St. Leger 1: The Bride Finder

by Susan Carroll

  Somewhere behind her, back in warmer, safer regions of the house, she could hear a clock striking midnight. The sound sent an inexplicable shiver through her. As Anatole slammed to a halt in front of the oak barrier, Madeline hung back.

  "Anatole, please," she said. "Perhaps this could wait until morning."

  "I may no longer have the courage then."

  "But the door is locked, and you have forgotten the key."

  He cast her a strange glance and then turned toward the door. The heavy oak shuddered and creaked slowly inward.

  Madeline's breath snagged in her throat, unnerved by the sight. She had not even seen Anatole touch the door. But he must have done, she reasoned desperately. The only alternative would be… unthinkable.

  There had to be some sort of a secret catch or a mechanism. Fear turned to fascination, but before she could question Anatole, he hauled her through the doorway.

  She clutched at him, drawing comfort from the feel of his tensile strength as they plunged into yawning blackness. The torch he carried made no more impact on this cavernlike chamber than trying to light the night with a single candle. Madeline caught only glimpses of cold stone, ominous looking shapes.

  "Wait here," Anatole commanded, peeling himself free of her. It was all she could do not to cling to his shirttails as he strode away from her.

  She huddled near the doorway as he stormed into the darkness, using his torch to ignite other flambeaux mounted into iron sconces on the wall. Not igniting them so much as seeming to hurl flame and defiance, giving the impression he would as soon have burned the place to the ground if he could.

  As illumination crept across the chamber, Madeline darted fearful glances around her, scarce knowing what horrors she expected to be revealed. The light leapt and flared, dancing macabre shadows over the rafters of what had once been a great hall, the heart and soul of a medieval castle.

  It was a cold, lonely soul at this hour, the tapestries rustling out mournful whispers of a faraway time that was long gone. The glory of the St. Leger dragon woven into those silken threads was a little faded; the blackened hearth empty and devoid of any welcoming fire. Cobweb-festooned carved chairs and the dusty banqueting table appeared to wait in melancholy silence for redoubtable St. Leger knights, who would never return.

  An eerie enough place to find oneself in the dead of night, but containing none of the terrors Madeline had once imagined. No moldering bones, no dead bodies, no madmen chained to the walls.

  Daring to breathe again, she took a few cautious steps deeper into the chamber. Anatole jammed his own torch into an empty bracket and stalked back to her side.

  "This is your secret room, my lord?" Madeline asked. "I see nothing so very dreadful that needs to be hidden."

  She smiled up at him, wishing with all her heart he would smile back, seem more like the man who had wooed and loved her on the hillside, not this stranger with the hard-set mouth and despairing eyes.

  "Why have you brought me here?" she asked.

  "You wanted the truth, Madeline, and I'm going to give it to you. It is time you met the rest of the St. Legers."

  "But I thought I already had."

  "Only the ones still living."

  Madeline gaped up at him incredulously. Surely he could not mean…

  "Are—are you trying to tell me this castle is—is haunted?"

  Anatole nodded grimly.

  "But I don't believe—" She caught herself whispering almost as though she was afraid of disturbing the spirit of some long slumbering knight. Foolishness.

  "I don't believe in ghosts," she said more firmly.

  At that instant the door to the chamber slammed shut. Startled, Madeline leapt closer to Anatole. A low, silky laugh sounded close to her ear, raising the hairs along the back of her neck.

  She glanced up at her husband, but never had Anatole looked less like laughing.

  "Who—what was that?" she breathed.

  "Him," Anatole ground out through clenched teeth. He gestured to the shadows behind them.

  Madeline peered past Anatole's shoulder, but she saw nothing. It took another moment to realize that Anatole was pointing upward, to a larger-than-life portrait mounted above the massive fireplace. A medieval knight in full regalia.

  Unease skittered up her spine, but she stubbornly shook her head.

  "No, it had to be only the wind, howling through the windowpane. Portraits don't laugh."

  "Neither does the wind, milady."

  If he was trying to frighten her, he was doing a remarkably good job of it, Madeline thought. But the steel in Anatole's eyes softened with regret and deepest sorrow. He circled his arm protectively about her waist.

