The Demon's Bride

by Jo Beverley

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got you. Get away, damn you! Get away!”

  Morden! What was he doing here?

  He threw her up on his horse, and she clutched the mane by instinct. Then he was behind her and the horse was galloping, away, away, away.

  Into a cold abyss.

  The loss hit her. With every stride she was torn further from herself, and the spirit was loose and adrift. . . .

  “Take me back!” she screamed. “I must go back!”

  “What the devil have they done to you?”

  “Can’t you feel it? It needs me!”

  “By heaven, it does not. The church. That’ll stop it.”

  Rachel was half fainting with an agony that was more mental than physical. The earl dragged her off the horse and carried her into the church, where candles blazed. He put her gently on her feet by the altar. , holding her tight. “You’re safe now.”

  “No, no! I’ll never be safe again!” She was shuddering and her teeth were rattling together like bones in a bag. “The demon is real!”

  “No, love. It’s all superstition.”

  “Then why are we in a church?” she demanded wildly, tearing herself out of his arms. “It’s seeking me!”

  He pulled her back into his arms. “Hush, hush. It can’t get you here.”

  Rachel shivered, but perhaps it was true. Her need to join it was fading, replaced by fear. “It’s waiting,” she whispered.

  “Then we’ll stay here until dawn. Presumably then whatever it is will have to return to its own private hell.”

  “No, no, it won’t.”

  “Come now,” he said with a laugh. “Everyone knows the rule of these things.”

  “How can you laugh? Can’t you feel it?”

  “No.”

  “You lie.”

  He didn’t deny it.

  Then a new song began. “I have to go back,” she said.

  “What?”

  “It needs me.”

  He grabbed her. “I need you. Be damned to whatever demon they’ve raised. You aren’t going to be it’s sacrifice.”

  “But it needs me,” she repeated as the new knowledge and certainty grew in her, as the keening sang in her mind and through her blood. “I must, I must--”

  He silenced her with a kiss.

  Then a howl rose in her mind, engulfing them both, as if the demon were here in the church with them.

  They fell rolling to the floor.

  When the kiss broke Morden stared at Rachel, wondering if she were just drunk, or had run mad, or if he had. He didn’t care. Her passion had always amazed him, but now she was aflame with it and willing.

  He spoke loudly and clearly, “You’re going to marry me, Rachel Proudfoot, but we’re going to join together here and now. That’ll put an end to any question of you being the Demon’s Bride.”

  He was prepared for resistance, but she said, “Yes,” and her eyes were fierce. Dear heaven, what had they done to her?

  He’d do it anyway.

  Her thin dress was little barrier to his touch, her lush curves ripe for him. He controlled his own need, seeking to build hers, to make this good for her.

  But she opened her eyes and focused on him. “Now!” she commanded with an urgency and knowledge that shocked him. She opened her legs and dragged him on top of her. Was all this for naught? Was she no virgin anyway? When he entered her, however, he felt her maidenhead tear.

  There was no cry of distress, however, just a manic delight. “Yes, oh yes . . .” she whispered, then shrieked, “Yes!” so the church rafters rang.

  Then the tempest took them both—a storm that was more than human, and deeper than the earth that mankind tilled; a power that blew bodies and minds apart and flow the fragments into a greater whole.

  Morden became slowly aware that he was both human and alive, and was surprised. For some moments there he had not been human, and in the climax—if it had anything to do with sexual climax—he had not been sure he would live.

  In sudden concern, he opened his heavy eyes and rolled to cradle Rachel. “Rachel! Love?”

  Her eyes flew open. “The earth,” she said, staring at him. “I was the earth. . . .”

  He wanted to make some boastful, flippant remark, but it would seem like spitting in church. Then he realized they had just fornicated in a church, before the very altar. There was a madness here. He tested the atmosphere but found nothing but echoes of their bonding.

  “The demon has gone,” he said.

