The Irish Bride

by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

  He stood up abruptly, almost turning over his chair. He caught it, set it upright, and threw her a swift sideways glance as though wondering if she’d noticed his perturbation. “I’ll say good night.”

  “Good night, Nick.”

  “If you need anything in the night,” he said, after clearing his throat, “knock on my door.”

  “Which is your room?”

  He paused, out of all proportion to the question. Then he stepped to what she’d thought was a closed window curtain. Drawing back the swath of blue silk, he looped the heavily tasseled tie over a wall hook. Underneath the curtain was a six-paneled door that matched the door to the corridor.

  “This is mine,” Nick said. “Our rooms connect.”

  “Do they, now.”

  “Naturally, my mother and sisters assumed ... they made the natural assumption. You needn’t worry, Rietta. The door has a lock—on this side.”

  “Must I ask you for the key?” Rietta asked, holding out her hand.

  Nick tossed his head toward a delicate ladies’ desk against the same wall. “It’s in the top left drawer. You’ll have to get it out to let me through. And if I may have the loan of a candle? They weren’t expecting me to use the room tonight.”

  “Won’t the servants wonder if you use it?”

  “Let them. They’ll talk about us anyway.”

  The key was long and gilded, with a faded blue ribbon tied through the scrollwork at the top. Nick slipped it easily enough into the lock but, though he tried until the veins stood out on his twisted hand, he could not turn it. “Rusted through,” he said, stepping back.

  “Perhaps it needs oil.”

  “No doubt. It’s been a long time since these rooms were occupied. Mother left this one when she became a widow.”

  “I didn’t put her out? I wondered.”

  “She always planned to leave it when I married anyway. Of course, I have my father’s old room, but the bed’s too soft.... Listen to me run on. I forgot for a moment that you’ve no interest in my bed. Here, take the key and put it away and bury all my hopes of you coming through that door with it.”

  “Good night, Nick,” Rietta said, controlling her lips with effort. They so wanted to smile. “You’ll have to risk the hall.”

  “Good night,” he said again, but didn’t move toward either door. “I wonder if I may ask a favor, Rietta?”

  “Of course.”

  “May I... ?” He opened his arms stiffly, awkwardly, as if afraid of a rebuff.

  Rietta walked into his embrace. His arms closed about her, warm and strong. Nick made no advance. He merely held her tightly, his cheek resting atop her head. Her own arms were looped lightly about his waist, his warmth seeping through to her. She had not realized how completely chilled she was until he wrapped her up in his strength. Rietta closed her eyes, savoring the moment.

  They stood like that, their separate rhythms of breath mingling into one even pace, until the clock chimed softly. As though it awoke them from a spell, they stirred and parted in the same instant. Rietta felt him drop a kiss upon her hair before she opened her eyes to find herself alone. One candle was missing from a branch of three on the dressing table.

  Rietta had never known the pleasure of a simple, spontaneous embrace. Her father was not demonstrative with his children and her sister accepted the affection of others but offered little generosity in return. Was Nick’s the action of a generous man, giving comfort and warmth without expecting any recompense? She knew what she could give him in return.

  Nick’s arms around her had seemed to send a heavenly shaft of light flooding through her body. To be cherished like that was all she’d ever wanted. Rietta promised herself that she would prove to be worthy of Nick’s affection. She vowed that she would be an absolute saint. Not another word of recrimination for his actions tonight would ever pass her lips. After all, he had saved her from the fearsome fate that her father had threatened. The manner of her wooing may not have been all a girl dreams of, but at least she’d met Nick before she’d been forced into marriage.

  Whether it was exhaustion, chamomile tea, or simply a desire to escape into the relatively simpler world of dreams, Rietta fell asleep almost before her head touched the pillow. When she awoke, it was to a sensation that no time at all had passed.

  She lay on the bed, quite cold, the bedclothes tumbled and tossed so that hardly a corner covered her. Contrary to all training and habit, Rietta had only removed her gown and corset before falling asleep. She’d always despised sleeping in her petticoat, and thought it the epitome of vulgar laziness. This one time, she hoped that circumstances would plead for her before whatever judge punished lazybones. She would have changed had she not literally run out of strength and energy by the time she’d unlaced her gown and washed her face.

