ROOK AND RAVEN: The Celtic Kingdom Trilogy Book One

by Julie Harvey Delcourt

  There was some mystery in all this, David felt, somehow circling around the Dowager Marchioness of Redsayle’s inexplicable hatred of Jessy. Before Sebastian had suddenly left for Celtica it was clear the countess wanted a bride from one of the Viking families of the kingdom for her son. That was the reason the two had planned to elope. He had been away with his regiment at the time, but he had letters from both telling him of the desperate step they were going to take. The hate the countess still held for Jessy did not make sense and

  David didn’t care for things that were illogical, they gnawed at him. This was a question he wanted answered sooner or later. Everything had a reason if you cared to find an answer. He cared.

  He looked at Sebastian and after taking a sip of brandy and scratching

  Hercules behind his ears, took a deep breath and waded in.

  “What you are going to do now is to tell me what exactly happened that summer and not lie to me,” he made his voice as stern as he could, entirely without its usual easy drawl. “And yes,” he held up a hand when he saw Sebastian’s mouth open,” I have of course heard Jessy’s side of the story. I have (metaphorically anyway) accepted your return with open arms. So if I feel for a moment you are not being absolutely honest with me, you can find lodgings elsewhere. What I need is to know whether my faith in you is justified.

  Jessy is my dearest friend next to you-“

  “You mean you have always loved her,” Sebastian interrupted, “And you are as windy as ever my friend.”

  David shrugged and gave a wry smile, “Known it was hopeless since we were twelve. Don’t interrupt me. Just answer me this; why did you leave her? Do you have any idea what she went through? I should hate you, tear your heart out, and feed it to Hercules here. I still may if your answer isn’t good enough. Recent behavior paints you as an idiot, but the question is this; is it idiocy, cruelty or some vagary of fate of which I am unaware? So fess up friend or put down that glass, get out and find an inn to hole up in.”

  Sebastian sighed and dropped back into the old wingback chair. He leaned his head back and for a moment closed his eyes, the firelight swirling red and black behind his eyelids. He had known that his return would not be simple for any number of reasons; his friendship with David being one of only many complications. Some of those difficulties and concerns he had used as an excuse to not think about what would happen if, when, he saw Jessy again.

  He had tried not to think about her before that meeting happened. He hadn’t wanted to remember what had been. He had feared his own expectations, and loss of hope he had to admit. He had also worried about losing focus on his assignment, but David had taken the initiative out of his hands by talking him into seeing that play. Now he had to deal with it all at once and David was really the only person in the world he would trust to help him with the mess he had on his hands.

  He took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and prepared to place his life, as both Earl of Redsayle and the agent known as Rook, into his best friend’s hands. “My mother had me kidnapped. I was returning in the dark from Pemberly the night before we were to elope. She had some ruffians on her payroll knock me out, truss me up like a Christmas goose and ship me off to Celtica. That is just the beginning of the story. Refill your glass my friend for there is much to tell you.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  David jerked in surprise so hard he spilled his good French brandy over Hercules, which didn’t bother that dog at all as he just started to lick off every bit he could find.

  “Kidnapped! You never told me that in the few letters I got! What the bloody hell?” David felt stunned, yet not at all disbelieving, it sounded like something the Dowager would not balk at doing. He had just never considered it a possibility.

  Sebastian held up a hand for silence and looked sternly at his friend. “Any and all letters were read David. I couldn’t give them any reason to see you as anything more than a completely uninformed friend. If you want the whole story then you have to let me start it and finish my way and not jump all over the place. We shall proceed in order thank you very much,” he said rather primly and David couldn’t help but snort.

  “Jessy was our little sister, the pesky, charming, troublesome little sister whose hair I tied in knots. I would beat to a pulp anyone who tried to hurt her of course but I, as you know, tortured her at will. Her home, her family, right down to the cook were my refuge growing up. It was the same for you.

  Pemberly was our refuge from Red Winds. I wasn’t stupid, I knew you adored her. I guess until our first summer down from Cambridge I always thought you two would grow up and marry,” he paused and looked sideways at his friend with a smile of reminiscence.

  “Then we came over that hill above Pemberly and there she was on the bridge waiting for us. She had on a blue dress her hair was tied back with a white ribbon. I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. I swear my ears rang with it. The terrible thing was I instantly felt guilty. I knew you loved her and well…remember Meg Hawes?” he asked and at David’s nod he continued “well it had been what, a week since I had enjoyed Meg’s considerable charms?” considerable he repeated silently remembering how spectacularly endowed Meg had been.

  “So here is Jessy with the amazing eyes, fresh as new cream and I wanted her more than I had ever wanted any girl before, and that’s a lot to say for boy of that age. The wanting was too damn close to those same things, those carnal things I had done with Meg it made me feel a bit ill. Too young to sort it out yet that it’s not wrong to want a lady,” he shook his head at his young self. “I had also suddenly and rather fiercely realized I would be willing to fight you for her. I had youthful and silly fantasies of fighting you for her hand like a couple of stags in season, showing off for the prize.”