  “No, no! It’s in me. In me, now.” She leapt to her feet and whirled, green skirts dancing. “The earth is reborn!”

  He grabbed her. “Rachel. This is very flattering, but calm down.”

  She clutched his arms, suddenly serious. “I must go back to the hill.”

  “Oh no. We’ll wait here until dawn to be safe.”

  “I must be there before dawn, or it will all be wasted.”

  “All what?”

  “All this! Stop denying it. You know.”

  “Know what?”

  “Waldborg. The earth. The spirit of the earth. It is to be renewed, and I am its vessel.”

  “Not anymore, you aren’t. You’re not a virgin anymore. Waldborg will have to make do with someone else.”

  She shook her head. “I am the Demon’s Bride, and the union is consummated. I am fertile!” she cried in a rapture. “I am as fertile as the buds of spring and as the seeds of autumn. . . .”

  She was going into a trance. He shook her. “Stop it! God damn them all, I’ll tear that hill down.”

  Her eyes focused. “No, no,” she said almost gently. “The spirit is the earth, and the earth is us. I am just needed for a little while, and then I will be yours forever.”

  It was almost as it were not Rachel speaking at all.

  “I’m not letting you out of here before dawn.”

  “Poor Mark,” she said, and his name was beautiful from her lips. “Are you fighting the beautiful mystery of it all? Look inside and see what you have become.”

  “What have you become?”

  “Dym’s Bride. I could be any woman, but now I am the key. It has to be me, and I must go.”

  The power of her conviction shook him. “What if this is madness? What if the demon wants you in the fire?”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “How the devil do you know? I love you, dammit. I’ve been fighting it for months. Now I’ve finally admitted it, am I to let you walk away to perform some ungodly rite that might destroy you?”

  She looked at him with tranquil eyes. “Yes.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “If for nothing else, for your land. You have a duty to your land.”

  “Plague on the land. I care only about you.”

  She shook her head in gentle reproof. “I do love you, but I love the land, too. I’m going to nag you about your gambling and your drinking, and demand that you spend more time here looking after everything and everyone that depends on you.”

  He kissed her ripe lips, as if drinking from a delicious cup. “I love you. I’ll do my best to be worthy of you, but I’m a wastrel at heart, you know.”

  “Yes.”

  He groaned. “Could you perhaps lie for me?”

  “Not tonight.” But there was a hint of humor, of sanity, in her eyes.

  “And you feel you must return to the hill?”

  “I know I must. I don’t know what will happen if I don’t, but it won’t be good for anyone.”

  He should be able to compel her to remain here by force, but he doubted it would work. She had within her the force of storm, flood, and thunder and he suspected she could tear him apart.

  He surrendered. “But I come with you.”

  “Of course.”

  The went finger-twined out of the church. Morden saw nothing to fear, but he could sense the Other around them. They mounted his skittish horse and he kicked it to the gallop toward the beacon on top of Dymons Hill, knowing that the dark force couldn�
�t be outpaced. That they carried it with them.

  The fire still burned, but all was quiet. The people around the base of the hill looked at them with eyes full of reproach and grief.

  When they dismounted Rachel said, “It’s all right, it’s all right,” touching hands with people near-by. “Waldborg is here among us and the earth will be renewed.”

  The word and the touch rippled around the hill.

  Waldborg is here.

  Waldborg is here.

  As Morden followed Rachel up the path, the music began again below them. He was in awe of her now, but terrified. What if the end of this was for her to be consumed by fire? He fingered the pistol in his pocket. He’d never let that happen.

  As soon as they arrived on the hilltop, Reverend Proudfoot hurried forward. “Rachel, my dear, are you all right? You screamed most terribly when Lord Morden seized you, and poor Mary Heyman has a numb hand.”

  “I’m quite all right, Father. It was just the interruption. Now we must finish.” She spoke almost absently and headed straight for the place where the knife still protruded from the ground. She was like a parched person seeing water. No one could stop her.

