by Nora Roberts
Chapter 9
THE moment the maid was gone, Phoebe tossed back the covers and hopped out of bed. She hadn’t been hallucinating from a blow to her head. The faerie castle was real, and the dolmen was the entrance to it.
She reached into the wardrobe and took down one of her bandboxes. Her special items were still inside. The whistle Gordon had made for her when she was ten; two striped agates he’d found and given her when she was twelve; a silver and coral teething rattle that had been hers; and her mother’s prayer book with a cover of green Moroccan leather.
She lifted the items out and removed the divider. Beneath it was a thick, rectangular package, wrapped in her best silk shawl.
Phoebe opened it and took out her father’s last manuscript. She traced her finger along the title: Thomas Rhymer, Tam Sin and Less Fortunate Mortals in the Kingdom of Faerie.
This was the work her father considered his crowning achievement, written in the final months of his life. She hadn’t yet read it.
In the weeks after his death it had been too painful for her to look at that wavery, beloved handwriting with its crossed-out words and phrases and cramped margin notes. It still was.
She let her fingers drift over the inked lines. She planned to transcribe the pages into a clean copy as she had done with all his previous works, in hopes of publishing it one day. Her father had paid to have the other volumes printed and bound, so there was no source of income for her in the stack of white sheets.
But, she thought with satisfaction, there is a good deal of knowledge here.
Phoebe had a strong intuition that she might find the answers to the riddles she was seeking in the manuscript. She already had a good grounding in folklore from copying over her father’s work and from listening to him discuss it with the late viscount.
She frowned down at the dedication: . . . most respectfully to John Tremaine, 5th Viscount Thornwood, my kinsman and friend—in hopes he may find the key to his great dilemma in these pages.
When she’d first read those words weeks ago, they made no sense to her. Now she had a faint glimmer of understanding.
Phoebe knew the legends of Tam Sin and Thomas the Rhymer, humans who’d been carried off by the faerie queen to be her lovers. She’d presented “True Thomas” with a silver apple, which when eaten gave him the gift of golden eloquence, and had released him after seven years.
But Tam Sin had not been let go so easily. His true love had to fight for him, pulling him from the faerie queen’s horse and holding him as he shape-shifted until her love and strength broke the spell and set him free.
As she set the stack down on the writing desk, the pages slid sideways. One fell on the floor. She knelt to retrieve it and recognized the Thorne crest at the top.
It was addressed to her father and written in the late viscount’s sprawling hand. She scanned the lines, her heart beating faster with every word.
Dear Ambrose,
You have always believed there to be a kernel of truth at the heart of every folktale and hoary legend. To me such tales were mere stories spun to amuse or frighten. I was terribly wrong. This is the tale of a cynic who became a believer overnight—to my great and everlasting sorrow.
There is no one else to whom I can relate my story without being thought a raving madman. I charge you not to tell another living soul. If you will swear to this, read on, my cousin and old friend. The story I will relate to you involves my nephew and heir, young Gordon Tremaine.
He is not gone abroad as expected, but is with me at Thorne Court. He claims to have found an entrance to another plane of existence inside the old dolmen on the moors. In fact, a door to the Kingdom of Faerie. And for his boldness, he has been most cruelly punished.
Come to Thorne Court as soon as is humanly possible. My nephew’s fate is in your hands . . .
She turned to the next page but it was missing. She glanced back to the top of the letter to check the date. It was written a mere two weeks after she and Gordon had last parted.
She frowned down at the date. Shortly afterward her father had gone away from Wickersham, ostensibly on a matter of research. He’d packed Phoebe off to Brighton and left her in the care of Sir John Malory and his good wife, saying it would be good for a young woman to move in society and learn how to go on, before she settled down.
Phoebe had enjoyed attending the assemblies and parties, but it was Gordon who filled her heart and mind. I shall know much better how to carry on in society when he returns, she’d thought at the time, but it will be good to get back home to Wickersham.
When she and her father returned home, everything was changed. He’d come back from his trip exhausted and silent. A few days later she’d received Gordon’s letter, ending their relationship.
Phoebe bit her lip. Everything was falling into place now. Everything except what had happened to Gordon, and why he was so intent on sending her away. And that meant he felt she was in danger.
She sighed and looked at the stack of manuscript pages. There were over six hundred, all heavily crossed out and rewritten, with cryptic abbreviations and tiny notes cramming the margins. It would be tough going, but she would persist until eventually she’d read them all, for the knowledge they held would provide the key that unlocked the riddle of Thorne Court. Her happiness—and Gordon’s—depended upon it.
Chapter 10
PHOEBE read until her head throbbed and her vision blurred. She put the manuscript back inside its hiding place, frowning.
The early chapters were about mortals who had inadvertently trespassed—or been lured—into the Kingdom of Faerie. Some were bound to remain there for seven years, some for a hundred and some for all eternity.
She didn’t understand the difference yet, or quite what these stories had to do with Gordon, but sooner or later she’d find the link. And if she couldn’t read, she might as well see what she could find out from Gordon himself.
She dressed for dinner, putting on her mother’s pearl earrings and the enameled heart that Gordon had given her. She found him in the drawing room, staring bleakly out the window. He turned when she entered and frowned.
