by Jane Godman
There seemed to be little else to do but accept his invitation with gratitude. In a trice, the coachman had transferred our belongings to the waiting vehicle, and we were bowling along the road toward the Athal peninsula. When we drew up outside the front door, Uther went away to give orders for rooms to be made ready for us, and Finty came rushing out to exclaim and offer sympathy for our plight. As I watched her lift worshipful eyes to Rudi’s face, a hitherto unforeseen problem occurred to me. How on earth was a girl reared in the lifestyle of an English socialite going to cope with life in the African veldt?
“Oh, it is so good to see you.” She turned to include me in that statement. “I’m afraid Aunt Eleanor has not taken Uther’s arrival terribly well. It was all most odd. I did think, when I saw him, that because he is the absolute image of darling Cad—really, the resemblance is quite breathtaking!—she would take a shine to him. But no! She took one look at his face and insisted on being taken immediately to her room, where she has remained ever since. And when I told her his name was Uther, she turned her face to the wall and cried. It was desperately sad. I couldn’t find a way to comfort her, so I have sent for my uncle Tristan. He will want to meet Uther anyway, because he is keen to do the right thing, but his company always does my aunt good.” She begged our pardon for leaving us to our own devices so soon after our arrival and went away to tend to Eleanor. I followed Rudi into the house and headed for the library. If I was going to be confined indoors on a rainy day, I might as well put my time to good use.
“Oh!” I paused on the doorstep. Nicca’s long frame was stretched out on a sofa beside the fire. He was perusing a newspaper.
He glanced up, a frown descending on his features as he saw who it was. Straightening his limbs into a sitting position, he said with perfunctory politeness, “Good morning. Were you looking for Finty?”
“No, I’ve seen her,” I said. Oh, well, he didn’t like me, and he certainly wasn’t going to appreciate this new situation that made us housemates. I might as well get it over with and be the one to spoil his day by breaking the bad news to him. “Our cottage flooded, so your brother has invited us to stay here.”
“I see.” The frown deepened. “Is that wise?”
My chin tilted of its own stubborn accord. There was enough of my residual annoyance caused by the flood left to ignite an instant spark of anger. “I don’t know what you mean,” I said. I could hear the pugnacious note in my own voice. I hoped he could hear it, too.
“The attraction between your brother and Finty cannot have escaped your notice, surely?”
“Are you suggesting that my brother is not good enough for your cousin?” I demanded, taking an instinctive step toward him.
He sighed. “I wish you would rid yourself of the notion that everything I say is intended to be an insult to you. That was not what I wished to imply at all. But I can’t picture Finty as a farmer’s wife in the African heartland, can you? I simply meant that throwing them together under the same roof might be a mistake. For your brother’s sake as much as for hers.”
Since the same thought had occurred to me just minutes earlier, the justice of his words struck me. I’d have died before acknowledging out loud that he was right, however. “Are you sure your dislike of this plan has nothing to do with your feelings toward me?”
A guarded look came into his eyes, and it was his turn now to say, “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Well, I find that remarkable considering that since we met you have described me as a bloody nuisance, a hornet, a hellcat.…Need I continue?” He shook his head, a slight smile flitting across his face. It occurred to me then that he should make an effort to smile more often. “I think you have made your feelings about me abundantly plain, meneer.”
He rose from his seat then and came to stand before me. As always, I was slightly unnerved by his size, and the fact that I had to tilt my head so far back to look up at him. “You have no idea, Annie,” he said expressionlessly and left the room. I watched his straight, retreating back with some dismay. Ag, sies! His dislike of me was clearly even greater than I had imagined.
“Why does Nicca always look so disapproving?” I asked Uther later that evening. We had finished an elegant dinner, during which I had endured the full force of the younger Jago brother’s frowning stare. Uther had allowed the others to file out of the dining room ahead of us and toward the parlour before he grasped my wrist, holding me back.
“Let’s play truant,” he whispered.
“We can’t.” I laughed.
