The Wedding Night (6 page)

"I only ask, sir, because a wife might object to having another woman living on the estate."
Mairey's
heart beat wildly under all that glowering. "
I
certainly would."

"You'll have no trouble on that count, Miss Faelyn. I've never had a wife."

Her heart took a crazy
thunk
, a little too relieved, a lot too giddy. She hurried the few steps past him into the parlor. "Do you plan to take a wife any time soon?"

"Why?"

Because the idea didn't set well with her. A wife in the offing—a wedding at
Drakestone
. She couldn't quite look at him, so she inspected the hearth and its damper, rattled the handle and came away with sooty fingers.

"Because, Lord Rushford, although no one hopes to conclude our pact sooner than I do, my father spent his entire professional life looking for the
Willowmoon
Knot. He was a much more experienced scholar than I am, and after thirty years he'd made little headway. We can hardly expect success after only a few weeks."

"And?"

She faced him, glad for the distraction of rubbing the soot off her fingers. "And if, sir, three years from now you should find a wife and you and I are still … associated, she would doubtless want me to conduct my research elsewhere than on your estate."

"Would she?"

"
I
certainly would!"

"Well, then, my dear," he said, leaning too close with a badly tucked-away grin, "I'll keep that in mind should I ever go looking for a wife."

"You'll warn me if you change your mind?"

"Absolutely."

That set off an entirely different set of fluttering in her stomach … bubbles of profuse contentment. Absurd—it was the lodge. She liked it too much.

"Good. In the meantime, if I'm to live as well as work here at
Drakestone
, I want to be assured that I may have the run of the lodge as you promised."

Rushford leaned easily against the arch. "As long as you don't add a wing onto the place without my permission."

"I won't even paint."

"Paint the lodge in yellow stripes, if you wish. Raise geese and goats. Just don't go inviting anyone onto the grounds who might pose a threat to the security of our project."

A threat? Though Caro and Poppy were liable to run wild, given the pond and the stream, and Anna was an unrepentant flower thief, they were hardly a risk to Rushford's security. Nor did he need to be a part of her private life.

"Of course."

"So, Miss Faelyn. I'm offering you the use of the lodge, a hundred pounds per month in salary, and one-tenth percent royalty on the net profits of the
Willowmoon
Mineworks
in exchange for your cooperation. I can offer no more."

The
Willowmoon
Mineworks
. The words slammed into the backs of her knees and her heart grew cold. She saw thick gray smoke where her village had once nestled against the hillside, and a dark-eyed dragon curled up on a heap of glittering silver.

Staying close to the beast seemed the safest way to govern him. Yes, belling the dragon. Heel,
Balforge
!

"I can hardly turn down such an offer, can I, my lord?"

"Well, then, Miss Faelyn." Rushford offered his hand, and Mairey took it without thinking, never expecting his to so fully enfold her own. It wasn't a handshake, it was a binding. And she could only watch in bewitched anticipation as he slowly lifted her hand to his mouth—so very warm and well-shaped—as he left a grazing kiss in the furrow between her fingers.

"To the
Willowmoon
, Miss Faelyn."

"Oh, yes." Her breath wobbled out of her chest, leaving her powerless to object, and wondering irrationally what his kiss would taste like—"My lord?" Sumner was at the door of the lodge, clearing his throat in short rattling bursts.

"What, Sumner?" Rushford kept her gaze as steadfastly as he held her hand, his fingers having separated hers to fit between them, as though he believed he had gained possession of her in the bargain and planned to explore her byways.

"There are three gentlemen to see you up at the main house, sir. I showed them to your office."

"Who?"

"The Messrs. Dodson, Dodson, and
Greel
."

Rushford straightened, and Mairey thought she saw a despairing confusion soften the flint of his eyes, a weighty sorrow that half-rounded his broad shoulders and drew down the corners of his fine mouth.

"I'll see them now, Sumner. Settle yourself here, Miss Faelyn. Make a list of what you'll
be needing
and give it to Sumner. Firewood, food, blankets—"

"My clothes will do for a start."

"Ah." He frowned, distracted, and she felt illogically abandoned by his abruptness. "Send for your things—for anything you might need to get you through this."

She needed Anna and Caro and Poppy, and Aunt
Tattie
. And a magic potion that would put this disturbing dragon to sleep for the next hundred years.

"I'll send word this very afternoon, sir."

