Haunted Hearts

Chapter 9: Finally meeting him.

Raeliana bolted upright in bed as soon as she heard a loud knock. The knocking continued relentlessly, and she groped for her old velvet dressing gown. Unable to find it in the dark, unfamiliar room, she threw her shawl around her shoulders and stumbled to the bedroom door.

"Who is it?" she called.

"His lordship's arrived, miss. He demands to see you right away."

Raeliana opened the door. Earlier, it had seemed absurd to have cordials and slip into bed when she still had not met her nemesis, but there had been no word of Wainwright's arrival.

All evening, she and Isabella had nothing better to do than work on their needlepoint canvases and stare at each other. Now, looking at the housekeeper's grim face, the time had come to meet him.

"But—it's so late," she stammered. "His lordship can't expect me to be dressed to meet with him now." She clutched the shawl around her slim shoulders. Her hair had already begun to escape its plaiting, and two particularly annoying curls kept falling over her eyes.

"Miss, he's called for you. It is best to come now." The housekeeper still wore a nervous, birdlike demeanor, but now Raeliana was distinctly aware that terror lit her eyes.

"He'll have to wait until I am properly dressed—"

"No, miss. Come now. He said he wants to see you immediately."

She just looked at the housekeeper, a stupefied expression on her face. She couldn't believe it. John Noah Wainwright must be a tyrant to demand this at such an hour.

"Very well," she answered slowly. She turned and stepped to the bed. Isabella was still in her trundle, the covers frozen in hand. Raeliana could almost read her mind. To her best friend, she probably looked like a child with her unruly curls braided down her back and her bare toes barely covered by the hem of her pristine white nightgown. But Raeliana was no longer a child. While Noah Wainwright might prove more of a dragon than she could fight, she was determined to defend her position until he booted her out of Stonegate's front door.

"I'll come with you Rae." Her friend whispered.

Raeliana flicked a glance at her. Isabella was straightening her frilly nightcap and reaching for her faded maroon-colored robe with an old purple wine stain down the front.

"No, there's no point in you suffering this humiliation too." Raeliana grabbed her velvet dressing gown, slung an arm through the sleeve, and trailed after Lord Noah's cowed housekeeper into the darkness of the passage.

She half-expected to be taken to the baronial hall, where Noah might view her from the dais and direct James with the instructions, "Off with her head!" Instead, she was led to the other side of the castle, to a handsome pair of walnut doors that appeared to lead to a man's study.

"He's in there." the housekeeper whispered behind her.

Raeliana felt like a lion tamer being told where the escapee was hiding. She waited a moment, expecting the housekeeper to at least open the door for her, but the timid woman made no such effort.

The absurdity of not even knowing the housekeeper's name struck her. The situation was ridiculous, yet not amusing, as waiting to enter the maw of Noah's study made her heart pound with unnatural fury.

'No man could be this much of a terror,' she told herself. Trying to forget the housekeeper's wild-eyed face, she placed her hand on the door handle and opened it.

In the back of her mind, she half pictured Noah as some kind of ogre poised by the fire, salivating from a feast of fresh servants. The handsome, bespectacled blond gentleman who perfunctorily rose upon her entrance couldn't have been less like her imaginings.

You don't know how cruel the master is. James' words seemed to taunt her.

"My lord," she whispered in the shadows by the door, momentarily shocked by how much Noah looked like Sean. The raven-black hair, balanced and precise Anglo-Saxon features, and the broad-shouldered, masculine figure. Struck by the awful comparison, she became unconscious of her own appearance, standing before a peer barefoot, clad only in her nightgown and dressing gown. She hadn't known what to expect from John Noah Wainwright's appearance, but this was beyond her anticipation.

"Sit down, Miss Ackerman." He nodded to the armchair across from the hearth.

While his own luxurious chair was upholstered in the finest purple damask, the one he offered her was made of near-petrified wood, torturously designed in medieval times with turned spools and spindles.

She sat and found it as stiff and uncomfortable as it looked. Vaguely, she wondered if the chair was normally kept in Stonegate's dungeon.

Noah resumed his seat, and she took in more of his appearance. His charcoal frock coat elegantly fit his enormous frame, as only the finest tailor could make it. Even so, she could see the muscles in his arms bunch against the fabric, straining it, testing it—an indication that this man was not the typical civilized, sedentary peer one would expect of a baron. When he reached up to the mantel where he kept a glass of brandy, she could almost imagine those same muscular arms raised with the Stonegate broadsword, eager to slam it down upon an enemy's skull.

She touched her forehead and let her fingers run along her scalp. It was then she remembered that her hair was in a plait, and she was dressed in her nightclothes. A betraying, panicky flush crept up her neck.

"Miss Ackerman," Noah finally gave her his attention. Despite his imperious, bored expression, she could tell he found her appearance aggravating. "I did not send for a governess. I sent for a doctor. Why have you come here?"

She met his cold stare, one not unexpected given the circumstances. Neither was the anger that lit his cerulean hazel eyes. The seconds ticked by as she rallied her thoughts, groping for the best explanation of her lie. He watched in a decidedly lordly fashion, as if, not being a peer herself, she were just a kind of creature brought into his richly appointed study to amuse him.

Still unable to find the best approach to begin her explanation, she merely returned the stare, noting that he appeared almost as tired as she felt.

He possessed lines of fatigue that creased either side of his well-formed mouth. With silence damning her, she gazed at him as he removed his spectacles and rubbed his bloodshot eyes. He seemed to wait like a bowstring ready to be loosed upon her lame words.

"You have nothing to say for yourself." It was not a question. It was a sentence.

She stared into his eyes, imploring for what, she didn't know. She wanted compassion, understanding, respect. She wanted to appeal to the human side of him and tell him she was just as qualified as any man he might bring to Stonegate. The only difference between her and her father's assistants was that in society, they were afforded the dignities of a formal degree and the esteem of other men. She was not.

Their gazes locked. She realized that this time she saw him without the cover of his spectacles. He was a handsome man, more handsome even than Sean, but now experience told her to give such handsomeness pause. As did such an expression.

Anger, betrayal, ridicule—she had anticipated that. But not this. His eyes disturbed her. There was a weariness she had never seen in any eyes before. It was as if they had never seen anything but the dark side of life. They held a dangerous beckoning, a lost beauty. She found she couldn't quite bear to look upon them.

"The explanation." He settled the gold-rimmed spectacles back on the bridge of his nose, and an arrogant, finely crafted nose it was. The vanquished mortal she thought she'd seen in him was now shielded.

"You—you would not have sent for me if you had known I was a woman." Her voice was weaker than she would have liked, but she was more shaken by the indefinable emotion she'd seen in his eyes than by the confrontation.

Nervously, as if it were a gesture of protection, she pulled the lapels of her dressing gown together, almost clutching them.

He stood. She was already dismissed. He'd obviously found her words trite and unimpressive. He meant her to go without further explanation.

"Wait." She clenched her hands and stared down at the gaudy gold and purple carpet as if for strength. Slowly, she rose to her feet, and even more slowly she tilted her head upward and met hus foreboding stare. "Forgive me, Lord Wainwright. It was an inexcusable ruse, but as one can already see by your reaction, I had no choice. If I'd sign the letter Raeliana, you would have tossed it in the paper bin, and I would not be here now trying to help-"

"I asked for a physician, not a governess."

"I am not a governess. The rest of my letter was true. I studied my father's work for years. There are few more qualified than I-"

"You're no doctor."

"I never claimed to be. You must understand, there are only a few who specialize in this area. No qualified man would be willing to come all the way up here to help your deaf brother-"

"Aaron is not deaf."