  At first, she attempted to pull the smooth linen sheet over her shoulder and retreat again into sleep. Yet it was not bodily discomfort that had awakened her. Something else had done that—a sound on the farthest shore of consciousness.

  A faint white light washed through the curtains. Rietta sat up, rubbing her forehead in an attempt to clear her head. She shuffled her feet across the carpet as she crossed to open the curtain. Was it dawn?

  Rietta blinked stupidly at the darkness beyond the window. Had she slept all day and into the following night? Or, horrible thought, had she hardly been asleep any time at all?

  The moon had to be riding the sky above the house, for there was milk-pale light everywhere, deepening the shadows to impenetrable depths but highlighting trees and the undulating ground. Rietta thought the view in daylight from this window must be remarkable both for beauty and tranquility. The colors of the flowers were all asleep under that bleaching light, but the beds looked well-filled and healthy.

  Rietta yawned and indulged in an ill-mannered scratch of her neck. She’d take a moment to change into something more seemly and then the world could just try to wake her. She started to untie her petticoat, then became aware of a strange sound.

  All the time she’d been gazing like a moonstruck ninny out of the window, this sound had been with her. Perhaps her neck had itched because of rising hackles.

  It was a voice, murmuring on and on, as ceaseless and as senseless as the waves tumbling onto shore. Was it Emma, dreaming of her false-hearted lover? Lady Kirwan, as troubled in sleep as in her waking?

  Rietta didn’t yet know enough about Amelia to hazard a guess over her secret sorrow. Advancing to the hall door, Rietta pulled it open as silently as possible and stood listening. Somewhere a clock was ticking, monotonous and reassuring. A skritching in the wainscoting told her that at least one mouse was keeping its tiny nose to the grindstone. But she didn’t hear the faint rumble of an indecipherable voice.

  She drew back into her room and instantly dismissed the idea of ghosts. Nick would have told her if Greenwood was haunted. But the prickly feeling on the back of her neck wouldn’t leave her.

  Then she could have slapped her forehead. Of course. The sound came from Nick’s room. Once she realized it, she recognized his voice—the rhythms, the depth, the thousand and one tones that expressed feeling. But who was he talking to so late? His mother, perhaps, come to see why her son had returned to his own room instead of lying close to his bride of a few hours.

  Rietta raised her hand but thought better of knocking. Her feelings toward Nick had whipsawed too much already. The intimacy of calling him through a matrimonial door might increase his already matrimonial ideas.

  Instead, Rietta turned her ear toward the door. She didn’t press against the keyhole or fetch the water glass from her bedside to amplify the sounds. She simply listened, her concern her excuse.

  At first, she heard only a continuation of the confused murmuring. Then a long silence—so Jong that she straightened up with a kink in her back. Just as she was about to give up, she heard a shout.

  “No! Not that way, you bloody fool!”

  His voice fell off again. A man
being tortured, fighting to defy his tormentors with silence, must make those same muffled gasps and cries. Only a few words were understandable and those wretched pleas wrenched Rietta’s heart. “No ... oh, God. Go back. Please. Please go back.”

  Snatching up a silken shawl from the foot of the bed, Rietta swirled it about her shoulders. Barefoot and swift, she passed from her room to Nick’s without so much as a glance about her to see if anyone was watching. The house lay as if under a spell of silent enchantment.

  Rietta pushed open Nick’s door and stole in. His curtains were wide open, the maddening moonlight pouring in like a cataract of quicksilver. Nick lay as though on a gridiron, the crosspieces of his window frames quartering the moonlight with shadows. His coverlet, pillows, and nightcap had all slithered to the floor.

  Slipping closer, Rietta whispered, “Nick?”

  He muttered in sleep, a grumbling sound like a thunderstorm threatening on the horizon. He was sprawled out, every limb pointing to a different compass heading. The moonlight was so brilliant, she could see the sheen of sweat on his forehead and the restlessness of his eyes beneath their lids.

