Linda Needham

by The Wedding Night

  And the door to the garden was standing open! A blatant breach of security. Jack grabbed the latch to pull the door closed and came back with a handful of stickiness.

  Honey! A great gob of it.

  Had the woman gone mad? He washed his hands in the kitchen, then set out for the lodge.

  It was lit like Christmastide, a candle blazing in every window, the front door standing open to the breeze and to every fiend who might pass by.

  He couldn’t have her living here alone. He’d convince her to move to the main house. Hell, he’d move her there himself! He should have knocked, but he heard a commotion at the rear of the house—shouting and screaming.

  “What the hell?” Fearing the worst, Jack tore down the hallway toward the sitting room, his heart in his throat.

  He threw open the door, ready to charge in, but time stood by for a moment and filled his heart to bursting.

  His sisters were playing there in the hazy lamplight, unaware of him, draped in fanciful too-big-for-them gowns, pale-haired and lovely, their little voices chattering like field mice.

  Emma, so near young womanhood; Banon, with her unforgettable smile, and dear Clady, who had loved to ride upon his shoulders.

  He’d found them.

  The scene blurred and stung his eyes.

  “Clady…,” he said to the littlest of the ghosts, afraid to take a step into the room for fear of frightening them away.

  But three pair of startlingly clear eyes found him.

  “Oh, look, Anna! A dragon!”

  And then they were screaming in terror. Jack was rooted to the floor.

  Emma picked up an apple and heaved it at him. “Away, monster!”

  Jack took one apple in the shoulder, and another on his knee. They didn’t understand. Didn’t recognize him.

  “Maireeeeeey!” Banon was shouting as she brandished a fire-poker; Clady was throwing pillows.

  They came at him in a cloud of nightgowns and streaming hair, still screaming like banshees, and calling for Mairey.

  Jack felt warm hands around his waist from behind, and the scent of apples, and then Mairey was standing in front of him, her back warm against his chest, intercepting the attack.

  “Anna, stop that right now!”

  Anna. Not his Emma at all. Not Banon, or Clady. No, of course not. His sisters would be older. Years older.

  Mairey was looking up at him, a magnet for the little girls, who had lunged at her and were tucking themselves into the fullness of her night robe.

  “I’m very sorry, sir,” she was saying, lifting the one he had thought was Clady into her arms. “We weren’t expecting anyone. You frightened them.”

  Jack couldn’t find any words, couldn’t spare a breath of explanation.

  “Is he your dragon, Mairey?”

  “No, Poppy.” Mairey smoothed her fingers through the little girl’s wispy hair, and set a kiss against her temple. “This is Lord Rushford. Our host. You must tell him you’re sorry.”

  “We’re sorry!” The chorus of little voices wounded him, made him angry.

  “Who are these children?” he bellowed, instantly ashamed to see the little faces fall.

  Mairey was frowning fiercely at him, as though he were in the wrong. “They are my sisters.”

  Hers.

  “What the devil are they doing here?”

  “No, Auntie, don’t! It’s all right.” She was shaking her head at someone behind him, waving them off. “And this is our Aunt Tattie.”

  Jack turned slightly and caught sight of an older woman wielding a large iron kettle.

  “Your lordship.” The woman ducked him a curtsey, then went to stand beside Miss Faelyn.

  They were a wayward sight, the five of them. So out of place and so familiar. Hiding from him. They couldn’t stay.

  “Come with me to my office, Miss Faelyn.” He turned to go, but the children were clinging to her.

  “No, Mairey! Don’t go! We just got here! A story, Mairey. Please.”

  The angel voices rose like a hymn.

  “My lord, I believe this matter will wait till morning.” Bright smudges of color pinked her cheeks. “I haven’t seen my sisters in a long time, and then only briefly. We’ve missed each other.”

  They couldn’t stay. “Then we’ll talk now, madam. Here.”

  She must have seen that he meant it. “Tattie, will you please take the girls upstairs—”

  “Mairey, nooooo!” The littlest of them clung tighter. Jack felt a raging rush of guilt when those fawn-brown eyes peeked out at him from under a fine spray of curls.

