The Dragon's Bride

by Jo Beverley

  Con looked back at Susan briefly, regretting yet not regretting the interruption. It would have been madness to have surrendered, and deeply wrong.

  “Bring him here, please,” he said to the maid. When she’d left, he said, “He’s a good enough friend I could show him his room and ignore him, but . . .”

  “But he’d guess, and we can’t do this, Con. You know that.”

  Before he could unwisely protest that, she added, “You must remember Lady Anne.”

  His self-imposed prison. But she was right. Strong, honorable, and right. “I must, mustn’t I? Very well, what rooms do we have available for Hawk?”

  “The Jason rooms, and the Ouroboros.”

  “Oh, yes, the circular one with the dragon eating its own tail. But the Jason rooms have mazes on the walls, don’t they? Arrange for Hawk to sleep in there. He enjoys a puzzle.”

  She was looking at him with a slight frown. “You don’t seem happy to see your friend.”

  He shrugged. “I wonder why he’s here. It’s either trouble or curiosity, or both.”

  She began to say something else, but then they heard footsteps, and in a moment Hawk walked in looking the same as always. An elegant devil, even in ordinary riding clothes and after a long journey.

  He was suddenly damned glad that Hawk was here, and grinned. After a swift, assessing moment, Hawk grinned back, executed an elaborate, archaic bow, and declared, “My Lord Earl!”

  Con dragged him into his arms for a back-thumping hug. He’d have been glad to see Hawk again in any circumstances after a year, but he felt as if sanity had just swooped into his chaotic life. For a start, Hawk had always had a gift for puzzles, and Crag Wyvern was full of them.

  Hawk glanced to one side and Con saw Susan standing there, the perfect image of a housekeeper except for her good looks and the lack of a cap. He was faced with a sudden decision.

  “Hawk, this is Miss Susan Kerslake of Kerslake Manor, who’s been kind enough to fill in here as housekeeper. She’s also an old friend. Susan, Major Hawkinville. You’ve heard me speak of him.”

  She gave him a quizzical look, but then offered her hand to Hawk rather than bobbing a servant’s curtsy.

  Hawk took it and bowed. “Charmed, Miss Kerslake.”

  Con had no doubt that he was making a hundred rapid assessments and calculations and coming to conclusions, many of them correct. But he didn’t regret introducing Susan as she was.

  She said, “The Jason rooms then?” and when he agreed, she left with a pleasant smile.

  Hawk looked at Con, but all he said was, “An interesting house.”

  “Wait till you see the whole of it. Trouble?”

  “I don’t think so,” Hawk said. “Van’s probably getting married.”

  “Probably? I saw the notice in the paper.”

  “That was a pretense. Long story. But now it’s become real if only he can persuade her. I provided him with some ammunition that should carry the day.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  Hawk had always been hard to read, and his years in army administration, some of it secretive, had perfected his inscrutability. But Con knew he was concerned about something.

  However, Hawk merely said, “Excellent,” and wandered over to consider the books on the shelves. “A conventional selection. I thought you said your predecessor was mad.”

  Con certainly understood an inclination to keep secrets, so he let it go. “The interesting stuff’s upstairs. Come along and I’ll show you.”

  But Hawk stayed where he was. “Perhaps I am jealous of Maria. A lowering thought. One George married. You here in Devon.”

  “I’ve no intention of living here, but our lives can never be as they were when we were sixteen. We will doubtless all marry.”

  Con thought of three new families—Van’s, his, and Hawk’s—linked as closely as the old ones, their children growing up as friends.

  But it was Susan’s children he saw, not Anne’s.

  Perhaps it would become more real if he put it into words.

  “I have more or less offered for Lady Anne Peckworth.”

  Despite having been out of the country for most of the past eleven years, and being a schoolboy when they joined the army, it took Hawk’s encyclopedic mind only a moment. “Daughter of the Duke of Arran? A good match.”

  “Yes.”

  “More or less?” Hawk wouldn’t miss a phrase like that.

