Her Scandalous Pursuit
Page 37
“No!” Carson screamed and ran toward the water.
“You bloody idiot.” Desmond smashed his fist into Carson’s jaw, and Carson went down. Still, he scrambled to rise. “Stop! Would you stop? It’s gone.”
“No, it’s not.” Thisbe’s voice behind them was so shredded it was hardly recognizable.
Desmond whirled around. Thisbe was the color of death and shaking, but she had risen to her knees behind him. She drew the Eye from the pocket of her sodden skirt and held it aloft. “I have it.”
She set the Eye on a rock beside her. Scooping up a smaller rock, she smashed it down on the Eye. Light flashed, and the very earth seemed to tremble beneath their feet. Carson let out a strangled cry, and the wild light in his eyes died.
Thisbe crumpled to the ground.
* * *
SHE WAS UNIMAGINABLY COLD. Thisbe looked around for Anne Ballew. She had just seen her a few moments ago, standing in the darkness, soft sparks of light cascading over her. For the first time, Thisbe saw Anne smile. But she was gone now. There was nothing but blackness and the cold that soaked clear through to Thisbe’s bones.
But, no, there was a voice. Thisbe knew that voice; she’d heard it before in the darkness, pulling at her. Now she was wrapped in warmth, blessed heat seeping into her. “Thisbe, love, come back,” the voice kept saying, the words a breath across her cheek, a rumble against her back.
It was clear, she thought with some annoyance, that he was not going to let her rest...
* * *
THISBE OPENED HER heavy eyes. Desmond cradled her tightly, his arms encircling her and his leg thrown over hers. A mountain of blankets weighed them down. “Desmond?”
“Thank God.” Desmond’s voice trembled almost as much as she did. “I thought you were gone. I thought it had broken you.” He squeezed her even more tightly to him, and repeated, “Thank God.”
His voice was hoarse, and he buried his face in her hair. Was he crying? It seemed very strange.
It was difficult to think; her mind seemed to float away. Still, Thisbe knew she should say something in response. “I’m cold.”
He chuckled now, kissing her cheek. “I know, love, I know. You’ll be warm soon.”
The next time she awoke, she was still cold, but it was more normal now, just a feeling of being chilled, as when one had stayed outside too long. She shuddered.
“Thisbe?” Desmond’s arms around her loosened, and he rose up to look down into her face. “How do you feel?”
“Sore.” She realized that the coldness before had concealed the fact that every bone and muscle in her body ached. She coughed. “And my lungs burn.”
“Of course they do. I’m sorry.” He smoothed back her hair from her face, gazing at her in the oddest way, as if he hadn’t seen her in years. “I don’t think anything’s broken, though.” He slipped out of the bed, and she saw that his face was red, his shirt damp with sweat. He must have been unbearably hot under the pile of covers with her. “I’ll run down and get you a cup of soup. I don’t want to ask Willoughby to bring it. He seems to be the only one working here.” He started toward the door, then hesitated. “But everything’s safe—you’ll be fine here.”
Thisbe blinked. “Of course I will.”
She closed her eyes again. It was pleasant here. But who was Willoughby? For that matter, where was she? On the edge of sleep, she let her mind drift, thoughts and memories slowly filtering back in. She was remembering now, but it seemed too great an effort to think.
The sound of Desmond entering the room awakened her, and she shoved herself up to a sitting position, her aching body protesting. She felt as if she’d been beaten—which, she supposed, she had, even though it was a tarn that flattened her.
Desmond hurried to her side and helped her sit up. She took the soup he offered and began to eat as he stuffed pillows behind her back, pulled the covers up around her and generally fussed over her. Then he brought a chair over to her bedside and sat down, watching her as if every bite she took was fascinating.
“Who’s Willoughby?” she asked when her stomach was sated enough she was no longer gulping down the soup.
“The butler here.”
“Oh, yes, now I remember. We’re still at Carson’s house? I would have thought he tossed us out.”