  So like his Clady. His heart lurched, and his stomach roiled with shame and sorrow. And all those memories.

  No. He couldn’t have them here underfoot. They would get in the way. He had his own family to worry about. He didn’t need someone else’s.

  “I’ll be up soon, girls. And you’ll each have a story.”

  “‘Little Red Riding Hood’!”

  “‘Gwynella and the Enchanter’!”

  “One each, I said. Now go with Auntie.” Miss Faelyn managed to funnel her brood through the narrow door, then leaned against it as it closed behind her scowling aunt. The sounds of footsteps echoed above them.

  “You didn’t have to shout at them, Rushford.” She held her place at the door, as though he would break it down and devour them. “They’re only little girls.”

  “Damn it, woman! You said nothing of this family of yours.”

  “Did you once think to ask me if I had a family?”

  “You should have said.”

  “And then what? You’ve decided for me that I must make my home at Drakestone House. Home to me is my family. And here they will stay.”

  “Not when it means a full-scale invasion of my property.”

  “They are children, Rushford, not an army of locusts.”

  “They are a risk to security, madam.”

  “Ballocks! They are three little girls and a warwidow who would lay down her life for them.”

  “I’m not interested in your family.”

  “That, my lord, is the only thing I’m interested in. I’m sorry if you can’t understand that.”

  Dear God, how well he understood; it was the gaping hole in his heart, wide and lonely, aching for the family that he’d abandoned.

  “They can’t stay.”

  “Then neither can I, my lord.”

  A stone thumped against his chest, the empty sound of his heart beating in a hollow drone.

  “We’ve made a bargain, madam. You and I and no one else.”

  “You knew everything about me, didn’t you?” She came away from the door, her long hair falling to her waist. “You knew my schedule, my library, my desire to find the Knot. How can you possibly have overlooked my family?”

  “I would have forbidden them in any case. Drakestone House is not a place for children.”

  “Nothing in the world could have persuaded me to come to live here if they can’t stay. I’ll keep them away from you, my lord, away from your house. You need never see them.”

  “Impossible.” He remembered his own sisters. As unmanageable as smoke, slipping through his fingers like water to bedevil him and make him laugh.

  “Despite what you saw here tonight, sir, my sisters are well behaved and respectful.”

  A cloud of giggling poured down the stairs and slipped under the door, wrapping his heart in aching wonder. The woman who was standing guard against him, wearing no more than her robe as armor, glanced fondly at the ceiling. He knew the indomitable love in her eyes and envied it in deep, dark waves.

  “You won’t see them, Rushford; won’t hear a peep. I promise to hide them away.”

  The giggling came again, irrepressible and without guile. And crowded with memories. Dear, soul-flooding memories. He turned away from her, from the mist blurring his vision. He cleared his throat to speak.

  “My desk chair is missing.”

  He felt her relax; knew that she stoope
d to pick up an apple.

  “Ah, well, yes. For that I must apologize. Caroline saw that it had wheels and tried to use it for a pushcart for our bags. The wheel broke as the chair rolled down your stone steps and is now in the carriage house under repair.”

  Memories. The wagon he’d made for Banon, whitewashed with paint he’d stolen from the pit boss. How could he let these children stay and not feel the loss every day?

  “Also, there’s a rose in my inkstand and water all over the blotter.”

  “I’m sorry. That was Anna. She loves flowers. I’ll take care of it.”

  His blossoms. Where are you, Emma? Are you happy? Are you loved? He could see Miss Faelyn in the window’s reflection, at peace and so steadfast in her care.

  “The window latch is sticky with something sweet.”

  “Poppy. She loves honey. On everything.”

  “She took honey from the hives in my apiary? She could have been stung.”

  “She wasn’t.” The woman’s gentle laughter was so forgiving, and soothed him when he preferred his anger. She was too close behind him, touching his elbow as if to make him understand what was so very clear to him. “There were no bees involved in the incident, sir. Cook gave her a spoonful from the kitchen crock. I’ll clean it all myself. I’m just sorry you don’t like children.”

