Mastered By Love (30 page)

life
was in the balance, and I would have been greatly disappointed had Minerva not warned me. I was in a position to save her—a girl who was born on my lands.”

 

He looked down into his sister’s mulish face. “What Minerva did was right. What I did was right. What you appear to have forgotten is that my people—even silly young girls—are my responsibility.”

 

Margaret drew in a long, tight breath. “Papa would
never—”

 

“Indeed.” This time his voice cut. “But I am not Papa.”

 

For a moment, he held Margaret silent with his gaze, then, unhurriedly and deliberately, turned toward the castle. “Come, Minerva.”

 

She quickly caught up to him, walking alongside.

 

He lengthened his stride; the other ladies were now far ahead. “I need to get out of these wet clothes.” He spoke conversationally, signaling he intended to leave Margaret’s little scene behind, metaphorically as well as physically.

 

Minerva nodded, tight-lipped. “Precisely.” A heartbeat passed, then she went on, “I really don’t know why Margaret couldn’t have waited until later to rail at me—it’s not as if I won’t be around. If she was really worried about your health, she’d have done better not to delay us.” She glanced sharply his way. “Can you go faster? Perhaps you ought to run?”

 

“Why?”

 

“So you’ll warm up.” They were nearing the mill. Raising a hand, she pushed his shoulder. “Go that way—through the mill and over the race. It’s faster than going down to the bridge and across.”

 

She usually avoided touching him, yet now she kept pushing, so he diverted onto the paved path leading into the mill. “Minerva—”

 

“We need to get you to the castle, out of those wet clothes and into a hot bath as soon as possible.” She prodded him toward the gangplank. “So move!”

 

He almost saluted, but did as she ordered. From Margaret, who thought of no one but herself, to Minerva, who was totally focused…on him.

 

On his well-being.

 

It took an instant for that to fully sink in.

 

He glanced at her as, her hands now locked about one of his elbows, she hurried him out of the mill. Her focus was on the castle, on getting him—all but propelling him—as fast as
possible inside. Her intensity wasn’t just that of a chatelaine doing her duty; it was a great deal more.

 

“I’m not likely to take a fatal chill from a dip in the river.” He tried to slow to a fast walk.

 

She set her jaw and all but hauled him on. “You’re not a doctor—you can’t know that. The prescribed treatment for immersion in an icy river is a hot bath, and that’s what you have to have. Your mother would never forgive me if I let you expire because you wouldn’t treat the risk with due seriousness.”

 

His mother, who had never wasted a moment worrying about his health. Male Variseys were supposed to be tough, and, indeed, were. But he bowed to Minerva’s tugging and resumed his faster pace. “I am taking this seriously.”

 

Just not as seriously as she was.

 

Or, as it transpired, any of his staff were.

 

The instant Minerva pushed him through the door into the north wing, Trevor pounced.

 

“No!”
His valet was literally aghast. “That’s another pair of Hobys ruined—two pairs in three days. And, oh, my heavens! You’re drenched!”

 

He refrained from saying he knew. “Is my bath ready?”

 

“It better be.” Trevor exchanged a look with Minerva, still by Royce’s side, still hurrying him along. “I’ll go up and make sure.” Trevor turned and all but fled before them, his footsteps clattering up the turret stairs.

 

Royce and Minerva followed, taking the shortcut to his rooms.

 

Minerva halted outside his sitting room door; he kept walking, to the useful new door into his dressing room and the bathing chamber beyond that Hancock, the castle carpenter, was just testing.

 

Hancock nodded. “Your new door as ordered, Your Grace. Just in time, it seems.” Hancock swung the panel wide. “Your bath awaits.”

 

Royce nodded. “Thank you.” He looked over the door and
its frame as he went through into the dressing room, then nodded again to Hancock. “That’s exactly what I wanted.”

 

Hancock saluted, picked up his toolbox, and walked off. Minerva appeared in the doorway—mouth a-cock, staring at the door, then at its frame. Then she looked at Royce.

 

“So Trevor and the footmen don’t need to come through the bedroom to reach these rooms.”

 

“Oh.” She stood there, digesting that, while he started the difficult task of unwinding his sodden cravat.