"Yes. Good." Rushford gave an abbreviated bow,
then
left the lodge as though his coattails were afire.

Oh, how easily she could imagine the stench of
sulphur
curling toward her as he set off to ravage the countryside. Yet it wasn't brimstone she smelled but the exotic spice of the kiss that he had lingered over, the very same kiss she'd done nothing at all to discourage, that still jangled in her veins.

A dangerous way to begin building a fortress against the man.

Rushford had been right about one thing: the lodge was large and entirely self-contained, with a small kitchen, five bedrooms, a dining room, a parlor, and a large sitting room. Five times the size of the house in
Holly Court
. She explored her new home from the attic to the root cellar, noting all the crannies and hidey-holes, should she need to use them in her campaign against her new collaborator.

Rushford was
foul
tempered and imperious, but she had never once felt in physical danger. His touch was resolute, insistent, but never harsh. The girls would be safe, but she would keep them away from the main house—keep Aunt
Tattie
busy with their schooling when she couldn't, and send them on outings.

Mairey smiled as she thought of the terror her sisters would bring down upon Rushford's sensibilities should he ever venture out to the lodge. Anna had become properly shy in recent months, but Caro and Poppy still had no sense of shame, and thought
bathtime
was playtime. So the sight of naked little girls squealing down the hallway—their auntie fast on their heels with towels to dry and cover them—was everyday normal in the Faelyn household.

It was good that her family would remain distant from the rest of
Drakestone
House. And if things didn't work out, she could always send them home to their village and its ancient peace.

She'd never been allowed to live there; she'd been exiled by her father's research. She would miss the girls fiercely, but they would surely thrive there.

Heaven alone knew how long it would take to find the
Willowmoon
Knot, or how long Rushford would persist in his search before he gave it up and let her go. The
Willowmoon
had been missing for two hundred and fifty years; she might be bound to the man forever! The quest stretched out before her as bleak as any prison sentence: Anna and Caro and Poppy grown and moved away, with families
of their own
.
Mairey's
hair gone gray and her heart lonely as Jackson Rushford tore up the countryside looking for the glade of silver.

She found a pen, a pot of ink, and a pad of letter paper in the parlor desk.

Dearest Aunt
Tattie
,

I have found lodgings near my work and wish you to join me here at
Drakestone
House, as soon as you can pack the girls and all their things.

And may the dragon beware.

Chapter 5

«
^
»

D
odson. Christ, he'd forgotten. Had another June come already? This one had crept up on
him,
forgotten in his quest to find Miss Faelyn and her silver mine.

No, not altogether forgotten. Never that. It was an everlasting echo in a heart gone hollow.

Jack made a detour into his private office, not yet ready to face Dodson and his partners. This meeting took more and more out of him every year, sapped his strength for days afterward.

It had become a dreaded reckoning, an acrid accounting of his failure. He had a file drawer packed with reports and assessments. Eighteen years of searching for the family his father had left to him.

Protect them, Jack. The girls, your mother. They'll need you, son.

But he hadn't protected them: he'd never seen them again. Not after the savage violence of a miner's strike gone horribly wrong. He had lost track of his family even as his father lay dying in his arms.

He'd been sent away that night, exiled to
Canada
, with the law on his heels and a price on his head. He'd spent his first shilling searching for his family; he would gladly spend his last if he had to.

Dodson and his lot had found little trace of them—only rumors and unverified sightings. Eighteen years was a lifetime of waiting, of stark loneliness and phantoms.

And hope was a heavy burden.

Jack emptied his chest of the pain, of his fury, and dimmed his memories so that they wouldn't flare up and overcome him in the midst of his meeting. He took a steadying breath and then shoved through the adjoining door into his office.

"Your report, gentlemen," Jack said sharply and without preamble, because he'd never found any other way to begin this annual farce. Every year it grew more difficult to talk through a tightening throat. "I haven't time to waste."

The firm of Dodson, Dodson and
Greel
, attorneys at law, had been sitting like undertakers around the conference table, and now they scrambled to their feet, all chattering at the same time.

"Well … sir … my lord Rushford—" The youngest of the men struggled to right his chair, his fingers creasing an already folded sheaf of stiff documents.

"Speak up, boy!" Jack stood fast at the end of the table, looking down its cold expanse of mirror-glossed mahogany. "You've had another year, Dodson. Have you added anything at all to my very thick but very empty file?"

