Because of You

She lay in bed, hoping it was only another of the vicarage’s many loose shutters being buffeted against the side of the house by the north wind. A visitor in the middle of the night meant bad news.

“Wake up in there!” a man’s voice shouted. “I need help!”

The man’s words, and years of serving the parish’s needs, roused Samantha. She threw a heavy wool shawl over her flannel nightdress, slipped her feet into a pair of old boots, and shuffled out of the bedroom into the kitchen.

The small house was attached to St. Gabriel’s Church, a stone Norman building that had weathered many a Northumberland winter, al
though this one promised to be colder than most. Samantha shivered as a draft skittered up beneath her nightdress.

Her visitor pounded on the door again, the force of the blows making the heavy cedar door shake.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” she said crossly, her words coming out in little puffs of frigid air. No fire burned in her hearth. Not at night, when she could conserve fuel by sleeping under a mountain of blankets.

She lit a candle and glanced at the clock on the sideboard. It was shortly past midnight.

Samantha could usually tell who was outside by peeking out the window to the side of the door. However, the night was too dark for her to make out anything but the man’s tall shape. He could be any of a number of the villagers.

He was just starting to knock again when she threw back the bar, opened the door—and found herself staring into the eyes of a tall, dark stranger.

She immediately attempted to close the door.

The man had anticipated her move and put his foot in the door so she couldn’t shut it. He was tall, broad shouldered, with a headful of dark hair and glittering, angry eyes. She didn’t know how she could have thought he looked like any of her friends or neighbors.

He didn’t force the door open but held his ground.

“What is it you want?” she asked through the crack in the door.

“I want the keys to the Ayleborough vault.”

Samantha almost laughed in his face. “Are you daft? Those keys are for the family only. Besides, it is the middle of the night.”

The stranger’s voice hardened with determination. “I want the keys.” He spoke in the clear, concise English of an educated man. But she bristled at his high-handed attitude and was all too conscious of the slight lilting burr of the northlands in her voice.

“You cannot have them without the permission of the duke of Ayleborough,” Samantha answered, with an authority gained from years of making grown men cringe in guilt and recalcitrant schoolboys swallow cod oil. She attempted to close the door but he pushed it with his shoulder, throwing it open and shoving her aside.

He was so tall, he had to stoop or hit his head on the low ceiling. His presence filled the room. “I want the keys.”

Another woman might have quaked from fear—and the truth be known, Samantha’s knees were shaking—but she was six-and-twenty, a woman in charge of her life. The Vicarage of St. Gabriel’s had been responsible for the Ayleborough family vault for almost two centuries. It was a sacred trust between the vicar and the noble family that paid St. Gabriel’s benefice, and she would not betray that trust.

She moved around the table, wanting to put
something between herself and this intruder. The candle’s wan light cast ghoulish shadows behind him. “You can’t have them.”

The stranger’s eyes narrowed. “I must not have heard you correctly,” he said in a low, silky voice. His gloved fingers opened and closed menacingly.

Samantha’s throat went dry, but if need be, she’d die to protect those keys. Since her father’s death a year ago, the villagers had been hinting broadly that the time had come for her to move out of the vicarage. Now was her opportunity to prove her worth. “You can’t have them,” she repeated stubbornly.

His eyes took on an almost unholy light of anger. He was obviously unaccustomed to being defied. Well, so was she.

She just wished she wasn’t so aware of how big and brutally strong he was.

Then, to her relief, he took a step away. He pushed his thick, heavy hair back from his face with his hand. His was a strong face with a straight nose and a lean, square jaw. When he attempted a smile, the expression seemed almost uncomfortable for him.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized, his tone brisk. He looked around the small kitchen. “I imagine my behavior appears rude to you, barging in as I have in the middle of the night.” He didn’t sound apologetic at all.

“Who are you?” she dared to ask.

He ignored her question. His dark gaze flicked
over her half-dressed appearance with disinterest. “Where is the vicar? I must speak to him.”

“He’s not available,” she announced curtly, and prayed the man wouldn’t realize she was alone. She should never have opened the door to him. How often had the villagers warned her to be more careful?

She crossed her arms against her breasts, suddenly aware of her vulnerability as a woman.

“But I must see him,” the stranger insisted.

“You can’t.”

“And who are you?”

Samantha drew a deep breath. “I’m his daughter. I am responsible for the Ayleborough vault.”

“Well, Miss—?” He paused.

“Northrup,” she said, for the first time a little self-conscious of her unmarried state.

“Well, Miss Northrup, I have traveled a long way. I want the keys to the Ayleborough vault.”

Samantha almost groaned her frustration. This man was stubborn. “What right do you have to them?”

The line of his jaw tensed. “That is my affair and mine alone.”

“Then we are at an impasse, sir,” she said firmly. “You are wasting your time and my precious sleep. I’m responsible for those keys, and I will not let you have them without authority from the duke himself. Whoever told you to come here in the middle of the night has sent you on a fool’s errand. Your time would be better spent in petitioning Ayleborough directly.”

He reached into his overcoat pocket to pull out a leather purse heavy with coin. “How much do you want for those keys?” He didn’t wait for her answer but threw the bag down on the table. “Here, there’s five gold pieces. Take it and let me have the keys.”

For a second, Samantha was tempted. Even before her father’s death, there hadn’t been much money in the house. She’d never seen a gold piece before.

Then she remembered the stories her father used to tell of angels, disguised as strangers, who were sent out into the night to test the mettle of good Christians. As a child, Samantha had always hoped that God would choose her to be tested and send one of the angel beggars to her door.

