Read Move Heaven and Earth Online
Authors: Christina Dodd
Move Heaven and Earth
OVE
H
EAVEN AND
E
ARTH
CHRISTINA DODD
To my in-laws Tom and Lou,
who gave the world three children:
a Girl, a Boy, and Perfection.
Thanks to Tom for being a rock.
And Lou—
I wish you were here to see this.
You would have enjoyed it more than anyone.
“The babe is hale an’ hearty, Yer Grace.” The midwife…
1
“A ghost walks the halls of Clairmont Court at night.”
2
Rand’s gaze burned through Sylvan’s gown as he used the…
3
Mortification burned like a live coal in his soul.
4
The dead were calling.
5
Seated in his wheelchair beside Sylvan as she lay in…
6
Leaning forward, Rand tucked the carriage blanket tighter around Sylvan’s…
7
What stupidity had chased her from the warmth and light…
8
But he wouldn’t have tried to hurt Sylvan. He loved…
9
“In the fields?” Garth stood on the hearth in the…
10
Someone was calling her name. Sylvan woke slowly, responding to…
11
The heavy signet ring Rand placed on her finger almost…
12
Sylvan grabbed for Rand and missed. He ran out into…
13
Dr. Moreland held the pink, sore-looking stub of Nanna’s leg in…
14
He’d spent the hours worrying about an act he’d finished…
15
Rand stared at Sir Ogden Miles, Sylvan’s father and his…
16
The Clairmont carriage boasted a matched pair of chestnuts, an…
17
Rand leaned over Sylvan as she stretched on the bed…
18
“Dear, you know I don’t like to be an interfering…
19
Lunch basket in hand, Rand returned to the entry to…
20
“I’m fine now, Rand. I just had a whim to…
21
No one in the village had seen Gail, no one…
22
Gentle hands took Sylvan by the arms and lifted her to…
Somerset, England, 1420
“
The babe is hale an’ hearty
, Yer Grace.” The midwife handed Radolf the red, squalling, still-wet newborn wrapped in a linen cloth.
The woman’s voice lacked enthusiasm and Radolf accepted the kicking child with dreadful anticipation. “Let me see,” he commanded.
The midwife knew what he desired, and she turned back the cloth to reveal the baby’s gender.
“A son!” Patton, Radolf’s chief knight, leaned over his shoulder and stared with frank envy, then slapped Radolf on the shoulder as the great hall rang with shouts of masculine celebration. “A son at last, with your black hair on his head and your vigor in his breast.”
A son. Disbelief mixed with joy inside of Radolf. He’d prayed, worked, schemed for this moment since the day the king awarded him Clairmont Court and the dukedom. For what good are lands and title without a son to inherit them?
Lifting the babe high, he spun in a circle and shouted, “Behold your future lord!”
The shouts of celebration shook the rafters, and the child screamed in answer. Carefully, Radolf lowered the child and handed him to the midwife, then tucked the cloth around his flailing limbs. “Swaddle him well. Keep him warm and dry, and get a wet nurse to suckle him until my lady’s milk comes through.”
Her face waxen, the midwife returned the howling child to the warmth of her ample bosom and pulled the edge of her cloak over him. “That should not be a problem, Yer Grace.”
Accepting a tankard of ale, Radolf drank the first toast to his son’s good health. He wiped his lips on the back of his hand and frowned. “I know Jocelyn wished to feed him herself, but we can’t have my son go hungry.”
“Yer wife won’t be feeding him,” the midwife said.
Radolf drank another toast and belched. “Did she change her mind?” Then he remembered of whom he spoke, and bellowed with laughter. “Surely not Jocelyn. She’s as pigheaded a woman as—”
“As you are a man,” Patton finished for him with a shout.
The smile faded from Radolf’s face, and he glared at Patton. The big man shriveled beneath the fury in Radolf’s blue eyes. When Patton had shrunk away, when he’d displayed sufficient respect for Radolf’s fury, Radolf allowed himself to relax. “Aye, perhaps ’tis true.” He cuffed Patton on the ear—a friendly cuff, knocking him only halfway across the room. “Jocelyn’s as pigheaded as I. A toast!” He lifted his tankard high. “To Jocelyn, bed partner, housewife, healer, and the one wife who’s carried a son for me.”
The men drank, but the midwife still stood there, holding the baby in tender hands and staring at Radolf as if he were more than pigheaded—as if he were a pig.
What was wrong with the old witch? Even an ignorant midwife ought to know this was a cause for jubilation. Irritated, he demanded, “What is it, woman? Haven’t you got your instructions?”
