The Wedding Night

by Linda Needham

  Her father had shown her every secret known to the Faelyn family; how to interpret every resource stored in his library at Galcliffe College. She had studied his crumbling manuscripts and the sketches of Celtic drawings; she’d learned about ancient silversmithing and mining, learned also that the Willowmoon silver had passed into history more than a millennium ago, leaving behind just a few faded references to its worth. How the Knot had turned up in London, no one knew, but it had last been seen in the treasury of the first King Charles.

  The Faelyns had been tracing it for the past two hundred and twenty years, trying to return it and its dangerous map to its rightful place in the glade. But they’d long ago come to a sturdy, impossibly high wall: their resources were exhausted. And now Mairey was alone with the burden of finding it.

  The agencies of government were unwilling to open their doors without an explanation—and that was impossible without giving away the location of the glade. The family had long ago scoured all the scholarly resources; the Church campaigned against the ancient pagans; and most museums were reluctant to reveal their own secrets.

  Still and all, partnering with Rushford was impossible, no matter what doors he could open for her. She had successfully escaped him and his beguiling temptations; the Willowmoon and its secret were intact.

  For the moment. That skin-prickling thought sent her flying through the coal-rubbled streets of Daunton, past the forlorn-looking train station and down a winding country road. Balforge would have to wait to have his folktale collected from Orrin and his friends; Mairey wanted to be miles from the beast by sundown.

  She would confront Dean Hayward and his indiscretion next week, letting her temper cool. His threat to sell her services was as ridiculous as it was barren. She was a grown woman and owed nothing to the college but a token rent on the dismal old chamber that housed her library. She had no intention of interrupting her trip just so that she could skin Hayward’s ears for his foolishness. The sooner she finished, the sooner she could be home in Oxford with her three sisters and Aunt Tattie.

  Besides, Mairey knew Hayward well enough to recognize one of his sentimental but wholly unsubtle attempts to lend a hand to the children of his old friend and colleague.

  God save her from such good works.

  But if by some horrible chance the trustees had stolen her father’s endowment and she needed ready cash to house and feed her sisters, there were plenty of marketable items in the Faelyn collection of artifacts and oddments. Treasures enough to sell to museums and collectors; all moderately valuable pieces of art, but not in the least sentimental.

  Her father would understand and applaud.

  At all costs, Mairey, but for the family.

  Her heart and all her hopes for her sisters were housed in the ceiling-high shelves of the Faelyn library.

  Knowledge. Wisdom.

  She’d never known just how precious—and how dangerous—a bit of knowledge could be until she met Jackson Rushford.

  She made the next village just as night fell. She dropped into a sagging bed at the Greenleaf Coaching Inn and slept fitfully through the night, her dreams tangled in the exquisitely amorous coils of a dark-eyed dragon.

  Chapter 3

  Mairey spent the next week coaxing folktales from irascible cotters and reclusive crafters, until her Gladstone was brimming with field notes and bits of village folklore.

  A blessedly full week with not a sign of Lord Jackson Rushford—curse his blighted soul.

  His image trespassed at will, though—that awakening sensation of being so completely surrounded by him in the dim light of the mill. His scent of danger, and the touch of his breath drifting through her hair, his untamed largeness, his fingers tracing the edge of her ear. She’d had no place to run then, and, she realized now, no real thought to do so.

  But she hadn’t backed down—and in the end, Rushford hadn’t followed.

  Which should have reassured her. But the man’s conspicuous absence, his easy acceptance of her final rebuff, only caused her to watch over her shoulder every minute, guarding against the dragon at the door.

  By the time she returned to Oxford she was exhausted, her nerves wrung dry and her heart aching from missing her sisters.

  The broad, comfortable lawns of Galcliffe College were a ruddy orange in the midsummer sunset. Just ten minutes in her library to unload her Gladstone and sift through her mail, and then she’d return home to her family.

  “Miss Faelyn! You, Mairey!”

  Dean Hayward. Not now! She wasn’t ready to raise her sword and do battle.

