The Bride of the Unicorn. Kasey Michaels
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His brother’s riding crop, a birthday gift from Morgan, was curled on the coverlet on his bed.
The lopsided birdhouse Jeremy had hammered together at the age of six was displayed on the night table.
A pair of mittens knitted by their mother for his fifth birthday lay on a chest at the bottom of the bed.
And a Bible, opened to the Twenty-third Psalm, rested on the desk where Jeremy had written his farewell note to his father before riding away in the middle of the night to seek out the adventure he would never have found at The Acres.
Jeremy’s rooms were exactly as they had been before he went off to war, to join his brother, his idol, and eventually to die a terrible death in that brother’s arms.
“You say you have forgiven me, Father,” Morgan said softly, giving in, only momentarily, to the pain. “Yet this room is still here, still the same. How can you truly forgive if you refuse to forget?”
“Who’s there? Grisham? How many times must I tell you that I do not wish to be disturbed when I am in here? Is there no peace to be found anywhere in this world? No compassion?”
Morgan took another step into the room, to stand just at the edge of the carpet. “No, Father, as a matter of fact, I don’t believe either of those things does exist,” he said, espying the duke standing just beside the windows, his thin face eloquent with pain. “Just as there is no real forgiveness, no entirely selfless charity, and precious little understanding.”
He took two more steps, turning to peer into the smiling blue eyes of his brother, brilliantly captured in the painting that was done on his seventeenth birthday, then slanted a look full of meaning at his father. “There is, however, revenge. The Old Testament, I believe, is chock full of it. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth—and, in admittedly a rather backhanded, perverse way, a child for a child. Tell me, Father, are you at all interested in winning some revenge of your own?”
CHAPTER SIX
With how much ease believe we what we wish!
Whatever is, is in its causes just.
John Dryden
CAROLINE LOOKED DOWN at her fingertips and the skin that was still soft and puckered from her bath, the first she had ever taken in a tub. She lifted her wrists to her nose, sniffing at the delicate scent of rose hip soap, a smile coming to her face as she raised her shoulders and rubbed her cheek against the collar of the soft pink terry wrapper the maid, Betts, had provided her with after helping her dry herself with huge white towels that had been warmed beside the fireplace.
Beneath the wrapper was a miles-too-long white cotton nightgown, old and mended, but with touches of lace at the hem, high collar, and cuffs. It had been one of Lord Clayton’s mother’s nightgowns, Betts had told Caroline, long since passed on to the servants’ quarters and well worn. Caroline thought it to be the most beautiful nightgown in creation.
She had told Betts, smiling at the girl, who was no more than a few years older than she—and who appeared to be shocked speechless at the admission—that she had slept in her shift in the summer and in the same clothes she worked in during the colder months. Betts’s possible disapproval had kept Caroline silent about the fact that, during the hottest nights, tucked up under the eaves in her narrow cot, she had dared to sleep with no clothing covering her at all.
Clucking her tongue over the sad state of Caroline’s bitten nails, Betts had nevertheless taken care to rub a perfumed ointment of crushed strawberries and cream into her new mistress’s hands, vowing that it would soon heal the dry, chapped skin, then solemnly repeated these ministrations on Caroline’s roughened feet and heels, an embarrassing and somewhat ticklish process that had made Caroline giggle nervously.
Betts had also helped her to wash her hair, then exclaimed that it was three shades lighter than it had been before the determined scrubbing that brought tears to Caroline’s eyes. Now, hanging halfway down her back, each strand free of tangles, Caroline’s hair was only faintly damp, for Betts had brushed it dry as the two of them sat on the hearthrug, warmed by the fire.
Now, lying back against the pillows as she sat cross-legged in the middle of the large tester bed, Caroline placed a hand on her stomach, enjoying the unfamiliar feeling of fullness that lingered a full two hours after her meal, which had been served on a silver platter—nothing like the wooden trencher she had used at Woodwere or the chipped bowl that was dipped into the common gruel pot at the orphanage. She was so full, in fact, that she didn’t believe she could eat above two of the half-dozen soft, crusty rolls she had stuffed into her bodice while Betts’s back was turned and later hidden behind one of the cushions on the chair in the corner.
Betts, before she left, had put forth the hope that “Lady Caroline” would have a restful night, and she had watched proprietarily as a footman slipped a warming pan between the sheets. Once the door closed behind the maid, Caroline had investigated every drawer and cabinet in the room, lifted each exquisitely formed figurine, inspected every small decoratively carved wooden chest and dainty porcelain box, sniffed at the contents of the crystal bottles on the dressing table, then whirled around in a circle in the middle of the room, arms outflung, laughing aloud at her good fortune.
All in all, Caroline decided happily now, looking around the candlelit room, she truly must have died—and this was heaven.
She had just stifled an unexpected yawn and was about to slip her toes beneath the coverlet, reluctantly giving in to sleep, when the door to the hallway opened once more and Miss Twittingdon—dressed in her ridiculous blue and purple plaid woolen wrapper and pink knitted slippers—entered, to stand beaming at Caroline.
“I’ve just come to check on my charge, my lady Dulcinea,” she said, approaching the bed. “I do hope you’ve been treated in accordance with your exalted rank. Otherwise there is nothing else for it but to sack the servants. Every last lazy one of them. Although I must say they have been extremely cooperative thus far, even going to the trouble to cut my meat for me when I found the chore beyond my strength.”
Caroline giggled and threw her entire upper body forward, pressing her forehead against the mattress, then rolled onto her back, her arms and legs spread wide as her sleek curtain of hair splayed out on the coverlet. She began sliding her limbs back and forth across the coverlet, in much the same way she could remember making angels in the snow at the orphanage when she was a child.
Then, looking up at Miss Twittingdon, her green eyes twinkling with mischief, she exclaimed, “Aunt Leticia! Can you believe this? Can you honestly believe any of this? Look at me! I’m reaching as far as I can in every direction, and still I’m miles and miles from the edge. We could fit six other people in this bed. Maybe eight!”
“My lady! To think such a thing! You are virginal,” Miss Twittingdon pointed out.
“Oh, pooh!” Caroline exclaimed, deliberately teasing the old woman with her own saying. She scrambled from the bed, not even noticing that her bare feet might be chilled by the cold floor, and began racing around the room. A generous amount of the material of her overlong nightdress bunched in one hand so that she wouldn’t trip, she pointed out one treasure after another to Miss Twittingdon until she happened to catch sight of herself in the tall freestanding mirror placed in front of one of the curtained windows. She released her grip on the material and stood rigidly still, looking at the stranger who grinned back at her. “Oh, my!”
Her smile slowly faded as she approached the mirror, one hand to her cheek as the other pressed against the cool glass, to confirm the evidence of her eyes. “Is this me, Aunt Leticia? Is this really me?”
“Of course it is you, my lady,” Miss Twittingdon stated firmly, if only slightly deferentially. “Surely you have seen yourself before this. You look as you have always looked every day of our acquaintance. Beautiful. Sweetly, heartbreakingly beautiful. However, you are barefoot, which I cannot approve, any more than I can like the notion of you remaining under this bachelor roof. I would be shirking my responsibility as your chaperon if I did not admit that. Have you had any of the apricot