The Wedding Night (8 page)

She looked up and into Rushford's stark curiosity.

"What's that you've written?" He came toward her, his gaze as warm as ladled honey on the place she'd just stuffed the note.

Mairey covered her bodice and the gathering heat with her hand. "I wrote down your
Nekha
lights for my folk studies."

"Show me." He seemed immovable.

Mairey plucked the note from her bodice and unrolled it for him to read. "As I told you—it's what I do when I'm not hunting treasure."

He took the note, read it twice, looked on the back,
then
drew the piece beneath his nose as though he were tasting her scent. "Most glad to be of service to your science, Miss Faelyn."

"Thank you." Mairey took the note back, her ears surely flaming. But instead of replacing the paper in her bodice—a habit she'd have to break immediately—she stuffed it willy-nilly into the nearest
notebox
.

When she turned back to her unpacking Rushford was leaning an elbow on a crate, chewing on a smile, all the drawers in place and Mairey feeling rifled from bodice to stockings.

"Now, my dear, why don't you enlighten me about the
Willowmoon
. Tell me all you know."

No
, she thought, her heart thundering high in her chest. "Well—" She would inundate the man with historical
accuracies,
bore him senseless with an austere lecture. "The item of antiquity known as the
Willowmoon
Knot was first recorded in a pamphlet published in 1589 by the Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries."

"Published?" Rushford came toward her with quiet intensity, planting his hands on the partner's desk. "Do you mean to tell me that those
dustwitted
scholars published a map to this pot of silver we're after? For all to see?"

"You needn't worry on that count, Rushford." Mairey stood fast against his bottled anger, relieved that he was standing safely on the other side of the desk, praying that he would stay there while she gathered her thoughts. "My fellow antiquaries in
Elizabeth
's time knew nothing of the silver, knew nothing of the clue that the knot-work might reveal. As students of ancient history, they were interested only in the
Willowmoon's
Celtic design."

"You're certain of this?"

"Positive." She couldn't very well tell him the full truth: that only one man had known of the silver in the glade at the time—Joshua Faelyn, the first of her family who had tried through the years to rescue the Knot. Unfortunately, Joshua hadn't recognized the significance of the odd knot-work until it was too late to rescue it from the wrath of the king.

Rushford looked unconvinced, but he cleared a spot on the desk and sat down on the edge, closer now and leaning toward her. "Continue."

Which wasn't as simple as it had been when he was across the room, when she could better ignore his eyes and their constant seeking.
She reached into a crate and pulled out an armload of note cases, which she began to sort on the shelf behind her desk.

"It was next seen, or rather next described, among an inventory of other antiquities that were confiscated in 1614 by James the First."

"There, you see, madam! The king knew something of its worth! He wanted the silver!"

"No, Rushford. King James knew nothing of the silver in the—" Dear God, she'd almost said "in the glade"! She steadied her thoughts. "In the time of his reign."

"If not for the silver, then what would a king want with a piece of ancient metalwork?"

Mairey's
heart was still clinging to her ribs, but Rushford hadn't seemed to notice her near slip. She turned from him and added another
notebox
to the row on the shelf.

"The king took 'a little
mislike
,' as they termed it at the time, to the Society of Antiquaries, suspecting that it was a political organization conspiring with others to do mischief to his reign." She turned from the shelves to fetch more boxes, but Rushford was there beside her, his arms loaded to his chin.

"There's a fool for you," he said, setting the boxes on the desk, "to see a threat in a society of scholars."

Let him spout his prejudices; let him believe that she was as ineffectual as her predecessors.

"Exactly, my lord." Mairey slid the boxes one by one next to the others. She'd sort them later; build her walls against him while he wasn't looking. "The king ignored the priceless stone
axheads
and bits of bone, but like any right-thinking pirate, he took the gold and silver into his personal treasury."

"And then?" Impatient, the man began to pry open the lid of crate after crate, as though he smelled treasure nearby. She watched him carefully.

"The Knot next appeared in a royal inventory following the king's death in 1625. It was recorded once again in 1642, when Charles the First went to war against Parliament. It was listed among the treasury items that left
Windsor
coffered and disguised in various carts, accompanied by a caravan of Cavaliers."

"On its way to where?"

"To Charles's queen, Henrietta, who had already sailed to
Holland
and was awaiting payment for arms. When the caravan arrived at the
Aylmouth
quay in Northumberland, one cart had disappeared.

Stolen, or waylaid—history has been absolutely silent on the subject."

"And then?"

Mairey sighed sharply, reminded of why she had agreed to his blackmail. "That, Rushford, is exactly the question we need to answer before we can take another step."

"What do you mean, madam?" He stopped his noisy work and stared at her.

"I mean, that's the last we know of the
Willowmoon
Knot."

"The last?" He dropped the pry bar on the crate lid, looking more a pirate scorned than a mining baron. "Hell and damn! Then how the devil do you know that the Knot still exists?"

"I don't."

"You—"

"I made that perfectly clear to you from the first, my lord."

"Bleeding hell!"

It did Mairey a world of good to watch him rake his fingers through his hair, watch it curl and then fall back into place, a little awry. The poor man was exasperated. Good.
Excellent
. Now he'd be better inclined to listen to anything she wanted to tell him, grab on to it with both hands, and call it truth.

Which was exactly what she'd been telling him: the bare, untraceable truth, but fully in her control.

"So, madam, this trail of silver goes stone cold way back in 1642?"

