The Courtship

by Catherine Coulter

  Spenser looked up. “That’s all of it. I think I got most of it right. Have you gotten it all down?”

  “Just a moment, a bit more. Now, let me take a few moments and copy down the original as well.”

  He watched her very carefully copy down the Old French. When she was finished, she looked up at him and shuddered. “I’m cold. It’s from the inside out. What can it mean?” He rose slowly, then gave her his hand. “Why was this with the leather scroll?”

  He just shook his head.

  “Where is the lamp? Why wasn’t the lamp here? Surely this Old French speaks directly of the lamp.”

  “Yes, it does. There is nothing else that fits.”

  “Then where is it?”

  “I begin to think that the Templar who gave King Edward the lamp presented it to him in the iron cask along with the leather scroll. I do not believe that anyone could have translated the scroll back then. I think that when the king decided to hide the lamp, perhaps at overwhelming urging from churchmen, he simply placed it back into its original cask, with the scroll, then buried it in the cave wall. He had someone write on this ledge—giving some sort of explanation, some sort of reasoning.”

  “But none of it makes any sense. It seems it was just as great a mystery to them as it is to us.”

  “Possibly. But perhaps they did understand a bit of it, enough to be frightened of it. Who knows? It is said that the medieval mind was a labyrinth with more twists and shadows than we modern folk can begin to comprehend.

  “Or, Helen, perhaps someone found the lamp hundreds of years ago and simply removed it. He left the cask and the scroll behind because he perceived no value in them.”

  “Yes,” she said slowly, “that sounds reasonable.” She looked as if she would cry. “Then the lamp is gone, found by someone long ago, perhaps disposed of again, and now there is simply no trace of it.”

  “No, I could easily be wrong. The lamp could have been hidden elsewhere. Perhaps the scroll instructs that the lamp should be kept separate from it. That would mean, then, that someone did translate the scroll. If that is true, then the scroll will have to speak of it.” He saw that she wanted to believe him. He wasn’t at all sure what he himself believed at this moment. A riddle in Old French engraved on a ledge at the back of a cave. And out of the wall of that cave, just above that ledge, had fallen an iron cask that held a leather scroll with writing from before the birth of Christ.

  He was beginning to feel chilled, the damp of the cave burrowing through his clothes to his flesh. “We can’t believe anything just yet, Helen. There are a number of possibilities. We will discover the truth, I swear it to you.”

  “You are an excellent partner,” she said, and tried to smile.

  He dismissed the lamp from his mind and lightly cupped her cheek with his palm. “Three weeks ago, Miss Mayberry, I was quite happily absorbed in doing not much of anything, simply enjoying all those delightful little pleasures of life. Then I heard you speak of discipline to Alexandra at the Sanderling’s ball, and my life flew out of my control.”

  “Lord Beecham,” she said, all stern and hard, “I am the one who has been made love to six times in the past two days. Pray do not speak to me of life having flown out of control.”

  He laughed deeply, a black sound in the damp darkness that echoed like chortling demons around a midnight fire. When they reached the narrow mouth of the cave and stepped into the sunlight, he turned to her and wiped the dust from her face. “When I became your partner, I had not expected such adventure.”

  “I have a feeling,” she said slowly, staring at him, “that the adventure is just beginning.”

  They stood together for a moment on the promontory just south of Aldeburgh and stared up the long, narrow beach. The small cave was ten feet below them, a shadowed black mouth in the side of the sliding rubble of a cliff. It was a bit treacherous getting to it because of all the strewn rocks and loose dirt.

  “It’s the most beautiful place on the earth,” Helen said. The tide was rising, sending swirling waters to break and fan out higher and higher onto the dirty brown sand. Countless black rocks, piled atop each other or standing alone, were covered with sea lettuce, bright green beneath the bright morning sun overhead. There were scattered piles of driftwood with seaweed woven in and over the broken branches and stems, like tangled green ropes. Shallow tidal pools were filled with limpets, beadlet anemones, periwinkles, barnacles, and sponges, all clinging to the small rocks within the pool. Lord Beecham wondered which one Helen wanted to flow over his feet when she sketched him naked.

