Gerard cursed the beekeeper,cursed his household of witches, cursed whatever malady caused him to topple from a damned bee sting. By the time he dragged himself back to the castle, the yard had filled with anxious women waiting to coddle him.
“Begone, the lot of you,” he shouted, like some curmudgeon from a ha’penny novel.
He was trained in courtesy. He never talked to anyone like that, much less his poor relations.
The beekeeper was nowhere to be seen. Neither was the dog or his agent. His Great-Aunt Winifred, garbed in unfashionable full crinoline and a widow’s black, gestured for the others to depart. “Have the tea and poultices carried to his lordship’s chambers.”
“I don’t want any damned blasted tea and poultices. I’m not an octogenarian.” He stalked toward the privacy of his tower keep.
“Then suffer through the night,” his aunt said without sympathy. “I can see you are breathing. We can hope you won’t strangle in your sleep.”
“I’m not an invalid. Tell Avery I want to see him.” He didn’t break stride.
“I’m not your housekeeper,” she called after him.
“I was under no illusion that you were,” he shouted back. “I thought you wanted to help. Sending for Avery is how you can do it.”Not by hovering, he muttered to himself.
She probably sniffed in disapproval, but he was too far away to hear.
Coming to Wystan was almost always a disaster. His estate was self-sufficient, but it was one of his many duties to oversee it. Theoretically, he supplemented his meager allowance with the profits, but the income was less each year, and he’d found no miracles to change that. Riches simply couldn’t be had from rocky fells and dales.
Soon, he’d have to become a lawyer just to buy clothes—except he’d have to work at night when his duties to his father’s extensive business and political affairs didn’t interfere.
In his suite, Gerard drank the nasty tea they sent. Despite his protest, he slapped the unwanted poultice on his swollen wounds, then picked at his dinner. He opened and closed the fingers the beekeeper had touched, fighting the notion that he’d almost felt her fear. His gift was for objects, not people. The last thing he needed in his life waspeopleinvading his head. He dismissed the thought as part of the pain he’d suffered.
He wasn’t normally an early to bed, early to rise sort of person, but what the hell was there to do in the country once the sun set?
He could study the stars through the old-fashioned telescope in the observatory, but he had little interest in places he couldn’t reach. He stored his other live artifacts up there though. He’d introduce the new one to them, see what happened. Did spirits talk to each other? They’d never done so to his knowledge.
He tried to recall the beekeeper’s face, but his eyes had been watering and nearly swollen shut and the memory was a blur. He was pretty certain she had been talking to the bees, though. And judging by the swarm that had followed her, they were listening.
Very little a Malcolm did could surprise him. More often, the know-it-alls irritated him. He made a mental note not to marry a Malcolm.
His question to Rainford about what to look for in a wife now haunted him.Wealthyandnot a Malcolmdidn’t encompass it all, but it certainly eliminated everyone here.
The topmost floor of the tower had been renovated with real windows for his great-great-grandfather, who had studied astronomy over a century ago. It was almost a museum of Ives’ hobbies. Gerard had boxed up a fair number of them to clear a table for his own collection.
He set the Roman medallion next to a crude replica of a horse carved from limestone. He’d kept the horse because it contained the memories of its previous owner riding free and bareback across green hills and through thick forests. There hadn’t been forests like that in England in centuries.
He picked up the small silver toothpick, but the old Georgian philosopher who’d once used it had nothing to say tonight. He set it on the other side of the medallion.
“Talk to each other,” he said dryly. “Let me know if I deserve to find treasure. Otherwise I may marry and give you over to the housekeepers, who will box you up and store you in the dungeon.”
Was that a ghostlyhmpfhe heard? He sat down to make notes in his journal, but his thoughts kept returning to the beekeeper, especially the part where she ran her hands over him. She had a lady’s tender skin, not a farm worker’s, but then, she was a Malcolm. They generally came from aristocratic families.
The bell he’d installed at the back exit rang. It allowed the few men on the estate to reach him without going through a protective cordon of females.
After finishing the meat pie the kitchen had sent up with the tea, Gerard clambered down the stairs to his ground floor office. If he was inclined to stay here for any length of time, he would hire a manservant to handle this sort of thing.
Having no servants in the tower encouraged him to move on before winter.
Avery waited outside. An educated man of good family, Avery had the thick shoulders and torso of a bull. The middle-aged estate agent dressed better than Gerard in rich tweeds and tailored doeskin. But then, the old bachelor lived on the estate and didn’t have anyone or anything eating up his pay.
Gerard gestured at the usual chair in his office and took his oak one behind the desk. “That was prompt. I didn’t mean to convey urgency.”
The steward propped his wool cap on his knee. “The ladies work themselves into a lather elsewise.”
Gerard acknowledged the truth of that. “Am I wrong in thinking they object to your dog?”
