With This Ring (3 page)

"Quel amazing," Sally whispered. Beatrice was amused. "Astonishing."

"Yes, ma'am. It was the most amazing thing. Finch said his lordship knew everything about your visit. That you'd come all the way from London and that you had a French lady's maid and that a highwayman had stopped you on the other side of the river. He even knew that you wanted to meet with him in 'alf an hour."

"The highwayman?" Beatrice asked blandly. "I'd rather avoid another encounter with him, if possible."

"No, ma'am," Alice said impatiently. "His lordship." The earl had certainly done a fine job of impressing his staff with an image of omnipotence, Beatrice thought. "You don't say."

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Alice nodded with a confiding air. "No one understands how his lordship could know things like that, but Cook says it's typical. Finch says the master has his ways."

"Ah, yes, his lordship's ways." Beatrice took another sip of tea. "Alice, I hate to disillusion you, but I suspect that your master did not employ metaphysical intuition to gain his amazing foreknowledge. I think it far more likely that he simply opened a window and put his head out so that he could overhear my conversation with his butler."

Alice stiffened, clearly offended by the suggestion that the earl might have done something as ordinary as to eavesdrop. "Oh, no, ma'am. I'm sure he didn't do any such thing. Why ever would he stick his head out into the rain?"

"Peculiar behavior, indeed," Beatrice murmured. "Perhaps we may hazard a guess as to why he is known as the Mad Monk, hmm?'

Alice looked crushed by Beatrice's failure to be impressed with the earl's mysterious ways. She backed toward the door. "Beggin'yer pardon, ma'am. Will ye be wanting anything else?"

"That will be all for now," Beatrice said. "Thank you, Alice."

"Yes, ma'am." The girl departed quickly.

Beatrice waited until the door closed. Then she picked up a piece of toast and took a bite. "I do believe I'm quite famished, Sally."

"Moi too." Sally seized the largest slice of fish pie and a fork. "Ye can make light o' that business with the 'ighwayman, if ye want, ma'am. But I vow, we're lucky to be alive. I saw the look in 'is eye. A nasty sort."

"We were fortunate to have such a skilled coachman. Luckily John is not inclined to panic."

"Hah." Sally shoved a large piece of pie into her mouth. "Coachmen are all alike. Reckless, they are. And drunk as lords most of the time. No, it was yer little pistol what scared off the bloke,, not John."

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"I know it's been a difficult journey, Sally. Thank you again for agreeing to come with me on such short notice. I could not drag my cousin and my aunt out of Town at this time. They had invitations to a most important soiree. And I did not want to bring my poor housekeeper along. Mrs. Cheslyn is not a good traveler."

Sally shrugged. "'Ere now, don't ye fret none. I was glad to 'ave the opportunity to practice me French. I'll be graduatin' from The Academy soon and gettin' ready to apply for work in a great household. Got to 'ave me accent right, nest-ce pas?"

"Your accent is improving daily. Have you selected a new name yet?"

"I'm still torn between somethin' simple like Marie and one with a bit more to it. What do ye think of Jacqueline?" "Very nice."

"Mais oui.' Sally hoisted her glass of gin. "Jacqueline it is."

Beatrice smiled. Fortunately for Sally and her atrocious accent, it was considered the height of fashion to employ a French maid. In the effort to obtain one, most of the ladies of the ton would willingly overlook a dubious accent. The simple truth was that there were not enough French maids, dressmakers, or milliners to go around. One could not be too choosy.

Of course, she reflected, if any of Sally's potential employers ever realized that it was notjust her accent that was questionable, but her past as well, things could become a bit more complicated.

Sally, together with the rest of the women who went through The Academy, all had one thing in common. They had once eked out meager existences as prostitutes in London's worst stews.

Beatrice and her friend Lucy Harby-known to her clients as the exclusive French modiste Madame D'Arboishad not set out to offer poor women a way off the streets.

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Faced with genteel poverty, they had both been too busy saving themselves from careers as governesses to worry about saving others. But once they were safely launched in their new professions, fate and Beatrice's upbringing as a vicar's daughter had intervened.

