Chapter Three

C HAPTER T HREE

The father raged and roared, and even complained to the king, but still the awful name stuck.

Her mother dosed Lady Long-Nose with potions and smeared her with poultices to stop her nose growing.

But nothing reduced the size of the baby’s nose.…

—From Lady Long-Nose

“Did I tell you what I found in your library this morning?” Lady Elspeth asked Messalina eagerly.

Julian watched Lady Elspeth as the carriage bumped toward Bond Street. Her cheeks were flushed prettily, a dimple appearing by her mouth as she smiled.

She looked the very picture of innocence.

He glanced away to stare out the carriage window. He’d have to tell his sisters soon about the marriage threat to Lucretia, but not yet.

From beside him, Messalina said, “No, what did you find?”

“A very old piece of a folio. I think it’s part of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People .”

“ No, ” Messalina exclaimed in a whisper.

Julian hadn’t thought of Ran’s youngest sister in over fifteen years. Yet now she seemed to have installed herself in Lucretia’s and Messalina’s lives quite easily. Was Lady Elspeth spying for her brother?

Ran certainly had reason.

“What exactly is that?” Lucretia asked with what sounded like reluctant interest.

Lady Elspeth looked startled.

“Darling.” Messalina sighed. “Bede. The father of English history?”

“Oh, that Bede,” Lucretia replied airily. “I thought you might mean the Sicilian Bede or even that one in France.”

Julian closed his eyes. They might be his sisters, but he felt alien when Lucretia and Messalina were frivolous like this. He’d spent four years in Augustus’s house—a place where no one could be trusted. Where servants and guests alike spied on him, eager to report any slight thing. If he smiled at a maid, she disappeared the next day. If he picked up a book, Augustus would make Julian watch as he burned it. If he frowned at a footman, he was forced to apologize.

“You made that up.” Lady Elspeth sounded fascinated.

While at the same time, Messalina said, “There are no other Bedes! It’s just the one.”

Lucretia mumbled, “Killjoy.”

His every expression, every little move was studied, picked apart, and used against him until Julian had learned to hold himself still, to express neither joy nor sorrow nor anger. He’d buried all his thoughts and feelings so deeply inside himself that sometimes he thought he’d lost them altogether.

Messalina snorted in an unladylike manner. “Even if some people are sadly ignorant of Bede, I’m terribly grateful that you found the manuscript, Elspeth.”

“I’m enjoying the work tremendously,” Lady Elspeth said, and in Julian’s mind’s eye, he saw that dimple again. “It’s as if I’m exploring an unmapped country. I never know what I might find—illuminated psalters or philosophical texts in Greek or—”

“The collected poems of Aphra Behn, woman poet,” Lucretia piped up. “Do you know she’s buried in Westminster Abbey?”

“Truly?” Messalina sounded surprised. “I’d have thought she was far too scandalous for such a prominent cathedral.”

The carriage jolted over something in the street, and Julian opened his eyes. Lady Elspeth was looking right at him, her mouth still in a soft smile. Why? Why would the girl constantly smile at him when he’d been nothing but dismissive of her? Those curving pink lips should make him suspicious. Should raise his hackles and make him reach for a weapon.

“We ought to visit Westminster Abbey and look for her,” Lucretia said, bouncing on the carriage seat.

Messalina stared at her sister. “ You want to visit an abbey?”

“An abbey where scandalous people are buried,” Lucretia retorted. “It’s quite different from some village church.”

“I would like to tour the cathedral,” Lady Elspeth put in. “I’ve heard that there’s an absolutely ghastly effigy of Queen Elizabeth in it.”

He was older than she, a cynical husk of a man trying and mostly failing to shield what remained of his family. Why in the world should she look at him so gently? Did she lack the instinctive wariness of any small, soft creature?

And yet he found himself relaxing under her stare, a feeling of warmth and comfort coming over him.

Dear God, Elspeth de Moray was dangerous, but not for the reasons he’d first assumed.

“Lovely,” Lucretia said. “Then we shall all go together.”

