The Captain's Frozen Dream

‘Is the guest room and my room as I left them?’

‘They are, but the linens haven’t been changed or the fires lit. If I’d received some notice of your arrival instead of being startled at night, things might have been better prepared.’

‘A man doesn’t have to send word to his own house.’

Miss Linton stiffened at the reminder of her place. Frustrated in her effort to enforce some control over Heims Hall, she turned to Katie. ‘Will she be staying here?’

‘You mean Miss Vickers?’ Conrad’s voice was low and warning. ‘Yes, she will.’

The little colour in Miss Linton’s face drained out, leaving her an unappealing shade of white. ‘But, Conrad—’

‘We’ll rely on you to serve as an appropriate chaperon.’

Miss Linton jerked back her shoulders in indignation, as if Conrad had asked her to walk down the high street of nearby Cuckfield naked. ‘I don’t think it’s appropriate for a woman like me—’

‘Thank you, Matilda.’ He cut her off, turned to Katie and held out his arm. ‘Shall I escort you to your room?’

Only the desire to vex Miss Linton prodded Katie to place her hand on the firm muscle beneath the wool coat. ‘Thank you.’

Conrad guided them around his cousin and they climbed the stairs. His solid form beside her was a welcome comfort against Miss Linton’s hostile stares burning a hole in the back of Katie’s dress. If only he had come back sooner, before Lord Helton’s lies had done their damage.

The staircase curved, taking them out of sight of Miss Linton and Katie removed her hand from Conrad’s arm, reluctant to encourage any intimacy between them.

Conrad didn’t protest, but continued to escort her down the short hall illuminated by the light spilling out of Miss Linton’s open bedroom door. It filled the narrow space with a wavering amber glow and sharpened the lines of Conrad’s straight nose and strong forehead.

He stopped before the open door of a bedroom in the middle of the hallway. Thankfully, it wasn’t one of the adjoining rooms at the end, the ones she and her father had occupied when they’d stayed here to study the tiger fossil. There were enough lingering memories to torment her, she didn’t need more.

‘In the morning, after we’ve both had some rest, we’ll talk,’ Conrad stated, as if the problems of over a year could simply be surmounted with a conversation.

She took the satchel from him, careful to keep her fingers away from his. ‘There’s little to discuss.’

She moved to enter the room, but Conrad shifted between her and the door. ‘There’s everything to discuss. Whatever happened while I was gone to make you think differently of me, I’ll see it set right.’

Katie fingered the rough spot on the satchel handle where the varnish had been rubbed away during her father’s many trips to visit scientific men. They’d appreciated his ability to find fossils, but not his theories on why the strange animals no longer existed. ‘Conrad, I spent my childhood listening to my father make promises to my mother, one after another. He’d make sure she never regretted leaving her family for him, he’d spend time with her once he was done with this paper or cleaning that fossil. In the end he couldn’t keep any of them.’

‘I’m not your father.’

‘But you have his passion for work, the all-consuming kind which places itself above anyone and everyone. When you first proposed, I told you I had doubts about entering your world, making myself visible to society. You were so gallant in your promise I’d never suffer and I believed you. Then you left and everything I feared, everything you assured me wouldn’t happen did.’

A new light flickered behind Conrad. Miss Linton stood at the top of the stairs at the end of the hall, her disapproving scowl deepened by the candle she held.

He lowered his head, his face so close to hers, Katie could see the faint outline of his beard along his chiselled jaw. ‘This isn’t how it’s going to end, Katie.’

Her chest caught at the nearness of him. If things were different, if he hadn’t left, she might have risen up on her feet and touched her lips to his, fallen into his arms and known the bliss they’d once experienced together on the Downs, away from everyone and everything except each other, but things weren’t different and the time for discussion had passed.

‘Goodnight, Conrad.’ Katie slipped into the room and closed the door behind her.

* * *

Conrad frowned as the lock clicked shut.

Matilda scurried up behind him, moving so quickly the candle flame danced and nearly went out before she raised her hand to protect it. ‘Conrad, we must speak.’

‘Whatever it is, it can wait until morning.’ He made for the stairs, rolling his stiff shoulders. He needed to eat and sleep in a real bed, not endure his cousin’s company. Hopefully the groaning of the ship’s timbers and the far-off thunder of breaking ice wouldn’t haunt his dreams. Too much was already cracking up around him for him to face tomorrow exhausted.

‘It can’t wait.’ Matilda dogged his heels as he descended, the light from her candle waving erratically over the plaster walls. ‘You can’t think to allow her to stay here.’

‘I’ll allow whomever I wish to reside here for any length of time.’ He stopped on the landing and levelled a pointed look at his cousin. ‘As I’ve allowed you to reside here and manage the estate in my absence.’

She pursed her lips in indignation. ‘Then I cannot continue to remain here, risking my reputation to lend some thin veneer of credibility to hers.’

