The bull pawed the earth. Its breath emerged in angry snorts. Cornwallis edged closer, slinking on his belly. The bull charged, sliding his horns beneath the dog. Cornwallis flew into the air. The crowd gasped. Handlers ran to break the force of the dog’s fall. Dazed, Cornwallis shook his head and staggered to his feet.
The crowd cheered, though Elizabeth was sickened by the entire business. Was she the only one who found such sport cruel? She felt alien to those around her, alien to their values and perceptions and the world they inhabited.
I don’t belong here. But where do I belong?
The dog darted in, catching the bull’s dewlap. The bull roared and twisted and kicked, breaking free. He charged forward until he reached the end of his tether. His head snapped back, and he slammed to the ground.
Elizabeth’s hands balled into fists. How brutal we all are, she thought, looking away from the bull, now bellowing in rage and pain. But what could one expect from a society that considered public hangings entertainment? Reluctantly, she focused on the ring again.
The bull rocked his head from side to side. Blood dripped from his mutilated dewlap.
Today we watch a bull bleed. Soon it will be Rand.
But Rand and his companion were long gone.
The crowd screamed further encouragement at the dog, who had once again attached himself to the bull’s throat. The bull tossed his head upward. The dewlap tore. Cornwallis tumbled to the earth, then scrambled back to the safety of his handler.
“Well done!” Walter’s shout joined the crowd’s applause.
Elizabeth raised her eyes to the evening sky, gradually melding into twilight. The town of Middleham clung to a hillside. In the distance, she could see the remains of Middleham Castle. Once the castle had housed kings and queens, knights and ladies. Now townspeople exercised their horses across the surrounding plain while wild birds nested among its ruins. But tonight was a special time when special things happened. Would the ghosts of the dead meet for one last banquet?
She shivered, filled with the same apprehension she had experienced when she spied the praying monk. On tiptoe, she spoke against Walter’s ear. “I am going for a stroll, my lord, and shall meet you later.”
“I shall count the minutes, my dear,” Walter said, but his gaze remained riveted on the ring, where a second dog had just been loosed on the bull.
As Elizabeth made her escape, she saw a full moon—lush and golden—inch above the moors. The air was warm and smelled strongly of wood smoke. Nightingales called from the darkness of the copses while insects whispered.
Midsummer’s Eve was believed to be a time when restless spirits walked the earth. On the hillsides, bonfires had been lit to hold them at bay, and young men made a game of leaping across the edges of the flames. She strolled among the revelers, stopping every once in a while to scrutinize the foot races and wrestling matches. She watched the husbands who smoked their pipes and passed around bottles of gin. She watched the wives who gossiped and, at the same time, watched their children. She envied the lovers who drifted toward the privacy of hedges.
A fiddler began to play. Couples joined hands and circled the bonfires. The tempo of the music increased. Spectators stomped their feet and clapped their hands. The dancers whirled, faster and faster, keeping time to the screech of the fiddle. The bow ran up and down the strings—wailing, beckoning, threatening, promising.
As the firelight shimmered off sweaty faces, muscular arms, bare chests, and flat stomachs, Elizabeth ached for her own man. Not any man. One man.
Where are you, Rand? she silently pleaded, watching sparks explode heavenward where they soon disappeared into liquid blackness.
“’Tis a night made for love,” a man whispered.
Elizabeth turned in surprise. “Rand! Are you real, or am I imagining you?” She traced the muscled ridges of his chest, then quickly dropped her hands, as if she had just encountered the bonfire’s flames. “You certainly appear solid enough, but what are you doing here? Why haven’t you left the Dales?”
“My partner saw fit to stay a while longer. I’ll be meeting him later, at midnight. Then we shall leave straightaway for Scotland.”
Elizabeth nodded. “Midnight. The hour when the veil is lifted between this world and the other. Be careful. You might meet a parade of ghosts on your way to Scotland.”
“You speak nonsense, Bess.”