“Carson’s not in much position to be tossing anything,” Desmond replied. “Do you remember what happened?”
She nodded. “I remember almost everything until I went sailing off the tor. After that, it’s a bit of a blur. I don’t remember hitting the lake, but I must have landed in the water instead of on the ground or I’d be in much worse shape.” Thisbe took another sip of the soup, thinking. “Then I remember darkness and cold. I thought I saw Anne Ballew again, but that was probably a dream I had while I was asleep. And then...” She frowned. “I remember light and the ground seemed to move.”
“It did,” he confirmed. “When you destroyed the Eye.”
“Did I? I wish I remembered that. How did I destroy it?”
“Crushed it to bits with a rock. It’s nothing but ground glass now and a twisted scrap of metal, which I melted in the fireplace. There’s a burn mark on the rock where you destroyed it.”
“What happened to Carson? You sounded as if he was ill or...” Thisbe trailed off. Perhaps she had smashed Carson’s mind, as well.
“He’s not sick, though he bloody well should have caught pneumonia, capering about out there in the rain in his shirtsleeves. Willoughby says Carson’s just been sitting, staring into the fire.” He shrugged. “He stopped me in the hallway as I was coming back here.”
“Carson? Are you serious? Why?”
“He wanted to apologize.”
“Well, I would think he should have done that to me,” Thisbe retorted.
Desmond laughed. “I told him that. But I believe he’s too ashamed to face you yet.”
“What did he say?”
“How sorry he was. How he wasn’t himself. How he never meant to hurt you. He seems to feel pretty wretched about the whole thing.” He sighed. “There wasn’t a single wry quip in all he said. I’ve never seen him so...exposed.”
“Do you believe him?” Thisbe asked.
“I think it’s true that he didn’t know what he was doing. He was ‘possessed’ by the Eye somehow. I have been envious of Carson, jealous, suspicious, but I don’t think he’s a bad person deep down. He was a friend to me long before he thought we could lead him to the Eye.”
“So you forgave him?”
Desmond snorted. “I’m not that kindhearted. However accidental it was that he knocked you down, the fact is, he killed you.”
“Yes, well, he tried to stab you, and that wasn’t accidental at all,” Thisbe said with some heat.
“Trust you to be more upset about what he tried to do to me than what he actually did to you.” Desmond smiled and lifted her hand to kiss it. “I told him I couldn’t give him absolution. I think that would have to come from you. Right now, I find it a little hard to care what happens with Carson.”
Thisbe was silent for a moment again, thinking. “Something puzzles me about all this.”
“Only one thing?” Desmond laughed.
“Well, one thing at this particular moment.” She smiled and squeezed his hand. It felt so wonderful, so right, to be with him like this, free of restraints or worry. “Carson was Anne Ballew’s descendant. That’s clear from his having the journal and that knife and all.”
He nodded. “I think that’s safe to assume.”
“Then why were you able to see the vision of me dead?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve been thinking about that and...the thing is, we don’t really know that Anne Ballew had only one child.”
“You’re right.” Thisbe straightened, intrigued. “I should have thought of that. Even if she had only one child,
that child very well may have had more than one and those children had children—there could be a number of people who are Anne’s descendants.” She paused, considering the idea. “Do you think that’s why the Eye couldn’t stop you? Carson certainly thought it should. He looked astonished when you kept coming toward him.”
“Perhaps. Or maybe he didn’t use it properly—or that power was just a myth.”
“But then why didn’t you feel its allure? Why didn’t it ‘call’ you as it did Carson?”
“It did ‘call’ me,” Desmond confessed. “When Wallace showed the bloody thing to me before you arrived, I wanted so badly to take it. All I could think of was how much I could learn, how much knowledge it held. I wanted it so much, it scared me.”
“But you didn’t take it until he forced you.”
“No. It was too seductive, too strong. I wasn’t about to let anything control me like that. That’s why I refused to take it until he threatened you.” He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. “It was far easier to refuse when you were there.”