  Marram grass stuck up in thick clumps on low sand dunes, along with lady’s bedstraw and restharrow, pink and violet blooms that looked delicate but were as tough as a man’s mother-in-law. And the pink of those dainty blooms reminded him of Helen’s mouth, and so he looked at her mouth, all softly plump and pink, and he shook.

  Lord Beecham breathed in deeply and looked at the scores of birds, particularly the one sanderling who was just a bit slower than his brothers. On one of his races with the waves, he was going to lose. He watched and breathed in the smell of the sea, the drying seaweed, the scent of the wildflowers, and he didn’t look at Helen’s mouth.

  “Just look at the avocets,” Helen said, pointing to several birds sitting in among the bedstraw and restharrow. “Those long, skinny, black beaks can go very deep to stab food. See how they turn up at the end? And there are so many black-headed gulls here. Most of all I love to watch the sandpipers hopping along the sand, racing the water both in and out.”

  Somehow he wasn’t surprised. But he said nothing, just kept looking at all the birds. There were more kinds than he could begin to count, all of them hungry, all of them yelling, crying, squawking, yipping. He watched some small oystercatchers and gray plovers racing a fast incoming wave. The water feathered out more quickly this time than just the time before, and the sanderling he had been watching, lost the race. It got soaked and nearly tottered over.

  “My family home,” Lord Beecham said, “as I told you already, is Paledowns, near the coast in North Devon. You can stand on the cliffs there and look toward Lundy Island. There are more birds mating there than you can even begin to count. They cover the sky during the spring. Puffins—my favorite as a boy—and razorbills, and kittiwakes—ah, so many different kinds, all of them loud and rowdy. If they’re not shrieking at each other, they’re flying over anyone who chances to be outside, their noise deafening, and naturally you’re running for cover. It’s a fascinating time of year.”

  “I have never been to Devon. Where is Paledowns, exactly?”

  “Between Combe Martin Bay and Woody Bay, by the village of Bassett. The sea cliffs there about are covered with shags and cormorants. There are days I remember as a child when there were so many fulmars diving and whirling about overhead that you couldn’t see the sky. Just fulmars gliding and swooping about, and even when one flew away you couldn’t see the sky because another moved in to take its place.”

  She was looking at him as though he was a stranger to her. She said slowly, looking at his mouth—she didn’t know why, but his mouth pleased her—“I hadn’t imagined that you would be so familiar with birds and such.” She shrugged. “One thinks of a gentleman and one pictures a stack of playing cards, a bottle of brandy, and an unbuttoned waistcoat.”

  “And a red nose? Perhaps a woman bending over him, her breasts nearly falling out of her gown?”

  “It is the likeliest image.”

  He supposed that was fair enough. A man of his proclaimed habits wasn’t necessarily given much credit for having expanded horizons. “Helen, a man who is a noted lover can appreciate other things as well. Life is not all drink and playing cards and women’s soft flesh.”

  He had silenced her for the moment, he saw that, and it pleased him. He stared toward a small group of pink-footed geese who couldn’t seem to decide where to stay on the wet sand or soar up to the cliff top. Even geese had to have a leader, and so he said, �
��A woman, even a strong woman like you, Helen, needs a man to assist her over the cracks in the roads of life.”

  She stared at him, her head cocked to one side.

  He pointed upward. “See the geese, now soaring upward in a nearly perfect formation? Well, they need a leader to get anywhere at all. So does a woman. She needs a man. That’s what I meant.”

  “If I could fly,” she said, shading her eyes with her hand and staring after the geese, “I wouldn’t need anything at all. Even without a leader, I would be free.”

  He looked again at her soft mouth and said, “Perhaps. To be truthful, a man prefers to be in bed with a woman rather than philosophizing about geese needing leaders or studying the eating habits of the leach’s petrel. However, when the man—such as myself—is very intelligent, then he can do many things at once, all of them well. Freedom for a woman, Helen, is being led by a man like me.”

  Helen bent down, pulled up a yellow-horned poppy, and threw it at him.

