Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13

“ W hat is wrong with ye, Grace?” Caleb demanded before inwardly cursing himself.

That hadn’t come out quite right.

Frankly, none of this was quite right. For one, he should not have appeared at breakfast the morning after that banquet. He’d made a practice of not spending time with his wife whenever possible, but here he was, watching her nibble distractedly at a piece of toast.

She looked up at him, her expression one of mild, polite surprise.

“Nothing,” she said, her tone suggesting that she could not even fathom why he might even think someone would ever be wrong with as primly pressed a proper Englishwoman as she. She allowed a hint of self-approbation into her smile. “I must be a bit distracted. Woolgathering, as it were. I do beg your pardon.”

She held the smile a moment more, then returned to her absent nibbling.

The whole thing was an utter crock of shite.

When she’d retreated into coldness the night prior, when he’d put her off in the carriage, he’d considered it his fair due. Any lass might be irritated, he gathered, to be mauled up against a wall and then discarded like yesterday’s scraps. She didn’t know he’d had a reason for wanting to keep her hands out from beneath his jacket, and he did not intend to share that reason with her.

He'd earned that anger, so he’d determined to weather it. After all, irritation between himself and his pretty wife, he was beginning to learn, often sparked into far more entertaining diversions.

And if he put space between them following those diversions, that was for the best, too. It was simpler that way. Safer.

“What are ye doin’ today?” he asked, then cursed himself even more soundly. He sounded like a green lad panting after the local dairymaid.

But there was something wrong and it was driving him mad not knowing what it was.

Grace’s surprise was slightly more genuine when she looked at him this time. He wondered when he’d learned to read her so well.

“Oh, this and that,” she said absently. “I thought I’d take a stroll through the gardens, perhaps. Or maybe attend to some needlepoint. I’ve been neglecting it terribly, I’m afraid.”

Neglecting her needlepoint his right arse. His wife had not spent her time since their marriage making samplers and ugly pillowcases. She’d been managing the household like a tiny domestic general.

Something had changed—but he didn’t what, nor precisely when.

It hadn’t been until they’d returned home that he’d been able to see her properly. He’d glanced over as he’d taken her cloak, thinking to test her anger, and passively wondering if he could tease her out of her snit with his fingers or his tongue.

What he’s seen in her face, however, hadn’t been anger, nor the mulish irritation she so often wore around him.

No, it was fear . Downright fear .

At first, he’d felt a bolt of horror, thinking that he’d been too brutish with her, that he’d let himself, fueled by desire, become the thing he’d sworn he would never be. But then he remembered her words on the balcony.

You really aren’t that frightening. I’ve seen far more frightening things, thank you very much. You’ll have to do better if you intend to alarm me .

She wasn’t afraid of him; she’d been very clear on that point.

What, then, had frightened her?

He was furious at himself for wanting to know. But he did want to know. He needed to know.

Grace patted delicately at her mouth, though a glance at her plate told him she’d not eaten more than a few bites of toast. Her cup of tea, too, was barely touched. Surely this could not be normal for her. She was slender, aye, but not emaciated. He’d felt the proof of that beneath his hands last night.

No, Caleb’s instincts insisted. Something was very wrong.

His wife, however, seemed determined to deny any such thing. She shot him an airy smile.

“Excuse me, Your Grace; I’m off. Enjoy your morning.”

She sounded precisely like the brainless English wife that Caleb had thought he’d wanted, the one that would be easy to control, the one who would not question a single one of his orders, who would accept the terms of their arrangement without argument.

He found he hated it.

He drank his own tea in a single, furious swallow. He’d gotten the habit of drinking it fast and hot in the army—one never knew when one’s marching orders would come in, and nobody liked to abandon their cup undrunk, not when the next brew could be days away. Now, though, the burn in his throat matched his mood.

She was his wife , damn it! If something was wrong, he deserved to know.

He shoved away from the breakfast table. He would find out. She would answer him.

