Chapter 18

Chapter Eighteen

The fire from the fireplace doused the room with a golden glow as Grace blinked awake. Was it nighttime? She yawned and stretched, her body humming with warmth and pleasant exhaustion. Why was she still in bed? She sat up, only to realize she was perfectly naked, and then the delicious scenes from the past hours materialized in her mind and she dropped back against the pillows.

Heaven on earth. A husband loving his wife certainly exceeded anything Grace could have imagined. Gentle, passionate—all the mystery from Lillias's subtle comments and fiction's strategic wording finally emerged in this glorious act of…love.

She tugged the blankets up to her growing smile. What a remarkable design! A divine combination of tender, exhilarating, and wonderfully roguish. She turned on her side toward Frederick's pillow and her smile dissolved. Her swoon-inducing husband was woefully absent. She twisted the blanket up around her as she sat, scanning the room and nibbling her bottom lip.

Her father had always accused her of being overly exuberant. Perhaps she'd gotten too carried away for a proper lady, but Frederick hadn't seemed to mind at all. Although, there was the moment she'd acciden-tally hit him across the face, but surely he couldn't hold her accountable for that.

It was his own fault after all. Her grin slipped wide. His own villainous fault.

Heat soared into her cheeks, and she released a sigh. Perhaps she should go in search of him to apologize? She looked up at the ceiling, reasoning it out. The thought didn't feel right at all.

A click at the door alerted her to someone's approach. She tugged the blankets closer and peered around the bed curtain. With quiet steps, Frederick entered the room, tray in hand, looking deliciously disheveled in his breeches and partially buttoned shirt. He placed the tray of tea and sandwiches on a nearby table and stoked the fire, his bare forearms glinting gold in the firelight.

Her body warmed from the sight as if she hadn't seen a set of forearms before, but they were his forearms. And that made all the difference. She traced a finger over her grin. Perhaps she was rather villainous too. She held her breath, waiting to gauge his reaction to her. If he frowned, she'd apologize profusely for her own villainy, but if he smiled…

His gaze found hers, surprise softening to a smile. A smile. "Hello, darling."

She sighed as the sound of his voice left a trail of tingles across her shoulders. "I'm so relieved you came back."

A laugh shot from him. "Of course I came back. Why on earth would I stay away?"

She smoothed the blankets around her, heat rising into her cheeks. "Well, I thought perhaps I'd either failed to please you, which seemed unlikely from your vigorous response, or you were horrified by my…enthusiasm."

He chuckled and approached the bed. A look she was beginning to recognize as quite rascally flamed to life in his eyes. "If you continue to make such a valiant effort to please me, Lady Astley, we may never leave this bedroom."

"Do you mean you weren't offended by my fervor?"

"Offended?" He sat on the bed and leaned in to kiss her, so gently her body swelled forward to extend the delightful embrace. "If half the women in England showed love with such fervor, there would be a sudden increase of satisfied marriages."

She smoothed her palm over his shirt. "I have no point of reference, so I'm experimenting as we go."

"Then count me as a willing subject." He brushed a hand against her cheek, his thumb tracing the edge of her lips. "Experiment away." He kissed her nose, her lips, then her chin. "Despite my past, dear Grace, I am quite a novice at loving. And you, my darling, love very well."

A shadow passed over his expression. Hints of his past, thoughts of other women came to mind. She shoved them away. He'd never been married except to her, and in this one act, they'd chosen each other. "It's a rather fabulous invention, isn't it?"

He drew back from kissing her temple, his brow raised. "Invention?"

"Yes." She placed both of her palms on his cheeks, tracing the curve of his jawline. "When God says two shall become one flesh, I never understood, but we're one. You and me. I—I belong to you, and you belong to me."

"I feel certain I'm in good hands." He brushed her hair back from her face. "And I will endeavor to be a much better husband than I've been the past few days."

"You are a fantastic teacher at lovemaking." She snuggled against his chest, resting a kiss against his neck. "I suppose you've had lots of practice."

With a groan, he collected one of her hands and breathed a kiss over her knuckles. "Many of my mother's accusations are true. I was a broken man, trying to fill my brokenness with companionship but never belonging." He looked down at their braided hands, emotion wrestling across his angled features. "I've had a great deal of practice at physically pleasing another and being pleased in return, but not loving. Nothing like this. And there's no going back to anything else for me."

"I'm very glad to hear it, because I want your future, Frederick. All of it."

"You are too good for my heart, Lady Astley." Those fathomless eyes, dark and deep enough to send her off-balance, searched her face with an intensity she didn't understand—pleading, apologizing, exploring. "I'm not that man from my past anymore." An unfamiliar vulnerability trembled in his baritone voice, awakening an awareness of the power she had at this moment—to either build him up to become the man he was meant to be or hold him back. "My future is yours. Alone."

Grace had once read a quote about a husband and wife that mentioned something about "promises forged in love from the soul outward." At the time, she'd thought it sounded lovely, but the quote held a new, sweeter meaning after her newfound connection to her husband. What a tender and exhilarating way to express love with one another! Grace nodded heavenward in appreciation.

Frederick had been wonderfully reluctant to leave her the next morning, but there was breakfast to be had and bathroom installments to be finalized, so he retired to his office. While Brandon sent Reeves in search of more garland, Grace began to form a Christmas gift list for the servants and took the opportunity to explore more of the maze-like house.

