Captive Bride (21 page)

She sat rigid, arms straight, fists clenched at her sides, her color high. As though reluctantly, her gaze met Tip’s across the chamber. Distress and guilt shone from the dark depths of her eyes.

“It is true, Tom,” she uttered.

Tip swallowed hard, his chest so tight his lungs seemed not to function. She loved another man. By the look on her face, a man she should not love.

“Who is he?” Thomas asked hurriedly. “If he’s within a few hours,
Cheriot
or I can ride fast—”

“Be quiet, Thomas.” Tip wondered that he possessed the power to speak.

“Why haven’t you told me before this, Bea?” her brother pressed. “We could have sent for him right away.”

“It was not possible.” Her voice sounded strangled.

“Well, why not?” Thomas pressed. “Who is he? Has he—”

“He is . . . ineligible,” she whispered, her eyes bright with unshed tears.

Silence descended on the chamber once more.

Iversly
chuckled mirthlessly. “See what you have done, young fool?” He laughed outright. “You have brought your sister extraordinary distress.
Perfect for me, of course.
The more pain she brings to our marriage bed, the greater my pleasure will be.”

“
Iversly
,” Tip ground out. “Leave. Or I vow I will find a way to make you pay for this, beyond the grave, if I must.”

“Ah, chivalrous to the very core,” the ghost murmured.

“He has gone,” Miss Dews chirped, but her gaze rested on Bea with quiet compassion.

Tip stared at the woman he had loved for years, who had loved another man possibly all that time. A man, no doubt, whose passions did not goad him into kissing her to within an inch of her innocence in a stairwell against her
will.

Perhaps the man lived close to Hart House. Then she might endure her mother’s demands in order to remain near him. Perhaps he was a member of the local gentry, a married man with a family. Did the cad know he had won her affections? Did he tease her with what she could not have? Or was he beneath her station, a servant?
Good God
.

Torn with shame, her eyes now admitted everything.

Tip’s heart burned.

“Well, that is that.” Lady
Marstowe’s
voice was less than steady. Bea’s head came up. The dowager stood. “
Beatrice, that
man will not relent. You are in grave danger.”

“I believe he is bluffing.” She sounded calm, and very certain.

“Nonsense.
His threats are perfectly sincere,” the dowager stated. “What will you do?”

“I cannot leave Aunt Julia to her fate.” Her gaze shot to Tip, then to her brother.

“Aunt Julia? Oh, good Lord, I hadn’t even thought,” Thomas exclaimed, gaping at the elderly lady.

“Of course you did not, Thomas dear,” Miss Dews tittered. “But
Iversly
will not harm me, and perhaps Beatrice is correct.” A dollop of cream attached to her lower lip wiggled as she
shrugged.

“He is playing a game,” Bea stated. “He wishes to harm the living, and so we must not play to his wishes. We must simply ignore him.”

“Ignore him?” Thomas exploded. “That is
preposter
—”

“Thomas, that is enough,” Tip said. “Go find Lady Bronwyn and escort her and Miss Minturn back to the village.”

Thomas set his jaw like a mule. “I will stay and help my sister.”

“Tom,” Bea said. “Your responsibility now is to your betrothed. And I will be fine, truly.”

“But
Iversly
will—”

“I am persuaded he means me no harm. Now, go. They are both overset and need you.”

He approached, crouched before her, and grasped her hands with a nervous shake. “You are an excellent sister, Bea, and I am a dashed poor excuse for a brother.”

She touched her fingers to his cheek. “I love you, Tom.” 

He blinked rapidly, pulled away, and hurried from the chamber. She gazed after him, eyes troubled.

Tip moved toward her. “What do you intend?”

“I will wait out the night,” she said to her palms upturned on her lap. “And tomorrow we will determine how Aunt Julia and I might leave the castle grounds without mishap.” She stood. “I will look again in the library and see if I can find something there that we missed.”

“You will voluntarily put yourself in the way of danger?”

Her gaze fixed on his
neckcloth
. “If he is telling the truth, I am already in the way of danger. If he is not, which I believe, I have nothing to fear.”

“It is not that simple.”

“It seems so to me.”

He drew closer, her beguiling scent and the determined tilt of her chin tangling his thoughts.

“Bea, don’t do this.” 

“Do what?” she said in barely a whisper. “Save my aunt?”

“Sacrifice yourself.”

Finally, her gaze flashed to his. “Perhaps it is the lesser of two evils.”

Tip stepped back, his heart thudding. “Then you have made your decision and I cannot alter it.”

She shook her head.

Panic washed over him, like in the stairwell, but this time his lack of control didn’t cause it. The woman of his dreams was slipping away, and he had never truly had her
.

“Do you expect me to remain here and watch you damn yourself?” His voice was unsteady.

“No. I expect you to depart before it becomes too difficult, as usual. You have heard something you do not like.” Her gaze was firm, her voice resolute.
Without passion.
“I give you leave to go now.”

Tip fought for composure. “You give me no choice.”

“That excuse again?”

“Bea—”

“Go to the village. Ask if anyone knows a thing to help us escape this place.” Her eyes challenged him to refuse. “We will see you tomorrow.”

He could not draw breath and he feared that every one of his emotions showed clear on his face. “Tomorrow, then,” he said, but his feet would not move.

He grasped her hand and drew it to his lips. Her lashes fluttered and she looked away. He
released her, bowed to the dowager and her sister, and left.

