Birdie and the Beastly Duke by Sofi Laporte

Chapter 14

Gabriel helped Higgins set up a table in the drawing room. He’d dine with Birdie there in the evening. By George, the thought of spending an entire evening alone with her made him nervous. What had got into him, agreeing to this supper? Yet her eyes had lit up, pleased, so he must’ve done the right thing.

He raked his hand through his hair.

The drawing room would do. It had panelled walls of cedarwood, dark green curtains, and heavy carpets. It was the most comfortable room in the castle. The large hall below was too cold and draughty, and the dining room was uninhabitable. The brigade of women who’d invaded the castle the other day had scrubbed the dining room to the best of their abilities, but the room merely had a rickety table, and chairs were missing altogether. He suspected that they’d been used as firewood at one point, since he once saw the leg of a chair in the fireplace. Who the deuce burned furniture, and why?

Birdie was right. He’d not bothered to get involved in the place. He’d kept himself safely locked in his tower room and neither knew nor cared about what happened around him. His conscience nagged at him.

He’d never asked for this title, this position, this responsibility.

When the lawyers had descended on him in his abode in London, he hadn’t been pleased. He’d even tried to decline the title, but that hadn’t been possible.

“You’re the last remaining issue of the late Duke of Dunross,” they’d insisted. He would become duke, whether he wanted to or not. Then Higgins found him in a tavern, roaring drunk, and dragged him home, scolding him the entire way.

Thanks to Higgins, he hadn’t touched alcohol since then. It was ironic, given that whisky was apparently what kept the old man alive.

When the town got wind that there was a new duke amongst their midst, invitations came flooding in: balls, concerts, and breakfasts. They’d hounded him. So, he’d fled to Scotland. It had worked well. He’d not received a single letter here. The only letter he’d found was the one in his military uniform. Crumpled, wet and muddy. “It would please me to see you married, son,” his father had written. He had already been dead by the time Gabriel had received the letter.

So, he’d married Miss Burns. Somewhat late, but he’d married her. He’d always told himself it was because it had been his father’s last request of him.

Gabriel had never really considered himself to be the marrying kind. He had intended to remain a bachelor and to spend his life serving in the army, dying honourably on the battlefield.

Fate had decided something else for him.

Fate had wanted him to be a duke.

He now had a duchess as well, with whom he was supposed to converse tonight. If he were honest with himself, it terrified him.

After he helped Higgins move the table to the drawing room, he returned to his tower.

He immediately noticed something was wrong.

Narrowing his eyes suspiciously to two slits, he surveyed the room. Something looked different here. It also smelled odd.  Then it hit him. The moldy, dusty smell was gone. It smelled clean. Of lemon, beeswax and… was that lavender? His gaze fell on a bowl with pot-pourri on a side table next to his bed. His grey woollen blanket was gone, and in its stead, there was a thick mattress covered with a white, crisp linen sheet, a neatly folded blanket, and a fluffy down pillow. Where had this small oaken box come from? Where was his pile of clothes?

The fireplace, cleaned of ash, gleamed, and the grate was polished. A thick, quilted blanket covered his bed. Someone neatly stacked his books on a little table, which hadn’t been there before. Was that frilly thing a lampshade?

Someone had dusted, cleaned, and sorted the room in the one hour he’d left. He knew who it was, even if she was the one who’d merely given the order.

Lavender! In a soldier’s room!

Where was his pistol? His eyes flew to the windowsill. Someone had washed his brushes and neatly lined them up there; the tin cans next to them were sorted according to colour.

His pistol was gone.

This, Gabriel decided, was beyond the pale.

It was simply and utterly intolerable.

Birdie had beenbusy the entire afternoon working in the library. With the help of the women, they’d taken every single book off the shelves and given it a good, thorough clean. To the shock of the maids, Birdie herself had tied an apron around her dress and had taken a rag in hand.

“These books are precious,” she’d told them. “Stack them all on the floor over here. I will dust them myself.” This is what she had been doing for the third day in a row. Her plan was to sort and catalogue them eventually, but for now, she wanted to put the library to order so it could serve as a schoolroom.

Birdie wiped the books down with the rag and stacked them into organised piles. There was quite a collection of Shakespeare and many books on history and geography. She pulled out a universal almanack from 1713, which, though outdated, might prove useful; Burns’ Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, which she pushed back into the shelf; a book on etiquette and ah—the greatest treasure of the library: a primer for little children, to teach them their ABCs.

“This, ladies and gentlemen, is worth more than Shakespeare,” declared Birdie from where she stood on top of the ladder, clutching the book happily in her hands. In the furthest corner of the shelf, she spied an original edition of Robinson Crusoe. “This one, too.” She could read it to the children. They would love it. She tucked the geography book and the almanack under one arm, and, poking her tongue out of the corner of her mouth, reached for the Crusoe. Just as her fingertips brushed the leather book spine, the door flew open.