“Wonderful,” Messalina said sardonically. “I’ve always wanted to see a ghastly effigy.”

Julian glanced out the window. They were nearing Bond Street. He had to speak to them now.

He cleared his throat. “I have something to tell you both. The duke has made plans to wed Lucretia to an unknown man.”

Beside him, Messalina gasped. “Dear God.”

Lucretia was frozen, looking at him with wide, frightened eyes.

Messalina clutched his sleeve. “She needs to leave London. Go to Scotland or—or France. Somewhere she can hide.”

He put his hand over his sister’s fingers. “Yes. And we will get her out. Quinn and I are thinking of plans.”

“But can’t Lucretia simply say no?” Lady Elspeth asked.

Was she bamming him? Julian stared at the girl, but her expression was entirely open, her blue eyes watching them with confusion.

How could anyone be so naive?

“No,” Lucretia said quietly. “Uncle Augustus can force the wedding. Just as he did Messalina’s marriage.”

“What?”

“Blackmail,” Messalina said. “The duke had me kidnapped and then held Lucretia’s safety over my head.”

“She had no choice,” Julian growled, remembering his anger and shock, the desperate ride to London to try to save Messalina. The realization that he’d arrived too late.

“Fortunately, I came to love my husband,” Messalina said crisply. “I’ve forgiven Gideon long since.”

“ I haven’t,” Lucretia muttered.

The carriage rolled to a stop.

Julian glanced out the window. The carriage was off Bond Street, but the street was still crowded. Good.

He turned to nod at Lucretia. “You needn’t fear, Hawthorne’s men are here and so am I. No one can snatch you from the street.”

She raised her head proudly. “I know.”

Messalina nodded at Julian. He glanced at Lady Elspeth to find her watching him as if trying to solve a puzzle.

The carriage door opened and the step was set. Julian jumped down first. He helped Lucretia and Messalina down before wordlessly holding his hand out to Lady Elspeth. She placed her little gloved fingers in his grasp as she stepped down. She shot him a glance from under lowered eyelashes, and for a moment, warmth lit his chest. Then she let go, and the cold returned. She lifted the hood of her dark-blue cloak over her head.

“Shall we?” Lucretia pointedly linked her arm with Messalina’s and set out down Bond Street.

“My lady?” Julian proffered his arm for Lady Elspeth, and for a second, she merely stared at the limb as if nonplussed.

Was he so loathsome?

Then she nodded and took his arm.

He inhaled the scent of wild roses and couldn’t stop his body from tightening in reaction. The temptation to lower his face to her neck, to find the source of that perfume and…

Julian cleared his throat and made himself move forward.

Their progress was slow, the way jammed with both the fashionable and the working class. An exquisitely bewigged pair of gentlemen bowed to a trio of giggling ladies. A floridly rotund country squire escorted his family: a matronly lady and three excited girls. A scarlet-coated soldier winked at a milliner, who tilted her chin in the air, clutching her bandbox as she hurried by.

“I don’t blame you, you know,” Lady Elspeth said suddenly.

For a split second, he wondered if she could somehow sense his longing.

Then he came to his senses. He lowered his head to hear her. “Blame me for what?”

“Ranulf.”

His heart froze. “You know nothing about that time.”

“I know that my brother lost his right hand.”

He wanted to close his eyes, step away from this conversation, and sear the memory from his brain.

Ran had been an artist.

“And you think that’s my fault.” It was. It was.

“No, that’s what I’m trying to tell you,” she said, almost scolding. “I don’t know whose fault it was, if it was anyone’s, but I don’t blame you.”

She should. “That’s very kind of you.”

“Now you’re being sarcastic.” She sighed. “Ranulf refuses to answer any of my questions.”

He looked at her. She wore a white cap underneath her hood, the lace framing her face like the petals of a flower. “You’ve seen Ran?”

She wrinkled her nose, which was ridiculously adorable. “I haven’t seen him, no. I don’t think any of our family has in years, except for Lachlan, who has to consult Ranulf about the ducal lands. But I do write both of my brothers.”

