With This Ring

by Celeste Bradley

  In fact, she was astonishingly good-natured toward him for at least an hour after their departure. At first he’d welcomed the respite from her sharp tongue. Then he began to worry. Sweetness and courtesy were not natural states for her. She must be feeling the strain by now.

  He became convinced that danger was nigh. She could blow at any time.

  * * *

  In a house in a once respectable, now genteelly shabby neighborhood in London …

  Time for breakfast. Lysander Worthington sat up in his bed, where he’d been lying fully clothed. As usual, sleep had eluded him, so he’d stared at the cracks in the stained plaster ceiling all the long hours of the night.

  He’d had a long hard ride home yesterday from Shropshire, all night and all day, slowed by pounding storms and hock-deep mud. His mount was the second-best horse in the family, but even a fairly decent-quality creature could not slog home any faster than that.

  He ought to be weary, he supposed. He sat on his bed and waited, trying to feel weariness. He felt nothing much at all.

  He rose to his feet and reminded himself to join his family downstairs.

  Most of the time, using his own gray-washed memories, Zander tried to be a good brother and a good son. The only problem was, it would have helped if he could actually be a good person first.

  He didn’t feel like a human person. Not a real, warm, flesh-and-blood, feeling, thinking, reasoning being of the human persuasion. He’d been one before and he remembered that once, he’d been just like everyone else, a real man.

  Now he was more like a reflection of one in a smoke-darkened mirror, or a crisp shadow on a sunny morning—the outline upon the ground complete, but with nothing but black inside.

  Everything looked fine on the outside. Even he could see that in his looking glass. He breathed, he walked, he ate, sometimes, and on rare occasions he even slept. His oldest brother took him to a tailor, so his prewar clothing looked as if it belonged to him, the postwar Zander.

  Yet there was no denying that something was wrong. He was broken, damaged, probably forever. He felt as though, if someone cut him open, they would find cables and pulleys instead of blood and muscle. He felt as dry and dark inside as a long-neglected attic room—empty but for the leftover possessions of past existence, worn and covered in dust.

  How could he even begin to fill that empty room? How did one refurbish a vacant heart?

  The stairs led down. He went down.

  In the sunny, shabby breakfast room, he found his eldest brother, Daedalus, along with his younger brothers Castor and Orion, bolting down breakfast and discussing the journey ahead. Ah yes, Elektra’s rescue.

  Pausing, Lysander tried to recollect the atypical urgency that had led him home at a gallop to report his sister’s actions to the family. It had seemed very important at the time, so he’d pushed himself and his horse with single-minded purpose.

  He remembered everything that had happened, of course. It was the emotional content of the events that had drained away too quickly, like water on sand.

  He did not speak or make a sound, but abruptly all eyes turned to gaze at him standing in the doorway of the room. From his vague and dreamy parents to his intensely vibrant youngest sister, Atalanta, those eyes asked him a question. Even his new sister-in-law, Miranda, gazed at him as if looking for something in him.

  Don’t bother, he wanted to say to them. You won’t find anything. I am an unoccupied husk, wearing tailored clothes. Of course, he said nothing. He never did. Nonetheless, they all seemed to believe he was better, because he hardly ever shouted out in the night anymore.

  He couldn’t remember feeling that nightmare horror. He couldn’t even remember why he’d cried out, except for a nauseating sensation of falling that sometimes still interrupted his infrequent sleep.

  He missed Elektra’s presence. Her determined focus and brisk assertiveness always made him feel as though she made up for any lack in him. Add in her irritable, silent compassion and he knew that with her, he need not pretend to be a person, or brother, or son. When he was with his bossiest sibling, he simply did as he was told, relieved from the strain of thinking for himself. He was ill equipped for that, what with his dusty-attic mind.

  Unfortunately, it seemed that Elektra was not as sensible as he’d believed her to be. Now he’d helped her do something that Daedalus and the others—well, mostly Dade—thought was odd or unsafe or appalling in some way.

  Zander knew that what he and Elektra had done was wrong. He just wished he could remember why it was wrong.