“You’re not fit to be up yet. You should be resting in your bed.”
“My nature is too restless to play the invalid. Will Lady Gwynn be joining us tonight?”
“No. She has not been well today.”
“Perhaps you should send for the doctor.”
He shook his head. “As you have surely guessed, her problem is not a weakness of the body, but of the mind.”
“Oh?” Phoebe cocked her head. “Seeing castles and lights where none exist—things of that nature?”
Gordon looked annoyed. “I see you have already made her acquaintance.”
“Briefly. I saw nothing that made me feel she would be incapable of joining us for dinner.”
He didn’t rise to the bait. “It would be most improper of me to discuss her condition with you.”
“Well, that puts me in my place!”
“I would certainly hope so.” His cool expression did nothing to take the sting from his words.
Holloway announced dinner, and Phoebe let Gordon escort her into the dining room. A velvet pouch hung from her belt, with the topaz and pearl inside it, wrapped in a piece of silk. Her plan was to let a good dinner and glass of port mellow Gordon’s mood. Then, when he least suspected it, she would produce her evidence.
She applied herself to the soup course but barely tasted it. Her mind was so full of questions and thoughts and plans there was no room for much else.
As the dessert course was served, Gordon’s perpetual frown deepened. Phoebe was distracted, and she avoided looking directly after him. He watched her over the rim of his glass.
She cannot bear to look it me. Small wonder, when I can scarcely bear to look at my own reflection in the shaving mirror.
He set down his fork and broke the silence. “You are very far away. Where have you gone, Phoebe?”
She was so deep in t
hought that she actually jumped when Gordon spoke. Although she knew they’d dined on fine porcelain by candlelight, she couldn’t have said what they’d eaten.
Phoebe offered an apologetic smile. “I’m afraid I was woolgathering.”
“Then you must make amends by carrying a bit of the conversation. I cannot do it all alone, you know.”
“Yes, I’ve been dull company tonight.” She lifted her glass and finished her wine while she decided if she should broach the subject most on her mind.
“Does your head still ache? I warned you that the moors were dangerous.”
“I am used to taking care of myself, you know,” she replied. “I roamed the hills and woods near Wickersham without suffering more than a few scratches or a twisted ankle.”
“You did not take very good care of yourself today.”
She had no good answer for that. At least not yet. “I’ll go upstairs early this evening. I’m reading a new book about Tam Sin and Thomas the Rhymer and how they were taken away to live among the faeries. I recall you were fascinated by the old ballads of mortals who were trapped within the faerie realm.”
Holloway was pouring wine into her glass and almost dropped the bottle. Gordon remained calm. “I have more pressing matters to occupy my time these days.”
He turned the conversation to other subjects and Phoebe bided her time. “I’ll remove to the drawing room and leave you to your port.”
“I won’t be long,” he said.
Phoebe smiled and rose. He still thinks he can force me to leave. She wondered how he would react when she produced the faerie gems.
James opened the drawing room door and she went in. Candles blazed, teasing muted rainbows from the cut crystal; but between the pendants cobwebs stirred, and the room’s rich fabrics and furnishings looked drab and dull in the light of the leaping fire.
It’s no wonder the local people think that Thorne Court is haunted, she told herself. She’d never heard of a house being subject to a faerie spell before. If the enchantment is broken, would it all be restored to the way it should be?
Phoebe strolled up and down the chamber, admiring the porcelains on the table and shelves and the paintings that were hung one above the other until they covered almost every inch of one wall. Landscapes and portraits in oil and watercolor were stacked between the chair rail and picture rail, some by well-known painters and others she didn’t recognize.
A series of three small but dramatic oils in simple gold leaf frames caught her attention. They were stunning. Lovely and eerily haunting. None were signed and she wondered if they were the work of Lady Gwynn.
The first painting made Phoebe’s heart skip a beat. It depicted the Faerie Stables with a long view into the interior of the dolmen. The intricate pattern of leaves and shadows upon the huge mossy stone gave the impression of vague faces, but she couldn’t be sure—they seemed to be changing even as she watched.
It’s just the flickering of the candles that made it seem so, she told herself. Still, something about the painting made the hairs rise at her nape.
And the second . . .
Phoebe moved closer to it, her breath catching in her throat. Here it was, exactly as she’d seen it last night: a deep lapis sky aswirl with stars, and the castle on the hill, ablaze with light. It was a thing of great power and beauty, and rather frightening. She took a step back in alarm.
The third was a rendering of Thorne Court—not the crumbling, black facade, smothered in ivy as it was now—but a stately manor of sparkling windows and creamy limestone that gleamed golden in the sunlight. It gave an impression of warmth and security, of family and honored traditions.
She leaned closer. For an odd moment, she’d imagined she saw a figure moving past one of the painted windows. Then there was movement at one side of the frame. Her heart turned over. She saw herself and Gordon walk into the painting, two children beside them, a boy and a girl.
Phoebe realized the paintings were not the work of Lady Gwynn, nor of any mortal hand. They were wrought by faerie magic.
