The Dragon's Bride (26 page)

The wife.

He would not dishonor her by taking and giving less.

“Lovers are so often tragic, aren’t they?” she said, wrapping her shawl more tightly around her and knotting it at the back. He helped, drinking in even this slight touch, his hands against her supple back.

“Because lovers are generally engaged in something illicit,” he said.

“This isn’t precisely licit, is it?”

Typical of Susan to insist on honesty. Could he live with anything less?

They walked on briskly, and gradually, out here where they’d roamed eleven years ago, they fell into the easy talk of the past, about plants and animals, and the sea and the sky. Then about the adventures of the years between.

First the light ones that carried no weight, but wove a fragile net between them. Then some of the more sober ones.

She told him more about working with the mad earl. He told her about army life.

He shared more about Waterloo and Dare, and she related with brief honesty her two times with other men.

The net they were building contained future pain as well as pleasure, but he was sure she was as willing as he to bear it.

Near an abandoned chapel, glassless windows showing a stark stone interior, they struck off across rough ground toward the cove. The route they followed was a faint smuggler’s trail, mostly overgrown with weeds, and they had to watch the ground for unpredictable dips and bumps.

When they arrived at the steep path to the beach, Con hesitated. “Did we really go down there without a thought?”

“Too old to make it anymore?” With a teasing smile, she pulled the hem of her skirt up to her waist and produced pins to fasten it there, leaving her stockinged legs bare to the knees. Then she was off, finding handholds on roots, and on some rods conveniently driven in for the purpose.

With a laugh, he followed, not hesitating even when his boots slipped on the soft clay rock.

She jumped the last few feet to the pebbly beach and turned to watch him. He jumped too, and swept her into his arms. Just a hug, a friendly hug, but they clung in the salt air, and he knew she was absorbing him as he was absorbing her. Was she, too, feeling as if she was becoming a whole person here?

They drew apart in synchrony, perhaps both recognizing a point of no return, and looked around at the small cove.

“I think of it as bigger,” he said.

“It hasn’t shrunk, but there was more sand here. The sea changes. Like everything else.”

She walked down toward the rippling waves, and he followed, admiring the elegant lines of her body, so different from those of a girl, but familiar, and not just from last night. A man knowing a young tree still recognizes it full-grown.

Last night. Had he been trying to prove something? To demonstrate his many lovers since her?

A smile fought through, and he said, “Susan?”

She turned, smiling, holding a strand of inevitably escaping hair off her face, her skirt still kirtled up to her knees at the front.

“Last night. I was trying to impress you.”

A hint of a blush touched her cheeks. “You succeeded.”

“I was fighting the memory of your many partners, all hugely endowed by nature, all possessed of the skills and experience of the world’s greatest lovers.”

She laughed. “Truly?”

“Truly.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered.”

“I know.” He had to speak the painful truth. “I’d welcome a chance to do better, but I have committed myself to Lady Anne, alas.”

Her smile faded. “Alas?”

“Alas. Perhaps it would be better if I pretended otherwise, but I can only give you honesty. On my first day at Crag Wyvern I wrote to her and as good as offered marriage. I didn’t come here with it settled in my mind, but I was drifting that way. It didn’t seem to matter whom I married. She is a sweet young lady who deserves a husband. When I wrote the letter, however, I was using her—as a shield against you. Which she now is. Alas.”

“And otherwise?” she asked.

Honesty, honesty. It could break his heart and hers. “Otherwise, I would have hope, at least, of winning you for my wife, my friend, my helpmeet all my days.”

She turned suddenly away, hand still holding back her hair. From her stance he guessed she was fighting tears.

He walked up to her and put his arms around her from behind. “Once, you threw away what we had. Here, in Irish Cove. Three days ago I repeated the folly. It would seem we are tragic lovers after all.”

He leaned down to kiss her wind-chilled neck. She lowered her arm slowly, letting her hair blow as it willed.

“All my life,” she said, “I’ve been a fighter against fate. I’ve fought to make things be as I willed them to be, and what do I have?” She extended her open hands. “Wind between my fingers. But even so,” she said, clenching those hands, “I am tempted again. Tempted to fight this.”