“Aye, Yer Grace, that I have. But I thought ye might want t’ know why yer wife’ll not be feeding th’ babe.”
Something about the way she said it made Radolf remember the screams emitting from the solar an hour ago. The men had said all women screamed in labor—they knew what they were talking about, didn’t they?
Radolf handed the tankard to a passing squire. “Jocelyn is fighting to get up already, isn’t she?”
Silent, the midwife shook her head.
He caught her arm in his hand. “Is she ill?”
“Nay, Yer Grace.”
“Well, then.” He grinned. “Why the long face?”
“She’s dead.” The midwife delivered the words as she would deliver a stillborn—grimly, stolidly.
“You’re lying.”
Radolf knew she had to be lying. Jocelyn wasn’t a big woman, but she was the first of his wives who had returned as good as he gave. She never backed down, never feared his shouting, never flinched at his scars or his temper.
She was the first wife who’d given him a son. “You’re lying.”
He wasn’t hollering now, but the midwife shrank back as if he were. “The priest is wi’ her now.” She tucked the shrieking baby closer to her and sidled toward the solar. “Ye can see yer lady wife’s body when we’ve cleaned an’ prepared her.”
Radolf followed. “You’re lying.”
“Ye can’t go in there,” she said. “’Tis a sight unfit fer a man not o’ th’ cloth.”
Behind her, the priest exited the solar with a long face, and Radolf turned to stalk him instead. “Tell me she’s lying,” he said to the priest.
He was an old priest, hard of hearing but apparently skilled at comprehending a husband’s disbelief. “My son, we must resign ourselves to the will of God.”
“Resign?” Radolf worked his fists, open and shut, open and shut. “Resign?” His voice rose, and he started toward the solar.
The priest flung himself at Radolf, grabbed his tunic by the neck and clung. “It would be better if you don’t look!”
Radolf carried him along like a flea on a dog.
Inside the door, Jocelyn’s sorrowful serving maids rushed toward him, blocking his view. “Yer Grace, you can’t!” they cried in unison.
But he could. She was there on the bed, alone, cold, white, still, the gold hair he loved to stroke dulled with sweat.
Not true. Not true
.
Crimson stained the sheets. The snapping blue eyes that had challenged and enthralled him were closed and sunk deep into her skull.
Not true
.
Her shapely limbs lay twisted, as if the bones had broken from the strain of producing his son.
The son he had prayed for to the exclusion of all else.
Not true
.
Something—someone—knocked him in the back, buffeted him until he faced the door. Someone stood before him, dragging him back to the great hall. Through the mist before his eyes, Radolf could see him. Patton. His lips were moving, and from a distance he heard Patton’s words of comfort. “You can always get yourself another wife. It’s not as if you haven’t had to court wives before. It’s been your misfortune to wed ones so puny they couldn’t carry a child to term, but Jocelyn produced for you, and your next wife will, too.”
A shriek worked its way up from Radolf’s gullet and burst forth with such power men cowered throughout the hall. “Nay!” His fist shot out. He knocked Patton to the ground with one blow to the face. “Nay!” Picking up a bench, he heaved it across the trestle tables, and pitchers and cups flew. The odor of bitter ale curled through the air. “Never again!”
His gaze lit on the midwife, and he marched toward her. Squeaking, she tried to make a shield for the child with her body. “Stupid cow,” he said, contempt weighing his tone. Gently, he folded back the cloth over his son and stroked the black hair so like his own. “I wouldn’t hurt the child. Jocelyn gave her life for this child, and that makes him doubly precious to me.” Then, glaring into the midwife’s eyes, he commanded, “Get him the finest wet nurse in England. Make sure the milk is pure and sweet. Tend my son well, for he is the only son I will have, and if he dies, you die.”
“Aye, Yer Grace.” The midwife bobbed a curtsy, then another, and when he gestured, she ran toward the solar, there to bathe the babe in the warmth of the fire.
Staggering to his heavy chair, Radolf began to collapse into it. Then he looked at the symbol of his lordship: the dark wood, the intricate carving, the tapestry cushions that protected his noble arse, and he remembered. Remembered how Jocelyn had teased him about his consequence. Remembered how he’d wrestled her into his lap. Remembered how he’d promised he would have a noble chair made for her—if she gave him a son.
Not true. Not forever
.
