The Bride of Time (6 page)

Having reached the study, Giles rang for Foster and sank into the chair behind his desk, his head in his hands. He hadn’t gotten much sleep, between painting and the disquieting feeling that had come over him because Tessa LaPrelle was sleeping under his roof in grave peril from all factors. What had he done?

He lurched as if he’d been shot when Foster’s knock broke the silence. “Come!” he said. The valet crossed the threshold and closed the door behind him in response to Giles’s nod. “Take a seat, Foster,” Giles said. “You’ll want something underneath you for this.”

“Thank you, sir, but I prefer to stand,” Foster replied.

Giles slapped his hands down upon the desktop and laced his fingers together. They were still smeared with paint. It gave him something to focus upon while he said his piece, though his eyes strayed to the jagged scar on the back of his left hand and wrist, angry-looking still, though it had healed since he was wounded a month ago. He couldn’t look the valet in the eyes.

“Foster, needs must there are…things that you should be made aware of, and should have been for some time now.”

“Yes, sir.”

“They concern some of the…situations that have been arising at Longhollow Abbey since the death of my wife.”

“Yes, sir.”

Giles cleared his voice. “I didn’t kill her, Foster.”

“I know, sir.”

“You answer quickly. Is that because you believe me, or you want to get past it?”

“ ’Twas an animal that killed her, sir,” said Foster. “Everyone knows that.”

“I am blamed for it nonetheless, because she cuckolded me with that rakehell Osborne. I didn’t kill him, either, though they say that of me, too, don’t they, Foster?”

“Yes, sir.”

How was he to tell the valet? How was he to reveal to the poor man something so bizarre he scarcely believed it himself, without sending him off coattails flying after a half-century of faithful service? On the other hand, how could he not? There was no contest. Giles had no choice. Foster had to be told, and he had to be told now—before the moon was full again tomorrow night. But telling would surely make him a prime candidate for St. Mary’s of Bethlehem Hospital in London, the infamous Bedlam. He would just have to risk it.

“That they were found dead together bloody near damned me, and may yet,” Giles said.

“You think they will re-open the investigation, sir?” the valet spoke up.

“It isn’t over, Foster. The nightmare has only just begun.”

“I do not take your meaning, sir? They are dead. How can it not be over?”

“There is still Master Monty.”

The valet’s expression hardened, causing shadows to mar his wrinkled face. “If I may be so bold—” he began, causing laughter to erupt from Giles’s throat.

“When has propriety ever stopped you, Foster?” Giles asked bitterly.

The valet cleared his voice. “Why do you keep the boy here?” he asked. “I should think you’d have packed
him off to school long ago, since you find his company so disagreeable.”

“I cannot,” Giles said flatly. Rising from the chair, he began to pace the length of the Aubusson carpet.

“But why, sir?” Foster persisted. “To my thinking—”

“This is why,” Giles said, thrusting out his wounded wrist. “The little savage bit me last month just before the moon waxed full. When it did…I changed, Foster. The morning after, I woke naked on the moor. I’d been drinking rather heavily. At first, I thought the brandy was to blame, but there was blood on me and it wasn’t mine. Shortly after that, there were reports of some wild animal attacking the livestock in the parish—”

“Those
werewolf
rumors?” Foster interrupted. “You can’t possibly believe that gammon, sir, much less imagine that you—”

“I’m not imagining anything, Foster.” He brandished his wrist. “Am I imagining this? I am telling you that little demon bit me, and when the moon waxed full…something happened to me and I savaged some sheep.”

Foster’s ramrod-rigid posture collapsed, and he sank into the wing chair Giles had offered him earlier. His complexion was ghost-gray. “If such a thing were true, that would mean that Master Monty is a…a…”

“Exactly,” Giles said. “Which is why I haven’t packed him off to school. If he is a lycanthrope, or
thinks
he is, I shouldn’t want to be responsible for setting him loose in a boy’s boarding school.”

“So you let him run lose
here?
Have you gone mad?”

“He’s hardly running loose,” Giles returned. “Besides, Miss LaPrelle is with him.”

Foster vaulted out of the chair with the agility of a man half his age. “You’ve left her alone with the boy?” he cried.

