The Dragon's Bride (25 page)

“My family,” David said. “One reason I’m reluctant to do this is my family. Uncle Nathaniel and Aunt Miriam won’t like the fuss, but … I don’t like disowning Mel Clyst. I’m proud to be his son. And I certainly don’t like claiming the mad earl’s blood.”

“Few things come without cost,” Con said. “It’s your choice. I won’t force it on you.”

Susan thought before speaking, but then said, “Mel would love to see his son the Earl of Wyvern, David. It would be the perfect revenge.”

“Revenge?” Con queried.

She turned to him. “As you know from the letter, the earl and Mel had a pact. According to Gifford, the earl helped catch Mel. He betrayed him.”

“But according to Swann, the old earl made him work very hard to make sure that Mel Clyst didn’t hang.”

“Really?” Susan thought about it. “But of course. Death would be too easy, and would free Lady Belle to do her unpredictable worst. She probably would have marched up and installed herself in Crag Wyvern as countess. I wouldn’t be surprised if he egged her on to follow Mel. For some reason, he finally wanted to be rid of them. She did come up here after Mel’s sentencing. Perhaps to ask for help. If so, she didn’t get it, because then she took the Horde’s hoard.”

Thinking aloud, she didn’t realize what she’d said until it was out. Perhaps it was time to tell Con why she’d wanted the earl’s money, but he didn’t seem to have noticed, and she had to remember that he was pledged to marry Lady Anne Peckworth. It would be embarrassing to be trying to gain his good opinion.

David suddenly said, “I need time to think about this.” To Con, he said, “Even though you claim not to want any of this, I thank you for your generosity. And for your high regard.”

He left, and Susan and Con looked at each other. Awareness of each other, of being alone together, shivered through the room. Yet neither of them moved closer, or farther apart.

“Would it work?” she asked.

“I don’t see why not. In addition to Lady Belle’s statement, there must be records on Guernsey. Note, however, that the foolish woman didn’t give a date. You were born when?”

“August 1789.”

“So sometime before November 1788—”

“You’re not suggesting I really could be the mad earl’s daughter?”

“Unlikely, but if the marriage was about then, you’ll probably never know.” A teasing light in his eyes made her want to throw something, but warmed her. It gave hope again of friendship.

“I pray it was in summer. Wouldn’t it be more sensible to take a sea voyage to Guernsey in a gentle month?”

“Definitely, but we’re talking about the mad earl and Lady Belle.”

Susan groaned. “Let’s send immediately to Guernsey to hunt those registers.”

“It might be easier to find the marriage certificate here.”

“You clearly haven’t tried a treasure hunt here.”

He looked at her, gray eyes warm. “You regard that gold as belonging to the Dragon’s Horde, don’t you?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, Con, but the earl broke his covenant with the Horde, so he didn’t deserve that money. It wasn’t the whole of Mel’s payments. He used to bring in all kinds of expensive curiosities to keep the earl happy.”

“And without the money?”

“David will have to run contraband dangerously often. There are debts, and on top of that people depend on their smuggling income. If there’s no work here, they’ll hire out to other gangs. Once allegiance slips …”

“I see. Have you told him yet that half that stash of coin is his?”

“I assumed you had.”

She felt herself color at the memory of what she’d done to earn her half, and then she also remembered the way it had ended.

“I’m sorry for taking offense at a reasonable question, Con.”

“Don’t take all the blame. I wasn’t rational either. I’m not…” He spread his hands. “I’m not myself, which is a strange concept when you think of it, since we are what we are. I have no idea what myself is anymore, but I was beginning to find out before Crag Wyvern came crashing down on me.”

“And I have made your situation more difficult. Perhaps it would be better if I left immediately….”

“No.” But then he looked out into nothing, a shadowy nothing. In the end he simply said, “Don’t go, Susan. Not yet.”

He rose, and she could almost see him pulling on a calm shell with practiced ease. “Tomorrow we’ll have a hunt for those papers. By the way, a friend of mine, Nicholas Delaney, will be visiting, and will stay at least one night. I promised him the Chinese rooms.”

“King Rogue. Was that where you went today?”

It was intrusive, even between friends, but his retreat inside that shell seemed all wrong to her.

He looked at her, deeply thoughtful, “You do remember, don’t you? He has a lovely home. I’d like to take you there—” After a halted breath he continued, “You’ll like him, I think. Perhaps your brother and cousin would like to join in the paper hunt. Do you have any other cousins at home?”

“Only Henry, the oldest, and he’s not one for games.”

He’d thought of taking her to visit his friend, then remembered Lady Anne. She longed to go closer, to help him, but that way lay disaster.

He suddenly fixed her with his silvery eyes. “Come to my room again, Susan. For nothing this time. We’d be careful.”

