by Karen Ranney
“Not spirits, no.” How could she possibly explain to this woman? It was like being asked to defend yourself, with one word, against the charge of stealing a loaf of bread. Except, of course, that she wasn’t a thief, and all she could think of to say was—no. Not spirits.
“He is very attractive, isn’t he?” Bernie asked, diverted from her questioning by the sight of one very tall footman. He was blond, with a wicked grin, and most powerful-looking arms.
Mary Kate glanced over at the footman, the same one who had helped her escape to London, then betrayed her to Archer. He was exchanging a meaningful stare with Bernadette. If she didn’t know better, a message was implicit in both stares, such a hot-blooded one that Mary Kate turned away, embarrassed. It must run in families, this earthiness.
“It’s a natural fact of life, Mary Kate,” Bernadette said, as if reading her thoughts. “Making love has been the glue that held society together. Marriages are formed, dynasties created, kings deposed, all for the sake of man wanting a woman. It would, however, be a damn sight better if your own lover were not indisposed by a wife. Even one who’s little more than a ghost.”
Her look was eagle-sharp, as all-seeing as her son’s.
“No ghost,” Mary Kate said, interjecting that comment before Bernie could run off again, fueled with nothing more than an errant thought.
“No ghost?”
Mary Kate shook her head.
“No feelings of cold or sounds at midnight? Don’t go smiling at me, Mary Kate. That’s how it’s usually done.”
“Not this time.”
“Very well, but I’ll bet there is a touch of Celtic in you. There’d have to be with that hair.”
“And what is wrong with my hair?”
“It’s entirely too bright. It is natural, is it not? You don’t wash it with henna, do you?” Bernadette asked, inspecting the corner of a teak table one of the footmen had carried in earlier. The change from topic to topic was another trait of Bernadette’s, a conversational ploy Mary Kate suspected was to keep the listener unsettled.
“My mother pretended we weren’t Irish, when my grandfather was no more than a slave to an absent landlord. Is that Celtic enough?”
“Such a noble race, the Irish. They have long been tied to the land, been able to hear the rumblings of the earth, breathe in the truth of nature itself.” She stopped, stood upright, and smiled at the look on Mary Kate’s face. “You think I’m daft, don’t you?”
Was there a way to answer that?
“Well, I’m not. I’m just interested in a great many things. And I’ve seen enough to tell me that the world does not always function in the serene way people would have it. I’ve witnessed rituals which celebrate life by taking it, the scarring of bodies in order to prove the victim’s honor and bravery. I’ve even sat and prayed to the sky, and played a flute to implore the gods to come and sit beside me.”
Another sharp look. “You think yourself haunted, then?”
Mary Kate was beginning to feel like a fox must feel, when trapped by a pack of voracious hounds. “I’m not quite sure.”
“Nonsense, of course you’re sure. Either something odd is happening to you, or you’re making it up. Which one is it?”
“Well, I’m certainly not making it up.”
“‘The dread of something after death, the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveler returns.’ Hamlet said it right, then. But tell me, has nothing odd ever happened to you in your life before? Nothing that would rip the veil asunder?”
“No.”
Bernadette plopped down on the edge of a particularly loathsome divan, whose legs resembled the claws of some ancient mythical beast.
“Think, child. Do not dismiss me so quickly.”
There was one occasion, only one, in which something odd had happened to her. Should she tell this surprising woman?
“Aha, there is that look upon your face. Something is there. You must tell me. You certainly must.”
Mary Kate had been more a child than young woman, still relishing unexpected moments of freedom from her mother. She’d been clad in a yellow smock with her fiercely curling hair tied up in a kerchief. In her pocket was a sturdy cotton handkerchief, a rock prettily shaped like a butterfly, and a pence she’d saved since the day she’d found it on the cobblestone square of Kennelworth Village. She remembered the cloudless day with perfect precision, remembered, too, everything about those moments, trailing along behind her brothers as they guided the cows into the barn. She didn’t understand what they were laughing about again, but this time it mattered less what they said than the fact she was near them. They rarely allowed her presence in their august midst, being almost men and not tolerant of nine-year-old girls.
