she could fade away into the shadows.

She looked about anxiously for Joshua when she arrived in the open doorway, but it was the duchess herself who came hurrying toward her.

The Duchess of Bewcastle had been a surprise. She had dark, short, curly hair and was extremely pretty, but her beauty came more from her bright vitality than from any particular physical attribute, Anne had decided. She smiled frequently, there seemed to be a permanent sparkle in her eyes, and there was nothing at all in her manner or bearing to proclaim the great elevation of her rank. She was a great favorite in the nursery.

When she had arrived there soon after breakfast with Lady Aidan and Lady Rosthorn, both of whom Anne had met several years before in Cornwall, she had gone out of her way to make Anne feel at home, drawing her up from her curtsy, linking an arm through hers, and leading her away into the darkened room where her young baby slept in his crib, his two little hands curled into fists on either side of his head as if he fully intended swinging them as soon as he awoke. She had even somehow worked into the conversation the fact that she was the daughter of a country gentleman who had been forced to supplement his income by teaching at the village school and that she herself had been teaching part-time at that same school when she had met the duke at a house party she had really not wanted to attend.

“It can be an abomination, Miss Jewell,” she had added as if she were really saying nothing of any great significance, “to find oneself stuck in a country manor surrounded by strangers who might possibly think themselves superior and wishing that one were anywhere else on earth but right there. I tried at first to remain aloof from it all, observing satirically from a shadowed corner. But Wulfric found me there and provoked me, the horrid man, and I emerged from that corner in order to preserve my very self-respect.” She had laughed lightly.

Wulfric, Anne gathered, must be the Duke of Bewcastle.

And she had, she had also realized, just been challenged into emerging from her own shadowed corner, the nursery, in order to preserve her self-respect.

But the duchess, she thought, had never borne an illegitimate son.

Now the duchess linked an arm through Anne's again.

“I will make sure that you have been presented to everyone, Miss Jewell,” she said. “And here is Wulfric first.”