Beyond the Grave Page 26

  "Because you are. Ride with me."

  "I, er, very well, but I need to change. The redecorating… She's right, and I don't really have an eye for it. I wouldn't know where to begin or even where to shop. My mother had pieces of furniture handed down from her mother, and I think the rest were items my father bought when they married." I shrugged. "She never instructed me in decorating rooms, and even if she had, it wouldn't have been on Lichfield's scale."

  "You'll manage," he tossed over his shoulder as he tightened a saddle strap.

  I sighed. "I don't want to manage, I want to excel. I want to out-decorate the dowager Lady Harcourt." There. I said it. Now I sounded spiteful.

  Seth hauled the side saddle down from the beam and carried it past us. "There's quite a simple solution, you know."

  "Don't tell me," I said, "you consider yourself a master decorator."

  He laughed. "No, but I know who has the best, most sophisticated taste in all the world."

  "Really? Can you introduce me?"

  He pouted at Lincoln. "No, because you're not allowing me to come to France with you."

  "Your friend is in Paris?"

  "He is. He lived here for a while then returned home when he grew bored. His name is Monsieur Fernesse, and he produces some of the finest pieces in all of Europe. His furniture and fittings are highly sought after. I'm sure he'll guide you in all things tasteful and sophisticated."

  "Write Charlie a letter of introduction before we go," Lincoln said, taking the saddle from Seth.

  "Certainly." His cheeks grew rosy. "A word of warning—do not believe everything Fernesse tells you about me."

  I grinned. "Oh? Is he prone to exaggeration?"

  Seth's cheeks glowed. "That's one way of putting it."

  I returned inside and changed into my riding habit. When I emerged from my room, Lincoln was waiting for me in the corridor. Something was wrong. He looked troubled.

  "What's is it?" I asked, searching his face for clues.

  "We won't be riding today."

  "Is Rosie ill?" I hoped there was nothing wrong with my sweet little mare.

  He shook his head then he leaned against the wall and scraped his hand through his hair. Was I mistaken, or did his hand shake?

  I grasped his forearms. "What is it?"

  "One of the straps on your saddle was cut. Not all the way through, but enough that it would have come apart during a ride. If you'd been riding fast, it would have slipped off and…"

  "My god. When you say cut, do you mean deliberately?"

  He nodded. "It was straight, not frayed, and clearly done by a blade."

  I slumped against the wall too. Someone had wanted me to have an accident, perhaps even kill me. I was the only one who used the side saddle. If Lincoln hadn't spotted it… I shuddered.

  It was his turn to grasp my forearms. His gaze searched mine. "It was a clumsy attempt, easily spotted. Its success depended upon a number of factors going against us. Whoever did it was either too foolish to have thought it through, too desperate, or in a hurry. It leads me to think it was merely opportunistic." He let me go to drag both hands through his hair and down his face.

  "If it was clumsy, then you ought to be calmer."

  "I am calm!" he growled.

  "You don't sound it."

  My lip wobbled and he took my face in his hands. "This might be the first of many attempts, Charlie. We must be vigilant."

  "You think they'll try again?"

  "They will and with more sophisticated methods next time. So I've decided. We're not going to France."

  "What! Why?"

  "All manner of dangerous things can happen between here and there."

  I held onto his wrists near my cheeks and drew his hands away. "All manner of dangerous things can happen here, too! The tampered saddle proves that. Lincoln, nobody knows that I'm going to France with you except Gus, Seth and Cook. I'll be quite safe there. When we return, we can investigate."

  He slumped back against the wall. "It's not as simple as that. I may not be able to keep my eye on you like I'd hope. Not on the journey over and back."

  "Why not?"

  "I…don't travel well by sea."

  "You get seasick?" I began to laugh but bit my tongue when he glared at me. "It seems I will have to nurse you on the crossing."

  "You won't be anywhere near me. You'll be locked in a cabin, alone, until we dock."

  I sighed. "You're going to be a fun traveling companion."

  He pushed off from the wall and strode down to his own rooms. Oh dear. I'd offended him. I ran after him and reached his door just as he began to close it. I wedged my body into the gap, stopping him from slamming the door.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "I wasn't mocking you. I'm just used to you being so capable all the time. Even when you're asleep you're alert."

  He grunted and moved deeper into the room. I followed.

  "Seasickness is not a weakness, Lincoln."