He shook his head against hers. “I cannot draw back. A few months ago another Rogue, Lord Middlethorpe, courted Lady Anne. He didn’t go so far as to offer marriage, but it was understood. She expected an offer, and he planned to make one. But then he met another. Soon the other woman was with child, and so one honorable necessity overrode the other.”

She turned roughly in his hands. “I could be with child.” But then she squeezed her eyes shut. “No, no! I don’t want you that way, Con, with dishonor and regret around us.”

He kissed her closed lids. “If you are with child, I must marry you, but I cannot in honor wish for it. And Lady Anne and her family will expect more from me before you can know. I told her I’d return in a week. I confess, I don’t see how to handle any of this with decency, never mind elegance.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder. “I’m praying not to be with child.” He heard a soft laugh. “All my life, above anything, I have wanted to be normal. I wanted to be like my cousins, like David, who fits comfortably into the ordinary world. But a wildness beats in me. It drives me to disregard rules and conventions, to seek the open spaces and adventures, even as I long to be like others, to belong. I wanted a normal courtship and wedding, but my wild side threw me into your arms. Then made me tear us apart.”

He held her tighter. “I don’t want you to be anything other than as you are, Susan.”

“But I seem to carry the seeds of destruction within me.”

He deliberately chuckled. “I think you’ve been living too long in Crag Wyvern, love. Real life isn’t so melodramatic.”

“It feels it to me.” She raised her head to look at him, and he saw tears glittering on the rims of her eyes. He didn’t mention them. “Is there no chance that Lady Anne will refuse your suit?”

He felt her pain because it mirrored his own. “I don’t know. It did occur to me that she might be less willing to marry Viscount Amleigh than to marry the Earl of Wyvern, but I don’t think she is so petty. We got along together very comfortably, and I believe that is what she wants. It was what I wanted a week ago. Or thought I wanted.”

Gulls gave their sobbing cries, swirling past on the winds.

He might as well tell her the rest of it. She’d find out one day. “Anne lives quietly because she was born with a twisted foot. It prevents her dancing, or walking long distances, so she doesn’t have many opportunities for flirtation and courtship, but she wants marriage, I think.”

He saw it register with her as it must. This was not an opponent she could with honor fight.

“It makes me think of breaking a leg and becoming crippled, too.”

He laughed because it was a joke, and because it was so very much a part of her to express what many would keep shamefully secret.

Despite the chill he could stay here forever, but the sun was beyond the horizon, and the pink and pearly remnants of light were beginning to fade to gray.

“We must head back,” he said. “We don’t want to be out in the dark.”

She moved apart from him and openly wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. He pulled out his handkerchief and she took it to dry her eyes and blow her nose. “I don’t want to go back,” she said.

“But we have no choice.”

“I do. I’m going home to the manor.”

After a moment, he nodded. “It is time. I won’t ask you to persuade your brother. It isn’t an easy burden to take up, and I understand all his scruples. Will you come up to Crag Wyvern tomorrow to join in the paper hunt? Whatever your brother decides, we need to find those papers and deal with them.”

“Yes, of course.” She took his hand and they walked back up the beach, soft pebbles shifting beneath their feet. “I don’t know what I want him to do, either. I see all the advantages, but I wonder if there’s a curse to being Earl of Wyvern.”

“Curses can be broken. Perhaps one of those books says how.” He looked up the narrow path. “Talking of curses, I think going up is worse than going down.”

“The alternative is to drown, sir.” With a saucy grin, she set off, agile as a cat. What could a man do but follow?

“Most battles are fought on fairly flat ground, you know,” he called after her.

She only laughed.

There was still laughter, and that was a miracle.

At the top, however, looking down at the place that had been so crucial in their lives, she said, “Yours is the hardest part.”

“Why?”

She looked at him. “Because you will do your best to be a good, loving, contented husband to Lady Anne, whereas I will be free to be a sour, eccentric spinster.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him on, back toward the rest of their lives. “You can’t imagine how relieved I am at the thought of not sleeping another night in Crag Wyvern.”

“Oh, can’t I?”

Though I’d sleep in hell itself,
he thought,
to spend my nights with you.

