Sam experienced the very devil of a time setting his world to rights following Miss Calhoun’s fleeing from his presence out in the garden. Then, and making matters worse, by the time he’d recovered enough to retrieve his handkerchief and her hair combs and make his way to the manor with the intent of apologizing yet again to his distraught guest, every servant seemed to know of his despicable behavior toward her. How they transmitted this information among themselves with a speed to be envied by the fleetest of Thoroughbreds, Sam believed he would never know for certain. But somehow they did—most logically, he believed, from gardener to page to maid and so on throughout the house—but however it was accomplished, the lord of the manor was now paying in spades for his outburst.
Inside the manor house, as he passed through it and encountered various members of his household staff, their sepulchral quietness vied for the upper hand with their judgmental solemnity. Under less trying circumstances, Sam would not have stood for it. But this time, and in this instance, having deemed it more than called for, he stoically ran the gauntlet of his servants’ disapproval. Time and again, he was told that the lady was not in the manor proper. She had not passed this way.
Sam wasn’t satisfied with that. Perhaps she’d instructed the servants not to tell him where she was. In that case, if she had, he would not ask them to break their word to her. Yes, it rankled a bit to think his servants would feel more loyalty to her than they did to him. But given his behavior with the lady, he couldn’t fault them, he supposed. And that being so, he did the only thing he could. He made his own search of the house, top to bottom. It proved fruitless. But Sam couldn’t say he was totally unhappy with his results. At least his staff had told him the truth—the lady was not in residence.
Then where the devil was she? He was forced to conclude that Miss Calhoun was, in actuality, nowhere. Which was a ridiculous notion because everyone must be somewhere. It was a law of nature or of some such related science, wasn’t it? Frowning, and worried that he’d driven her to do something foolish like leave on foot, Sam sought out the only person he had yet to question. Scotty. He found the hulking giant in the butler’s pantry.
Seated on an impossibly small stool next to a tiny table which he dwarfed, the big man was engaged in, lo and behold, cleaning a gun. Surprise laced with a jet of apprehension had Sam raising his eyebrows. “Dear God, Scotty,” was his greeting to the enigmatic butler. “Has it come to this, man? You need a gun?”
Scotty’s response was to glance up at his employer from under his heavy brow ridge and then silently resume his quiet task. “No. Your gun.”
Well, that explained nothing. Sam exhaled. “I see.”
Following that, Sam wondered how exactly to proceed from this point with his butler of very few words and, worse, very unpredictable responses. If he didn’t frame a question with precise and simple wording, Sam reminded himself, then he would get the answer he deserved. Watching his butler, who’d been an orphaned babe taken in all these many years ago by Her Grace Nana with no forthcoming explanation to anyone as to where she’d got him or under what circumstances, Sam suspected that the man understood more and felt more than he let on. Sam also believed that Scotty didn’t lack so much in intelligence as he did in language, for whatever reason.
Finally Sam believed he had it—the most politic framing of his simple question. “Scotty, have you seen Miss, er, the duchess?”
Still singularly occupied with his task, the big man didn’t look up, but he did answer. “Yes.”
Excitement raced through Sam. If one didn’t mind pulling hen’s teeth, then one could get results with his butler. “When did you see her, Scotty?”
“Yesterday.”
Sam’s breath left him in a disappointed huff. “Yesterday. Not today, then? Not at all?”
Scotty kept polishing the gun’s barrel. “No.”
Impatience and irritation had Sam quirking his lips. “Are you certain?”
Now the butler raised his head, looking Sam in the eye. “Yes.”
“Then no one has seen her. Yet she can’t have disappeared into thin air.”
“No.” The butler put the gun and the cloth down on the table and stood up … always an impressive sight. “Her Grace Nana knows.” He then pointed a thick finger in a vague direction, somewhat northwest of where they stood now. “The tower.”
Sam slumped with relieved revelation. “Of course. The tower. She went to the tower.” She was safe. Sam stepped forward and clapped Scotty on a huge and solid arm. The butler’s stance and expression did not change. But that didn’t stop Sam from being grateful. “Thank you. The tower. I would never have thought of looking there.”