“Me? Why?”
He shrugged. “I just didn’t feel such a pull. I didn’t feel it when your grandmother showed it to us, either.”
“Really? How odd.”
“I think your power must have been stronger than it.” He smiled at Thisbe.
“Or perhaps it was our love that was more powerful,” Thisbe said.
He leaned in to kiss her, and the conversation was put aside for the moment. When Desmond raised his head, he said, “You should sleep.”
Thisbe shook her head. “I’m fine—I’m feeling stronger by the moment. And I’ve done nothing but sleep for—How long has it been?”
“It’s been a day now.”
“A day!”
He nodded. “I was getting worried... Hell, I was terrified. You didn’t die—or, rather, you did, but you came back to life, but I feared your mind was gone. That you would be nothing but a shell.”
“Stop. Go back. I ‘came back to life’? What does that mean?”
“When I pulled you from the water, you weren’t breathing. But the Swiss discovered a century ago that if you forced your own air into someone’s lungs, sometimes he would begin breathing again on his own.”
“That’s what you did for me?” Thisbe gazed at him, wide-eyed.
He nodded. “I read an article not too long ago about pushing the water out of one’s lungs and he suggested that pushing the air out of your lungs, as well as in, would more closely simulate breathing. I was afraid I’d break your ribs, but I was desperate. Your lips were blue. You looked...”
“The way you saw me through the Eye.”
He nodded.
“Grandmother’s prediction came true, after all. Our love led to my death. What we didn’t know was that your love would be bring me back.”
Desmond leaned forward suddenly, setting aside her cup and taking both her hands in his. “Thisbe, I am such an idiot. Which, of course, probably comes as no surprise to you.” He lifted her hands to kiss them. “I should have trusted you, trusted myself. What I told you the other day, that we aren’t bound by an inflexible destiny, that we can reshape our fate into something better—that is the truth of the matter. It’s what I believe. But I was afraid to believe that you could actually love me.”
“How could I not love you?” Thisbe caressed his face.
“There are many reasons, but I’m not foolish enough to point them out.” Desmond smiled. “It makes no sense, but I wanted a future with you so much that believing I could have it terrified me.”
“I understand.”
“Do you? I’m not sure I do. All I know is that yesterday, when I saw you go off that ledge, all I could think was that I would not let you die. Whatever I had to do, I would. The only thing I couldn’t do was sit back and allow it to happen. Our lives are what we make of them. They’re what we do with what we’re given. I had been given the most precious gift possible in your love, and I’d been too scared, too stupid, too blind, to take it.”
Tears filled Thisbe’s eyes. “Then you’ll marry me?”
Desmond grinned. “I’m the one who’s supposed to ask you.”
“I never do what I’m supposed to,” Thisbe retorted. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she kissed him. When at last she pulled back, she said, “So will you? Marry me?”
“Of course I will.”
“And all those qualms about being thought an adventurer?”
“Why should I care what other people think? All I care about is you,” he told her. “And if that means living in an enormous house with your delightful family, and being waited on by servants, and researching exactly what I want in our own private laboratory...well, those are hardships I shall simply have to bear.”
Thisbe laughed and pushed back the covers, no longer cold at all. After swinging her leg over his, she straddled him and hooked her arms loosely around his neck. “Then perhaps you might show me how glad you are that I didn’t die.”
His mouth softened, his eyes darkening. “Are you sure you feel well enough?”
“Desmond, dearest, I’ll always feel well enough for you.” Thisbe moved in to kiss him, bearing him back down on the bed.
* * *
THEY RETURNED TO London the following day. Unsurprisingly, when they related their story to the family, the dowager duchess rose from her chair like a vengeful goddess. “You destroyed Anne Ballew’s Eye? Really, Thisbe, I sent you to find the thing, not ruin it.” Her gaze swiveled to Desmond. “No doubt that was your idea.”
