by Sandra Heath
“Rowan, after all this, I can’t help accepting that there really is something strange in progress after all, maybe even that the curse is—”
He broke in quickly. “Please don’t say anything more, don’t think anything more, don’t look for anything more!”
His unexpected vehemence took her aback. “Barely an hour ago you were exhorting me to believe!”
“I know, but I don’t always say what I mean, or mean what I say.”
“Rowan, I may usually be practical and always in search of a logical answer to everything, but there isn’t a rational or natural explanation for all this, therefore we have to enter the realms of the irrational and supernatural.”
Suddenly he put his finger gently but firmly to her lips. “I know, Marigold, but can’t you see that I need you to be strong and scornful? That’s why your volte-face feels almost like betrayal to me.”
“Betrayal? Oh, but—”
“In twelve days it will be midsummer, and in the meantime I need you to argue, to pour disdain upon it all, to make me hope the whole business is a nonsense. Please, Marigold.”
His vulnerability in that moment was so affecting that tears sprang to her eyes. She loved him so fiercely that to defend him she would have faced Satan himself. She would certainly confront whatever lay behind this portrait!
Slowly he removed his finger from her lips, and kissed her. Then he smiled into her tear-washed eyes. “Don’t cry, my lady, for the night—and our marriage bed—awaits. Come.” He took her hand and led her from the room.
Chapter Eighteen
Marigold awoke the next morning with Rowan’s arms around her. Outside it was a sunny June morning, and she could hear the peacocks on the lawns. She gazed at the cream velvet bed hangings, and the tasseled golden ropes that tied them back to the dark carved oak posts. They were in her apartment, the one that was always set aside for the lady of the house; Rowan’s apartment was a little further along the passage, and occupied the prime position above the main entrance.
She snuggled closer to him, inhaling his warm masculinity, and putting her lips to the soft hair on his chest. Oh, this was paradise, and how wonderful the night had been, making love with him until the small hours before falling asleep in an embrace. Heaven help her, she loved him to distraction, and at a moment like this she didn’t want to think about anything threatening, but she knew she must, for as he had pointed out, there were only twelve days to midsummer.
She tried to be her usual sensible self, finding a commonplace explanation for it all, but it didn’t work. How could it, when a robin followed her from Anglesey, and a wren spoke? And when so much could be read into a mere painting? She rested her cheek against Rowan’s chest, and closed her eyes. If she accepted that it was really happening, she also had to accept the curse, but for Rowan’s sake, she knew she must hold her tongue. Last night his vulnerability had cut into her heart like the sharpest knife, and if she could spare him any pain at all, she would.
Rowan stirred, and his arms tightened around her. “This is a very pleasing awakening, my lady,” he murmured.
“I find it so too, my lord,” she whispered.
“I still cannot believe that Merlin Arnold was so great a fool as to desert your bed,” he said softly, pulling her on top of him, so her red-gold hair tumbled forward over her shoulders, and her nipples brushed his chest. He put his hand up to run his fingers through her hair.
She felt him hardening and pressing between her legs, and closed her eyes with pleasure. Let these moments never end.... But the moment did end, indeed it was shattered by an urgent knocking at the door. Her eyes flew open with dismay, and Rowan looked irritably toward the sound. “Yes?”
“It’s Beech, my lord. Please forgive the intrusion, but I must speak with you.”
“Can’t it wait?”
“I fear not, sir.”
“Oh, very well, I’ll see you in her ladyship’s dressing room directly.”
“My lord.”
Rowan sighed, and then looked up at her. “The pleasures of the flesh must wait, I fear,” he said, putting his hand to the nape of her neck and pulling her mouth down to his. Then she rolled reluctantly aside as he flung back the bedclothes, and grabbed his dressing gown. She drew the bedclothes warmly around herself, then watched as he went through into the adjoining dressing room, leaving the door ajar. She heard the ensuing conversation.
“What is so important that I must be disturbed, Beech?”
“My lord, I would not presume, but the situation is, er, delicate.”