"No!" the young man said, casting a pleading glance at the elder Dodson. "I mean…"

"What my son means is nothing explicit." Dodson punctuated his findings with a bow. "I'm sorry."

Sorry
. That answer still slashed as deeply through Jack's defenses as ever, made his throat close over and disabled his fury. He turned away to the windows and the green woods beyond the garden, where Mairey Faelyn was settling her brightness into the lodge.

"Detail your report, if you please," Jack said, hearing the shuffle of papers and the whispering as though they were close-kept secrets. A scheme to keep him from his family, to expose his shame.

"Um, sir. We … our operative, that is, he…" It was Dodson's son again, and more whispering.

"Your operative did what?" Jack turned, his anger patched over thickly enough to shield his heart from the blows that would come.

"Our operative searched the usual sources, sir, focusing this time on the parish records in
Cornwall
and
Devonshire
."

"You've searched both counties three times before."

Greel
wagged a patronizing finger. "But not for years—"

"
Seven
years ago,
Greel
. I have the report in my own file, compiled by a Mr. Wilfred Rainey." He'd memorized every item, sorted and analyzed, hoping Dodson had overlooked some fact or an idiosyncrasy that only Jack himself would notice. Nothing. "Why do you waste my time looking in places you've already examined?"

Greel
lowered his finger. "Mr. Rainey no longer works for Dodson, Dodson, and
Greel
. We thought that our new operative—"

"Tell me, Dodson, why I shouldn't fire your firm and find another."

Dodson bristled and blinked. "We are the very best at these issues, sir. We've found many a lost relative, united heirs with fortunes—"

"But what have you done for
me?
" Jack's righteous anger made him feel whole and in control, made him feel as though his mother and sisters were waiting for him at
Southampton
or at the shore in
Brighton
, eating frosted cakes, their hands and faces scrubbed clean of coal dust. He need only take the right train.

"The 1842
Devonshire
assize, my lord,"
Greel
said quickly, sliding another page out of the report and across the table toward Jack. "As you can see there, a woman named Claire
Radforth
was fined three shillings for stealing eggs from her employer."

Jack picked up the paper, tasting venom on his tongue. "And I see that the same woman served three months in the Female Penitentiary in
Exeter
. What has this creature to do with my mother?"

Greel's
face paled to match his ginger frizzled hair. "Well—we just thought—"

"My mother's name is Claire
Rushford
, not
Radforth
."

"Yes, of course, sir. But mistakes are often made when the illiterate speak their names to a court official. Rushford quite easily becomes
Radforth
if one—"

"Claire
Rushford
, Mr.
Greel
." Jack came slowly around the table, grateful that the man was backing well out of his
reach,
else he might take him by the throat and squeeze too hard. "My mother was a collier's wife, not a street-corner slattern. She taught
me
and all my sisters to read and to write. She damn well knew how to spell her own name."

"Yes, yes, of course she did, my lord. However—"
Greel
sat down hard, and Jack followed after him.

"Nor was my mother a thief. You are looking once again in the wrong place."

"There is the graveyard accounting, my lord,"
Greel
said, shuffling wildly through his papers, thrusting one between Jack and himself. "Here."

The graveyard accounting. The page crumpled against Jack's chest.

The writing was a blur, as it always was at first. That startling fear of finding a name that was too dear, and with it a spiraling pool of emptiness. His hand shook as he went to the window with the report, where the light was better and the air was sweetened by the wisteria.

"You'll see,
sir, that
our operative has singled out a number of possibilities." Jack could hear the fear and hesitance in
Greel's
voice; relished it because it matched his own. "Odd spellings and such, as I said. Collected in potters' graveyards only because they were connected with the appropriate dates and locations. The unclaimed body of a woman your mother's age."

A body. Jack grasped again for his anger and found plenty of the sort bound up in helplessness.

It would do; it was heavy enough to weight him to the spot.

"What else have you got to show me, Dodson? I have three sisters: Emma,
Clady
, and
Banon
."

"We know their names, sir."

"They would be twenty-eight, twenty-six, and twenty-one, respectively."

"We know their ages."

"Then why haven't you found them? I pay your firm thousands of pounds annually, have done so for nearly two decades—long enough for your father to die, Dodson, and your own son here to have grown out of knee breeches and take his bloody place as a partner—and in all that time you have yet to turn up anything of consequence. Not a single word. My family did not vanish from the earth!"

