Lady Harquist—nee Betty Lund—took her new position seriously. Thus each spring Fair Badden society enjoyed its one and only ball. It was no accident that Lady Harquist had set the date for her gala just before May Day.
She wished to contrast the rough-and-rowdy country entertainment with her own sophisticated party. Fortunately, Lady Harquist never realized she alone thought that in a contest between May Day and her ball, her ball prevailed.
“Who’ll all be there?”
Edith glanced up at the innocent tones. “Everyone. Including Mr. Merrick, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Not at all!” Rhiannon’s eyes widened. “You must try to overcome these prejudices.”
“Hm.” Edith studied the girl before turning her attention back to her list. “Then there’s all the arrangements to be made for the wedding itself. Your dress isn’t even half done and—”
“Oh!”
At the sound of dismay Edith’s head shot up. Rhiannon scooted back and Stella’s head landed on the ground with an audible thump. The dog cast an aggrieved look around and promptly went back to sleep.
“Hadn’t we best make plans for the May Day first?” Rhiannon asked anxiously. “I mean, the wedding isn’t until after—”
“The day after May Day.”
“Yes. Well. Still after. There’s still much to do for Beltaine night. You promised we’d bring clover wine and we haven’t even bottled it yet.”
“There’s enough to drink on Beltaine night without our adding to the general insobriety,” Edith said virtuously.
“Mayhaps, madame.” Rhiannon smiled and Edith felt her virtuous mien slip in answer to the girl’s wheedling ways. “But would you condemn our neighbors to the aching heads and roiling bellies you know they’ll suffer if they’ve only The Ploughman’s vile bran ale with which to celebrate the eve of May Day?”
“Maybe they shouldn’t drink so much.” Edith sniffed and colored, conscious that she might have on one or two Beltaine nights imbibed a bit more than was seemly herself, but unwilling to admit it to Rhiannon.
“Ach, now, dear.” Rhiannon reached over and tickled Edith under the chin, her smile conspiratorial. “ ’Tis once a year we in Fair Badden have an excuse to play at being varlets and laggards and buffoons. The rest of the year we’re too sober by half. What’s a celebration without your good clover wine?”
The girl was right. Edith herself didn’t want to get, er, festive on The Ploughman’s rotgut ale, and intend to get festive she did.
“All right, Rhiannon,” she capitulated with a grumble. “We’ll bring the clover wine but if there were less celebrating on Beltaine night mayhap we mightn’t have so many baptisms nine months hence.”
It was true, particularly amongst Fair Badden’s younger, farming population. The old custom of young people pairing up and going off into the dark woods on Beltaine night to collect hawthorn blossoms often ended with the courting couple having an incentive to move past courting to the altar. Often that incentive was a babe.
“I wouldn’t know about that,” Rhiannon said. “I’ve been Virgin Queen of the Virgin May three years running now.”
“You just make sure you keep running this Beltaine night, girl,” Edith said severely. “At least until after your wedding.”
Chapter Eight
“Hide and seek?” Susan Chapham echoed Margaret Atherton’s suggestion. “In the yew maze?”
She glanced around as she said it, an unnecessary precaution as Edith Fraiser had shepherded their parents into the drawing room where innumerable games of whist, coupled with matching glasses of port, would keep them busy all afternoon. “Dare we?”
The young men, reluctant to be caught instigating such naughty sport, remained mum but their smiles related their accord with the proposed entertainment. Only Ash Merrick remained uninvolved, his gaze distracted, his expression polite but bored. More than anyone Rhiannon had ever met, he provoked the mischievousness in her. She simply could not let him dismiss her and her friends.
“Why not?” Rhiannon therefore asked. “ ’Twill be good practice for Beltaine. Mayhap we ladies will discover some hidey hole to keep ourselves safe from roaming males that night.”
“And how do you propose to conduct the game?” Ash Merrick asked. He unfolded his whipcord length from where he’d been idly leaning against the maypole the villagers had erected that morning.
His time in Fair Badden had bestowed a tawny hue to his pale skin and since he so adamantly denounced wearing any wig, his hair, freshly washed, glistened like polished ebony.