Julian blinked. Rumor had it that Ran was a recluse, hiding away in some townhouse in Edinburgh. “What…” He took a breath. “What does he say?”

She laughed, too loud, too boisterous, and utterly charming. Everything he did not deserve. “He tells me about anatomy.”

“What?”

She smiled up at him. “He’s taken a great interest in it and consults with learned men all over the continent.” Her smile fell. “Via letters, of course.”

“Of course.” Julian had thought that Ran had given up. Had retired from the world, never to return. But if he was pursuing his interests, was in contact with others…

That was good. Very good.

His guilt should lessen at the news. Except Julian would have to fool himself first.

He knew what he’d done to Ran.

Lady Elspeth said, “There is really no need for us to be enemies. After all, your sisters are friends to me.”

“My sisters,” he said through stiff lips, “forget that your brother killed Aurelia.” He glanced at her, making his expression harden. “You and I can never be friends.”

She looked up at him with solemn eyes. “Can’t we?”

Why was she even trying? Didn’t she know he’d been the architect of Ran’s fall? Didn’t she know how base his desires were?

No one should be friends with him.

There was a shout behind them, and Julian turned just in time to see a skinny lordling chase after a tattered urchin, shoving aside a man in a bottle-green waistcoat in the process.

Julian faced forward again.

Lady Elspeth pulled at his arm, and he realized that his sisters had stopped by a shop window, their heads together as they peered inside. It wasn’t until Julian and Lady Elspeth caught up to them that he saw that the shop sold books.

“Shall we go in?” Messalina asked Lucretia.

Lucretia rolled her eyes. “Don’t you have enough books?”

Messalina answered, “No.”

While at the same time, Lady Elspeth said excitedly, “I don’t think one could ever have enough books.”

Julian’s lips twitched. “Of course you don’t.”

“Oh, come in,” she said in mock affront, and they followed his sisters into the shop.

Inside, closely set bookshelves created a warren, the scent of ink, mildew, and, faintly, decay in the air. The shop held both new editions and older volumes. There were two customers already peering at the shelves, but otherwise the store was empty.

Messalina and Lucretia immediately wandered to inspect some large volumes lying in a glass case.

Lady Elspeth looked around, her face lit with something close to rapture. “Let’s check down here,” she said, leading him into an aisle.

The scent of old paper was stronger here, reminding Julian of his father’s library at Greycourt. The hours he’d spent reading poetry in a window seat, dust motes floating in the sunlight. That time was like a paradise forever lost. He’d been a daydreaming boy, unprepared for Augustus and his evil.

“Oh, look,” Lady Elspeth called, tearing Julian out of his thoughts. “What a lovely set of Mr. Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language . Aren’t they beautiful?”

Lady Elspeth was gesturing to a tall, dusty glass case, inside which were four folio volumes. The case was naturally locked.

“And expensive,” Julian said dryly.

Lady Elspeth pouted. “But they’re still beautiful. Even if unaffordable to most.”

He fought back an urge to lean closer, perhaps to feel her warmth on his skin. “Point.”

She nodded as if having proved something to herself and walked deeper into the store.

Julian shook his head, strolling after Lady Elspeth. He caught up with her as she stood on tiptoe trying to reach a thin folio on an upper shelf. She clutched two other books in her other arm.

Julian reached over her head and easily took down the book, presenting it to her.

“Oh, thank you.” She took the book and opened it, smiling faintly. “It’s Hero and Leander by Christopher Marlowe. I’ve always wanted to read it.”

“Have you?” He contemplated her. “It’s a bit risqué for an unmarried lady.”

“I think you know I don’t worry much about the opinions of others.” She had a smudge of dust on the tip of her nose, and he wanted—very badly—to thumb it away.

Instead he murmured, “No, you seem to live by your own rules.”

Elspeth either ignored him or didn’t hear his words. “Oh,” she said, frowning ferociously at a Daemonologie by King James VI. “What a hateful book.”