  Frighten her? No, she sensed that if Anatole had his way, he would have swooped her up in his arms this minute and carried her far away from this disturbing place. He was tormented with fear himself of someone or something.

  This strong, formidable male could have fiercely taken on any other foe, from hordes of villainous Mortmains to a sea of invading armies. But he was so vulnerable, so helpless against all these rampant legends, these terrors of the mind. They stalked him like the infernal St. Leger dragon, scorching him with myth and superstition.

  If anyone was going to slay that dragon, Madeline realized, it had to be her. The realization fortified her courage as nothing else could.

  Tenderly she stroked a wild snarl of hair back from Anatole's eyes. Humoring him, she said, "All right. Perhaps you had better introduce me to this ghostly ancestor of yours who seems to find me so amusing."

  With great reluctance Anatole stepped aside, allowing her a fuller view of the portrait. Madeline could only marvel that she had failed to remark it sooner. The painting seemed to dominate the entire hall, the colors strangely vivid after so many centuries. As vibrant as the knight captured upon the canvas.

  The midnight hair and beard, the swarthy skin, the hawk's nose, all stamped the man indelibly as a St. Leger. A scarlet cape falling off one shoulder, he conveyed an impression of restless energy, a boundless desire to be off on some fresh quest or adventure. One hand clasped a heavy book inscribed with foreign symbols of a language unfamiliar to Madeline, while the other rested impatiently on the hilt of a crystal-adorned sword—

  A soft gasp of recognition escaped Madeline. "That sword. It's the same one that—that—"

  "That you flung back in my teeth tonight?" Anatole said bitterly. "So it is, milady." '

  "I was considerably distressed, Anatole. I am sorry."

  "Don't be. When I have finished telling you all, you may regret you didn't thrust it through my black St. Leger heart."

  His words disturbed her, but Madeline could think of nothing to reassure him. She returned to studying the portrait instead.

  The knight did not appear to have been as tall or as powerfully built as her own husband. But he had a presence that was undeniable. His power, she decided, rested in his eyes with their exotic slant, dark, enigmatic, mesmerizing.

  "Who is… I mean who was he?" she asked.

  "Lord Prospero St. Leger," Anatole spoke the name with obvious loathing.

  Her admiration for the knightly figure was clearly the last thing her husband desired, but Madeline couldn't seem to help herself.

  "He was magnificent," she sighed.

  Anatole stepped behind her, clamping his hand possessively down on her shoulder.

  "What he was, milady, is a goddamned sorcerer."

  "Anatole…" she protested.

  "It's true. Everything Bess Kennack told you. I am descended from a sorcerer, and yonder he stands. It's his cursed blood that flows through my veins and every other St. Leger."

  "I am sure every family has its share of black sheep."

  "Black sheep!" Anatole snarled. "That doesn't begin to describe Prospero. No one even knows where the devil he came from. From the devil most likely. According to the tales, he just appeared on the Cornish coast one stormy night, in a burst of lightning.

  "So
me say he was the bastard of a poor crusader who had the misfortune to fall prey to the seductive wiles of a witch on his travels. A Spanish harlot, a gypsy, or something even worse."

  An icy draft knifed through the hall, chilling Madeline to the bone. The torchlight flickered, playing eerie tricks with the portrait, darkening Prospero's eyes to an ominous hue.

  Madeline shuddered, cowering closer to Anatole. All her imagination, of course. She repeated to herself yet again that she didn't believe in supernatural manifestations. However, if she had, she would have cautioned Anatole that it might be less than wise to make this one angry.

  But Anatole himself seemed to have second thoughts, for he moderated his tone. "In any event, no matter where Prospero came from, I can tell you where he ended. At the stake. Condemned for witchcraft."

  "So were many innocent people."

  "Prospero was not innocent! He was a master at all the black arts: alchemy, spell casting, especially love potions. No lady in all of England was safe from his seduction."

  That at least was one thing Madeline had no difficulty believing. There was a truly wicked quirk to Prospero's lips, a come-hither expression, sensual and alluring.