As she trailed a stick in the dust, making patterns with its leafed tip, it felt as though there were a humming passing through the tips of her fingers, causing her knuckles to vibrate, her wrists to tingle, a strange resonant sound traveling by bone through her body. As it seemed to pass through her arms, Mary Kate realized in the way that children sometimes do that something was going to happen.
Her father stood in front of her, his arms outstretched as if wishing to hug her, but as she walked up to him, ready to be enfolded in his embrace, it was as if he took a quick step back, shaking his head. She loved her father, in the single-minded way young girls do. He was a bear of a man, with shoulders that seemed to block out the sun, a large square face, a mustache he occasionally allowed her to tug, and a smile so blinding white that Mary Kate could see it even now, in this bright room far away from the farm of her birth. Except on that day, his face was wreathed in a strangely sad smile, but his eyes glittered with joy.
How well she remembered feeling so confused, as the man she adored had stepped between her and her brothers, and her brothers all unknowing that he had done so. The sun seemed to shine through him, he was nearly transparent, for all that he looked the same, with the look in his eyes, so soft and tender just for her.
“Da?” she’d said, stepping toward him then.
“I love you, lass,” he said then, in a soft and curiously sad voice. Her brothers tricked her into making her think that they could not hear him. Even Alan, the oldest, had turned impatiently and yelled at her to keep up, or he would tell their mother she was worthless calling the cows home. None of them saw her father, or pretended not to, a game she had wished they not play.
She was openmouthed yet silent, trapped in an odd sort of horror/wonder as the vision of her father faded from sight. Just like a cloud of dandelion spores cast to the wind, he had disappeared, his smile, his broad and thick mustache, and the lingering voice of him.
She should have known, then, that people would not believe her.
Still, she had tried. She’d rushed ahead of her brothers, racing to the small farmhouse they’d always called home, with only one thought in her mind. To tell her mother what she’d seen, her father’s smile so sad, of tingling bones and words that hung on the air and other things she didn’t understand.
Her mother said not a word, only plunked down the dinner plate in front of her, grabbing her hair and nearly pulling it out by the roots to gain her attention.
“Go and wash your hands, Mary Kate,” she’d commanded in that way of hers that brooked no argument. “And brush your hair,” she’d added, never content with only one chore assigned.
Mary Kate had demurred, not due to any sweetness of nature, but because of the strange look upon her mother’s face. Such a look demanded silent obedience.
“I’ll not have such silly talk at my table” was all her mother had said then. It was only after the news had come that her father had fallen down and died at market that her mother had spoken of Mary Kate’s grandmother, of the whispers of her strangeness, of powers that hinted at witchcraft and Wicca.
That her mother had hurled these accusations at her, Mary Kate flinched at remembering. She’d been crouched over her father’s dead body, in the small farmhouse he’d bee
n so proud to own and steward. She’d been too young to understand, but not too young to help prepare her father for his burial.
There had been many things she could have said to her mother then, but such knowledge was only supplied by maturity, and she had been barely a child that night. Hardly able to defend herself against her mother’s accusations, buffeted by too many raw emotions, one of which was the sense of strangeness about herself.
Her father had said good-bye, and her mother had hated her for it.
“Very good. I knew it had to be such.” Bernie stood, batted her hands together as though carding wool between them.
“Now, tell me everything that’s happened to you since you left London, my dear. Every little bit. Well,” she amended, seeing the rapidly spreading blush upon Mary Kate’s face, “almost all of it.”
Chapter 26
“At the risk of offending your vanity, you look as if you’re recuperating from a particularly nasty bout of influenza.” He grinned at her frown.
“At the risk of offending your lineage, I have just come from your mother. She insisted that I try a curry she concocted. Archer, I do believe it had monkey’s brains or something in it.” Her look of horrified fascination made him grin again.