  He caught the small flower, shook off the dirt, and brought it to his nose. “Not much smell. Time for more truth—I would rather be breathing in your scent while I’m kissing your white belly.”

  She turned away from him, and he imagined quite correctly that she wanted to smash him but good, but she controlled herself, saying as she pointed, “Pay attention, Lord Beecham. The land flattens out south of us. There are salt marshes that are covered with waders at low tide, estuaries that snake in and out of the low-lying land, very bad-smelling stretches where the water is trapped for long periods of time. I doubt you would appreciate that particular scent. But along here we have a more interesting coastline.” She opened her arms wide. “I own a lot of this land.”

  It wasn’t worth much, he thought, but he wouldn’t mind owning it either, just for its incredible beauty. He said, “This land is like the biblical lily of the valley, Helen, it provides neither food nor a way to grow it. There is no arable farmland, no place to build homes, not even decent grazing for sheep or cattle, just the vast stretches of marram grass, pink sea bindweed, and dunes covered with yellow evening primroses.”

  “I bought it because I know the lamp is here, somewhere.”

  He nodded. Perhaps he would have done the same thing. The only thing was, anyone could come on this land and search. There were no fences, even though fences wouldn’t make any difference to a treasure hunter.

  “There are even some rich pink marsh orchids sticking up here and there,” Helen said. “You wouldn’t enjoy it if I threw marsh orchids at you. But mainly, as you can see, there is just the harsh green shingle flora covering most everything. Yes, this is my biblical lily of the valley. I do not expect it to return anything to me, except the lamp.”

  “A rather large expectation.”

  “Just the search makes it worth it,” and he believed her. Actually, it would make it worth it to him as well. He watched her reach down and snap a flower off its stem. “It’s wild chamomile,” she said, straightening. “Just breathe in the smell of it, Lord Beecham. Mrs. Stockley makes a marvelous tea with it.”

  “The scent is not bad, but on the other hand, it’s not you.”

  Did her hand tremble at his words just a bit? Probably not. She said, “Lord Beecham, you will attend me. Now is one of those unexpected times in your life when you must attune your brilliant mind to matters other than carnal passions.”

  “You wish me to forget that soft white flesh behind your knees?”

  “You have never known the soft white flesh behind my knees.”

  “True, I’ve been too frantic, too crazed with lust, and thus neglected the less dramatic yet still quite delicious treats that you have to offer me. I will try to find more control the next time.” He took her hand and couldn’t help himself. He stared at her mouth. “But the problem, Helen, is that I want to be inside you immediately. I want to be so deep inside you that when you tighten around me, I feel like I will fly apart and there is no more wondrous thing in life to do than fly apart inside of you. And your long legs, Helen, around my flanks, squeezing me. And just before you scream your pleasure, I love to kiss that wild beating pulse in your throat.”

  “You are very fluent with words that create very vivid images, but I am not listening to you, Lord Beecham. The words you have just said have flown away on bird wings, thus, to me, they never even existed.

  “There will be no next time. I have given this a good deal of thought. You will be my partner, no more, no less. Anything else makes no sense. I am serious about this, Lord Beecham. Now, it is time to get back to Shugborough Hall. It is time for luncheon, then time for work.”

  He lightly stroked his fingers over her cheek, tucked a windblown piece of hair behind her ear, and leaned forward to touch his mouth to hers. It nearly undid him, but not quite.

  He drew back, smiled at her, patted her cheek, and whistled as he walked away from her.

  “You need discipline,” she called after him, her hair whipping into her mouth.

  He turned and gave her a long, thoughtful look. “Discipline, if dished out by an expert, is a very fine thing, Miss Mayberry. Perhaps I should reconsider having a competition with you. What do you think? Could you possibly devise anything close to what I eventually will do to you?”

  “You will probably be shot before that can happen.”

  He laughed and laughed. It was beginning to feel familiar to him now, this laughter thing. He rather liked it. It made his innards feel warm and somehow more connected to something outside himself. It brought that something closer to him, and whatever it was, he liked it.