  “Nick,” she said again, reaching for his hand. His skin felt as hot as a coal snatched from the fire. A delirious notion of sliding into bed beside him possessed her. What would it be like to share so much heat?

  “Come back,” he pleaded, like a lost thing. His eyes opened. His gaze rolled aimlessly past her face, past the window. “Where are they? They’ve all ridden away.”

  “Who has?” Rietta wondered aloud, her voice as soft as the wind brushing its fingers over the window.

  “Fox. Allenby. Ribera. They’ve all ridden away. They should have waited for me.” He shivered and crossed his arms, drawing into himself. Rietta swept up the coverlet and put it over him. She wasn’t certain if he was awake or answering her out of some dream. If so, it might prove dangerous to wake him while he was so deeply enmeshed in the toils of a nightmare.

  “Where have they gone?” Rietta asked, still bending low.

  “Cashman?” he said. “Tompkins?”

  He sat up suddenly. Rietta felt back, clutching her shawl to her breast. Though the room was flooded with light, he didn’t notice her. He stared toward the exposed windows, pushing the fingers of one hand through his tousled hair.

  She heard him draw a great deep breath, on and on as though he were coming up from the bottom of a river and needed the air to live. Then he sighed and rubbed his face. “I—I’m home. Thank God.”

  Nick fell back, his arms thrown wide. He no longer looked as if he were tied to a rack. His pose bespoke the luxury of waking from a dream into the comfort of a bed that moments ago had been the scene of mental horror.

  The moment she moved, even though she felt sure she was silent, he rolled on his side and looked at her. “Your bed isn’t comfortable?” he asked. “Or perhaps you’re hungry?”

  “No. I’m not.”

  ‘Too bad. I’m as empty as a gallon jug after a wake. If I had an accomplice in crime, I’d go poaching in the kitchen.”

  Rietta considered questioning him about his nightmare, but his sharp, bright tone warned her off. It would have been easier to deal with him had he demanded angrily to know how she dared to come into his bedroom. She suddenly realized that he might leap to a natural conclusion— that she’d changed her mind about consummating their unusual marriage.

  He swung his legs out of bed. Rietta turned her head away, but she’d already taken notice of his smoothly muscled thighs. I’ll escort you back to your room, if you’re quite sure you’re not hungry.”

  The dressing gown’s medieval lines suited the thin lines of his face, making him look like a scholar. But the glint in his eyes as he came nearer was that of a man who had studied sensual arts not sanctioned by church or law. “Unless you’d rather stay here, Rietta. You’re more than welcome to at least half the bed.”

  Rietta retreated toward the door. She might entertain the idea of joining him there but she couldn’t escape the feeling that it would be wrong. “I-—I am a little peckish, come to think of it.”

  “Very well. I’ll show you the way.”

  He carried the candle through the dark hallways. The black shadows swirled around them like blind ghosts as they walked. Remembering that her hair was loose, Rietta bundled the mass up into a more seemly knot, twisting it so that it would stay.

  Nick paused before a portrait and held up the chamber-stick. “This is my grandfather, Sir Artemus.”

  “There’s a man behind that beard?”

  “The family theorizes that the law was interested in the old gentleman and that he grew the beard to baffle identification.”

  “I’m sure it must have. His own mother would have been hard-pressed to know him,” Rietta said, peering at the few inches of skin visible behind a veritable hedge of hair. “What do you suspect him of having done?”

  “Murder, they say he had terrible nightmares....”

  Rietta schooled her features to reflect nothing but mild interest as the candlelight fell on her face. “You have his eyes, I think.”

  “Possibly. Anyway, he’s the romantic fellow who built the bench we stopped at earlier in the evening.”

  “Oh, then I’m certain he’s completely innocent of any wrongdoing. A man with such romantic gifts in his soul ...”

  “Romantic notions have led men into desperate enterprises before now, Rietta.”

  “Such as?”

  He walked on. “Explorers must have romantic souls. Who’d seek a new world without one?”

  “True. The Crusaders must have been rather romantic, don’t you think?”

  “Perhaps they started out that way, but I imagine the realities of the Holy Land must have quickly ended their illusions.”