He was preparing to storm up to his wife’s bedchamber, a boundary he’d not yet transgressed, when he spotted his housekeeper bustling along and his tactician’s mind wondered if there was a better way than a frontal assault when it came to getting the information he needed.

Caleb had never been considered as a spy—he was too big, too brusque, too Scottish—but he’d worked with intelligence officers during his military career. He respected their trade.

“Mrs. O’Mailey!” he barked.

The housekeeper, then just a maid, had tended Caleb’s mother at his birth. She was resoundingly unimpressed by any display of temper on his part.

“Yes, Your Grace,” she said placidly.

“What is wrong with my wife?” he demanded. He’d seen the two women with their heads together as they mused over various household projects. He’d left them to it—as long as she didn’t put up more shrines to his wretched ancestors, Grace could festoon the house however she bloody well pleased—but now he wondered if this could be used to his advantage.

He didn’t realize that he’d hoped Mrs. O’Mailey would insist that nothing was amiss, of course, until a flicker of concern passed her face.

“I cannae say for certain, Your Grace,” she said, hesitant as though she was thinking and speaking at the same time. “But she does seem…odd this morning.”

Caleb swore. His housekeeper gave him a chiding look.

“Language, Your Grace,” she said severely.

Caleb, who was a man who had seen battle and a duke atop that, barely bit back an apology for his profanity. In any case, he did not let any oaths slip from his lips.

“Has she nae said anything to ye, then?” he probed.

Mrs. O’Mailey hesitated. Caleb’s fist clenched.

“She did ask me if there was a mill nearby,” the older woman said, sounding perfectly puzzled by it. “I told her aye, an abandoned one that’s not been in operation for as long as I’ve lived here.”

Caleb waited for more without a great deal of patience.

“And?”

Mrs. O’Mailey shook her head. “And nothing. She didn’t ask anything else, didn’t say anything else. But she looked rather…”

She paused, and Caleb had the sinking sensation that whatever the woman said next, it was going to make him want to hit something very hard.

“Haunted,” she said at last. “The poor lass looked rather as though she’d seen a ghost.”

“Grace.”

Grace turned at her brother Evan’s urgent voice. He was standing behind her, looking dreadfully out of place in this horrible little hovel.

“Grace, we have to go. Hurry. We have to go.”

A little voice in the back of Grace’s mind whispered that this wasn’t how it had happened, that she simply must be dreaming, but any nod to sensibility was lost in the face of her brother’s anxiety.

“Go,” Grace said. “Yes, yes, let’s go.”

She was meant to be stirring the soup; the ladle in her hand tugged at her. How many times had Mrs. Packard rapped her knuckles with this ladle for some minor transgression? She stared at it for a moment, as if the solid metal between her fingers would help sort out the meandering logic of her dreams.

Her brother tugged at her arm, only now it wasn’t Evan; it was Frances.

“Hurry,” Frances said. “Before they come back. We have to be quiet.”

This part, Grace understood. She’d spent years forcing herself to be quiet even when she was frightened, cold, in pain. She’d bit back her anger and her spite, shoved it down, down, deep inside, where nobody could touch it, not even her.

She could do that one more time, couldn’t she? For Frances?

She let the ladle drop, though it didn’t sound like a ladle dropping. But Frances’ hand was in hers, so Grace followed. This was an escape, she told herself, reality and dreams layering atop one another. This was how she’d gotten free. She had truly gotten free.

These thoughts did not comfort her when she heard another voice, familiar but out of place, calling her name from behind her.

“Grace?”

She hurried, though it couldn’t be the Packards. They never called her by her name, only ever “girl” or “you” or a litany of insults too broad to list.

“Grace, what are ye doing?”

The voice tugged at her, but not nearly as firmly as Frances pulled her ahead.

“Jesus Christ, Grace, stop!”

She jolted, gasping into wakefulness, even as her balance threatened to teeter over the first stair and down into the darkness below. Before she could fall, however, hands grasped her from behind, and she was pulled back into a firm, strong chest, was being held tight as the last dregs of sleep left her and she got her feet beneath her.