Then he sobered, just then realizing the import of what Scotty had said. “Did you say that Nana is with the, uh, duchess in the tower?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, where the devil is Mrs. Convers? How did Nana get away from her nurse?”
“She hides.”
“And Mrs. Convers?”
“She looks.”
“Of course. But doesn’t find her.”
“No.”
This was an insane conversation and well Sam knew it. “Do we know where Mrs. Convers is, then? What has Nana done with her?”
“Carriage house.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “Not again. Locked in, I suppose?”
“Yes.”
Sam eyed his butler and wondered how to proceed. There were rules regarding these things, rules known only to Nana, who wasn’t to be trifled with. Sam was quite convinced that she could turn them all into toads if she so chose. “I see. May I at least assume that we will be letting her out soon … Mrs. Convers, I mean?”
“Yes.”
Well, that was a relief. Mrs. Convers was the third nurse this year, and here it was only May. Sam shook his head as he took another tack and did his wondering out loud. “So Nana is up in the tower. There must be a hundred or more steps. How in the world does the old dear get up all of them?”
“One at a time,” Scotty supplied seriously.
Sam’s question had of course been rhetorical, but that point would be lost on the hulking butler. Still, a bemused chuckle escaped Sam. “Yes. I suppose then that I will have to take a page from her book and do the same thing.”
“What book?”
Dear God. Sam momentarily closed his eyes and rubbed at his forehead. “I mean I will have to climb the tower steps in the same manner. One at a time.”
“I’ll come, too.”
Sam shook his head in the negative. “No, there’s no need.”
“I’ll come, too.”
Sam eyed the big determined man, looking him up and down. “Of course you will. Never any question about that.”
* * *
Her tears dried, and feeling somewhat calmer now, Yancey perched sideways atop the torn straw bedding in the tower’s room. Her Grace Nana mimicked her pose and sat at the bed’s other end, facing her. The perfectly white cats, Mary, Alice, and Jane, had accompanied her up here and had arranged themselves around the room. One sat in the window’s wide sill. Another perched on the chair. And the third sat atop the table. Like silent sentinels, they watched the two women.
Bemused as much as befuddled by their appearance here, Yancey allowed the tiny older woman to hold her hand and stroke her palm. A harmless activity, yet it seemed very much to please the ancient lady, who looked up at her now and said, “You’re a magical person, my dear. But you don’t know it.”
This white-haired peer of the realm kept saying such mysterious things as that, just as she’d done a bit ago when she’d made her presence known to Yancey. But taken aback nonetheless—not knowing if she was in the presence of the insane or the insightful, but suspecting both—Yancey tried to extricate her hand. The ancient woman’s grip proved to be surprisingly strong and unyielding. More curious than alarmed, Yancey relaxed, refusing to struggle with her.
Eyeing their joined hands, Yancey said, “I wish you wouldn’t say things like that, about me being magical and belonging here. Because I really don’t know what you mean by them.”
“I know you don’t. But you will come to know.”
Yancey raised her head until she met Her Grace Nana’s gaze. A beatific smile lit the sweet little woman’s wrinkled face. “In time, Sarah Margaret, you will know.”
Yancey froze. That name. That hated name. It was all she heard. She knew the elderly woman believed she was talking to the duke’s wife and had no idea who she really was, but that didn’t forestall her emotions. Defiance born of years of hurt and betrayal reared its jutting head in Yancey’s heart. “I don’t wish to be called by that name. It is detestable to me.”
“I know—”
“No. You don’t know.”
She’d spoken more sharply than she’d intended but Her Grace Nana appeared unperturbed. “Oh, but I do. You won’t always hate it. It won’t always be so for you.”
Yancey tried now in earnest to pull her hand out of the older woman’s grip. This time, Her Grace Nana allowed it. With her hand free, Yancey smoothed her hair behind her ears, nothing more than a nervous gesture. “How can you know? How? And yes it will always be hateful to me. Always.”
