How to Forget a Duke Page 10

  Then on the same day, she lost her father as well. And Crispin refused to allow Sybil to suffer any more than she already had.

  He patted her reedy shoulders, the blades sticking out like wings of a bird when she wrapped her arms about his waist and squeezed him, her head resting just at his sternum. “Ah, so you did miss me. And I was only gone for a week.”

  She lifted her face and shook her head. Releasing her hold, she held up eight fingers to correct him.

  This was one of her ways of communicating. He’d only actually heard her speak once, four years ago, when she’d first introduced herself in a shy whisper. “My name is Sybil Montague and I should like to see my father, if you please.”

  Then, the next time he heard her voice had been the last.

  The memory of that day would always haunt him. He’d been striding out of the Great Hall, furious and planning to leave Rydstrom Hall and his father’s hypocrisy for good. But all of a sudden he’d felt a quake beneath his feet as a terrible, ominous growl and reverberating crack split the air.

  Then he’d heard Sybil’s scream—a raw, endless shriek that shook the windows in the morning room. And that was where he’d found her, trembling and stark white, standing at the bank of windows that overlooked the cliffs.

  The very place where his parents had been standing a moment before.

  He learned then that the quake he’d felt beneath his feet had been the rock face sheering away from the cliffs and crashing to the sea.

  Witness to the horror, Sybil had been mute ever since. Somehow, the scream had been so powerful that her vocal folds had torn. The London surgeon that Dr. Graham had summoned said that her throat appeared shredded to the point where he could not imagine it ever healing properly. At best, she would be able to whisper.

  Yet in these past four years, Crispin could not persuade her to try. And when he was met with the utter desolation and fear in her eyes, he never pushed her. She had her own method of communicating and he was fine with that.

  “Have it your way, then. Eight days, it is.” He ruffled her downy head. “What have you been doing during this endless stretch of time? Practicing your letters, I trust. As I recall, your As have forelocks and your Bs have tails. And you add so much flourish to your Qs that they nearly require a page to themselves. Before long, you’ll use up an entire inkpot for one word.”

  Sybil rolled her eyes at him before rushing over to the small mahogany table in front of the window. Grabbing a sheet of paper, she skipped back to him, and handed it over, shoulders straight, chin high, and beaming.

  He glanced down at the drawing, used to having Sybil converse in this manner. Even though she knew how to read and write, sometimes she preferred to show him how she saw the world around her. In the past, she’d drawn countless nightmarish images of the cliffs, in an effort to explain her outright terror of them, conveying the message that a ten-year-old vocabulary could not.

  The sketch in his hand was far different, however. There were no hard slashes of charcoal on the paper, but soft, delicate sweeps showing a likeness of him . . . and Miss Bourne.

  Drawn from the perspective of this window, and looking out over the old bailey, he was clearly carrying her as he had been. Yet in this rendering, it appeared as if he were resting his cheek upon her head. It looked like a page from a fairy-tale storybook. Apparently, his sister saw the episode as something wholly romantic and not what it had actually been. A gut churning, irritating, and worrisome agony.

  Having Jacinda Bourne under this roof put the safeguards he’d set in place for Sybil in jeopardy. No one aside from Mrs. Hemple, Fellows, and Graham could know about her real identity.

  Here in Whitcrest, the villagers believed the story he’d concocted—that Sybil was the child of Mrs. Hemple’s late cousin, who’d had no other family to raise her. They even credited him for making her his ward and permitting her to live at Rydstrom Hall as if it were her own.

  He couldn’t risk the truth reaching London. He’d purposely stayed away these past four years, had cut off ties with his former friends, in order to avoid any repercussions for her.

  He’d kept Sybil’s true identity a secret, wanting to spare her from tainted labels given to the illegitimate daughters of nobles. Society would spurn her, make a parody of her existence. Gentlemen, like the ones he’d admired in his youth, would only deem her worthy of becoming a mistress. And Crispin could not let such a tawdry life befall her.