He woke the next morning to a subtle awareness that Susan was not in the house, and that they had decided their future.

In harmony, but apart.

She’d spoken of the urge to fight, and it raged in him too. Fight to seize the treasure from the jaws of fate. Duty and discipline ruled, however. He had taken this course of his own free will, and since it involved another, he must follow it.

He got out of bed and managed to summon some enthusiasm for the day’s paper hunt. On a simple level it could be amusing, and if David Kerslake accepted his part, it would pave the way to a kind of freedom, at least from Crag Wyvern.

Hawk was here, he remembered, and Nicholas had promised to come. Susan, too. It could, for a miracle, even be a day of lighthearted fun. In the presence of outsiders, so much about the mad earl now seemed ridiculous rather than horrific.

He pushed to the back of his mind all thoughts about the future, as he’d so often pushed away thoughts of death and maiming before battle.

He found Race in the breakfast room, consuming his usual enormous meal, and then Hawk walked in. Con performed the introductions.

Hawk sat, saying, “We met, I think, at Fuentes de Onoro.”

“Lord, yes,” Race said, for once looking a little awed. “I was a cornet then. I’m surprised you remember.”

Con smiled. “Don’t flatter yourself. Hawk rarely forgets anything.”

“It’s a curse,” Hawk agreed. “But in fact, de Vere was left in charge when his senior officers were wounded, and I had to leave the orderly retrieval of his troop in his hands. Did what he was told precisely and efficiently. That is truly rare.”

“Obedient to a fault,” Race said, seeming to have recovered his normal manner. “Which brings me to ask, my lord, if you have any particular duties for me today.”

Con realized that Race didn’t know what was going on. Once the maids had replenished the dishes, he explained.

“Beautiful,” Race said, with all the glow of the cherubim looking on the face of the Lord. “I wish I had known this Lady Belle.”

“She’d have eaten you for dinner,” Con said.

“Oh, no, I don’t think so.”

And on consideration, Con didn’t either.

After another mouthful of thick ham, Race asked, “Did Lady Wyvern come up to Crag Wyvern shortly before she left?”

“I think Susan mentioned that, yes,” Con said. “Why?”

Race smiled again. “She killed him, of course. Wonderful woman. He’d broken their pact and harmed the man she loved, so she came up here for vengeance. I assume he would let her into the sanctum, and while there, she slipped something deadly into one of his favorite ingredients.”

“Because, of course,” Hawk said with the same delight at the puzzle, “she could not have heard of his death on her travels, and yet according to your account, she assumed it in her letter to her daughter, yes?”

“Yes.” Con absorbed it. “Of course she killed him. She is nothing if not consistent in her allegiances. She probably also calculated the advantages of having the influence of the Earl of Wyvern working for her—especially if it was her son. One wonders what will become of Australia—”

“Still at breakfast?”

Con turned to see Susan in the garden doorway in a becoming peach-colored dress and modish bonnet. Another Susan, and one he could become very used to seeing in the morning. Beside her was a shorter, pretty young woman with big, sparkling eyes.

“I’m Amelia Kerslake,” she said, without waiting for an introduction, though she did drop a curtsy. “I’m sure you can use extra hands, Lord Wyvern.”

As he rose with the other men, Con said, “We can use extra hands, if you’re not easily shocked, Miss Kerslake.” He looked a question at Susan, wondering if she’d told her cousin the details. She only smiled, which was somewhat hard to interpret, so he said, “But we poor paltry males have only just begun our breakfast and need our sustenance. Will you sit with us?”

Once everyone was seated, Con introduced Hawk, noting that young Amelia was eager to test her flirtatious teeth on anything male. He was sure Hawk and Race could cope.

To Susan, he said, “Is your brother coming?”

There were other things he’d rather say, but during a night short on sleep, he’d arrived at a point of calm and acceptance. It would seem that she had too.

“He had some business to do, but will come up later. He still hasn’t decided.”

“There’s no hurry.”

“No, but we ladies are impatient to begin the hunt,” she said to everyone, “so do eat up.”

All the men laughed and cleaned their plates with speed.

“Army training,” said Race, standing first. “The call to battle means don’t waste what’s on the table.”