  "It makes me weak, therefore it's a weakness." He strode to the desk and gathered up some papers.

  I sighed. "So it's one single weakness. If you have any others, I'm yet to discover them."

  He shuffled the papers then shuffled them again. I almost interrupted, but his shuffling became more and more furious until he finally threw the pages on the desk, sending them skittering across the surface, crashing into the inkstand, and onto the floor.

  He spun round. "You are my weakness, Charlie."

  I balked; blinked.

  "That's not what I meant." He looked to the ceiling. "I'm not very good at…this. I always seem to say the wrong thing."

  "Would you like me to return later, when you've calmed down?" I said testily. I did not like him to think of me as his weakness, as something to be coddled and protected lest I bring him down too as I fell.

  "No! Christ." He blew out a breath then lifted his gaze to mine. I closed my fists and bit my tongue to stop myself throwing my arms around him and telling him it didn't matter, that he didn't have to say anything. I was not going to make this easy for him. "I wanted to tell you this on the ride, but now will have to do." He blew out another breath. "I've been thinking about what you said, that I must be prepared to risk losing you. I've thought of little else."

  My tongue began to hurt so I bit my cheek instead and nodded at him to go on.

  "I think you're wrong."

  "Pardon?" I blurted out.

  He gripped the chair back behind him. "There is risk to your safety no matter if you are with me or not, and with the ministry or not. Edgecombe proved that. He could have shot you or anyone in that room, accidentally or on purpose. And now the saddle…" He cleared his throat. "You and I are not…together…and yet there continues to be risks. So you see, we might as well be together as apart."

  It wasn't very eloquent, but he wasn't a man who was comfortable with expressing his emotions. "I like how you thought it through," I said with a small smile.

  His brows lifted. "And?"

  I stepped closer to him. "And I like that you are not going to shut me away in this house to keep me safe, despite the incident with the saddle."

  "I didn't say that."

  "I want to expose the person trying to hurt me, Lincoln, not hide from them."

  A shadow flickered across his eyes. It was filled with pain. I drew him into a hug and he let go of the chair behind him and wrapped his arms around me. He sighed, his breath ruffling the hair at my neck.

  "You worry me, Charlie," he murmured.

  "You worry me too, Lincoln. But it will be all right. We'll go to France then come back and find out who cut the saddle." I stroked his hair and relished the feel of his strong arms, his hard chest, and the way he held me tightly as if he were scared to let me go.

  We stood like that for a long moment. For my part, I enjoyed the embrace, but I also wasn't sure what to do next. Kiss him? Talk further? And why wasn't he kissing me?

  The knock made us jump apart. Seth stood in the doorway, a silly grin o
n his face. "Finally!"

  "What do you want?" Lincoln growled.

  "Don't get snappy with me because you were caught with your trousers down, so to speak." His grin widened.

  "I would answer him, if I were you, Seth," I warned. Lincoln had gone rigid with fury. I suspected that meant he didn't want others knowing about us. His reticence seemed somewhat unnecessary considering Seth had caught us red-handed, and most of the committee members already suspected we were more than employer and employee.

  "You're needed in the stables."

  "Are there any more problems?"

  "No, but we need another set of muscles. Cook says he's too busy to help."

  "I'll be there in a moment."

  "Very good." Seth whistled all the way down the hallway.

  "Lincoln," I said as he folded his arms across his chest. "This…the thing that just happened between us…you are not going to pretend it didn't happen, are you?"

  He smiled. Yes. Smiled. So he was capable of it. I felt quite giddy with wonder as I drank in the sight of the tiny lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth. "No." He took me in his arms again and kissed me tenderly, teasingly, pecking and retreating, exploring.

  Then the kiss deepened, sending my heart racing and my mind blank. I couldn't get enough of him. Couldn't get close enough, even though our bodies were pressed together. I clutched his shoulders, holding on because he was solid and I felt in danger of floating away. His hand splayed at my back, the other at my waist. It moved to my hip and touched the chatelaine there. I groaned.

  As if my voice had slapped him, he broke off the kiss and stepped away. His chest rose and fell with his heavy breathing, his eyes turned stormy. "I…we…must stop."

  I nodded stupidly, unable to speak. With a steadying intake of breath, I too stepped back.

  "I'll tell Seth that the committee members are not to be informed," he said.

  "Oh?" It took me a moment to comprehend that he was speaking, let alone register what he was saying.

  "They're too reactionary to a change of this magnitude."