  But she turned toward his familiar warbling hail and watched him padding down the gravel path toward her, his polished shoes winking out from beneath his dusty black robes, a cheery smile on his leathery face. He was more than three times her age, twice her weight, with all the power and prestige of an Oxford dean—and the coward had crumbled like a shortbread biscuit the moment Rushford had pressed him.

  “Mairey, my dear, dear Mairey!” Hayward beamed at her as though he hadn’t a notion that he’d nearly ruined her life. “Your travels have pinked your cheeks.”

  “And I shall tweak yours clean off if you dare betray me again.” She dropped her Gladstone at her feet.

  “What is this, my dear? What have I done?”

  “Rushford!” Mairey focused her glare past Hayward’s spectacles into the injured hazel of his eyes. “Does the name sound at all familiar?”

  “Ah, yes, my girl! Quite an arresting development, eh?” Hayward reached into the pocket of his robe and took out his ever-present flower snips.

  “Arresting, sir? You nearly stripped me and my father of our life’s work—took the food from my family’s table.”

  “Nonsense, Mairey.” He carefully deadheaded a rose that had bloomed and crinkled to pale brown in the time that Mairey had been away. “I would never do such a thing to you or to your father. I loved Erasmus like a brother—love you like a niece.”

  “Dean Hayward, you set a barbaric industrialist on me. That isn’t love.”

  Hayward shook his head. “Mairey, Mairey, you misunderstand. Lord Jackson Rushford is a very wealthy man. Your father spent his life and his fortune looking for all sorts of fanciful things. I could offer Erasmus little help in all the years of our friendship. He wasn’t the most companionable of our lecturers. Reclusive, I would say, until he needed something. He complained to me unendingly about the resources that he lacked, that he wished he had access to. I could do little; Galcliffe College is not a Merton or a Balliol. Research money has always been granted to loftier ventures than his: science and manufacturing, exploration. And after your father died—”

  “It became my turn. And I’m doing just fine with his endowment. And if it comes to it, I’ll do fine without it!”

  “Yes, my dear, but the trustees thought it best to, well—”

  “The trustees thought what?” Mairey felt a wobbling roll of fear in her stomach as the flush on Hayward’s cheek brightened to well-defined blotches.

  “Galcliffe is in a sorry state, Mairey. You know that. Rushford’s first payment for your services will keep us open for another ten years, at least. Maybe longer!”

  “My services are not for sale, Dean Hayward. I will leave the college if I must!”

  “But Rushford is expecting you to—”

  “Let him rot.” Mairey’s smile came easily, triumphant and at peace with the simplicity of it all. The Willowmoon was safe. She’d never see the man again, never again be tempted. “Now excuse me, Dean Hayward”—she started up the short walk—“I’ve been gone three weeks and have a lot to catch up on.”

  She took hold of the door latch, but the handle wouldn’t budge.

  “Mairey?…” Hayward’s voice had become wheedling and whiny.

  She ignored him and tried the door again. Still nothing, though the entire mechanism looked as if it had been polished quite recently.

  “You can make up for your great gaffe, sir, by having the door p
laned to meet the jamb.” Mairey wedged her shoulder against the panel, gave a shove, but came away with an aching arm and a colossal misgiving.

  “Mairey, I couldn’t stop him.”

  “Stop whom?” Mairey didn’t like Hayward’s ashen pallor any more than she liked the prickling chill that lifted the hair at her nape.

  “Rushford.”

  “You couldn’t stop him from what?” Yes, Rushford was the misgiving, and the anger that grew hotter at the tips of her ears.

  “He wanted…”

  “He wanted what?” She’d been privy to the power of Rushford’s wants but was having difficulty finding sympathy for Hayward’s fear.

  He sighed and handed her a brassy new key.

  She kept back a sailor-blue curse. “He’s locked me out of my own library?”

  “Well…”

  “May the man find adders in his marmalade!” Mairey grabbed the key out of Hayward’s cold fingers, crammed it into the lock, and yanked down on the latch. She shoved hard, and the door flew open to a vast, echoing emptiness.

  Stunned, Mairey stepped inside, her heart gone hollow.

  The orange light of the nearly spent evening spilled in from the tall, barren windows, painting soft stripes across a floor stripped of its carpets and the threadbare tracks her father and her grandfather before him had paced into their delicate patterns.