“Only to someone who needs a deep trencher to support a reed-thin frame,” Con said, finishing more slowly.

Susan was amazed at how possible it was to be with Con like this, to be friends. Almost sisterly, though very unsisterly hungers swirled beneath. It was as if life had layers.

Like living water under ice, though that wasn’t a good analogy, since the top surface of her life was surprisingly warm and almost joyous.

Like a delicious crust on a pie?

Like cream on a cake?

Like manure spread on a fallow field?

“What are you smiling about?”

She looked sideways at Con and told him.

He laughed aloud. “Don’t take up poetry.”

“Perhaps there’s a place in the world for earthy poetry.”

He winced at her pun. “Like the stone around the hearth,” he offered. “Warmed from what it contains.”

Smiling, they followed the others into the courtyard. De Vere was protesting that he was a great deal more substantial than a reed. Amelia had plucked a tall ornamental grass and was considering him against it, pretending the matter was in doubt.

Susan laughed along with everyone else, feeling a powerful rightness in the world, which was strange when her heart was breaking. Stones around fires did sometimes crack from the heat.

There was something so steady and strong between her and Con, however, that it was precious. Once this was over, they might not meet again. She was sure they wouldn’t seek meetings. But the knowledge that the bond still lasted would be sustaining.

She still wished for other things, even prayed for other things, but not at the expense of another woman’s heart.

She did wonder if Lady Anne would want a husband who would rather marry another. In the night, she’d fought and won the temptation to write and tell her. She knew Con would do his best not to let his divided heart show, and his best would be very good. Perhaps, in time, his regard for his wife and the mother of his children would deepen into a true love.

She had to pray for that, too.

She had brought this upon herself. Con might try to take the blame for writing to Lady Anne, but he would never have reacted that way if she hadn’t behaved so foolishly all those years ago.

She caught Major Hawkinville looking at her with far too keen an eye, and chose the bold approach. “The atmosphere of Crag Wyvern does incline to melancholy, doesn’t it, Major?”

“Perhaps one has to be particularly susceptible, Miss Kerslake.”

“And you are not of a melancholic disposition?”

“I’m far too practical. Why is this empty basin labeled ”The Dragon and His Bride‘?“

She moved closer to it. “It had statues. The dragon and his bride.”

“Ah. Having seen the Roman bath, I can imagine.”

“Are you talking about the fountain?” asked Amelia, who had always been able to follow many conversations at once. “I’d like to see the figures.”

“It’s not suitable,” Susan said.

“You’ve seen it, and you’re as much of a maiden as I am.”

Susan flashed Con a look, then knew it was a terrible mistake. She could feel her color rising and of course could do absolutely nothing to stop it. “I know it’s shameful at twenty-six,” she said in an attempt to cover it, “but there’s no need to make such a point of it, Amelia.”

“Susan!” Amelia exclaimed, going pale. “You know I never meant—”

“Yes, I know,” Susan said, going over to hug her. “I was funning. But the statues are not at all pleasant.”

She saw de Vere looking at her with raised, speculative brows and knew she might as well have shouted her sin from the rooftop.

“I think I should see it,” Major Hawkinville said. “I need to see everything to do with the old earl if I’m to help solve this puzzle. But then,” he added, with a slight smile, “I’m no maiden.”

Susan thought he’d picked that up to cover the moment and said a prayer of thanks. As she expected, however, Amelia insisted that she should come too.

“Very well, but don’t tell Aunt Miriam!”

She distinctly heard the major murmur, “I doubt she’s a maiden, either.”

Con led the way, since he knew where the figures had been placed—in a windowless alcove off the great hall.

“We couldn’t face trying to get them up or down stairs,” he said, “and they’d be leaving through the hall anyway. They’re only about half size,” he added, drawing back a heavy curtain, “but dashed difficult to manhandle.”

Susan stood back to let Major Hawkinville go in, but when Amelia followed, she felt obliged to look.

Apart, the figures lost some of their unpleasantness.

The dragon lay on its back, its legs in the air like a puppy, making its large organ ridiculous and its snarl rather like a silly grin. She bit her lip, and Amelia laughed outright. The woman, however, was still somewhat embarrassing, if only because she looked as if she was in a private ecstasy.