  “I’ve arranged to speak to her father when I return east.”

  “Ah.”

  Con could see questions in Hawk’s eyes, but at least he didn’t ask them. “What of you?” Con asked, “A lady in mind?”

  God, such a stilted conversation. Was there no real friendship to recapture?

  “Give me time. I’ve been in England for only a week. Besides, unlike my fellow Georges, I have neither title nor large estate to offer. Since I have no intention of living at Hawkinville Manor with my father, I don’t even have a home.”

  Trouble there too. Despite Susan, despite a tentative healing, Con flinched back from probing it.

  “How is your father? I heard he suffered a seizure of some kind.”

  “Recovering. I haven’t been there yet.”

  Conversation dragged to a halt again. “Perhaps we should be taking a bath,” Con said.

  Hawk’s brows rose in a question, and Con laughed. “Come and see.”

  At sight of the Roman bath, Hawk whistled. “Crazily extravagant, but I can’t say I like the decor. He really didn’t like women, did he?”

  “I presume because they kept failing him. A man like that always blames the woman. But sharing hot water seems to encourage confidences.”

  “I must remember that next time I have a deceitful supplier to question. Though,” he added, “considering the personal habits of most deceitful suppliers, perhaps not.”

  They strolled back into the bedroom, and Con looked at the fresco of Saint George and the dragon. “Apparently this was modeled after my ancestor, the first earl.”

  “Not a warrior, I assume. I wouldn’t bet on this one against that dragon.”

  “Nor I. Notice there’s no cross bar on that lance? The beast would keep running up it and eat him as it perished.”

  They fell into a humorous, professional analysis, then progressed to the Wyvern rooms, joking about various aspects of the corridors. Con felt the old ease unfurling between them tentatively, but with all the sure power of an unfurling leaf, and gave silent thanks.

  When he saw the bed, Hawk burst out laughing. “After all this, he never showed signs of fathering a child?”

  “Ah,” Con said. “Now that is a most interesting question.” He sketched in the details of Lady Belle’s letter.

  Hawk smiled. “What a splendid notion. You think you can persuade young Kerslake to go through with it?”

  “I hope so. Can you see any problem?”

  Hawk contemplated the blank wall facing the bed. “No serious ones. It’s suspicious that he fathered no more children, but these things happen. And his habit of drinking strange brews might have had a negative effect. I wonder what happened to the young woman who played the part in Guernsey.”

  “She might come forward when it becomes common talk?”

  “More likely demand money for her silence. That can be the new earl’s problem. And you know, from my very brief exposure to your predecessor’s nature, I wonder if she survived.”

  “He pushed her off the boat on the way home?”

  “And kept that marriage certificate in these rooms. He’d want it close. Sewn into a book’s binding. Or in a cavity cut into the walls . . .”

  He walked forward and ran his fingers around a blank piece of wall opposite the bed. “Has anything been moved from here?”

  “I don’t think so. Why? You’ve found something?”

  “I’ve found a blank piece of wall in a room otherwise completely cluttered, and a mark. . . . Ah.” He dug his nails in and pulled, and part of th
e faux stone slid sideways.

  Behind was not a secret compartment, however, but a drawing of a young woman. It was a highly worked professional piece clearly showing the delicate lace trimming of her dress, and the pearls around her neck. Her hair was simply gathered up in the manner of a girl just out in society. Nothing could be told from her face, however, because the paper had been slashed like a pie, and the triangular pieces hung away from the gaping hole.

  “Isabelle Kerslake, I assume,” Con said. He’d thought he was past being shocked by his predecessor, but this was vile. “He lay in his bizarre bed looking at her, and hating her and Mel Clyst. I wonder why he suddenly decided to act on it.”

  “Men break. The last straw, and all that.” Hawk looked around at the cluttered room. “I admit, it will be interesting to take this place apart piece by piece and find his other secrets along with that paper.”

