Linda Needham

by The Wedding Night

  “This cover isn’t the original.” Wonder and habit made her speak aloud. “Nor the binding.”

  “It had damn well better be original! How the bloody hell can you tell?”

  “The gilding, for one. A thousand years old, no more than that.” History be damned—this was legend come to life!

  “A thousand years? Blast it, woman! Isn’t that old enough?” Rushford shook the table with his weight as he leaned over the book, his hands resting hard on the tabletop.

  “The cover missed the Gofarian by five centuries.”

  “Damn the man! The archbishop swore to me this book was authentic.”

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t.” She prayed that it was, for it was a miracle. Mairey opened the cover to the parchment, and the first words of Latin took her breath away.

  As the Willow shall race the Moon

  On footsteps bright with silver.

  Begetting of sorrows,

  Begetting of joy.

  Tears rushed to Mairey’s eyes, so very hot and incriminating if Rushford ever saw them. Here was magic—a priceless sword dangling above her head, held there by a man who had the power to destroy her village and the people she loved. The same man who could open doors so long closed to her.

  “Well, madam?” His voice came rumbling from behind her, and frightened a sob from her chest. The blackguard must know for a damning fact that she would have crawled on her knees from here to York just to catch a glimpse of the Gofarian. And now here it was, inside Rushford’s library. He was a sorcerer, a piper whose music was meant only for her, and she was helpless against his enchantment.

  She could almost feel the weight of the Willowmoon Knot in her hand, feel the cool silver turn warm. It was as near to her as Jackson Rushford.

  “Well, yes,” she managed to say, though too softly, as she wiped a stray tear off her cheek. “The book is interesting.”

  “More than interesting. I can see it in your eyes.” He was leaning so close, he might have seen inside her heart.

  “A scholarly surprise then.”

  “Ha! Private museums, Miss Faelyn,” he said evenly, giving a wicked crook to his brow. “Gilded invitations into restricted archaeological sites, sacred books, crumbling manuscripts, sealed vaults, tea at Windsor with the queen—they are yours for as long as you associate yourself with my search for the Willowmoon Knot and the secret of its silver.”

  Oh, Papa! What should I do?

  “We’re an impeccable fit, Miss Faelyn.” He was impossibly tall. Impossibly dark-eyed and handsome. “Offer your skills to me, and I shall give all this to you. A simple, profitable business relationship.”

  Not simple. Terrifying. Impossible.

  And as perilously tempting as gazing over the side of a cliff and believing with soaring certainty that she could fly. This man, this predatory beast, was offering her a precious set of wings and making her fly over the mouth of hell.

  He was offering the Willowmoon.

  “But if you’re truly not interested, Miss Faelyn….” He offered his open palms. “I will engage someone else.”

  The threat was so blatantly idle that Mairey snorted. “Who?”

  “There was a young man recommended to me. Brawlings, I believe.”

  “Arthur Brawlings.” Mairey knew him well. A despicable charlatan who would boil his own mother’s bones and salt an ancient barrow with them, if he thought it would bring him an ounce of glory. Yet Brawlings was also a scholar of the Celts and treasure hungry. With all the resources that Rushford was offering, the man would soon be on a trail that would bring sorrow to everyone Mairey loved.

  Rushford had thought of everything.

  As always, the man was watching her every move, had probably seen the teary redness in her eyes and would make the most of her weakness.

  “Should you refuse me, Miss Faelyn, I will put these same resources at Brawlings’s disposal.” He folded the cloth over the ancient text, one corner and then the next, until it was gone from her sight. “We will surely lose precious months of research while he catches up—a year or two, perhaps. But I am a patient man, willing to search the world for what I want, if need be. The Willowmoon Knot will eventually be found, and its clues will lead me to the silver.”

  She couldn’t take that chance.

  She would have to make a pact with the devil. Yet not on the devil’s terms.

  Deception, half-truths, sleight of hand…the secrets of the Willowmoon still belonged to her, and the truth could be as blinding and deceptive as any lie. Let the man believe that she was as greedy as he, that they were after the same glittering prize. Mairey’s heart was raw and her head ached.