He spent the next four hours scouring the village and surrounding farms for information that could thwart
Iversly’s
plan. He found nothing except, finally, a pint of ale between his palms and the cold, hard realization that Bea was justified to accuse him of fleeing. Only a coward would run from life in the fear that it would be too difficult to handle.

He pushed away the tankard.

This was not about his life. It was about hers. He could not allow her to remain in danger. She might not let him give her his name, but he would give her what he could. If it meant tackling his own ghosts to do it, then so be it.

“Well, Beatrice, you have made your bed,” Lady
Marstowe
said apparently without irony. “But dinner must still be eaten, even at this late hour. Where is that foolish cook?” She strode from the chamber.

“You should not have sent dear Peter away, Beatrice dear. I told you, poor Rhys will not harm me.”

“Rhys?” Bea started. “Do you mean Lord
Iversly
?”

Aunt Julia nodded, her eyes prancing in different directions.

“How do you know his name?”

“Oh, we have had a number of lovely chats.”

“Lovely chats? Aunt Julia, he is evil.”

Julia smiled and dug in her embroidery bag. “Now, what did I do with that lace? I must finish this cap before you leave so that you can deliver it to Harriet. She will look fetching in it, I daresay. It is quite a shame dear Alfred will never see her wearing it.
Silly man.”

“Aunt Julia,” Bea sat forward in her chair, “I am not leaving here, except perhaps in a different form than I have now.”

“That’s all well and good, my dear.”

“What did you and
Iversly
speak of?”

She waved her hand about vaguely. “He is a regular ghost, I daresay.”

“Yes, I know, Aunt Julia. But did he say anything about—about you?”

“He promised he would be very good to me. They always are, you see.”

They?
Bea’s insides trembled. Aunt Julia’s mind worked differently from most
people’s
, but she was not mad. Bea almost wished she were.

“Have you known other ghosts?”

“Several, to be sure,” Julia chirped, fishing around in her bag and pulling out a tangle of fabric swatches.

“Are they like
Iversly
?”

“Oh, no.
He is a great deal
more unhappy
.” She plucked up a pink silk and pinned it to the edge of the cap for Bea’s mother.

Bea grasped her great-aunt’s hands to still them. Aunt Julia’s merry hazel eyes met hers.

“Aunt Julia, did he say anything to you that might help us here tonight? Is he sincere in his threats?”

“Perfectly, I should say.” She laid a wrinkled palm on Bea’s cheek.
“Dear, dear Beatrice.
We will miss you when you are gone. And Harriet will be so cross. She has always considered you the best of her
children,
however she goes on about Sylvia’s beauty. And of course your father will grieve. He admires dear
Georgianna
so, but he depends upon you.”

Bea gaped. “They will not miss me.” The words popped out. They felt good and awful at once. “I suspect they will barely know I am gone.”
Except, of course, that Mama would have to find someone new to order around.

But even if Bea somehow did return to Hart House, those days were over. At least, she wanted them to be. At present, with her dreams of Peter
Cheriot
finally
destroyed,
she didn’t know if she had the strength to make any lifetime decisions.

“Of course they will know, and they will miss you,” Aunt Julia patted her knee and returned to her sewing. “And poor darling Peter will be devastated.”

Bea’s heart tightened.

Lady
Marstowe
marched into the room. “Come, Beatrice. Dinner is served and you must maintain your strength for tonight. Perhaps
Iversly
will make a mistake.”

Bea didn’t have stomach for the meal. Aunt Julia ate heartily, and Aunt Grace commented on the village and Miss Minturn’s ridiculous behavior. When they returned to the parlor, the dowager called for tea as though it were a typical night. Bea appreciated the pretense, but still she could not eat a bite. She nursed a cup until it grew cold,
then
poured herself another.

She met Lady
Marstowe’s
gaze across the table. “You should go to bed, Aunt Grace.”

“I will do so when I am ready.”

Bea cast her gaze to Aunt Julia, who was scooping spoonful after spoonful of sugar into her cup. Clearly they intended to wait for midnight with her.

She took up a book and tried to read, but remembered nothing at the end of each page. Tip’s words from the stairwell kept returning to her, that he was not able to choose as he liked.
But not only his words.
His touch, his desire, his eager possession of her.
Her body filled with yearnings and despair. She hardly knew how to think of his departure now.

When the great-aunts fell asleep on the couch, Bea fled the chamber, trying to escape her thoughts.

In the library she rifled through piles of scrolls and loose papers, and studied the shelves again. Halfway across the chamber she came upon a small, leather-bound book with gilt edges. It appeared to be a diary of sorts. Heartbeats quick, she opened it. The entries dated to 1770 and recounted the daily life of an elderly widowed gentleman residing at the castle. She read through it, flipping pages swiftly. It said nothing of
Iversly
.

Hopes momentarily dashed, Bea continued searching. Eventually, she sat back and sighed.

“You are a coward.”
Iversly’s
voice sounded distant.

“I don’t care what you think of me,” she retorted.

“You will shortly.”

A shiver slithered up Bea’s back. She repressed it. “What time is it?”

“Nearly too late for you, my dear.”

“Do you still think I will come to you willingly?”

“As the hour nears, panic will get the better of you. You will come before midnight.”

“Perhaps I would prefer death.”

“I know what you would prefer. But that is not to be your lot, is it?”

Bea turned.
Iversly
stood before the closed window shutter.