  Miranda looked the most worried. Well, she was somewhat new to the family and therefore still fairly normal. Cas looked unhappy about leaving his pretty wife behind in her condition but otherwise not so worried about Elektra herself. Orion looked as though he were considering the radial symmetry of sea urchins or some such thing. Zander knew that Orion’s perpetual distraction was nothing like his own broken speechlessness. Orion had a whole mind, a very fine one—one much too busy with important thoughts to be fully engaged in silly matters such as paltry runaway sisters.

  Little Attie gazed up at Zander with narrowed green eyes. At thirteen years of age, Atalanta was a spindly creature made up mostly of freckles and iron will. Out of all of the family, Zander rather thought Attie understood him the best. Attie was broken, too, in her way. She had no concept of the rules of right or wrong that applied to the world outside these walls—or if she did, she frankly chose to ignore them.

  Zander knew the rules as well. There was nothing wrong with that part of his memory. He just couldn’t remember why they were supposed to be so important.

  Dade shoved a last bite into his mouth and stood, still chewing. “Come on, you lot,” he said to his brothers. “The mounts I’ve rented should be here by now.” Daedalus had a horse of his own, a fine spirited black named Icarus, of course.

  Zander’s horse, a brown gelding that he’d acquired, didn’t strictly belong to him in the usual sense of ownership, but no one else had seemed to want it so he’d untied it from the post in front of the military hospital on the day he decided to depart from it and ridden it home.

  The stolid brown beast had no name at all. It breathed, it ate, it trotted on his wordless command. It was enough for Zander.

  He hadn’t eaten, though no one seemed to notice anything different about that. His horse had been fed. That was likely good enough for Zander’s purpose. Though the both of them had just ridden into London the afternoon before, the sun was barely up before they joined the others and rode out again. The horse seemed rested enough, so Lysander didn’t complain.

  Complaining required talking—and it also required giving a damn.

  Zander had mostly forgotten how to do either one.

  Mrs. Philpott scuttled into the breakfast room. “They’re here, missus! They’re home!”

  * * *

  The city grew around them as they neared the center. Low buildings turned to high ones, scarce houses became attached rows. The noise of a thousand souls and their doings began to hammer at their ears, causing them to raise their own in response.

  The city. Aaron had intended to avoid London entirely. So, of course, the dangerous Misses Worthington needed to be returned to London. He slouched down on Lard-Arse, pulled Hastings’s battered hat low over his face, and hoped for the best. This had been the location of the worst of his youthful offenses. The throbbing heart of Society—and worse. A restless and bored young man, with a long and powerless heir-hood before him, could find plenty of mischief with which to occupy his senses.

  He had, indeed he had. Now that past weighed upon him like a millstone strapped to his back.

  See her home, then be on your way.

  Still, he couldn’t keep his mind off the puzzle that was Elektra Worthington.

  Aaron had learned through very difficult years of trial and error never to judge by appearances, first in his error-filled youth, then later as he’d tried so hard to rebuild his character and regain h
is honor.

  Along the way he had come to understand that heroic-looking fellows could be the greatest cowards, and sweet, demure ladies could vindictively destroy one’s life with a single word. In the end, he’d learned to keep to himself but for a few worthy companions, carefully chosen not for their rank or wealth, but for their fine deeds. Even rascally, gutter-born Hastings had shown Aaron moments of outstanding valor and a hidden streak of gentlemanly decency—at least, on rare occasions.

  Actions told the truth, as outward show did not, and there was surely no certainty to be found in anyone’s idle words!

  So what did he know of Miss Elektra Worthington? From beneath the brim of his hat, he studied her straight back as she sat beside her cousin driving the pony cart. Her bonnet hid her golden hair and her astonishing face from him, making his task a bit easier, although every swaying motion of the cart draped her gown across her tiny waist and rounded hips—thank goodness the low seat-back hid her bottom from his view!

