The Dragon's Bride

by Jo Beverley

  No, dammit, he would not. He would not become the sort of man to harm weaker rivals over a woman.

  He took a moment to clear his head, then asked, “Are you willing to stay on until I make decisions about Crag Wyvern, Mrs. Kerslake?”

  He thought she would refuse, but then she said, “For a little while, my lord. I thought to begin the search for a replacement.”

  “Very well, but there is no need to seek a highly qualified woman. I do not intend to live here. I have a home elsewhere, and a family well suited there.”

  “A family?” The words were followed by a flush of color, and a quick, mortified lowering of her startled eyes.

  He could have crowed with triumph. That had stung her.

  By God, did she have hopes of entrancing him after all? He’d like to see her try.

  Oh, yes, he’d very much like to see her try.

  He’d also love to claim a wife and children and make her wounds bleed. If he’d a hope of maintaining the lie he might have done it, but it wouldn’t stick.

  “My mother and two sisters,” he said. “They would not like to move here.” But then he realized he had one blade that might cut deeply. “Also, I am to marry. Lady Anne would not be comfortable here.”

  You have a rival, Susan.

  A serious rival.

  What are you going to do about that?

  He had met Lady Anne only a few times in London, then spent four days at her father’s home, Lea Park. Nothing was settled, but he was thinking of making an offer of marriage. It wasn’t an outright lie, and Lady Anne was too good a weapon to leave in the scabbard.

  Susan was guarded now, however, and little showed, though her widened eyes gave him a bit of satisfaction.

  “It is not good for a house to stand empty, my lord.”

  “I hardly think Crag Wyvern will appeal to many tenants.”

  “Some people have unusual tastes, my lord,” she said with a slight, cool smile. “The earl had guests who liked Crag Wyvern very much indeed.”

  The smile was an act of pure bravery that made him want to salute her.

  Damnation, Susan. Why?

  “Then please supply Mr. de Vere with their names, ma’am. They may have first refusal. I know that leaving the chief house empty is always an economic hardship to an area.”

  Her brows rose, and her lips tightened, but it was a suppressed smile rather than annoyance, and it danced in her eyes.

  “You’re thinking of smuggling,” he said. “Yes, at the moment the area is prospering from the Freetrade, but the end of the war is bringing hard times everywhere. On top of that, the army and navy have men to spare to patrol the coasts. That, I assume, is how your father was caught.”

  Her smile fled. “Yes, though if the earl had raised a finger to help him, he’d not have been transported.”

  “Remarkable that the mad earl for once did the right thing. The law is the law, and must be upheld.”

  There, that was a clear enough message for her.

  “If there’s any sanity in Parliament,” he went on, “duties will be reduced and smuggling will cease to be profitable enough to justify the risks. The change won’t come today or tomorrow, but it’s on the horizon, Susan. People hereabouts need to remember that they once lived by farming, and by fishing for something other than barrels and bales.”

  “We know,” she said softly.

  “We?”

  “The people hereabouts.”

  That was not what she’d meant. She’d meant herself and the new Captain Drake, damn his black soul.

  And somewhere in that he’d called her by her name, which he’d resolved not to do.

  Con stood abruptly. “The tour of the house, Mrs. Kerslake.”

  She rose with controlled grace and led the way back into the faux-stone corridor, heading toward the kitchen area first.

  There weren’t many surprises. He’d roamed this house as a youth and discovered most of its nooks and crannies. One startling new feature was a kind of drawing room off the great hall, plastered and painted in the modern style, furnished with spindle-legged chairs and tables.

  “I persuaded the earl to have one room where conventional guests might feel more at ease,” Susan said, standing composedly beside him, smelling faintly of lavender soap. Not the right perfume for her at all. She should smell of wildflowers—and sweat, and sand.

  “Did he have any conventional guests?”

  “Occasionally, my lord. People will drop by.”

  “How alarming. Perhaps that’s why he constructed a torture chamber. I’ve known drop-by guests I’d like to hang in chains.”

  He intended it to be a joke but had forgotten whom he was with. When her eyes flickered to his, alight with startled laughter, he instinctively stepped away.

  “Now I suppose we must tackle the upper floors,” he said. “Including a more thorough check of the late earl’s chambers.”

  Her face was carefully blank as she turned to lead the way. “They are not particularly alarming, my lord, but in some disorder. . . .” From the back he saw her slight shrug, which drew his attention to her square shoulders and then to her straight back.

  Which he could remember naked . . .

  Breathe, dammit, breathe. And listen. She’d said something about disorder.

  “I remember he didn’t like to leave Crag Wyvern,” he said as she led the way up the wide central stairs. Her long back seemed to point down, down to the full curve of her bottom, which was bewitchingly at eye level. He sped up to climb the stairs alongside her, housekeeper or not.

  He ached for her now as if she were a fire on a freezing night in the sierra. But fire burned. Fire destroyed. Even a safe fire, built within stones, could harm. He’d seen frozen men ruin their hands and feet by trying to warm them too close to a hot fire.

  “He never left here,” she was saying. “Certainly not as long as I’ve been aware of his movements.”

  “Why not?”