“Delicate?”
“The landlord of the Royal Oak has come running to report an overturned wagon at the village crossroad, and—”
“Beech, with all due respect, I fail to see how this can be termed delicate.”
“I must relate it all, for you to understand, sir.”
“Oh, very well. What about this wagon?”
“It’s carrying the luggage of a lady who is about to stay with her brother, the new tenant of Romans.”
“So there is a new tenant? I wondered when I saw lights there yesterday.”
“Oh, yes, my lord, the agent arranged it all a week or so ago.”
“Go on.”
“The tenant is expecting a large party of guests, his sister included, and she sent her belongings ahead by this London carrier, a very vulgar and quarrelsome fellow by the name of Starling. Anyway, it seems he missed the sharp turning to Romans, and only realized when he reached the village, so he tried to turn his wagon, but it overturned, and spilled its entire load. Naturally, the villagers hurried to help, but instead of showing gratitude, the fellow leveled a shotgun at them and vowed he’d shoot anyone who so much as came a step closer.”
“Good God.”
“It’s true, my lord. And there he sits now, refusing to let anyone near, and saying that the only persons with authority to say who can and cannot handle the property are the lady herself, who has yet to leave London, or her brother at Romans.”
“Well, I trust someone has had the sense to send word to Romans?”
“Yes, my lord, but the gentleman was out. A message was left, but that was an hour ago. The crossroad is completely blocked, other traffic cannot pass, and tempers are running high. The innkeeper fears someone could be killed, and that you are the only person to whom this lunatic may listen.”
“Who in heaven’s name are these people I have at Romans?”
But butler cleared his throat. “This is the rather delicate point, my lord,” he replied.
“How so?”
Beech’s voice dropped out of Marigold’s hearing. There followed a brief silence, and then Rowan answered. “Very well, I will be ready directly.”
“My lord.”
Beech left the dressing room, and Rowan returned to the foot of the bed. He seemed a little unsettled. “Marigold, I fear I must go out to deal with an incident in the village. After that I have estate matters to attend to, and will breakfast as I can. I should be free by the middle of the afternoon, but trust you will be able to amuse yourself in the meantime?”
“I am well able to amuse myself, my lord,” she replied, wondering greatly about the tenant of Romans and his sister.
“I will send Sally, and give instructions that your breakfast is to be served here. Then you may do as you please, for you are now mistress of this house.” He turned toward the door, then paused to smile back at her. “Be assured that I have not forgotten our unfinished, er, business.”
She smiled back, but when he’d returned to his own apartment to dress, she pondered the overheard conversation. Why had the butler believed the identity of the new tenant was too delicate for the ears of Lady Avenbury? What’s more, why did Rowan apparently think the same?
Sally came as promised with a breakfast tray of scrambled eggs, toast, and tea, and while Marigold ate in bed, the maid laid out the clothes they decided upon. Marigold had finished breakfast, washed, had her hair combed and pinned, and had begun to
dress in a black-spotted white muslin morning gown when she heard a faint tapping at the bedroom window. It was Jenny Wren. Marigold glanced quickly at Sally. “That will be all now, Sally, I can finish myself.”
“Very well, madam.” The maid bobbed, and hurried away.
Marigold immediately opened the casement. “You are Jenny Avenbury, aren’t you?” she asked, somehow knowing that the wren would understand.
“Yes.” To anyone else the wren sounded as if she called tic-tic-tic, but Marigold heard the spoken word. Jenny hopped closer. “Help us, help us, please.”
“But how?”
“Come. Come now.”
Jenny flew to the walnut tree that grew outside, where Marigold saw Robin was waiting. “Come where?”
“Ride, ride,” called Jenny.
Marigold nodded. “All right, I’ll get ready.”
“Quick, quick.”
Without calling for Sally again, Marigold dressed as quickly as she could in her riding habit. Word was sent to the stables to prepare a horse for her ladyship, and within ten minutes she was hurrying down to the hall in her sage green habit and brown hat, her white gauze scarf floating behind her. A groom had saddled a fine roan mare and brought it to the front of the house, together with a horse of his own, indicating an intention to accompany her.