  "Some say he even bewitched the king into giving him Castle Leger, thus making the Mortmains our perpetual enemies," Anatole went on. "All of Cornwall must have breathed a sigh of relief when Prospero was reduced to ashes."

  "Did no one mourn for him?"

  "No one. He died alone, leaving no family, no wife, no legitimate children."

  An unexpected wave of sadness swept over Madeline. Beneath all of Prospero's flash and bravado, did she detect a trace of profound sorrow and loneliness in those unfathomable eyes?

  She had to remind herself that she was looking at a portrait of a man long dead. Whatever Prospero's tragedy, Madeline's concern was more for his descendant.

  Anatole. Her husband, who had stood too long in the shadow of Prospero's legend, until he had become tormented nigh to madness with the belief that he had inherited tainted blood, some strange cursed powers of his own.

  Madeline rested her fingertips gently on the broad span of Anatole's chest, and tried to reason with him.

  "My lord, these tales of Prospero are very… interesting. But only consider. If Prospero died as the legends say, alone, unloved, unwed, with no legal heirs, where did all the rest of you St. Legers come from? How was Castle Leger passed down through the generations? The story makes no sense."

  Anatole issued an exasperated sigh. "Madeline, if you are going to try to make sense out of my family history, we are going to be here all bloody night. And we have a good many more of my ancestors yet to go."

  "There are more? Like Prospero?"

  By way of answer, Anatole whirled her about and propelled her toward the opposite wall. Like tombstones rising up from a moonlit graveyard were other portraits. Dozens of them, miniatures, ovals, gilt-framed rectangles. The subjects were attired in everything from the opulent brocades of the Tudors to the powdered wigs of the present day.

  None of them appeared as overwhelming as Prospero, but were disturbing enough all the same. It was those eyes, those piercing St. Leger eyes.

  "The family portraits," Madeline murmured, feeling a little daunted. "I often wondered why I never saw any likenesses hanging in the main house."

  "These are not exactly the sort of ancestors a man flaunts with pride, my dear."

  Madeline's gaze raked down the formidable row, alighting with relief on the oval of a surpassingly beautiful girl with masses of gypsy dark hair, her lithe figure dressed in the stiff silks of a farthingale.

  "Now, that is a very sweet young lady," she said. "You cannot tell me anything dreadful about her."

  "That is Deidre St. Leger. She's the one whose heart is buried beneath the church vestibule."

  "Oh," Madeline said weakly.

  "She was murdered by one of the treacherous Mortmains when she was but seventeen. If she had lived, she, too, would likely have been charged with witchcraft."

  "Surely not, Anatole! How could the most ignorant fool in the world have accused such an innocent girl of such a thing?"

  "Perhaps because among other strange talents, Deidre could make flowers grow."

  "So can my cousin Harriet. But that does not make her a witch."

  "Whatever Deidre planted, grew and bloomed overnight!'

  Impossible, Madeline started to protest, but Anatole hustled her along to the next painting.

  "This is Deidre's older brother, Drake St. Leger."

  "Which one?" Madeline asked. She saw two miniatures, side by side. One of a raven-haired cavalier, the other a stern-faced Puritan bearing Roman's blond looks and ice blue eyes.

  "They are both Drake. He was a thief."

  Madeline frowned in bewilderment. "You mean that he disguised himself? I had a great-uncle who was a thief, but not nearly so clever. He had a bad habit of pinching snuffboxes and occasionally someone's pocket watch."

  "Drake stole another man's life."

  Madeline groaned, but Anatole continued as though he had not heard. "When his own body became too badly disfigured during the war against Cromwell, Drake merely possessed himself of another one."

  Merely? Madeline's mouth dropped open, only to weakly close again. How did one even begin to refute a notion as incredible as that? As Anatole moved relentlessly on to another painting, she pressed her fingertips to her brow, feeling the start of a raging headache.

  She had hoped to reason with Anatole, argue him out of one superstition. Or two. But never in her wildest imaginings had she expected anything like this.