  “He suffered from a fear of the outside.”

  “What did he fear out there?”

  For Con, the danger was all within.

  Could even fear enable him to resist the flaming power of Susan, especially if she was to stop, turn, approach, press, kiss, begin to shed her clothing . . . ?

  She stopped, turned. . . .

  “He had nothing real to fear as far as I could tell. He simply feared being outside these walls. He was insane, Con. It was mostly in subtle ways, but he was insane.”

  As insane as he was to imagine that Susan planned seduction! He gestured her to lead on and soon they reached the earl’s rooms. She unlocked a different door this time and they entered the bedroom, though it did not seem a precise term for the room he saw.

  The bed was there, huge, hung with faded red hangings that were actually moth-eaten to holes in places. It sat in a jumble of other furniture, however, as if the earl had tried to make this one room into a house.

  The red window curtains were drawn against the courtyard light, but the holes let in some light. As his eyes adjusted, he saw a large dining table with just one chair, an armchair, a sofa, a breakfront desk, and bookcases everywhere.

  There were more bookcases than would fit around the walls, so many were the freestanding, rotating sort. All were full, with surplus books staggering on top. Con hesitated to try to move through the room, and for other reasons as well. The smell of musty books and vaguely noxious things hung heavily in the gloomy air.

  Every surface was scattered with objects from riding crops to strange glass vials to stuffed animals. Con saw two human skulls, and not the neat, clean skulls found in anatomists’ collections. There were other bones, too, which he hoped were from animals. Some were small enough to even be leftovers from the earl’s dinners.

  Presumably the crazy earl hadn’t eaten the body of the crocodile, however, leaving only the glassy-eyed head, or the rest of whatever had owned the black and leathery claw hanging from the cobwebbed lamp near the desk. The upper rail of the b
ed boasted a fringe of other dark and shriveled things.

  Curiosity made him work his way through the room to have a closer look.

  “Dried phalluses,” she said. “From as many species as he could obtain them. His most prized collection.”

  Con stopped, then pushed his way to the window to drag open the heavy curtains. The right one tore in his hand, spewing dust and other things over him so that he coughed, and had to brush off his face.

  Through sunlight swarmed with motes he faced her. “Did you really think of joining him in that bed?”

  She stared at him like a marble statue, and for a moment he thought she’d say a cold yes. But then she said, “No. I never came here before becoming housekeeper.”

  It was damnably ambiguous. “Then why spend so many of your years here?”

  “I told you. I needed employment, and it wasn’t easy to find. What’s more, this was interesting employment. The earl was mad, but his madness was fascinating at times. After all,” she added with a wry twist of her lips, “how many women in England have such an extensive knowledge of phalluses?”

  It almost broke a laugh from him, and he looked away, at one of the two adjoining doors, the one that didn’t lead into the sanctum. “What’s through there?”

  “His dressing room. Theoretically.”

  Susan worked her way carefully through the clutter to open that door, feeling as if she were constantly working her way through chaotic and often rotten obstacles to try to reach some sort of understanding with Con.

  She could not recapture the past, but did they have to clash like enemies? Wasn’t there at least neutral ground?

  She stepped into the dressing room and stood aside for him. This room was blessedly clear of furniture other than two large armoires and the tin bathtub hung with draft-excluding curtains. The window curtains were open here, so the light was good.

  She watched his reaction.

  He stopped, staring at the figure hanging from the ceiling. But then he stepped forward and poked a finger into one of the flock-spilling gashes in the dummy.

  A smile fought to show on her lips. Against logic she was deeply proud of the cool nerves formed in him by war. Against logic, a deep ache near her heart told her love still lingered in her. Love like a smoldering fire, threatening to burst into flame again.

  Despite a growing longing to stay, she had to escape this place before she did something she would regret even more than she regretted the past.

  He turned to a frame on the wall holding a number of swords and touched the blade of one with a careful finger. “Not ornaments,” he remarked.

  “He told me he’d been a skilled fencer in his youth, but along with his fear of the outdoors, he feared anyone near him with a weapon. So he fenced with that.” She indicated the swaying figure that was suspended so that its feet almost touched the floor.

  “Hanged by the neck?” Con asked.

  She just shrugged.

  “What a way to spend a life. There’s that Roman bath, however. How does that fit in?”

  “He developed an obsession about physical cleanliness, and would spend hours in the tub. Then he had the idea of the larger one. He decided physical cleanliness was the key to a long life and good health, and also to fertility.”

  “Zeus, that’s enough to give a bachelor a distaste for bathing.”

  Their eyes met for a startled moment. She knew he too was thinking of the risk they’d so thoughtlessly taken eleven years ago.

  Chapter Eight

  “I was young and foolish,” he said, “and never gave the matter a thought. I hope . . .”

  She wished she weren’t blushing. “Of course not. There would have been hell to pay.”

  It was a delicate subject, but the wash of heat running through her skin was not only from that. Finally they were really talking about the past.

  “That’s what I supposed.” He looked at her a moment longer and she held her breath, hoping for something that might weave a thread of connection, but then he looked around again. “Why haven’t these rooms been put into better order, Mrs. Kerslake?”