  Crispin hadn’t even told Aunt Hortense about Sybil. Because, more than any other person he knew, his forthright aunt believed that every disgrace brought upon a family must be punished. He knew from experience that, for her, there were no exceptions to this rule. And he had no doubt that his aunt would know the truth at first glance. After all, paintings of her younger self—near perfect copies of Sybil—filled her apartments.

  He’d managed to hide the portrait above the mantel as well as the miniatures, but there was nothing he could do about the mural on the wall, aside from cover it with a dust sheet and ask that only Mrs. Hemple clean the room. And while he felt confident that his servants would not be tempted to steal into those locked rooms out of curiosity, the same could not be said of Miss Bourne.

  Now, and before he knew what he was doing, he crumpled the paper in his hand.

  Sybil reached out to rescue the sketch and sent him a chastising glower as she smoothed out the page over the flat front of her simple blue dress. When finished, she inspected it, her frown turning into a wistful smile as she returned to the small writing desk at the window and propped it up between the inkstand and the bronze lamp, displaying it as if it were a treasure.

  “Sir, Sybil wants to know when you’re going to marry her,” Mrs. Hemple offered.

  Crispin suppressed a growl. Had everyone gone mad? In the past hour, he’d been inundated with assumptions that he planned to marry the most meddlesome creature he’d ever encountered. It was starting to grate on his last nerve. “There is no cause to compile any foolish notions. Miss Bourne was injured and I merely carried her to get us both out of the storm. And as soon as the rain stops, she will be gone from Rydstrom Hall.”

  Then, once he sent her back to London, he would dissolve his membership with the Bourne Matrimonial Agency and seek other, more manageable, options.

  Sybil scribbled on a scrap of paper and handed it to him. “You said you were bringing home a wife.”

  “I said I was searching for a bride, not that I ever planned on bringing her here. Besides, whomever I marry will stay in London and keep a house there.” Or some other part of the world, so long as it was far away from here.

  While he spoke, a mixture of confusion and sadness flashed over her features as she pointed a finger to herself. He realized he’d said the wrong thing.

  “No, dearest, it isn’t because of you. Of course she would care for you, as anyone would. It’s only that . . .” He tried to think of a way to explain that would make sense to a girl of ten. When she was older, she would understand that he was only trying to protect her. “A woman of society would not want to live here while Rydstrom Hall is under repair. She would prefer to see it in all the glory one might expect of a duke’s castle.”

  Thankfully, Mrs. Hemple—who’d lived here long enough to know that this house would never be completely finished—kept quiet and didn’t even send him a look of reproach for his lie. They all wanted to protect Sybil from the outside world.

  Sybil took the scrap from him and, at her desk, wrote a line below the first before returning it. “Where would you live?”

  “I explained this already. I would spend part of the time in London, and part here.” He handed the page back to her, hoping this would satisfy her.

  But again, Sybil returned to her desk, dipped the quill into the inkpot, and wrote in her impeccable, flowing script. “But isn’t she pretty?”

  He read the question aloud without thinking, his throat closing over the last syllable. His mouth suddenly dry, he asked, “Who, Miss Bou
rne?”

  Sybil offered an expectant nod. He looked to Mrs. Hemple for a redirect of the conversation topic only to find that she was looking at him with eagerness as well.

  Bloody romantic fools, the lot of them.

  “To a gentleman, physical beauty matters little,” he hemmed, shifting from one foot to the other and trying not to think about snarls of red hair, uncanny blue eyes, a plump red mouth, and . . . sea buckthorn berries. He swallowed and cleared his throat before continuing. “A gentleman looks for someone who has an upstanding character and a clever wit.” And, in his case, a great deal of money as well.

  Miss Bourne had none of the most necessary qualities.

  Crispin didn’t know the reason, but a slow smile bloomed over Sybil’s face. She snatched the paper from his grasp, rushed back to her desk, and then handed it back to him with a new line written in large, taunting letters. “You do think she’s pretty!”

  He read the accusation with a start, a ready denial on his lips. But as he looked at his smugly grinning sister, standing with her hands clasped before her, her pale golden brows lifted, he reminded himself that she was merely ten. For the past year, she’d become obsessively romantic, marrying two of any creature she encountered, from the cats in the keep to the frogs in the north garden, and even drawing wedding pictures of the fish served at dinner. There was no reasoning with her at this age.