  St. Legers. Legions of them. Conjurers, clairvoyants, mediums, exorcists, diviners, soothsayers, and the lord alone knew what else. Her husband related these bizarre histories with such deadly calm, such force of conviction that her mind whirled, her own reason began to feel battered and shaken.

  The tales tumbled out of Anatole, more swiftly now, the truth he'd kept back, spilling out of him like a poison that had festered in his veins for far too long. He rushed through the years, generations of devil-spawned St. Legers, down to his father, the gentle Lyndon with his harmless talent for finding lost things, for knowing when letters would arrive before they did.

  By the time he'd finished, he hardly dared glance at Madeline for fear of her reaction. She stood calmly enough, staring up at the portraits with frowning concentration. But so quiet. It was most unlike his inquisitive Madeline. He would have preferred bitter tears, recriminations, demands to know why he had deceived her regarding his dreadful family for so long. At least then he could have soothed, reassured, begged forgiveness.

  But this heavy silence. It alarmed him as nothing else could. He would have given all he possessed at that moment for one fraction of Marius's power to delve into her heart. To know what she was feeling.

  "Well? Have you nothing to say?"

  The bark of his voice startled Madeline out of her trance. She offered him a wan smile. "What is there to say, my lord?"

  "You usually have no difficulty finding something. No more arguments? No questions?" he asked, regarding her anxiously. "Not even the most obvious one:

  She knew full well what he meant. Her gaze darted from him to the portraits of his ancestors and back again. She shook her head.

  But Anatole had gone too far to allow either of them to retreat now.

  "Go on. Ask me, Madeline," he prodded. "You have to be wondering. If all these other St. Legers are so damned strange, what cursed powers does my own husband have?"

  "I already know." She plucked nervously at a loose thread on her gown. "You—you think you can see visions of the future. And I suppose it's possible if you stared at a person hard enough, worrying about them, you might begin to imagine dreadful things, and if by chance, they come true—"

  "Damn it, Madeline! I don't imagine anything."

  She flinched at his angry tone, and he instantly regretted it. But the woman was beginning to make him a little crazed.
After all he'd told her, she was still stubbornly groping for some rational explanation.

  He attempted to be patient, find a way to make her understand. "I see flashes of the future, so horrible, so detailed, it is like—like stumbling into a nightmare in someone else's eyes, a nightmare I know will come true. And there's not a God-cursed thing I can do to prevent it."

  Horror and pity shimmered in her soft green eyes. But not, he sensed, because she believed him. No, it was obvious, his lady was beginning to think him mad.

  Anatole paced off several agitated steps. This was pure torture. He hardly knew what was worse. Having to tell Madeline all these damning things about himself, or having to compel her to believe him.

  In sheer frustration he unsheathed the St. Leger sword, thrusting the crystal-embedded pommel before Madeline's dazed eyes.

  "You see this weapon I gave you?"

  She clearly did. She retreated a wary step.

  "The sword itself is infused with magic, more of Prospero's infernal sorcery. The power of the crystal represents something different to each St. Leger heir that wields it. For me, if I stare into the crystal too long, I see visions of my own future."

  "Visions?" Madeline quavered. "In—in the sword?"

  "Aye. Last winter, I saw your coming, milady. A glimpse of your hair blowing in the wind, your shape lost in the mist. The crystal seemed to be warning me. Beware the woman of flame."

  "Then, why did you marry me?" she asked in a small voice.

  "Because I had no choice. I can't do anything to change my destiny, and in your case, I didn't want to. The only danger you presented was to my heart."

  He regarded her with longing. Didn't she understand it was his heart that he was risking now? Laying all bare for her to see, the blackest parts of his soul. Like a man poised beneath an ax blade, waiting for her acceptance or her rejection.

  She wasn't even looking at him, she was staring at the crystal, her eyes wide and fearful. What he had said about the sword seemed to have unnerved her as nothing else had done.

  More than once during this hellish night, he'd felt a stab of irrational anger against her, for forcing him to share truths that could only hurt them both. But now she looked so pale and scared, like a child realizing for the first time there really might be hobgoblins lurking in the dark.