Yancey’s benign tormentor smiled her sympathy and patted Yancey’s arm. “Poor wounded lamb. Nothing lasts for always, my dear. Nothing. And I am right. You will see, and you will come to know.”
As if that were the most innocuous of comments needing no further elucidation, Her Grace Nana pulled herself to her feet, shuffled over to the table, and stroked the purring cats, talking in silly love tones to them.
Yancey could only stare at the woman’s age-hunched back and remind herself that Her Grace Nana’s talk was so much prattle. And if she seemed to know things that she really couldn’t know, then it was probably because she was referring to some knowledge she had of the real duchess, someone Yancey knew nothing about. So of course, Yancey reminded herself, it was only natural that she should feel as if she were in the dark. But frighteningly, she reflected, with her gaze still trained on Her Grace Nana’s shawl-covered back, the lines between herself and the other Sarah Margaret were beginning to blur, even in her own mind.
But why wouldn’t they? she argued right back. She’d taken on the other woman’s identity and life, hadn’t she? Yes. Her only hope now was that she wouldn’t also suffer the woman’s fate—and even that was assuming that the murdered Sarah Margaret Calhoun back in Chicago was in fact the actual duchess these people believed Yancey to be.
Unbidden, the duke’s handsome yet menacing face popped into Yancey’s mind, immediately racing her pulse with awareness of him as a man as well as fear of him as an adversary. She frowned, putting a hand to her temple. She mustn’t allow her woman’s heart to respond to him. She must instead think rationally about this man. He knew she wasn’t his wife. Yet he hadn’t told anyone differently. And without his corroboration, her protestations otherwise to the servants this morning had fallen on deaf ears.
Yancey’s question remained: why wouldn’t he tell them she spoke the truth when she said she was not the duchess—a woman they’d obviously never met? The unsettling answer was that it served some purpose of his to allow her charade to continue. Could that purpose be to get away with murder? After all, how could anyone say his wife was dead if she was right here in attendance? A possible truth, then, was that Yancey’s own masquerade had played innocently, yet perfectly, right into the duke’s scheming hands.
A very daunting notion. She still did not want to believe him capable of murder. She still wanted to think him innocent. Because she was so attracted to him? Yes. A self-loathing filled Yancey. She’d always prided herself that being female was her greatest asset in her profession. And now here it was in danger of being her greatest weakness. Always before, she’d never had a problem keeping her heart out of her work. But here and with this man, she was finding it increasingly difficult to do so, even after only one day. How difficult would it be next week, then? Or the week after that?
Exhaling, Yancey rubbed a hand over her face. This was awful. The whole thing. A convoluted mess. Then an ironic smile claimed her lips. Of course if it weren’t, she’d have no need to be here. And if there’d been an easy or even a discernible answer to the mystery of the duchess, she would have had no need to go to such lengths—physically and geographically—to solve this case of simple mistaken identity that had led her into this intrigue.
Frustration ate at her. If only she could come right out and ask the duke what the truth was. She’d certainly intended to do exactly that, but that had been before she’d met him. And now that she had, now that she’d felt his irresistible masculine tug on her female heart and body, she wasn’t so sure she really wanted to know the truth. And that alone could get her killed.
Yancey suddenly felt physically ill. She clutched at her stomach, concentrating on breathing and forcing her incriminating thoughts back to where they belonged, back to some dark place at the back of her mind where they could no longer accuse her or cloud her judgment. And thus she sat quietly, repeating to herself that she had a job to do. She’d come all this way to do it, and do it she would. She would allow nothing and no one to interfere with that, least of all the duke or even her present companion.
Yancey sat there until she believed her own conclusions, until her mood lifted and she felt more her practical-minded self. Shifting her weight atop the clean straw mattress, she told herself that it now seemed silly that she had allowed this ridiculous conversation with this ancient little woman to upset her. Yancey concentrated now on Her Grace Nana. What she finally saw was the truth—a dear but dotty woman whose white hair wisped about her head like a halo, whose skirts trailed the ground, who played hide-and-seek, and who talked to cats.