  She lay over the knife, face down.

  Morden couldn’t simply watch her do this. He ran to sit beside her, placing his hand on her back. “Rachel?”

  She turned her head and smiled. “It’s all right. You’ll see.”

  And then the spirit poured through her.

  It was more than before, and different, and he was trapped in it.

  He tried to break free, but his hand was sealed to Rachel and through her to the earth. He knew now why Rachel had screamed. If he were separated from her now, the skin would surely be ripped from his hand.

  He tried to resist insanity, to cling to reason, but the rapture was too great. He collapsed down over her—his bride, his love, his dear destruction—and every point of contact became a new annihilation of his self.

  He was the hill, and he was the beating heart of the earth, full of the fearsome energy of life. When he was lost, when Mark Brandish was no more, he was expelled with newborn agony like a seed breaking through the soil with spring ferocity in the glorious triumph of growth.

  He saw the air in all its wonders, full of dancing magic, and rode the wind through the living trees. He brushed over water, the blood of the earth, and sank drowning-deep into the salt oceans.

  He was with Rachel, joined to her more poignantly than in sex, as they played with fish and dolphins, then spouted free to race through clouds. At last, at last, they rode the glow of the new day, spiraling back down and into a hill in Suffolk.

  Mark opened his eyes and stared at the watching faces.

  Plague take it, he was intimately wrapped around his future countess and being grinned at by silent crowd of yokels. He shook her and said, “Rachel.”

  She rolled onto her back and smiled at him. “Oh my.”

  He straightened her skirts, hoping that one day she would open her eyes like that after lovemaking, and smile in that way that spoke of heavenly delights. ‘Struth, but her gown was scarce decent, being so thin and without petticoat or stomacher.

  “Are you able to stand?”

  She looked around and her delicious color flooded into her face. She scrambled to her feet, completely the vicar’s practical daughter again, caught in the most unthinkable situation.

  He kept an arm around her, even though she tried to struggle free. “Miss Proudfoot has done me the honor of agreeing to be my countess,” he announced.

  “I have not!”

  He put an edge of command onto his voice. “You most certainly have.”

  And she hid her face against his chest and did not deny it. The music on top of the hill picked up the jollity already ongoing down below.

  “You’d no need to tell us, milord,” said Mrs. Hatcher. “We knew you were the one.”

  “The one for what?” asked Rachel, coming out of hiding.

  “Why, the one for the Bride. The Bride’s always the one on the point of marrying. Has to be really, the way it can take them.”

  Rachel gasped. “You mean . . . it usually . . .”

  “Tends that way, yes, miss, though there’s some as say that it’s just the excitement and the excuse. I’ve never seen it take anyone like tonight, that’s for sure. I reckon tonight were a proper Dym’s Night. The land’s all set for a while now.”

  “Yes, it is,” said Rachel, then she spoke more loudly, so more could hear. “I have to tell you something, something I learned tonight. Dym’s Night comes of the joining of the Christian rhythms with those of the ancient earth. The date doesn’t matter, only that everyone believes it’s the right night. No calendar change can alter it.”

  There was a murmur of relief.

  “What happened to Meggie Brewstock, then?” Mark asked. “Did Waldborg kill her?”

  “The spirit never kills. The third earl came as you did, but later. When he dragged her away, the bond was too great. She died of the shock.”

  The experience was rapidly fading into a magical dream, but Mark could imagine the effect of being ripped out of it. “Damnation. If I’d arrived later, I could have killed you.”

  Rachel took his hand. “But you didn’t. And you came to save me.”

  Ada Brewstock stepped forward. “It were as you said, miss. Grandad told me before he died. They had to knock out the earl, you see, to try to save her, but it were too late. Said poor Meggie looked so awful they couldn’t have people see her like that, so they threw her on the fire and claimed it were an accident. She’d not completed her part, so that were a bad year in the land, and for many a year after.”