  With determination, Aaron cleared his mind. Yes, she was most pleasing to the eye. So was a fine sunset or a well-formed horse. Setting aside that delicate beauty and mouthwatering figure, looking past her fine gown and polished manner, what did he see? What had she shown him through her actions?

  Determination shone from her, he decided. Her goals might be superficial and social-climbing, but there was nothing short of pure Sheffield steel composing that poised, erect spine. He recalled the way she’d urged him not to make her brother share in her punishment. Her family needed her, she’d claimed. That remained to be seen, but he sensed that her kin loyalty was strong, though she claimed to be weary of drowning in brothers. She obviously possessed an intelligent mind, though woefully lacked in good judgment—for had she not impulsively kidnapped a man?

  Then the way she’d pulled herself from the river and immediately turned to her cousin’s rescue. Courage, she clearly had in bucketloads. Dangerous amounts, actually, in one so sadly misdirected.

  Brave, clever, strong-minded, and loyal. What a pity she was also utterly selfish and shallow, not to mention entirely mad!

  Aaron did not really notice when his mind went back to admiring the sweet, female curve of hip and waist. When he tapped his heels to his mount to come alongside the cart so that he could catch a glimpse of joggling buxom bounty as well, his consciousness simply refused to acknowledge the action. He was simply riding along, minding his own matters, was he not? Nothing wrong with that.

  What might have alarmed him more than recognition of his harmless voyeurism, had he only realized it, was that he paid no attention whatsoever to the jiggles and joggles of the equally comely and far more sane and sensible Miss Bliss Worthington!

  “We’re here! At last!”

  Chapter Twelve

  Elektra hesitated just outside her front door. Home. The exterior did not stand out from the others on this block. Fine houses, gone a bit less fine over time, yet still mostly respectable. The interior, however …

  As if she’d run through the house at full speed, flashing through her mind came the vision of what lay in each room … room after room of cluttered creative madness and random odds and bits of whatever someone had picked up and put down with no discernible rhyme or reason. Piles of books lay everywhere, even infesting the front entry hall, here and there, in the corners and on the lower shelf of the side table, creeping in like unwanted dogs vying for a bit of human attention. On the wall above that table hung a mirror, gone dotted and grainy with time and damp and hanging very obviously askew because that best covered the gaping hole in the plaster caused from someone leaving a Chinese rocket where six-year-old Attie could reach it. The resulting fire hadn’t been much ado, but the crack in the wall ran vertically above the mirror like a sapling, branching out when it reached the ceiling.

  Just like the manor, Worthington House in London was a ruin. Still standing, but battle-scarred and tattered by the endless, eternal, explosive Worthington search for amusement.

  Searing self-consciousness flooded her belly.

  How we must look to him! Her throat was tight. On the outside, however, Elektra knew she had not so much as flinched. Her chin remained high, for though she cringed inwardly she would not show it for an instant. Worthingtons might not be able to lay claim to much, but they did have their pride.

  Belatedly, she also wondered what Bliss would think of it all. Of course, Bliss was allegedly a Worthington, so perhaps she would think nothing of it at all.

  Then the door opened and the Worthingtons flowed out. Amid the babble, they were all three swept back in, pulled by the tide of family ties.

  * * *

  Aaron had never seen the like of Worthington House in his life. At first it seemed cluttered. Upon closer observation, it seemed insanely cluttered.

  There were books, upon stacks of which stood works of art from thirty different cultures, strange bits of machinery, books, a few taxidermy animals whose moth-eaten fur had seen better decades … and then there were some more books.

  The only thing missing was possibly a little more clutter.

  He turned to his companions in astonishment. Bliss smiled serenely at him, then stepped confidently into the hall. “Greetings, cousins.”

  Elektra brushed past him to embrace the woman standing to greet them. Aaron had not even spotted her in the chaos, but he could now see clearly see that she had once been a great beauty herself. Elektra swept the silver-haired woman into her arms and kissed her on the forehead.

  “Oh, Mama,” she said with a laugh.

  The woman definitely resembled Elektra—an older, shorter, rounder version of Elektra with hair of the finest silver instead of the finest gold.