  “Like she ever saw me as anything other than a brother you idiot. Is that why you were so mean that summer? Can’t tell you the number of times you made Jessy cry. I remember thinking how nice it was a hot summer since I spent most of it with a wet shirt. You picked more fights with both of us than I can even count.” David didn’t share that he knew exactly how Sebastian had felt as he himself had been being struck down by love in a single heartbeat. He had fallen in love with Jessy when he was ten and had gone to live as a ward at Red Winds. The countess did not approve of what she called ‘bookishness’ in a boy and so he had escaped the house with a copy of Robinson Crusoe and walked until he found a large and shady tree.

  He had just opened to his place in the story when a rather imperious voice above his head had spoken.

  “You are the new boy at Red Winds.”

  He had looked up startled to see a younger girl with long coppery fair hair, bright green eyes and wearing boy’s trousers sitting in the branches above him. He couldn’t help but think he had found a wood sprite she seemed so elfin and precocious.

  “What are you reading new boy?” she had asked as she promptly swung around and hung upside down by her legs. Her hair had nearly reached the top of his head.

  “My name is David and I am reading Robinson Crusoe,” he craned his neck to meet her eyes.

  ‘Oh I want to read that one, it sounds like such an adventure!’

  “Well then why don’t you?”

  “I don’t read well enough yet,” she said blithely.

  “Maybe you would if you were with your governess instead of climbing trees,” he had answered rather tartly for it was clear from her speech she was gently born.

  “That is not an adventurous idea at all David the new boy,” she said as she flipped over and landed neatly on the grass next him. She sat down across from him and crossed her legs like a boy, elbows on her knees and an intent expression on her face. She had a smudge of tree moss on the end of her nose that exactly matched the green of her eyes and a leaf stuck in her long hair.

  “Read to me,” she demanded. David fell into love as fast as a rock falling to the bottom of a deep green lake.

  He brought himself back from his memories and focused on w
hat

  Sebastian was saying.

  “Yes, well, being mean didn’t help, trust me. I couldn’t wait for school to start again and yet agonized about not seeing her for months on end. I just hoped whatever insanity possessed me would fly off by Christmas. I was so angry at her for being her; for being funny and beautiful and fearless. I hated her for making me love her and even think about something as serious as marriage. I had a grand plan of being the greatest rake of the age, of cutting a swath in London for years. I could see it all falling apart and me in parson’s mousetrap by the grand age of twenty two at best.”

  “Oh your mother wasn’t going to let that happen! I do remember thinking that school year that I hated you and the term would in murder,” David mused. “You have a way about you that brings murder to mind more often than it should.”

  “Really?” Sebastian hid a grim smile as David did not yet know half of it when it came to people wanting to kill him, or him killing other people for that matter.

  “Well good God man you rolled with every skirt within a mile of Cambridge that year! I recall you were almost sent down for getting caught with Master Tidwell’s niece and she was only visiting! I still have nightmares about climbing down that wall with you and playing look out. I fantasized about Jess finding out what a despicable rake you were and falling into my arms. The reality of that not happening occurred to me about every other week. It was always you. She told me when she was nine and you rescued her kitten Marlowe from the south fountain that she was going to marry you.”

  “She did?” Sebastian was momentarily disconcerted. “I was determined to shake off whatever she had done to me. Didn’t work,” he shook his head slowly.

  “And that is why you still live Sebastian St. Just. I knew what you were doing and was also pretty sure it wasn’t a bad thing to get it all out of your system. So I rationalized it to myself anyway. Hasn’t always been easy being your friend.”

  “We were intimate,” Sebastian said abruptly as if it pained him.

  “I know,” David answered simply.

  Sebastian looked up in surprise with a glint of alarm in his golden eyes.

  “Just how much do you know?”

  “Pretty much everything, except why you disappeared.”

  He looked at his friend with a strange new consideration. “You let me live. I am sitting here in your house, you neither poisoned the brandy nor tried to run me through,” he seemed to wrestle with some new knowledge. “You love me!” He blurted out with a deep inner sense of shock.

  David bolted up in righteous indignation, “I am not a molly and you damn well know it!” his face rather red.

  “No! No! I don’t mean it like that! It came out all wrong. Sit down! I don’t want to have to punch you in self-defense,” he laughed. “I just mean that I’ve always known what a great friend you are, tried not to think too much about how hard it was for you to love Jessy and still stand by me too. But this! I’m not sure I’m worthy. I haven’t always been so great have I?” he said with a certain bitter twist to his lips.

  “You’re my brother,” David said simply. “At least the closest to one I have ever had. You could have been gone twice the years and my door would still have been open for you.”

  And everything Sebastian had agonized over for the first two years, and then the double life he had led the next five, came pouring out.

  CHAPTER SIX

  She stood at the top of the ballroom stairs and looked down upon the room. Her hand rested on that of her escort, the Duke of Tamworth. In the not so distant past, she had thought never to be accepted among such a gathering. The casual assurance of her place in the world had been ripped from her at the age of eighteen. Her parent’s deaths, one closely following the other, had kept her from having a season. She hadn’t wanted one but her mother had wanted one for her. When next she had seen London she was no longer fit for a season and less than a year after that she had been a widow.