“No, Grandmother, I am the one who made that decision. I smashed it to bits.” Thisbe ignored her grandmother’s gasp and plowed ahead. “All Desmond did was save my life.”
“Of course, that is the most important thing,” the duchess said, though her tone left some doubt as to her words. “But it does seem to me that one could have achieved both things. It’s an heirloom—our ancestor entrusted it to us. Anne Ballew gave us our gift.”
Thisbe’s eyes flashed. “Anne Ballew wasn’t—”
Seeing the expression on Thisbe’s face, Desmond interrupted, stepping forward. “Anne Ballew wasn’t in favor of saving the Eye. As you know, she appeared to Thisbe in her dreams and specifically told her to destroy it.”
“I’m not at all sure you heard her correctly, Thisbe,” Cornelia said.
Desmond went on in an admiring tone, “You have the ability, ma’am, even without the Eye. You don’t need it. Look at how accurate your prediction was. Thisbe did die because of our love.”
“Of course I was right...despite what all the disbelievers said.” The duchess looked pointedly around the room at the other members of the family.
“You were completely vindicated,” Desmond agreed.
Cornelia preened. “Not that I needed any vindication. I have always known my gift was powerful.”
“The Eye was too powerful for people who don’t share your gift to use. And, as we’ve seen, it can easily fall into the wrong hands. I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s better that they not have the opportunity.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” Thisbe’s grandmother admitted, looking somewhat mollified. She followed the statement with a piercing look. “And now, I suppose, you’ll want to marry my granddaughter.”
“Yes, ma’am, I intend to ask her father for her hand.”
Cornelia heaved a sigh. “You are hardly the suitor I would have picked for my granddaughter, but Thisbe seems peculiarly set on you. And one cannot but be grateful that you kept her from drowning. I grant you my permission,” she said with a regal nod. “Provided, of course, you wait to have the banns read, like decent people, instead of rushing off with a special license.” She sent a withering look at her son and his wife.
Desmond’s interview with Thisbe’s father was a far easier matter. When Desmond asked for his daughter
’s hand, the duke said, “I don’t suppose I have any say in the matter. But it was kind of you to ask.” He leaned forward, his usually vague gaze intent. “The only question I have for you is...do you love her?”
“That’s an easy requirement, sir. I love Thisbe with all my heart. I’ve loved her from the moment I saw her.”
The duke smiled and sat back. “That’s something I’m familiar with.”
* * *
THISBE AND DESMOND were married three weeks later. Surprising everyone, Cornelia went to call on Zachary Wallace. Surprising no one but Desmond, after her visit Mr. Wallace was inspired to bestow an unconditional research grant on Desmond.
When Desmond went to thank Cornelia, the duchess fixed him with her steely gaze, and said, “My daughter-in-law assures me that you object to the notion that Thisbe’s fortune becomes yours the moment you marry her—possibly the only subject on which Emmeline and I agree. But we cannot have you penniless. You must have the wherewithal to buy Thisbe presents and purchase your books or whatnot. This seemed the obvious solution. You can scarcely maintain that you haven’t earned whatever that man pays you. Mr. Wallace, of course, realized the advantages of my not bringing charges against him, and he was happy to agree to that arrangement.” Cornelia’s lips curved up at the memory of another battle won. “And now, one hopes, you will buy yourself some proper attire for the wedding and a ring appropriate to Thisbe’s station.”
Desmond bought the clothes, but the wedding ring he gave Thisbe—and the one she preferred—was the simple gold band his mother had worn.
The wedding took place at Broughton House with scarcely a hitch. The duke was only a few minutes late, and though Desmond forgot his tiepin, that was easily solved by borrowing one from Reed. The twins performed admirably, carrying the rings on their small square pillows without a single jump or skip and not once tossing the pillows or hitting one another with them until after the ceremony. Kyria and Olivia kept Thisbe’s nerves at bay all morning. And the dowager duchess and Great-Aunt Hermione, who had traveled up from Bath for the occasion, had only one small tiff.