  “You’ve left me little choice, Rushford. I want the Willowmoon Knot as much as you do. A fortune in silver is difficult to deny. Very well—I’ll join your project.”

  He raised a dark brow as though he were surprised that he’d won. “Done, then.”

  “Yes. Done.” Mairey felt as though she’d been flogged and thrown out on a rock. “Now, sir, if you’ll point me in the direction of the nearest lodging house, I’ll return to Drakestone in the morning to see my library properly packed and sent back to Oxford, where I can conduct my research properly.”

  “No.” The word was plain and clipped, but as powerful as a blow. “You work for me now, Miss Faelyn. Your library stays here.”

  “I can’t afford to ride the train back and forth to Oxford every morning and evening.” She couldn’t leave her sisters and her aunt. And if she was to keep Rushford from learning too much, she needed to conduct her research safely distant from his prying.

  “And I can’t afford the time to have you on that train. You’ll live here on my estate—”

  “I’d rather sleep on a park bench! Good day, sir.” Mairey got three steps toward the foyer before Rushford got a fist-hold of her skirts.

  “Be still, girl!” His momentum propelled him against her before he easily hauled her backward into his chest.

  “I’ll not live alone with you, sir!” He was wrapped around her like a winter coat buttoned up against a cold wind.

  “I’m offering you a private lodge here at Drakestone,” he murmured against her ear.

  “No.”

  “I assure you, Miss Faelyn, that if I had improper designs on you I would be forthright about it.”

  “What the devil does that mean?” The man was forthright enough with his shimmering heat and the fierce banding of his arms, a cocoon as ravishing as she remembered in her dreams.

  “It means that you and I have contracted a business deal, which satisfies both of us in equal measure.”

  “As I measure it, Rushford, you got the bucket and I got the hole.”

  Rushford was silent and still for the space of a heartbeat, then Mairey heard a rumble and realized that he was laughing softly, the sound coursing through her like another pulse.

  “Indeed,” he said, freeing her from his grasp but blocking her retreat. “Drakestone is large and the lodge is separate, secured behind as many locks as you find comfortable. But you will work with me in the main part of the house. My hours are long and unreliable. The sooner we find this Knot and its silver the sooner we’ll be quit of each other, and the happier we both will be. Agreed?”

  She looked up over his shoulder. His library was enormous, with two full stories of books and polished mahogany, and a mezzanine ringing the room. And a quarter of the shelves on its lower floor were empty but for a few of her field note boxes lined up together.

  She could build an impregnable fortress against him here.

  “Whose desk is this?” Mairey slid her hand just under the edge of the desktop, following the undulations of the mahogany-cabled carving. “Have you a clerk?”

  “It belongs to me.”

  “How often do you use it?”

  “Rarely. This is my library. My office is through that connecting door.”

  “Your hours?”

  “Vary, as I said, as required by my business conce
rns.”

  “Your mines, I assume.” She endured the bitterness, offered him a smile.

  “Yes. As well as my forges and smelters, my foundry—”

  “So you’re busy most days?”

  “And most nights.”

  Busy stripping hillsides of ancient trees and defiling gentle waterfalls with coal slag. Like any busybody dragon, he’d soon tire of sniffing round his new bauble and leave her to the wonders of his lair. Hiding her work from him would be simple if she built her walls of dancing mirrors.

  Oh, Papa, the possibilities.

  “May I see the lodge?”

  He led her silently through the clipped shadows of the formal garden, past an afternoon-gilded greenhouse, over a low footbridge and its crystal stream, and into a remarkably unspoiled willow woods. He was single-minded in his long stride, constantly looking back to make certain she was following.

  And when the lodge appeared beneath the heavy canopy of oak and hornbeam, Mairey thought they had accidently stumbled onto a storybook house.

  It had a thatched roof and round-topped windows, three chimneys and a winding path of pearly gravel that seemed to sing as she followed it to the front porch.