Grabbing the chair, he heaved it aloft. Cushions scattered. He carried it to the window. It wouldn’t fit through the narrow opening, so he banged it against the stone wall until the legs broke off and the back collapsed. Shoving it through the opening, he listened for the satisfying crunch when it hit the ground.
Splinters. It was splinters.
True. Forever
. Jocelyn was dead. She’d died for his son, for Clairmont Court and for him, and never would another woman be worthy of the position of the duke of Clairmont’s wife.
Lifting his fist into the air, he swore the oath that would bind him. “For the good of my sweet Jocelyn’s son, I’ll move heaven and earth to keep Clairmont Court—forever.”
Somerset, England, April 1816
“
A ghost walks the halls
of Clairmont Court at night.”
Miss Sylvan Miles clutched her bonnet in one hand and a strap with the other as the two-wheeled open carriage climbed yet another hill. With a throaty chuckle, she responded, “I’d be disappointed if one didn’t.”
The coachman hunched his massive shoulders. “Aye, ye may laugh. A meager woman might do so—until she comes face-to-face with that awesome lord.”
Jasper Rooney had picked her up at the Hawk and Hound Inn only two hours before, and she’d thought him a dour young man with no imagination. Now she wondered if he didn’t suffer from an excess of imagination. Telling herself she shouldn’t encourage him, she tried to ignore the prod of curiosity. Instead she looked at the
rugged moor that rolled past the fashionable Stanhope gig. She smelled the scent of the ocean as they neared it and hunched her shoulders against the nip of the breeze. And she burst out, “Have
you
seen this ghost?”
“Aye, that I have. Thought myself mad when I saw him striding the grounds in his fancy suit. I told our Reverend Donald, and he said I wasn’t the first to sight it. ’Tis the ghost of the first duke of Clairmont.”
His voice throbbed with emotion, and he trembled, but Sylvan wasn’t afraid.
She’d seen worse than ghosts in her time.
Briskly, she demanded, “How did you know that? Did you ask the ghost his identity?”
“Nay, miss. But he looks just like the portrait of Radolf. A fearsome man, tall and brawn. A warrior with mace and sword.”
She grinned, secure in the knowledge the coachman couldn’t see her. “If he’s carrying a mace, I’ll do my best to avoid him. Warriors exhaust me.”
“Ye’re not a very respectful miss,” Jasper chided.
“You’re not the first to remark on that,” Sylvan agreed. Then the carriage topped the hill, and she cried, “Stop!”
Before Jasper had pulled to a complete halt, she leaped off the steps and onto the ground. A tangled madness of ancient forest and moor, cliffs and savage ocean stretched before her. She waded into the new green grass, absorbing the scent of it as she crushed it beneath her feet. Close at hand, heather and bracken rippled, and beyond that, the sea’s surface undulated at the command of the wind. Far in the distance, she could see squares of brown dirt that had been cleared and plowed and perhaps planted, but that had not yet produced an inkling of a crop. On the sea, a few fishing
boats, dwarfed by distance, bobbed among the rocks. Clasping her hands at her breast, she tried to contain the welcome ache inside her.
It was a homecoming, but she’d never been here before.
“’Tis a god-awful primitive place, ain’t it?” The coachman sounded as if he hoped she would agree. “Most ladies react just like you. I’ve had some of them want to turn back right here, but they always go on.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this.” Her lungs filled with fresh, brisk air, and it intoxicated her. She wanted to run and dance, to find a high place and jump off, trusting to the wind to carry her—
“Willing to brave the horrors of Clairmont lands for the prestige and wealth of the duke.”
—and then drop her gently to earth, there to rest and heal.
“’Course, you can’t leave,” Jasper said. “His Grace said you were the new nurse for Lord Rand.”
Rest. God, what she would do for a good night’s sleep.
“Told him it was foolish, I did. The other nurses were men—as is proper—and
they
couldn’t deal with Lord Rand.”
Jasper’s derision jerked her focus to him. “Deal with Lord Rand? What do you mean?”
“The tantrums and the shouting and the swearing have sent four strong men running in eight months. How’s a woman going to take it?” His gaze ran contemptuously over her. “’Specially a tiny thing like you.”
Sylvan stood stock still, struggling with a sense of betrayal.
Garth Malkin, current duke of Clairmont, had claimed his brother was an invalid. He’d implied that ill
fortune had crushed all spirit from Lord Rand. He had fostered the impression of a cowed man who needed careful handling. His Grace’s reassurances were the only reasons she had allowed herself to be persuaded to come, for she had not escaped her last encounter with Lord Randolf Malkin unscathed.