  “Did you have any relations in the Crusades?”

  “Not that I know of. Our family tends to stay at home. Except me.”

  “And Emma. She tried to find a new world, didn’t she?”

  “Did I thank you for taking her in?”

  “Your mother did.”

  “Well, perhaps there’s some wanderlust in our family nowadays But in the past, we’ve always kept to our own fireside.” His voice dropped. “I intend to honor that tradition henceforth.”

  “I can see why. I’ve never been in a house I like better than Greenwood, although ...” Her voice trailed off.

  “You can see that it needs some money spent on it,” Nick said, finishing her sentence for her.

  “I wasn’t going to say anything of the sort, Nick. I was going to say that I can’t wait to see it by daylight.”

  Nick took her elbow to steer her behind the staircase. “The servants’ quarters are downstairs. We’ll have to go quietly. Cook grows irritable if she doesn’t have enough sleep. She cooks like an angel when she’s rested, and burns things like the devil if she’s not.”

  “Then I’ll go quiet as a snowflake.”

  But when Nick pushed open the door it was to find the cook wide awake. “And this is a fine time o’ night,” she began before she saw who it was. “Master Nick!” she gasped, rising to her feet from behind the broad table. “And yer ladyship!”

  “Good morning,” Nick said genially. “You’re up late.”

  The cook’s pale cheeks flushed pink, the color flooding up into the roots of her white hair, braided into a thick coil that hung halfway down her back. Like Rietta, she wore a flowered shawl around her shoulders, though over a brown, stuff dress. “There’s much work to be done,” she said. “Your lady mother’s inviting half the country to come meet your bride. Good luck to you, my lady.”

  “Thank you, Mrs.... ?”

  “Cook, my lady.”

  “I can’t call you—

  Nick saved her. “Mrs. Cook has been working here since I was a boy. She knows all my favorites.”

  “I shall have to speak to you about him,” Rietta said. “I’m sure he was no better than a pirate.”

  “We’re hungr
y as pirates,” Nick said. “Can you help us?”

  The cook’s warm brown eyes flicked between them. “You’ll be hungry, sure enough,” she said, and the understanding in her voice and the sly touch of her finger to her nose made Rietta turn pink.

  “Come down to raid my kitchen, have you? And if I’d not been here, half tomorrow’s victuals would have been gone come the morning, I’ll warrant.” The plump lady cast a calculating glance at the windows. “All right. Sit ye down and I’ll cook eggs for you. But you eat ‘em up quick as lightning for I’ll not have you sitting in my kitchen ‘til cock crow.”

  Nick pulled back a chair for Rietta and indicated with as much studied grace as could be found in a ballroom that she should sit down. Rietta swept him a curtsey and took her seat with dignity.

  “Isn’t it terribly late for you, Mrs. Cook?” she asked. “I hope you’re not unwell.”

  “Not a bit of it, your ladyship—barring a mite o’pain in my joints from time to time. It’s my knees, creaking like the handle of a pump, so they do.”

  Rietta saw with an inner smile how Nick sat back, well out of the way, as she and Mrs. Cook were instantly plunged into a discussion of goose grease versus some patent remedy. It wasn’t long before Mrs. Cook had brought out a bottle of her special mixture, a bright yellow liquid dial gurgled thickly when poured. Rietta rubbed a little into the back of her left hand and blinked back tears. “Good heavens! It’s liquid fire.”

  Quick as winking, Nick snatched his handkerchief from his pocket, dunked it in a pitcher of water standing on the drain board, and draped it over the back of his wife’s hand. She threw him a glance that had more gratitude in it than any she’d shown so far. He’d moved so quickly, with so little wasted motion, that she’d hardly seen him act until the soaking cloth was comforting her hand.

  “How ... how can you stand it?” Rietta asked hoarsely.

  “It’s the burning that gets the good of it well into the skin,” Mrs. Cook replied with pride.

  “I’ll make you up some of my mother’s preparation. She enjoyed messing about with herbs and such.”

  “My lady’s the same. But I’ll swear by Dr. Mountjoy’s horse rub t’my dying day. Eat your eggs.”