Perilous Pleasures

by Jenny Brown

  The question took him by surprise. “I do.”

  Her face lit up. “Then I could use it to grow the herbs and simples you might use in your cures.”

  “Nothing would give me more pleasure.”

  Her offer touched his heart. He hadn’t expected her to take such an interest. But even so, he wondered if finishing his father’s conservatory would be tempting fate.

  He snapped the reins and the gig resumed its progress down the country track. A few moments later he put his free arm around his wife. She didn’t resist, but snuggled closer to him. If she wanted the conservatory rebuilt, he must do it for her. He would do anything for her that might bring that fleeting look of pleasure to her warm brown eyes.

  As they drove on, he pointed to where, off in the distance, a lone sentinel stone stood, thrusting out of the barren hillside to give mute evidence that the Ancient Ones had long had his patrimony under their sway. Zoe asked him to take her closer so she could examine it. When they reached it, he reined in the horse and helped Zoe out of the gig so she could approach the stone more closely.

  The sun had sunk near the horizon, bathing the close-cropped pasture around th8em with that warm golden light that lasted so briefly this time of year. He remembered loving the way that light had gilded the stone when he’d come here in his childhood—though the stone itself had filled him with uneasiness then, as it did now.

  With her usual good sense, Zoe betrayed no sign of fear but marched right up to the standing stone. As she did, he noted with pleasure that she was walking normally again. Her leg was healing, and no longer seemed to pain her. When she had reached the stone she tilted her head back to examine it in the fading light and traced out the runes carved into it with her forefinger. When she was done, she walked back to him, more slowly than necessary, as if she were puzzling something out in her mind.

  When she had taken her place by his side, she asked, “Is the stone the reason why your servants are so superstitious? Do they still worship in the ancient way?”

  “No. They’re good Christians all.” The suggestion surprised him.

  “Really? I thought perhaps, because you follow the ancient ways, they might, too.”

  “No. I learned those ways in France, when I began my studies with the Dark Lord. Such practices are no longer followed here. It would shock my tenants to know that I dabble in such things.”

  “I doubt that. Surely Auld Annie is no Christian.”

  Again his chest tightened. “What makes you say that?”

  “That weird gesture she makes whenever she sees me, and her dire warnings—they’re quite disquieting. They were what made me think it was she who had first taught you about the ancient religion.”

  “She disturbs you, doesn’t she?” The words came out before he could censor them.

  “Yes. I must confess, she does. I know that respect is due to her, as your nurse. But . . .” She paused, clearly nervous about continuing.

  He leapt into the silence. “But what?”

  She drew in breath. “Well, I’ve no experience in the management of such a large household, so perhaps I’m overreacting, but I don’t think she’s a good influence on the other servants. Twice already she’s burst into my room when I hadn’t bade her enter, muttering about some family curse, and uttering dismal warnings. And she seems to have infected the housekeeper with her superstitions, too. Mrs. MacAlpin was full of disturbing hints when she took me around the manor, though she refused to explain anything when I confronted her.”

  “Disturbing hints of what?”

  “That curse of Auld Annie’s. I assure you, it’s nothing I took seriously. But I do take seriously the way Auld Annie might use such superstitions to undermine my authority here. I’m afraid she’s too old to learn to serve a new mistress.”

  “Do you want me to send her away?” He felt himself go cold.

  She nodded. “If it’s possible.”

  There was no putting it off any longer. He must tell her. But he said nothing as he led her back to the gig, he couldn’t. His heart was breaking. She would take the curse seriously when she learned the truth, and when she did, his dream of happiness would fade like his father’s. He must be grateful for the brief hours of content he’d shared with her, and take what comfort he could from knowing that, unlike his father, he hadn’t let his selfishness ruin a woman’s life.

  He must tell her the truth, but when he did, even bespelled, he knew she’d finally leave him.