He glanced at the book in question—a tattered copy facing out—and snorted. “You don’t believe in witches, do you?”

She looked at him strangely. “Do you?”

“No, not really.” He shrugged. “But at the border where I grew up, the superstition was still alive. And of course there were strange women who wanted to be thought witches. They called themselves Wise Women and dealt in herbs and the like. Simply nonsense.”

Her face had closed for some reason, and he couldn’t read her eyes.

“Elspeth,” Messalina called from behind him, “are you ready? Lucretia wants to visit the glove maker.”

“I’m coming,” Lady Elspeth replied. “I just have to buy these.”

They went to the tiny counter where the proprietor sat dozing. He didn’t seem entirely happy to be disturbed for business but was quick to settle the transaction with Lady Elspeth and tie the small stack of books together.

“Thank you,” Lady Elspeth said politely, and she reached for her parcel.

Julian picked up the books before she could. “Allow me.”

“That’s very kind of you,” she said stiffly.

He couldn’t help arching a brow. “Very few ladies have had cause to call me kind.”

Beside them, Lucretia snorted.

Oddly, Lady Elspeth frowned at his sister.

Outside, Hawthorne’s men were waiting patiently.

Julian nodded to them as he followed the ladies. As he did so, he noticed a flash of green behind them.

The man in the bottle-green waistcoat was lingering by the shop before the bookstore, seemingly interested in a display of lace-trimmed tricornes on the table in front. The shop boy was staring at the green-waistcoated man with suspicion, and well he should be. The man didn’t seem the sort to be able to afford a lace-trimmed tricorne, let alone to wear one.

Julian casually turned back to trail after the ladies. Perhaps the man in the bottle-green waistcoat wasn’t following them. Perhaps he was too suspicious.

But there was another possibility. Perhaps Augustus had set a watcher on them, either to kill Julian…

Or to make sure Lucretia didn’t flee before the marriage.

“Well,” Elspeth said the next day, “this is certainly depressing.”

“Isn’t it?” Lucretia agreed faintly.

“What?” asked Ann Greycourt, the Duchess of Windemere, sounding confused.

All three ladies stood with Messalina, looking down at the gravestone of Aphra Behn, woman poet, in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. It was black and set flush with the stone floor and read:

MRS APHRA BEHN

DYED APRIL 16

A.D. 1689.

HERE LIES A PROOF THAT WIT CAN NEVER BE

DEFENCE ENOUGH AGAINST MORTALITY.

Elspeth tilted her head, studying the inscription. “Do you think that is what she wanted her gravestone to read?”

“Noooo,” Lucretia moaned. She seemed to be taking the inscription very hard.

The duchess merely blinked and gazed around a bit absently. Elspeth wasn’t entirely sure how she’d come to be with them at the cathedral. Something about Messalina inviting her after the duchess appeared at Whispers that morning. The sisters and Elspeth had agreed to act as normal as possible until a way for Lucretia to flee had been decided on.

“It does seem unlikely that Mrs. Behn wanted this on her gravestone,” Messalina said. “Unless she became quite religious toward the end of her life. Like John Donne.”

“John Donne was religious?” Lucretia asked, diverted.

“He became a priest,” Messalina said, and one could tell she very much wanted to roll her eyes.

Elspeth bit back a smile.

It was a cold, dreary day. Rain was dropping aimlessly on the cloister garth outside as if unable to commit to a storm.

Elspeth shivered. She wasn’t entirely sure what a garth was. It looked like a square garden to her.

Lucretia was still frowning at the stone. “I don’t think Aphra wrote this.”

“Aphra?” Messalina looked incredulously at her sister. “You’re on intimate terms with her now?”

“Yes,” Lucretia said, her chin set quite firmly.

“A man wrote it,” Elspeth said with certainty, even though she knew very little of Aphra Behn. “Her husband or perhaps a brother, someone who was quite jealous of her talent and wanted to have the last word.”

“You have a low opinion of the male sex,” a very male voice said from behind Elspeth.