  The towering shelves that had once held thousands of books were empty. Gone were the cluttered curio cabinets and the gouged, ink-stained worktables, her father’s leather chair with its caressing imprint, and the partner’s desk they had shared.

  Gone.

  A sob filled her chest and found voice in her throat. Tears slid down her cheeks.

  Rushford.

  “He came a week ago, Mairey.” Hayward clung to the door handle. “With a half-dozen men and three lorries.”

  She swabbed away the tears, cursing them, too. “You let Jackson Rushford steal my father’s library!”

  The Willowmoon!—he had it all! Every word. Every letter. Drawings, maps, runes!

  “Rushford promised me that he would pay you well, my girl.”

  “Pay me?”

  He dipped his chin and shook his head. “Oh, Mairey, I’m a wicked man.”

  You’re a fool, she wanted to say. But she knew that wasn’t true and would only hurt him more deeply. Hayward wasn’t privy to her father’s secrets, and certainly not to hers. How could he have known the havoc he would cause? Better that he didn’t pry.

  “Never mind, Dean Hayward.” She slid her palm across the windowsill. Clean. Stripped bare. Sterile. The room was cleaner than she’d ever seen it, from ceiling to floor. Not a trace of the Faelyn family remained. “I’ll go to London in the morning. I’ll find Drakestone House and rescue my library, or Rushford will pay dearly.”

  “How?”

  “A thief is a thief. I don’t care who he knows, God or the queen.”

  “Do you mean to call down the police on Jackson Rushford?”

  She couldn’t risk the authorities—too many questions.

  “I have no choice but to confront the dragon in his lair.”

  And not a clue as to what she would do when she got there.

  Her temper still charringly hot, Mairey let herself into the little house in Holly Court wanting nothing more than to see her sisters, to hold them and never let go. But it was nearly ten, and they would be fast asleep and not expecting her until tomorrow. She could hear Aunt Tattie’s nickering snore from above stairs, her day’s work accomplished and her three “baby ducks” snuggled down safely to their dreams.

  God, how she loved coming home to them. Home, where even the playful shadows and the creaking silence seemed a fond welcome, where the scent of tomorrow morning’s bread cooling on its rack made her stomach grumble.

  Tomorrow.

  Tomorrow was Monday. Rushford’s Monday. Damn the man!

  Mairey sat her satchel on the hall chair and was about to make a foray into the kitchen for a cup of tea when she heard familiar whispering curling toward her from abovestairs. Three ghostly little figures in glimmering flannel appeared on the landing. One by one they glided down the steps, their small hands clinging to the rail, but not very well to their giggles.

  Mairey knew these errant spirits as she knew her own heart and loved them as she loved life itself. They were the joy in everything she did, her hope for tomorrow, her sacred promise to her parents—and the reason she would defend the secret of the Willowmoon and the glade from men like Rushford.

  She stood as still and unnoticed as the spriggy wallpaper, biting hard on her tongue to keep herself from giggling as her sisters descended the stairs.

  First Anna, almost regal at ten, her pale hair veiled by what looked like the sheer lace curtains that usually hung in Mairey’s bedroom window.

  “Shhhhhhh—hush your squealing, Caro!” she said none too quietly herself. “Aunt Tattie will hear you.”

  “Then wait for me, Anna!” Caroline whispered, her earnest, ghostly, eight-year-old gait hobbled by a pair of Mairey’s boots. Her best and newest!

  And then little Poppy, dragging Mairey’s bed pillow behind her—barely six, but quick to study mischief from her sisters.

  Three little whirlwinds—her chamber was no doubt turned topsy again. Poor Aunt Tattie.

  The scamps thundered into the dining room and headed for the kitchen.

  Mairey let the door to the butler’s pantry close softly on its swinging hinges; waited until she heard voices rising in the kitchen, the clinking of the honey crock, and the rattle of the spoon drawer and the plates. She made her way quietly through the pantry and leaned against the kitchen jamb.

  “I’ll cut,” Anna said, the bread knife already halfway through the first inch-thick slice. “Do keep your fingers out of the way, Poppy.”

  “They’re hungry.”