  Chapter 14

  What was the matter with Adam? He’d dropped the reins and sat in the gig beside her staring, as if frozen, at the barren fields. Zoe couldn’t understand it. One moment he’d been so happy, when he’d given her that touching gift of his sister’s knife. Then he’d withdrawn.

  It must have been her ill-chosen words about Auld Annie. She should have known better than to criticize the woman who’d raised him. She wished she’d kept silent, but it was too late now. Adam had become as cold and inscrutable as the standing stone that glinted silver blue in the light of the rising moon.

  She stroked his arm, hoping to defuse the tension she felt flowing through his body. But though he tolerated her touch, he didn’t put his arm back around her shoulder the way he had earlier.

  She took the bull by the horns. “I owe you an apology. I was wrong to ask you to send your nurse away. She has far more right to be here than I do.”

  He shook his head. “You have every right to wish to see her gone. I wish I could dismiss Auld Annie. Indeed, I’d give all that I possess to be able to do so. But the curse she referred to is real. And it is what makes it impossible for me to send her away. As much as I might hope I won’t have to inflict her brutal ways on my own children, I might have to.”

  “Why? What possible hold can she have over you? Does she know some damaging secret about the family? Is it blackmail that ties you to her?”

  “Nothing like that. But I may need to call on her to nurse my children—our children,” he corrected himself, his face working. “Though I pray to God with all my strength, I won’t.”

  Zoe’s heart sank. So much for her dreams of having a child who would enter the world with a name and a home, a child upon whom she could lavish all the love she didn’t dare show her husband lest she frighten him away.

  She’d assumed that Adam would want children, too, whatever his feelings about her. A nobleman must have an heir. But her husband’s last words made her realize her mistake.

  “So you have no love for children?” she said quietly, hiding how much the question meant to her.

  “To the contrary, I’ve always loved other people’s children. It’s only the thought of ours that fills me with foreboding.”

  Her heart sank further. “Because I would be their mother?”

  “Never! You’d make a wonderful mother. Your children would be loved and comforted.

  “But my children would be Isabelle’s grandchildren. Is that why you would hate them?”

  He didn’t answer her directly but picked up the reins. Then he turned to face her. “Didn’t you ever wonder why a man like me would have chosen to take a vow of chastity? You know me well enough by now to know the strength of my passions and the difficulty with which I repress them.”

  She had, but what did that have to do with curses and their children? Hesitantly she answered, “You told me that you wished to be the Dark Lord’s heir, and that his heir must be chaste—or at least that’s what you thought until your teacher convinced you otherwise.”

  “But didn’t you wonder why I wished to be the Dark Lord’s heir? Didn’t you wonder why I spent so many years so far from home, living the life of an exile, when I had these beautiful green acres waiting for me where I could have lived the life of a gentleman surrounded by comfort and by others of my kind? Didn’t that seem strange to you?”

  “Everything about you seemed strange to me—at first.” She couldn’t keep the exasperation out of her voice. “But I’ve grown accustomed to you. You’v
e been the Dark Lord’s heir as long as I’ve known you, so I didn’t question it. From the very first you made it clear you wished to devote your life to becoming a great healer.”

  “My desire to be a great healer had little to do with what I wished,” Adam said softly. “If I could have had my wish, I’d have lived here all my life, tending my estate, and enjoying the simple pleasures of a gentleman with a beloved wife and my sons and daughters.”

  She fought against the jealousy that surged within her at the thought of that lost beloved wife whose children would have been so very wanted. “Then why then did you leave it all behind? Why are you the Dark Lord’s heir?”

  “Because of the curse,” he said. “Because I couldn’t bear to see it strike again. Because I hoped that something I’d learn when the Dark Lord revealed his deepest secrets could undo it.”

  “What curse? You’re driving me mad with your refusal to explain it to me.”

  “The Ramsay curse.” His eyes bored into hers, gleaming in the falling dusk like the flames of the beacon that warns mariners at sea of the fatal rocks that lie hidden by the shore. “In every generation of our family, twins are born, one hale and strong, like me, and one”—his voice broke—“like Charlotte.”