“Yes. We are rational people and such things do not happen.” She looked around, afraid someone might be eyeing Rand with suspicion, but they were in a secluded spot, surrounded by prickly hedges. Rand must have seen her earlier and followed.
“I’ve not been noticed,” he said, indicating his garments.
I would notice you, she thought. So would any other right-minded lass.
Despite his clothes, his bearing was every bit as proud as an aristocrat’s. His stance was straight and tall. Had his solid chest been clad in armor, it would have stopped a dozen arrows. The moonlight flashed over his hair, causing it to shine like polished onyx. Long, thick strands fell below his broad shoulders.
The butt of a pistol had been thrust into the belt of his breeches, so she smoothed his shirt over it. “I had to bury your blasted coin purse, Rand. The jewelry was useless to me. Lord Stafford lists all stolen goods in the paper, which means every pawnbroker has a description.”
“Is that why you’re angry with me?”
“I’m not angry.”
“Yes, you are. Otherwise you would not have been Stafford’s companion at the bull baiting. I thought you hated him.”
“I don’t hate him. He’s slimy, insignificant, and I pity him. Nevertheless, I agreed to this engagement months ago.”
“That strikes me as a feeble excuse. What did you and Stafford talk about, Bess? Did you mention me? Did you tell him who I am? Have you betrayed me?”
The accusation cut between them. Betrayal. For long moments, Elizabeth found it impossible to speak, let alone formulate a response. “I would sooner die than conspire against you,” she finally said.
She saw him turn away and run his fingers through his hair. His fingers were long and blunted on the tips. He had strong, callused hands, hardly the hands of a gentleman. Those hands and fingers would feel rough against her skin.
“Take me with you,” she blurted.
Even as she spoke, she knew the impossibility of her demand. She must sort out her father’s financial difficulties. The eight hundred pounds from Charles Beresford would arrive any day. Then she and the barristers and the note holders must begin the laborious process of settling the Wyndham accounts. If she left, her father would lose everything. There was also the matter of the final installment of Castles of Doom. Soon it would be published with all the attendant obligations.
Yet none of that mattered, not when Rand stood beside her, so close his sleeve brushed her bodice.
“I must admit that I can think of far less agreeable companions,” he said. “But I cannot take you with me.”
“Why not?”
“For one thing, your reputation would be destroyed.”
“I don’t give a fig for my reputation!” The warmth of the night pressed upon her. The writhe of the fiddle coursed through her veins, like blood, like the pounding of her heart. “I insist that we run off together. Now! Tonight!”
“Bess, please listen. If we ran off together, eventually you would realize that your happiness lies in being wed to a country squire, surrounded by country children, growing stout and middle-aged in your comfortable country house.”
“No, Rand, I’ve never wanted that.”
“Occasionally, on a summer evening like this one, you might wonder what happened to me, but it will be an idle thought, soon gone.” He traced the outlines of her lips with a gentle finger. “’Tis the way it should be, Bess.”
Her throat ached from holding back forbid
den words, from wanting Rand and all the pleasures implicit in the night. “No, you’re wrong,” she whispered. “I would never stop wondering.”
“Never is a long time.”
“I refuse to spend my life concocting exciting lives for other people. I refuse to end my life drowsing over an almanac, my spectacles slipping from my nose, my gouty leg propped atop a stool. I don’t want to remember a Midsummer’s Eve long ago, when you and I chatted so politely about what can and cannot be.” The moon hung like a paper lantern beyond their heads, beyond the leaping flames of the bonfires. “I crave different memories.”
“’Tis better thus.” Rand cupped her chin. “To think back upon me, as I will you. I shall be the man who never aged, the man who remained a mystery, so you can make me anyone you wish me to be. ’Tis better to imagine than to know.”
Rand was mistaken, thought Elizabeth. Sometimes her imaginings proved far worse than reality could ever be.
“If we really knew each other,” he continued, “you would accuse me of being cruel or indifferent, and I would nag you for not properly darning my hose. We would uncover all sorts of annoying truths and our love would slip into routine.”
