Mary Balogh - Simply Love

She had looked like beauty personified. For one moment he had thought…

Ah, what was it he had thought?

That she had walked out of the night into his dreams?

It was embarrassing even to consider that that was perhaps what he had thought before he had come jolting back to reality.

But certainly he had taken a step toward her without speaking a word. And she had stood there, apparently waiting for him.

And then he had seen the horror in her eyes. And then she had turned and fled in panic.

What had he expected? That she would smile and open her arms to him?

He gazed after her and was again Sydnam Butler, grotesquely ugly, with his right eye gone and the purple scars of the old burns down the side of his face, paralyzing most of the nerves there, and all along his armless side to his knee.

He was Sydnam Butler, who would never paint again, and for whom no woman would ever walk beautiful out of the night.

But he had left self-pity behind long ago, and resented moments such as this when his defenses had been lowered and it crept back in like a persistent and unwelcome guest to torment him. He knew that it would take him days to recover his equilibrium, to remind himself that he was now Sydnam Butler, the best and most efficient steward of the several Bewcastle employed to run his various estates-and that was the duke’s assessment, not his own.

He was Sydnam Butler, who had learned to live alone.

Without a paintbrush in his nonexistent right hand.

Without a woman for his bed or his heart.

He did not linger on the promontory. The magic was gone. The silver had gone from the sea to be replaced by a heaving gray, soon to be black. The sky no longer held even the memory of sunset. The breeze had turned chilly. It was time to go home.

He headed off along the path, in the direction from which the woman had come. After a few steps he realized that he was limping again and made a determined effort not to.

He was more glad than ever that he had moved out of the house and into the cottage. He liked it there. He might even stay after Bewcastle and all the others had returned home. A cottage, with a cook, a housekeeper, and a valet, was all a single man needed for his comfort.

Belatedly it struck him that there had been nothing grand about either the woman’s cloak or the dress beneath it, and her hair had not been dressed elaborately. She must be just one of the servants who had come with the visitors. She must be. If she were indeed Lady Alleyne, she would be at dinner now or in the drawing room with the rest of the family.

It was a relief to realize that she was only a servant. There was less of a chance that he would see her again. Whenever she had any free time from now on, he did not doubt that she would stay far away from the cliffs and the beach, where she might encounter the monster of Glandwr again.

He hoped he would never see her again, never have to look into that lovely face and see the revulsion there.

For an unguarded moment he had yearned toward her with his whole body and soul.

He thought resentfully that she would probably haunt his dreams for several nights to come.

If only he knew exactly how long Bewcastle intended to stay, he thought as he let himself in to the cottage and closed the door gratefully behind him, he could begin counting down the days, like a child waiting for some longed-for treat.

“She simply disappeared off the face of the earth,” Joshua explained. “She was not in her room, she was not in the nursery, and she certainly was not in either the drawing room or the dining room.”

“I daresay,” Gervase, Earl of Rosthorn, Morgan’s husband, said as he cut into his bacon, “she is intimidated by us-or by all you Bedwyns anyway,” he added with a chuckle.

“Oh, but she need not be,” Eve, Lady Aidan Bedwyn, said. “We are really quite ordinary people. But you may be right, Gervase. I can remember a time when I was intimidated.”

“So can I,” Judith, Lady Rannulf, added fervently.

“And now she is taking breakfast in the nursery?” Christine, Duchess of Bewcastle, grimaced. “Oh, I do feel ashamed for having let it happen. I ought to have made far more of an effort yesterday to find her and welcome her to our home. We both should have, Wulfric. I’ll go up there immediately.”

“Perhaps,” Lord Aidan Bedwyn suggested, “she should be given time to finish her breakfast first, Christine. You are the duchess, you must remember, and the sight of you might take away her appetite.”

Most of those gathered about the table chose to find that remark worthy of laughter. The duke grasped the handle of his quizzing glass and half raised it to his eye, but he lowered it again when he saw that his duchess, far from being offended, was laughing too.

“It was remiss of Freyja and Joshua to lose one of our guests yesterday,” he said. “I would encourage you to find Miss Jewell, Christine, and invite her to dine with us this evening.” He indicated to a footman with the mere lifting of one finger that his coffee cup needed replenishing.

“And you ought to explain, Christine,” Lord Rannulf said with a broad grin, “that an invitation from Wulf is the equivalent of an imperial summons. Make it clear that the poor woman really has no choice at all.”

“And speaking of empty chairs at the dinner table last night,” Lord Alleyne said, “whatever happened to Syd? I have been looking forward to seeing him again but have not yet so much as set eyes on him.”

“I think, Alleyne,” the duchess said apologetically, “he must be afraid of me.”

That pronouncement provoked another burst of merriment from those gathered about the breakfast table and a haughty lift of the eyebrows from the duke.

“He behaved most properly when we arrived,” the duchess explained. “He was out on the terrace waiting to greet us. But I have not seen him since, and last night, well after dinnertime, he sent an apology for not coming. He had apparently just arrived home and found our invitation.”

“A bouncer if ever I heard one,” Alleyne said.

“I suppose,” Rachel, Lady Alleyne, commented, “it would not be the most comfortable thing in the world to dine out in company when one has only one arm-and that the left arm.”

“If that was his reason for not coming,” Freyja said, frowning, “then he needs a good talking to. Syd was always the quiet one among us, but he was never a coward.”

“As witness the way in which he acquired his wounds,” Aidan said dryly.

“I can remember watching him learn to ride again after he had recovered his health,” Rannulf said. “On the morning I was there at Alvesley he must have mounted thirty times and fallen off twenty-nine before finding a secure seat. But he would not allow either a groom or me within ten feet of him. And that was only learning to mount .”

“Oh, the poor gentleman,” Rachel said. “I remember my lessons when Alleyne insisted that I learn to ride-and I had two arms. I was convinced every bone in my body would be broken before I was finished, though I never did actually fall off.”

“I enjoyed catching you too much, Rache,” her husband said, waggling his eyebrows at her.

“Never call Sydnam poor in his hearing, Rachel,” Freyja advised. “Do not even think it.”

“Wulfric,” the duchess said, leaning eagerly across the table in his direction, “you will be seeing Mr. Butler this morning on estate business, will you not? Do invite him to dinner again. He really must not think of himself as a servant even if he is your steward. You told me that he took the position only because he felt he must do something useful with his life.”