She jumped and turned to see Julian Greycourt standing there. “You startled me apurpose.”

He tilted his head slowly to the side, staring at her as if she were almost, but not entirely, interesting. “Perhaps you simply don’t pay attention to your surroundings.”

Elspeth narrowed her eyes. “You were behind me. I haven’t eyes in the back of my head like a… a…”

“Owl?” he inserted.

“Owls don’t have eyes in the back of their heads.” Elspeth frowned. “They merely turn—”

“Quite.” Why did the man feel the need to interrupt her? “Perhaps Janus,” he continued musingly. “The two-headed god. Though the analogy is somewhat clumsy.”

Elspeth fought to keep from propping her hands on her hips like a baker arguing with a customer. “I didn’t say Janus. You did.”

She could see his lips parting and was aware once again of how beautiful his mouth was. It was stern and hard, the vertical indentation between upper lip and nose so sharp it might’ve been carved in marble. And yet… his lips held the possibility of softer moods.

Sensuous moods.

What would he look like if he were to taste a sweet custard, licking the cream from his upper lip—or even her fingers—his eyes half-closed…

She was brought abruptly back to the present by Messalina’s voice. “What are you doing here, Julian?”

Mr. Greycourt’s attention turned to his sister, and Elspeth felt a momentary pang of disappointment at the loss.

He said to Messalina, “I’ve come to see Westminster Abbey with my sisters and Lady Elspeth.” He bowed to the duchess. “And, of course, my aunt.”

“I didn’t think you would remember our discussion from yesterday?” Lucretia looked a bit startled.

Mr. Greycourt raised his eyebrows. “Naturally, I remember what my sisters talk about.”

It was a gentle rebuke, but still a rebuke. Elspeth watched Mr. Greycourt’s face, but he gave no indication he might be hurt by Lucretia’s lack of faith in him.

Lucretia, on the other hand, looked thoughtful. Perhaps she was realizing that her brother cared more for her than she had thought?

“Naturally, you’re welcome to walk with us, Julian,” Messalina said in an even tone.

Mr. Greycourt inclined his head to his sister before he held out his arm to his aunt. “May I escort you?”

“Oh, thank you.” The duchess flushed a pretty pink. “But I think I’ll walk with my nieces.”

Her Grace took Lucretia’s arm and began strolling to the abbey’s entrance with Messalina bookending her on her other side.

Mr. Greycourt stood staring after them.

“Ahem.” Elspeth cleared her throat.

He ignored her.

Elspeth tried a little louder. “Ahem.”

Mr. Greycourt turned his frosty gray eyes on her. “Have you a cold, my lady?”

“Not at all.” Elspeth looked pointedly at his elbow.

He raised an eyebrow but held out his arm. “Shall we?”

Elspeth tucked her hand into his elbow. “Yes, we shall.”

He led her back along the chilly cloister corridor.

At first she’d been incredulous when Freya had explained that it was considered proper and polite for a gentleman to offer his arm to a lady. Elspeth thought the idea that a woman was so weak that she had to lean on a man just to walk was ridiculous.

Nevertheless, the position was quite warm, if nothing else. Mr. Greycourt radiated a great deal of heat. Elspeth cozied up to him and smiled when he shot her a puzzled look.

They climbed the few steps into the abbey proper, and Elspeth stopped dead. “It’s amazing, isn’t it?” She looked in wonder at the ceiling high, high above them. She’d never been in a building so big. “It makes one feel rather like an ant.”

“Does it?” He tilted his head back. “I’m not sure what an ant feels like.”

She stared at him, eyebrows raised. He’d made a joke?

He turned then and looked her in the eye, and there was a faint curve at the corner of his mouth.

“Perhaps…” Elspeth licked her lips and couldn’t help but notice when his gaze dropped to her mouth. “Perhaps very small.”

He arched an eyebrow.

“The ant, I mean.” Elspeth took a breath to steady herself. “It would feel very small and insignificant.”

“Is that what you feel?”

“No.” She smiled as she realized. “No, I don’t. I feel rather exuberant.”