“You must only believe about half of what Bernie says, and suspect the rest.” He laid the spade down upon the workbench, stepped closer to her. He tipped her chin up so that he could see her eyes. There was no hurt there, no expression of wounded affront, nothing to indicate she’d had her feelings hurt. Odd, the protectiveness he felt. He loved his mother, but his mother loved him. And she would not hesitate to attack anything, or anyone, she saw as an obstacle to his happiness. What would she have done to Alice he wondered, and then resolutely put that thought aside.
“I approve of her gift, by the way.”
Mary Kate glanced down at the dress she wore. She’d had no choice in the matter, had tried to decline the countess’s generosity with a smile. It had made no difference. “It is supposed to be of the latest style,” she said.
“Come,” he said softly, holding her hands up away from her. “Let me see you.” He twirled her in the room. “You look like the light from a prism, magically splintered into a hundred iridescent colors.”
She laughed, charmed by his cajolery. “Your mother waits for me to return, Archer.”
He grinned, a perfectly unrepentant grin. “I doubt that. Besides, I do not wish to talk about my mother at this moment, Mary Kate, but only the reason for your newest blush.”
“I am not blushing.”
In a movement so quick she’d not anticipated it, he lifted her into his arms and strode through the doorway. She gripped his shirtsleeves for balance, hiccuped a surprised gasp, then smiled at the glint of mischief in his eyes.
“What are you about, Archer St. John?”
“Doing something I’ve always wished to do, Mary Kate, but had no subjects I would willingly test.”
“Am I one of your plants now?”
He squinted at her. “Have I not called you a spice? A condiment of exquisite delicacy, Mary Kate.”
“I haven’t the slightest idea whether you’ve just insulted me or rendered me a beauteous compliment.”
“Must women always be complimented?” His smile offset the stringent quality of his words.
“Must men always be so complaining? After all, it takes but a moment to say something nice.”
“I’ve often found, however, that men are the ones required to say the niceties, while women always receive them.”
“Very well. I wanted to thank you, Archer, for last night, but could not find the words to say.”
“A compliment, Mary Kate?”
“A nicety Archer.” She looked down at her fingers, plucked the material from her sleeve.
“Did I bring you pleasure?”
She could not halt the soft inrush of breath. He only smiled at the sound. Her hands grasped one exploring hand. He again extricated them, concentrating upon the small pearl buttons of her bodice.
“Archer!”
“We are alone, Mary Kate, the door is conveniently locked, this portion of the structure is as private as my chamber, and everyone knows not to interrupt me when I am engaged in my pursuits.”
“And am I considered one of your pursuits, then?” Such a solemn interrogatory from a mouth too wide, lips too full.
“One of my most tantalizing, I will confess.”
Her bodice was opened, and he slipped a hand inside. Warmth, curving flesh, and lace. An exquisite combination. Was there ever a more enchanting picture of a woman than Mary Kate bathed in sunlight? The bright crown of her hair, the bodice gently parted, the lace of her chemise hiding her breasts from his gaze, the darkness of her nipples thrusting impatiently against the cloth, peaking it. He drew back and looked into her eyes. There was surprise there, and something else, a touch, perhaps, of desire. Certainly curiosity again.
“I haven’t the slightest idea how to treat you, Mary Kate Bennett,” he said, brushing his hand against her soft skin. “You are either the most clever woman of my acquaintance, or the most ill treated. An angel or a devil. Which are you?”
“What do you want me to be?”
“Is it that easy?” he mused. His fingers brushed against her flesh, curved beneath a breast. “Are you only what I wish you to be? A wood nymph, perhaps, or an elfin creature, here but for a moment to dazzle me and then, just as quickly, gone?”
She shook her head, the expression in her eyes too difficult to study. He wanted her exposed, not merely her flesh, but her mind. Was that what he truly wanted? How much easier to care less for her motives than for her response.