But she had found she couldn’t bear the thought of Rand’s scalding blue eyes bleak with defeat, nor his vibrant figure wasting away. She had imagined herself gently coaxing him back to life, bringing a smile to his pale lips and lighting the spark of his soul once more. Yet Jasper was insinuating…
“Having second thoughts, miss?”
Second thoughts, indeed. Second thoughts were for cowards and ladies, not for Miss Sylvan Miles.
Squaring her shoulders, she looked up at Jasper on his perch and smiled. “You’ll have to wait and see, won’t you?”
He stared down, slack mouthed, then an answering smile crept over his sullen face. “Perhaps you’ll do. His Grace is no fool, is he?” Climbing down, he offered his enormous hand. “Best get in the gig.”
Sylvan didn’t move. “Where’s the house?”
“Through the village, around the hill and up. Four hundred years ago, Lord Radolf built it facing the ocean, so the windows rattle in the mildest breeze. When a storm blows up, we’re lucky to keep the fires lit and the smoke out of the house. The first duke acted just like today’s Clairmonts. Not interested in good sense and comfort, only interested in struggle and challenge. Whole damned family’s dicked in the nob.”
Ho, now that was interesting. “Why do you say that?”
“Best get in, miss. They’ll be looking for you at the manor.”
He wasn’t going to answer. Evidently, he regretted his
disclosure, and she couldn’t urge him further. She might not have the breeding of a lady, but her governess had taught Sylvan well. A lady didn’t listen to a servant’s gossip.
Sylvan had always thought it a waste of valuable information, but that was her vulgar ancestry coming to the fore. Placing her foot on the step, she bounded back into the carriage with no assistance.
Jasper sighed in ill-concealed forbearance and climbed back onto his perch. He really was an enormous fellow. He should have been a farmer—or a soldier. “Were you at Waterloo?” she asked.
“Aye, miss. I was Lord Rand’s body servant.” He spoke to the fine pair of matched horses as they traveled down the winding road. “Still am, for that matter. I change his sheets, care for his clothes, wash him, dress him.”
“Drive him too, I dare say.”
“He doesn’t go out, miss.”
“Really?” She sat forward in the seat. “How does he keep abreast of that which must interest him?”
“Like what?”
“Well”—she tried to think—“such as the events of world? Napoleon’s exile and such.”
“I bring him the London papers when they arrive.”
“What about…oh…the events of the estate?”
“I tell him what he needs to know.”
Perhaps Garth had justification for worry. Perhaps Lord Rand had slipped into a decline of sorts. She assessed Jasper again. “So he depends on you completely. You care for him when he has no nurse in residence. Tell me about his condition.”
“He can’t walk.”
Jasper’s bluntness bordered on rudeness, but Sylvan wasn’t offended. If he had been at Waterloo, then he’d treated the wound that downed Lord Rand, and he knew
more about his state than anyone else. Jasper had already proved he felt protective of the family. Perhaps the tale of the ghost had been nothing but a fiction to scare her away.
“What’s that?” She pointed at a smudge of dark smoke that rose along the horizon.
“The mill.”
“What mill?”
“The cotton mill.”
“On Clairmont lands?” She stared at the smoke, tracing it until it dissipated in the high winds that tore the clouds to tatters. “Impossible. Dukes don’t indulge in trade.” Surely not the pleasant, handsome Garth. “Only merchants do. Then they buy a barony and put their daughter on the marriage mart, seeking a title to match their fortunes.”
“Well, I don’t know about that, miss. I only know about His Grace.”
What a clam! she thought in exasperation. She might as well have indulged in curiosity. Jasper wouldn’t tell her a thing.
The gig rattled along the rutted track. They drove through a cultivated hollow where men plowed the soil and pressed seed in place, then into a pleasant country village with a few shops and homes. It looked clean and prosperous, the kind of place Sylvan had imagined existed but had never seen.
The blacksmith examined her as they drove by, then raised a hand in welcome, and she waved back.
A homecoming.
“We’re starting the ascent to the manor.” Jasper pointed with his whip. “If ye’ll look up as we go around this corner, ye’ll catch yer first glimpse.”
She did, and no etiquette could stop her exclamation of “Mercy!”
The house straddled the rocky hilltop like a Gothic battleship defying the elements. Each succeeding duke evidently had a different idea of style and good taste, and some of them must have been, as Jasper claimed, mad. The hodgepodge of chimneys, windows, and carvings tried but could not distract from the exterior jumble of gray stone, sandstone, and marble.
