Page 33 of The Duke
“I didn’t ask you to. Not given…” she trailed off, then came up, and sat on her folded knees, looking down at him. It was difficult to make out her expression, and he feared he’d disappointed her. “I have no dowry, no connections, and most importantly no virtue. I’m hardly a catch.”
“You’re more desirable than any other woman,” he said what he was thinking aloud, and she dipped her head and kissed his lips lightly.
“I suppose I’m simply not the marrying kind,” Elsie said.
Kit sat up, reaching for his own clothes as she dressed. How could he explain there was nothing wrong with her, and he would be more than happy to do the honourable thing? Being married to her would be a wondrous thing, and their nights would be ones filled with pleasure. A notable marriage based on friendship and affection. It sounded rather like his dear parents’ union and look at how well that had worked out—both of them disappointed and dead despite their best efforts. He would ensure that the Ashmore line ended with him. He could not inflict this fate on another.
“You will find a better match. Of that, I have no doubt.” A bitterness rose up in him. A form of jealousy that he had not expected even as he said the words. The idea of someone else wedding her, or someone else kissing her… He realised the truth that someone would gravitate towards Elsie’s sweetness, generosity, wit, and beauty…but she was his. Or at least he wished to claim her.
“Better than a duke?” She laughed having finished dressing as much as she could. She sounded doubtful, and he was certain Elsie thought he considered himself too high in his instep to make an offer for her. “Please rest assured I have no expectations of you. I know I am ruined and not good enough for a duke.” She pressed her hands against the folds of her skirt. “Will you walk me to my chamber?”
“Of course,” he replied. How he wished she knew that she was far too good… but the words stuck awkwardly in his throat and when he thought he had found them she was already several steps away from him. Perhaps in the light of day, with a clearer head he would try to reassure her of this. Following in her wake, all his prior pride put to one side, a need arose to ensure she safely reached her chamber.
If he thought they might be silent, he was wrong. Once they were in the corridor, heading towards the staircase, Elsie wasraising a topic of conversation he had put off for the entire time he had been focused on her.
“You think the chandelier was done deliberately?” Elsie kept stride with him, but he noticed she held on to the banister rather than take his arm. She wasn’t angry, but he suspected she was hurt. But her very question pinpointed why he could never marry—inflicting his family legacy on a woman or a child would be an inhuman act. Having attempted to explain or voice such thoughts to her previously had not worked and Kit doubted such ideas would suddenly take. Elsie would surely just see it as an excuse.
“I do,” Kit said.
“Well, it must have been done by someone in that case. A person who wished you or this evening ill.”
“Possibly. Yet this manor.” Kit glanced around them as they reached the midway point of the stairs, a small landing with an alcove. Elsie was hurriedly moving on, so he continued, “But you must remember that the building is hundreds of years old. It has lived through the monasteries being dissolved, and for decades, there’s not been any restoration done on the place, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was sheer bad luck.” Or the Ashmore’s legacy of death and destruction.
Elsie did not reply to this, but he did see her chewing on her lip. “Which room is located above the ballroom?” Her hand raised in the air as she tried to count. “We should check it and see.”
“See what?”
“Was it just ill fortune or sabotage? If it was the latter, we might be able to find out who is guilty?”
Kit had tried something after his parents’ deaths convinced that, if he found out the culprit for the spike in the wheel, this would somehow improve matters. “I’m not certain…”
“Come.” She grabbed his hand and set off retracing their steps just on the floor above. Darting along the corridor, eager to locate the chamber above the ballroom, flitting in and out of themoonlight. “Is this the one?” She ran ahead of him and pressed a hand against the door. “God, the smell is bad even up here.”
Nodding, Kit opened the doorway to the bedchamber, one of the numerous unused bedrooms that littered the second floor. Most, he suspected, would be dust filled and abandoned with furniture missing or damaged.
Edging their way silently inside, Kit saw that white sheets covered up most of the furniture in ominous shapes, removing from his eyesight clarity on what each of them might be. It was a chamber which had not been robbed of its contents. However, what remained created an ill-smelling gothic counterpoint in front of them. The curtains were partly drawn, and Elsie walked across, flinging them wider. Sickly white light poured in through the glass, like stale milk, revealing in its wake on the floor, a thrown back carpet, splintered wood, and an abandoned axe. Visible through the cracks in the flooring was the dropped chandelier, part of its mechanism still swinging. Someone within the household, or a guest perhaps, had snuck upstairs determined to end the party. Or more likely end his sister and him. Either way that was why the celebration had come to a crashing halt.
Elsie glanced up at him, her expression drawing down in a quick frown, calculation quickly showing on her pretty face. “It can’t be a curse. Don’t you see it, Kit? I thought for a moment it might be, because you were so convinced, but…” She stopped herself and stepped closer, one of her hands reaching out for him, gently touching him. “But here is the proof, nothing otherworldly, that someone—someone real—is trying to kill you.”
CHAPTER 17
Elsie watched Kit as he circled the axe and the gap in the floor, sections of the ballroom visible. He hadn’t spoken in several minutes his face drawn in severe lines as he gazed down at his surroundings with calculation.
If she could guess, she would assume he was waiting for an answer from God. Or hoping for an obvious sign of guilt that would point to someone he knew. Yet he still said nothing. To Elsie, there was no obvious answer other than deliberate sabotage and who might be motivated was beyond her. Never had she felt like more of an outsider, none of the servants had been remotely friendly to her so how was she supposed to guess at those responsible.She wished she could tell what Kit was thinking as it was so hard to tell. His face was inscrutable, even after having been so intimate with him. It was strange to feel as if they were linked and connected physically and yet Ashmore did not trust her enough to confess his innermost thoughts.
Having shared such an act together, their mutual passion overwhelmed them. She saw now how unfulfilling and lacklustre her one previous lover had been. Captain Oliver Graves. He was insignificant compared to what she felt for Ashmore. He’d hadfreckles and bright brown eyes, which had reminded her of her morning chocolate, but a great deal of the pain his rejection caused her seemed unimportant now.
How had she thought that was love?
She had believed she wished to marry Graves… well it proved how silly she had been. About as silly as she had been to trust Graves to honour his promise to wed after. She had been a fool, and with the years that had passed since she’d been with him, and since his death on campaign, Elsie had accepted that her stupidity would be punished by no one ever offering for her. She would be denied a marriage.
A loving union which her heart had always sought. Her romanticism had to be put aside, but it did not seem her lusts could be… For a moment, she recalled how her Grandmother Keating had acted on the discovery of her physical relationship with Graves. Her grandmother going far enough to intercept the captain’s letter to discover what had occurred between the two of them. The torrent of insults the older woman, her own relative, had directed her way still burnt through her. It had been a revelation that Grandmother Keating knew Margot was not her blood relation, given what the old woman had said about Elsie’s mother.
Ashmore’s dismissal hadn’t stung in the same way as her grandmother’s words had. No, he seemed to believe the opposite of Elsie, and yet he, just like her grandmother, would never see her in the marrying light.
Perhaps, Elsie thought, her heart sinking that her grandmother had been right, that she was little more than a light-skirt, who could so easily give out her favours, without ever risking her heart.
And yet…