The painting became more than a flat surface, it became a door to another dimension. She was compelled to reach out her hand, to touch the canvas and see if it would really go through the frame and into that other world beyond. To see if she could step inside it . . .
The door opened and Gordon entered. “No! Phoebe!”
She started and whirled around, feeling dizzy and a bit disoriented, as he limped toward her. The drawing room looked dim and insubstantial as fog.
Gordon pushed past her, his scarred face was knotted and dark with fury, his mouth twisted like a grotesque mask. He yanked the framed canvases off the wall without ceremony and pitched them into the blazing fire.
“Gordon, no! Oh, what have you done?”
Phoebe blinked away as tears from the acrid smoke gusted out from the fireplace. Gordon stood between her and the leaping flames as the ornate frames and exquisite paintings charred and blackened, his face like stone.
Phoebe awoke from her daze. She couldn’t bear to see such amazing works of art destroyed. Grabbing the poker, she caught the frame of the castle painting and drew it forward toward the hearth. Gordon reached down and grasped her wrist in a hand of steel. The poker dropped to the hearth with a clang.
“Leave it!” he said savagely as he pulled her to her feet.
She stood there, white-lipped and silent, staring at him. When the red and orange flames danced over the surface of the paintings he finally released her.
His hot anger had congealed to a cold fury. “Listen and listen well! Do not meddle in things that don’t concern you.”
“Whatever affects you, affects me as well! Let us take the gloves off. I know more than you guess. That after you left Wickersham you came here and somehow stumbled into a world that wasn’t yours, with tragic consequences. I know that the service you claim my father rendered you somehow helped you gain your freedom. What I don’t know is why you turned away from me then and why you turn away from me now!”
He went white beneath his tan. “You know just enough to have it be a danger to you,” he said. “Don’t go poking about, Phoebe. I won’t have you harmed.”
“Then, for God’s sake, tell me what happened to you.” She touched his sleeve. “I’ve seen the castle. I’ve met Lady Rowan. I know that it’s real.” She held out the gems.
Gordon was silent a moment. “I will tell you this much. I was at the dolmen where I found you, and saw a fox run inside with something in its mouth. A fox kit, I thought, and followed. It was Lady Rowan’s little page boy. I set him free and went with him into the Kingdom of Faerie during a faerie rite, which no mortal is permitted to see. For that I was put under a spell of one hundred years away from the mortal world. Lady Rowan intervened because I saved her page, and instead I was given two choices: eternity in their world—or seven years in mine, during which I might find a way to break the spell. At a price.”
“I chose what I thought was the easier way.” He held out one scarred hand, touched his ruined face with the other. “Tell me, do you think I chose wisely? Was it was worth the price?”
She looked up at him with her heart in her eyes, saw the terrible pain that was his daily lot. “Only you can decide that, Gordon. But I will share your life if only you let me.”
He flung himself away from her. “Do you think I want you drawn into the same hell that I inhabit? Do you? And by God, they are trying to lure you in.”
She looked down at the marks on her wrist inadvertently left by his strong grip, then at the crackling flames and curls of burnt canvas flaking away to ash. “That is my decision,” she answered. “I chose to be wherever you are. Together we can find a way to break the spell that binds you.”
She lifted her head. He was staring down at her blindly.
“Oh, my love,” he said softly. “My precious girl. I would die first, rather than bring harm to you. Don’t you understand that?”
“I don’t care . . .”
&nbs
p; “Ah, but I do. There are matters you don’t know about and can’t understand, Phoebe, and that is why you cannot remain at Thorne Court.” He leaned down and kissed her, the briefest touch of his mouth against her lips, then turned and left the room.
Phoebe was panicked. She paced the drawing room, willing herself to be calm and not succeeding very well.
I won’t go, she vowed. He can’t make me. Whatever dangers there are we will face them together. I’ll go to him now, make him explain everything . . .
But even as she thought it, she heard the galloping of hooves and knew he had left the house.
Chapter 11
PHOEBE went up to Lady Gwynn’s room. The door was unlocked and the dowager was propped up in a chair before an easel, painting by the light of an oil lamp. “Come in, child. I’ve been waiting for you. Did you like the new paintings in the drawing room?”
“Who painted them?” Phoebe asked. “Was it you?”
“Oh, no. My style is quite different.” She waved a hand at the canvases that now faced forward into the room. There were only three subjects, shown in every possible season and quality of light: Thorne Court, the Faerie Stables, and the castle on the hill.
They were the works of a genius. A mad genius. But there was no likeness at all to the works that Gordon had destroyed.
“Then where did they come from?” Phoebe demanded.
“A clue for you, my dear, from Lady Rowan. And a reminder to Lord Jack. He has so little time left.”
A chill wrapped itself around Phoebe’s heart. “Lord Jack? Who do you mean?”
“Why, Gordon, of course. Lady Rowan gives mortals nicknames. She calls him Lord Jack because he fell down the hill. And when you are taken away to live with the faeries, your name will be Lady Jill.”
A shiver ran up Phoebe’s spine. “I have no intention of letting anyone take me away from Thorne Court.” She stood beside the older woman’s chair. “You know what happened to him.”