“It’s my house,” he replied arrogantly, commandeering an opened bottle of champagne. “I can do what I want.”
We ended up sitting side-by-side on the floor of the vast, empty ballroom, sipping champagne and giggling over nonsense. I was amazed by how quickly I had come to feel that I had known this man forever. But in reality, of course, I had known him for longer than that.
I took great care over my appearance that night and wore one of Bouche Jago’s elegant evening dresses that Eleanor had skilfully adapted to fit me. It was black-and-gold chiffon, hanging straight from my shoulders to a frothy, layered hemline at my ankles. Sleeveless and low cut, it showed far more flesh that I was generally comfortable with, but the warm light in Uther’s eyes signalled his appreciation. Since I had dressed entirely with him in mind, that was all the approval I needed.
The ballroom was unusual because one wall of the ruined castle had been incorporated into the house. A huge, stained-glass window, a replica of one that had graced the original Tenebris, spanned the wall and scattered vivid colour across the floor.
“Oh, he has always worn that particular expression,” Uther replied in answer to my question about Nicca. He took a slug of champagne direct from the bottle and held it out to me. I swallowed, shivering slightly as the cold fizz hit the back of my throat. Uther slipped off his dinner jacket and drew it around my shoulders, his fingers briefly skimming the flesh of my collarbone. It was the first time he had touched me. The gesture only served to make me shiver more, but for rather different reasons. “I was only two years old when he was born, and in those two years my mother had died and my father remarried. It was common knowledge, apparently, that he never got over my mother’s death, and Nicca’s mother—a pleasant-enough lady and certainly a kindly stepmother to me—could never replace her. The marriage was not a success, and Nicca was six when they went their separate ways. We saw very little of each other as we grew up. Consequently we are more acquaintances than brothers. I take after my father and am accounted all Jago—for my sins! Nicca is like his mother’s family, serious, dutiful and definitely un-Jago like.”
“Yet you asked him to come and work for you when you inherited the title?”
“But, of course. There is no one I would trust with my inheritance more than Nicca. He is definitely better at looking after my money than I am.” He took another long swig from the bottle. “I was not brought up to see this title as my birth right, remember. There were two sons before me in the ‘true line’ of the Jago family. Petroc and Rory always stood between me and the title. Of course, Petroc died when I was still a child, but Rory was the heir to the title and there was never any reason to believe he would not inherit it. He was killed in the trenches, and I suddenly had to adjust my expectations. When the war was over, Nicca left the army and went into partnership in a firm of lawyers. He has carved out a very successful career for himself, despite inheriting his maternal grandfather’s wealth and not needing to work at all. When Cad died, naturally I approached Nicca and asked him for his help.”
“You said the ‘true line’ of the Jago family. What does that mean exactly?”
“The Athal line can trace its heritage back to the Anglo-Saxons and the title to the Conqueror. But the ‘true line’ is said within the family to come directly from Arwen Jago, the evil eighth earl.” He paused, regarding me. “Are you still cold?” How could I explain that it was not a chill, but that name—Arwen Jago, a name I had neve
r heard but somehow knew—that had caused me suddenly to tremble?
I shook my head, and he continued. “So, while there may be offshoots of the family, only those who are descended from Arwen himself can consider themselves true Jagos. Nicca and I are Jagos, but we are not of the true line.” He said it matter-of-factly and without rancour, but something in his words touched a deep chord within me. One I had not known existed until I came to Tenebris. The feeling that gripped me blazed fierce and proud, akin, I imagined, to the emotion felt by the noble knights who had touched these castle walls on the eve of battle. Smiling inwardly, I thought how typical it was of me that I should feel the emotion of the warrior, not the ladylove who sighed as she waved him goodbye!
Uther had been watching my face with stinging intensity. He rose then and, leaning down, held out a hand to help me up. Smiling into my eyes, he grasped my hand and held it against the ancient stone, keeping his own palm firmly over mine so that I could not draw away. A jolt like an electric charge ran through me, and my whole body jerked violently. I turned questioning eyes to him and he nodded an affirmation. He felt it, too.