 

Trevor appeared in the open doorway opposite, from which steam eddied as a footman poured what had to be a last pail of steaming water into the large bath; if any more was put in, it would slosh out when Royce got in. He signaled to the footman to stop.

 

His valet, meanwhile, was frowning at two glass-stoppered bottles he was holding. “Which would be better? Mint or peppermint?”

 

“Menthol.” Snapping out of her trance, Minerva bustled in to join Trevor. “Pennyroyal is what you want—it’s the best for warding off chills.” She stepped around Trevor, let the footman squeeze past, then pointed to a rack of similar bottles set on a wooden table. “There should be some there.”

 

“Pennyroyal. Right.” Trevor went to the rack. “Here it is. How many drops?” He squinted at the tiny label.

 

“About a teaspoon, even two. Enough so you can smell it strongly.”

 

Trevor took out the stopper, tipped a bit of the oil into the water. Minerva and he sniffed the steam. Both frowned.

 

Walking into the bathing chamber, Royce dropped his sodden cravat, which he’d finally managed to untangle, onto the floor; it landed with a splat, but neither his valet nor his chatelaine reacted.

 

He looked longingly at the hot water, felt ice seeping into his marrow—heard the other two arguing the merits of adding peppermint as well.

 

Lips setting, he yanked his shirttails free of his waistband,
loosened the cords at his wrists and neck, then looked at his chatelaine. “Minerva.”

 

She looked up, met his eyes.

 

“Leave. Now.” He reached for the bottom of his shirt.

 

“Oh, yes—of course.”

 

He pulled the shirt up, heard the flurry of her footsteps, then the door to the bathing chamber click shut. Grimly smiled. But wrestling free of the drenched folds was an exercise and a half; Trevor had to help—with that, his boots, and his breeches, designed to cling to him even when dry.

 

Finally naked, he stepped into the tub, sat, and leaned back, then sank right down. Felt the heat from the water slowly melt the ice in his flesh. Felt the warmth sink in.

 

Felt warmth of a different kind slowly expand from his center out.

 

His gaze on the door through which his chatelaine had fled, he slowly thawed.

 

 

Late that night, lounging shoulder to the wall in the darkness of an embrasure in the keep’s gallery, Royce broodingly stared at Minerva’s bedroom door.

 

The only thought in his mind was whether her caring about him as she clearly did was sufficient excuse for what he was about to do.

 

He understood perfectly well why the need to bed her had suddenly escalated to a level significantly beyond his control. Dicing with death had that effect, made one only too aware of one’s mortality, and commensurately fired the need to live, to prove one was vitally alive in the most fundamental way.

 

What he was feeling, how he was reacting, was all perfectly natural, normal, logical. To be expected.

 

He wasn’t at all sure she’d see it that way.

 

But he needed her tonight.

 

And not solely for his selfish self.

 

While in the matter of the rescue, he and she had been in the right, so, too, had Margaret. He’d accepted the need to
secure the succession; he couldn’t continue to put off speaking and gaining Minerva’s agreement to be his bride.

 

To be the mother of his son—the eleventh Duke of Wolverstone.

 

At this moment in time, all roads in his life led to this place, and compelled him to act, to take the next step.

 

The castle had grown quiet; all the guests were abed, whoever’s bed they were gracing that night. Within the keep, only he and Minerva remained; all the staff had long retired.

 

There was no sense dallying any longer.

 

He was about to push away from the wall, had tensed to take the first fateful step toward her door, when it opened.

 

He froze, watched through the darkness as Minerva came out. She was still fully dressed; clutching a shawl about her shoulders, she glanced right, then left. She didn’t notice him, standing perfectly still in the enveloping shadows.

 

Quietly closing her door, she set off down the corridor.

 

Silent as a wraith, he followed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Twelve

 

 

 

 

A
full moon rode the sky; Minerva didn’t need a candle
to slip down the main stairs and follow the west wing corridor to the music room. Once on the ground floor, she walked quickly, openly; all the guests were on the floor above.

