She stepped forward. “We are to huddle?”
“My coat will dry I hope, and then we can use it for warmth. In the meantime, you… well…” Kit tried to think of the right way of putting it.
“The time for formality might have slipped away from us.”
When he looked up, he was surprised to see that Elsie looked as if she was trying not to laugh. It was then that he thought, whilst she might be one of the prettiest girls he’d seen in many a long year. She had the loveliest and smallest feet imaginable. Yet she might also be one of the strangest people he had ever encountered, which was something given Kit lived in what was widely agreed upon to be a haunted house.
CHAPTER 7
Elsie had never found herself in a cave before. It wasn’t a location she would ever wish to return to, with very little space to move between the three of them. Thankfully, Lancelot had curled up in the corner furthest from the ledge and was watching the sky with great interest through the mouth of the cave.
As for the new duke, he was watching her with a curious expression, one which she found impossible to read and make head or tail of. Perhaps he thought wrongly that she was attempting to compromise or entrap him. Elsie had heard men with titles often felt that way. She fervently hoped he did not believe her capable of that.
However, she was acutely self-conscious of her own bedraggled state, her ripped dress with the chemise askew now blatantly visible, and its white material wetly clinging to her legs. Protectively, she raised her hands and folded them in front of her. She supposed she could be grateful that the duke—that Kit had moved away to look down into the cove, seeming to consider how trapped they really were.
Edging nearer to him, Elsie asked, “Has the tide slowed at all?”
“Seems to have done.” He looked grim and cold now he had removed his coat. “As it starts to lower?—”
“What strikes me as most odd is how the cottage is still… well it is not under water.” Elsie had moved to the edge of the cave and was looking out into the cove.
Kit abruptly moved back into the cave. “Come away from the edge.”
Elsie let him go, and continued to stare out at the cottage, lifted out of the waves on its little rock jetty, a safe barrier around the building of a good twenty feet. Perhaps they should have risked swimming towards that, it would have been preferable to climbing up the cliff front.
When she looked back, Kit had lowered himself to the ground, stretching out his long legs and placing his back against the wall. He looked cold and tired, and yet somehow more engaging and approachable than ever before.
With a tentative step nearer, Elsie asked. “Will you tell me why we didn’t just go to the cottage, surely it would have been easier to swim there?”
“There is always a question with you, isn’t there?”
“Perhaps if you could answer one or two of them, I might stop asking them.” Elsie was surprised at the forcefulness of her reply, but to her even greater astonishment Kit sighed and nodded.
“It’s an old wives’ tale, one my mother told me, that the cottage is cursed. That in short it isn’t safe. I didn’t want to risk—either of us trying to venture out to it.”
“Do you always believe superstitions?”
“In this part of this place, it often seems the wisest course of action. It has cost me, denying such things.” Even in the dim interior of the cave, Elsie could see the glimmer of a smile forming around his lips as if Kit understood the irony and perhaps even humour of what he’d just said. It made his dark features brighter, casting an almost appealing look to his demeanour. “You must know the story of Tintagel?”
“The story of the knights of the round table? Or Arthur and Guinevere? Yes, of course, why do you think I named the dog Lancelot?”
“That’s part of it—but that’s not the story of Tintagel.” There was a sad intensity to Kit’s face as if the mythic legend might somehow have some impact on him personally.
“What’s Tintagel’s real story then?” Elsie asked.
“It’s where Arthur was conceived and born,” he said, looking away from her as he spoke of such delicate things. “But he was only brought into existence by a trick. Merlin bewitched Arthur’s father to look like Igraine’s real husband, so he stole into her bed in the night and forced himself?—”
“I understand,” Elsie said. That part of the story had been skipped over in her readings. It painted Arthur’s father as far more of a villain than most might want to consider.
A wry look of sympathy twisted the duke’s face, and Elsie had to mentally shake her head and tried her best to dismiss the idea that the duke might ever be classed as attractive.
“I think it gives the area an unpleasantly debauched aura. Which certainly fits my family’s reputation,” he continued, “when you look at what my own father is reported to have done in his youth, not to mention all my uncles. Their actions rather place them alongside Arthur’s father.”
“Do you think that all Ashmores are so cursed?” It was not that Elsie believed in curses, but Margot was an Ashmore, and if there was any hint of truth to it, Elsie should know, so she could defend her sister.
“Being related to the Ashmore name is rarely found to be a good thing.”
Taking a step nearer to him, Elsie sank down next to His Grace. “I’m afraid I am quite ignorant of your family’s history.”