Her chin tilted in his direction, she brushed back her hair, then clasped her hands before her. It was a strange and touching pose of supplication. It was as if she held all the various pieces of herself together to protect herself from him. He’d seen her ill, embarrassed, bemused, passion-weary. Now he was treated to the sight of her assuming a penitent’s posture, utterly serene, a Madonna of flagrant allure.
A look flashed in her eyes, then disappeared as quickly as a falling star. He had not imagined it, had he? A twinkling of fear and something else, a curious pairing of emotions, wonderment and fright.
There was silence in the room, an odd sort of quiet. Not tranquil nor serene, but bubbling with thoughts left unspoken. Words were dangerous things, as sharp as stillettos. It was easier, simply, to be silent in his lust.
He should walk away from her this instant, should he not? How odd that he knew he would not.
He leaned forward, touched her temple with his lips, brushed her skin again, inhaled the scent of her.
How arresting a sight, his tanned hand against cream-colored lace. He did not tease her further, sought out the firmness of her nipple as if it were a lodestone for his fingers, a gentle quest. She sighed, or gasped, either sound one of such sweet surrender that he smiled, tenderly, and kissed her temple again, leading her onward, closer, nearer.
A gentle shake of her head, another soft sound. His other hand, resting on her waist, was drawn up to encompass her other breast, a gentle support, a friendly benediction. She leaned closer to him, willingly solicitous, begging for a kiss.
Instead, he leaned back, looked into her eyes, witnessed the dazed expression, the darkening of her pupils, the dilating of them as her body readied itself for passion. Did she become swollen and moist in places to be invaded with his fingers, his tongue? She sighed, and he extended two fingers, brushed down the edge of lace upon her breast until only an impudent nipple appeared. Like a dawn sun, it peeped over the horizon of lace, eager, curious, tenderly imploring a welcoming suckle.
He could do no less. His hair brushed against her chin, his mouth closed over her left breast. She made some fluttering motion of her hands until they settled upon him, one hand at his cheek, feeling the hollowing of his mouth as he sucked hard and eagerly, the other at the back of his head as if to keep him rooting there. A st
range mewling sound escaped her like the cry of an animal in need. A sound that seemed to accompany the tremble of her fingers, the very tremulous nature of her lips.
He gently raised her chin, kissing her with a slow tenderness that paid no heed to the sweeping greediness of her tongue, to the hands that grasped his shoulders, to the eagerness betrayed by the weakness of her limbs.
Last night they’d spiced their loving with words and laughter, a daring look, a teasing jest. Today they were immersed in silence.
He curved his lips over hers, felt her smile as he kissed her again. His hands left her breast for a moment, returned to the row of buttons on her bodice. One by one he finished unbuttoning them, kissing each inch he exposed by doing so. Only when he finished did he raise his head and look at her, a glance of utter devilment.
He wanted to tell her she was wearing too many clothes, but he had caught the utter stillness of her. Instead of speaking, he reached out and pulled the dress down, baring impossibly white rounded shoulders rendered even more white by the glare of the sun. She trembled in his arms.
He pulled her close, witless at the feel of her quivers, shaken loose from his own needs for a moment, like a dinghy set adrift in a sweeping tide. She did this to him, shocked him without a word spoken.
She was even more beautiful than she had been last night. Today she was his sunlit nymph, white and red and pinked all over from embarrassment, or something else she betrayed artlessly with her shaking fingers.
He extended a hand and she took it, stepping out of her undergarments with the grace of a princess. When he knelt to remove her slippers, he heard her soft, almost painful exhalation.
The sun seemed magnified a thousandfold, its rays upon her skin both illuminated and warmed. He stroked one hand down one curved shoulder to a forearm bathed by a golden light.
He allowed her no modesty as he stared at her. Instead, he lifted her chin with his fingers and forced her to look into his eyes. If he had not been forbidden to speak by some unwritten rule for this moment, he would have told her that she looked insanely proper at this moment, surrounded by greenery, standing naked in a place where nature dwelled and allowed itself to be tamed. She was neither forest creature nor nymph, but rather princess or queen. A regal being who commanded by the sheer power of her beauty.