“I will not require an escort, thank you,” she said, as he helped her to mount.
“But, my lady, you don’t know your way around.”
“I know enough to ride one way and then retrace my tracks. I’ll be quite all right.”
“Well, if you’re sure ...” he said doubtfully.
She kicked her heel before he could deliberate further, and the mare scattered the gravel of the drive as she rode swiftly away. In a moment Robin and Jenny were flitting from tree to tree beside her. “Quick, quick,” sang the wren.
At the lodge the lodgekeeper snatched off his hat respectfully on seeing who rode past. “Good morning, my lady.”
“Good morning,” Marigold called back.
For some reason she expected the birds to lead her toward the village, but instead they went in the opposite direction. “This way, this way,” Jenny urged, skimming low over the road as it crossed one of the four causeways that gave access over the wide moat. Almost immediately the birds left the road and turned toward the escarpment around the foot of which Marigold and Rowan had driven the day before. The land began to rise steadily out of the valley, and after a while she reined in, unable to resist the temptation to look back at Avenbury.
The scene below was laid out like a patchwork, with the great henge easy to pick out as it swept around the village and the common. The water in the moat shone in the sunlight, and the standing stones seemed almost white. The little flock of sheep grazed again near the great oak, watched over by the boy with his dog, and the mellow sound of the church bell echoed through the shimmering summer air. At the crossroad in the village, she could see how the overturned wagon was blocking the way.
Her attention moved to Avenbury Park. The house was a jewel in the filigree of its formal Tudor grounds, and the standing stones and moat had been skillfully blended into the design of elegant formal flowerbeds and topiary trees. A wooden bridge led over the water to the lawns that swept gently to the serpentine lake, which she could now see wound eastward along the foot of the escarpment.
She noticed a small boathouse among some weeping willows, and a jetty where a flat-bottomed skiff was moored. The reedy shores were ideal for the immense variety of ducks and other waterfowl that had converged on one of the few stretches of water in this chalky region. As she watched, something disturbed the birds, which rose in a noisy flock, then settled again a little further along.
Robin and Jenny were impatient. “Hurry, hurry! Must see!” cried the wren, swooping low above Marigold’s hat.
“See what?” But the two small birds flew swiftly on, and she had to urge the mare after them. Where were they taking her? What were they so anxious she should see?
Chapter Nineteen
The escarpment air was sweet with the scent of wild thyme, and blue butterflies danced above sward that was lavishly sprinkled with wildflowers. Sandstone boulders were dotted around, and did indeed look like sheep, Marigold thought, conceding that to call them graywethers was actually very appropriate. A few windblown hawthorns and the occasional rowan tree had found root in the thin layer of soil that covered the white chalk, and clumps of yellow gorse bloomed here and there. Skylarks tumbled high above, their wonderful bubbling song rippling across the warm mid-June sky. Oh, how criminal to name someone as disagreeable as Alauda after such a glorious songbird, Marigold thought as she continued to follow Robin and Jenny.
It wasn’t long before she realized the birds were leading her toward the eastern end of the escarpment, where Rowan had told her there were ancient fortifications believed to have been a Roman camp. The closer she rode to the edge of the summit, the more oddly undulating the land became, and at last she saw that the dips and rises in the land were linear earthworks created countless centuries before. Whoever occupied this site would not only have found it easy to defend, but also a superb lookout point.
Robin and Jenny dipped down into a hawthorn bush that grew out of a tumble of graywethers right at the edge of the descent, and when she reined in next to the bush and looked down, she saw she was directly above the house and former hunting tower called Romans. The grounds were flanked by curtains of trees that stretched right down to the foot of the escarpment, but the house enjoyed a fine uninterrupted view.
It was a three-bayed stone building, with a fine wrought-iron veranda extending all around the ground floor. A matching balcony surrounded the floor above, and the original square, ivy-covered hunting tower still rose sturdily from one end. The incline from here on the summit down to the house was very steep indeed, but the quarter of a mile or so from the house to the valley was much more gentle, with open grounds and a long drive that curved down to the road along which she and Rowan had driven the evening before.
