She knew the moment Nicholas entered the gallery. He walked with lazy grace, but she saw the tension in him. They stood only three feet apart," but in truth, there was a chasm between them.
"He was quite a man, was Captain Jared," he said, looking up at the portrait.
She eyed him a moment, then said, "You said you simply knew who I was, simply knew I was the child you'd lived with nearly all your life in your dream. Come, Nicholas, how did you recognize me? I was a woman, not the child you dreamed about."
"I told you the truth. I simply knew. I realize it must sound impossible to you, but I knew you would be at that ball, knew it all the way to the deepest part of me, and I knew you the moment I saw you. Does that mean nothing to you, Rosalind ? Can't you see? We were meant to know each other, meant to be together."
She crossed her arms over her chest, tapped her toes. "Listen to me, Nicholas. Despite all that's happening here, despite all the questions, the mystery, it is still my life. Mine. And you married me under false pretenses."
Yes, true enough, damn me for an idiot . He reached out his hand to her, dropped it when she didn't respond. "Rosalind , I did what I had to do. Whatever this debt is, I know to my bones that both of us, together, must figure it out. We must figure it out because I know I am meant to save you."
"Ah, so now you believe the debt is to save my life? Uncle Ryder saved me first and now it is your turn?"
"No, I'm not certain that is the debt, but it seems certain to be a part of it."
She said nothing for a very long time, merely stared at him, through him really, and he had no idea what she was seeing, thinking. She said at last, "That first night I sneaked a look over my shoulder at you even while Grayson was leading me to the dance floor. I will be honest here, Nicholas. You fascinated me from the first moment I saw you. You looked so mysterious, so dangerous." She stared back up at Captain Jared. "You made me feel things I didn't know existed. You made my insides want to shout with joy. I felt drawn to you. In some deep part of me, I knew you were meant for me. I was very glad when Uncle Ryder told me you were coming to visit that next morning. And you came and I knew I wanted you, desperately." She paused a moment, thoughtful. "And now you will say that I too recognized you, recognized you as what—my knight? My husband? What?"
He said, without looking at his wife, "I've been wondering why you can't read the final pages of the Rules of the Pale."
"All right, so you are not ready to deal with my questions. Aunt Sophie says that a man, if he is smart, can distract with great skill, he can avoid facing something that makes him uncomfortable. Perhaps you would like to deal with this question: If Grayson hadn't been led to the Rules of the Pale, by whomever or whatever, if we didn't know about Sarimund and his damnable rules at all, there would have been nothing to focus on, nothing to draw us into this mystery. What would you have done? Would you simply have hung around me, hoping something evil would try to do away with me and you would slay it?"
"I don't know. I didn't think of it, truth be told. Everything has happened so very quickly. I only knew that finally, in this span of almost three hundred years, it was I, Nicholas Vail, not Captain Jared or any of the other following firstborn Vail sons, who was finally in the right place at the right time. And there you were, in the middle of it. Waiting for me."
"I wasn't waiting for anyone or anything except my memory to return. I didn't know there was anyone for me or anything to wait for. No, that's not true—the song was always there, waiting to be understood, I suppose you could say."
"Yes, it is. Even without the Rules of the Pale, the song is a focus. And where would you say it comes from, Rosalind ?"
"I suppose I would say it's always been printed in my mind and on my soul. Even losing my memory made no difference to the song."
"Just as my knowing you, recognizing you, was deep inside my mind, always there."
"But Nicholas, you must see that I don't know anything else. I sing the song, but I don't know what it means, didn't re-ally care, not after so many years. Without your coming, there would never have been a mystery, no debt I knew of, that my adopted family knew of. In the long view of things, what does a simple song have to do with anything at all?"
"Richard tried to take you."
"Yes, he did, and that is quite interesting. I wonder why he did. To keep us from getting married? So that I wouldn't bear you an heir? So that he could kill you at his leisure and then take the title and estate? We'd only just met, Nicholas. Why would Richard act so speedily on something that probably wouldn't even come to pass?"