And so it was with a chuckle that Yancey called the woman’s attention away from the cats and back to herself. “All right, then, Your Grace Nana, how will I know? Tell me that much.”
Coming back over to the bed and again perching a hip atop it, much as if she sat sidesaddle on a horse, Her Grace Nana smiled a knowing smile as she took Yancey’s hands in hers. Yancey’s heart softened at the feel of the warm small-boned, age-gnarled little hands that held hers. The older woman’s disconcertingly lucid light blue eyes met Yancey’s. “I cannot tell you … except to say that you will know. You will be left with nothing more than knowledge. And nothing less.”
Yancey frowned. Now, what the devil does that mean? Her sympathetic gaze roved over the other woman’s impossibly sweet face. She was to be pitied and indulged, but not believed. As if to prove all this to herself, Yancey took another, more practical, tack in her questioning. “I see. Now, dear, tell me how you knew I was up here, or if you even did, I suppose I should add. I mean, you could have been coming up here anyway and simply found me here.”
“No. I came up here to see about you. Alice told me.” She released Yancey’s hands and pointed to the white cat still seated regally on the foot-wide stone windowsill. Unbelievably, the sleek cat ducked its head in seeming acknowledgment. “She saw you come running in here. From behind the garden. Over by the benches under the elms. With Sam. And then she came and got me at the carriage house.”
Disbelief coursed through Yancey. She hadn’t seen any of the cats there. Or Nana. Yet that was exactly where she had been with the duke. How could Nana know that? Surely one of the gardeners had told her. But something else nagged at her. “Did you say the carriage house? What were you doing in the carriage house? Did the dowager perhaps arrive?”
That would be awful. Yancey just didn’t feel up to another confrontation today.
“No, no. I was locking Mrs. Convers inside.”
She said that as if it explained everything. Yancey stared at the wizened old woman. “I’m sorry, but who exactly is Mrs. Convers?”
Her Grace Nana waved a hand in dismissal. “Sam calls her my nurse and companion. I call her my warden.” She leaned in conspiratorially toward Yancey, all but whispering now. “Mrs. Edgars is next, you know.”
Yancey frowned, seeing in her mind the tall, angular, unsmiling, unwelcoming woman who had shown her to her suite of rooms yesterday. “Do you mean the housekeeper?”
“Do you mean the housekeeper?”
Startled to have her words repeated, Yancey sat back, roving her gaze in an assessing manner over the much older woman’s face. To Yancey’s dismay, Her Grace Nana’s eyes seemed suddenly cloudy, not so focused, and her expression slack. Yancey slumped. The poor old dear was gone, at least in mind and spirit, if not body. Now what had caused that?
“A little bird told me I might find you two up here.”
The unexpected sound of the masculine voice from behind her jerked Yancey around and had her leaping off the bed in one movement. Her back to the wall, she faced the duke, her heart pounding, her hands fisted.
“Samuel, dear,” Her Grace Nana greeted him, her voice full of affection. “I seem to have misplaced my nurse.”
Yancey looked from the man to his nana and back to him when he replied, his voice patient and warm. “I’ve heard. But I think we’ve found her in the carriage house.”
“Ah,” the old lady remarked, sounding as if a great mystery had just been solved. “So that’s where she’s got to.”
“Amazing, isn’t it?” The duke had directed his comment to Yancey.
But she was in no mood for idle chatter. “What are you doing up here?”
Standing just across the threshold, with his arms crossed over his chest, he lolled with a shoulder leaned against a wall comprised of cold, massive stone blocks. “I used to come up here all the time when I was a boy. Sometimes with my brother on a rainy day. We’d be here for hours fighting many imaginary battles and countless invading armies. But now, when I want to be alone, when I want to see something eternal, something bigger than myself—I mean the mountains—I come up here. But I believe, in this instance, what you’re doing up here should be my question to you.”
