Catherine Coulter the Sherbrooke Series Novels 6-10 (9781101562123)

by Coulter, Catherine

  “When I was away from you in those moments after I read from the Rules of the Pale, Sarimund said I was the crown of his kingdom, the bringer of peace and destruction, the one who had to right the grievous sin.”

  She jerked away from him and pulled her hair, actually jerked it with her hands. “What is this wretched grievous sin?” She jerked at her hair again. “To understand magic, I suppose you must simply accept all the twists and turns, the questions that can drive a mortal mad.”

  Nicholas said, “Almost three hundred years is a very long time for this being who saved Captain Jared to wait. Wait for what? Like you said, Sarimund called it a grievous sin and those are the same words in your song. I know of his death and her grievous sin. Perhaps it is a sin committed long ago by a god or a wizard or a witch, something strong enough, something bad enough, to continue existing all these years—until the two of us came together.”

  “Yes,” she said, “yes, we are one.” Her heart was tripping. “You believe that our coming together brings us more knowledge, more power?”

  He strode away from her, walking the length of the library, staring out the windows for a long moment before saying over his shoulder, “I am a simple man, dammit, a man of business. I own ships, I own property in Macau and in Portugal and here in England. Despite my wealth, I am still simple. Dammit, I want to be simple, I don’t wish to be cut adrift from what is normal, what is expected, what I am used to.” He turned around and smacked one fist against the wall. A portrait of a racing horse shuddered, the frame tilted to the left. “Here I am carrying on, and you don’t even know who you are. I am a fool—but a simple fool. Forgive me, Rosalind.”

  “What happened to me when I was a child was not your fault.”

  He walked back to her, grabbed her hands, and held them against his chest. “If it means being magic to resolve all this, then I will give up my simpleness. We will wait for the night and see what happens.”

  “Open the door this minute, do you hear me? I want to speak to that wretched ghost! He is not in the drawing room so he must be hiding from me here in the library. Open the door now.”

  He kissed her quickly, set her away from him. “Shall we let my dear stepmother come in and try to find Captain Jared?”

  “Will you tell her it’s the very first Vail and not her father-in-law?”

  “No, let Captain Jared amuse himself at her expense if he wishes to.”

  Nicholas opened the door, gave Miranda a slight bow. “My wife and I have to visit a sick tenant. Have yourself a fine time with our ghost.”

  Miranda gave both of them a malevolent look, turned her back on them, and said loudly, “Well, you dead old monster, are you in here? I don’t see you. Are you hiding from me?”

  There was only the sound of the ormolu clock on the mantel, its steady ticking like falling rain in the silence.

  “So you’re afraid of facing me, are you? Well, you always were a coward when you were alive and—”

  A creaky old voice sang out,

  A crooked root is what I see.

  Not the rose you pretend to be.

  A black-hearted witch with an ugly nose

  Set big and lumpy on a rotten rose.

  “I am not a crooked root or a rotten rose, you cursed dead moron! I am a rose! Lumpy? I have a beautiful nose! What do you know, you’re only a bloody ghost with a big mouth. You’re not even here, just your voice, and let me tell you, your rhymes aren’t at all clever. Ugly nose indeed! Show yourself, I’ll show you a lumpy nose!”

  Captain Jared, smart ghost that he was, kept quiet. “You never liked me, never accepted me. It wasn’t my fault that mewling bitch died. She was a weakling, a drain on your son, an encumbrance. I didn’t kill her, your son didn’t kill her. She simply died from all the meanness inside of her.

  “Your son loved me, he married me, and I gave him an heir—I gave him three heirs—yet my heirs still wait in the wings for that miserable Nicholas to drop dead. You always turned your nose up when I came here and for no reason. I hate you, do you hear?”

  A soft rhythmic sound came from the corner, like a boot lightly tapping its toe against the floor.

  Nicholas took Rosalind’s hand and they left the library to a silent ghost and his furious stepmother.

  They heard her shout through the closed door, “I am not crooked! It is you who were crooked your entire blighted life, pretending to be a wizard. Tell me what is going on here, you old sinner, tell me now, else I’ll never leave! Why did my precious Richard have that wretched vision?”