Her mouth dried. “No need to be careful if it’s nothing.”

He smiled. “For everything, then.” But the smile didn’t warm the shadow in his eyes.

“It wouldn’t be right, Con.”

“Oh, yes, it would.”

She wavered, almost a physical wavering toward him, which she fought to resist. She wouldn’t even mention Lady Anne, for that might make it seem like a contest between them. “You’d regret it later.”

He began to come around the table to her. “Regrets are hard to judge ahead of time. Have you noticed that? I have deeply regretted not forcing you to see sense eleven years ago.” He was on her side now, and coming close, and she couldn’t make herself run.

“Do you regret last night?” he asked.

“Only the ending of it,” she whispered. “But—”

He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. The first joining of open lips conquered her resolve and melded her to him. When their lips finally parted it took all her strength not to say the fatal words,
I love you.
She gazed at him, tempted almost beyond will. Who could resist a tempest… ?

Then she realized that someone was tapping on the door.

Eyes met in guilt, and then they stepped apart. He went to open the door. Jane stood there, eyeing them suspiciously. “You’ve a visitor, milord.”

“Who?”

“Says his name’s Hawkinville. Major Hawkinville.”

Susan’s first alarmed thought was that it was a new, higher-ranking Preventive man, but then Con said, “Hawk,” and she remembered that this was one of the other Georges.

Here?

Now?

A blessed interruption, but she wasn’t sure she could cope with any more shocks and surprises, not with her body still seething with forbidden passion for Con.

Con looked back at Susan briefly, regretting yet not regretting the interruption. It would have been madness to have surrendered, and deeply wrong.

“Bring him here, please,” he said to the maid. When she’d left, he said, “He’s a good enough friend I could show him his room and ignore him, but…”

“But he’d guess, and we can’t do this, Con. You know that.”

Before he could unwisely protest that, she added, “You must remember Lady Anne.”

His self-imposed prison. But she was right. Strong, honorable, and right. “I must, mustn’t I? Very well, what rooms do we have available for Hawk?”

“The Jason rooms, and the Ouroboros.”

“Oh, yes, the circular one with the dragon eating its own tail. But the Jason rooms have mazes on the walls, don’t they? Arrange for Hawk to sleep in there. He enjoys a puzzle.”

She was looking at him with a slight frown. “You don’t seem happy to see your friend.”

He shrugged. “I wonder why he’s here. It’s either trouble or curiosity, or both.”

She began to say something else, but then they heard footsteps, and in a moment Hawk walked in looking the same as always. An elegant devil, even in ordinary riding clothes and after a long journey.

He was suddenly damned glad that Hawk was here, and grinned. After a swift, assessing moment, Hawk grinned back, executed an elaborate, archaic bow, and declared, “My Lord Earl!”

Con dragged him into his arms for a back-thumping hug. He’d have been glad to see Hawk again in any circumstances after a year, but he felt as if sanity had just swooped into his chaotic life. For a start, Hawk had always had a gift for puzzles, and Crag Wyvern was full of them.

Hawk glanced to one side and Con saw Susan standing there, the perfect image of a housekeeper except for her good looks and the lack of a cap. He was faced with a sudden decision.

“Hawk, this is Miss Susan Kerslake of Kerslake Manor, who’s been kind enough to fill in here as housekeeper. She’s also an old friend. Susan, Major Hawkinville. You’ve heard me speak of him.”

She gave him a quizzical look, but then offered her hand to Hawk rather than bobbing a servant’s curtsy.

Hawk took it and bowed. “Charmed, Miss Kerslake.”

Con had no doubt that he was making a hundred rapid assessments and calculations and coming to conclusions, many of them correct. But he didn’t regret introducing Susan as she was.

She said, “The Jason rooms then?” and when he agreed, she left with a pleasant smile.

Hawk looked at Con, but all he said was, “An interesting house.”

“Wait till you see the whole of it. Trouble?”

“I don’t think so,” Hawk said. “Van’s probably getting married.”

“Probably? I saw the notice in the paper.”

“That was a pretense. Long story. But now it’s become real if only he can persuade her. I provided him with some ammunition that should carry the day.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

Hawk had always been hard to read, and his years in army administration, some of it secretive, had perfected his inscrutability. But Con knew he was concerned about something.

However, Hawk merely said, “Excellent,” and wandered over to consider the books on the shelves. “A conventional selection. I thought you said your predecessor was mad.”

Con certainly understood an inclination to keep secrets, so he let it go. “The interesting stuff’s upstairs. Come along and I’ll show you.”

But Hawk stayed where he was. “Perhaps I am jealous of Maria. A lowering thought. One George married. You here in Devon.”