  “We seek only to amuse,” Con said. “Perhaps I should open this to the masses and charge a penny a gawk. Nicholas Delaney will be turning up tomorrow too. He doesn’t have your eye for solving mysteries, but he can be perceptive in his own way.”

  “The founder of the Rogues? I look forward to meeting him.”

  Con shook his head. “Lord, but it feels strange to have people coming here. Ordinary people. Perhaps we should invite up the Kerslakes. I only worry that Crag Wyvern will split open and crumble away.”

  “Sorry if you’re attached to it, but good riddance as long as no one’s killed in the collapse.”

  “Someone else said that. And neither she nor you have seen the torture chamber yet.”

  “Thank the Lord. It wouldn’t be surprising, you know, if this place had loosened some of your screws.”

  “As obvious as that, is it?” Con asked, navigating a way out of the room and back into the corridor.

  “Is Diego still with you?” Hawk asked.

  “Yes, why?”

  “He’d only have come to England if he felt needed.”

  This was the astute assessment of someone who knew him well, the assessment he’d feared. Now it didn’t seem intolerable.

  “It’s war sickness,” he said as he locked the room. “I was getting over it.”

  “Dare?” Hawk asked, persistent as a surgeon after shrapnel.

  In Brussels, before Waterloo, they’d all shared a billet—Van, Hawk, Dare, and himself. Van and Hawk, professional soldiers like himself, had been somewhat impatient with Dare’s unshadowed enthusiasm, but they’d come to like him. Cheerful, generous Dare was impossible to dislike.

  “Dare’s death didn’t help,” Con said, leading the way down the corridor. “But it isn’t insane to find the experience of death and agony unsettling.”

  “Of course not. But I gather you’ve been avoiding your friends.”

  “Not any longer,” Con said, grateful to arrive at the Jason rooms. “Bring ’em all on. The more the merrier.”

  He left Hawk there, knowing it wasn’t particularly friendly, but needing to be by himself. Friendship was unfurling, but he wasn’t quite ready for the full power of it yet.

  Where? In this fortress of rooms, where could he be sure to be undisturbed? In the Wyvern rooms, probably, but he wasn’t going there.

  The roof. He and Fred had found the way up to the roof and he thought he could remember it. He went up a circular staircase into the floor that contained the water cisterns. Then he found the trapdoor and climbed out.

  Chill evening air hit him, blessedly welcome, and he leaned on a merlon to look at land and sea, at “outside.”

  Kerslake was reluctant to take this on for a number of reasons. Con wondered if it was pure selfishness to try to persuade him. But in holy truth he’d think himself blessed never to have to come here again.

  Except that owning Crag Wyvern would offer the painful hope of at least seeing Susan again. If Kerslake did become earl, there would be no reason. No excuse . . .

  He began to stroll around the parapet, but as he turned onto the south wall he stopped. Susan was there facing him, a knitted shawl wrapped around her for defense against the brisk sea air.

  She looked like the simplest country woman.

  She looked, as always to him, magnificent.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was hoping you wouldn’t notice I was here.”

  He didn’t take it wrongly. He knew exactly what she meant.

  He walked nearer. “Come to Irish Cove with me?”

  She stared at him, but not with surprise. “It’s a chilly evening.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of going swimming.”

  She cocked her head, considering him, but then she said, “All right.”

  He led the way back to the trapdoor, but as he stood aside to let her go down first he said, “Would you change for me? Out of that gray gown.”

  She considered it again. “If you wish.”

  When they arrived at the garden level she said, “I won’t be long,” and walked off toward the kitchen area.

  He’d like to go with her in case she changed her mind, but he made himself wait, hoping no one was going to interrupt this. Race was back in the office, but might pop out for some reason. Hawk . . .

  He’d abandoned Hawk, and Hawk was doubtless drawing all kinds of conclusions. If he was drawing the right ones, he wouldn’t interfere.

  Though perhaps he should.

  A gentleman engaged to marry one lady did not go for evening walks with another.

  So why was he going with Susan to Irish Cove? To deal with shadows from the past. No more. It was certainly too chilly for a reenactment.