  “But you loved Charlotte. She was beautiful and good.”

  “I saw her that way, but I was the only one. To the rest, even to her own mother, she was only a cripple, a hopelessly damaged monster, mute and twisted.”

  Zoe struggled to comprehend what he was telling her. “You never told me Charlotte was crippled.”

  He nodded and bowed his head, letting the waves of long hair fall forward over his eyes, as if he’d hide himself from her. “She was born that way, as the smaller twin always is. Her one side was nearly useless though she could drag herself around with the help of sticks. But she couldn’t speak. Or at least, not so that anyone but me could understand her.”

  “How sad, Adam. But why?”

  “Because I’d made her so. I was the stronger twin, the bearer of the Ramsay curse. I sucked the life out of her in the womb. I’ve had to live with that knowledge all my life. I wouldn’t wish it on my son. Better he never be born.”

  “But that’s mad. No one sane could blame a child in the womb for the fate of his twin.”

  “Then you must call my mother mad, and my father, and the cottars that live on our lands, for they all believe it.”

  “Based on what?”

  He brought his hands up to his face and rubbed at his eyes as if he could rub away the memory. “They say that ten generations ago, a Ramsay laird stole a girl from one of the neighboring clans and forced himself upon her. As he took her, she seized his dirk from his belt and plunged it into her own breast. With her dying words she laid a curse on the Ramsay laird: that his violent, lustful nature should be passed down to his sons, who would war against their siblings, even in the womb.”

  “But that’s arrant superstition! You’ve been trained as a physician. How can you believe such a thing?”

  His eyes met hers. “Because it’s true. Every few generations a Ramsay wife has given birth to twins, one strong and hearty, the other a helpless cripple, damaged by the unseen struggle in the womb. My father was one of such a set of twins—the strong one. His twin was saved by the skill of the midwife who stayed on to nurse him, the woman you know as Auld Annie, though he lingered on for only three years before death claimed him.”

  He paused and took a painful gulp of air. “The pattern repeated again with Charlotte and myself, though by the time of our birth Auld Annie was more experienced, so she was able to keep my sister alive until we were one-and-twenty.”

  “So that was why you apprenticed yourself to the Dark Lord, to heal Charlotte?”

  “Yes. As soon as I was old enough to be my own master, I set off to consult the finest physicians in Edinburgh, hoping to find some way to make Charlotte whole. The few who would agree to treat her subjected her to painful therapies that did nothing but increase her suffering. They bled and purged her. The most vigorous cut into her tendons. She begged me to give up my efforts, but I couldn’t. I traveled to London alone to see if physicians there had anything more to offer.

  “It was a doctor there, Dr. Fox, who told me that because her condition resulted from a supernatural affliction it could only be cured by a therapy of the same nature. He suggested I seek out Mesmer or the Count of Saint-Germain—some man who healed the spirit, not just the body.

  “So I went to France, only to find that the Count was dead and that Mesmer had been driven away by the jealousy of his competitors. It was one of his students who told me of a man who was a greater healer than Mesmer—the heir of an ancient tradition of wisdom, who’d improved his abilities by studying on the Continent ’til he’d also mastered all that the greatest men of science could teach.”

  “The Dark Lord?” Zoe asked.

  “None other. Mind you, I was skeptical when I sought him out. I knew all too well how charlatans played on the hopes of desperate families. But when I arrived at his chateau in Morlaix his behavior reassured me. Unlike a charlatan, he made no grandiose claims. In fact, he applauded my skepticism about mystical powers as evidence of my intelligence, and merely bade me observe him as he went about his cures.

  “When I did, what I saw made it impossible for me to doubt his power. For the first time in my life, I felt hope. But when I asked him if he could help my sister, his words were chilling: The Ramsay curse had begun with the Ramsay lust. If I was to see her cured, I must vow myself to lifelong chastity.”