“Take ease, old man. If the legend is true, and such
things are possible, she will be safe enough during the day and at night as well, except when the moon is full. That won’t occur until tomorrow night, which is why we’re having this conversation now. I need to be certain my suspicions are correct before I can take action concerning the boy. I have something in mind, but I will need your help.”

“You have never gotten on with that boy from the day your poor sister, God rest her, showed up on the doorstep with the lad in tow.”

“Ursula was a fool to have gotten mixed up with Montague,” Giles reflected. “Master Monty was his from a previous…association. I’m sorry to say it wasn’t a marriage. The chit ran off and left the boy for Montague to raise, some dark-eyed Gypsy wench he’d shacked up with. The little blighter favors her, no doubt; Montague was fair. Then when Montigue died doing his bit, fighting for King and country, the boy’s care fell to Ursula. The bairn in Ursula’s belly when she arrived here
was
Montague’s, however. Master Monty was jealous of it. Ursula was afraid of the boy, if you can imagine that. We spoke at length on it. I pooh-poohed it at first, of course. I’m sorry now that I wasn’t more sympathetic. You know how she died. I will never believe it was a suicide.
Never
.”

“You can’t seriously believe—”

“I don’t know what to believe. That’s why I need your help, Foster. The boy’s been knocking about on his own much of the time. Nobody wishes to court his company. We’re all to blame for that. But, by God, it ends here and now. I don’t want to frighten the others, but supervision is imperative until we sort this out.”

“You mean that task is mine, I gather?”

“Until tomorrow night, if you’re game.”

“If what you suspect is true, God help us, that could
mean Master Monty might also be responsible for the deaths of the mistress and that…Osborne person!”

“All of which should prove to you that I did not kill them, Foster. They were murdered long before I was bitten, and no man could have savaged them the way they were found.”

“But…he’s only a lad. How could he have?”

“That is precisely what I mean to find out.”

Foster paused before speaking. “How exactly do you mean to enlist my help?” he asked at last.

That wasn’t a good sign. In all his years with the valet, Giles had never known him to hesitate, or place conditions upon a directive as he did now. That meant there was room for doubt. The poor man probably did think him off his head. Maybe he was. It was passing bizarre, yet too coincidental to be dismissed lightly.

“Does that mean you will help?” Giles prompted.

“I am still concerned about Miss LaPrelle,” the valet hedged. “Whatever possessed you to take her on here in the midst of all this? That was most irresponsible, especially considering your…suspicions. Why? Forgive me, sir, but I need to know what you could possibly have been thinking.”

“Why?” Giles said absently. “I do not know if I can answer you. You know how important ‘The Bride of Time’ is to us. We need the blunt, and the Prince Regent is interested. His patronage could make my name a house hold word. His interests flag, however, and I’m anxious to finish the painting before that occurs. I’ve had his favor ever since I painted that miniature of Maria Fitzherbert for his pocket watchcase. You remember, he paid me handsomely, and gave me the snuff box that doxy tried to steal last night as a bonus.”

“Vulgar piece,” Foster observed.

“Quite, but a bonus all the same, and that commission led to another possible sale if I can finish ‘The
Bride’ in a timely fashion. Working on it takes my mind off the situation, and the brandy…I don’t even like the stuff, but it blunts the edges. You know the run of bad luck I’ve been having with models….”

“Yes, but I fail to see how all this answers my question about Miss LaPrelle, sir.”

“You will, if you let me finish,” Giles said, somewhat less than patiently. “I’ve been praying for someone like her to inspire me to finish the work. When she arrived, in my drunken haze, I thought I’d had an answer to my prayers. She is perfect for ‘The Bride.’ She is The Bride; so much so that I had to have her at any cost, even though she’d come about the governess position. I do not expect you to understand it. I don’t understand it myself, but there it is. There’s something about her…something fresh and new. I wanted that. I
needed
that, in more ways than one.”

“For the painting,” Foster said, answering his own question, albeit skeptically.

Giles’s eyebrow lifted. “What else?”

“It isn’t up to me to say, sir. You must search yourself for the answer to that.”

“Hah! Nothing has ever stopped you before, old boy.”