“Everyone hides and one person tries to find them all?” Susan suggested.
“Sounds confounded tiring to me,” St. John said, yawning behind his gloved hand.
“Have you a better suggestion?” one of the other young ladies asked.
“I do,” Phillip declared. “The ladies hide and the last one to be found wins.”
“But that isn’t fair,” Margaret said plaintively. “Rhiannon will be the last woman found. It’s her yew maze, after all.”
“Besides,” John Fortnum said in his gruff, forthright way, “seems to me that since the men do all the work, the men ought to reap some sort of reward.”
An inspired smile appeared on Phillip’s face. “How about this? The gentleman who finds the last lady hidden in the maze shall be rewarded with”—he looked around—“a kiss.”
The ladies tittered. The men grinned knowingly. And Ash Merrick leaned toward Margaret Atherton, saying something in a voice that did not carry. Something for her ears alone.
“Aye. A kiss it shall be!” Rhiannon declared.
“But Phillip knows this maze nearly as well as Rhiannon,” Susan complained. “He’ll be sure to win …” And then, as realization struck her, “Ohh!”
Phillip’s golden brows rose in feigned innocence. “I am sure Rhiannon knows hiding places I’ve yet to discover.”
He was so sure of himself, thought Rhiannon, and the same quality that had driven her to support the game, the same thing that spurred her to race breakneck speeds when putting her horse to a hurdle, was pricked awake by his certainty.
She did indeed know a place or two Phillip had never discovered. Besides, Margaret knew the maze nearly as well as she, and from the manner in which she cast sidelong glances at Ash Merrick, she might well prove to be the last lady discovered … if Ash was the seeker.
Sure enough, Margaret lent her support to the proposal. “All right. I’m game.”
“Indeed?” One of Ash’s black brows climbed consideringly, a lazy sexual quality in his regard.
Margaret tittered unconscionably and Rhiannon felt her cheeks grow warm. She chided herself viciously. Why shouldn’t he flirt with Margaret? He was unattached—as was Margaret.
She moved away from them, her feet carrying her swiftly as, with heated faces, the other young women in the party added their approval. As soon as it was decided that the women should have the count of two hundred before the men came to find them, they disbanded, multicolored skirts belling out as they fled amidst laughter into the maze’s evergreen corridors.
As soon as she passed beneath the rose arbor that led into the maze, Rhiannon broke to the left. Experienced hunters like her friends would drive to the back of the maze and scout for a hiding place there, amidst thick hedges in the densest part of the garden. But not her.
She would stay on a side path. After the men had passed, she would sneak back toward the front and the rose arbor she’d ducked under. There, the rose vine entangled with an ancient yew, hiding a little nook she had discovered years ago. Outside the maze she would be barely visible, but from within the maze no one would be able to see her.
She waited for the men to enter, her heart racing. She heard a muted hunting-horn sound and then the men crashing through the entry, calling out. Before long Susan Chapham’s squeal of outrage proclaimed her the first woman to be found. Had it been Ash? Or was he seeking other quarry?
Cautiously Rhia
nnon peered around the corner. The only sound she heard was that of St. John’s perennial complaints. She sped swiftly back toward the entrance. Crouching low, she angled her body sideways and pushed her way through the thick growth.
And then she was in.
She looked around. The very center of the huge yew had rotted away, making a small empty room with living walls. Slender needles of sunlight pierced the higher boughs, stabbing the earth with brilliant pinpricks. The tight, unfurled buds of the red rose adorned the dark green walls like rubies. Beneath, her feet crushed fifty years of accumulated yew needles. Their fragrance rose, sharp and pungent.
She hadn’t been here for years. Not since she was a little girl, driven from her bed to hide from the redcoated devils who rode thundering through her dreams. Or had they been dreams? Memories most like, taking advantage of sleep’s vulnerability to attack once again.
Thank God, she’d found haven. She’d found Fair Badden. She’d never have to face the landscape of her nightmares again. Ever.