“Birdie!” Gabriel roared.

The door crashed against the ladder, which wobbled dangerously. Birdie reached out to clutch it, but because she had the books tucked under her arm, they toppled down, and that simply couldn’t happen. They were too precious. Trying to catch them, her fingers groped the empty air; the ladder wobbled, wobbled some more, and she went down with a crash—right on top of Gabriel, who never saw her coming.

She felled him neatly with a swoop and caught the primer.

Her body crashed on top of his, crushing the air out of both their bodies. “Oof!”

He’d smacked his head on the floor with a crack and lay there, his eye closed.

Birdie gasped for breath. Why didn’t he move? “Oh, dear.” She prodded Gabriel in the arm with the book. “I hope I haven’t killed you,” she gasped. She leaned forward to look at his face. His black hair tumbled over his aquiline forehead. She studied his lips. His lower lip was fuller than his upper lip. His eye was closed, and the eyepatch had slipped a bit.

Dare she look at what was beneath it?

Her finger crept upward slowly and hovered next to the patch. Just as she was about to touch it, his other eye popped open.

Startled, she withdrew, but his hand whipped up and gripped hers in an iron grasp.

She noticed his hard masculine body against hers, that smell of leather and smoke. It bewildered her senses.

“I was just about to—check—whether you were still alive,” she babbled. She still lay on top of him, the primer in one hand, now pressed against his chest.

Gabriel was evidently not dead because he was breathing rather heavily. Birdie realised she was crushing the poor man. She’d have scrambled up, but his arms were clasped around her like iron bands.

She felt an odd stirring in the pit of her stomach.

“Can you please say something? You’re awfully quiet and there’s a glazed look in your eye,” she said breathlessly.

“I’m fine.” His voice was thick. He cleared his throat and loosened his grip.

“And your head?” She scrambled off him and backed away to put as much distance between them as possible. He sat up and shook his head.

“My head, ma’am, as previous wars have proven, is thicker than stone and impossible to crack.” He adjusted the eye-patch.

“I’m glad.” Birdie stared at him and clutched her primer, as if to ward him off. Something had happened that she couldn’t interpret. A sizzling. A spark. A tingle as if the blood in her veins had turned to champagne bubbles. Birdie cleared her throat. “What was it you wanted?”

Gabriel looked at her blankly. Then a look of thunder shadowed his face. “Oh. Yes. I wanted something. You had my room cleaned!”

Birdie picked up the books and held them in her arms. “It was about time. Three maids went in and came out with five buckets of pitch-black water. You should’ve seen it.”

Her husband folded his arms. “I thought I’d made myself clear: I don’t want anyone in my room.”

“Yes. I gave the orders that no one should disturb you. Which is why they cleaned after you left.”

“No. I mean that not a single living, breathing, soul should enter my room. Ever.” He jutted out his chin. “You touched and moved my possessions, and now some of my things have been moved or are missing. My pistol is gone.”

“How excel—I mean. I do not know what happened to your blasted pistol. I gave instructions to the maids to work carefully and quickly. I gave the order not to remove anything aside from dust, dirt and cobwebs.”

“But someone must’ve moved it!” Gabriel gave a frustrated huff.

To avoid his gaze, Birdie shuffled the books in her arms, rearranging them. “You probably did so yourself,” she said dismissively. “Sometimes we move things without thinking.”

He threw her an irritated look. “I forbid anyone, including you, to touch my pistol. And I want everything in my room to be returned to its original state. Every. Single. Thing.”

“Certainly. Your wishes shall be respected, Your Grace. Shall I instruct the maids to return each little speck of dust and grime? I’ll tell them to shake out their rags there.”

“Birdie.” He gave an exasperated laugh and felt the back of his head.

“Oh, dear. Do you have a bump on your head?”

“I’m fine.” Gabriel continued to rub his head.

Birdie lifted her hands to touch the back of his skull. His black curls were as soft as silk. This sizzling feeling pulsated through her. Again, there was an odd look on his face. She dropped her hands quickly.

“Look at the library, isn’t it a gorgeous room now that it’s clean?” she babbled. “It took four maids to carry the heavy carpet outside. Now we can see that it is Persian and quite valuable! I daresay this room is becoming my favourite by far. But look, how late it is! I need to get changed and ready for supper tonight. Do not forget. We dine at seven.” Birdie gave him a last smile and promptly left, with the books under her arms.

Gabriel exhaled a shaky breath.