Caleb. Montgomery Estate. She was here, she was married, she was not—there. With them.

She managed one shaky breath before Caleb’s hands turned her, moving them both back from the precipice. His gaze searched hers, eyes wild.

“What the hell were ye doin’, leannan ?” he asked, voice raspy with sleep or perhaps fear. “Ye nearly tumbled over.”

She was horribly disoriented, though gradually the world was coming into sharper focus around her, thank goodness. She extended a hand, pressing it against Caleb’s chest. She could fear his heart racing through the thin fabric of his nightshirt. She wondered if her pulse was leaping as frantically before deciding yes, of course it was. He tucked a loose strand of hair back from her face, touch as rough as the gesture was gentle.

She couldn’t decide if it felt soothing or if it rattled her even more thoroughly.

“Grace,” he said again, voice insistent.

He was waiting for her answer, she realized, which meant she needed to provide one—immediately.

She channeled her years of training in deportment and politics to offer him her best attempt at a sheepish, but unconcerned smile.

“I’m sorry if I startled you,” she said. “I must have been sleepwalking. It happens now and again.”

Caleb’s frown deepened. He looked unconvinced, but his tight clasp on her shoulders did slightly loosen. She wished, briefly, that he was a bit stupider; that would have been so dreadfully convenient.

“Sleepwalking.” He was still searching her, like her face would reveal more answers. She refused to permit it. “And this happens to ye often?”

“Now and again,” she repeated, hoping she hadn’t made her tone too light to be believable. “But, no, I wouldn’t say often .”

Goodness, she hoped not. It had been a frequent occurrence shortly after she’d been taken to the mill. She would wake to find herself already banging at the door of the small closet where she’d slept, one of more of the Packards already arriving to bang on the other side and scream at her to shut up and right quick, if she knew what was good for her.

Like with her nightmares, she’d gotten her sleepwalking under control out of sheer necessity, had stamped down her unconscious needs to serve her conscious ones—namely, not to get whacked with a utensil, shouted at, or given even less food than her usual scant rations.

“Is it because ye were dreamin’?” Caleb asked, too clever for his own good.

Grace refused to let her muscles clench.

“I dream all the time,” she said. “I don’t sleepwalk nearly as often.”

It was true and untrue. And she suspected that her husband knew it. As he held her, hands still on her, eyes still keen, she could practically hear him asking it. Why are you lying?

And the part of her that could hear that question echoing in his cantankerous, gruff voice almost considered answering. They’d had their moments, hadn’t they? On the balcony—in the library. They’d had moments where they’d let the veils of circumstance and animosity fall, and they’d told the truth, even if it was only in parts.

But then she remembered the gossip, the snickers hastily hidden behind fans. She remembered how matrons had eyed her with pity, their glances speaking. Poor Grace Miller. Spoiled goods.

Aside from her friends and her brother, nobody had cared much for Grace’s side of the story. Those who had bothered to ask hadn’t believed her.

Caleb hadn’t bothered to ask. And she didn’t know if she could bear it if he didn’t believe her. Not tonight, at least, when the walls of her past were closing in around her.

So he didn’t ask, and she didn’t tell him.

Instead, Grace broke his stare, looking down at her feet, though she knew it was the coward’s way out.

“I’m getting chilled,” she said. “And I’m tired. I’m going back to bed.”

Her husband’s hands dropped from her arms. She resisted the urge to reach up and brush at the spots where he’d been touching her, even as cool air prickled the uncovered skin.

“Very well,” he said. Did he sound…resigned? She didn’t dare risk a glimpse at his face. “Goodnight, Grace.”

“Goodnight.”

She scurried back to her room, feeling very much like a mouse seeking solace in its little hidey hole. The covers on her bed had grown cold, and it took a long time for their protection to feel safe enough for Grace to fall back to sleep.

Even so, and even with her ears craned for any sound of movement, she did not hear her husband come back to bed before she dropped off into an exhausted slumber.