She vanquished the memories, as she always vanquished the memories of her life before her arrival here. She would think of nothing unpleasant. She was playing a game on a lovely spring day and she was going to win. She could imagine Phillip’s surprise when he strode confidently toward the bower he expected she’d be occupying only to find it empty.
She grinned. She would wait until he’d given up and then she’d walk serenely from the gate, stringing a chain of daisies as she came.
Ash Merrick might even smile.
Within a few minutes a triumphant call signaled the discovery of another lady and then another. Two more ladies had been flushed. Another cry and more laughter. That left only Rhiannon.
“She’s here somewhere,” she heard Phillip say from nearby.
“Aha, Watt! She’s outmaneuvered you! Best think twice before marrying a wench what’s smarter than you.” It was John Fortnum.
“I’ll find her.”
But he didn’t. A few minutes later Phillip called out, “There’s nothing else for it, lads. We’ll just have to drive her like a partridge. She’ll be far back where the trees overhang the maze. Likely she’s clambered up one and is swinging her legs overhead, laughing as we stumble about nose to the ground.”
“Well, even if I don’t win the kiss, you’ve just offered me reward enough to gain my aid,” another man laughed. “Rhiannon Russell must have pretty legs.”
Rhiannon’s face grew hot.
“I’m for it, too!” John Fortnum answered, his voice moving off. “Lead on, Watt.”
Rhiannon settled down to wait, leaning her head against the yew’s shaggy trunk. It could take a goodly while before Phillip called quits. He was tenacious and he disliked being bested.
Perhaps it was the cool dimness chased with golden lights, or perhaps the hushed stillness, the rich damp scent of a hiding place, but soon her eyes drifted shut and she fell into a light, easy sleep.
“Tha thu agam.” I have you.
Her eyes opened slowly, uncertain of what she’d heard. Gaelic. She hadn’t heard the Gaelic tongue in ten years. She raised her head, her vision slow in adjusting to the sharp contrasting light.
Ash Merrick stood over her.
Sunlight dappled his broad shoulders, sparkled in his black hair. His head was cocked to one side and in the odd light she could not make out the expression in his dark eyes, though she could see clearly enough the dark lashes surrounding them, the shadow beneath the high cheekbone, the shape of his mouth.
“You spoke to me in Gaelic.”
“Did I?” His voice was quiet. “I was raised in the Highlands, for all my English blood, you know.”
“Aye. English … How would you … ?” She stuttered, stopped herself, went on. “I didn’t hear you enter,” she said, self-conscious beneath his mute appraisal. “How can that be? I should have heard the sound of yew boughs breaking and—”
“Easy, Miss Russell,” he said. “I came in by the roses.” He gestured toward a low opening leading to the grassy gardens outside. “I walked the outer periphery of the maze. Sometimes a man needs to stand back to see what’s before him.”
“Oh.” She swallowed, brushing the hair back from her face. It didn’t seem fair that he’d left the maze. It set unexpected anxiety shivering through her and she didn’t understand why.
She tilted her head back. He bent down, startling her. She jumped a little. He went motionless for a heartbeat and then with a slow, wry smile, reached down and gently removed a sprig of yew from her skirts. Flustered, she brushed the needles from the folds.
“I’ve won,” he said.
“Aye.” She did not meet his eye.
“You didn’t expect anyone to find you.”
“Nay.”
“You dislike it that I did.”
“Aye,” she replied sullenly.
“Why is that?
“I don’t know,” she muttered. “I’d hidden where no one would find me. I thought I was safe.”
“ ‘Safe.’ An interesting choice of words considering we were playing a game.”
“It’s a feeling, is all,” she explained grudgingly. “I used to come here when I was just a lassie newly arrived from … newly arrived at Fair Badden.”
“From the Highlands.”
“Yes.”
“You were what? Nine years old? Eight? Your family had fought for the Pretender, hadn’t they?”
She nodded.
“Did you hide? When Cumberland’s men came? Why? The troops didn’t seek children.”
“They sought anyone that wore a plaid,” she replied in a hushed voice.