He hadn’t advanced on her, but she still felt a need to step back. As it was, she had to tip her tongue out to moisten suddenly dry lips. She roved her gaze over him. Was he actually bigger? Taller? Even more muscular and imposing than he’d been out of doors? Or was it the room’s confining dimensions that made him seem so? That had to be it. Just as she’d done yesterday when he’d surprised her in her bedroom, Yancey wondered how long he had been standing there and how much he had heard. In her mind she damned the well-oiled door to this room for not squeaking a warning to her. She also damned the cats as well for having done nothing to give away their master’s presence.
“Any one of the cats here got your tongue?” He idly pointed to the three felines in attendance.
He always asked her that. Perhaps if she weren’t so tongue-tied around him … Yancey raised her chin. “Very amusing, Your Grace.”
“Ah, then they don’t. Excellent.” Holding her attention with his piercing slate-gray eyes, he held a hand out, as if he wanted her to take it.
Never. Yancey took another step back, only to butt into the table behind her, which elicited a startling yowl out of the offended cat sitting there. Yancey whipped around, her hands held to her chest. The white cat crouched down and hissed at her. Yancey jerked back.
“Jane, stop that. You’re being a bad girl.”
This reproof had Yancey pivoting to Her Grace Nana, who’d just chastised the cat. The older woman caught Yancey’s eye. “It’s not you, dear. It’s Scotty. She doesn’t like him.”
“But Scotty’s not…” Yancey thought her voice sounded weak and so far away … as if she were at the other end of a tunnel. All of a sudden these people seemed oddly strange to her, as if they were malevolent and were closing in on her. She didn’t know whom to trust or what was real or imagined. She put a hand to her temple, wondering what was wrong with her, why the room was slowly spinning. Did no one else feel it?
She put a hand out, seeking a solid presence to cling to, but finding none. “Scotty’s not up here,” she got out, hearing the slur in her words.
“But you’re mistaken, Miss Calhoun. Scotty is right here.”
This came from the duke. As if made of lead, as if unable suddenly to control the movement of her head, Yancey did her utmost to lift her gaze until she could see the duke. And there was Scotty standing beside him.
“No,” Yancey whispered. He hadn’t been there but a moment ago. She could not make heads or tails of this. Had the butler materialized out of thin air? In a puff of smoke? Had they all gone mad—or had she?
“Help me,” she begged, her knees feeling weak, a hand outstretched to the duke.
With an oath and a frowning look of sudden concern, he started toward her. But that was when the floor rose up to meet her … and the world went black.
* * *
“Shhh. She’s coming around. Be quiet now. Don’t scare her.” Sam punctuated his admonitions with a fierce frown all around the canopied bed, in the center of which lay Miss Calhoun, who was returning to consciousness following her swoon in the tower.
Standing in the circle around her bed were Scotty the silent butler, Robin the tearful lady’s maid, Mrs. Edgars the glaring housekeeper, Mrs. Convers the recently rescued and irate nurse, Nana the oblivious, her three cats—Mary, Alice, and Jane—and Mr. Marples the dog. The cats were on the bed. The short-legged dog yapped frantically, wanting also to be atop the bed. One of the cats hissed at him. Stiff-legged with outrage, the terrier growled right back.
“Quiet that dog, or I’ll clear this room,” Sam all but growled to Miss Calhoun’s lady’s maid.
Wide-eyed with fright, yet dropping a curtsy, the girl wordlessly plucked the frantic wire-haired terrier off the carpet and held his squirmy body in her arms. Petting it, she shushed it and stared at Sam.
He nodded his thanks to her, which seemed to frighten her more, and then turned to the florid-faced Mrs. Convers, his nana’s nurse. “Dampen a cold cloth for her head.” Scotty’s turn was next. “Open those windows. The breeze will do her good.”
Nana nodded, repeating, “The breeze will do her good.”
