The Dragon's Bride (14 page)

“De Vere isn’t the earl, you know,” he said pleasantly, but with cool eyes.

“Goodness, I must have been confused for a moment.”

His smile widened as his eyes chilled. “He is heir to a pleasant estate in Derbyshire, however, unless his disapproving father disinherits him. Worth your effort, perhaps, if you’re not absolutely set on Wyvern.”

Now she was smiling as falsely as he was, and praying that the other two men weren’t listening. “Do I have a chance at Wyvern?”

He froze, looking at her, not smiling at all, and she wondered why she’d fallen into such a destructive exchange.

“Play your hand, Susan, and find out.”

It was a challenge. A challenge to seduce him again in case he could be swayed? Surely he knew she would not do that.

No, perhaps he didn’t…

She wanted desperately to speak to him directly, to talk about the past, to try to recapture the friendship and trust they’d once had. He was still angry and distrustful, however, and with reason, and she couldn’t imagine how to change that.

Not with words, that was sure.

“And you, my lord,” she said, directing most of her attention to her plate, “what ambitions do you have?”

“Ambitions,” he repeated, in the same polite tone. “I am ambitious for peace, Miss Kerslake. International peace, and personal peace. For simple country days, and comfort for those I love.”

She looked back at him, relieved that they’d found a safe subject. “Your mother and sisters.”

“And Lady Anne.”

Her throat tightened. She was trying to accept the idea of his chosen beloved, but it was hard. She prayed that the hesitation of her fork had not been visible, but the delicious lobster became like clay in her mouth, heavy and liable to choke her.

She chewed slowly to steal time, then made herself swallow. There was nothing between them anymore, so why did the reminder that he was engaged to marry create a painful lump in her chest?

She took a sip of wine. “Will your future wife like Crag Wyvern?” It sounded reasonably normal to her ears.

“No. We are remarkably in tune, Lady Anne and I.”

“I see now why you do not plan to live here, my lord.” She felt as if she’d reached solid ground again after wallowing in a swamp. It was not ground she’d have chosen, but it was solid.

“Remember, I do not want to live here either.”

He was hammering the fact home, and she realized why. He was telling her that even if she somehow inveigled him into marriage she would still not catch the prize he thought she wanted.

Oh, Con, can we not do better than this?

She tried. “I do not like Crag Wyvern either, my lord,” she said plainly. “Perhaps Lady Anne and I will find ourselves in tune, if she ever does visit here.”

“Unlikely.”

She raised a brow.

“You are the housekeeper, Mrs. Kerslake. You and my wife would be unlikely to discuss such matters.”

It was so deliberately discourteous that Susan simply stared at him, and after a moment he looked away. That gave her a chance to squeeze her lips together to fight back tears.

Only pain would make Con into this hurtful man, and some of the pain—most of it?—was her fault.

She caught de Vere’s all too perceptive eye on her, but that at least gave her an excuse to address a remark to him and switch the pattern of the conversation. She managed to force a bit more of her dinner down.

She had never expected this meal to be enjoyable, but she hadn’t expected torture. Despite David and a stranger as safeguards, she felt as if she were being forced to walk on broken glass.

It was David who found a topic for four-sided conversation—a discussion of the role the newspapers should play in the setting of public policy. None of them had strong political leanings, so they could debate it warmly without friction. She could have kissed him. She didn’t know whether he’d been aware of what was going on or not, but she was certainly coming to appreciate that he was a person well able to deal with the world, and not her troublesome little brother anymore.

Another end. A good one, but an end. Except possibly in the matter of the gold, David didn’t need her anymore. It hurt a little, but it freed her. She could leave, and if Con was going to bring his bride here, even for the briefest visit, she would make sure to be elsewhere by then.

She’d never thought Con’s marriage would hurt so much. She’d never realized how deeply she still cared.

Was there anything she could do to try to reclaim the treasure she had carelessly thrown away?

No. She must not think that way.

Though she was the only lady, she assumed she should behave in the conventional way and was glad of the chance to escape. At the earliest excusable moment she rose to leave the gentlemen.

All the men rose too, but Con said, “I don’t think any of us wishes the freedom to get drunk and tell risqué stories, Miss Kerslake. I plan to move into the courtyard to enjoy port and brandy in the evening air. Please join us.”

There was a distinct edge of command to it.

So she was not to escape so easily. Very well. She would advance with bravado. “With pleasure, my lord. I enjoy a good brandy.”

“And I’m sure the brandy here is very good.”

He flicked a glance at David, who responded with a bland smile, but she was suddenly sure that Con had guessed. He knew David was Mel Clyst’s son, after all.

Would he move against David as a form of revenge? Though it seemed alien to the Con in her heart, she sensed that this man held darkness enough to do it.