“And you hid in the woods.” The words seemed to come from him without volition.
“Yes.”
“And no one found you.”
“Me or the old lady my mother sent with me.” She hadn’t ever told anyone of those days. Not even Edith Fraiser. She’d tried once, but Edith had tucked her shivering body onto her lap and told her to forget everything that had happened to her before she came to them.
Rhiannon had tried to do what Edith said. Like she had tried to do everything else the Fraisers had asked, to be good and dutiful and never give a moment’s distress. Mostly she had succeeded. She could barely recall her own parents’ faces. “We watched the croft burn.”
He did not ask her to elaborate and for this she was grateful. But he understood. She could see it. Sense it. Following Cumberland’s defeat of Prince Charlie’s Highlanders at Culloden she’d lost everyone: father, brothers, uncles, cousins.
“Do you have family … besides your father?” she asked.
“A sister. A brother.”
She nodded. “Where are—”
“Then you found your way here,” he cut in. “But you still felt hunted.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Only sometimes at night. When the thunder came. I didn’t want to be a coward and I didn’t want to hurt Mrs. Fraiser’s feelings—and they would have been sorely hurt had she thought I didn’t feel safe in her own good home—so I’d steal outside and come here.
“No one ever found me. No one knew about it. I thought no one ever would—lest I told them. So it was safe, you understand. And now it isn’t anymore, because you found me and I don’t know that I’ll ever feel safe here again.” Or anywhere, she thought.
He studied her for a long moment before extending his hand as he had yesterday after wrestling her beneath him and making her aware of his strength, his tensile length, and his weight. He’d made her feel weak, vulnerable. Yet it was not a conscious aim of his. She could not fault him for making her feel that way, or in some odd way liking it. Because if she’d felt weak, he’d felt strong and she knew he would use that strength to protect her.
She placed her hand in his. Effortlessly, he assisted her to her feet. He stepped away.
“You should be safe. You should feel safe,” he murmured, an edge of anger sharpening his tone.
“No matter now.”
; “I won’t tell anyone about this place,” he said. “In a few weeks I’ll be gone and it will be your sanctuary once again.” His words came rapidly, as though he must say them.
He didn’t understand. Whether he went or stayed, wherever he was, she would always be cognizant of the fact he knew about this place. She would never be alone here again. He would be with her. But his impulse was kind and she could not rob him of that.
“Thank you.”
“But”—he stepped nearer and she could see his chest rising and falling as though he’d been running—“I still would have my reward.”
He stepped forward and she moved back until her shoulders pressed against the yew’s green branches.
“An toir thu dhomh mo pog?” he whispered. Will you give me my kiss?
She lifted her gaze; it became entangled with his as surely as the rose vine entangled with the yew at her back. As steadfast and ineluctably. “Aye.”
Slowly, carefully, Ash drew near her. His hands hung loose at his side, his eyes held hers. He angled his head and lowered his mouth until she felt his breath on her lips. Her eyelids fluttered closed. Their lips met.
As soft as summer mist. Delicately as dawn’s first colors. Tenderly his mouth molded over hers, moved with breath-stealing sweetness and her own lips, readied for an overpowering assault, were conquered instead by exquisite gentleness.
He raised his arms and she, prepared to lean into his embrace, found that he did not embrace her at all and that instead his strong arms reached past her, bracketing her head, and finding purchase against the living walls behind her. He leaned forward, deepening the kiss.
She sighed, her head falling back, overwhelmed and shaken. She felt weak, her body drugged, her pulse erratic. Unsteadily she laid her hand against his chest for support. His heart beat thickly beneath her palm.
His mouth opened over hers, his breath stole between her lips. She could feel him, taste him, complex and exotic, spicy wine and fresh mint. The tip of his tongue gently lined her lips, coaxing them farther apart.
Her legs trembled. Her thoughts grew faint. All she was aware of was his mouth, his tongue gently playing, seeking the sleek lining of her inner lip, the tip of her own tongue. His heart thundered beneath her hand in an acute counterpoint to the leisurely intoxication of his kiss.
The Passionate One Page 7