by Jo Beverley
“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 familia
r, 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.”
“I know.” He had to speak the painful truth. “I’d welcome a chance to do better, but I have committed myself to Lady Anne, alas.”
Her smile faded. “Alas?”
“Alas. Perhaps it would be better if I pretended otherwise, but I can only give you honesty. On my first day at Crag Wyvern I wrote to her and as good as offered marriage. I didn’t come here with it settled in my mind, but I was drifting that way. It didn’t seem to matter whom I married. She is a sweet young lady who deserves a husband. When I wrote the letter, however, I was using her—as a shield against you. Which she now is. Alas.”
“And otherwise?” she asked.
Honesty, honesty. It could break his heart and hers. “Otherwise, I would have hope, at least, of winning you for my wife, my friend, my helpmeet all my days.”
She turned suddenly away, hand still holding back her hair. From her stance he guessed she was fighting tears.
He walked up to her and put his arms around her from behind. “Once, you threw away what we had. Here, in Irish Cove. Three days ago I repeated the folly. It would seem we are tragic lovers after all.”
He leaned down to kiss her wind-chilled neck. She lowered her arm slowly, letting her hair blow as it willed.
“All my life,” she said, “I’ve been a fighter against fate. I’ve fought to make things be as I willed them to be, and what do I have?” She extended her open hands. “Wind between my fingers. But even so,” she said, clenching those hands, “I am tempted again. Tempted to fight this.”
He shook his head against hers. “I cannot draw back. A few months ago another Rogue, Lord Middlethorpe, courted Lady Anne. He didn’t go so far as to offer marriage, but it was understood. She expected an offer, and he planned to make one. But then he met another. Soon the other woman was with child, and so one honorable necessity overrode the other.”
She turned roughly in his hands. “I could be with child.” But then she squeezed her eyes shut. “No, no! I don’t want you that way, Con, with dishonor and regret around us.”
He kissed her closed lids. “If you are with child, I must marry you, but I cannot in honor wish for it. And Lady Anne and her family will expect more from me before you can know. I told her I’d return in a week. I confess, I don’t see how to handle any of this with decency, never mind elegance.”
She leaned her head against his shoulder. “I’m praying not to be with child.” He heard a soft laugh. “All my life, above anything, I have wanted to be normal. I wanted to be like my cousins, like David, who fits comfortably into the ordinary world. But a wildness beats in me. It drives me to disregard rules and conventions, to seek the open spaces and adventures, even as I long to be like others, to belong. I wanted a normal courtship and wedding, but my wild side threw me into your arms. Then made me tear us apart.”
He held her tighter. “I don’t want you to be anything other than as you are, Susan.”
“But I seem to carry the seeds of destruction within me.”
He deliberately chuckled. “I think you’ve been living too long in Crag Wyvern, love. Real life isn’t so melodramatic.”
“It feels it to me.” She raised her head to look at him, and he saw tears glittering on the rims of her eyes. He didn’t mention them. “Is there no chance that Lady Anne will refuse your suit?”
He felt her pain because it mirrored his own. “I don’t know. It did occur to me that she might be less willing to marry Viscount Amleigh than to marry the Earl of Wyvern, but I don’t think she is so petty. We got along together very comfortably, and I believe that is what she wants. It was what I wanted a week ago. Or thought I wanted.”
Gulls gave their sobbing cries, swirling past on the winds.
He might as well tell her the rest of it. She’d find out one day. “Anne lives quietly because she was born with a twisted foot. It prevents her dancing, or walking long distances, so she doesn’t have many opportunities for flirtation and courtship, but she wants marriage, I think.”
He saw it register with her as it must. This was not an opponent she could with honor fight.
“It makes me think of breaking a leg and becoming crippled, too.”
He laughed because it was a joke, and because it was so very much a part of her to express what many would keep shamefully secret.
Despite the chill he could stay here forever, but the sun was beyond the horizon, and the pink and pearly remnants of light were beginning to fade to gray.
“We must head back,” he said. “We don’t want to be out in the dark.”
She moved apart from him and openly wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. He pulled out his handkerchief and she took it to dry her eyes and blow her nose. “I don’t want to go back,” she said.
“But we have no choice.”