  Fighting the urge to roll his eyes, he bent forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Your time would be better served on your lessons, especially your handwriting.” Then addressing the housekeeper, he said, “Mrs. Hemple, perhaps you can keep her occupied for the next few hours with repetitive sentences.”

  As he expected, Sybil did not appreciate his advice and scrutinized the script on the page. When she shot him a hard look of disbelief, everything in her countenance and posture proclaimed that her letters were perfect. And, in truth, they were. Nevertheless, it was his turn to smirk at her.

  Then with a nod, he left her in Mrs. Hemple’s care and went into the main house to check on his guests. He needed to make travel arrangements for them as soon as possible.

  By the time the storm ended, Jacinda Bourne would be settled at the inn, and he could breathe easier.

  Chapter 9

  “She certainly had not been in the wrong, and he would never own that he had.”

  Jane Austen, Emma

  “Thank you for the dress,” Jacinda said to the brown-haired maid, while slipping into the borrowed dark blue frock.

  “No trouble at all, miss.” And as Martha buttoned up the back, Jacinda took note of the neat rows of simple stitches at the cuffs of the short, banded sleeves. They reminded her of how Miss Beels had decided that Jacinda was of a different class, simply by the cut of her clothes.

  Distractedly, the kernel of an idea sprouted.

  If one wished to explore a castle without anyone the wiser, likely it would be best to blend in with one’s surroundings. Wouldn’t it? And surely in a castle this size, no one would notice an extra maid walking the corridors.

  Her pulse skittered with excitement at the thought, beating so quickly that it whirred beneath her skin and in her ears. And her lungs felt like knotted balloons with all the air trapped inside, her breaths short and fast.

  Splaying her hand over her clambering heart, she wondered if she’d ever felt this way before. It was quite thrilling—the notion of disguising herself as a servant. Though, if that was all it took to excite her, then clearly, she’d led a dull life and wasn’t used to mischief of any kind.

  Perhaps she was a quiet, unassuming girl who dutifully waited on her ailing uncle. She might be sweet and . . . ugh . . . an awful bore.

  Yet that would hardly explain why the duke despised her. If they’d only met twice, a quiet mouse would hardly have made a lasting impression.

  “’Tisn’t anything near as fine as your clothes, miss. ’Tis only homespun, but it’s me Sunday best. I made it meself.” The maid smiled proudly, displaying a pair of deep dimples on either side of her round cheeks. She had a wholesome, scrubbed-clean look about her and an innocent vibrancy that made it easy to like her.

  Jacinda hoped she wouldn’t get her into any trouble. But if the duke planned to send Jacinda away as soon as the storm broke, then she had to explore Rydstrom Hall as quickly as possible. After all, there was a reason she was here, where no one, save him, seemed to know her. And she was determined to find anything that would lead her to the answer.

  “It’s lovely. Truly,” Jacinda said, smoothing her hands down the dress, unadorned aside from a bit of white piping along the modest neckline. The fabric was somewhat itchy on her bare skin, but she willed herself not to think about it.

  “I’m sorry for not bringing a shift, but I only have the one.” Martha plucked at the front of her gray maid’s dress, her cheeks coloring. Then lowering her eyes, she crossed the room to busy herself at the hearth where rain steadily dripped down the chimney, splattering on the logs with sibilant hisses and tiny curls of smoke. “I’ll make sure to launder your fine cambric first so that you can have it back by the time you finish your bath. It’ll only be a short while till the water’s ready. And after, I have a special recipe for a nice posset to help you sleep.”

  Sleep sounded divine. Jacinda would love to curl up beneath a warm coverlet and sleep for days. After Dr. Graham’s examination and endless series of questions, he’d offered her laudanum. But her insatiable curiosity didn’t want sleep. It wanted answers.

  After she’d declined, the doctor had warned that all the aches from the bumps and bruises from her tumble in the sea would soon catch up with her, and to rest as much as possible. But to her mind, that was all the more reason to make haste.

  “You’ve been splendid, Martha. I think I’ll lie down for a while,” she said, holding open the door.