“That’s not the real reason, Rand. You think to protect yourself by weaving a web of words. You fear me for other reasons, don’t you? I’ve sensed it from the very first.”
“’Tis not fear, Bess.” He slipped his arm about her waist. “’Tis all so complicated, what I think sometimes.”
The fiddle music ended abruptly, as if it had been severed by a sword. Elizabeth heard Rand’s breathing, and her own. The shadows wrapped them together like a cloak. She looked up into his eyes.
We have stood like this before, she thought, when the night was known by another name, when the night was called St. John’s Eve.
Suddenly, she began to weep.
“Ah, Bess, my bonny Bess.” Rand’s voice was tender. “Are those angry tears?”
“Yes. No.” Gasping for breath, she slipped from his arms to the ground below, landing on her knees.
Rand knelt in front of her, then pressed her face against the coarse wool of his shirt. “All right, my dearest love,” he crooned. “’Twill be all right. I’m here, Bess, and we have a few more hours.”
“I don’t want you for ‘a few more hours.’”
“Hush.” With his finger, he tilted her chin. “I cannot make love to a weeping woman, even if the moon causes her wet eyes to shine like all the stars in the heavens.”
“You have read my books,” she said with a sniff.
He laughed low in his throat. “I need no book to do this.” He removed her fichu, fumbling at her brooch, then thrust his warm hand inside her bodice.
She gasped as he caressed one full, aching globe.
“Nor this.” With his free hand, he unbuttoned her coat, then her waistcoat. “Nor this.” Drawing her breast from her shift, he lowered his head and began to tease her nipple with his tongue.
The fiddle started up again, and Elizabeth felt the blood course hotly through her veins. Gently pushing Rand’s face away, she settled prone upon the ground.
He removed her slippers and tossed them aside. Raising her skirt and petticoats up toward her waist, he jerked back in surprise. “Bess! You’re wearing breeches!”
“I rode to the peel tower.”
“My London ladies never wear breeches beneath their skirts.”
“I don’t want to hear about your other women, Rand. I shall be your first woman, just as you shall be my first man.”
“Am I not your first man?”
She felt a blush stain her cheekbones. “I was sixteen.”
“Ah, sixteen. I don’t think I was ever sixteen.”
“Of course you were. You must have been.”
“My logical Bess.” Without further ado, he removed her breeches, tossed his pistol toward her slippers, took off his own clothes, then straddled her hips.
His movements were so swift, she had no time to study the magnificence of his lower body. But it didn’t really matter because his lips were nuzzling her bosom again. She wove her hands through his hair and pressed his face closer, until his mouth was filled with her breast. She ached to fill her mouth with something, too. Releasing his hair, she grasped one of his hands and sucked his first finger.
To her surprise, his finger inside her mouth consumed her with such a craving that she felt her own warm moisture accrue, and she found herself digging her heels into the hard-packed earth. Urgently, she lifted her buttocks.
“Whoa, Bess. Let me move up a bit. There. Now we fit.”
They did fit! Elizabeth vaguely wondered how that was possible, especially since the passive organ inside her was growing thicker by the moment.
She panted and Rand’s finger slid from her mouth. He snaked his arm between their bodies. With that same wet finger, he rubbed her intimately, tenderly. Behind her closed eyelids, she saw bonfire flames and sparks exploding heavenward, until they disappeared into liquid blackness. Nay, not blackness. Color. All the colors of the rainbow.
The fiddle began a new refrain, a simple tune, but Elizabeth heard a different melody. It sounded like a lyrical thread woven through a tapestry, and it was the very same melody she had heard inside Lord Stafford’s music room.
Panic clawed at her heart. She knew Rand would take what he wanted of her, then leave her all alone. His voice would mock like a bow across a fiddle. His laughter would ring in her ears long after he had ridden away; laughter that conveyed a bitter triumph. It had always been thus.