Con turned toward the doors into the garden, putting a hand on his chair back for a moment. Perhaps he had drunk a little more than he should have. How many bottles of wine had been served? She couldn’t be sure, nor how much of it he had drunk, but she prayed he wasn’t intoxicated. That tipped many a man—or woman—into doing and saying things they otherwise would not.

He flung open the doors into the courtyard. The enclosing walls cast shadows, but it was not yet dark. “Bring the decanters and glasses,” he said to no one in particular, and strolled out along one of the stone paths toward the central fountain.

Susan noted that someone had turned on the water, probably trying to do their best for the new earl. Despite the unpleasant design of the fountain, the gentle splashing was soothing. She felt a desperate need for something soothing.

Susan looked back, but David said, “Go on. De Vere and I will play servant this time. Would you rather have tea?”

She made a lightning calculation. Tea would be so blessedly normal, but she knew she’d feel absurd attempting to preside over a tea table out beside the lewd fountain.

“I will drink brandy with the rest of you,” she said, and followed, but slowly. She had no intention of having a tęte-ŕ-tęte with Con by the fountain.

She also had no intention of showing how uneasy all this was making her. She’d drink her brandy, which she did enjoy, and then she’d politely say good night. And nothing short of a direct order would stop her from finding her rooms and staying in them.

Tomorrow, she resolved, pausing to inhale the perfume of some hyacinth, she would begin her retreat. There was nothing here for her or Con but pain. He was tied here for life, so it was for her to leave.

It wouldn’t be hard to find someone to fill in as housekeeper, and in her remaining days she would conduct a thorough, clearheaded search for secret rooms, compartments, or other hidey-holes for the gold. If only she’d done that sooner, but she’d been so sure that the earl would have stashed the gold carelessly, and for safety’s sake, she hadn’t wanted even the servants to know when she took it. Now, with Con here, it was more dangerous, but she would do it. Even if she didn’t find the money, she needed to know that she had done her best.

“Another insect?”

She started, and looked up to see that Con had walked back to her side.

“Insect?” Susan asked.

“Wasn’t that what you paused to study this morning?”

Perhaps she, too, had drunk too much. It took her a moment to realize what he meant, and then she became freshly aware of him studying her from his bedroom window, of him being naked from the hips up—and invisibly, from the hips down.

Despite his clothes, her mind filled with the image of his splendid torso, and the dragon that apparently marred it.

She gathered her wits. “Oh, yes. But not now. Now I am simply enjoying the scent of the wallflowers.”

She saw him inhale. “So English. Spain and Portugal are full of smells, and some of them are even pleasant. But not like the scents of an English garden.”

It was so honest, so ordinary, so tender even, that she breathed it in as she had the perfume, holding on to the moment as if she could stop time. She didn’t even dare to look back to see what had happened to David and de Vere.

Then she realized she had to say something. The only thing that occurred to her was prosaic. “The garden needs a gardener. It was Mrs. Lane’s pride and joy. I’ve done my best, but I do not particularly have the gift for it.”

“You’re not a gardener?”

“No.”

Did he feel it as meaningfully as she did, that he didn’t know, and that he’d asked?

“Are you?” she asked.

“God, no. Though I appreciate a wholesome garden when I find one. Imagine Crag Wyvern without this.”

He turned to look around, and she did too, seeing it with different eyes. It was quiet in the failing light, but during the day the garden buzzed with insects for which this was their entire world. Even the birds didn’t seem to leave it. A world, a wholesome world, within the Crag. Without it, the place would truly be dead and rotten.

There was even the musical splash of the fountain to add to the magic.

He walked toward it and she followed, not so nervous now. A glance showed David and de Vere coming, decanters and glasses in hand, talking animatedly about something.

Almost a normal moment.

In Crag Wyvern.

Astonishing.

Then she almost bumped into Con because he’d stopped dead.

“I want this removed,” he said.

She followed his gaze. “The fountain?”

“I want the figures out of here. Tomorrow.” His eyes turned savagely to hers. “If you don’t see why, Susan, you have been eaten whole by the dragon.”

Shaking under that attack, she looked at the fountain, really looked at it. The maiden writhed beneath the dragon as always. The beast pinned her arms with its claws and spread her legs with its lower body.

She thought it horrid, but she’d learned to ignore it. The water was rarely turned on, however, because then the cistern in the roof had to be refilled. When it had been gushing water she hadn’t looked at it clearly.

Now, however, she did.

The dragon’s huge phallus spewed over the captive bride, some liquid filling her screaming mouth, more pouring off her outstretched, piteous hands.

After a horrified moment, she turned away. “Yes. Yes, of course.”

She still heard the music of the water, but now the image made it foul.