 

She’d loaned Cicely, a distant Varisey cousin, her mother’s pearl brooch to anchor the spangled shawl Cicely had worn as the Princess of France in that evening’s performance of
Love’s Labour’s Lost
—and had forgotten to take it back. The brooch was valuable, but much more than that, it was one of the few mementos she had of her mother; she wasn’t of a mind to risk leaving it jumbled with the other pieces of finery in the costume box, not even just until tomorrow.

 

Not that she imagined anyone would steal it, but…she wouldn’t be able to sleep until she had the brooch back.

 

Reaching the music room, she opened the door and went in. Moonlight streamed through the wide window, flooding the stage, providing more than enough light. As she walked up the aisle between the rows of chairs, her mind drifted to Royce—and the sharp clutch of fear, almost paralyzing in strength, that had gripped her when she’d seen him in the
river, with his burden sweeping wide around the spit where his would-be rescuers had waited…

 

For one crystal-clear instant in time, she’d thought she—they—would lose him. Even now…She slowed, closed her eyes, drew in a slow, steadying breath. All had turned out well—he was safe upstairs, and the girl was at her home, no doubt cosseted and warm in her bed.

 

Exhaling and opening her eyes, she continued on more briskly, stepping up onto the low stage. The trunk of costumes stood in the lee of the paneled left wing. Beside it sat a box full of shawls, scarves, kerchiefs, mixed with fake daggers, berets, a paste tiara and crown, all the smaller items that went with the costumes.

 

Crouching by the box, she started sorting through the materials, looking for the spangled shawl.

 

With hands and eyes engaged, her thoughts, prodded by Margaret’s outburst, and by comments she’d subsequently heard, not just from the ladies but from some of the men as well, roamed, circling the question of whether she’d done the right thing in warning Royce of the girl’s danger.

 

Not all who’d commented had assumed she’d expected him to rescue the girl, but she had. She’d expected him to act precisely as he had—not in the specifics, but in the sense that he would do all he could to save the child.

 

She
hadn’t
expected him to risk his life, not to the point where his death had become a real possibility. She didn’t think he’d foreseen that, either, but in such situations there never was time for cold-blooded calculations, weighing every chance.

 

When faced with life-and-death situations, one had to act—and trust that one’s skills would see one through. As Royce’s had. He’d given orders to his cousins and they’d instinctively obeyed;
now
they might question the wisdom of his act, but at the time they’d done as he’d asked.

 

Which was all that mattered. To her mind, the end result had been entirely satisfactory, yet of all those above stairs,
only she, Royce, and a handful of others saw the matter in that light. The rest thought he, and she, had been wrong.

 

Of course, they wouldn’t think so if the girl had been wellborn.

 

Noblesse oblige; those dissenting others clearly interpreted the phrase in a different way from her and Royce.

 

The spangled shawl wasn’t in the box. Frowning, she piled the other things back in, then lifted the lid of the trunk. “Aha.”

 

She drew the soft folds out. As she’d suspected, Cicely had left the brooch pinned to the shawl; freeing it, she closed the clip, and slipped the brooch into her pocket. Dropping the shawl back into the trunk, she lowered the lid, and stood.

 

Just as footsteps sounded in the corridor beyond the open door.

 

Slow, steady, deliberate footsteps…Royce’s.

 

They halted in the doorway.

 

Royce normally moved impossibly silently. Was he allowing his footsteps to be heard because he knew she was there? Or because he thought there was no one around to hear?

 

She edged deeper into the lee of the panel; the thick velvet curtain, currently drawn back, gave her extra cover, ensuring her outline wasn’t etched in moonlight on the floor before the stage. Sliding her fingers between the curtain and the panel, she peeked out.

 

Royce stood in the doorway. He glanced around the room, then walked slowly in, leaving the door wide.

 

A great deal tenser than she had been, she watched as he paced down the center aisle. Halting halfway to the stage, he sat in a chair at the end of one row; the wooden legs scraped as he shifted, the small sound loud in the night. Thighs spread, he leaned his forearms along them, linked his hands between. Head angled down, he appeared to be studying his loosely interlocked fingers.

 

Royce thought—again—of what he intended to do, but need was a clamor filling his mind, drowning out, sweeping aside, all reservations.