The woman screamed.
Iona halted.
“Pardon me,” a male voice said in puzzlement. “Did I hurt you?”
The scent of lust died out, replaced by that of suspicion.
“You beast,” the woman cried. “How could you?” In the echoing silence of the enormous library, ripping fabric resounded loudly.
“Alice, don’t play insane,” the gentleman said firmly. “You know me. I’m the worst possible choice for your schemes. Being a countess isn’t all you might think.”
“You rake,” the woman cried, disdaining the gentleman’s logic. “Taking advantage of a helpless widow!”
Iona sighed. She recognized the woman’s scent now. She’d only met Lady Alice yesterday but had smelled her fear and worry and recognized her predicament. The lady’s father was a wealthy baron hoping to rise in rank. He would not appreciate his widowed daughter bearing a bastard.
Crying rape to force an—earl?—into marriage was not the solution. What did she do now? She owed nothing to either of the couple, but that poor unborn child deserved better than this.
Hiding in plain sight was a tight-rope Iona walked every day. It was simpler in Wystan, where everyone accepted her as the beekeeper and knew better than to question. She’d risked her invisibility by stepping too close to society, but the book was worth it.
Now, she had to deal with the consequences. Circumstances might force her to hide, but hers wasn’t a naturally retiring nature.
Donning her best simple-minded servant expression, Iona hastened toward the couple, calling herself every kind of fool but knowing she couldn’t allow this scene to carry out to its inevitable conclusion. She might have been a wallflower in London all those years ago, but she’d learned a lot since.
“May I help, my lady?” she inquired, interrupting a dramatic scene where the lady in her ripped bodice clung to the gentleman’s lapel with one hand and beat him with the other.
Tall, dark, and possibly handsome if he hadn’t been scowling fiercely enough to terrify a phantom, the gentleman warily glanced at her. “The lady has been taken by a fit, I believe. Would you have smelling salts?”
“No, but if you smacked her, she might come around,” Iona responded cheekily. “If you are too gentlemanly to do so, shall I try?” She knew she looked small and weak, but helpless, she was not. The lady reeked of duplicity, and the gentleman. . . among other things. . . exuded incredulity.
The lady shrieked a protest. “He has assaulted—” She shut up when she recognized Iona as the librarian’s companion.
If she’d actually recognized Iona, there’d be hell to pay, but Iona was fairly certain she’d never met Lady Alice before this week. The world was full of people she’d never met, including the gentleman.
Iona crossed her hands over the book at her waist and applied her best domestic-servant expression. “Perhaps I could find your maid, my lady?”
The gentleman’s fury had reached the level of a smoldering fire. She could swear she heard him growl. He towered over her, which was annoying. He was excessively large across the shoulders, but his beautifully fitted tailed coat clung neatly over narrow hips. From the way he backed off once released, she gathered he had muscles on top of muscles that he’d courteously restrained while being assailed.
“I can fetch a footman to find the maid,” he said stiffly, with that slight rumble still in his voice to indicate his displeasure.
“That would be best,” Iona advised, doing her best to hide in the larger lady’s shadow. The flickering of the one gas sconce should render her dull gray gown and pale features nicely invisible beneath her servant’s cap. Lady Alice wept and didn’t protest as Iona steered her toward the door.
“Go to Wystan,” Iona advised in a low voice as she led the lady to the main staircase. “The ladies there understand. You and the child will be safe.”
Pretending she had not heard, the lady lifted her chin and grasped the polished mahogany banister, dismissing Iona. The frilled train of her fashionable, ebony silk gown swished as she climbed the curving stairway, leaving Iona behind to take the service door.
The gentleman’s smoldering scent lingered in the wide corridor. She could hear him speaking with a footman. The servants’ network would find the maid. All was as well as it could be. Hugging the precious book to her bosom, she headed for the back stairs where dozens of servants scurried up and down to the ballroom.
Even when she heard the gentleman shout after her, she kept going. In her mind, she donned a cloak of invisibility and vanished behind the baize-covered door. He would forget her by tomorrow, and then she’d be gone. She couldn’t risk being seen again.
Two
Disgusted with himself, with society, and the world in general, Gerard pushed his gelding hard on the last stretch of the journey to Wystan Castle.
“Ridiculous name for an old stone keep and watchtower,” he told the spirit lingering in his head. “It looks nothing like a castle.”
The heart of his earldom dated back to a thirteenth century barony, when the fortress probably was grand for the times. The keep had originally been owned by Malcolms and called Malcolm Castle. After the first earl of Ives and Wystan breached the walls, he’d apparently liked the idea of owning a castle. So he renamed it after himself and turned it into a rambling monstrosity.
Life is in the soil, not the architecture, the spirit in his pocket reminded him, in Latin, of course. The damned soldier must have been a philosopher, but he was right, in his way. One side or the other of Gerard’s family had lived here since before the dark ages. They were attached to this land, heart and soul.
He couldn’t be the one to lose it.
The journals in the immense Malcolm library housed in the castle mentioned a wooden fortress prior to the stone one. And Gerard didn’t