Rand seemed to sense her fear. Slowly, he moved his hands over her body, caressing her as he would a terrified child. At the same time, he disengaged himself from her.
She calmed at his deft strokes. “I cannot do this,” she whispered, both relieved and frustrated by his withdrawal.
“’Tis all right, little one,” he soothed. “Put your clothes back on and I shall hold you in my arms.”
“But I want to know you!”
“You know me, Bess.”
“Aye. Perhaps I should have said I want you.”
“I want you, too, but not against your will.”
“’Tis my will that wants you,” she whispered, her whole body feverish with his touch. Despite his obvious control, she felt his erection rise, hot and hard against her belly.
Staring up into his face, she saw nothing more than tender concern. Why was she hesitating? She had loved this man from the moment they met, perhaps even longer. Trusting her panic would disappear, she guided him into the deepest recesses of her body. “I have no doubts,” she said, “none at all.”
Rand heard the conviction in her voice. He felt a rush of gratitude, then a rush of renewed desire. Murmuring endearments, cradling her backside, he moved within her until she whimpered with pleasure. And yet he still sensed a fearful reluctance.
Sweat beaded his brow. Sliding free, he rubbed the head of his erection against the cleft between her thighs.
At first Elizabeth lay motionless. Then, unable to endure the gratifying agony, she pushed his hand aside and impaled herself on his hardness. “I have no doubts,” she repeated, her legs lifting around him.
“Nor do I,” Rand whispered, as he felt her nails rake his back. He heard her sob his name. The anxiety had given way to eagerness.
Joyfully, he thrust again and again, deeper each time.
Elizabeth pressed herself more firmly into his straining groin, yet somehow he managed to insert his fingers and search out the tiny nub at the center of her desire. She caught her breath, but released it when her quivers coiled into one huge burst of uncontrollable ecstasy. She heard Rand moan, and she felt a new wetness, and she was vainly triumphant at her power to cause that wetness.
“Bess, my Bess,” he cried, pumping his hot offering into her body, bringing her to an apex of delirium tha
t was even more explosive than the one before.
She thought she couldn’t possibly endure a third tempestuous convulsion, but his kiss, as long and deep as his thrusts, provoked yet another satisfying spasm of completion.
Afterwards, fully clothed, she lay in his arms and listened to the fiddle.
Then she stared into his eyes, as blue as the North Sea. “Now you will have to take me with you,” she murmured.
He shook his head. “’Tis impossible.”
“But I have just given you my heart.”
“You have given me far more, Bess. You have given me memories, and dreams that won’t jerk me out of a restless sleep. However, you must return to Lord Stafford. I am certain he is desperately search—”
“No! I must stay by your side. Earlier, I wondered where I belonged. I don’t have to wonder anymore. I belong with you.”
Rand kicked at a clump of brush. “Do you believe what you read in the chapbooks, Miss Wyndham? Do you think the life of a highwayman is so damnably romantic? Think again. There is hunger and sleeplessness. Lurking behind every corner is the shadow of the hangman’s noose. If you want to ponder romance, Bess, visit Roova Crag.”
“But you don’t have to be a highwayman, Rand. You can—”
“Coper!” somebody shouted. “Help! I’ve been robbed!”
Other shouts joined the first. The voices came from the horse fair.
Elizabeth saw Rand’s face freeze into a mask of utter helplessness. “What is it?” she cried.
“My partner. I never should have left him. I love you, Bess. I always have and I always will.”
Rand turned and ran toward the noise. He saw Zak leap up onto a horse, kick at one man, and beat away at a second with the butt of his pistol.
“Bloody pimps!” Zak shouted.
Several more men surrounded him. Zak’s horse reared and flailed at the would-be captors, scattering them. Rand spotted Walter Stafford, standing off to the side, watching.
Stafford raised his arm and leveled his pistol.
“No!” Rand bounded forward and jostled Stafford’s arm. The pistol discharged harmlessly at the moon.
The Landlord's Black-Eyed Daughter Page 11