  Rushford held open the door, and Mairey found herself as charmed by the inside as she had been by the outside. Big, bright rooms freshly furnished, the homey smell of woodsmoke caught up in the timbers.

  The girls would love it here!

  “I trust it meets with your approval, Miss Faelyn.”

  Rushford was waiting for her in the wide hall as she came down the stairs. He’d been oddly puritanical in staying below while she explored the bedrooms, this feral-forged man who had thought nothing of pinning her to a post in an abandoned mill and fondling her as though they had been hungry lovers.

  “The house is very unlike you, Rushford.”

  “An old royal hunting lodge. It was the first building on the property, some three hundred years ago. And as I promised, a full five-minute walk from the main house, with plenty of locks and a sturdy bar for the door. It’s yours to do with whatever you wish.”

  “Are you married, my lord?” Mairey hadn’t meant to ask that particular question, and never so bluntly, but it seemed important if she was going to be tied to the man indefinitely.

  She’d have thought the question a simple one to answer, but Rushford just stood there looking at her, frowning.

  “I only ask, sir, because a wife might object to having another woman living on the estate.” Mairey’s heart beat wildly under all that glowering. “I certainly would.”

  “You’ll have no trouble on that count, Miss Faelyn. I’ve never had a wife.”

  Her heart took a crazy thunk, a little too relieved, a lot too giddy. She hurried the few steps past him into the parlor. “Do you plan to take a wife any time soon?”

  “Why?”

  Because the idea didn’t set well with her. A wife in the offing—a wedding at Drakestone. She couldn’t quite look at him, so she inspected the hearth and its damper, rattled the handle and came away with sooty fingers.

  “Because, Lord Rushford, although no one hopes to conclude our pact sooner than I do, my father spent his entire professional life looking for the Willowmoon Knot. He was a much more experienced scholar than I am, and after thirty years he’d made little headway. We can hardly expect success after only a few weeks.”

  “And?”

  She faced him, glad for the distraction of rubbing the soot off her fingers. “And if, sir, three years from now you should find a wife and you and I are still…associated, she would doubtless want me to conduct my research elsewhere than on your estate.”

  “Would she?”

  “I certainly would!”

  “Well, then, my dear,” he said, leaning too close with a badly tucked-away grin, “I’ll keep that in mind should I ever go looking for a wife.”

  “You’ll warn me if you change your mind?”

  “Absolutely.”

  That set off an entirely different set of fluttering in her stomach…bubbles of profuse contentment. Absurd—it was the lodge. She liked it too much.

  “Good. In the meantime, if I’m to live as well as work here at Drakestone, I want to be assured that I may have the run of the lodge as you promised.”

  Rushford leaned easily against the arch. “As long as you don’t add a wing onto the place without my permission.”

  “I won’t even paint.”

  “Paint the lodge in yellow stripes, if you wish. Raise geese and goats. Just don’t go inviting anyone onto the grounds who might pose a threat to the security of our project.”

  A threat? Though Caro and Poppy were liable to run wild, given the pond and the stream, and Anna was an unrepentant flower thief, they were hardly a risk to Rushford’s security. Nor did he need to be a part of her private life.

  “Of course.”

  “So, Miss Faelyn. I’m offering you the use of the lodge, a hundred pounds per month in salary, and one-tenth percent royalty on the net profits of the Willowmoon Mineworks in exchange for your cooperation. I can offer no more.”

  The Willowmoon Mineworks. The words slammed into the backs of her knees and her heart grew cold. She saw thick gray smoke where her village had once nestled against the hillside, and a dark-eyed dragon curled up on a heap of glittering silver.

  Staying close to the beast seemed the safest way to govern him. Yes, belling the dragon. Heel, Balforge!

  “I can hardly turn down such an offer, can I, my lord?”

  “Well, then, Miss Faelyn.” Rushford offered his hand, and Mairey took it without thinking, never expecting his to so fully enfold her own. It wasn’t a handshake, it was a binding. And she could only watch in bewitched anticipation as he slowly lifted her hand to his mouth—so very warm and well-shaped—as he left a grazing kiss in the furrow between her fingers.

