The Wedding Night

by Linda Needham

Jack decided that the woman had caused enough trouble; God knew where she was leading them all, “What is it you need, Miss Faelyn?”

  To be free of you, Lord Rushford. Mairey had never seen Rushford’s map before, the grasping hold he had on the riches of the earth. Nor could she have imagined that his holdings so closely ringed the Willowmoon. A chill had come upon her the moment she’d opened the door; it curled around her heart, frightening her to the marrow.

  “I’ll be right back, gentlemen,” Rushford said as he took her hand and slipped it over his arm.

  He skidded her through the foyer and into the library, scooping her into his arms and depositing her on top of his desk.

  “What the devil was that all about?” he asked fiercely, trapping her with his hands on either side of her legs.

  “I only stopped in to tell you that I had returned from the Tower.”

  “And stayed to ask about silver mining? Silver, Miss Faelyn! And the Celts!”

  “I was curious.” She’d been stunned by the vast scope of his contemptible enterprise, unable to stop her questions. Ripe with splendid news that she couldn’t tell a soul, especially not the reprehensible but dangerously attractive Viscount Rushford.

  “You picked a bloody bad time to become curious about silver mining.”

  The very best time, Rushford. “I’d never seen your map before. Where do you hide it?”

  “Damn the map! What do I say when those men stop to wonder who you are, and why you would wander into my office unannounced. They’re sure to ask why I have an astoundingly beautiful young woman living in my house.”

  “In the lodge.” Beautiful? He thought she was beautiful? Well, and that was the problem, wasn’t it—all this crackling attraction between them. She kept forgetting who he was; she needed stark reminders of the danger to everyone she loved, to her village. She needed his towering map that bled black with his mines to remind her that he was her enemy.

  “The men are your business associates, Viscount Rushford. They will certainly find out sometime that I live on the estate. Just tell them that I am one of those fusty old antiquarians, and that I’ve engaged your lodge as a place from which to study its history.”

  “Not bloody likely. You are neither fusty nor old, as every man in that room was patently aware. Not so easily dismissed.”

  Mairey felt her ears go crimson at the effort to keep from remembering the graze of his tongue against her lips.

  “If all goes well, my lord, one day soon we’ll find the Willowmoon Knot, and then I’ll be gone from your circle and no longer your problem.”

  Despite all the books and the inch-thick carpets, despite the tapestried drapes, her declaration seemed to echo in the library.

  He straightened, a tic dancing along his jaw. He looked angry, frustrated.

  “Where did you get these?” He flicked his finger across the sagging violets that her sister had surprised her with that morning.

  “From Anna. Why?”

  Rushford scrubbed his hand across his mouth, calmed considerably. “They’re wilted.”

  “It’s been a long day.”

  “Made longer by Walsham, I suppose?” He was folding bits of her skirt between his fingertips, watching her.

  “He was…manageable.” Mairey hid her amusement; Rushford truly hated the man. She wanted to suspect a heathy dose of jealousy, but that would only rouse too many other suspicions, too many impossibilities.

  “Did you find anything?”

  Mairey had to look him boldly in the eye to tell him this particular lie. It made her heart feel a little hollow.

  “Nothing at all, my lord.”

  Adam Runville’s last will and testament.

  “Will you go again tomorrow?”

  I’ll go to Donowell, as soon as I can get away from you, Lord Dragon.

  “That depends. There are other clues to follow.” While she bided her time.

  “My best to Walsham, madam. My worst to him if he should ever touch you wrongly.” He lifted her hand in his, pressed a delicious kiss against her fingertips, and then left her to return to his pillaging.

  Left her wanting so very much more.

  Jack once again made his way through the twilight toward the lodge, this time carrying a bag of flour. He was running out of excuses, and would have to confess to Miss Faelyn one day soon that he enjoyed her company outside the bounds of their project. Which would sound something like courting. Which made beads of sweat pop out on his forehead.

  Bloody hell! He was courting Mairey Faelyn! That explained the gnawing in his stomach and the battering that his heart was giving his rib cage at the moment. Courting!