"I don't know Richard, I don't understand him. Was that his motive? It sounds logical, given that he's a very angry man, mayhap a very bad man, albeit too young a man to be so accomplished at sin already."
"You indeed look like brothers, nearly twins, save you do look a bit older. He is only twenty-one, so very young to be thinking of murdering his brother, or murdering me."
"You've seen what a rotter Lancelot is. Can you imagine what he will be like when he is thirty? If he lives that long. As for Aubrey, who can say? At our wedding breakfast, he was certainly interesting and clever for one so young."
Rosalind said, "I agree you are not blessed in your remaining relatives. Do you think perhaps Richard wanted me for himself—for some reason we don't yet know? Or perhaps he saw me and he is the one who fell head over heels in love? The infamous coup de foudre? He had to have me or die trying?"
"Now that's a mawkish thought." Nicholas took a step toward her. Rosalind looked him squarely in the eye, then down at his outstretched hand.
"Don't," she said.
He drew a deep breath, but didn't back away. He dropped his hand to his side. She saw a flash of anger in his eyes, but he said only, "The fact is, you are very important to someone. The people who tried to murder the child, are they still about? Would they recognize you like I did? And Rennat the Titled Wizard of the East—who is he to you? What is he? A long-ago ancestor? Or perhaps simply a beneficent being assigned to look after you? If so, he didn't do a very good job of it when you were eight years old. Who are your parents? Are they still alive? Where are they?"
"You know I have no answers to these questions. You also know when I finally spoke, I spoke fluent English and Italian. Which am I?"
"I told you I would send off inquiries and so I shall."
"Just what would you inquire about?"
"That's easy enough—any renowned wealthy family who mysteriously lost a child ten years ago. No, don't doubt that. How else could you speak two languages fluently? Your English is obviously a lady's English; your Italian, I am certain, is the same. Well, let's see." He spoke Italian to her, not an educated, aristocratic Italian, since he'd learned it from an Italian mistress from Naples, but he did indeed know educated Italian when he heard it. In the next moment, she answered his question about her favorite hobbies in smooth upper-class Italian.
Nicholas nodded. "Ryder told me your clothes were well-made, though ripped to rags. And there is your gold locket. Someone will recognize it." He said it with absolute conviction. "Now, after you left me alone with the old earl's ghost, I finished reading Captain Jared's journals. I told him his assistance was worth spit, that he hadn't written a single helpful thing. He didn't even tilt the chair."
"Perhaps he is embarrassed."
"I'm thinking he simply doesn't know himself since he never found the little girl to whom he owed his debt."
She said, "For me, it always comes back to why would anyone wish to murder a child?"
"Don't forget that whoever it was, he didn't get the job done. He failed. Now that is something to consider, isn't it?"
Now that she thought of it, she realized he was right. "Surely it wouldn't be all that difficult to kill a child. It's not as if the child could defend herself."
"And why on the docks in Eastbourne? Say you are Italian, then why were you here in England? Were you with your parents? Were you kidnapped fro
m them here? No, that can't be right. Your parents would have raised a mighty hue and cry and Ryder Sherbrooke would have heard about it. No, you were likely taken from Italy. By whom? And why would he or she or whoever want to murder you here? In Eastbourne?"
"For that matter, why not simply toss me over the side of the ship in the English Channel?"
He sent his fist into the wall right beside Captain Jared's portrait, making its heavy gilt frame tilt. When he faced her, he looked dangerous, his eyes dark, opaque, vicious, she thought, his mouth cruel. "Bloody hell, don't be angry at me, Rosalind . I did what I had to do."
She sighed. "I know."
He felt a surge of relief, felt the rage fade a bit. "You do?"
"Of course. Tell me, Nicholas, when all this is resolved, will you journey back to Macau? Are the laws different enough there to enable you to have a wife in England and one in this Portuguese colony?"