  “So’s this knife. You best hurry and get the butter. The honey crock, Caro!”

  Caroline only grunted around the fingerful of honey she’d just stuck into her mouth.

  They were so busy raiding the bread keep that Mairey was completely unnoticed as she drew her coattails up over her head, hunched her back, and stepped into the kitchen.

  “Ah, me tasty little morsels,” Mairey said in her best wicked-old-witch cackle. “You’ll give me tea with my bread and honey, or I’ll eat you all up!”

  There was shocked silence, then in the very next tick of the kitchen clock, three terrified little voices rose up in a single, glass-shattering scream, rattling kettles and pie tins, and making Professor Martin’s old spaniel bark two houses down.

  They screamed until three pairs of eyes found her, and then three smiles lit her heart.

  “Mairey!” Their screams of delight pierced the night again and brought on another howl from the dog.

  Mairey was tackled full-on by her sisters. They fit perfectly into her arms, and she knelt to collect and kiss them all.

  “You’re home a day early! Hooray!” Caro planted a honey-smeared kiss on the side of Mairey’s nose, then danced off in a melody of “hooray, hooray, hoorays.”

  “You should have told us!” Anna hugged Mairey, her face flushed from her raiding, the lacy window curtain forgotten in a pool beneath the worktable.

  “Only a half-day, sweet.” Mairey slid her fingers through Anna’s hair, wondering when its baby-fineness had thickened to ropes of silk, full of sorrow that she hadn’t noticed. “But if pirating is what I’ll find when I return unexpectedly, I think I’ll keep my comings and goings a secret.”

  “You’re going away again, “Ree?” Poppy had fastened her arms like warm shackles around Mairey’s neck, and rubbed her cheek against Mairey’s. “Please, stay! Pleeease!”

  No thanks to Rushford, she’d be gone again in the morning. “I’ll be away for only another day, Poppy. I promise.”

  “Ducks, ducks! My baby ducks! I heard screaming!” Auntie’s voice found them well before she came through the pantry, wieldi
ng the poker from her bedroom stove. “Anna, what is this? What—well.”

  The lanky woman stopped at the door and shook her head gravely, sending its white blossoms of cloth-tied curls waving.

  “Mairey Faelyn, you’re as naughty as your sisters!” Tattie bent down to Mairey and stuck out her cheek to be kissed.

  “Haven’t I always been?” Mairey gave her a quick peck and laughed as she got to her feet with Caro’s sticky-handed help, though Poppy held on like a cat clinging to a buoy in a raging sea.

  Tattie nuzzled Mairey’s cheek and then Poppy’s. “Mairey didn’t say she was comin’ in tonight, did she, my Popper?”

  “My plans changed suddenly.” Radically. Unalterably.

  “Changed how, dear?”

  Mairey hated to dodge her aunt’s question. But Tattie was her mother’s sister, as unaware of the Willowmoon and its secrets as anyone else in the world—except a certain dragon. The woman was as possessive as a lioness when it came to her nieces. Widowed since Waterloo, when she’d lost her handsome young groom, the woman had never had children of her own but had made up for it in the last six years.

  “I’m going to London tomorrow—”

  “London?” Anna grabbed Mairey’s hand and held it tightly. “Can we go with you, Mairey? Can we please? I want to see Kew Gardens again—the orchids.”

  “The zoo! The zoo! The zoo!” Caro threw her arms around the lot of them, jumping and making monkey noises.

  Poppy’s grip around Mairey’s neck tightened, and the girl climbed higher in her arms. “I just want Mairey.”

  “I’m sorry, loves. You can’t come with me this time.”

  “Next time then?” Anna laced her fingers together in girlish prayers, bouncing on her toes, nearly as tall as Mairey.

  “If it’s at all possible, sweet. Don’t I always keep my promises?” Especially to little girls whose hearts deserved a daily dose of wonder. She tried; oh, how she tried.

  Anna kissed her. “You’re the best sister in the world, Mairey.”

  “What’s in London, Mairey Faelyn?” Tattie had perched her spectacles on the nub end of her nose, great lenses that turned her nondescript hazel eyes into piercing inquisitors.