What the deuce had just happened? And he wasn’t thinking of the library and the cleaning. Truth be told, he couldn’t care less now. He had more imminent, disturbing problems. His heart still hadn’t calmed down from the staccato it had hammered into his chest when Birdie had fallen on top of him. It was a sensation that he’d enjoyed rather more than he’d cared to admit. For one moment, he’d thought she was about to kiss him. Suddenly, there was nothing he wanted more. Zounds. When he’d opened his eye and gazed into her hazel ones, he almost kissed her.

Dash it. Why hadn’t he?

He felt uncomfortably hot and bothered by the entire episode and had completely forgotten what he’d wanted from Birdie.

His pistol. It was all about his pistol. Where the deuce was it?

He took a step back and stumbled over a ghostly figure by the window, half-hidden by heavy brocade curtains. He uttered a muffled oath and grappled with it, only to discover it wasn’t human, but a construct of broom and linen sheets.

The devil! Did the entire house conspire to bring him down?

Just at that moment, Higgins entered.

“Higgins!” Gabriel bellowed. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Beg your pardon, Your Grace,” Higgins mumbled as he hobbled into the room. “It’s a ghost.”

“A ghost!”

“A ghost to scare the other ghost.”

“Higgins. You’re not making any sense.”

“Aye, Your Grace. The other ghost was sitting on the fence.” Higgins took the sheet and broom from Gabriel and set it up again. “Outside.”

Gabriel shook his head. Had the old man lost his mind entirely?

“It’s my own idea,” the man boasted. “The best way to fight ghosts is with ghosts, especially if they aren’t actual ghosts.”

Gabriel pressed his fingers against his temples and massaged them. “Higgins.”

“Oh, Your Grace. What to do with the painting?” Higgins pointed at the fireplace. Gabriel looked up. Only now he saw that above the mantle was a gaping space where the old duke’s portrait had hung. “Her Grace insisted on taking it down.”

The painting lay on the floor so that the old duke’s haggard visage grimaced at the ceiling. Gabriel looked down at him. He hadn’t noticed it there and would’ve stepped right on his face had Higgins not stopped him. He’d never known the man who’d left him with this inheritance. But he knew he had been a bad sort of man, grossly neglecting his estate and people. Not that he was much better, his conscience whispered. Had he ever bothered to inquire into the state of his estate? The tenants and their welfare? He tugged at his collar. And blast it, why was he still so infernally hot?

“What do you suggest doing with it, Higgins?” He looked down at the portrait cluelessly.

“What I’d do with it?” Higgins titled his head sideways.

“Yes.”

“I’d burn it,” Higgins muttered. “The man deserved no better.”

For a moment, Gabriel was speechless. “And yet you served the man loyally for what? Twenty years?”

“Twenty-three years, five months, six days and three hours. Then he kicked the bucket.” Higgins bared his yellowed teeth in something that was supposed to be a grin. Then he pulled himself up proudly. “We Higginses have always served the Dukes of Dunross.”

“So you said.” Shame, really, that this Higgins was the last of his kind. Gabriel contemplated for a moment, then said, “Well, Higgins. Do what you must. If Her Grace doesn’t want to see the man’s visage, then so be it. Burn it.”

Higgins’ face lit up with delight. “Aye, Your Grace.” He turned to leave.

“Oh, and Higgins,” Gabriel called after him. “I hope you don’t burn my painting when you outlive me. If they ever make one of me.”

Higgins’ laughter cackled through the corridors as Gabriel returned to his room to ponder on the impact this afternoon had on his sanity.

Gabriel strodeup and down in front of the window, hands clasped behind his back, and wondered where Birdie could be. She hadn’t forgotten, had she?

Tugging at his cravat, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d dressed up like this. He was conscious that the clothing was not the newest fashion. Dash it, he didn’t even know what the newest fashion was. Weren’t these lacy cuffs something that his grandfather had worn in his time? The lace hung over his wrists, and he shook it away impatiently. A man couldn’t pick up anything without the bothersome lace in the way. He was a military man. He preferred simple, clean-cut, no-nonsense clothes.

He paced. He’d been half as nervous before his wedding. Dash it all. Get a grip on yourself, Gabriel. It’s just supper.

Footsteps sounded at the entrance. He jumped.

She was here.

Birdie was dressed in a dark blue gown and scarf that brought the colour out of her eyes. Her hair was parted in the middle and done up, some strands teased out to frame her face, and the candlelight highlighted the auburn colour of her hair.

He gaped at her. What had she said? That she didn’t have the looks? He almost snorted. Then he remembered his manners. “Good evening,” he said politely. He pulled out a chair and gestured for her to approach.