  Hell. No. He wanted to talk to the woman about mining. She’d been interested enough a few days ago to interrupt his meeting; he even had a pocket full of drawings and diagrams to help demonstrate. That he would be gone for the next two days was worth a mention. But delivering the flour from the main pantry…yes, this was the best he’d come up with yet.

  Near to whistling, he followed the stream till it widened to a pool, his step lighter than it had been in years.

  Courting?

  “Shhh!”

  He stopped at the oddly hovering voice, unable to locate its source. Then came a tugging at his pant cuff. Miss Faelyn’s shadow-pale face peered up at him from behind a fallen tree, her wide eyes bright and blinking.

  “Miss Faelyn?” he asked, his voice sounding harsh in the cool night.

  “Down, Rushford, you’ll scare them away.” She tugged again at his trouser cuff, the gentle pressure bringing him to his knees beside her.

  “Scare who?” He noticed then that her sisters were sprawled like wood nymphs in the giant roots that had once anchored the tree to the bankside. The youngest was draped precariously on a drooping branch, her fingers dragging in the water.

  “The fair folk are out tonight,” Miss Faelyn said, her words dappled in amusement as she nodded toward the pool. “We’re watching them.”

  “Are you?” he asked, aware of little more than the glint of moonlight on her mouth.

  “There’s another one, Mairey!” The little voice was bright with awe, and far too loud for secrets. “Look! Look! Do you see?”

  “I do, Caro. I see four. Anna?”

  “Oh, yes, Mairey, I see them, too.”

  Jack didn’t see anything. Only the woman’s moon-bright hair. “Fair folk?”

  “There.” She pointed at the air above the pond. “Carrying lanterns for dancing at their revels.”

  Jack saw only the phosphorescence given off by decaying matter in the rushes. “Miss Faelyn, those lights are—”

  “Fairies, my lord,” she said pointedly. He could feel her eyes on him, daring him to contradict her. “What do you call them where you come from?”

  “These fairies belong to his lordship.” The middle child—Caro, if he remembered rightly, the one who had wielded the poker against him—jumped off the tree to hang off Mairey’s shoulder, her round little face between theirs, her eyes sparkling with conspiracy. “They’re your fairies, aren’t they, sir?”

  He looked again at the ethereal illuminations, their feathery lightness matching the stars for acrobatic grace. He remembered his family lying like ragdolls under the open skies, for no other reason than the fact that it was huge and magnificent and they loved each other.

  “The fairies aren’t mine, Caro,” he said, swallowing hard to keep his voice steady, “but they do pay rent to live at Drakestone.”

  “Really, sir?” He heard Mairey’s soft laughter in her voice, and his ears went hot with pride. “What coin do they use to pay you?”

  “Well, candy.” Jack caught himself smiling at her, and crossed his legs as she was doing and sat fully on the spongy ground.

  “Chocolate candy?” The littlest of the girls slid into Mairey’s lap and peered into his face, smelling of rose soap and childhood.

  The woman was waiting for his answer as readily as her sisters, her eyes sparkling, her mouth
dew-damp and stunningly inviting.

  “Yes, chocolate,” he said, delighting in the grin that she gave him, and nearly jumping out of his skin when she patted his hand.

  “Poppy’s favorite.”

  “My favorite!” The squeal of laughter would have sent all the fairies in England back into their holes, or wherever the devil they lived.

  “What’s in the sack, sir?” Caro asked, poking at the bag of flour he’d set beside him.

  “Candy for the fairies?” Poppy leaned down to look.

  “For us, too?” The elder, Anna—the flower thief who had pelted him with apples—knelt down beside him, too much the young lady to squeal or poke like the other two.

  And still Mairey said nothing, only smiled from behind Poppy’s curls and let Jack blunder around and gain his bearings.

  “The sack is only full of flour, I’m afraid.”

  “Fairy flour to make fairy cakes!” Poppy flung herself out of Miss Faelyn’s lap and into his, all pointy elbows and sticky fingers, and was circling like a puppy for a better seat.

  “Poppy, be careful with Lord Rushford.” Miss Faelyn looked pained when she saw where the girl was stepping.