He was right. The garden was the healing heart of Crag Wyvern, but by creating the dragon’s bride fountain, the mad earl had introduced a blight.

“I don’t know how it’s constructed,” she said, “but I’ll find out what needs to be done to remove it. Tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry,” he said in very different voice.

She looked and saw a different man, less dark, less hard, closer surely to the Con she remembered.

“Sorry?” she asked, wondering if he was going to apologize for some of the darts he’d thrown at her tonight.

“You aren’t my housekeeper at the moment, are you? I shouldn’t be giving you orders.”

She suppressed a sigh. “It doesn’t matter, my lord. It should be done.”

Her brother and de Vere were close, but Con moved away from the fountain. “There are benches beneath the lime tree, I think. We’ll sit there.”

David flashed her a look that suggested that he thought this earl was as mad as the rest of them, but Susan understood. Having been alerted to the abhorrence of that fountain, she didn’t want to sit near it either.

There were two benches, and she ended up sitting beside David, while Con and de Vere sat on the other. She rather thought David had engaged in some clever maneuvering to achieve that, and she wondered what he was seeing here. As she warmed her cognac, the finest that the Freetrade had to offer, she wished this were a more wholesome evening.

The idea of sitting in a tranquil evening garden with Con and friends was something she had never dreamed of, and even in this flawed state it was sweet enough for tears.

“Miss Kerslake,” de Vere said, “do you know what was here before this garden?”

She took a small sip of her brandy. “I’m not sure, sir. The original plans for Crag Wyvern show a garden here, but I’ve heard that before Mrs. Lane took care of it, it was in sorry shape. At one point it was all grassed to make a tennis court.”

De Vere looked around. “And the windows survived?”

“I don’t think so. Originally the lower windows were stained glass. There’s a painting in one of the corridors.”

De Vere shook his head. “Mad. And through the ages, too.”

“No one’s denying it, Race,” Con said.

“If I were you, I’d disown the lot of them.”

Con took a mouthful of the brandy. “Ah, but that’s the burden of the aristocracy. We can’t disown our ancestors and keep the spoils.” He turned to Susan. “Are there records of the first earl, Miss Kerslake? I would be interested to know more about the story of the dragon.”

“I don’t know, my lord. There’s a room in the cellars full of boxes of ledgers and documents.”

De Vere gave a faint moan, and surprisingly, Con laughed in seemingly true humor. “You are not getting a sniff of them until you’ve dealt with current matters. And in fact, I have engaged the curate to deal with the books. He might be willing to include archives.”

“Unfair. Unfair.”

“We’ll probably not be here long enough to make any order of them anyway.”

“I could stay,” de Vere said, and flickered a smiling look at Susan.

That was unwise. She felt Con’s cold disapproval like a lance. It seared through his words as he said, “You are my secretary, Race. Where I go, you go.”

“Sounds more like a damn wife to me.”

“For that, you lack certain essential qualifications.”

De Vere didn’t seem daunted by the sharp edge in his employer’s voice. In fact he smiled in a deliberately winsome way. “Miss Kerslake said I was angelic.”

Con looked across the gathering shadows at Susan. “Don’t forget, Miss Kerslake, Lucifer is an angel, too.”

They were both speaking laconically, lounging at either end of the bench, but Susan wanted to scream at them to stop it, to stop sliding knife-edged comments through the conversation.

She drained her glass of brandy and stood. “I believe it is time I retired, my lord, gentlemen.”

David stood too. “And I must return to the manor. Thank you, my lord, for an excellent dinner.”

They went through the courtesies, but all the time Susan felt weighed down by Con’s attention, quivering with the fear that he would command her to stay. There surely was nothing to fear, but here in the darkening garden at the heart of Crag Wyvern, she was afraid.

He didn’t stop her, and she walked away with David, making herself not rush. They reentered the house through the dining room, and Susan was pleased to see that the servants had quietly cleared the table while they were outside. They had even restored the table to the usual seating for eight, which better suited the proportions of the room.

As they entered the corridor, David said, “De Vere is a damn strange secretary.”

“I think he’s more of a friend.”

“A damn strange friend, too. Are you all right up here with them?”

She knew that if he suspected any awkwardness he would want her to leave immediately. She could deal with awkwardness, and it would become nothing more than that.

“Of course I’m all right.” But she added, “The earl is troubled. I think it’s something from the war, which is not surprising. Perhaps de Vere suffers in the same way but handles it by creating mischief. It’s not likely to affect me, however.”

“If you’re sure. But if you ask me, the mad blood runs in both sides of the family.”

“That could be true….” Yet she’d seen no sign of imbalance in Con all those years ago. He’d been the sanest, most even-tempered person she’d ever known.