  “To the Willowmoon, Miss Faelyn.”

  “Oh, yes.” Her breath wobbled out of her chest, leaving her powerless to object, and wondering irrationally what his kiss would taste like—

  “My lord?” Sumner was at the door of the lodge, clearing his throat in short rattling bursts.

  “What, Sumner?” Rushford kept her gaze as steadfastly as he held her hand, his fingers having separated hers to fit between them, as though he believed he had gained possession of her in the bargain and planned to explore her byways.

  “There are three gentlemen to see you up at the main house, sir. I showed them to your office.”

  “Who?”

  “The Messrs. Dodson, Dodson, and Greel.”

  Rushford straightened, and Mairey thought she saw a despairing confusion soften the flint of his eyes, a weighty sorrow that half-rounded his broad shoulders and drew down the corners of his fine mouth.

  “I’ll see them now, Sumner. Settle yourself here, Miss Faelyn. Make a list of what you’ll be needing and give it to Sumner. Firewood, food, blankets—”

  “My clothes will do for a start.”

  “Ah.” He frowned, distracted, and she felt illogically abandoned by his abruptness. “Send for your things—for anything you might need to get you through this.”

  She needed Anna and Caro and Poppy, and Aunt Tattie. And a magic potion that would put this disturbing dragon to sleep for the next hundred years.

  “I’ll send word this very afternoon, sir.”

  “Yes. Good.” Rushford gave an abbreviated bow, then left the lodge as though his coattails were afire.

  Oh, how easily she could imagine the stench of sulphur curling toward her as he set off to ravage the countryside. Yet it wasn’t brimstone she smelled but the exotic spice of the kiss that he had lingered over, the very same kiss she’d done nothing at all to discourage, that still jangled in her veins.

  A dangerous way to begin building a fortress against the man.

  Rushford had been right about one thing: the lodge was large and entirely self-contained, with a small kitchen, five bedrooms, a dining room, a parlor, and a large
sitting room. Five times the size of the house in Holly Court. She explored her new home from the attic to the root cellar, noting all the crannies and hidey-holes, should she need to use them in her campaign against her new collaborator.

  Rushford was foul tempered and imperious, but she had never once felt in physical danger. His touch was resolute, insistent, but never harsh. The girls would be safe, but she would keep them away from the main house—keep Aunt Tattie busy with their schooling when she couldn’t, and send them on outings.

  Mairey smiled as she thought of the terror her sisters would bring down upon Rushford’s sensibilities should he ever venture out to the lodge. Anna had become properly shy in recent months, but Caro and Poppy still had no sense of shame, and thought bathtime was playtime. So the sight of naked little girls squealing down the hallway—their auntie fast on their heels with towels to dry and cover them—was everyday normal in the Faelyn household.

  It was good that her family would remain distant from the rest of Drakestone House. And if things didn’t work out, she could always send them home to their village and its ancient peace.

  She’d never been allowed to live there; she’d been exiled by her father’s research. She would miss the girls fiercely, but they would surely thrive there.

  Heaven alone knew how long it would take to find the Willowmoon Knot, or how long Rushford would persist in his search before he gave it up and let her go. The Willowmoon had been missing for two hundred and fifty years; she might be bound to the man forever! The quest stretched out before her as bleak as any prison sentence: Anna and Caro and Poppy grown and moved away, with families of their own. Mairey’s hair gone gray and her heart lonely as Jackson Rushford tore up the countryside looking for the glade of silver.

  She found a pen, a pot of ink, and a pad of letter paper in the parlor desk.

  Dearest Aunt Tattie,

  I have found lodgings near my work and wish you to join me here at Drakestone House, as soon as you can pack the girls and all their things.

  And may the dragon beware.

  Chapter 5

  Dodson. Christ, he’d forgotten. Had another June come already? This one had crept up on him, forgotten in his quest to find Miss Faelyn and her silver mine.