  “Jack,” he said firmly. “My name is Jack. I feel a hundred years old and a thousand miles away when you call me ‘Rushford’ or ‘my lord.’”

  “Are you a hundred years old, Lord Jack?” Anna had taken Poppy’s place in Miss Faelyn’s lap.

  “Are you?” Mairey asked, smiling.

  “Thirty-three.” He grunted as Poppy dropped into place and lounged against him, a bare foot kicking the fallen tree.

  Caro was now hanging on his shoulder, draped over his back, whispering, “I know how to make fairy cakes.”

  “With honey?” he ventured.

  The little girl’s eyes grew wide, as though he possessed magic and was willing to use it to better the world. “Then you know, too! Mairey! Can we make fairy cakes tonight? Can we?”

  “It’s late for cooking cakes, girls,” Mairey said, to a chorus of groans. “Aunt Tattie will be asleep.”

  “We’ll be quiet!”

  “Yes, I can imagine that happening.” She raised a brow at Jack, inviting him to remember the sounds of a household full of children.

  “Please, Mairey,” Anna said, old enough to rally her patience, but ready to spring away like a gazelle.

  “All right. If you’re quiet.”

  Anna snatched up the bag of flour and dashed down the shadowy path with Caro on her tail.

  Miss Faelyn got up, dusting off her skirt. “Will you come, my lord?”

  He didn’t see how he could get away. The realization that he didn’t want to came over him in a rush of yearning. Poppy had a hold of his neck, and Mairey had a grip on his heart.

  Where else would he go?

  “I’m not any good with a cook pot, Miss Faelyn.”

  “I know.” Mairey could well imagine her dragon curled up in her aunt’s kitchen, warming his belly on her stove, snoozing after inhaling a plateful of cakes—his mouth sweet with stolen honey. She ought to have sent him back to the main house for safekeeping. But he had managed to stand so easily with Poppy in his arms, and the little scamp seemed extraordinarily attached to the giant.

  Ah, Poppy. I know the feeling too well.

  “I can’t stay long,” he said, as though he knew her thoughts. “I need to be off to Cornwall before daylight.”

  Mairey felt her face go pale, and hoped that he couldn’t see in the near darkness. “Until when?”

  “Two days, maybe a little longer.”

  Long enough for a trip to Donowell without him—a prospect that didn’t rest as comfortably as it might have a few weeks ago.

  “Come, my lord, we’ve got fairy cakes to make.”

  “Indeed.”

  Chapter 9

  Mairey made Donowell by late afternoon the next day, and found a room in a small inn on the sea cliff, run by a pair of elderly maidens. She was standing in the nave of Holy Martyr’s Church a half hour later.

  Rushford was in Cornwall. She had followed him secretly to the train to be sure, then left on a different track. Yet still she watched over her shoulder for him, feeling like a sneak-thief. Her father had spent all his life plotting out the places where the queen’s stolen treasury had been recovered. It had taken Mairey less than two weeks to find Adam Runville, his will, and a list of his possessions that meant the world to her cause:

  …six gilt knives, bonne-handled; one silv’red disk, anciently ornamented; one brass ewere…

  One silv’red disk, anciently ornamented.

  All because of Rushford—the very man who must never see the fruit of all his beneficence. She would spend the remainder of today and tomorrow following Runville’s trail, and then return to Drakestone without him knowing that she had ever come.

  The deception made her jaw hurt and her heart ache.

  But she would persist, for the Willowmoon Knot. For love and devotion, for her village, for the glade, for her sisters and her father.

  She forced the chant into her thoughts, trying to rid them of the sound of Jack’s close and gentle laughter, and the disarming way it reached down into her chest and lifted the breath right out of her. The way the moonlight made his eyes sparkle, made his fine teeth gleam through his so very reluctant smile.

  He’d won Poppy with that smile, and had threatened Mairey’s composure when her small sister had slipped her hand into his and dragged him along the path toward the lodge.

  He’d looked lost and found again at the same time, and if she hadn’t known better, she might have believed she’d seen tears welling like stars in his eyes.

  Impossible dragon.