  Silence, then a deep pitiful sigh, and a depressed singsong voice:

  She’ll leave if I talk

  She’ll stay if I don’t

  She’ll haunt me forever

  Unless I’m more clever.

  Prithee, just look at me now

  Shrieked at endlessly by a lumpy-nosed cow.

  “More clever than I? You’re a dolt, to have you as a father-in-law fair to burned me to the core, but I survived. A cow? I’m a cow? You should thank me, for I was the one who sent you that little brat who cursed me with those black eyes of his as he slunk behind furniture so I couldn’t see him, but I heard him chanting curses, death curses. I told his father how he spewed hatred at me and at him, that I feared for my newly born son’s life, how he bragged that he would kill you, kill all of us. Nicholas was always a spawn of the Devil, I told his father, had thick bad blood in his veins, and he believed me. A man should believe his wife, curse you.

  “At least now you’re dead, save for something malignant that has managed to stick its snout out of the ether. And just what is this prithee business? Another of your affectations, no doubt. No one has spoken that word for hundreds of years. Ah, but you must always be the poseur, even dead. I believe I’ll have you dug up out of your grave and burn your wretched skeleton. That’ll see you gone, now won’t it?”

  Nicholas and Rosalind had to lean close to the library door when Captain Jared sang softly, that ancient voice echoing eerily,

  The knife rises high

  And brings the end near.

  The knife starts to fall

  And you choke on the fear.

  The prince must win

  Evil must die

  Pay attention, madam, for the end draws nigh.

  The prince will win? What prince? The end was nigh? Captain Jared sounded very serious about that. Rosalind supposed nigh meant tonight. They heard Miranda shriek and throw a hassock toward the fireplace.

  Nicholas whispered against her temple, “Do you think he’s hiding up the chimney?”

  Rosalind shuddered. “If she was thinking aright, she would realize it isn’t the old earl, that it is someone else. And all those things she told your father . . . It’s evil what she did, Nicholas—claiming a little boy chanted curses, making threats.”

  Nicholas shrugged. “Whatever she said or did, when I think about the past, I am vastly relieved I was forced to leave England, forced to face what I was at my core, forced to make my own way. Had I remained, raised as a pampered earl’s son, would I have become like Richard perhaps? Or like Lancelot?”

  “You would have become exactly what you are only you would not speak Chinese and have Lee Po about to correct Marigold’s English. I begin to believe she makes mistakes on purpose to gain his attention.”

  He couldn’t help himself, he laughed, kissed her, said against her temple, “Captain Jared certainly has the old girl going, doesn’t he?”

  The day seemed interminable, so many hours to be got through until the sun set and it could be considered night. Nicholas and Rosalind did indeed visit tenants, happy to welcome the new countess, happy to see Nicholas now their roofs didn’t leak, there was hay in the sheds for their animals, and grain grew in the fields.

  They spoke to three more women who were willing to sing with a ghost and work at Wyverly Chase, and they managed to get through a tense dinner with Nicholas’s three half brothers and his battleaxe stepmother.

  Nicho
las asked Richard as he sipped on a lovely Bordeaux, “You had this vision only once?”

  “That’s right. It was real. It was the truth. But I see you still have her with you. You are a fool, Nicholas, a right fool.” Richard shrugged. “Why should I care? After she flings your heart into the bushes, I will be the Earl of Mountjoy.”

  Miranda hissed.

  Richard turned to her. “What makes you dislike that image, Mother?”

  Miranda waved her fork at her son. “A vision simply shouldn’t happen to a fine, normal, wickedly handsome young man like yourself. It happens only to crazy old men like your grandfather, whose blasted ghost sang out a ‘prithee’ to me.”

  “I rather like his songs,” Aubrey said as he chewed on Cook’s ham. “I wonder if he will allow me to sing with him.”

  Miranda hissed again.

  “All of you are bloody mad,” Lancelot said and threw a slice of bread across the dining room. “I want to leave. There is no reason to stay in the same house with a murderess. And Nicholas amuses himself at our expense. He will doubtless try to kill us, or set his wife to do it.”

  Rosalind was beginning to think that dispatching the lot of them wasn’t a bad idea.