  What other opinion could she have of him? “I don’t like deception.”

  “That wasn’t my intention. They are my sisters, left to my care when our father died. I love them as I love my life. I will not desert them for you, Lord Rushford, or for the Willowmoon Knot, or for anything in the world. I pray you’ll understand someday.”

  Jack swallowed back the searing shame that had hold of his throat. “Just keep them away from me, Miss Faelyn. Far away.”

  He started for the door and would have been well gone from her, but the woman tugged him back with her gentling question.

  “Why did you come to the lodge tonight?”

  To see you, Mairey Faelyn; to sit with you in the hearth light and tell you of my day.

  He was dizzy for lack of breathing, unable to avoid her too-wise gaze. “It will keep till the morning, Miss Faelyn.”

  He left the lodge and didn’t slow his stride until he was well down the wooded path, away from the softly glowing windows, away from the laughter that spilled from the garret.

  But not nearly far or fast enough to outpace the ghosts or the dismay in Mairey Faelyn’s eyes.

  Chapter 8

  Mairey watched Rushford stalk out of the lodge and down the path, wanting to be blazingly angry at him and his conceit—for breaking down her door, frightening her sisters, and then trying to turn them out! Anger would have served her best. But while he’d been raging at her, she’d looked a little too deeply for a flaw, and had seen too much: his beastliness bore the unmistakable mark of a raw and painful wound. It had made him shy from her and the children, the way a lion might with a thorn in its paw.

  “Is your dragon gone, Mairey?” Poppy had escaped her aunt and was sitting on the landing above, a crooked frown creasing her brow.

  “That’s not your business, Persephone Faelyn. Up to bed with you!” Mairey swept Poppy into her arms and tossed her into bed with the other two.

  Poppy was asleep long before the wolf had eaten Riding Hood’s grandmother; Anna and Caro lasted just long enough for Gwynella to refuse to marry the prince and run away with the enchanter.

  Tattie was snoring softly in her own room a few moments later, leaving Mairey to clean up the sitting room where her sisters had pitched their battle against Lord Rushford.

  She had arrived in time to see him standing unarmed against the onslaught of apples and Caro’s poker. He’d done nothing to defend himself, Goliath allowing Mairey’s three little Davids to do their worst against him. If she hadn’t stopped them, Heaven only knew what injury they might have inflicted on the man.

  She had never seen a more vulnerable sight in all her life, all that mighty brawn so achingly disarmed.

  No wonder he’d ordered them to leave Drakestone House. They’d made a mess of his library, had broken his favorite chair, and had nearly disabled him.

  The mess in his library would still be there to greet him in the morning, a further reminder of the Faelyn sisters’ invasion of his precious privacy—surely a breach of security, as well. It would be best to clean it right now and not have to face him in the morning.

  Mairey dressed and hurried through the moonlit woods to the main house, letting herself into the library with the key that she kept meaning to restring on a ribbon.

  She lit a small fire in the hearth and set the thick desk blotter to dry nearby, then washed honey off the window latch and the back of a nearby chair, discovering more of it on a dozen other surfaces that Rushford would have bellowed about. They would have to live more lightly on the estate, keep to the woods and the shadows, and out of Rushford’s sight.

  Waiting for the blotter to dry and finding herself restless, Mairey collected some of Henrietta’s papers off the lines in the conservatory and returned to the library. She rolled her father’s chair to the fireside, then sorted the still-musty letters by date, setting aside those written after September of 1642.

  Thinking just to skim some of the faded passages, she soon found herself caught up in Henrietta’s letters. Most were passion-filled missives to her dear Charles, written in the woman’s native French, having little to do with the war except for her diatribes against the Roundheads.

  Henrietta’s personal letters! Oh, Papa, imagine! She had the key to the Tower of London, to all the vaults and collections in the kingdom. She’d sold her soul to Jackson Rushford to gain entrance, but so far the price hadn’t been too high.