  Helen prepared to leave him at the turnoff to Shugborough Hall. “I must find Walter Jones, the young man who will be marrying Teeny. Also, I must see that all my lads are doing their jobs correctly and that Mrs. Toop is controlling Cook and Gwen. I will be home soon.”

  “What if the lads are slackers?”

  “They will be sorry for it.” She paused a moment, then gave him a sloe-eyed smile that made him instantly ran dier than a goat looking at the first grass of spring. “They know all about punishments, Lord Beecham. It is rare that they would dare not pull their weight. It is only when there is a rumor about a new punishment that they do their jobs poorly just to see what it is.”

  His eyes nearly crossed. She gave him a little wave and rode Eleanor, snorting and flinging her head about, toward the west to Court Hammering. Her laughter floated back to him.

  “Wait,” he called after her. “I wish to visit this inn of yours.”

  14

  THE MARKET TOWN OF Court Hammering was just three miles east of Orford and two miles south of Shugborough Hall. Had there been any high promontories about, he fancied he would be able to see the sea. But the land was gentle rolling hills, thick stands of oak and maple trees, and stone fences older than the Druids.

  Court Hammering wasn’t a particularly beautiful old town, but it had an air of satisfaction and stolid durability, a lovely old stone church built from the local pale-gray stone, and a small green with a pond in the middle and at least three dozen birds of all sorts hanging about in the willow trees that hung over the water. Not a bad town, he thought, to nurture the mistress of discipline.

  Unfortunately, King Edward’s Lamp, the premier inn of Court Hammering, was currently overrun by a group of boisterous young men from Cambridge, here for a touted mill being held over near Braintree way. They were also here to drink themselves stupid in Helen’s taproom, something that would not have been allowed were Helen present.

  Lord Beecham saw the blood in her eyes as she walked into the inn. He was grinning from ear to ear. He couldn’t wait to see what she would do.

  The taproom was long and narrow, low-ceilinged, with heavy dark wooden beams, a highly polished oak floor, and a large fireplace with a wide stone hearth. There were four long tables with benches and three smaller tables with chairs and a row of windows across the back of the room. There was an open door on the far side of the taproom that gave onto the kitchen.<
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  It felt cozy and warm as a mother’s womb, safe from the dangers of the world, a man’s haven. The air was thick with the rich, yeasty smells of ale and baking bread.

  But what struck Lord Beecham when he stepped into that open doorway was the ear-shattering noise. When he had been at Oxford, had he made this kind of racket? Probably so.

  One young man was standing on top of a long table, singing at the top of his lungs, his shirt free of his breeches. Another young man was cursing at the barmaid while his friend was trying to pull her onto his lap and put his hand up her skirt at the same time. One very pale young man was lying on his face close to the table, perhaps unconscious. Dice were being thrown at another table. There would shouts of triumph, moans when the dice came up snake eyes, and the general wild-eyed fever of youth.

  In the short moment after Lord Beecham arrived in the doorway of the taproom, he would swear that it got nois ier.

  Any other woman in the world, and he would have ordered her to remain in the corridor while he dealt with the drunk young men. But it was Helen, and there wasn’t any other woman like her in the whole world.

  He smiled, folded his arms over his chest, and watched her stride into her taproom. By all that was good and right, he thought, she would look magnificent with a sword in her hand. But, truth be told, she didn’t need one.

  She went directly to the young man who was pulling the barmaid down onto his lap.

  Helen stopped directly in front of him.

  The barmaid, Gwendolyn, saw her first and yelled over the din of young male voices, “Miss Helen, help!”

  “I am here, Gwen.” She closed her hand over the young man’s shirt color and lifted him straight up. He dropped Gwen and gawked at the goddess who had him by the neck.

  “What—?”

  “You stupid young codfish,” Helen said calmly, jerked him off the bench and shoved him against the wall. She grabbed his neck in both hands and slammed his head back once, twice, against the wall. She quickly stepped back and watched him slide slowly to the floor, unconscious. She said to Gwen, who was straightening her apron and cap, “Go fetch the lads from the stable. We need to clean all these little giblets out of the taproom.”