He made a courteous bow, then turned about and, using the staff, found his way out of the room. The doors opened for him and closed behind him after he departed.
Kian and Loris exchanged glances, as did the others in the room.
“Is he in earnest?” Kian asked.
“I don’t know,” Malachi said. “He seems to be.”
“He said it before the Guardians,” Dyfed said, his tone filled with wonder. “It must be so.”
Desdemona Caslin shook her head. “Something’s wrong.”
Professor Seabolt, who had been sitting silently in the farthest corner, lost in thought, suddenly rose to his feet. “It’s the blood curse,” he said, looking at Malachi for agreement. “The blood curse. Don’t you understand?”
Malachi was on his way out the door before Professor Seabolt stopped speaking, with Kian at his heels. Morcar Cadmaran was still in the courtyard when they burst from the front doors. He was surrounded by several of his men, already mounted on their horses.
But Cadmaran wasn’t paying attention to the horse that was being held for him or to anyone around him. He was standing with his hands held before him, the staff he had clutched only moments earlier fallen upon the ground.
“The devil,” Malachi muttered. “He couldn’t have known it would be enough.”
“What is it?” Loris asked, coming to stand beside Kian. She saw what they were all looking at and found that she, too, was arrested by the sight.
Morcar Cadmaran was gazing at his hands.
He could see.
Slowly, the Earl of Llew turned and looked at the audience assembled on the steps of Castle Tylluan. His eyes moved knowingly over each face, coming to rest at last on Lord Graymar.
“I didn’t know,” Cadmaran murmured, his tone filled with the same amazement that Loris knew they all felt. “You put the thought in my head yesterday, on Bryn Chwilen, when you mentioned the unoliaeth and the blood curse. I only guessed that it would be enough to make recompense for my wrongs. And it worked.” A wide smile grew upon his handsome face. “I can see. The curse has been lifted. Now, at last, Malachi,” he said, “we are equals again.”
“You’ll never be his equal,” Kian said curtly. “Sighted or not. You never were.”
“I shall be,” Cadmaran vowed. “Losing Desdemona was but a small price to pay to regain my sight. You will have to decide, in the future, whether it was worth gaining her for all the loss that you shall suffer. It is a war between us now, Malachi,” he said, his black eyes filled with an intense hatred that Loris found frightening. “The Guardians may hear me as they please, but they cannot take my sight away again. They never lay the same curse upon one of our kind twice, and having lived in a hell of darkness these past three years, I fear nothing else.”
“Put this foolishness behind you, Morcar,” Malachi advised. “I don’t wish to live in enmity with you.”
“But I do,” Lord Llew said. “And I will.”
He mounted his horse and took the reins, controlling the massive beast with ease.
“I shall see you again soon, Lord Graymar. Good-bye, Desdemona, my pet,” Lord Llew added. “I hope you’ll be happy with your powerless husband. If he should begin to bore you, I would be glad to consider taking you back. You need only ask, my dear.”
Desdemona’s reply was to look at his fallen staff, which still lay upon the ground. Beneath her gaze the object exploded into thousands of tiny shards, causing the horses to whinny and shy away.
Cadmaran laughed with intense amusement and, calling for his men to follow, rode away.
The events of the day cast something of a pall on the night’s celebration, but not for the people of Tylluan, who were glad to be rid of the athanc and tremendously pleased that their lord had taken Loris as his wife.
Cook grumbled about having to labor to create two festive meals in as many nights, but with Loris back in charge of the servants and preparations, the work went quickly.
The great hall was filled to overflowing with all the people of Tylluan, dining upon dilled salmon, roasted lamb, and beef stew, along with a fine leek soup and plenty of bread and cheese. There was wine to drink and good ale as well and all the music and laughter and singing and dancing that accompanied such celebrations. This time, the celebrants were careful not to break any dishes, and the only games that were played were those that involved the children.
Kian found it impossible to care about either the food or the celebration. A bathtub had been set up in his bedchamber, ready with soaps and lotions and soft towels. Water was being kept hot on the fire, and a bottle of French champagne had been brought up from the wine cellar and was waiting to be opened. He had instructed Cook to leave a basket filled with goods that required little preparation—breads, cheeses, some sweets and fruit—along with plates and utensils. He and Loris hadn’t truly had a proper wedding night, a lack that Kian intended to remedy just as soon as they could possibly make a graceful exit.
As soon as the remains of the meal had been cleared, Kian took Loris’s hand and stood. He opened his mouth to begin his speech of thanks and departure and then stopped.
“Someone’s coming,” he said.
Loris looked at him curiously. “Who? Surely Cadmaran wouldn’t—”
“It isn’t Cadmaran,” Kian said quickly, aware of Malachi’s intent gaze. “It’s a mere mortal. Several mere mortals, in fact. They’ve crossed Tylluan’s borders and are coming to the castle. Very quickly.” He looked at his cousin, saying, wonderingly, “I can sense the presence of strangers within Tylluan, and know where they are. I’ve not been able to do so with any great accuracy before.”
“Your powers have increased,” Malachi said over the din in the hall. “You may have many such happy discoveries in the days to come.”
“My grandfather,” Loris murmured. “It must be my grandfather coming. Oh dear. I’m afraid he’s going to be very angry. And all of this”—she motioned toward the merry dancing and singing taking place—“is going to seem very wild to him. I so wanted him to have a wonderful first impression of Tylluan.”
“He will have, I promise you,” Malachi said reassuringly. He rose from his chair and neared them. “Go and rest. Dyfed and Desdemona have already done so, and quite rightly, considering the events of the night and day. Your cousin Niclas and I will greet Lord Perham and keep him company. He will be quite content and pleased with all that he hears and sees.”
