by V. J. Banis
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 1981, 2012 by V. J. Banis
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidebooks.com
DEDICATION
I am deeply indebted to my friend, Heather, for all the help she has given me in getting these early works of mine reissued.
And I am grateful as well to Rob Reginald, for all his assistance and support.
QUOTATION
“Now I wish you to learn of one of the strangest matters that has ever been found in writing or in the memory of mankind.... Know ye that on the right hand of the Indies there is an island called California, very close to the Earthly Paradise, and inhabited by black women without a single man among them, for they live almost in the manner of Amazons. They are robust in body with stout, passionate hearts and great strength. The island itself is the most rugged with craggy rocks in the world. Their weapons are all of gold as well as the trappings of the wild beasts which they ride after taming, for there is no other metal on the whole island.”
Garcia Ordóñez de Montalvo,
Las Sergas de Esplandián
PROLOGUE
LONDON
The window of the carriage crashed open.
“Why are we stopping here?” the woman inside demanded. “I gave express orders—”
“The horses, milady,” the driver mumbled apologetically, “they must rest. There’s water here.”
“Oh, the horses! The poor horses, I hadn’t thought—” Claire Hayes sighed and, opening the carriage door, stepped down by herself, to the dismay of the footman hurrying to help her.
It was just past dawn, the rising light turning the sky to stained glass. The driver hastily unhitched the horses and led them to a little stream that ran alongside the road. Claire could hear them drinking greedily while she paced to and fro behind the carriage.
The cool damp air smelled of the crabapples that bordered the route, and the freshly turned soil of the farmland beyond. By mid-morning they would be in London, with all its stink and smoke, and there she would....
She paused, watching a nervous redwing lift from its perch in a bullace tree. What would she do once they had reached London? Continue a stupid quarrel with Richard, who was, so far as she knew, fifty miles behind at Everly Hall?
It had seemed the only thing to do last night. With tempers flaring and angry words falling like shards of glass between them, she’d leapt into her carriage and set out pell-mell for London. Of course, Richard had been expected to follow her. It was doubly infuriating that he had robbed her of the roadside reconciliation she had envisioned. After all, she had hardly intended to end up in London alone, while practically everyone who was anyone was at Everly.
On the other hand, she couldn’t turn back now, she told herself, furious with Richard for his obstinacy. I would be a laughing stock.
“Aren’t those horses ready yet?” she demanded, coming around the carriage.
“We’re just feeding them, milady,” the driver said. “Soon’s they get their wind....”
One of the horses whinnied, pricking up his ears. In a moment Claire heard it as well—the distant rattle of hooves on the hard ground. Someone was approaching, riding swiftly.
Claire smiled to herself and walked into the roadway, watching back the way they had come.
So she was to have her way after all. It was a triumph of sorts, though a hollow one, for she felt at the same time a disconcerting sense of disappointment; this would have been the first time that Richard actually stood up to her. She made an unconscious gesture, as if dismissing that idea out of hand.
The horseman rounded a bend into sight, slowing his mount as he caught sight of them along the road. He had reined to a stop and was leaping down before she saw in the pale light that it was not Richard, but his brother Peter.
“Claire, I’ve been worrying myself sick over your traveling alone.”
“In the company of my servants.” She corrected him. “Really, Peter.”
“Yes, well, I’ve been praying every mile, just the same.”
She smiled grimly. “I rather fear prayers concerning me are rejected automatically on arrival.”
“You mustn’t talk like that,” he whispered, glancing at the servants.
“At any rate,” she added, ignoring the objection, “as you can see for yourself, I’m quite all right—or will be, as soon as I’m on the road again. Aren’t those blasted horses rested yet?” she demanded over her shoulder.
“I’ll hitch ’em up now, milady,” the answer came back.
“And Richard?” she asked, turning back to Peter.
“You haven’t seen him then?” Peter looked surprised. “He left the same time I did, only he rode cross country. He said he could make better time that way. Not knowing the way, I thought I’d be better off following the road. My guess is, if you just sit tight here for half an hour....”
“Twiddling my thumbs?” she snapped. “Thank you, no. It looks as if we’re ready to go at last.”
She started for the carriage. Peter, pausing to glance back the way he had come, followed her. “If you don’t mind, then, I’ll ride inside with you.”
She shrugged and allowed him to hand her inside. “As you wish,” she said, sinking wearily back into the leather seat. She did not say so, but she would welcome the company; her own had proved a trifle unsatisfactory.
He called for a servant to tend to his horse, and then climbed inside. The driver larruped the horses, and the carriage jolted forward.
Peter had taken the seat opposite her. “I’ll have you know you set the entire party on its ears,” he chuckled. “They would talk of nothing else. Why did you decide to leave?”
Claire frowned, realizing that for the moment she could not recall precisely what it was she and Richard had quarreled about this time.
“Because I chose to,” she snapped. “If you’re going to ride with me, Peter, for God’s sake—”
“Claire, please.”
