Page 3 of The Marquis' Game of Seduction
Rose hadn’t expected this question out of such a young child. She swallowed and said, “My parents both died when I was quite young.”
“Oh. How did that happen?” Duncan asked. His eyes glittered with a mix of curiosity and sadness.
“They were quite ill,” Rose said, although word of the definite reason for her parents’ death had never met her or Carrie’s ears. “And my sister and I were raised at an orphanage.”
Normally, when people learned about the tragedy that had befallen Rose’s early life, their eyes dropped to the ground with embarrassment. But Duncan’s reaction was far different. He didn’t drop Rose’s eye contact; he didn’t seem at a loss for what to say. He had unbridled curiosity, and he faced reality without hesitation. In some respects, Rose wished she had that kind of strength.
“Would you like to see my bedroom?” Duncan asked. It seemed that he’d decided to trust her already, for better or for worse.
“If that’s all right with Judith,” Rose said. She arched her brow toward Judith, who gave her a little playful nod.
Duncan padded back up the stairs, with Judith and Rose yanking themselves up behind. Judith whispered, “I dare say, these stairs get more difficult every single year,” and let out a light chuckle. Rose cranked her head around and gave Judith a sneaky grin.
“I think he’s quite fascinating,” Rose muttered.
Judith pressed her finger into her lips, as a means to “shush” without the sound. She batted her eyelashes and said, “Be careful what you say. He hears everything. And he’s an incredibly intelligent child, as you can tell. If you give him too much power, you won’t have a chance on this earth.”
Rose grinned wider, knowing this was entirely true—with children, you couldn’t show too many of your cards. She stretched up the last length of the staircase and landed on an Asian rug at the top, beaming down at Duncan who gave the air of having had to wait for her for several minutes, rather than seconds. He pointed toward the door next to them, saying, “This is my bedroom. Please, follow me.”
The formality of the young boy was quite fascinating to Rose, especially since she’d grown up in an orphanage. There, children had run wildly, cackling and leaping about and getting into all sorts of trouble. Duncan seemed the sort of child to sit off to the side, taking notes on the situation at hand like one might analyse birds or animals in the zoo.
Duncan’s room hadn’t yet been decorated to suit a child. Judith also mentioned this as they entered, saying, “The Marquees has told us that we can arrange it however we like—even ordering in paint and rugs and anything else Duncan might find that suits him…”
“Yes, but I’ve brought my own toys…” Duncan said, pointing toward an enormous chest at the far end of the room, near the four-poster bed. A stuffed teddy bear’s hand stuck out of the part in the chest, like it was trying to crawl out from the inner belly. “They all came from my mother and father’s house—and all bought here in England. You see, we arrived back from the West Indies when I was just seven years old. I wasn’t allowed to bring many toys back from there, because Mother said they may be infected with disease.”
Duncan skipped over to the edge of the room and began to draw out more of his toys, introducing them and dotting them in a line before her. A papier-maché doll, a rocking horse with a slender body, even a small doll’s house, along with several books.
“They’re marvelous,” Rose said. In her own childhood, she’d had very little to play with, and she felt a strange jump of jealousy. It wasn’t that she wanted to go back to her youth; yet she truly did ache for her past self, wishing it had all been different.
Judith perched in a little chair near the entrance to the bedroom, while Duncan moved toward the bed tapped his hand across the bedspread, insisting that Rose sit with him. When she did, Duncan bounced a bit on the mattress. He felt like a cartoon character in a comic strip, a boy completely drawn out of the smoke in the air. He gave her yet another sneaky smile and said, “I’ve already begun concocting my own secret plans for this estate.”
The sentence surprised Rose. She stitched her eyebrows together and said, “Pardon me, Duncan? I suppose I don’t quite understand what you mean.”
Duncan’s skin glowed with his excitement. “It’s just that I like to create… my own games,” Duncan said. It seemed as though he wasn’t accustomed to telling anyone about his secret plans. “I’ve been an only child my entire life, and back in the West Indies, it wasn’t customary for me to spend time with other children—only with my governess, who we left behind.”
“Did she play your secret games with you?” Rose asked.
Duncan’s shoulders drooped. “Unfortunately not,” she said. “She was far too serious for my liking. She frequently told my parents that I had an active imagination, but she never said it like it was a good thing. She always said it like she needed to warn them. Like my creativity was going to make me a—a pariah…”
“That is quite an excellent word to use,” Rose said. “What makes you have such a remarkable vocabulary?”
Duncan shrugged. “I suppose that isn’t terribly important to the story, is it?”
Rose tried her best not to show her inner laughter, which now bubbled up. She pressed her lips together and shook her head.
“Very well. Would you like to hear about my games?” Duncan asked.
“Very much so,” Rose returned. Already, her heart swelled with adoration for this young, strange, endearing boy.
“During one of them, I pretend that I’m a ghost,” Duncan said, lowering his voice. “I imagine that I’m just like my mother’s father’s father’s father—who wandered through these hallways hundreds of years ago. I pretend I’m like him as a boy and imagine it: what my day might look like, what I might do with my friends and siblings. It’s quite exhausting, imagining such a reality so different from ours, but it really is so splendid as well. You must help me sometime. I know for certain that this other, much older boy had a governess as well.”
“I hope I can play the role as well as you envision it,” Rose said.
Duncan nodded his head severely. “You can’t understand how lonely it’s been the past five days. All I wished for was someone to play with. Someone to speak with.” He lowered his voice, casting his eyes toward Judith—who, it seemed, wasn’t paying even a slight lick of attention. “I’m so grateful not to be the only new one in the house. It is quite a creepy place, is it not? It has nothing of the warmth of my old home. Mother always said it was quite creepy, growing up here. Of course, I had never seen it until I was seven years old. That was just a year after grandfather died. I was never able to know him. I regret that, although Mother doesn’t have terribly pleasant things to say about him, either.”
Judith burst up from her chair, seemingly ready to put a halt to Duncan’s aimless, round and round speaking.
“I dare say it’s time for our new Rose to see the rest of the house,” she told Duncan, her voice reproachful. “You’ll see a great deal of her later.”