“Tell me what you can feel,” he murmured. His voice was low and seductive. He caught my other hand and held it over his heart.
“I can feel you,” I whispered. Unable to help myself, I took a step closer to him. I could feel the heat of his body. “Inside me.”
He groaned. “My, God. Do you know what hearing you say those words does to me?”
“Yes.” I reached up and boldly touched my mouth to his. He returned the movement so that our lips flirted lightly, our breath mingled and we tasted each other for the first time. This time. His tongue traced the outline of my lips and, obedient to a centuries-old memory, I pressed my body close to the contours of his. My lips parted, and with a soft murmur, I welcomed the new familiarity of his tongue circling mine. Our entwined hands braced against the wall of Tenebris heightened every sensation. Of now and of then.
I could feel it all. The quivering anticipation of the maiden waiting on the turret wall for a glimpse of her knight, knowing that, when day turned to night, she would feel his lips on her breast while his hands explored her body. On towering battlements, I saw a proud lord draw his mistress into his arms, breathing in her essence as he brought her to shuddering rapture with a single, swift caress.
Within that first brief kiss, Uther experienced with me the distilled ecstasy and agony of a thousand years of clandestine lovemaking that had taken place inside the maze of thick walls and secret galleries of proud Tenebris. When we broke apart, we were both shaking with the violence of our emotions.
“Sometimes I dream of a dark shape, like a bird…” he whispered, his lips tracing the line of my jaw.
“And it feels like this,” I murmured.
“No,” his lips moved lower, drawing a line of fire down my neck. “It comes close, but nothing has ever felt like this.”
I stood on the balcony of my bedroom and looked out across the cliffs, glimmering and vast in the shimmering light of an upended crescent moon. A long line of ocean spray tracked the ancient, rugged coastline. The cool breeze prowled over my skin, and I welcomed it as a distraction from my obsessive thoughts of Uther.
I had been at Tenebris for a week, and I was forever now the willing prisoner of a man with a smile like a mischievous demon. In that short time, I had reached a point where I no longer recognised myself. My body hungered for him constantly, even when I was with him. He had cast an instant spell on me, one from which I could not break free. Would not break free, I corrected myself as I remembered that first kiss. Because there had been other kisses. Each as devastating. Each a spell-binding out-of-body experience. Dear God, how could my untried body possibly already know what it felt like to make love with him? Yet I did know because we had loved each other for all eternity.
Stepping back into my room, I glanced at the clock. I had allowed my daydreaming to make me late, and I hurried down to the dining room where the others were waiting. Dinner at Tenebris was always a lavish affair. The servants, most of whom had been employed during Cad Jago’s day, were eager to demonstrate their skill and dedication to the new earl. The butler, Winrow, was married to the cook, and between them, they ensured that mealtimes ran like clockwork. Eleanor’s habit was generally to eat in her room, and Finty, well trained by Bouche, attempted to be the perfect society hostess.
“It must have been a great comfort to the earl and countess when they adopted you, since they didn’t have any children of their own,” Rudi commented.
“Oh, but they did,” Finty explained. “Cad and Bouche had two sons—Petroc and Rory—but they both died in war. Isn’t that quite poetically sad? Someone should write a sonnet or couplet or some such thing about it. And the estate, of course, is entailed away from the female line. I suppose I should be quite horridly bitter about that if I were a Jago born. But they left me well provided for. So when Cad died, Uther here, although a distant cousin, inherited the title. And he is also a soldier, so there is some nice symmetry there, don’t you think? Am I right in thinking that you were both there when Rory was killed?” She turned to Uther and Nicca, bringing them both into the conversation. When silence greeted her, she glanced around the table in evident confusion. “Have I said something I should not? Gosh, what a dreadful chatterbox I am. Do forgive me, Cousin Uther…Cousin Nicca. I thought Cad told me that you were in the same regiment as Rory, but perhaps I was mistaken? I can be quite sadly scatter-brained.”