The first young girl, bleeding from a miscarriage, had arrived at the back door of Lucy's new dress shop a month after it opened. Beatrice and Lucy had carried her upstairs to the cramped quarters they shared. When it had become certain that the girl would survive, they had concocted a scheme to find her a new profession.

The ticket to a better life was a fake French accent. The plan to remodel the young prostitute into a French lady's maid had worked so well that The Academy had been born.

Five years had passed since that fateful night. Beatrice now had her own small town house. Lucy, who had become the more financially successful of the pair with her outrageously priced gowns, had married a wealthy fabric merchant who valued her business talents. She had moved into a fine new house in an expensive neighborhood, but she continued to operate her dressmaking salon as Madame D'Arbois.

Beatrice and Lucy had converted their old quarters above the dress shop into a schoolroom and hired a tutor to teach rudimentary French to desperate young women.

Occasionally they lost one of their students back to the streets. Beatrice's spirits were always down for a while after such incidents. Lucy, far more practical about such matters, took the philosophical approach. You cannot save everyone.

Beatrice knew her friend was right; nevertheless, she was, at heart, a vicar's daughter. It was not easy for her to accept the failures.

Sally studied the gloomy stone walls of the chamber. "Do ye think this place is haunted like the innkeeper's wife said?"'

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"No, I do not," Beatrice said firmly. "But I do have the impression that his lordship's staff rather enjoys their master's bizarre reputation."

Sally shuddered. "The Mad Monks o'Monkcrest. Gives one the shivers, nest-ce pas?"

Beatrice grimaced. "Do not tell me that you actually believe some of the tales the innkeeper's wife told us last night."

"Fit to give a person nightmares, they were. All that talk of wolves and sorcery and 'orrible events in the night."

"It was all rubbish.'

"Then why did ye let her carry on until nearly midnight?" Sally retorted.

"I thought it was an amusing way to pass the time." Sally knew nothing of the real purpose behind the frantic trip into the wilds of Devon. As far as she was concerned, Beatrice had come to see the Earl of Monkcrest on obscure family business. Which was actually no more than the truth, Beatrice thought.

"From the sound of 'im, he could have walked straight out of one of Mrs. York's novels." Another shudder sent a tremor through Sally's full bosom. "Quel mysterious, nest-ce pas? Strikes me as just the sort of gentry cove what lives in moldering ruins and sleeps in crypts and never comes out in the daylight."

Beatrice was surprised. "Do you mean to tell me that you read Mrs. York's novels?"

"Well, I don't read too good meself," Sally admitted. "But there's always someone around who can read 'em aloud to the rest of us. I like the bits with the ghosts and the bloody fingers beckonin' in the dark passageways best."

"I see."

"We're all lookin'forward to Mrs. York's new one, The Castle of Shadows. Rose says 'er mistress bought a copy. As soon as the lady's finished readin'it, Rose is going to borrow it and read it to us."

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"I had no notion that you were interested in horrid novels." A small, familiar rush of pleasure went through her. "I shall be happy to lend. you my copy of The Castle of Shadows."

Sally's eyes widened with delight. "That's very nice of ye, Mrs. Poole. We'll all be ever so grateful."

Not as gratefW as I am, Beatrice thought.

It always gave her a quiet thrill to learn that someone enjoyed the novels she penned under the pseudonym Mrs. Amelia York. She said nothing to Sally about her secret identity as an authoress, however. Only Lucy and the members of her family knew that she wrote for a living.

She followed Sally's glance around the room. Perhaps she would make some notes before she left. Monkcrest Abbey was nothing if not picturesque. Thick stone walls, arched doorways, and what appeared to be endless miles of gloom-filled passageways all went together to create a house that would fit quite nicely into one of her novels.

En route to their chambers, she and Sally had passed through a long gallery filled with a number of artifacts and antiquities. Greek, Roman, and Zamarian statues gazed with impassive stone faces from a variety of niches. Cabinets filled with shards of pottery and ancient glass occupied odd corners in the halls.

In addition to being a scholar, Beatrice reflected, Monkcrest was obviously a collector of antiquities.

She closed her eyes and allowed herself to absorb the atmosphere of the ancient stone walls.