"Not entirely cold, my lord." His ears pricked, this wily dragon, and his gaze fixed on her as she braved the open crate nearest to him. "Many of the items which were cataloged in that wayward cart have reappeared over the years, returned to their rightful place in the royal treasury, or mentioned in probate inventories. So the
Willowmoon
Knot is out there somewhere."

"What does this knot thing look like? Was there a woodcut made or an engraving?"

"Not even a sketch." Here she would have to tread more lightly. "Only a vague description of the moon's cycle and a knot-work of Celtic tracings." Mountains and a serpentine river, a chevron of geese pointed northward, an arrow
nocked
and aimed directly at the heart of her village. "Meaningless to the modern age."

His eyes were on her, as though he'd discovered some truth of his own that he didn't plan to share. "To anyone but a scholar of Celts."

"Hopefully."

"So where do you begin, Miss Faelyn?" He leaned close to her, peering into her eyes. "Which door do you wish me to open first?"

Impossible man—improbable wizard. But oh, the vistas she could see from here!

"Tell me what great sources are available to me, Rushford, and I'll best know where to begin."

"The
Gofarian
, of course." He nodded to the cloth-wrapped treasure on the worktable.

"I'll start it in the morning."

"And then report to me."

"That is the charter between us, Rushford." But she expected to learn nothing from the miraculous manuscript beyond a hint at the
Willowmoon's
history. Dear stuff, and heart-singing, but not helpful because it had been written too early, and she already knew it all. "What else can you show me?"

Rushford nodded, unlocked his desk drawer, and pulled out a folder. "Beginning with the most obvious, the Royal Archives at Windsor; the Chapter House at Westminster Palace; the Court of King's Bench at the Lord Chancellor's Office. And, of course, the Public Records Office, which has begun moving a few documents from the
Wakefield
Tower
. Deputy-Lieutenant de
Ros
and the Keeper of the Records have been notified that I may drop in."

Ah, yes. His commission from the queen. Her father had been a mere scholar, not a mining baron with a title that was probably as old as God's and pockets as deep as the seas. No wonder he'd gotten nowhere.

"What else have you in your arsenal, Lord Rushford?"

He looked up from his page of miracles, dreams of silver plunder alive in his dark eyes. "Far too many to list, and I am no judge of their significance. Of all the resources of the Empire, which would you pursue first? What would be your fondest wish?"

To be done with this business, she thought fiercely; to be free of the burden of the
Willowmoon
. It had become unbearably heavy in the last days, and more than a little confusing.

"I would like to see the personal papers of Henrietta, Charles's queen."

"Why?"

His directness always startled her, made her stop short and weigh every word before she spoke it. "The queen's personal guards would have supervised the shipment of her treasury under her express instructions."

"Of course. Done. I'll look into the matter in the morning."

Just like that. The
Faelyns
had spent two hundred years knocking on locked doors, and Rushford was able to open them with a wave of his hand.

"What the devil is this?" Rushford was staring into a wicker basket he'd pulled from a crate, his nose wrinkled. "Another of your mummified squirrels? Gad, woman, it reeks!"

He stuck the basket and its fusty ripeness under her nose. The offending item was green and withered, and Mairey couldn't help her laughter.

"It's a meat pie, my lord. Your cloven-hoofed pixies packed up the lunch I threw away three weeks ago and shipped it here to
Drakestone
House."

He looked so thoroughly disgusted that Mairey took the basket from him and set it outside the library door.

They worked well into the small hours, stopping only to eat from the tray Sumner had set on Rushford's desk. Like a boy at Christmastide, the blackguard opened every crate himself. Mairey had to run to keep up with him, nearly throwing the books into the shelves so that she could be back in time to keep him from reading too deeply.

He seemed to be everywhere at once, and always with her; steadying her on the wobbling footstool, chiding her for risking her neck, and then bearing the task himself.

Her father was there too, in everything she touched. His hand, his script, his philosophies. The
Willowmoon
and all it meant to him. His body was buried in the churchyard in her village, on the breast of the hill beside her mother. But he was also here in the library, in her heart, and so very much alive.

His field notes rang with his voice, and she couldn't help but turn the pages, remembering their travels through the countryside.

Finally, in the deepest part of the night, when the shadows clung heaviest to the vaulting mahogany,
Mairey's
yawns became noisy. She flopped in the chair at his desk, bone tired but unwilling to leave Rushford alone in the library with all of her research unguarded, and prepared to stay till dawn two days hence if the man was so inclined.

"To bed with you, Miss Faelyn." He was studying her from the hearth, his eyes as old as the earth.

"No, thank you, my lord. Not without you."

Dear God!
The string of words had made perfect sense inside her head, but now that she'd launched them into that crackling space between her and Rushford, all she could do was ride out the flush that scorched her from her toes to the ends of her hair.

"A tempting invitation, Miss Faelyn," he said softly, moving toward her, his face planed in the flame of his desk lamp. Then he leaned across her shoulder, tipping her backward, and turned down the wick. "But ill-advised, considering—"

"Considering,
sir, that
I misspoke." She scooted the chair out from under him, stopping abruptly when the wheels caught on the carpet fringe. "I meant to say I would stay here in the library and work as long as you were staying. That's what I meant."

"I believe you, Miss Faelyn," he said calmly, letting another lamp gutter out, leaving the library dark but for the gas-lit sconce by the door. "And I applaud your diligence. But the day has been long and we both need sleep. We'll finish this tomorrow. Come, I'll walk with you to the lodge."