Beauty and the Duke (5 page)

Hurrying across the grounds, Christine paid little attention to the wind that had picked up since that morning and now whipped at her skirts as though the
humidity and her emotions had conspired to create a storm. Head down, she persevered through the long grass as she swept past the pond.

How dare Erik give away quite possibly the greatest find of the century. Why would Papa even suggest Joseph Darlington’s name? Men! Six of one, half a dozen of the other. They were all the same.

“Miss Christine! Miss Christine!”

She came to an abrupt halt and looked up suddenly at the heavy, black clouds forming on the horizon behind the wind-whipped oaks. Looking around, she caught her hair with one hand and vaguely wondered if she had imagined someone calling her name, or if God—or the devil—had whispered her name.

“Miss Christine!”

Christine turned in the direction of the school. Babs, Dolly, and the impish blond Sal, three of the girls who had been in class were running toward her with six other girls in tow. Only one thing in life struck fear into Christine more than standing in front of a classroom filled with intrepid students who asked a question she could not answer. And that was being caught outside in the open with those very same daunting students.

Putting on her optimum teacher smile, she greeted the girls. Dolly was the first to speak, her red curls bouncing around her flushed face. Each of them was carrying books. “You did not return to class. We have been waiting to speak with ye, mum.”

All the girls flocked around her. “Everyone is talking about Lord Sedgwick’s visit,” Dolly said before Christine could find her voice.

“Will he steal you away from us, just like Mr. Darlington stole Miss Amelia?” Sal asked.

“It isn’t stealing if she
wants
to go away with him,” Babs said.

“But you believe in the ring now?” Dolly’s hopeful voice persisted. “Why else would a rich, handsome
duke
visit Sommershorn Abbey?”

Christine had completely forgotten the ring.
Heavens.

She stared down at the braided band of silver that seemed to be glowing blue in the dreary gray light. The thing had got stuck on her finger and she’d forgotten about it in her vexed emotional state.

“You must have been thinking about his grace before you put on the ring,” Babs insisted, her voice fraught with awe. “Or he would not have appeared at our classroom door. What did you wish for, Miss Christine?”

Silence gathered around Christine at last, as anxious eyes awaited her reply.

It was true that morning she had been thinking about Erik, but that was only because of their meeting last night at the gala. She had merely been woolgathering this morning—something she rarely did—when he’d popped into her thoughts again. But thinking about a man did not mean she wanted him to show up on her doorstep.

And, yes, she admitted that she had told Aunt Sophie she wanted to make an earth-shattering discovery.
A discovery so magnificent…the entire world would stand up and take notice
.

Clutching the packet to her chest, Christine knew that what Erik had brought was indeed something magnificent.

She suddenly felt dizzy.

But none of this meant the ring was magic. The idea was ludicrous.

If the ring were magic, she’d be able to fly or turn invisible or possess some other power that would allow her to transcend mere human frailties. She would be
invulnerable to doubts, her intellect intact, and she’d be perfectly cheery, like a dollop of warm sunshine on cobbles.

Taking in their determined expressions, she recognized the futility in glossing over reality. A reality born from the wisdom that came with age and experience, a wisdom that rebelled against a concept charged with fanciful notions. A wisdom acquired through life experience, and that refused to make her a co-conspirator with her students. And then she folded.

How could she be so cruel as to tell them the truth?

“It is not wise to believe in sorcery and fairytales,” she told them instead.

“Why, Miss Sommers?” Babs asked.

“Because…” For a moment, Christine was at a complete loss as she sought to explain her logic. “Because we are sensible, and sensible people do not waste time on such piffle.”

She started to step past them when Dolly spoke. “But Miss Sommers…”

Christine stopped. Something in her chest tightened. They looked so crestfallen, she felt a compunction to explain. “Lord Sedgwick and I used to know each other a long time ago,” she said gently. “He and my father were in contact and we met again last night at the Fossil Society gala when Mr. Darlington introduced us. His grace then came to talk to me about…” she thought of the need for secrecy about his find, “something private. That is all.”