  Some of the ink on Henrietta’s letters had washed away, leaving them readable only with a bright light behind the page and a little guesswork. She was holding up a particularly badly faded letter when a latch clicked and the door from the foyer opened to a silhouetted darkness that she would have known anywhere.

  “My lord.”

  “What are you doing here, madam?” He was in a fine midnight mood, was her dragon.

  “Working,” she said, holding up the letter to the fire, hoping that he would leave her to her task.

  “Damn it, woman! Is that the way it is between us?” He was on her in the next moment, his wall of heat overwhelming the fire in the hearth as he leaned his weight and his fury so fiercely against the chair arms that she rocked backward on its gimbals, making it impossible not to look up into his blazing eyes. “Have I so insulted you and your family that you’re burning evidence to spite me?”

  “I’ve burned nothing except wood. It’s cold.”

  He snatched the letter from her, tipping the chair further backward. “Then what is this?” He thrust the paper into the small space between her nose and his.

  “It’s a letter from Henrietta to her husband. I would never destroy it.”

  The man growled a curse and straightened to read. Her chair rocked upright abruptly, yet he kept his knee between hers, pressing it against the edge of the seat so that her entire field of vision was made up of his woolen waistcoat, the gold-fobbed watch chain bridging the line of black pearl buttons that marched down his broad chest to the tapering of his stomach, and the front of his trousers.

  Her heart took off on a zithering flight and strung her pulse along behind it. She wanted to reach beneath his coat and shape her palms over his hips. But Rushford was scrutinizing the offending letter as though he suspected that it contained the alchemists’ secret.

  “It’s blank,” he said, and loomed again, bending her chair backward so that their noses were nearly touching.

  “Blank, except when it’s held to a backlight.” Mairey snatched the letter from between his fingers. “May I rise, sir? Or do you plan some other mischief with me?”

  Dear God, he was handsome, and wild-hearted again in his passions.

  “The mischief is yours, Miss Faelyn. You
and your sisters.”

  Dew glistened on his hair and across his shoulders; he smelled of the night, of the blueness of the moon.

  “Have you been out walking, sir?” Some bit of lunacy made her touch a bead of water that clung to a dark curl at his temple. It slid off his hair and ran down her finger.

  “Hunting the moon with my fellow wolves, my dear. Just like the bloody tales of the bloody beasts you tell your sisters.” He dipped his head, his breath almost a kiss. “Whatever you think of me, I don’t eat grandmothers or little girls.”

  “Aha!” She pointed her finger between them, amazed at his confession and utterly charmed when she ought to feel spied upon. “You were listening at our window! Why?”

  He had the courtesy to look chastened. “I was waiting.”

  “For?”

  “You.”

  That made her heart leap to all sorts of conclusions that it ought to avoid.

  “Well, then, sir, if you were at the lodge, you saw me leave there a half hour ago. Why didn’t you say something then? Were you lurking?”

  He chewed on his lip, straightened and walked to the window, then confessed quietly, “I…” He glanced back at her, a wryness in his tone. “Fell asleep.”

  Mairey knew that she shouldn’t laugh, knew that the slightest whimper in that direction would set the man’s pride on end. But even after clapping her hand over her mouth, she couldn’t keep the giggling noises from escaping her.

  “Thank you, madam.”

  “Oh, my!” Crispy leaves and bits of loam clung to the back of his coat. She went to him and started brushing him off, then handed him a good-sized maple leaf, complete with a winged seed pod attached. “You should have stayed with us, sir. You could have slept on a bed with the other cubs and not in the briars.”

  He watched her from over his shoulder, his eyes tracking hers like beams of pure sunlight. Her lashes felt sun-warmed when she lifted them.

  “They can live here at Drakestone,” he said quietly. “I won’t fight you.”

  “Good. It would have been very uncomfortable for all of us. I wouldn’t have stayed.”

  “I know.” There was finality in those two resolute words and a nuance of approval.