Conrad glared at her as he would a sailor who dared to question his orders. ‘Careful, Matilda, how you speak of the woman who is to be my wife.’

‘Don’t think to cow me into withholding my opinion of your connection to a woman of no standing who can bring nothing to your family.’

‘She’s the granddaughter of a baronet.’

‘And the daughter of a disgraced woman who didn’t have the foresight to think of her family, her name, her ancestry before running off with some poor country doctor. No wonder Miss Vickers behaved the way she did after you left. You have no idea what they’re saying about her in London.’

‘You’re right, nor do I want to know,’ Conrad tossed over his shoulder as he made for the entrance hall.

‘But you must.’ Matilda followed him. ‘They say she and certain members of the Naturalist Society were more than professional acquaintances.’

Conrad paused in the centre of the room, tightening his fist at his side before releasing his fingers one by one. Matilda’s revelation added to the unease already created by the scene with Katie and Mr Prevett on the road. Whatever had happened while Conrad was gone, the gravity of it was beginning to settle over him like a storm in the North Atlantic. Only tonight he had no time for it, or his cousin. The woman wasn’t above exaggeration, she excelled in it. He brushed her and his suspicions aside as he made for his study. ‘No doubt the stories are in existence because of my uncle.’

‘There’s no reason for an august man like Lord Helton to dirty his hands with a woman like Miss Vickers,’ Matilda countered as she followed after him. She was the only one who’d ever venerated his uncle. Her slight connection to the marquis through Conrad gave her the single edge of superiority over her small group of friends and she cherished it. ‘She isn’t suitable to be a marchioness.’

Conrad stopped and whirled around to face her. ‘What are you talking about? I’m not Lord Helton’s heir.’

‘You mean you haven’t heard?’ Her dull-brown eyes sparkled with the delight of knowing something Conrad didn’t. ‘Your cousin Preston is dead. You are Lord Helton’s heir now.’

* * *

Conrad shoved open the study door and it banged against the plaster wall. The breeze of it disturbed the blue-and-gold flag from the ship of his first command hanging from the timbered rafters. The stench of stale air hit him as he made for the sideboard and the decanter of brandy sitting on top.

What the hell happened while I was gone? It was as if he’d sailed away from one world and returned to find another, more contemptible one had taken its place.

He flipped back the silver stopper and raised the crystal to his lips, ready to drown himself and all his shattered plans in the liquor. Nothing had gone as he’d intended, not his expedition or his homecoming.

Over the top of the glittering decanter, he caught sight of his father’s portrait hanging over the mantel. Conrad lowered the decanter. This had once been his father’s domain and he’d filled the shelves with his collection of beetles, the research of which had garnered him the presidency of the Naturalist Society. Later, his study of the insects had provided a refuge from the nightmares of the hell his own brother, the Marquis of Helton, had consigned him to for daring to defy him, the one which had ruined his health and broken his spirit.

Conrad followed the stare of his father’s painted brown eyes across the room to where the spoils of Conrad’s expeditions now adorned his father’s precious bookcases—Inuit spears, beaverskin moccasins, wood totems and the fossil remains of animals both known and unknown. They were a silent catalogue of all his past successes and triumphs. Taking it in, his gut sank like it had the morning he’d watched Gorgon break apart and slip beneath the icy water, leaving them trapped. It was his blood trapping him now, the legacy his father and mother had spent years struggling to escape, the one ruled by the iron fist of Lord Helton.

Conrad took another long drink and silently cursed his uncle. Lord Helton cared for nothing except power and using it to make men in government and society bow and scrape before him. After Conrad’s father’s early death had put him beyond his brother’s reach, it’d been a struggle for Conrad and his mother to escape Lord Helton’s grasping control. If it hadn’t been for Heims Hall and his mother’s brother, Jack, they might never have known peace, or the security of a home and an income not encumbered by the Helton legacy.

Conrad smiled at the memory of his mother standing in the grand entrance hall at Helton Manor after his father’s funeral, breaking Lord Helton’s walking stick over her knee after he’d dared to strike Conrad with it for mourning his father. She’d pelted the man with the broken bits and a barrage of insults, stunning Lord Helton into silence for the first time in his life.

Conrad’s smile faded. Afterwards, Lord Helton’s methods had become more subtle and he’d resorted to lies and rumours to attack her instead of confrontation. When she’d passed, Lord Helton then turned his vengeance against Conrad, using his influence in government to make sure every ship Conrad received after becoming captain was more worm-eaten than the last. Yet Conrad had accepted each doomed command and made a stunning success of them all, securing his reputation as a first-rate officer and diluting Lord Helton’s influence. After Napoleon’s defeat left Conrad without a ship and on half-pay, he’d volunteered for the Discovery Service and built a name for himself as an explorer, one of Mr Barrow’s favourites, a man who always succeeded.