  But now, here she stood with one of the highest peers of the realm. Not for the first time, she thought life the most twisted road anyone could ever travel. It was rare, but not unknown for an actress to find a place in the Upper Ten Thousand, but usually only after marriage, not before. Her background, real widowhood and careful preservation of a respectable character had allowed this to happen.

  Of course, it was all another role. If these people knew all her story the doors would close, unless she was the wife of a powerful man. Sometimes, she was not so certain that she would really care. The dual life she led became increasingly tiresome and it was not clear to her just where it was leading.

  Sebastian’s reappearance had turned everything on its head.

  The Duke had asked her yet again to marry him and yet again she had turned the question aside. Not a no, not a yes. He was a kind man only ten years her senior; handsome in his distinguished way and not without humor, but love was an elusive thing. She knew quite surely that she did not love him and privately feared she would never love again. Marriage in this world was rarely about love and Tamworth did not really expect her to love him like a giddy schoolgirl, but she couldn’t quite face the idea of spending life with a man without loving him. She had thought maybe she could come to truly care for him and respect him at least. It was the best most society marriages managed.

  She had almost made up her mind to accept Tamworth and draw him into her confidence; until this evening. She had almost convinced herself that the security and companionship would be enough and that at last her answer would be yes. She felt she knew Edward well enough to reveal her past, and all its ramifications, with a chance of not repelling him. He seemed a good man, and discreet. It would have been so pleasant to have at last laid down all the burdens she had carried for the past years and let someone else do the heavy lifting.

  Sebastian had either come back at a very good time, or a very bad one, mere moments before she would have taken an irrevocable step. She wasn’t sure which it was yet. But his return had brought back all the feelings that had flooded her every minute and filled her with every breath as a teenager. Remembering, albeit unwillingly remembering, what love felt like stalled her decision to marry Edward. She didn’t know her own mind. She might appear collected on the outside, but inside Jessy was painfully aware her needs as a woman had been reawakened. It caused a flutter of panic just below her heart.

  Granted, the primary emotion she was currently feeling was hate, not love, but she had put strong emotion so far from her in the past years just to survive, that even that reawakening was a powerful shock. Her hand trembled with a sudden spurt of rage mixed with a mild dose of hysteria. He had actually thought she would become his mistress! Was he insane?

  “My dear, are you cold? Your hand is trembling,” Edward smiled down at her with concern.

  “No, no. I think maybe the performance this evening took more out of me than usual. I do hope I’m not coming down with something,” like love or even lust with Sebastian she thought. Oh stop thinking about him! She berated herself.

  “I see my sister over by the garden doors. I think she was rather hoping we would be making an announcement this evening and is probably dying of curiosity. We’d best go and speak with her,” Edward led her around the crush of people at the edge of the dance floor.

  “I find it hard to believe she’d hope you would marry an actress. She has been terribly kind to me but she must have hoped for you to make a much more brilliant marriage.”

  “Remember, my own mother was not nearly as well born as you and all my family has an affection for the theater. If the fourth Duke could marry whom he chose, why not me? We Tamworth’s have always admired true talent, and you my dear have a gift. What’s the good of being a Duke if I can’t make society bend just a little to my will? I can’t imagine anyone looking better in the Duchess’s tiara,” he smiled.

  They were standing with Lady Georgina, sipping champagne, and recovering from a rather vigorous set of country dances when they were interrupted. A dar
k clad figure, obviously not in evening attire, was cutting across the room toward them. Jessy recognized Mr. Burnell, Edward’s secretary. What could possibly have brought him out this late and to a ball to chase down his employer? It couldn’t be anything good. His normally pale face looked flushed and his cravat had been very hastily tied.

  “My dear,” Edward took Jessy’s hand, “I think our evening has come to an abrupt end. Nothing would bring Mr. Burnell here but a great emergency. I shall have to leave you with Georgina. You have the use of my carriage. I shall instruct my coachman when I leave.” With a final kiss of her hand he turned to join Mr. Burnell, who stood respectfully, but impatiently waiting at the edge of their group.

  “Whatever could have happened?” Lady Georgina wondered. “I know Edward and my husband have been engaged in some rather hush hush dealings of late with the Ministry, but with the war so long over what could possibly be important enough that it must be seen to at this hour?”

  “Now my lady, we must not speculate. If the war taught us anything, it was not to discuss state affairs in public.” Lord Harrow’s heavy handed advice and rather reprimanding tone brought a curl to Lady Georgina’s lips, quickly erased. As the wife of one of the highest ranking members in the ministry, she could never have been accused of indiscretion. If Harrow had been privy to half the things she had known during the war against Napoleon, he would have white hair and probably have taken to drink more than he already did.

  “Jessamy my dear, it is really too bad that Edward had to leave, but never fear, escort or not, we shall contrive to see you enjoy yourself,” Lady Georgina reassured Jessy, but immediately noticed that Jessy hadn’t heard a word she had spoken.