  Arms laden with wet garments, Martha bobbed a curtsy and shuffled out the door. Then she hesitated, casting a fretful glance toward a tray of tea, broth, and bread resting on the hearth’s ledge. “Mayhap I should ought to stay. His Grace left strict instructions for you to eat every morsel.”

  “Never fear,” Jacinda added quickly, turning Martha toward the stairs with a friendly pat on her shoulder, stopping just shy of pushing her out the door. “I’ll gobble it up straightaway.”

  Martha nodded uncertainly. “If you say so, Miss Bourne. But if you need anything in the meantime, the bellpull’s by the window. Pay no mind to the water dripping through the casing. It always does that when it rains.”

  “I’m sure I’ll only sleep after I eat.” For good measure, Jacinda feigned a yawn behind the cup of her hand. Then, as an afterthought, she pointed to the top of Martha’s head. “Would you mind if I borrowed your cap? It might help to keep my head warm.”

  Martha, ever generous, readily agreed, not knowing how she’d just completed the perfect disguise.

  Jacinda closed the door, waited a minute, then opened it again. Leaning out, she perked her ears to the sound of nearby footsteps. When nothing but silence greeted her, her lips tilted up at each corner.

  It was time.

  Making her way down the narrow stairs, she tucked a few stray auburn curls into the borrowed ruffled cap. Yet, when she accidentally scraped the red lump at her temple, she winced, the wound throbbing with renewed vigor. Her vision went blurry.

  “Don’t you dare, Jacinda,” she scolded, bracing her hands against the millstone grit wall for balance. “On top of everything else, you will not add falling down the stairs to your ever-growing list of catastrophes.”

  So, after a deep breath and a little mental pinch of determination, she set off again.

  Beyond the base of the tower, Jacinda found narrow corridors encased in thick stone walls with fat rough-hewn beams overhead. She passed several doors that intrigued her, but they were locked tight. Since she didn’t have much time—or a key for that matter—she continued onward, rounding corners and ducking out of sight whenever she heard footfall
s nearby.

  Fatigue began to take its toll when she found herself in a particularly lengthy corridor that seemed to go on forever. She paused briefly in an alcove to gather her breath, the damp air musty and sweet. Standing there, the hushed patter of the rain and the murmured rumbles of the storm tempted her to give in to exhaustion, to curl up in this space and close her eyes.

  But she couldn’t do that. She hadn’t discovered anything yet.

  Fighting a yawn, she chafed her hands over her arms and set off again. Then, at the end of the corridor, she found herself in a wide hall. Flickering sconces bathed the clay-colored walls in burnished gold. And with a quick look from left to right, she saw that no one was about.

  Like in the gatehouse, storm shutters covered the recessed windows. And above her was an open minstrel’s gallery with mischievous faces carved into the corbels beneath the wooden parapet. They seemed to look down at her as if they knew what she was up to, and so she smirked back at them and continued her sly exploration.

  Unfortunately, her wet ankle boots were starting to make slurping sounds with every step. Trying to walk on tiptoe didn’t work to silence them. It made them squeak instead. Drat. If she couldn’t silence them, she would be discovered.

  Just as the thought entered her mind, a narrow slit of a door opened, not two steps ahead of her.

  Jacinda darted to the shadowy corner in a hasty splunch, splunch, splunch of steps and pressed her back against the cool wall.

  A heaping bale of linens gradually emerged, followed by the maid carrying it, the pile so high it went to her eyebrows. Using her hip to prop open the door, the maid squeezed into the hall, but then her apron caught on the latch, jerking her to a halt and sending a few items to the flagstone floor.

  She muttered an oath under her breath, followed by a drawling singsong of words as if she were mimicking someone. “‘We must ready the duke’s and the duchess’s chamber with haste,’ Hemple says. ‘Are you able to carry all these linens at once?’ Oh, of course I am, ma’am. I’m part octopus, after all. And never mind the fact that you took Martha away to play lady’s maid, leavin’ me with all her duties, and”—she stopped her tirade the instant she stepped on one of the fallen—“Blasted, cursin’, rot!”