“Yes, we were all in the same regiment.” Nicca confirmed, when Uther did not respond. Finty’s artless enquiry had brought an abrupt and effective end to the dinner party atmosphere. “And Rory was our commanding officer.”
“Why not tell it all, brother dear?” Uther said, rising from his seat and throwing his serviette down onto the table. It was a curiously insolent gesture, as if the square of white linen was a gauntlet and Nicca his chosen opponent. “Or perhaps I should say ‘Major Jago’?” He stalked out of the room.
“Uther is referring to the fact that I was a major in the regiment and he, my older brother, was a sergeant serving under my command. By the time he had left the army, of course, he had risen to the rank of captain. Cad was right, however”—Nicca nodded briskly at Finty—“the three of us did serve together in the trenches in Flanders. And Uther was actually with Rory when he was killed.”
Finty looked stricken. “No wonder he was so upset when I mentioned it.”
“You couldn’t have known,” Rudi attempted to reassure her. He turned to Nicca. “You were very young to hold such a high rank.”
“Good men died too soon in the war,” Nicca explained. “Promotions tended to happen very quickly in Flanders.”
There was a world of stories behind those words, but it was clear he did not wish to tell them. Rudi changed the subject. “If Rory died five years ago, did Cad not get to know Uther—who had become his heir—after his son’s death? I’m sure Uther said he had never been to Tenebris until now.”
“As far as I know, Cad did extend several invitations to Uther to visit Tenebris, and I know he made him an allowance. I sold out immediately after the war, but Uther chose to remain in the army, and with one thing and another, he never came here and never—as far as I know—even met Cad.”
“No,” Finty said. “Not long before he died, Cad told me he thought it was a great shame that Uther had never been here. He said he wished he had been able to get to know his heir. And it really is a shame that they never met. It is truly remarkable how very much Uther resembles Cad, in looks at least.”
“It seems odd to me that an heir to such a large estate would not wish to spend some time getting to know how everything worked before taking over,” Rudi commented.
Nicca shrugged. “Cad Jago cast a long shadow,” he said. “And Uther is not the sort of man to enjoy kicking his heels in the country, learning the rudiments of estate management and business affairs.” He lifted his eyes to mine as, murmuring an
incoherent excuse, I, too, rose from the table.
Without pausing to think about what I was doing, I ran lightly up the stairs. I drew a deep breath and knocked on the double doors of the earl’s bedchamber. Uther appeared in the doorway. I had time to assimilate the way white silk clung to his broad shoulders and how snugly his black trousers fitted his slim waist and long, muscular thighs before he took me in his arms, ruthlessly kissing me. On the way up the stairs, I had come up with the flimsiest of pretexts for going to him. It didn’t matter. In that moment I could not have remembered any excuse for being there to save my life.
“Marry me, Annie.” Uther’s lips were warm against the pulse at the base of my throat as the pressure of his body forced me to arch my back over his arm.
Abruptly, I opened my eyes and the splendour of the earl’s bedchamber swam back into focus. “Pardon?” I murmured, convinced that I had not heard him correctly.
His mouth travelled lower, following the deft fingers that were swiftly undoing the buttons of my blouse. I shivered slightly as the cool air brushed the bare flesh of my breasts, but all other sensations were forgotten as Uther’s tongue swirled possessively around my nipple. My knees began to give way, and the arm about my waist tightened, holding me upright.
“I said, ‘Marry me, Annie.’” His tongue moved to my other nipple. “I love you with all the insanity my soul can contain. And that is considerable, believe me. Be mine. Give yourself to me completely.”
I wanted to say that we didn’t need marriage. That I was his already. Utterly. Couldn’t he tell? But I was unable to speak. So I nodded. With a low, masculine purr of possession, he scooped me up in his arms and deposited me on the huge, four-poster bed. His hands slid under the layers of my clothing, finding and probing parts of my body I hadn’t even known existed. I was powerless to do anything other than lie back in his arms.