“Oh, I am sorry,” she said, exasperated. “Though I don’t know why you don’t just take the vows if you’re going to be all that dreary about a simple oath.”
“My religion means a great deal to me,” he said soberly, his eyes meeting hers. “And I think you know why I haven’t taken vows.”
Her gaze slid away from his. “I don’t think you ought to talk about that,” she said. “I am engaged to marry your brother, after all.”
“Yes. I’d almost forgotten Richard.” He turned to stare out the window.
She studied his face in profile, thinking, not for the first time, that Peter was better looking than his brother. She knew that he was in love with her. She thought of the passion with which he embraced the Church and its teachings; if only that passion were directed into other channels....
She blushed, smiling to herself; she could just imagine what Aunt Tess would have to say about her scandalous way of thinking. If she returned Peter’s love, would his passion still be for the Church?
But there was no sense in such musings. Richard was an earl, the eighth Earl of Everly, and enormously wealthy, while Peter was only a second son, who must live on the allowance his brother provided.
Peter turned abruptly from the window, and for a fleeting moment she saw something she had never seen in his face before, something hard and intense and almost frightening. She blinked, and it was gone, so completely that she could not be certain that her lack of sleep and the gloom of the carriage had not combined to delude her.
“I can’t tell you how glad I am to have you to myself.” He smiled.
“Your company has always been welcome to me.”
“Has it?” he asked. To her surprise he leaned forward, clasping her hand between his. “Claire, I must kno
w, if there weren’t Richard...?”
“But there is Richard.” She interrupted him, alarmed by the intensity of his gaze and the fierceness of his grip. She tried to free her hand, but for a few seconds he held it tight. Then some of the tension seemed to drain from him.
“Yes, there is Richard.” He released her and sat back.
It was the last time that he touched her during the ride; yet, some hours later, when she alighted from her carriage before her aunt’s house on Prince Edward’s Square, it seemed as if her hand still burned from his grip.
* * * * * * *
“You must wake up, Claire!”
Claire reluctantly came awake. She opened one eye with effort and found that the midday sunlight still struggled to get through the closed curtains. It could have been no more than an hour since she’d crawled wearily into bed.
“Claire, don’t you hear me? You must get up,” her Aunt Tess demanded, shaking her shoulder. “Something dreadful has happened.”
Claire’s eyes, which had drifted shut, opened again. “What is it, Aunt?” she asked sleepily. “Don’t tell me the house is on fire?”
“It’s Richard.”
That brought her awake. She sat up, giving her head a toss to dislodge the cobwebs inside it. “So he’s finally come,” she said with a grim smile, but the smile faded when she saw her aunt’s face. “What is it? What’s happened?”
“He’s had an accident. They’ve brought him home on a stretcher.”
The whole square was astir with the story. There had been a quarrel between the couple and, against all reason (as the story was being circulated), Claire had started back to London in the middle of the night. Distraught, and worried over his fiancée’s safety, the Earl had had his horse saddled hastily. Too hastily, as it turned out, for somewhere in the countryside a girth had given, and the Earl had been flung from the horse. Stunned by the fall, his foot twisted in a stirrup, the poor man had apparently been dragged some considerable distance by the confused beast. The Earl’s servants, hard on his trail, had found him lying in a ravine.
Richard’s townhouse and that of Claire’s aunt shared a corner of the square, sitting at right angles to one another, so that Claire’s room actually overlooked the garden of the other house. By drawing the curtains, she could look down on the bedlam below. There had been a delay while a bed was made ready, the townhouse having been closed while Richard was at his estate for the season. As a result, it happened that Claire was at her window the moment Richard was carried across the garden by his servants.
Even at the distance, she could see the blood-soaked clothing and the ghastly, unnatural angles at which his legs were twisted. The sight, brief though it was, made her stomach turn. She had been twelve when her father died in a hunting accident. She had seen the grooms riding in with the strange, awkward bundle flung across the saddle of her father’s horse. Unsuspecting, she had run out to see for herself the cause of all the excitement.
The servants were accustomed to paying little attention to her, and they were too caught up in the drama of the moment. No one had noticed a young girl staring as the still bleeding body had been laid upon the ground, almost at her feet.
Since then the sight of blood or a wound—even a scuffed elbow—was enough to make her ill. She knew that she must go to Richard, that it would be expected of her, but the very thought filled her with dread.
“They’re saying you’re to blame,” Aunt Tess wailed, wringing her hands. “Oh, what’s to be done?”
“I shall go to Richard,” Claire said, her voice quavering.
* * * * * * *
A short time later, those who saw her hurry down the steps of her aunt’s house attributed her paleness to grief, for which they gave her due credit. Her coloration, in fact, had more to do with a sleepless night, and her dread of seeing Richard in his battered condition, but the firm tilt of her chin gave an honest indication of the courage it had required of her to make this visit.