They parted with a kiss in the great hall, and Susan went to the kitchen area to compliment the staff. She was still there when the bell rang. She told Diddy to go and see what the earl wanted. “Probably more brandy,” Susan muttered, but she’d be happy enough if he drank himself into a stupor.

Diddy came back. “He wants to speak to you, Mrs. Kerslake. He’s in the dining room.”

Susan was strongly tempted not to go, but how would that look before the servants? The rest of the servants. And it wasn’t as if this were a medieval castle and the earl had droit du seigneur or anything so absurd. Nor was she an unprotected waif. If she couldn’t defend herself, she had a family of men ready to do so, or to avenge any wrong.

He must know that.

If he was sane.

If he wasn’t dangerously drunk.

She hesitated, wondering if there was time to change into the defense of her housekeeper’s clothes, but there wasn’t.

She left the kitchen, but as she did so she said, “If I scream, come and rescue me.”

She made it light, but she knew the women would do it. They’d lived with one mad Earl of Wyvern already.

She entered the garden a different way. With darkness almost complete the lamps created pools of light and shadowed corners. In the heart of the shadows the fountain still played.

The bride still drowned.

She detoured to the concealed wheel valve, and switched the water off.

Splash diminished into trickles, and then to peaceful silence. Susan walked through it toward the shining rectangle of the dining room doors, where Con stood waiting. Alone.

She hesitated out in the dark, but she would not be afraid. To be truly afraid of Con would be the final denial of all that had once existed between them.

She stepped into the room. “My lord? You needed something?”

He was blank, impossible to read. She wished the wide table stood between them, but he had waited for her near the doors. She wished she’d come in from the corridor.

She edged a little farther into the room to put more distance between them, trying not to make it look like a retreat. She was stopped by the table. To work her way around it would be ridiculous.

“In Spain, I almost raped a woman,” he said.

She looked at him, seeking the meaning beneath the words and finding it. “That’s why the fountain offends you?”

“That’s probably why I am more sensitive to it than you. I regret implying that you are uncaring.”

A flutter of something started within. Not hope, no. That would be foolish. But… pleasure. Pleasure that he could say that to her. That he wanted to and felt free to.

“Not uncaring, no. But I am callused,” she said. “Crag Wyvern does that. The constant abrasion of the wicked and the bizarre makes us insensitive after a while.”

“Like war. The constant abrasion of violence, suffering, and death. I tried once to peel away the calluses. It was a mistake.”

She wasn’t sure what had caused this moment of openness, but it was a treasure to savor. She leaned back slightly against the table between two chairs. “Why was it a mistake?”

As if mirroring her, he leaned back too, against the doorjamb. “Because I had to go back to war. Waterloo. Good calluses take time to build. Or restore.”

Clearly he needed to talk and he’d chosen her to talk to. Privately, she gave thanks, but she simply said, “What happened?”

He shrugged. “We won. We lost. I mean, we lost too many good men. Ten thousand of them. I suppose it was worth it, but sometimes it’s hard to see why. If they’d dealt with Napoleon properly the first time…”

He shrugged again.

“You must have lost many friends there.” She hesitated, wondering whether mentioning his closest friends, something shared in the past, would be a mistake. But she did it. “The other two Georges? The Rogues?”

He did look startled—perhaps it was a flinch—but he answered. “One of the Rogues. Lord Darius Debenham.”

She ached for him, but treasured the moment. “One of the Duke of Yeovil’s sons. I heard of his loss. I’m sorry.”

He said nothing more, and she sensed that this connection, whatever it had been, was fading. She’d recapture it if she could, but had no idea how. They stood in silence for a moment or two. and then he said, “What happened eleven years ago, Susan?”

The suddenness of it stole words. Eventually she said, “You know what happened, Con.”

Did he think she would deny it? Try to claim it had been some huge mistake?

“I suppose I do. You made your ambitions clear enough. Did you try to marry Fred?”

She was poised on a razor edge. Did she admit that she’d never felt the same way toward any other man, that she’d bitterly regretted what she had done? Did she protect her pride with lies?

She could summon the courage to go only halfway. “Aunt Miriam had hopes. I suppose we all tried a bit, but my heart wasn’t in it.”

Do you hear what I’m saying Con? Do you care?

His eyes were steady, his face without any readable expression. “And your heart was in it with me?”

In the face of that daunting blankness, she could not make the ultimate surrender.

And of course he didn’t care.

He had Lady Anne.

“Why do you ask, Con? It was a long time ago, and you are to marry soon.”

His long lashes blinked over silvery eyes. “Ah, yes. Lady Anne. She has nothing to do with the past.”

“She makes the past irrelevant.”

He pushed off from the doorjamb and moved a step closer. “The past is never irrelevant, even if we wish it were. I wonder why you haven’t married. If you are telling the truth and don’t want the Crag anymore.”