  “Not if his precious wife stabs him first,” Aubrey said, and Rosalind saw him grinning behind a spoonful of vegetable marrow soup. “What with all that violent red hair, I imagine she has a formidable temper, is that true, Nicholas?”

  “He wouldn’t have the nerve to strike her,” Lancelot said, his mouth full, “now that he knows she’ll cut his heart out. As for that heathen servant of his, I swear the fellow is cursing me whenever I chance to see him. He looks foreign. I don’t like him.”

  Nicholas said, “It’s true, Lancelot, that Lee Po knows many meaty curses, some of them designed to tangle up your innards so you choke on your own guts. I’d keep my distance from him.” Nicholas paused a moment, looked around the table. “You know, perhaps Lancelot is right, all of you should return to London. Perhaps after dinner. Or after an early breakfast in the morning. Thank you, Richard, for delivering your vision message.”

  Richard came right out of his chair. “No!”

  Nicholas lounged back in his earl’s chair, arched an eyebrow. “No? Why ever not?”

  “I cannot,” Richard said, his voice, his very posture intense. His hands were splayed on the table, his knuckles white. There was something desperate about him, Nicholas realized, but what was it?

  45

  Dinner dragged on with no explanation from Richard. Nicholas and Rosalind finally left his family to tea and whist. Lancelot was in a vile mood, throwing down his cards as if each one were a weapon. Aubrey baited him, said he was pretty as any girl he’d ever seen, which Nicholas thought wasn’t far from the truth. Aubrey’s smile never faded, his good humor seemed inexhaustible. On the other hand, Aubrey spent most of his time at Oxford. He didn’t have to live with this bunch.

  As for Richard, he brooded, one booted leg swinging over the arm of his chair. Nicholas didn’t think he was brooding over his luck at cards. Why, he wondered yet again, was Richard so anxious? If Rosalind did stab him, as Richard claimed he’d seen in the vision, then why wasn’t he raising a brandy glass?

  It was a relief to leave the four of them behind the closed drawing room door.

  “I wonder where Captain Jared is this fine night?” Rosalind said as they walked into the earl’s bedchamber.

  “He kept quiet and I can’t say I blame him,” Nicholas said.

  They drew on cloaks over their clothes. “It might be quite cold in the Pale,” Rosalind said as she tied the black velvet ties together.

  Rosalind made certain there was always a good three feet between them even though they held hands. She didn’t want to fall into the Pale with the both of them naked.

  Nicholas said, “I feel bloody ridiculous, lying in bed, waiting. Waiting for what? How the devil will we get to the Pale? I have no flying carpet.”

  She shook her head. “We must be patient, and wait, no choice. Would you like me to sing to you?”

  He sat up. “No, what I want is to see if you can now read the final pages of the Rules of the Pale.”

  She sat up beside him. “I can’t believe I forgot about it. You believe Sarimund has removed the veil from them as well as freed the pages from the shorter book?”

  “We will shortly see, won’t we?” He fetched the book from the top drawer in his dresser.

  She sat in the large comfortable chair in front of the fireplace, and Nicholas stood beside her, his hands outstretched to the sluggish flame.

  Her fingers trembled as she thumbed to the end of the book. She looked down at the writing, then up at Nicholas.

  He said, “You can read it now. It would make no sense if you still couldn’t.”

  She looked down again, cleared her throat, and read:

  This is the end, I can offer no more help since I promised not to meddle.

  You are a gift, Isabella, never doubt that, you are brave and true, your honor bone deep. Many times, I have found, a gift is a debt to another.

  I have but to warn you not to trust anyone or anything, be it a god or a goddess, a wizard or a witch. Do not accept what you see for it may not be real at all. Those in the Pale fashion lavish illusions and violent phantasms to drive the unwary mad. Be disbelieving. Be cautious.

  But know that evil cannot touch you.

  Good-bye, my sweet girl. You must sing, never forget to sing.

  Sarimund

  Rosalind stared down at the last page for a good long time before she raised her face to her husband’s. “My name is Isabella.”

  He looked at her thoughtfully, stroking his long fingers over his chin. “It is a beautiful name. I wonder how Sarimund knew your name was Isabella some three hundred years before you were born.”