Leaving the library via a servants' stair, Grace found herself in an unfamiliar passageway, so quiet it left a chill across her skin. She pushed through a nearby door, ornately carved with Havensbrooke's theme—lions—thinking it would lead her to the south wing, but instead, she entered a magnificent sitting room she'd never seen before. Designed in pale blue and white, with an air of French accents, the room gave a strange sense of otherworldliness. She turned to look through the way she'd just come and discovered the "door" matched the wallpaper so well it blended into the wall almost seamlessly.

Servants really had the most interesting entrances.

A book lay open on a settee as if recently left there, but from the faint light fanning between the half-closed shutters, enough dust coated the furnishings to suggest no one had been in the room for a long time.

What was this place?

She stepped farther into the deserted room, her feet barely making a sound across the carpeted floors. The setting teased her senses awake, and her scalp began to tingle its customary warning of a mystery. Lanterns waited, unused. Candles stood on the tables.

A broad hallway led into shadows, with a league of portraits lining the walls. The gallery showcased a portrait in which Grace recognized two of the faces. Lady Moriah stood between two men, an older man with features similar to Frederick, and a younger man, pale eyes and dark hair, with features more like Lady Moriah. A younger version of Frederick stood nearby, almost separate from the other three, his lips quirked in a smile very unlike any she'd seen in him. Bitter.

She reached to touch the canvas and smooth away the foreign expression. What must have caused such a look? Loneliness? Rejection?

She paused her gaze in his painted one, attempting to unearth the secrets she'd only heard hints of, before she moved farther down the hallway. One room opened into another room, all waiting in the same eerie anticipated silence.

One elegant suite showcased a massive sitting room separating two bedrooms—one more masculine, the other feminine—with windows looking out over the walled garden that led up the hillside toward the vista.

East. She gasped. These must be the east-wing bedrooms. The place her mother-in-law had closed off when her elder son had died. Grace spun around to look behind her, as if someone watched. Somewhere within these walls, Edward Percy had breathed his last.

Another delightful chill shimmied up her spine.

She entered the sitting room with its rich reds and golds, the two oil portraits over the marble fireplace drawing her forward. One was of the brother Grace had seen in the previous family portrait, Edward, and the other was of an elegant, raven-haired beauty.

"Celia," Grace whispered into the stillness.

A rush of emerald gown wrapped around her, complementing the depth of her laughing green eyes. Everything about her pooled with elegance and refinement, from the sweep of her dark hair to the tilt of her chin. No wonder she had wooed the fates of the Percy men.

The more masculine bedroom boasted thick, box-like furnishings, but the most striking feature was the state of the room. A chair tipped back, lying topsy-turvy on the floor, as if someone left it in a hurry. Curtains were flung back instead of closed like the rest of the rooms. The bed waited, unmade, and the massive desk by the window stood littered with papers, with some sheets scattered across the floor.

Had this been where Edward died? Why wasn't the space tidied?

Grace stepped to the desk, her fingers ruffling the feathers of an old ink pen. A small box with gold trim and shaped like a pirate's treasure chest overcame Grace's self-control. With a careful twist of the clip holding the lid in place, Grace looked inside. Letters tied together with a ribbon. On the top, written in elegant hand was a simple phrase: "To my darling Elizabeth."

Elizabeth. Grace plundered her thoughts for a face in the Percy family to match the name. Wasn't Elizabeth the name of Frederick's grandmother? Grace shifted another piece of paper loose enough to make out the name on the next letter. "My Oliver."

Those were Frederick's grandparents. The letters were theirs. She grinned and tucked the box back into its spot. Perhaps she could convince Frederick to allow her to read them. What a beautiful introduction to two of the people he loved most in the world.

As she placed the box back in its spot, her hip hit the desk. A few of the precarious papers on the edge fluttered to the carpeted floor, and the middle desk drawer shook open. Grace rushed to set the papers right— an odd assortment of bills, ledger sheets, and personal correspondence, it seemed—but then Frederick's name among the words of one of the pages inside the drawer caught her attention.

I am now inclined to believe Frederick had no hand in the events that led to his exile.

Grace took up the paper, stepping toward the window to get a better view of the words.

I have ruined my life and his with my quick judgment, instead of remembering he has loved this land with more commitment than either me or Father. Parks, do you see how my hand is shaking even now? I can barely breathe. How can I make amends for the sins which weigh me down? Even now my heart quakes from the ghost who haunts me.

A shiver tiptoed up Grace's spine, and she scanned the room, looking for proof.

I am caught with no escape. I cannot seek justice for my wife's treachery without incriminating myself. I am ill, Parks. A sudden fatigue has befallen me—whether from the pains of my own remorse or a viler deviance, I am uncertain. I've ruined it all. God have mercy. I cannot trust her. I've stripped her of everything in hopes of finding some redemption for Havensbrooke.

Send for Frederick. May he…

The handwriting quaked to such an extent the words became illegi-ble, scratching off the page.

Grace scanned through the loose papers for more of the letter, but nothing matched. How long ago had it been written? Hadn't Frederick mentioned something about his mother forbidding access to these rooms soon after Edward's death?

Grace's attention shot back to the letter in her hand. She'd read about letters scratching off before being completed, usually because the person was dying of some sort of poison or weakness. But hadn't Frederick said his brother had died from a weak heart?

Grace's gaze slipped up to catch a glimpse of Celia's portrait over the mantel in the adjoining room. Her eyes took on a decidedly darker glint, her smile mocking.

Grace swallowed through her dry throat and tucked the page into one of the books in her hand. Something felt unfinished here. Her lips tipped into a responding smile. She may not be fully equipped for a fashion debut, but solving a mystery? She'd been training for this her whole life.

The game was afoot.