  She suppressed a sigh and regrouped. “Anything likely to turn to slime has been thrown away, my lord. And of course they were inventoried. But apart from that, the earl stated in his will that everything was to be left for your disposal.”

  “I hadn’t realized quite what that meant. Very well, dispose of that figure for a start.” He strode to the armoires and threw open the doors to reveal a collection of long robes. The drawers, she knew, contained a few suits of clothing, none younger than ten years.

  “And get rid of this lot,” he said. “Give them to the vicar for the poor if they’re any use.” He walked back into the bedroom. “Have the extra furniture moved out of here. Is there still empty space in the floor above?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Then put it up there.” He looked at the bed. “Get rid of that. Burn that stuff hanging around it. And where the devil did he get those skulls from?”

  “I don’t know, my lord.”

  “I’ll talk to the vicar about decent interment. And about whether any graves have been disturbed around here. All these books can go to the library, though de Vere had better check to see whether there’s anything extraordinary about them.” But then he frowned. “He has enough to do. Is there someone else in the area who could organize and evaluate those texts?”

  “The curate is a scholar and would welcome the extra income,” she said, enjoying seeing Con take command and issue crisp orders.

  She might have enjoyed seeing him in battle except that it would have killed her, moment by moment, to watch him in danger. Bad enough to have known he was at war, to pick up each newspaper fearing to see his name.

  She hadn’t been able to help following Con’s career through Fred Somerford. He’d entered the infantry. He’d made lieutenant, then captain, and once been mentioned in dispatches. He’d been at Talavera and wounded at the taking of San Sebastian—

  Wounded!

  —but not seriously.

  He’d changed regiments three times to see more action.

  Trying to pretend only polite interest, Susan had wanted to scream, “Why? Why not stay safe, you stupid creature?”

  Her Con, her laughing gentle Con, had no place in fields of cannon fire and slaughter.

  Yet it had made him the man she saw today. . . .

  He was opening and closing drawers in the desk, glancing at the contents. “The curate had better go through everything,” he said. “In fact, perhaps you shouldn’t get rid of the bed. Just the hangings and mattress. There’s a dearth of money in the coffers, so I can’t afford the grand gesture of throwing away solid furniture.”

  Susan worked at keeping a bland expression but was jabbed by guilt. She remembered Con saying years ago that his branch of the family was the poor one. It had sprung from the first earl’s younger son, and what modest wealth the Sussex Somerfords had accumulated had been wiped out by royalist sympathies during the Civil War. Since then they’d lived comfortably enough, but more as titled gentlemen farmers than as members of the aristocracy.

  Times were hard for farmers now, however, even gentlemen farmers, and the old earl had run the earldom’s coffers almost dry with his crazy pursuits. And she must try to take what little coin might be left. . . .

  One idea stirred. “What of the contents of his sanctum, my lord? The . . . specimens and ingredients. I believe some of them are valuable. Certainly the earl paid a great deal for them.”

  He looked at her. “So I shouldn’t consign them to the fire? Hell. Is there an expert nearby who might be willing to organize the sale of them?”

  “The late earl dealt with a Mr. Traynor in Exeter. A dealer in antiquarian curiosities.”

  “Is that what they call them? Well, waste not, want not. Give the details to de Vere and he’ll summon Traynor. And the various peculiar objects in this room might as well be put in the sanctum for his assessment. Perhaps croco
dile heads have mystic powers. We wouldn’t want to deprive the world of such valuable artifacts, would we?”

  A smile was fighting at her lips as she glanced at the withered objects hanging around the bed. “And those?”

  “By all means.”

  But then he worked his way over to a sideboard and gingerly extracted something from under a pile of old magazines. It was a pistol. He carefully checked it, then tipped something out. The powder in the firing pan, she assumed.

  He turned to her. “He feared invaders?”

  “I don’t know, but he liked to keep in practice.”

  “What did he practice shooting on if he never went out?”

  “The birds in the courtyard. He was quite good.”

  He turned to look out at the courtyard. No birds were flying now, but the busy chirping and twittering was audible. “Not so safe after all,” he murmured, and she wondered what he meant.

  He put down the pistol and headed so quickly for the door that he bumped into a set of rotating shelves, sending it spinning and books tumbling.

  “Hell!” He stopped to rub his thigh.

  She hurried over to pick up the books, but he said, “Leave them,” and continued out into the gloomy corridor.

  She followed, wondering what was suddenly so wrong.

  “How many keys are there?” he demanded.

  “Just two. Mine and the earl’s, which should have been sent to you.”

  “A large bunch of keys, yes. I thought they were symbolic.” He pulled the door shut. “Lock it. We’ll let this Traynor loose on all of it before touching anything.”

  As she turned the key in the lock, he spoke again, however. “Are there anymore firearms in there, do you think?”

  “I believe he had a pair.”

  She saw him brace to return to the room, and then give up the idea. “Before Traynor arrives, I’ll have Pearce check the room for danger. No need to accompany him, Mrs. Kerslake. You can trust him with the key.”

  They were back to formality, when for a moment back there it had slipped. “Very well, my lord.”

  Then he said, “You’d have married him to become Lady Wyvern?”