  “If that is indeed my name in the present day. Why didn’t he tell me my last name as well?”

  “Since we are speaking of magic, then we are naturally speaking of obfuscation. I now believe that to make a proper magical pronouncement, you must be infuriatingly murky; you must litter ambiguous metaphors over the landscape; and you must spice your pronouncements with otherworldly words that don’t fit into any comprehensible framework. You must unveil only half clues, a lame bit of garbled nonsense here and bit of misdirection there. And withal, we simply must accept it.

  “And as for Captain Jared’s dreadful rhymes—if his ghost would show himself but once, I would wring his bloody neck. Hmm, I wonder if my hands would go right through his neck. I wonder if there are more rules—vital rules—that Sarimund is still hiding from us.”

  Rosalind cocked her head to one side. “Being a wizard, you would know, now wouldn’t you?”

  “If I am a wizard, then you, madam, are a witch.” And he began pacing the bedchamber, his cloak billowing about his ankles. He said, “I am a simple man. I am, I really am. And I like the name Isabella.”

  “That must mean I am Italian. Oh, curse Sarimund, why didn’t the moron write down my full name? Ah, yes, that would mean breaking a magic rule. You know, Nicholas, I’m thinking one must study obscure texts to think magically.”

  “Leave me out of it. All I want to do is to stride over my acres, watch my lands flourish, give Clyde free rein to jump over that fence at the back of my northern border, watch the barley and rye grow tall, and make love to my wife until I am unable to move. Ah, if we are blessed, to fill the Wyverly Chase nursery.” He heaved a sigh. “Don’t look alarmed and tense upon me. I have no intention of attacking your fair person.” He brushed his fingers through his hair, making it stand straight up. “Well, I most certainly will think about how you feel when I’m deep inside you, but not now. Now I want this over with. Behold, madam, a patient man. Come lie with me.”

  And so they lay next to each other, again holding hands, a blanket pulled over their cloaks and their booted feet. Their talk dwindled. Rosalind was on the edge of sleep when she heard Nicholas say, his voice low an
d deep, “If we do not survive this, Rosalind, know that I love you. Like the Dragon of the Sallas Pond, you are my mate for life. I pray we will survive this journey, that we will enjoy a nice long life.”

  “I love you too, Nicholas. It would seem I’ve loved you all my life—no matter which life. It is amazing how you make me feel, how you make me want to skip and jump and sing and perhaps play a rousing waltz on the pianoforte.”

  He basked. This incredible woman he’d dreamed of for so many years actually loved him, despite—despite what? He wondered, and frowned. But he didn’t ask because suddenly, all words, all thoughts faded from his brain and he fell asleep instead.

  Suddenly both of them jerked straight up in bed.

  “What the devil?”

  “I don’t know,” Rosalind said, and clutched his hand.

  They watched as the smoldering ashes in the fireplace suddenly ignited, as if fanned by an invisible hand. The flames roared upward, making a loud whooshing sound, as if all the air in the room were being sucked into it. The flames whipped up and out, and the sound of a high wind filled the room.

  Nicholas cursed and grabbed her against him. He yelled, “Don’t let go of me, whatever you do, don’t let go of me. Do you hear me?”

  She nodded, unable to speak, only stare at the roaring flames. The sucking sound became even louder. The flames turned bright blue, then the blue deepened into a rich royal blue. They watched the big chair whip round and round until it disappeared into the whirling vortex. The gigantic flame seemed to swallow the chair. But how could that be? They’d watched the vortex actually suck the chair into the fireplace, but it was too large to fit, surely it was. Yet it didn’t matter, the chair was gone. The blue flames roared, leapt upward as if trying to reach the sky, and the sound of it was like the cackle of a hundred mad witches.

  Then the huge funnel turned itself on them. They felt the incredible pull, and despite themselves, it jerked them to their feet and pulled them toward the roaring flames that now had leapt out of the fireplace and formed a huge funnel that was twisting wildly, reaching to the ceiling, filling the bedchamber, twisting and circling fast, the noise unbelievable. But there was no smoke, no particular heat.