“Suffice it to say…I wouldn’t want the lass to come to harm because of selfish motives, sir.”

Giles gave it thought. “I suppose it is selfish of me to some degree,” he admitted finally. “After the sordid business with Elena, I expect the company of a decent woman under this roof would not go amiss. I’ve had my fill of tragedy. If this nightmare turns out to be real, I will not become a slave to it. I will have a life—a decent life.”

“Which brings us back to exactly what you expect of me now, sir.”

Giles nodded. “I want you to keep an eye upon Master
Monty from a discreet distance until just before dusk tomorrow, when the moon rises. I mean to lock him in. Then, I shall give you my chatelaine, and I want you to lock me in the solarium, and no matter what occurs—no matter what you hear, or what I command or beg for, or what Master Monty demands—you mustn’t unlock either door. When dawn breaks, you will come for me first, and we will unlock Master Monty’s chamber together.”

“How will that prove anything?”

“I know the state I was in when I woke naked on that moor smeared with blood. Believe me, if either of us has changed, you will know.”

“And what will I do with the knowledge, sir, if it is as you fear? What will
you
do—kill the child, kill yourself? Do not expect it of me.”

“For now, let us just do this test,” Giles said. “We will deal with what’s to be done with what ever we’re facing after we learn what it is.”

“You’ve been going through a bad patch, sir,” Foster said. “It’s understandable that you would be a little…irrational.”

“A bad patch, Foster?” Giles blurted. “My pregnant sister, so full of hope for the future, dies, her death deemed a suicide, leaving me with a savage little ward to raise, who isn’t even blood kin. My wife and her lover are found ravaged with their throats torn out on the moor, and I am suspected. We are bloody near rolled up, dependent upon the patronage of the Prince Regent, until the
on-dits
that have driven all my local patrons away reach his ears in London, and I cannot find a model for the work that has captured his interest. Oh and, here is the best bit. Just when I think I have her, the perfect Bride of Time, she refuses and I am forced to try to do the work from memory. Irrational? Believe
me, old friend, you have not begun to see ‘irrational,’ but unless I miss my guess, and I dearly hope I do, you will see it in full force tomorrow night. You can bet your blunt upon it!”

Chapter Five

Tessa didn’t see Giles Longworth again that day. She took her meals in the servants’ hall, while her charge ate alone in his rooms, which she thought rather odd, since most children Monty’s age in such a house were trained early in dining room etiquette as a matter of course. Nevertheless, she was relieved over it. The tension between the child and his surrogate uncle was palpable. Dorcas assured her that this was the normal protocol for meals at Longhollow Abbey, since the master rarely ate in the dining parlor. The house keeper complained that he rarely ate at all of late, and what food he did take was had in his solarium studio. It seemed an odd business, but then nothing seemed normal since she’d arrived, including how she’d arrived. She still hadn’t come to terms with that.

Preparing the boy for bed fell to the maid, Lottie. After Tessa finished her evening meal, she decided to look in on the child before she retired. She found him standing before the window in his nightshirt, gazing at the almost-full moon. He should have been in bed, and she was about to say so when he spun on his bare heels and faced her. The look in his eyes backed her up a pace. It wasn’t the look of a child at all. It was the look of a
demon eons old, the eyes dark staring things beneath the ledge of his brow. His lips were fixed in a sneer. It was a fleeting expression that quickly changed back to the cherubic countenance he’d presented thus far, but it was so profound it riddled Tessa with crippling chills from her scalp to her toes.

“Well, Master Monty,” she said, regaining her lost composure and her footing as well. “You should be abed, shouldn’t you?”

“I’ve been waiting for you,” the boy said sweetly.

“How odd, since I didn’t know I was coming.”

“I knew you would come. You want to make a good impression upon Uncle. It won’t do you any good, you know, but you’re curious. The others were as well.” He yawned and stretched. How innocent he looked now, in his fine lawn nightshift, his little pink toes peeking out from beneath the hem, his hair all mussed. “They were sorry after, just as you will be, miss.”

“And how is that, Master Monty?” Tessa persisted, determined to draw the child out. He was either playacting, or possessed of a devious, obstreperous nature. She meant to find out which.