  Magnitude? Reactionary? I suppose he meant they might try to send me away. But surely Lincoln could just overrule them and do his own thing as he usually did.

  "Eastbrooke and Gillingham already suspect," he went on, "but I can fool them a little longer. You'll still be in charge of redecorating. After the parlor, the entire house is yours to do with as you wish. I'll employ a housekeeper and maids to take over your duties. Anyone you need. You're now mistress of Lichfield, not a servant. Is that clear?"

  I nodded numbly then watched him leave, his back ramrod straight, his hair disheveled from my exploring fingers.

  What had just happened? The kiss. Yes. But beyond that…he didn't want the committee to know about us, yet he was talking about me becoming mistress of Lichfield. Did he mean to make me his wife after he'd worked out how to broach the subject with the committee? But that was madness.

  Wasn't it?

  I was a street waif, disowned by her adopted father, bastard daughter of a murderer and poverty-stricken French woman. And Lincoln was the son of someone important, of that I was certain. His mother may have been little better off than mine, but I suspected his father was a lord, perhaps even one of the men on the committee. Lincoln may not care for social distinctions but the world did. A public admission of our relationship might see him expelled from the ministry by four people who cared about such things very much.

  Anyway, it was foolish to think about us being more than lovers when he'd not promised me anything. He'd even declared that he didn't want to marry, that he was unfit to be a husband. While I disagreed, I doubted he'd changed his mind so soon. So he must be referring to making me his lover. I didn't care. It didn't matter to me if we never formalized our union, as long as his heart belonged to me.

  I plopped down in an armchair and stared at the bookshelf. I was trying to sort through my thoughts when one of the books caught my attention. It was a reference about Greek myths.

  I plucked it off the shelf and flipped to the page on Aphrodite. "The Goddess of Love," was written in bold type beneath her name. My breath hitched. I read the paragraph about her then re-read it. Goddess of love!

  Good lord. Lincoln may not be very good at voicing his feelings, but he certainly knew how to show them in other ways. I sat back and smiled down at the picture of the woman who looked so similar to the one engraved on my chatelaine. He'd given it to me even while he'd been pushing me away, even as he told me he was not capable of love. This was proof that he was.

  I just hoped his heart would remain true when the committee learned of our relationship, such as it was, and they tried to send me away. Because I had no doubt some of them, if not all, would do everything in their power to separate us.

  * * *

  THE END

  * * *

  Coming Soon:

  GRAVE EXPECTATIONS

  The 4th book in the Ministry of Curiosities series by C.J. Archer.

  * * *

  Charlie's life is perfect. She has everything her heart desires. Until it all goes horribly wrong. With an angry dead supernatural on the loose and the committee determined to get rid of her, Charlie's time with the Ministry of Curiosities, and Lincoln, is in danger of ending.

  * * *

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  A Message From The Author

  I hope you enjoyed reading BEYOND THE GRAVE as much as I enjoyed writing it. As an independent author, getting the word out about my book is vital to its success, so if you liked this book please consider telling your friends and writing a review at the store where you purchased it. If you would like to be contacted when I release a new book, subscribe to my newsletter at http://cjarcher.com/contact-cj/newsletter/. You will only be contacted when I have a new book out.

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  Also by C.J. Archer

  SERIES WITH 2 OR MORE BOOKS

  The Emily Chambers Spirit Medium Trilogy

  The 1st Freak House Trilogy

  The 2nd Freak House Trilogy

  The 3rd Freak House Trilogy

  The Ministry of Curiosities Series

  The Assassins Guild Series

  Lord Hawkesbury's Players Series

  The Witchblade Chronicles

  SINGLE TITLES NOT IN A SERIES

  Courting His Countess

  Surrender

  Redemption

  The Mercenary's Price

  About the Author

  C.J. Archer has loved history and books for as long as she can remember. She worked as a librarian and technical writer until she was able to channel her twin loves by writing historical fiction. She has won and placed in numerous romance writing contests, including taking home RWAustralia’s Emerald Award in 2008 for the manuscript that would become her novel Honor Bound. Under the name Carolyn Scott, she has published contemporary romantic mysteries, including Finders Keepers Losers Die, and The Diamond Affair. After spending her childhood surrounded by the dramatic beauty of outback Queensland, she lives today in suburban Melbourne, Australia, with her husband and their two children. She loves to hear from readers. You can contact her in one of these ways:

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