Birdie sat. “This is very fine. I see Higgins has lit the candles. And oh! The flowers!” She jumped up again, went over to the window and smelled the flowers in the vase. They were the same purple flowers he’d picked for her the other day. No other flowers were growing in this place. It relieved him that she seemed to like them.

Higgins came stumbling into the room, nearly dropping the soup tureen. Luckily, Gabriel reacted quickly and caught it before it fell out of his hands. “Thank you, Higgins. We can serve ourselves.”

“It’s mock turtle soup,” Higgins explained. “And I shall serve, Your Grace.” It was as though he’d remembered his role, and even though his hands shook, he ladled soup into their bowls without spilling.

Then he bowed and left the room.

“Higgins certainly is an institution on his own.” Gabriel looked at his retreating figure, shaking his head. “I offered him retirement with sufficient funds. He could live in his own place, comfortably. But he refused. Said it was a tradition for the Higgins butlers to serve the Dukes of Dunross until their very last day.” He frowned. “He said it would be a shameful legacy for him to retire before that.”

Humour sparkled in Birdie’s eyes. “Higgins will outlast us all. He’ll still be around when this place is a mere ruin,” she said.

Supper was excellent. Cook had made them fowl, with a variety of side dishes and dessert. Gabe supposed it tasted good, but it was all lost on him. Birdie was encompassing his entire attention.

When Higgins served syllabub in dainty glasses, Birdie spooned it with relish, but Gabriel pushed his glass away.

“If you’re not eating that, I will,” Birdie said and reached for it.

His wife certainly knew how to enjoy food.

His wife.It was the first time he had thought of her as his wife, and he discovered he liked it. He was surprised with what ease they conversed. Her face was animated when she talked, and she had a tic of pushing her spectacles up the nose even though there was no need for it. It was more habit than anything else. Around her neck, on a chain dangled a ring. The wedding ring that had been too big for her.

Toying with the spoon in his coffee cup, Gabriel realised with a jolt how much he liked her. She had a fine sense of humour, a strong sense for the practical, and a kind, warm heart. She was talking now about her old school, Miss Hilversham’s Seminary for Young Ladies, and the pranks she and her friends had played there.

“How odd. My friend Arabella wished that night that each of us marry dukes. Three of us did. Don’t you think that is a strange sort of coincidence? Or do you think the wishing well had true powers and made it happen?”

“I don’t believe in the supernatural,” he heard himself say. “Though there is so much more out there in this world than we can understand.”

“Oh! Speaking of supernatural.” She leaned forward, an impish glint in her hazel eyes. “Did you know that Dunross Castle is haunted?”

“Hm. Yes. They say a morose, disfigured man haunts the tower room.” He smiled wryly.

“You should never talk of yourself in those terms,” Birdie scolded. “You are scarred, but not disfigured.”

“I beg to disagree.”

“Well, I must say, that eyepatch of yours is rather frightful, and makes you look so much more terrifying than you are.” She studied his face so intently that he had to keep himself from squirming in the chair. “But what I meant was a ghost on the battlement.”

“The battlement?” he echoed.

“Yes. I found it very odd because it appeared to be of the same kind that I and my friends used to create when back at school. A makeshift sheet with holes.”

He frowned. “Higgins keeps babbling about ghosts. He even set one up in the library.”

She uttered a low laugh. “I know. Higgins thinks it will scare the other ghost away.”

“Are you saying that someone purposefully attempted to frighten you?”

“It appears so. But to what purpose? And why?” Birdie leaned on her hand. “Maybe we have it all wrong and that the ghost serves a different purpose entirely.” She frowned. “Because the fake ghost isn’t walking every night, but only on some. I am keeping track of it, you see. It may be a sign, or similar. A flag, maybe.”

“What kind of sign do you mean?”

“If only I knew! It is a secret I am determined to discover. Even if it turns out to be a mere child’s prank.” She hesitated before adding, “Did it ever occur to you that the people in the village have no great love for us—particularly for you?”

He sighed. “It has never bothered me since we never see each other. But yes. The old duke did not treat them well. His steward died under mysterious circumstances.”

“And you never installed a new steward.”

He toyed with his cup. “No. McAloy, the reverend, tells me he handles things for me. He is respected in the village.”

“It might be a good idea to have a proper steward,” Birdie replied, and her chin jutted forward stubbornly.

“I am sure you have someone in mind.” He leaned back in his chair.

Her lips pressed down as if to repress a smile. Gabriel thought again of this afternoon, and of how close he got to kiss those lips.

“I might.” Birdie smiled at him, and his heart jumped. “This was a lovely dinner,” she added.

“Yes,” he said lamely, “it was nice.”

Birdie excused herself and left the room, and he exhaled. He hadn’t noticed he’d been holding his breath.

Quite ridiculously, he was already looking forward to spending another evening with her.