by Laura London
He pulled her close into his arms. “Kyler and I returned to Fern Court and found you’d been gone all afternoon, and knowing you as I have come to…” He stroked her hair. “… it didn’t take long to figure out where you might have disappeared to. At the Castle we found a servant willing to tell us, for a small fee, that Crant and Ottmar had set out not five minutes before with a pack of trail hounds. It seemed only too likely that you and Lorraine were their quarry, so we’ve been following the trail behind their lanterns.”
One of the hounds appeared out of the smoke, nosing an aimless pattern around the huddled group, growling querulously, then whining as it sighted them.
“Oh, Justin, it’s him! They’re coming!” said Lynden.
“Good,” said Melbrooke, his face hard. “I have something to say to him.” There was a heartening confidence in his voice, and Lynden found herself rather childishly clutching at his hand.
“At least you’re angry with someone other than me,” she said with a tired measure of her usual impishness.
Two more sniffling hounds appeared out of the smoke and suddenly Crant and Ottmar were coming toward them, with the fire at their backs, like demons emerging from the mouth of hell. Melbrooke stood, facing Crant; Kyler crouched near Lorraine like a panther ready to spring. Crant and Wishke were armed with pistols, which they trained on the group.
“Percy, you’ve been tramping around the mountains since sunset,” Melbrooke said calmly. “You think you can intimidate us with pistols full of damp powder? They’ll never fire.”
“The accuracy of your perceptions is a never-ending source of delight to your friends, my dear Justin.” Crant lowered his pistol and shrugged. “So the match is even.”
“Bah!” exclaimed Ottmar. “This is good expensive powder and I have kept the pistols in my official Prussian army holster. We’ll see about damp powder.” He stretched his arm, taking aim straight at Kyler, and pulled the trigger. It clicked worthlessly. “Damn no-good British powder.”
“Blame it on the British weather,” said Crant. “But, Justin, it seems you’ve made the acquaintance of my illegitimate son.”
“Your legitimate nephew,” replied Melbrooke. “As you know, Percy, I’ve no taste for melodramatics, but I find myself in the position to tell you that, after years of thinking you were merely a common cynic, I find you are, in fact, a blackguard. We have found the proof needed for this young gentleman”—he indicated Kyler—“to assume his rightful place as holder of the Crant title and lands.”
“So. You have been busy, haven’t you?” said Crant. His eyes narrowed into dark slits as he rocked back slightly on his heels, dropping his pistol to the ground. “Documents? Marriage lines? Is that what you have?”
He turned his dark gaze on Kyler. “But perhaps I can prove that they were forgeries, and that your poor sainted mother was no better than a whore.”
Fury transformed Kyler. He uncoiled from his crouch and stalked across the turf separating him from Crant, his face a mask of rage. “You jackal’s whelp! I’ll make you eat those words…” Crant’s sardonic smile froze as Kyler’s hands closed on his throat, and the two men grappled. The hounds barked and the sheep scattered.
Lord Melbrooke’s gently bred young bride, her clothes torn and filthy, her hair in wild streaming ribbons about her face, struggled to her knees, waved both scraped fists excitedly in the air, and screamed, “Bravo, Kyler! Have at ’em!”
Ottmar Wishke moved toward the fray to be intercepted by Melbrooke who swung a fist straight and true into the military man’s ample stomach, and took a crude but powerful blow from Wishke in return. The dogs were yapping and howling frenziedly now, tails straight, and the rams were bounding and kicking through the four combatants. Lynden managed to grab the collar of one hound and held it as it strained away. Crant and Kyler crashed through the wall of the sheep shack, knocking the flimsy structure flat, while Ottmar came back at Melbrooke, heaving a giant rock nearly as big as a man’s head. Lynden screamed a warning, and Melbrooke ducked in time as the rock bounced heavily from his shoulder with a crunching sound, leaving a patch of blood oozing from his silk shirt. His wound did not seem to faze him as he gained ground on Ottmar, pounding his head and body with a merciless rain of punishing, lightninglike blows. They were treading dangerously near the edge of the dark gully—black silhouettes against the red and bright yellow flames. Ottmar picked up a jagged branch and swung it at his adversary, breaking it on Melbrooke’s upraised arm. At this moment an excited ram ran behind the two, brushing Wishke’s legs; fatigued from the struggle, the Prussian lost his balance, and, as Lorraine shrieked and Melbrooke made a futile lunge to catch him, he pitched backward over the gully’s edge into the fatal blackness. Any death cry or thud of his body hitting the rocks below was obliterated by the roar and crackle of the burning heath.