Con stayed outside, though when Amelia laughed, de Vere went in. Susan heard him say something, and Amelia laughed again.

“Doubtless highly improper,” she said to Con, joining him outside.

“Almost certainly.”

“What are you going to do with those figures?”

“If your brother takes up my offer, it can be his problem.”

The others emerged then, Major Hawkinville steering Amelia and de Vere like a teacher with young pupils. He gave Con and Susan a wry smile, but even so, she thought he assessed them.

He was one of those men, she decided, who couldn’t help puzzle out everything they came across. She gathered, from things Con had said on the way to Irish Cove, that puzzling out things had been part of “the Hawk’s” work for the Quartermaster-General’s Department. Mostly he’d been engaged in the usual QM work—moving the army around efficiently and making sure it had the necessary supplies to live and fight with. He’d also, however, shown a gift for sorting out problems and investigating crimes.

A man like that would be bound to detect the feelings between them, she supposed. All the more reason for these to be their last days.

Lady Anne could be perceptive and intelligent too, and even if she did not see them together, others would.

Stories would weave from place to place and reach her eventually. They always did.

“Did inspiration strike?” Con asked his friend.

“No, but I didn’t expect it to. My method is the tedious accumulation of details. Eventually a pattern emerges that points to the solution.”

“You are assuming some sanity at work.”

‘True chaos is rare. Madmen have their logic and purposes, too.“

“If you insist. I give you command of this, Hawk.”

They all went up to the Wyvern rooms, Amelia exclaiming with delight at the gothic decor along the way. Yorrick the skeleton was a particular thrill.

At the sanctum door, Con took out his key, but it wasn’t locked. They entered to find Mr. Rufflestowe busily cataloguing. He looked considerably startled at the invasion, and Susan at least was startled to find him there. She’d forgotten all about him.

“We’re on a hunt, Rufflestowe,” Con said. “A legal document that the earl misplaced, probably in these rooms.”

“I have placed any papers I’ve found in the books on the desk, my lord, but none are legal documents. Most are scribbled notes, some are recipes.”

Con went over and looked quickly through them. “As you say.” He looked at the major. “What method do we use?”

“A systematic one,” Hawkinville said, eyes already stripping the room of secrets. “We have six people and four walls, a desk, and the rest of the space. You take the desk, Con—”

But Mr. Rufflestowe interrupted. “If you will permit, my lord, I will begin work on the books in the other room.”

Con’s brows rose, but he said, “By all means, but keep an eye open for a legal documents, or a place where one might be concealed.”

The curate left, and Con laughed. “I wonder what devilment he thinks we’re up to?”

“Here,” Susan pointed out, “devilment is not a word to be laughed at.”

“But laughter chases away the devil,” de Vere said.

“Five,” Hawkinville firmly interrupted. “Con, you should still take the desk, since there’ll be papers there to do with the earldom. The rest of us will take a wall each.”

Susan found herself with the door wall. That meant significantly fewer shelves to search, but even so, she was soon very weary of the painstaking business. She also wished she were back in her gray gown. Her hands and dress were covered with dust.

She glanced at Amelia and found her murmuring the odd comment to de Vere as she went through racks of scrolls, and laughing at his quiet replies. De Vere had the ingredients to explore, which he was thoroughly enjoying.

Con was sitting at the desk sorting papers into piles much as de Vere had done in the office, but when he looked up and caught her eye she knew it was not a task he enjoyed.

They shared a wry smile and returned to work.

Then the door beside her opened and Jane came in, her face disapproving as always. “A Mr. Delaney, milord,” she said, looking around the room as if they were a bunch of children up to no good.

Con rose. “Nicholas. Good, you haven’t missed the fun.”

“As bad as that, is it?” said the man who must be Nicholas Delaney, leader of the Rogues.

As introductions were made, Susan studied him with interest. He was handsome in a casual style. Even his blond hair had a softer tone than de Vere’s, and looked as if it was barbered only when he thought about it.

She remembered being intrigued by Con’s stories of him. He had almost hero-worshiped him, though it hadn’t been expressed as such. His name had simply come up a great deal, with many sprinklings of “Nicholas says.”