“Because of the ceiling,” he murmured.

She tilted her head, trying to read him. “That’s certainly part of it.” Something flared behind his eyes. Something private and vulnerable.

Before she could completely process what she’d seen, his expression froze over, becoming impossible to discern.

“Come,” he said. “We’re lagging behind.”

“You care for your sisters,” Elspeth said.

“Of course I do.” His arm stiffened under her fingers. “I’m their brother. Is that so odd?”

“It is, actually,” she replied, thinking. “Lucretia at least seems to be a bit estranged from you.”

There was a flash of something almost like hurt in his cold, cold eyes before he turned away from her. He faced forward, not answering.

“I beg your pardon,” Elspeth said softly. “I was perhaps mistaken in the matter.”

“No,” he replied stonily. “You’re quite right.”

Ahead, Lucretia, Messalina, and the duchess were standing before a tomb. When Mr. Greycourt and she came abreast, Elspeth could see that the other ladies were gazing doubtfully at a gentleman in a doublet and ruff who was reclining lazily on his side atop his coffin.

“I… don’t understand,” Her Grace murmured. “It seems strange for him to not be lying flat.”

Lucretia tilted her head. “He seems rather jolly, don’t you think?”

“He’s certainly colorful,” Elspeth said, eyeing the bright yellow hose.

They started strolling again, and Mr. Greycourt leaned down to murmur, “We were all destroyed that summer. The summer Aurelia died. My mother passed away within a week, leaving my uncle in control. He sent my sisters to an elderly cousin and took Quintus and me to London. It was… difficult. I didn’t see Messalina and Lucretia again for four years. That’s probably why she thinks me distant.”

His last words were whispered, and she felt a pang of sympathy. It seemed that all the children of both the de Moray and the Greycourt families had been scattered from their homes. She tried to remember Ayr Castle, but all she could conjure in her imagination was the smell of the stables and the nook under the servants’ stairs where she used to hide from her nurse.

She asked impulsively, “Have you been back to Greycourt since that summer?” Greycourt Hall was the country seat of the Dukes of Windemere. Their lands adjoined those of the Dukes of Ayr, with Greycourt on the English side of the border and Ayr Castle on the Scottish side.

He shook his head.

She nodded. Had any of them returned? Well, Lachlan must have, simply to see to the care of Ayr Castle. But besides him? Perhaps no one. Greycourt and Ayr Castle were almost like fairy-tale palaces, locked away behind walls of thorns, forgotten by all until some prince or princess might wake them again.

It was a forlorn thought.

Elspeth looked up as they climbed a series of stairs into the chapel beyond the transept. “Oh,” she breathed. Above them was a magnificent ceiling, all carved fans and pendants, each worked into intricate designs like lace. She turned in place, head tilted back, examining the ceiling. When she glanced down, she met Mr. Greycourt’s gray eyes watching her. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

“I suppose it is,” he said slowly, never looking away. “Quite unique and beautiful.”

She caught her breath at the intensity in his gaze. It was strange, for he hadn’t seemed to even glance at the ceiling. But she was aware suddenly of how serious he was, as if the ceiling was the most important thing he’d ever contemplated.

Lucretia called to them, and Mr. Greycourt blinked and looked away from Elspeth.

She breathed a sigh. His close regard was almost too intense, as if he’d cracked open a door to his soul and she’d been blinded by the light within. But that couldn’t be. Mr. Greycourt was a cold, unmoving, unfeeling man.

Wasn’t he?

All this time he’d been leading her to Lucretia, Messalina, and the duchess. The sisters had paused with Her Grace before an enormous family monument.

“Why,” Lucretia asked in an appalled tone, “is the father dressed as a Roman soldier? Surely he hadn’t those muscular arms when he died at eighty?”

Elspeth examined the carved marble. “There always seem to be naked babies,” she mused, peering closer at the winged ones about the Roman father’s head. “Do you think—”

The father’s nose suddenly chipped off, almost as if—

A crack echoed around the abbey.