Just visible beyond one of the curtains of trees, was the eastern extremity of the lake, and a jetty like the one at Avenbury Park. To the rear of the house, just before the steepness of the incline became too great, there was a small walled apple orchard, with a white summerhouse where someone was seated. It was a gentleman, but all she could see were his gleaming top boots and the newspaper he was reading.
Hoofbeats carried on the air, and she looked down the drive to see a horseman riding slowly up the drive. She immediately recognized Rowan. As he disappeared from her view at the front of the house, Robin and Jenny hopped urgently from branch to branch of the hawthorn bush.
“Follow us! Follow us!” the wren urged in her odd tic-tic tones, then she and the robin flew down the hill toward Romans.
Marigold gazed uneasily down the steep slope. Was it safe to attempt to ride down? The answer was definitely not, so she hurriedly dismounted to tether the mare to the bush. She stole one last glance at the house, and was in time to see a maid hurry into the orchard to tell the man in the summerhouse that Lord Avenbury had called, then she began to clamber down the incline.
“Quick! Quick!” called Jenny.
“I’m doing the best I can!” Marigold protested through clenched teeth as she slithered a little. The rest of the descent proved just as fearsome a scramble, and she slipped once or twice, leaving grass stains on her riding habit, but at last she was by the orchard wall, in which was set a sturdy but weatherbeaten wooden door she hadn’t noticed from up the hill. The door was so overgrown with ivy and weeds that it had clearly not been opened in years, but Robin and Jenny fluttered to the top of the wall above it, and the wren urged her again. “Come here! Come here!”
“I can’t go through that!” Marigold whispered back. It was all very well for them, they could fly!
“Look through! Look through!”
Look through? It was a solid oak door! But then she saw a hole where a small knot
had fallen out, and she put her eye to it to peer into the orchard. The view was very restricted, only a few of the apple trees and part of the summerhouse, and although she couldn’t see him, she could hear Rowan’s voice. It was raised in anger, but she couldn’t make out what he was saying. Of the other man she heard and saw nothing at all, although Rowan was plainly speaking to him. At length there was silence, and she caught a brief glimpse of Rowan striding away. The man in the summerhouse called mockingly after him. “You cannot win, Avenbury! I’m invincible!”
Marigold started with shock. Falk! So this was what Robin and Jenny were so anxious she should know! Her heartbeats quickened uneasily, and she drew back from the spyhole as if the door had suddenly burned her skin. She leaned against the wall, her thoughts in a whirl. What was Falk doing here? Then she remembered the overturned wagon. The new tenant’s sister. Alauda was coming here too! Was that what Rowan would have learned if he’d kept the assignation requested in the note? It was certainly why Beech had felt it prudent to tell Rowan in private about the “delicate” matter of his new tenant’s identity.
Suddenly there were two small squeaks of fear, followed by the whir of little wings, and she looked up sharply to see Robin and Jenny flying away. They fled up the hillside into a dense hawthorn tree, and disappeared. Marigold straightened warily as she heard the beat of much larger wings. A dark shadow passed over her as a black carrion crow landed where the smaller birds had been. It tilted its glossy head to gaze down at her, then began to flap and caw loudly. Fearing Falk would come to investigate, Marigold gathered her cumbersome skirts and began to hurry up the slope as best she could, hoping to reach the shelter of the hawthorn bush, but the crow followed, fluttering directly overhead, still giving its loud, croaking calls.
Long before she reached the bush, she heard someone trying to push open the door in the orchard wall. The ivy resisted for a while, then suddenly gave way, and the rusty hinges complained as the door was shoved roughly. Its hinges groaned as it swung out from the wall, then Falk emerged, and his eyes shone as he saw her clambering up the steep hillside about fifty feet above him. The crow immediately pulled away toward him, and disappeared over the wall into the orchard.