  Miss Elektra Worthington would age beautifully. Some lucky man was going to have a real beauty to look at for the rest of his natural life. Perhaps it would make up for living with a madwoman.

  Bliss floated forward serenely and held her hands out to the older woman who must be Mrs. Worthington.

  “Auntie Iris,” Bliss smiled and bent to give her aunt a kiss.

  The entry hall began to fill up. There were a bewildering number of Worthingtons. There were tall ones, and short ones, and dark ones, and light ones. There were young ones and old ones, and strange, ethereal elfin ones.

  A stout, grizzled man stepped forward to take Bliss’s hand. He bowed deeply and formally, as if to royalty. “And with her breath she did perfume the air: Sacred and sweet was all I saw in her.” He straightened, then grinned and smacked a kiss upon the back of her hand. “Hello, Bunny!”

  Mrs. Worthington looked on benignly. “The Taming of the Shrew, Act One, Scene One,” she informed Aaron in a confidential tone. “Isn’t he marvelous?”

  Aaron was careful not to betray any sign of his classical education. “Them’s pretty words, right enough, missus.”

  Then Mr. Worthington turned to his missing daughter. With a big smile, he took her by the shoulders. “O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!” Then he pulled her close for a bear hug.

  Mrs. Worthington sighed in delight. “Romeo and Juliet, Act One, Scene Five!”

  Aaron nearly choked. Fiery Elektra was no sweet Juliet!

  In the meantime, more and more Worthingtons were popping up. One by one they dashed into the room, from the hallway, down the stairs, one even coming in the front door—magically appearing as if on command. Elektra was beaming, and exasperated, at the chaos and the noise and the shouted questions and the way her little sister was dangling on her skirts as if she were half her size.

  Aaron could not take his eyes from her shining face. He’d seen her by lamplight and daylight, prim as a schoolteacher and muddy as a farmer.

  Now, at home, laughing aloud, surrounded by the madness of her silly crazy family, she was truly alight.

  “You are a tall piece of handsome.”

  Aaron looked down at the stately but odd Mrs. Worthington. She gazed at Aaron coyly and whacked him on the arm with the fringe of the trailing shawl
she wore. Without taking her eyes from him, she waved a beckoning hand over her shoulder.

  A tall, dark bloke approached. He attended his mother’s call without objection, but with a look of distant tolerance that said he’d rather be somewhere else.

  “Orion,” Mrs. Worthington stated. “He will pen great works in science. Mr. Hastings brought your sister and cousin home.”

  The fellow shook Aaron’s hand, then slipped away as another young man approached, this one accompanied by a lovely lady who seemed to be expecting. “Hullo, I’m Cas, this is Miranda. Thanks for hauling Ellie back.” He rolled his eyes. “You wouldn’t believe what we thought she’d gotten up to!”

  His pretty wife smiled at Aaron even while planting an elbow in her husband’s midriff. “You are most welcome, Mr. Hastings.”

  Aaron figured he was in for more introductions, although it seemed that no one meant to introduce him to a certain familiar-looking fellow who kept to the background. That would be Lysander, of the thudding fist and poor judgment. Aaron shot the man a narrow glance, but Elektra had mentioned that her brother spoke little. It seemed that his Hastings façade would hold up well enough in this household.

  “This is our youngest.” Mrs. Worthington waved a long, lacy handkerchief, and a little girl stepped forward.

  Aaron gazed down at the scrawny creature that stood before him. She had amber hair that coiled in tight ringlets like her father’s where it wasn’t braided into strange random locks. He was pretty sure there were feathers woven into the braids, and he only hoped they were not still attached to the birds. She was oddly garbed in a too-large dress, a too-small cape, and giant horseman’s boots as well, not to mention the arresting impression of freckles covering her nose, the chip in her front tooth, huge green eyes, and a set of cheekbones that would someday rival the greatest beauty in the land.

  “I am Atalanta,” the strange being stated flatly. “I’m dreadfully brilliant, but socially backward.”