But this man was a far cry from her image of an angel. Or a beggar. And he looked ready to throttle her, not save her soul.

“The keys are not for sale,” she said, her voice proud. “You cannot have them without the permission of the duke of Ayleborough.”

The man glared at her as if he couldn’t believe she would refuse his money. In the candlelight, she could see he had brown eyes, dark almost to the point of being black. Dangerous eyes.

And he had not liked her answer.

Conscious that she wore little more than her nightclothes, Samantha sent a hesitant glance back toward her bedroom, which had a good, solid door but no lock.

That moment of hesitation cost her. The stranger whirled suddenly and lunged for the hook next to the hearth. A set of keys hung there, the keys to the church and the Ayleborough vault.

He was out the door before Samantha could shout for him to stop. She charged into the night after him.

There was no moon, but she knew the way across the churchyard into the cemetery. Apparently, so did the stranger, although she heard him grunt as he stumbled over a half-buried headstone.

Samantha cried out, “Help me! Please, someone, help me!” But she knew her shouts would go unheard. On a winter’s night like this, all the villagers would be huddled deep under the covers, their cottage shutters closed, their heavy doors latched.

The white marble of the Ayleborough vault glowed a shadowy gray in the night. For an instant, the man’s form was silhouetted against it as he reached the vault gates.

Above the whisper of the wind, Samantha heard the gates creak open. Her father had always meant to oil that hinge but had never found the time. Now the creaking sounded ominous in the night. In another moment the stranger would be inside the vault.

She heard him swear as he tried first one key to the vault’s heavy iron door and then another. She reached the gates just as he opened the door,
its hinges whining in protest. He slammed it shut behind him.

“Stop! Please stop!” she begged him, knowing he would not listen.

The vault had been built over two hundred years ago. Styled as a miniature Greek temple, it contained two rooms, the tiny antechamber, and the burial crypt itself.

Samantha wrenched open the iron door open and was surprised to see a candle flame in the burial crypt. The stranger had known, even in the dark, where the hidden alcove with the tinder box and candles were. She slowed her step.

Who was this man?

She backed outside, suddenly uncertain. Then the flickering flame disappeared and she realized with a sense of horror that he had entered the burial crypt. The heel of her foot bumped into a good stout log and she almost stumbled. Instead, she picked up log, hefting its weight in her hand. Armed, she reentered the vault, ready to do battle.

Yale Carderock stood surrounded by his ancestors. He held up the candle and in the soft light immediately found what he’d been searching for. He walked over to the marker carved in the marble:

LELAND CARDEROCK

4TH DUKE OF AYLEBOROUGH

1743-1805

His father. Beside him lay Yale’s mother.

Almost with disbelief, he traced the outline of the letters.

He’d recently arrived in London and had gone to the tailor’s to be fitted for a wardrobe worthy of a prince when the tailor had informed Yale that the fourth duke of Ayleborough was dead…and had been for almost two years. Yale had immediately left the man’s shop and hired a horse. He’d ridden hell bent for terror all the way to Sproule and the sacred ground of St. Gabriel’s because he didn’t believe it could be possible. His father couldn’t be dead.

He still didn’t want to believe it, even as he rested his hand upon his father’s grave. The man’s presence seemed to radiate from the stone.

Yale closed his hand into a fist. The angry words he and his father had spoken the last time they’d met rang as clearly in his mind as if they had been spoken only that afternoon. The anger, the contempt, the final edict.

For eleven long years, Yale had sweated blood, scraping and working and planning for the day he would return to England and prove his father wrong.

And now, here he was…and his father had, once again, had the last word, but not in the way Yale had anticipated.

He was so stunned, he couldn’t move.

All those years, wasted.

Then, Yale Carderock, the disinherited second
son of the fourth duke of Ayleborough, did the only thing he could do. He tilted back his head and laughed. The sound was bitter and full of anger, but he couldn’t stop. It was either that, or howl at the moon like a lunatic.

The sound of his laughter echoed off the crypt walls…and he feared he might be going mad, especially when he felt the sting of tears.

He stumbled back from the grave a lost man.

“Don’t touch anything or I shall be forced to bash your head in.”

The crisp order with the soft northern burr reminded Yale that he was not alone. Miss Northrup stood in the entrance only feet from him. She brandished a half-rotted log in his direction.

Her presence was exactly what he needed to regain his equilibrium. He scratched at an incriminating tear at the edge of his eye as if it were nothing more than an irritating itch. Opening his arms in a conciliatory gesture, one hand holding the candle, he said, “See? I’ve done no harm.”

She eyed him suspiciously. The deep auburn and gold highlights of her brown hair caught the candlelight in these close quarters. She was younger than she had first appeared to him…and more attractive.

Of course, dressed in a high-necked nightdress and unlaced boots, her sleep-loosened braid swinging with anger, she didn’t seem threatening. At some point in the chase across the grave
yard, she’d lost her shawl, not that she was in any danger of being compromised. Her over-large nightdress was as concealing as a nun’s habit.

However, the martial light from her brandy-colored eyes was anything but pious. Her indignation had also brought color to her cheeks. He had no doubt she would clobber him until her weapon disintegrated in her hands if she got the opportunity.

He didn’t remember her, but it had been some twenty years since he’d lived in Sproule. His mother had preferred life in London, and considering how much he and his father had argued, he’d had little incentive to visit him at the family’s ancestral home, Braehall, a good three miles from this village.

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