Relieved to feel the first plop of rain against her shoulders, Christine looked up at the thunderheads. She told all of them to get back to their rooms.

“Go on now, get to shelter.” She smiled encouragingly.

But watching them shuffle away, she didn’t understand why she felt as if she had just crushed their hearts.

Christine could not remove the ring.

She used lard, tallow, ice, steam, Aunt Sophie’s cod-liver oil. Nothing worked. In the end, Christine resorted to wearing gloves during class the next week and pleaded hard work in the laboratory to get Mrs. Samuels, her housekeeper, to deliver her meals in the evening while she studied Erik’s tooth fossil.

She had not seen him since his visit to the abbey a week before. Not even a minutia of gossip appeared in the rags. Every day she had looked, expecting to see news that some aristocrat was offering up his poor virginal daughter to the devil duke of Sedgwick for perpetual bondage in the name of matrimony. But she’d read nothing.

Christine spent the last week evaluating Erik’s find, poring over every detail in every book in her extensive library and that of the museum’s, perusing every drawing depicting every documented fossil found. Today had finally been the last day of classes and, after collecting the students’ books, she hired a hack and traveled a mile west to the church to see her father.

The old cathedral was a magnificent affair with seventeenth-century stained-glass windows and pillars carved from granite. It was the church where Christine had been baptized. Every Sunday since she had come to live at the abbey, she attended services at this cathedral with due diligence. Even Christine’s father, who had been a free thinker for his time, and Aunt Sophie, who definitely held a particular bent toward one’s spiritual freedom, had never risked their mortal souls. Still it had been a surprise to Christine that Papa had requested
in his will to be buried here instead of the abbey. Aunt Sophie told her later that this cathedral had been the place her father had married her mother.

A wrought-iron fence enclosed the cemetery. Christine’s father was buried near the rose garden. In all that time since Papa had passed, she had never seen another visitor to this sacred place. Today was no different. She removed the spent flowers she had placed in the urn next to his stone marker last week with a new bouquet she’d bought from the young flower girl hawking her wares outside the church. Then she sat on the stone bench.

What she wouldn’t have given to show him the fossil tooth.

“We should have talked more, Papa,” she whispered. “Why didn’t you tell me you were corresponding with Erik?”

She suspected Erik had written to Papa about the discovery of the bones on his property. Then after her father had passed away, Erik had gone to Edinburgh and found Joseph. All of which had played a part in bringing Erik to Sommershorn Abbey…at the exact moment she had put on the ring, she’d reminded herself for days now.

The sunlight suddenly vanished briefly behind the clouds. She peered up at the sky as a voice behind her spoke. “Good day to you, Christine.”

Reverend Simms stood beside the bench. She rose. He was a big man with gray hair and a gentle smile, the only man of the cloth Aunt Sophie ever tolerated lecturing her on the evil of smoking tobacco and drinking bourbon. Smiling, she held out her hand. “I thought you were in Westchester.”

“I returned yesterday.” He suddenly lifted her hand into a blade of sunlight. The ring shone nearly blue and
warmed her finger. Raising his eyes to hers, he lifted his brows. “ ’Twas a gift,” she said. Only a half lie. Her students had given her the ring. “The markings are some form of Gaelic,” she offered to the silence, having already attempted to research the inscription.

“The words inscribed are Gaelic, the
markings
are Arthurian.” He lowered her hand. “Sadly, even today, legends, and superstitions still surround the saga of Arthur and Merlin.”

She brought her hand nearer to better study the ring. “You might know your seventh-century paganism. But not your metallurgy. This ring is not seventh century.”

“I knew your papa,” he said quietly. “The ring belonged to him.”

Startled, she met his penetrating glance. “I thought the ring belonged to Aunt Sophie.”

“Perhaps.” His forehead wrinkled in a frown. “Your papa
did
give it back to her shortly after you were born. He told me he bought it from an old Gypsy trader who promised that the ring would give him whatever he wanted most in the world. What have
you
wished for, Christine?”