Awareness fluttered through her. For an instant she could feel the weight of the years. It was a vague, wispy, indescribable sensation, one she often had in the presence of very old buildings or artifacts. The invisible vapors flowed around her.

There was melancholia, of course. She often felt it in structures this ancient. But there was also a sense of the future. The house had known times of happiness in the past

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and it would know them again. The heavy layers of history pressed in on her. But there was nothing here that would give her nightmares or keep her awake tonight.

When she opened her eyes she realized that her dominant impression of Monkcrest Abbey was that of a sense of loneliness.

"Imagine living in a ruin such as this," Sally said. "Mayhap 'is lordship really is a madman."

"Monkcrest Abbey is not precisely a ruin. It is quite old but it appears to be in excellent repair. This is not the house of a madman."

Beatrice did not attempt to explain her sensibility to atmosphere to Sally. It was a part of her that she had never been able to put into words. But she was quite certain that she spoke the truth. The earl might well be reclusive, inhospitable, and eccentric, but he was not crazed.

Sally took another bite of pie. "How can ye be certain the Mad Monk won't lock us in the cellar and perform strange occult rituals on us?"

"From what little I know of that sort of thing, I am under the impression that one needs virgins in order to perform most occult rituals." Beatrice grinned. "Neither of us qualifies."

"Mais oui. " Sally brightened. "Well, then, that's a relief, ain't it? I believe I'll have a bit more gin."

Beatrice was as certain of Monkcrest's disdain for the occult sciences as she was of his sanity. He was a respected authority on antiquities and ancient legends. He had written extensively on his subject and always from a dry, scholarly perspective.

Unlike herself, she thought ruefully, he did not seek to heighten the supernatural or the romantic in his work. During the past two days she'd read several of the long, dull articles he'd penned for the Society of Antiquarians. It was painfully clear that Monkcrest felt utter contempt for the thrilling elements that were her stock-in-trade.

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If he were to learn that she wrote horrid novels for a living, he would likely send her packing in a minute. But that was an extremely remote possibility, she reminded herself. Her identity as Mrs. York was a closely guarded secret.

And in spite of his staffs opinion to the contrary, she was confident that the Mad Monk was no sorcerer. He would not be able to look into an oracle glass and determine her true identity.

Sally sipped her gin. "From what that fat butler said, 'is lordship ain't overfond of company. Wonder why Monkcrest agreed to see ye without an argument?"

Beatrice reflected on the empty feeling that shimmered beneath the surface of Monkcrest Abbey. "Perhaps he's bored."

Oapler 2

Something glided through the shadows, a phantasm

which had been disturbed by her presence and which

could not now return to its deep slumber.

FRom CHAPTER Two oF The Ruin BY MRs. AmELiA YORK

lou came all this way, braving highwaymen, bad inns, and a storm just to ask me about the Forbidden Rings of Aphrodite?" Leo tightened his grip on the carved edge of the marble mantel. "Madam', there is little that can astonish me, but you have managed to do so."

The damned Rings. Impossible.

He had heard the ridiculous rumors, of course. He cultivated gossip on matters that touched upon the subject of antiquities the way a farmer cultivated crops. Recently he had heard that after two hundred years the mysterious Forbidden Rings had reappeared, but he had discounted the tales.

His source, a dealer in antiquities, claimed that the

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Forbidden Rings had materialized in a pawnshop in London, of all places, then had just as quickly vanished again, presumably sold to some gullible collector.

Leo had put no credence in the authenticity of the supposed relics, nor of the reports he had heard, because there had been no confirming evidence. The world of antiquities was rife with fantastical claims and whispered tales of strange events and rare objects. Sorting out the truth from the fraudulent was his life's work. He had learned long ago not to accept anything at face value. It was a rule he applied not only in his professional investigations but also in his personal life.

As legends went, the Forbidden Rings of Aphrodite ranked among the more obscure. As far as Leo was aware, only a few scholars such as himself and a handful of collectors had ever heard the tale. Such arcane lore was not the subject of casual drawing-room conversation. In his experience, it rarely succeeded in attracting the interest of the fashionable.