  Filling up her mind with more productive images—of slag heaps and gaunt children—she shouldered her bag of foolscap and carbon and went in search of Sir Adam Runville.

  Holy Martyr’s had once been a priory, its chapel an echo of Canterbury cathedral. In the long centuries since, it seemed that every family in the parish had commissioned a bronze plaque or stone marker to commemorate the loss of a loved one. The walls and floor were nearly paneled with them. She hoped Adam Runville’s heirs felt as much dedication to his memory.

  She scoured the walls, reading every plaque, walking the length and breadth of the entire sanctuary, deciphering the worn letters in the crypt stones embedded in the floor. She checked the Lady Chapel and the transepts, rounded every pillar, and was about to take her search outside into the churchyard when she remembered the tower.

  Two winding stories later, in the middle of the spiraling steps, just below a narrow arching window, she found the name that made her heart quicken.

  Adam Runville. Dates, titles, praise, and prayers for his soul. The thieving devil. Did your queen ever learn of your duplicity? And was that the Willowmoon Knot, Sir Runville—the “silv’red disk, anciently ornamented?”

  Wishing her father were here to share her success, Mairey dropped her hat at her feet, then unrolled a thick piece of parchment and fished around in her bag for a block of rubbing carbon.

  She almost wished Jack were here with her. Not the rapacious Viscount Rushford of Rushford Mining and Minerals, but the Jack who had helped her make fairy cakes with her sisters.

  By the time Aunt Tattie had come down the stairs, roused from her bed by the unstoppable merriment, everyone and everything was sprinkled with flour.

  Griddle cakes, the man had called them, best eaten with thick maple syrup on a cold morning in the Yukon. Poppy never left his side; Anna was completely in love; Caro had found a best friend; Aunt Tattie was flirting wildly; and Mairey had wanted to cry.

  She still did, because there was no cake-making Jack. He was part of her fairy tales. Dragons never won the maiden—she had best remember that.

  Mairey fit the parchment against the bronze plaque, squaring her arm and elbow across the top edge to hold it fast against the wall, and started rubbing the block lightly over the page. As awkward as it was, there
was no better way to copy a bronze. The block hit the rim of the raised crest beneath and bounced out of her fingers. She muttered, “Blazing toads,” as the piece rolled two steps down the spiraling stairs—

  And up against a pair of expensive boots, dusty and dreadfully familiar.

  “Do let me help you, Miss Faelyn.”

  She looked up into Rushford’s eyes, feral and dangerous, and utterly cold.

  “How did—”

  “How did I find you?” He covered her hand against the wall and the parchment with his own, hot-palmed and huge, invading the cool spaces between her fingers. His eyes were shuttered and as dark as the midnight of his hair, gleaming blue-black in the evening light of the window. “Your sisters thought I ought to see that you hurried home to them. I thought so, too.”

  Mairey couldn’t read him at all, he was closed down so tightly.

  “You were gone to Cornwall,” she said, trying to erase his suspicions with a smile that felt as feeble as it must look.

  He put the lump of carbon in the short span between them. “Show me.”

  “Show you what?” Runville’s will? How could he know about it? And what the devil would she tell him?

  “Show me how to take a carbon rubbing. Isn’t that what this method is called, Miss Faelyn?” His question brushed against her ear as he leaned in to take a closer look.

  “A rubbing, yes.” Her fingers were cloddish and trembling as she took the carbon from him. “You start like this,” she said, feeling his gaze shift to her mouth and then to her eyes. “Hold the carbon flat and…and work the edge of the letters.”

  Her hair was a curling mess after all her travels, her plait fallen to the front, and in the way of her rubbing. But she was caught like a rabbit, unable to shift in any direction without moving against the man.

  “Is the Knot here in Donowell, Miss Faelyn?” He lifted her plait off her shoulder and smoothed the curls at her nape, making her breath rattle. “Is that why you came here?”

  “I don’t know yet where the Knot is.”

  “But Runville had it at one time, didn’t he?” Rushford shifted his length to the same stair as hers, and she was caught even closer, his knee bent into the back of her own, his weight and warmth against her skirt heating through to her drawers and collecting like honey low in her belly.