As Scotty lumbered past, bent on doing Sam’s bidding, the stout nurse curtsied to Sam, said, “Yes, Your Grace,” and hurried over to the washbasin and dry sink tucked away in a corner of the room. In a moment she was back with the dripping cloth and made as if to place it on Miss Calhoun’s forehead. Before she could, Mrs. Edgars plucked it from her, saying, “Give me that. You’re dripping it everywhere. I will tend the duchess.”
But Sam surprised his housekeeper—and himself—by taking the rag from her. “In fact, I believe I will tend her.”
His housekeeper looked as if she could slap him. “I must protest, Your Grace. I hardly think you—”
“You hardly think at all if you think to gainsay me, Mrs. Edgars.” Sam leaned in toward her, daring her to say another word. Wisely, she did not, instead firming her severe lips into a straight line. Satisfied, Sam righted himself and said, “Leave us. All of you.”
En masse, they all turned and, following Scotty, filed out. Mrs. Convers gripped Nana’s arm, so the cats fell in, single file, behind them. Still holding the dog, the lady’s maid was next. Mrs. Edgars was at the rear and herding them all as if she were a shepherd and they her flock. Once she stepped over the threshold into the suite’s sitting room, she arrowed an angry look Sam’s way. But she did close the door behind her. Sam didn’t know what to think about her impertinence. Perhaps he’d had too lax a hand with his household staff of late. Perhaps he needed to pay more attention.
But alone at last with Miss Calhoun, Sam dismissed his housekeeper from his mind and placed the washcloth on his supposed wife’s forehead. But Miss Calhoun, in a semiconscious state, frowned and swiped at it, dislodging it. Sam spoke low and soothingly to her and put it back in place. Slowly she writhed, moving her arms and legs and tossing her head from side to side. The cloth again dislodged and a tiny moan escaped her. Sam plucked the wet rag up and tossed it to the nightstand. Obviously she wasn’t going to hold still for its cooling benefits.
He perched a hip on the side of the bed and watched her. He knew that should she awaken and find him thus, his positioning would appear at best unseemly to her. But for the life of him, he couldn’t step away from her. Nor could he help but notice at such close quarters how disconcertingly young she appeared with such pink cheeks and the childlike pout of her full lips, her slender neck, and unblemished skin. She was beautiful. Delicate. Like a flower. Or perhaps a nymph from the sea. More affected than he cared to admit, Sam had all he could do not to caress her cheek or stroke her hair.
He focused on her long red hair, trying to name for himself its color. Auburn? Burnished gold? Copper? None of them, yet all of them, seemed to fit. It depended on whether or not she was in the sun. And even now the thick tresses had fallen like silken waves about her.
Just then she moaned again and writhed with an unintentional sensuality that nevertheless stunted Sam’s breathing. Instant carnal images burst into his mind’s eye, as much appalling him as exciting him. The things he saw the two of them doing together hardly seemed appropriate under these circumstances with her in an impaired state. But there they were, even despite her being fully dressed and only semiconscious, for God’s sake. Not for the first time in his life was Sam chagrined by the willful turns his masculine brain would take when shown a beautiful woman. Very unsettling, much as if a rutting beast lived within him.
He’d grown used to that aspect of his nature, but did prefer instead the idea of the civilized gentleman able to control his baser instincts. Yet … here the images were, and Sam’s moment of shame was bowled over by his desire for her. Causing him increasing physical agitation, his mind insisted on showing him pictures that boiled his blood, images that depicted her as God made her, naked, beautiful, proud, writhing atop a bed—his bed—and moaning, under him, and calling out his name—
She opened her eyes, revealing them to be a deep forest-green. Sam felt his heart rate pick up. Still, he managed what he hoped was a neutral enough smile.
She didn’t return it but blinked rapidly, as if still in a daze. Then, suddenly, her gaze landed on him and held. She frowned, much as if she couldn’t quite place him. Sam said nothing, giving her a few moments more to clear her mind. He knew the moment conscious awareness came to her because her eyes opened wide and she froze, croaking out a single, accusatory word. “You.”