Page 30 of The Hidden Heart

“No, don’t leave,” Lady Westhampton protested. “We haven’t even had our tea yet. Tell her to stay, Richard.”

“Yes. Of course you must stay, Miss Maitland. We shall all have tea.” Cleybourne seemed almost jovial. He turned and held his hand out toward Gabriela, motioning for her to step forward. “Rachel, you must allow me to present Gabriela Carstairs to you. She is Roddy Carstairs’ daughter. Do you remember her?”

“Yes, of course. Miss Maitland was just telling me about you, Gabriela.” Rachel smiled warmly. “It is nice to meet you.”

“Pleased to meet you, my lady,” Gabriela responded, giving her an excellent curtsy.

“You look very much like your mother,” Rachel went on. “But there is something of Roddy Carstairs about your eyes.”

“That is just what the duke said,” Gabriela rejoined happily.

“Come, sit down and let us have tea.” Rachel began the ritual of pouring tea for all of them. “I hope you are enjoying it here at the castle, Gabriela. It can be a trifle medieval, I’ve found.”

“You wrong it, Rachel. It is a cozy enough place,” Cleybourne said.

Rachel laughed. “Yes, if you find a great pile of stones cozy.”

“It reminds me of a castle in a book I once read,” Gabriela piped up. “Except that one was in France, and there was a wicked count who lived there.”

“It is precisely the sort of place where one would expect to find a wicked count,” Lady Westhampton agreed with a twinkle in her eye. “And perhaps a ghost or two.”

“Oh, yes. And dungeons. There are dungeons here. Baxter showed them to us.”

“Cellars,” Cleybourne said firmly, but there was a smile lurking about his mouth. “They are merely cellars. A few times there may have been some prisoners kept there, but they were not dungeons.”

He glanced over at Jessica, who was watching him. Jessica… Knowing her name now, he found himself wanting to say it. Her eyes were clear blue and steady as she gazed at him, and there was something about them that always made him feel as if she could look right through him. Richard suddenly remembered the dream he had had the other night and the way those eyes had looked, gazing up at him in the heat of passion. He flushed and turned away quickly. “I…I am most surprised to see you here, Rachel. I had thought you were going back to Westhampton for Christmas.”

Rachel blinked at the abrupt change of subject. “Why, yes, I am. But, as you know, I stopped first at Dev’s to see him and Miranda. That is where I received your note telling me of your intention of coming to Castle Cleybourne. So I thought it was a perfect opportunity for me to drop by on my way to Westhampton and see if I could persuade you to come have Christmas with Michael and me.”

“It seems a long way round to go from Derbyshire to the Lake District by way of Yorkshire,” Cleybourne commented dryly, smiling a little to take the sting out of the words.

“Well, you know me. Michael says I have no sense of direction,” Rachel responded lightly.

“It is very kind of you to offer. However, I am afraid that I must decline.”

“Yes, I see now that you have guests. Or, rather, new residents, I should say. And of course it is important for Gabriela to have Christmas at her new home.”

Jessica wondered if he would tell Lady Westhampton that he did not intend to keep Gabriela. It was a perfect opening for it. She watched with heightened interest as the duke nodded then glanced away without saying anything. Jessica felt her heart lifting in her chest. Did he mean not to ask Lady Westhampton to take Gabriela, after all? Seeing him coming in the door with Gabriela had given her hope. Had he actually walked with her in the garden? Surely that meant he had softened toward the girl.

“Uh, yes.” Richard shifted a little uncomfortably in his seat. He had spent most of the morning writing and rewriting a letter to Rachel asking if she and Michael would take over guardianship of Gabriela. It had been difficult to find the right words to explain why he could not take the child. Now he found that it was equally difficult to explain the matter in person.

Of course he could not say anything about it with Gabriela herself in the room. He would wait until later, and perhaps then the words would come more easily to him.

They finished their tea, engaging in the social small talk that one generally had among a group of relative strangers, discussing Lady Westhampton’s trip from Derbyshire and the conditions of the road and whether the cold, gray winter skies would produce snow any time soon. Cleybourne inquired after Rachel’s brother and his new wife, and Rachel smilingly revealed that Miranda, Lady Ravenscar, was expecting a great event in the spring.

“So of course she could not travel. Otherwise, I would have tried to get them to come with me to Westhampton for Christmas, too,” Rachel explained. “But, then, I don’t think they would have. It is their first Christmas together at Darkwater.”

“Darkwater!” Gabriela exclaimed. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. It is just—that is such a gloomy name. Is it foreboding as well?”

“You mean like Castle Cleybourne?” Rachel teased. “No, it isn’t at all gloomy. The name comes from a tarn nearby, where the water looks black as night. But the house itself is a light, warm stone, and quite welcoming and beautiful. I grew up there, and I love it dearly. However,” she added with a smile, “it does have a curse upon it.”

“Really?” Gabriela looked entranced.

“Oh, yes. Really.”

“What sort of curse?” Jessica asked, almost as intrigued as her pupil.

“Oh, a family sort of thing. It happened during the Dissolution of the Abbeys under King Henry VIII. A nearby abbey was torn down and the lands given to our ancestor, the Earl of Ravenscar, to repay him for his loyalty to the king. It was said that the abbot had to be dragged out of the place, and he put a curse on it, saying that no one of our family, no one who lived ‘within the walls of these stones’ would ever know happiness.”