“I do. I’m going home to the manor.”
After a moment, he nodded. “It is time. I won’t ask you to persuade your brother. It isn’t an easy burden to take up, and I understand all his scruples. Will you come up to Crag Wyvern tomorrow to join in the paper hunt? Whatever your brother decides, we need to find those papers and deal with them.”
“Yes, of course.” She took his hand and they walked back up the beach, soft pebbles shifting beneath their feet. “I don’t know what I want him to do, either. I see all the advantages, but I wonder if there’s a curse to being Earl of Wyvern.”
“Curses can be broken. Perhaps one of those books says how.” He looked up the narrow path. “Talking of curses, I think going up is worse than going down.”
“The alternative is to drown, sir.” With a saucy grin, she set off, agile as a cat. What could a man do but follow?
“Most battles are fought on fairly flat ground, you know,” he called after her.
She only laughed.
There was still laughter, and that was a miracle.
At the top, however, looking down at the place that had been so crucial in their lives, she said, “Yours is the hardest part.”
“Why?”
She looked at him. “Because you will do your best to be a good, loving, contented husband to Lady Anne, whereas I will be free to be a sour, eccentric spinster.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him on, back toward the rest of their lives. “You can’t imagine how relieved I am at the thought of not sleeping another night in Crag Wyvern.”
“Oh, can’t I?”
Though I’d sleep in hell itself, he thought, to spend my nights with you.
Chapter Twenty-five
He woke the next morning to a subtle awareness that Susan was not in the house, and that they had decided their future.
In harmony, but apart.
She’d spoken of the urge to fight, and it raged in him too. Fight to seize the treasure from the jaws of fate. Duty and discipline ruled, however. He had taken this course of his own free will, and since it involved another, he must follow it.
He got out of bed and managed to summon some enthusiasm for the day’s paper hunt. On a simple level it could be amusing, and if David Kerslake accepted his part, it would pave the way to a kind of freedom, at least from Crag Wyvern.
Hawk was here, he remembered, and Nicholas had promised to come. Susan, too. It could, for a miracle, even b
e a day of lighthearted fun. In the presence of outsiders, so much about the mad earl now seemed ridiculous rather than horrific.
He pushed to the back of his mind all thoughts about the future, as he’d so often pushed away thoughts of death and maiming before battle.
He found Race in the breakfast room, consuming his usual enormous meal, and then Hawk walked in. Con performed the introductions.
Hawk sat, saying, “We met, I think, at Fuentes de Onoro.”
“Lord, yes,” Race said, for once looking a little awed. “I was a cornet then. I’m surprised you remember.”
Con smiled. “Don’t flatter yourself. Hawk rarely forgets anything.”
“It’s a curse,” Hawk agreed. “But in fact, de Vere was left in charge when his senior officers were wounded, and I had to leave the orderly retrieval of his troop in his hands. Did what he was told precisely and efficiently. That is truly rare.”
“Obedient to a fault,” Race said, seeming to have recovered his normal manner. “Which brings me to ask, my lord, if you have any particular duties for me today.”
Con realized that Race didn’t know what was going on. Once the maids had replenished the dishes, he explained.
“Beautiful,” Race said, with all the glow of the cherubim looking on the face of the Lord. “I wish I had known this Lady Belle.”
“She’d have eaten you for dinner,” Con said.
“Oh, no, I don’t think so.”
And on consideration, Con didn’t either.
After another mouthful of thick ham, Race asked, “Did Lady Wyvern come up to Crag Wyvern shortly before she left?”
“I think Susan mentioned that, yes,” Con said. “Why?”
Race smiled again. “She killed him, of course. Wonderful woman. He’d broken their pact and harmed the man she loved, so she came up here for vengeance. I assume he would let her into the sanctum, and while there, she slipped something deadly into one of his favorite ingredients.”
“Because, of course,” Hawk said with the same delight at the puzzle, “she could not have heard of his death on her travels, and yet according to your account, she assumed it in her letter to her daughter, yes?”
“Yes.” Con absorbed it. “Of course she killed him. She is nothing if not consistent in her allegiances. She probably also calculated the advantages of having the influence of the Earl of Wyvern working for her—especially if it was her son. One wonders what will become of Australia—”