It was Peter, however, who spared her the worst of the ordeal. She had found the house in a state of total confusion, the front door standing open and servants too busy rushing to and fro with cloths and basins of water to notice or much care who was about. Claire had started to enter Richard’s room when Peter intercepted her.
“You mustn’t go in there,” he said, taking her arm. “The doctors are trying to set his legs. It’s an ugly business, and anyway, he wouldn’t know you.”
She might have argued, but at that moment another maid came out, this one bearing a basin filled with bloody water. The sight made Claire’s legs weak, and she let Peter help her to a chair.
“This is my fault,” she murmured, echoing what others were already saying.
“No, it’s God’s will,” Peter intoned.
There was such an odd note of satisfaction in his voice that she looked up at him, surprised, but at that moment he glanced away, so that she could not read his face. When he again looked at her, his was the anxious face of the concerned brother.
“I think you’d better go now,” he said. “It will be a day or two, at least, before Richard will want to see anyone. I’ll let you know how things are.”
* * * * * * *
It was, in fact, the better part of a week before she saw Richard. The blame was not hers, for Richard had sent back a reply to her first inquiry, asking that she wait until he was somewhat better before she called on him.
She attributed the delay to his consideration of her, since he was acquainted with her aversion to such injuries, though it could not but make her look worse than ever in the neighbors’ eyes. The accident had occurred sometime in the early hours of Saturday morning, but it was not until Thursday that Claire received a note from her fiancé, telling her he would welcome a visit from her if she could manage it.
Unconsciously she had dressed in black, which only emphasized the paleness of her complexion. She was not a pretty girl by ordinary standards; the planes and hollows of her face were rather too exaggerated, and her mouth, though full lipped, was not especially large. Her large, dark eyes, however, were expressive and arresting. They could smolder with anger or passion at one moment, and then, caught unaware, gaze at one with a child’s innocence and vulnerability.
Her mother had died in childbirth. Claire had been more or less raised by her father, though his idea of the best way of doing that was to leave her as much to her own devices as possible. Still, he had tried to take some interest in her, and he was not entirely to blame if she had consequently grown up more comfortable in the company of men than women. By the time of her father’s death, she could ride like a cavalryman and handle a rifle with fair skill, though she had never learned how to brew a decent cup of tea or mastered any of the other homely skills considered so essential to womanhood.
At her father’s death she had come to live with her only relative, his widowed sister, Tess. The alliance between the independent and headstrong young girl and the flighty, old-fashioned widow had been an uneasy one. Aunt Tess had for the most part allowed Claire to do as she wished—which Claire would have done anyway. It was undoubtedly true that Aunt Tess’ enthusiasm for her niece’s upcoming marriage was greater than Claire’s own.
Which was not to say that there was not a certain affection between the two, nor that Aunt Tess, watching Claire pin a small hat to her pale yellow hair, did not feel sympathy for her.
“Shall I come with you?” she asked.
“Thank you, Aunt, but I think not.” Claire smiled gratefully. “The neighbors might think I’d only go on a leash.”
“It would do you well to pay a little more attention to what the neighbors think.” Aunt Tess scowled.
“I’m never unmindful of it,” Claire replied, letting herself out the front door.
Though it was only a matter of a minute or two from her front door to Richard’s, she was conscious of a number of curtains being discreetly edged back from windows, and of heads turning in the little park in the center of the square.
She smiled with grim amusement and went straight across, looking neither right nor left.
At first she thought her fears had been excessive. It was true that there were several ugly bruises and scrapes to be seen, but she was able to avoid looking directly at these, and for the most part Richard’s major injuries were concealed from her sight. He sat in a carved wooden chair, his legs covered with a plaid blanket. His hands and head had been swathed in so many bandages that he looked like an Egyptian mummy.
“It’s a good thing the wedding isn’t immediate,” she said. “They’d take you for one of the gifts rather than the groom.”
“I’m glad to see you taking my misfortune so well,” Richard said, a trace of irony in his voice.
“I am sorry,” she said, and meant it. “Sorry for everything, and especially seeing you like this. But it isn’t forever.”
“I’m afraid that some of it is,” he said.
Her smile faded and her eyes grew wide. “What do you mean?”
Richard tapped with his finger at the plaid blanket covering his legs. “The bones were rather shattered. The doctors were able to set some of them, but not all.”
“Do you mean you’ll have to walk with a cane?”
“Yes,” he said, adding on a lower note that she had to strain to hear, “if at all.”
“My God,” she breathed, rising from her chair and going to the windows. They were in the parlor, and from the garden outside came the scent of spring flowers, and not too far distant the clip-clip-clip of someone trimming hedges.
Richard, her husband-to-be, a cripple? It was something she’d not contemplated, though she now saw that she ought to have been prepared for the possibility. If only...surely someone might have warned her...it was so much to digest all at once.
“That’s why I put off your coming, I wanted to think how best to tell you about—about everything,” he said. “I’m afraid there’s more.”
She turned back to the room, trying without success to manage a smile. “I suppose I’d better hear it all, then.”