"It isn't easy, my lord," young Dodson said from behind his chair. "Perhaps if you could give us a bit more information."

"There must be a very hot place in hell for lawyers, Dodson. I've told you everything I know."

"Yes, yes. Without a doubt, sir," the younger man stammered, though Jack had spoken his curse to the senior partner. "Perhaps if you'd repeat it again. I'll check our notes."

"Do that. Check your damn notes. I last saw my mother the night my father died. I was on the deck of a smuggling ship that was sailing out of a dark cove off the coast of
Furness
." Sightless darkness, the sting of salt in his nostrils. A fatherless son. The sea had smelled of desolation and betrayal and untimely farewell ever since. "It was the twentieth day of June, 1840."

Young Dodson's nose was buried in the file. "Yes, my lord, as it says here. When again did you last see your sisters?"

Jack swallowed the clod in his throat, tossed the report onto the table, and looked to the enormous map on his wall, the breadth of his domain. Lead, tin, copper. And for what purpose?

"I saw them that morning at breakfast, before they crawled back into the mines for another twelve-hour day of dragging coal sledges to the surface. That was the last I saw of them." But their faces still gleamed each night in his dreams, haloed in golden curls.

Young Dodson was still searching his notes. "That was a full two years before Parliament enacted the law prohibiting girls and women from entering the mines. Perhaps your sisters met their ends in an accident. If that were so… I mean…"

The young man inhaled sharply and raised his eyes, wary, obviously waiting for Jack to strike out. But Jack had never allowed himself to think of a cave-in or a fall, or the skull-cracking swing of an iron donkey.

Was it time to begin thinking that way?

Had his family's silence been so immutably real all along? Had he been alone from the beginning? He cleared his throat and steadied his hands on the back of his chair, wondering if he would ever be ready to hear that kind of truth.

"I suggest, Mr. Dodson, that if
your
operative hasn't thought to research mining accidents in northern
Lancashire
between
twenty June, 1840
and the autumn of '42, perhaps he
should
."

A spark lit the young man's eyes. "Yes, my lord, immediately. I shall oversee the project myself."

Jack should have been grateful for young Dodson's enthusiasm, and for this new direction, but there would be harrowing pain in such success. A molten hotness pricked the backs of his eyes.

"That will do, gentlemen." Jack walked away from the stinging heat and found his anger again. "Leave your report on the table, Dodson."

"My lord, we've not finished explaining—"

"One more season, Dodson," Jack said, holding open the door to the breezy foyer. "That's all I'm giving you. Then I shall terminate our association."

"But, sir, we—"

"Good evening." Jack waited while the men clucked and eyed each other gravely as they gathered their ruffled dignities and left.

Jack listened to Sumner's balmy tones as the man let the Messrs. Dodson and
Greel
out into the twilight, and he wondered if he could ever act upon such a threat. Terminating his relationship with Dodson's firm would be admitting that hope was lost, that he had abandoned his pledge to his father. A trust betrayed. He wasn't ready for the shame of it; would never be.

More than that, he wasn't ready to be alone in the world with no other blood of his heart but his. He battled every night to keep the memories from fading to fog, turning them into dreams where his parent's small cottage was larger and brighter and warmer than it had ever been. Where his father told stories of his soldiering, and his mother combed the tangle of twig and bramble out of
Banon's
hair. Where Emma read the month-old
Times
aloud and
Clady
wrapped Jack around her finger, and his heart around hers.

Jack bit the inside of his cheek and tucked away his grief. He couldn't risk losing them. Not yet. He would give Dodson a year, perhaps longer. After all, the man's son seemed to have taken a real interest in the case. New blood. Yes, that's what was needed.

Just as he needed to give Mairey Faelyn free rein to find the
Willowmoon
Knot. If its design truly was a cryptic map to a vein of silver hidden in some forgotten part of
Britain
, he would find it as surely as he had found the glitter of silver in her eyes.

Granted, the woman was ill prepared to conduct a prudent investigation. Her library had resembled a squirrel's nest and had had just as much security.

She would need a key to the
Drakestone
library. Jack unlocked his desk drawer and fished out the extra key. He kept his own deep in his pocket, but for some reason he would never understand
,
women rarely had such conveniences stitched into their garments.