He froze. He looked primed for violence, his face now even harder, colder. He said very precisely, "You are my bloody wife. You will remain my bloody wife until the day we die."
"No," she said, her face still, "I am your debt."
She heard him cursing as she walked away from him down the long gallery, vicious curses. She didn't recognize many of the animal parts he used so fluently. She did understand the occasional reference to a woman whose ears he wanted to box.
When Nicholas walked into the master bedchamber late that night, Rosalind wasn't where he'd believed she would be— namely, in bed. He didn't expect her to want to make love to him, but he'd believed she'd be there, possibly pretending sleep, he didn't know, but she'd be there. Perhaps because she feared a ghost's machinations, and his company was better than none at all.
At dinner, she'd spoken calmly, detailing plans she'd made with Peter and Mrs. McGiver for improvements within the house and work on the grounds. She'd played the piano, and he leaned his head back, closing his eyes to listen. And when she'd added her voice to the songs, he'd sighed with pleasure. When she crashed down on the final chords of a Beethoven sonata, they both looked up to hear applause coming from the corridor outside the drawing room. Peter Pritchard stuck his head in, smiling, pointing to the audience of servants.
She'd played a song for Mrs. McGiver to sing, and that had been very fine indeed. Then all the servants had been encouraged to sing, and they'd had an impromptu musicale. It had been, he thought, quite nice.
Where the devil are you, Rosalind ?
Yes, she'd been calm whenever she'd spoken to him or looked at him. Nicholas realized finally, after following her up to bed, that he'd thought of more questions, and decided that once they made their way to the cursed center of this maze, he never again wanted to hear another question in his natural life. Ah, but if there was magic in him, maybe nothing in his life would be natural. If he'd had magic in him from as far back as Captain Jared, then why had he been forced to eat roots in Portugal when he'd been a starving twelve-year-old?
As he paced the large bedchamber, he remembered that storm in the Pacific, near the Sea of Japan, when one of his sailors had nearly been swept overboard and Nicholas, through sheer luck—or something else—had managed to loop a rope around the mart's flailing hand, surely an unlikely feat, and haul him upright. The first thing the sailor had done was cross himself a good six times, others of his men as well, and none of them had ever looked at him again in quite the same way. On a very deep level, they'd feared him.
The candlelight flickered.
"Go away," he said.
The light calmed. That ancient old sea dog was ready and willing to keep him company, but not his wife.
He went to the adjoining room door and turned the knob. It was locked. She'd locked a door against him.
He knocked on the door. "Rosalind, let me in. I wish to speak to you."
Nothing.
"Dammit, I'm your husband. You will obey me. You will open this damned door now."
"I know well who you are, my lord. I, however, have nothing more to say to you. Go away. Good night."
His booted foot itched to break down the door. Instead, he walked quickly to the main door off the hallway. It was locked too. He felt like a fool. He stood against the opposite wail, his arms crossed over his chest, staring at the locked door, and finally managed to calm himself. Let her stew. Let her get cold during the night without him to warm her. Let her be frightened of all the unknowns all by herself. Curse her.
When he finally fell asleep, alone and naked in that big bed, a heavy dose of fatalism settling into him, he realized what he wanted was to make her angry enough to try to murder him. He yearned for violence, violence he could handle, anything but her polite disinterest.
He thought he heard an ancient old voice humming and resolutely ignored it.
At exactly three in the morning, Nicholas sat straight up in bed at a deafening roar. Windows shuddered, the room rocked. Thunder, he thought, heart racing, it was only thunder. It was odd, though, because it hadn't looked to storm when he'd finally fallen into his bed. Another clap of thunder shook his had. Suddenly, a jagged sword of lightning struck directly into his bedchamber and he was bathed in light. Only thing was, the light didn't fade. It was as if a dazzling sun was trapped in his bedchamber. This isn't right, isn't right at all.