  She appeared in a simple, high-necked blue cotton dress, her hair uncovered and in a plait, but with her shawl still wrapped around her for warmth. He’d rather she left off the shawl, but that would be asking her to suffer even more for him.

  They walked out together and followed the path along the grassy headland for a while, contentedly in silence. He realized that this was a friendship he could accept in all its power, without reservation. If he hadn’t built a wall between them.

  Eventually they came to a slippage where they had to scramble over rough rocks. She laughed as she tried to hold up her skirts and cling to his hand. “This was much easier in a girl’s shorter skirts!”

  “Or in breeches.”

  She smiled at him. “Or in breeches. This is a mad enterprise, you know.”

  “Do you want to go back?”

  “Not at all. Perhaps we’ll be lunatic lovers, lost over the cliffs.” Then she sobered with awareness of her words.

  “We are lovers,” he said, pulling her up to solid ground again. “Past, and almost present.”

  And future? almost escaped. But he didn’t want to be Susan’s lover. The carnal part would be wonderful, but it wasn’t the essence of what he wanted. He wanted the golden friendship, the companion for life.

  The wife.

  He would not dishonor her by taking and giving less.

  “Lovers are so often tragic, aren’t they?” she said, wrapping her shawl more tightly around her and knotting it at the back. He helped, drinking in even this slight touch, his hands against her supple back.

  “Because lovers are generally engaged in something illicit,” he said.

  “This isn’t precisely licit, is it?”

  Typical of Susan to insist on honesty. Could he live with anything less?

  They walked on briskly, and gradually, out here where they’d roamed eleven years ago, they fell into the easy talk of the past, about plants and animals, and the sea and the sky. Then about the adventures of the years between.

  First the light ones that carried no weight, but wove a fragile net between them. Then some of the more sober ones.

  She told him more about working with the mad earl. He told her about army life.

  He shared more about Waterloo and Dare, and she related with brief honesty her two times with other men.

  The net they were building contained future pain as well as pleasure, but he was
sure she was as willing as he to bear it.

  Near an abandoned chapel, glassless windows showing a stark stone interior, they struck off across rough ground toward the cove. The route they followed was a faint smuggler’s trail, mostly overgrown with weeds, and they had to watch the ground for unpredictable dips and bumps.

  When they arrived at the steep path to the beach, Con hesitated. “Did we really go down there without a thought?”

  “Too old to make it anymore?” With a teasing smile, she pulled the hem of her skirt up to her waist and produced pins to fasten it there, leaving her stockinged legs bare to the knees. Then she was off, finding handholds on roots, and on some rods conveniently driven in for the purpose.

  With a laugh, he followed, not hesitating even when his boots slipped on the soft clay rock.

  She jumped the last few feet to the pebbly beach and turned to watch him. He jumped too, and swept her into his arms. Just a hug, a friendly hug, but they clung in the salt air, and he knew she was absorbing him as he was absorbing her. Was she, too, feeling as if she was becoming a whole person here?

  They drew apart in synchrony, perhaps both recognizing a point of no return, and looked around at the small cove.

  “I think of it as bigger,” he said.

  “It hasn’t shrunk, but there was more sand here. The sea changes. Like everything else.”

  She walked down toward the rippling waves, and he followed, admiring the elegant lines of her body, so different from those of a girl, but familiar, and not just from last night. A man knowing a young tree still recognizes it full-grown.

  Last night. Had he been trying to prove something? To demonstrate his many lovers since her?

  A smile fought through, and he said, “Susan?”

  She turned, smiling, holding a strand of inevitably escaping hair off her face, her skirt still kirtled up to her knees at the front.

  “Last night. I was trying to impress you.”

  A hint of a blush touched her cheeks. “You succeeded.”

  “I was fighting the memory of your many partners, all hugely endowed by nature, all possessed of the skills and experience of the world’s greatest lovers.”

  She laughed. “Truly?”

  “Truly.”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered.”