“I’ve no intention of living here, but our lives can never be as they were when we were sixteen. We will doubtless all marry.”

Con thought of three new families—Van’s, his, and Hawk’s—linked as closely as the old ones, their children growing up as friends.

But it was Susan’s children he saw, not Anne’s.

Perhaps it would become more real if he put it into words.

“I have more or less offered for Lady Anne Peckworth.”

Despite having been out of the country for most of the past eleven years, and being a schoolboy when they joined the army, it took Hawk’s encyclopedic mind only a moment. “Daughter of the Duke of Arran? A good match.”

“Yes.”

“More or less?” Hawk wouldn’t miss a phrase like that.

“I’ve arranged to speak to her father when I return east.”

“Ah.”

Con could see questions in Hawk’s eyes, but at least he didn’t ask them. “What of you?” Con asked, “A lady in mind?”

God, such a stilted conversation. Was there no real friendship to recapture?

“Give me time. I’ve been in England for only a week. Besides, unlike my fellow Georges, I have neither title nor large estate to offer. Since I have no intention of living at Hawkinville Manor with my father, I don’t even have a home.”

Trouble there too. Despite Susan, despite a tentative healing, Con flinched back from probing it.

“How is your father? I heard he suffered a seizure of some kind.”

“Recovering. I haven’t been there yet.”

Conversation dragged to a halt again. “Perhaps we should be taking a bath,” Con said.

Hawk’s brows rose in a question, and Con laughed. “Come and see.”

At sight of the Roman bath, Hawk whistled. “Crazily extravagant, but I can’t say I like the decor. He really didn’t like women, did he?”

“I presume because they kept failing him. A man like that always blames the woman. But sharing hot water seems to encourage confidences.”

“I must remember that next time I have a deceitful supplier to question. Though,” he added, “considering the personal habits of most deceitful suppliers, perhaps not.”

They strolled back into the bedroom, and Con looked at the fresco of Saint George and the dragon. “Apparently this was modeled after my ancestor, the first earl.”

“Not a warrior, I assume. I wouldn’t bet on this one against that dragon.”

“Nor I. Notice there’s no cross bar on that lance? The beast would keep running up it and eat him as it perished.”

They fell into a humorous, professional analysis, then progressed to the Wyvern rooms, joking about various aspects of the corridors. Con felt the old ease unfurling between them tentatively, but with all the sure power of an unfurling leaf, and gave silent thanks.

When he saw the bed, Hawk burst out laughing. “After all this, he never showed signs of fathering a child?”

“Ah,” Con said. “Now that is a most interesting question.” He sketched in the details of Lady Belle’s letter.

Hawk smiled. “What a splendid notion. You think you can persuade young Kerslake to go through with it?”

“I hope so. Can you see any problem?”

Hawk contemplated the blank wall facing the bed. “No serious ones. It’s suspicious that he fathered no more children, but these things happen. And his habit of drinking strange brews might have had a negative effect. I wonder what happened to the young woman who played the part in Guernsey.”

“She might come forward when it becomes common talk?”

“More likely demand money for her silence. That can be the new earl’s problem. And you know, from my very brief exposure to your predecessor’s nature, I wonder if she survived.”

“He pushed her off the boat on the way home?”

“And kept that marriage certificate in these rooms. He’d want it close. Sewn into a book’s binding. Or in a cavity cut into the walls …”

He walked forward and ran his fingers around a blank piece of wall opposite the bed. “Has anything been moved from here?”

“I don’t think so. Why? You’ve found something?”

“I’ve found a blank piece of wall in a room otherwise completely cluttered, and a mark…. Ah.” He dug his nails in and pulled, and part of the faux stone slid sideways.

Behind was not a secret compartment, however, but a drawing of a young woman. It was a highly worked professional piece clearly showing the delicate lace trimming of her dress, and the pearls around her neck. Her hair was simply gathered up in the manner of a girl just out in society. Nothing could be told from her face, however, because the paper had been slashed like a pie, and the triangular pieces hung away from the gaping hole.

“Isabelle Kerslake, I assume,” Con said. He’d thought he was past being shocked by his predecessor, but this was vile. “He lay in his bizarre bed looking at her, and hating her and Mel Clyst. I wonder why he suddenly decided to act on it.”

“Men break. The last straw, and all that.” Hawk looked around at the cluttered room. “I admit, it will be interesting to take this place apart piece by piece and find his other secrets along with that paper.”

“We seek only to amuse,” Con said. “Perhaps I should open this to the masses and charge a penny a gawk. Nicholas Delaney will be turning up tomorrow too. He doesn’t have your eye for solving mysteries, but he can be perceptive in his own way.”

“The founder of the Rogues? I look forward to meeting him.”