“But, Malachi,” Loris said, “I can’t think it right to let you enchant my grandfather.”
Lord Graymar smiled. “Can you not?” he asked, looking from one to the other. “Consider it a wedding gift.”
“But—”
“You can speak with your grandfather first thing in the morning.”
Kian cleared his throat, and Malachi quickly amended, “I mean to say, in the afternoon. Now go on with you both. I’ll take care of everything.”
Some hours later, as they lay together, comfortable and replete against the soft sheets of Kian’s bed, Loris said sleepily, “I hope my grandfather is all right.”
Kian kissed her hair, still damp from their leisurely bath. “If anyone can keep him happy, it’s Malachi. I had the distinct feeling when we left him in the great hall that he was looking forward to playing lord of the manor. The great Earl of Graymar in his element.”
“He does it very well,” Loris said. “I wonder why Malachi has never married. He’s very popular with women—all the females that I met in London are half in love with him. Even the married ones.”
“I don’t know,” Kian murmured. “I think perhaps he’s never had the time. Being the Dewin Mawr, as well as the Earl of Graymar, must be very demanding. It’s probably like already being married.”
“But that’s precisely why he needs a wife,” Loris said. “We are so very useful to a husband.”
Kian smiled and pulled her against him more closely. “That you are. Very, very useful.”
“In many ways,” she told him. “Y
ou must admit that your life would be far more difficult if I didn’t manage the castle and arrange matters to make your days easier.”
“You did that long before you became my wife,” he said.
“But then I wasn’t very, very useful.”
“You were,” he said, his warm hand pressing against her hip. “But not in the same way.”
“And that’s why Malachi needs a wife.”
“I believe he already has a mistress who has proved quite useful.”
Loris turned toward him, lying on her back as he leaned over her. “No, for the other reason.”
“To be helpful and make his days easy?”
“To love him,” she said, reaching up to caress his cheek. “To take care of him.”
“Ah, I see,” he murmured. “I can think of another reason for him to get a wife. Several others, actually.”
“What are they?”
“To bring him joy with a simple glance,” he said, softly kissing her lips. “To give him pleasure with a smile.” He kissed her again. “To make him feel strong and whole with but a word. To make him want to rise in the morning just so that he can see her. Hear her voice.”
“I’m not sure such a woman exists,” she murmured.
“Aye, she does. But Malachi will have to find his own. I spent ten long years waiting for mine,” he said, bringing his mouth to hers once more, “and I’m never going to lose her again.”
Read on for an excerpt from
TOUCH OF DESIRE
Coming soon from St. Martin’s Paperbacks
Glain Tarran, Pembrokeshire, Wales
April 4, 1821, past midnight
Ceremonial Grounds
“The site is all that I could have hoped for, and far more. There are twenty enormous monoliths, paired together in a manner similar to those at Stonehenge, all of Welsh bluestone. I can only guess at the site’s date of origin, though it is classically Druidic in arrangement. The stones create a single, complete, perfect circle. Unlike other such sites, no stones have yet fallen.
“The main question”—at this point the wind began to blow so heartily that Sarah had to tether the edges of the page with her forearm—“is why this fantastic remnant of our historical past has been kept so secret from the government of England and the people at large. Why do the Seymour family and local villagers so vigilantly hide it?”
The wind apparently had had enough. Somehow, her glasses had slipped far enough down her irritatingly small nose to be snatched off by the wind. Flinging her knapsack aside, she grasped at the air, then went down on hands and knees to frantically search the ground.
“That is the outside of enough!” she informed the element hotly. “I must have my spectacles.”
And that was how Malachi, the Earl of Graymar, came upon Miss Sarah Tamony.
To say that he was shocked would have been apt.
He had no notion of why she’d come or how she’d ended up in the most sacred and secret place in Glain Tarran, but he did know that he had to get rid of her as soon as possible.
By the time she’d finally circled his way and seen him, he’d decided upon a course halfway between terror and kindness. Extending one palm, he brought forth a small flame, only enough light to help the moon illuminate his face. Making his expression as foreboding as he dared, he said, over the wind, in a darkly stern tone, “What are you doing here?”
She pressed up to her knees and squinted at him, setting one hand over her wind-blown hair to hold it back from her forehead.
“Well, at present,” she shouted over the elements, “I’m trying to find my spectacles.”
The flame floating over Malachi’s palm died away, and he felt himself gaping.
“What the devil are you doing on my lands!”
“I’m presently trying to find my spectacles. I don’t suppose you might make it stop a moment”—she motioned toward the wind with a wave of one hand—“so that I might discover where they’ve gone?”
“Be silent!” Malachi told her angrily, then turned his attention back to the wind. “Dwyn!”
The wind began to blow along the ground, tumbling leaves and branches and, finally, a pair of battered spectacles, which landed near his feet.
Bending, Malachi picked the spectacles up and examined them in the moonlight.
“They’re bent,” he said curtly, holding them out to his visitor.
She didn’t answer him directly, but spent a long time rubbing them clean with a bit of her skirt, before putting them on.
“Ah, that’s better,” she declared happily, gazing up at him, her face illuminated by the pale moonlight. “Do you remember me now, my lord?”
Malachi gazed back at her steadily, into a face that he knew well from description, but couldn’t recall from memory. She was a beauty. An auburn beauty, with large blue eyes and fine, aristocratic features. A rare, intelligent beauty who knew how to talk her way into getting almost anything she wanted.
Miss Sarah Tamony was a dangerous female.
Touch of Passion
© 2005 Susan Spencer Paul.
ISBN: 0312933886
ST. MARTIN’S
Ed♥n
Touch of Passion Page 38