She smoothed her velvet skirts with suddenly nervous hands and laughed around the tightness in her throat as if he were being silly.

“You have always been able to put distance between yourself and others when it suited you, Christine. I would be more inclined to believe you have charmed yourself with your wishful thinking. Whatever that may be.”

“Have you never believed in such nonsensical superstitions?”

He softened his tone as if he were speaking to a child. “Of course I have. For years when I was a child I never stepped on a crack for fear of breaking my mother’s
back.”

She peered down at the braided silver band on her finger. Just looking at the ring filled her with a sense of purpose. And something akin to confusion.

After a moment, she unclenched her hand. “You married my parents to each other. Did you know my mother?”

“She was an actress,” he said. “Your father defied common sense and his family to marry her. It was what he thought he wanted more than anything until it came to his next big discovery.”

“Then in the end, the ring did not give him what he wanted most.”

“Your father never considered that he gave more of himself to his studies than to his marriage.”

Perhaps it is not enough just to want a thing,” she said. “You have to be willing to sacrifice everything else to have it.”

His brows lowered. “I have long since concluded that if someone believes something will happen, by their own actions, they can actually cause that event to occur, thus reinforcing their superstitions. No good ever comes from the belief in sorcery, Christine. Even if it
is
a figment of one’s imagination.”

And hadn’t Aunt Sophie taught her how important it was to be sensible and logical? Persistence reaped its own reward. Isn’t that what Papa had always promised? Though she hadn’t always listened.

She’d told herself other things as well, as she spent last week evaluating Erik’s find. Six days she had examined the evidence, daring to conclude that Erik was indeed sitting on what might be the greatest find of their age. Not since William Buckland discovered the first reptilian-like fossil bones at the Stonefield quarries near Oxford had such a discovery rocked the paleontol
ogy field.

She may have spent the last days of class teaching her students about the merits of hard work, but even she could not deny that Erik’s arrival had occurred less than five minutes
after
she put on the ring. Christine had always thought she was too sensible to believe in such twaddle as spells and charms, but then her father had believed in the existence of dragons—to the dismay of all academia—and now she had a tooth in her possession that belonged to a beast at least thirty feet tall.

Christine spent the rest of the afternoon at the museum. By the time she reached the abbey, the sun had already set and a drizzle fell. Passing the caretaker’s cottage, she picked up her step, her shoe heels clicking on the damp cobbles as she followed the stairwell down to the basement. She pulled her key from her pocket. A statue of Cerberus, the mythical three-headed dog that was said to guard Hades, sat in an alcove to the right of the doorway.

A solid twist opened the door. She blustered into the basement vestibule and slammed the door against the wind. She paused, leaning her forehead against the door before noting someone had lit the lamp. As thoughts tumbled through her mind, she turned.

Her scapegrace cousin leaned in the archway separating the corridor from the vestibule. “Hello, coz,” he said.

His cologne overpowered her and she waved her hand in front of her nose. “What are you doing here, Gordy?” She adjusted her hat.

“Papa is in London. Parliament is in session. Your trust fund needs to be managed. All manner of business brings us to London.” He suddenly laughed. “What is
that on top of your hat? A
nest
?”

A lock of blond hair fell across his brow. He was considered by most to be dashing. He wore a shirt with a stand-up collar, silk cravat, and blue-and-white-checked trousers. He dressed like a deranged peacock. Christine possessed no inkling how they could possibly share the same grandparents.

She swept past him down the corridor to her laboratory. The door to her laboratory was open. A lamp burned on the table to the right of the door. Gordy had been inside!

Dear God
.

She must have left the door unlocked.

She made a quick visual assessment of her workspace. The packet Erik had brought her remained wrapped in cloth beneath the top shelf where she had left it. Her research books lay open beneath where she had left them. It took all her will not to shove Gordy out of the room and lock the door in his face. “What are you doing at Sommershorn, besides trying to steal something?”