Con shook his head. “Lord, but it feels strange to have people coming here. Ordinary people. Perhaps we should invite up the Kerslakes. I only worry that Crag Wyvern will split open and crumble away.”

“Sorry if you’re attached to it, but good riddance as long as no one’s killed in the collapse.”

“Someone else said that. And neither she nor you have seen the torture chamber yet.”

“Thank the Lord. It wouldn’t be surprising, you know, if this place had loosened some of your screws.”

“As obvious as that, is it?” Con asked, navigating a way out of the room and back into the corridor.

“Is Diego still with you?” Hawk asked.

“Yes, why?”

“He’d only have come to England if he felt needed.”

This was the astute assessment of someone who knew him well, the assessment he’d feared. Now it didn’t seem intolerable.

“It’s war sickness,” he said as he locked the room. “I was getting over it.”

“Dare?” Hawk asked, persistent as a surgeon after shrapnel.

In Brussels, before Waterloo, they’d all shared a billet—Van, Hawk, Dare, and himself. Van and Hawk, professional soldiers like himself, had been somewhat impatient with Dare’s unshadowed enthusiasm, but they’d come to like him. Cheerful, generous Dare was impossible to dislike.

“Dare’s death didn’t help,” Con said, leading the way down the corridor. “But it isn’t insane to find the experience of death and agony unsettling.”

“Of course not. But I gather you’ve been avoiding your friends.”

“Not any longer,” Con said, grateful to arrive at the Jason rooms. “Bring ‘em all on. The more the merrier.”

He left Hawk there, knowing it wasn’t particularly friendly, but needing to be by himself. Friendship was unfurling, but he wasn’t quite ready for the full power of it yet.

Where? In this fortress of rooms, where could he be sure to be undisturbed? In the Wyvern rooms, probably, but he wasn’t going there.

The roof. He and Fred had found the way up to the roof and he thought he could remember it. He went up a circular staircase into the floor that contained the water cisterns. Then he found the trapdoor and climbed out.

Chill evening air hit him, blessedly welcome, and he leaned on a merlon to look at land and sea, at “outside.”

Kerslake was reluctant to take this on for a number of reasons. Con wondered if it was pure selfishness to try to persuade him. But in holy truth he’d think himself blessed never to have to come here again.

Except that owning Crag Wyvern would offer the painful hope of at least seeing Susan again. If Kerslake did become earl, there would be no reason. No excuse …

He began to stroll around the parapet, but as he turned onto the south wall he stopped. Susan was there facing him, a knitted shawl wrapped around her for defense against the brisk sea air.

She looked like the simplest country woman.

She looked, as always to him, magnificent.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was hoping you wouldn’t notice I was here.”

He didn’t take it wrongly. He knew exactly what she meant.

He walked nearer. “Come to Irish Cove with me?”

She stared at him, but not with surprise. “It’s a chilly evening.”

“I wasn’t thinking of going swimming.”

She cocked her head, considering him, but then she said, “All right.”

He led the way back to the trapdoor, but as he stood aside to let her go down first he said, “Would you change for me? Out of that gray gown.”

She considered it again. “If you wish.”

When they arrived at the garden level she said, “I won’t be long,” and walked off toward the kitchen area.

He’d like to go with her in case she changed her mind, but he made himself wait, hoping no one was going to interrupt this. Race was back in the office, but might pop out for some reason. Hawk …

He’d abandoned Hawk, and Hawk was doubtless drawing all kinds of conclusions. If he was drawing the right ones, he wouldn’t interfere.

Though perhaps he should.

A gentleman engaged to marry one lady did not go for evening walks with another.

So why was he going with Susan to Irish Cove? To deal with shadows from the past. No more. It was certainly too chilly for a reenactment.

She appeared in a simple, high-necked blue cotton dress, her hair uncovered and in a plait, but with her shawl still wrapped around her for warmth. He’d rather she left off the shawl, but that would be asking her to suffer even more for him.

They walked out together and followed the path along the grassy headland for a while, contentedly in silence. He realized that this was a friendship he could accept in all its power, without reservation. If he hadn’t built a wall between them.

Eventually they came to a slippage where they had to scramble over rough rocks. She laughed as she tried to hold up her skirts and cling to his hand. “This was much easier in a girl’s shorter skirts!”

“Or in breeches.”

She smiled at him. “Or in breeches. This is a mad enterprise, you know.”

“Do you want to go back?”

“Not at all. Perhaps we’ll be lunatic lovers, lost over the cliffs.” Then she sobered with awareness of her words.

“We are lovers,” he said, pulling her up to solid ground again. “Past, and almost present.”

And future?
almost escaped. But he didn’t want to be Susan’s lover. The carnal part would be wonderful, but it wasn’t the essence of what he wanted. He wanted the golden friendship, the companion for life.