  “So the impoverishment of the estate back then was entirely the third earl’s madness.”

  “Your ancestor felt some of what you felt this night,” Rachel said to Mark. “That drove him mad.”

  “Aye,” said Mistress Brewstock. “It’s not a mystery for men.”

  “Are you still sane?” Rachel asked him.

  “No, I’m madly in love.” He kissed her, despite their audience.

  “You don’t regret it, then?”

  “No,” he said, and it was true. “I regret nothing.”

  She turned and drew the blade out of the earth and handed it to Michael Bladwick. “Keep it safe.”

  “Aye, Lady,” he said, not at all prosaically. “That I will.”

  People seemed to want to gather around Rachel, talking, but mainly touching. Mark noted how they all called her “Lady” and he didn’t think it was a reference to her future as his countess. It was as if she were magic, and perhaps tonight she was.

  He knelt and tested the ground with his fingers—the ground from which she’d just drawn the blade. It was hard earth over chalky rock, with no crack or crevice that he could detect. Was he to believe this? That spirits could rise in the eighteenth century?

  Whatever had happened, he knew he was changed without hope of recovery. His land was no longer maps and ledgers and rents to be spent, but a living thing in his charge, and perhaps now it would be more bountiful—because of a Dym’s Night.

  He hoped so. He was called to cherish it as potently as he had ever been called to a woman.

  Except one.

  He stood and looked across to where she was talking to her father. Probably duly reciting all the details for one of his damned books. That dress outlined every lush curve of her passionate body, the bodice was far too low, and no woman with hair like that should be allowed to let it hang free in public.

  He commandeered Sir George’s cloak and went to wrap it around her. “No details of all this are to be published,” he said to her father.

  “The routine details, perhaps,” countered the vicar calmly. “But as for the rest, I doubt it would be believed. However,” he said with a direct look, “I think a wedding is in order.”

  “Indeed it is, and as soon as possible.” Mark dared Rachel to refuse. He’d carry her off and hold her prisoner until s
he consented.

  But Rachel smiled. “I am to be bride to another demon, I see.”

  “For all time and beyond, without hope of escape. Yes?”

  She blushed, looking every inch a clergyman’s proper daughter.

  “Yes please, my lord.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I wrote this story in 1991, and I’m pleased to see it available again. In looking it over, I was interested to see how some themes from it have appeared in other works.

  I played with the sacrificial virgin story in “The Dragon and the Virgin Princess,” in a collection called Dragon Lovers.

  The calendar change of 1752 is crucial in another fantasy story, “The Marrying Maid,” in Songs of Love and Death, which also involves a rakish aristocrat and a clergyman’s daughter--and some rapturous faerieinspired sex, now I come to think of it!

  Lastly, this story is about an unlikely countess, and I first wrote that in a Regency historical called Forbidden Magic. Yes, I played with a little fantasy that time, too. In that case the magic was a lewd statue that could grant wishes, but with a sting in the tail. It catapults impoverished Meg Gillingham into the marriage with the eccentric Earl of Saxonhurst, and she soon wonders if she’s been blessed or cursed. That novel has been reissued and is available now.

  My new book, coming in March 2011, is actually called The Unlikely Countess! Like “The Demon’s Bride,” it is a Georgian romance about a simple woman whom fate shoots into the aristocracy. There are no dragons, faeries, or demons in this one, however--simply the craziness that overtakes humans when they fall in love, especially to an unlikely opposite.

  In The Unlikely Countess, Prudence Youlgrave is the daughter of a librarian, left in poverty by her father’s death. At the opening, the hero, Catesby Burgoyne, is also very short of money, but his brother’s death catapults him into being Earl of Malzard and back among his alienated family, none of whom have any faith in him.

  To see how these two people come together, why they marry, and how it all turns out, read The Unlikely Countess. If you want to try before you buy, there are excerpts on my Web page, www.jobev.com.

  All these books are or will be available in print and e-book format.