He looked toward the windows as he jumped out of bed. And waited, standing by his bed, but there were no more slashes of lightning, no more thunder to rattle the windows and shake the room, but still, the huge bedchamber remained pure white. And he thought, No, this is whiter than sunlight. This is something else entirely, only he didn't have a clue what was happening. The Pale, he thought, this is a message from Rennat.
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He remained standing beside his bed, breathing hard, wondering what the devil was going on, trying not to let his imagination run wild and his heart slam out of his chest. Or perhaps—he said, "Are you here, Captain Jared? If this is one of your bizarre performances, stop it at once, do you hear me?"
No sound, nothing at all, just the empty stark white. Dead white, he thought, as dead white as the face of a bandit he'd killed outside of Macau the previous year.
He heard Rosalind scream.
He ran to the adjoining door, kicked his foot into the wood close to the lock, but the door didn't give. He cursed, then rubbed his injured foot. Not broken, thank God. He pounded the door. "Rosalind ! Open the damned door!"
Suddenly, the door swung wide open and he was nearly blinded. The countess's bedchamber looked even whiter than his own vast room, the white light nearly blinding. He could see every corner of the room, every detail of the furnishings and draperies. Even the light layer of dust on the vanity table glittered the same dead white, as if encased in ice.
Rosalind stood beside her bed, a white nightgown covering her from neck to toe, her vivid red hair now as white as the room, tangling over her shoulders and down her back. Her face looked dead. He knew his face must look the same, and wasn't that an image to turn his innards to water?
"Rosalind? Are you all right?"
She didn't move, said nothing. She seemed unaware of him, seemed not to even hear him, much less see him.
He stopped cold when he neared her and saw she held a knife. It was dripping blood. Only, the blood drops were white.
She's been hurt, she's been—
He looked closely at her white face, at her hair still white as an old woman's. Why didn't the white fade away? Unless it wasn't natural. His wife holding a dripping knife in her hand was far from natural as well.
He looked down at the knife, saw the steady drip, drip, drip of white blood onto the carpet beneath her bare feet. Where was all the blood coming from?
He watched a white blood droplet splash on her left foot. White on white. It was obscene.
He didn't touch her, merely held out his hand. "It's all right, sweetheart, I'm here. It will be all right. Give me the knife."
She didn't look at him, didn't respond at all. Finally, she st
retched out her hand to him. He gently uncurled her fingers from around the knife handle.
He realized soon enough that he'd seen the knife in the library beneath glass in a small case on one of the bookshelves, locked to the young boy who'd once tried to open it. Had it belonged to his grandfather, or had it gone all the way back to Captain Jared Vail? He didn't know. The knife looked vaguely Moorish, the blade curved like a scimitar, gems embedded in the ivory handle. He didn't remember what sorts of gems they were and couldn't tell now because they were utterly without color.
He raised his voice. "If it isn't you, Captain Jared, is it Rennat? I don't care who is causing this—stop it now. I am tired of this trick, do you hear me? Stop it now!"
To his relief, and, he admitted, to his surprise, the room went slowly dark, fading finally into the simple dark of night. He turned toward the window to see rain streaking down the windowpane. He realized there'd been no more thunder, if indeed thunder it had been. As for the strange lightning, no, lightning wasn't the word for it either.
He carefully laid the knife on the night table beside the had. It no longer dripped white blood, no surprise, since whoever, whatever, had stopped the magic.
He clasped Rosalind's shoulders in his big hands and lightly shook her. "Rosalind, come back. Everything's over now."
Slowly, she raised her head to look up at him. Her eyes, once dilated, were normal now, and blue once again, her hair vivid red, her face no longer the dead white, but still too pale. "Sweetheart," he whispered against her temple, "it will be all right. I'm here with you now. I can protect you, well, perhaps not completely. I nearly broke my foot trying to break down your door." He pulled her tightly against him, pressed his palm against her head until she rested on his shoulder.
Her breathing was slow. She said facing his neck, "I'm sorry about your foot."
He rocked her where they stood, kissed her hair, began to smooth out the tangles. "Can you tell me what happened?"
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