  Adam stopped and stared silently at the horizon where the last rays of the setting sun flashed over a distant mountain. When he began speaking again his voice was almost a whisper. “I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was so young, just turned one-and-twenty, my own master at last. My passions were strong and easily gratified. I was a wealthy lord—in France—surrounded by women competing to become my mistress. I couldn’t give that up. Even after what I’d seen the Dark Lord do, I couldn’t make myself believe that I could heal my sister by taking a vow of chastity.

  “So I begged the Dark Lord to find some other way. That was when he read me my horoscope. It showed there was no other way. My character was under the sway of four strong planets placed in Pisces. I faced a choice—to redeem myself by self-sacrifice or to suffer. If I wouldn’t vow myself to chastity, my sister’s case was hopeless and I must leave.

  “His words left me devastated. I’d seen him cure cases that seemed far more hopeless than hers. Surely there was something he knew that could improve Charlotte’s condition. I bargained with him and told him I would take the vow he demanded of me, but only if he would teach me the healer’s art. I offered him a small fortune for his tuition. It took some persuading—he doubted a Pisces could find the strength it would take to become a healer. But I was persistent, and at last he took me on, but only on the condition that I would bring Charlotte to him, so he could examine her in person. To sweeten the bitter pill he’d given me, he said that if I could stay chaste for many years I would have made myself into one of the very few of his disciples who were fit to become his heir.”

  Zoe interrupted him. “So did he teach you, then, the secrets of healing those afflicted like your sister?”

  His face had turned to stone. “He began to teach me the rudiments of healing, but by the time my sister had arrived in Morlaix, I sensed him holding back. I told myself it was because he was distracted by working out how he would go about healing her. But I know now it must have been because he knew I was incapable of keeping to my vow of chastity.”

  “But you told me that you did keep it,” Zoe said. “For nine long years.”

  “Oh yes. I did,” he said bitterly. “Starting from that day when I returned from my week of debauchery in Paris to find my sister’s corpse. Only that proved to me how right he had been to demand it of me.”

  Zoe broke in, “And yet, on his deathbed he told you to marry me. He freed you from that
vow.”

  Adam shook his head as if to clear it. “I know. I can only hope that at the end he saw that my atonement had been enough. It has even occurred to me that perhaps he saw that chastity had become too easy for me, and that marriage would force me to find the discipline needed to express the Ramsay passion without causing harm.

  “But there is another possibility.” His face darkened. “Perhaps he intended me to suffer the fate of my father before me, and father another pair of Ramsay twins, as penitence for what I’d done to Charlotte.

  “In any case, after her death, there was no more time for him to teach me anything. The revolutionaries were hunting for me, too, and the Dark Lord had to send me away for my own protection. Though I studied with others, none of them knew what he knew. If we were to have a child afflicted as my sister was, I couldn’t offer it any more help than I did Charlotte.”

  He bit his lip. “That’s why I don’t want children, and why I’ve struggled to contain my desire for you since we were wed. Much as I long to make you the wife of my body, I can’t do it. Not knowing the cost.”

  Zoe’s heart melted. He’d avoided her, not because he loathed her, but out of his need to protect her.

  “We live in modern times,” she finally replied. “And you’ve mastered far more of the healing art than most men. Enough to save my life. And besides, you said the curse only strikes some of the Ramsay lairds. Perhaps our children won’t fall victim to it.”

  His lips tightened. “So my father hoped when he married my mother. He, too, was a man of enlightened principles and refused to accept that his life could be ruined by an ancient curse. He didn’t tell his wife-to-be about our family history, afraid that she’d laugh at him and call him a superstitious fool. But when she quickened, and the midwife told them that she’d be bearing twins, he was forced to tell her the truth. That was when they had the quarrel that resulted in his leaving Strathrimmon before I was born. He didn’t want to leave, but he had no choice.”