“It looks,” Sylvan said in wonder, “as if a giant child kicked over its blocks, then tried to reassemble them.”
“Most visitors are in awe.” Jasper’s spine straightened beneath the black coat.
“In awe.” Immense stands of horse chestnut and mountain ash whisked past, then the hedges. They rounded the bend and the house showed itself in its full glory. Nothing about it resembled her father’s new house, which had been designed and decorated by the finest craftsmen in England, but somehow Clairmont Court welcomed her—her, the daughter of a merchant. They pulled up to a series of broad steps that led to the terrace and then into the house, and she stared at the towering structure. “
I am
in awe. I have never seen anything remotely resembling this. It’s chaotic. It’s barbaric. It’s—”
A wooden chair crashed through a tall, narrow ground-floor window and skidded across the terrace.
“Likely to get worse,” Jasper finished for her. “He must have heard you were coming.”
Boys ran to the horses’ heads while a deep voice raged from within the house. “A woman? You got me a hen-hearted woman?” A glass statue followed the chair, but through a different window, and shards sparkled like rain on a cloudless day.
Jasper leaped from his perch and ran up the steps, forgetting his duty to Sylvan, but she didn’t mind. All the better to get a grasp on the situation.
Bracing herself, she descended from the carriage. She pulled off her gloves and her cornet bonnet, ran her hands through her hair, and fluffed it out.
The ragged edges of one window broke in a series of shattering protests as a stick, probably a cane, punched it out. “What the hell do you think to accomplish with a woman?”
“Give me that!” The sound of a scuffle carried clearly through the open window.
“That’s right, steal from a crippled man.”
“If you’d wait to meet her…”
Sylvan recognized Garth’s voice, but more than that, she recognized the other voice. When she had known it before, it had been lightly contemptuous, unwillingly attracted. Now the tone had changed, but she remembered it from her experience on the battlefield and in the hospital. She’d heard it in every soldier’s voice as he was carried, screaming, to the surgeon for amputation.
Rage and pain, disgust and fear.
She didn’t want to face those raw emotions again. She’d spent the last eleven months trying to forget, while knowing she never would.
Run away
! her mind urged.
Run before your foolish compassion traps you here
.
But her feet moved forward.
Call Jasper and tell him you’ve changed your mind. Run away
!
Slowly, she mounted the stairs, and all the while Rand’s voice raged and Garth admonished. A vase full of flowers flew out the window and broke so close the water wet her shoes and splashed her dress. Lord Rand must have seen her and was aiming now.
It was a clear sign she should leave, but instead she picked up one of the fragrant wild roses and walked on,
hiding her apprehension with a calm expression. The expression she had perfected on the battlefield.
At the door, Jasper gestured heartily. “Come in, miss. Hurry! I’ve never seen him like this, and maybe when he realizes what a lovely lady ye are, he’ll remember his society manners.”
Sylvan could have laughed at Jasper’s naïveté, except it showed how little the invalid was understood.
Her appearance wouldn’t calm the beast, it would provoke him, for no man liked to be weak and helpless before a woman.
She really ought to leave before she stepped inside the house, but as she hesitated, she again experienced a moment of warmth, of homecoming. Clairmont Court sucked her in, and she stepped across the threshold.
“Take your outer garments, miss?” A broad-beamed maid bobbed a curtsy as Sylvan removed her pelisse and handed over her gloves and hat.
“Thank you,” Sylvan said. The wide marble entry stretched all the way to the stairs, and doors opened onto it. One doorway seemed to bulge as two men and three ladies peered at her. Sylvan’s dragging feet slid to a halt.
An attractive woman of perhaps fifty years complained in high-pitched exasperation. “I told Garth this was a bird-witted idea. I don’t know why he doesn’t listen to me.”
“Perhaps, Mama, because he’s the duke and you’re only a duke’s sister-in-law.”
Sylvan glanced sharply at the young man who stood patting his mother’s hand as they stood in the doorway of a salon.
He grinned and winked. “James Malkin, at your service, and my mother, Lady Adela Malkin.”
“Why shouldn’t he have a nurse?” Sylvan asked the lady.
“We don’t need a
female
nurse,” Lady Adela corrected. “You’re no doubt sweet-natured and gentle, but all the other nurses have treated him tentatively, when what he needs is some sense knocked into him.”
“He’s not a bad boy. He’s just having trouble adjusting.” The whispery voice belonged to a soft-faced, silver-haired woman dressed in the height of fashion.