Lynden scrambled to her feet and ran into Melbrooke’s arms. “I’m glad, so glad it wasn’t you,” she cried.
Crant and Kyler were still fighting amid the ruins of the shepherd’s shack. Lynden picked up the branch Ottmar had swung at Melbrooke and ran back to the struggling pair; but Melbrooke restrained her from entering the fray.
“Crant is weakening,” said Melbrooke, sliding an arm around his wife’s shoulder. “Let Kyler have his fight.” Indeed, it was true: The older man was reeling and gasping for breath under Kyler’s furious onslaught. Crant, mustering an impressive surge of energy, picked up a wicked-looking, rusty awl from the shack’s wreckage. Kyler dropped back; but not quickly enough to avoid receiving a long gash in the flesh over his collarbone. He lunged forward and pulled Crant off balance, then wrested the awl from him, holding it to Crant’s throat. Crant’s eyes were glazed with naked fear.
Kyler lowered the sharp point slowly, looking at Crant and speaking softly. “I’ll give you until tomorrow morning to be out of the country. If you return, so help me God, I’ll pursue you with the full force of the law.”
The nephew and uncle gazed their last at each other, the sculpture of the lean dark faces so much alike, the souls so unutterably different. A minute passed before the former Lord Crant turned and disappeared into the smoky dark, followed by his dogs.
Kyler turned to look at Melbrooke; there was some uncertainty in his attractive young face. “D’you think I did the right thing?” he asked.
Melbrooke gripped Kyler’s shoulder. “The right thing in every sense of the word.”
“Thank you,” said Kyler with sincerity.
Melbrooke smiled and glanced back toward Lorraine. “My contribution was a small one, and—I regard you already as one of the family.”
“Thank you for that, as well,” said Kyler, and started in Lorraine’s direction. He halted no more than four feet from her, and turned suddenly toward the blazing heath, a dark slim figure against the flames. He pulled off his eyepatch, flinging it across the fire trench into the inferno. Lynden laughed with glee. Lorraine’s eyes filled with happy tears as Kyler lifted her into his arms and pressed a fully reciprocated kiss onto her waiting lips.
Lynden watched with strong approval. “Rainey, after that, he’ll have to ask you to marry him!”
Kyler turned to grin at her. “Lord, Hornet, won’t you even let me do my own proposing?”
“Of course,” conceded Lynden handsomely. “But first you must answer this: Justin told Lord Crant…” She paused. “Oh, dear. Now you’re Lord Crant. What a muddle it will be until we’re used to the name change! Anyway, Justin told your Uncle Percy that proof had been found naming you the rightful heir. Was that a bluff, or did you really find it?”
“Aye, that we did,” said Kyler. “When we reached Justin’s lawyer in Penrith, we took out what evidence we had to show the fellow. There was my stepmother’s letter, of course, and the sundial rubbing, and the note we found in the mausoleum. You gave it to me last night to take along, remember? Justin had never seen it before, and no sooner did he set eyes on the blasted thing than he announced we had been reading it wrong t
he whole time. The note really said we were to look beneath the dome of spring’s floral harbingers. What you read by lamplight as a p was actually a fancy, old-fashioned d. And you know where there turns out to be a flowery dome? Right there over the entrance hall of Crant Castle’s Great Tower. It’s a grand, flashy thing covered over with leaves and marsh marigolds and done in stained glass. What do you say to that?”
“Rats!” said Lynden.
“Just as I thought. You’re mad as fire not to have figured the thing out yourself,” said Kyler. “Anyway, when we arrived at the castle, Melbrooke marched straight into the tower, demanding to see Lord Crant, and, in the two minutes we were left waiting in the hall, he found the whole raft of documents—marriage lines, identification papers, love letters from my father to my mother, the whole business. I’ll tell you, hornet, your husband’s as smart as a whip. He lifts up the face visor of a moldering old suit of armor, puts in his hand, and pulls out the bundle. They were there in the helmet’s jaw the whole time. Crant himself must have walked past them ten thousand times.”
* * *
From her high, pale post in the black, crystal sky, the moon was spreading her light on the quiet fells of Westmorland. The twins had returned to their respective bedrooms at Fern Court, and Kyler Miller, soon-to-be the new Lord of Crant Castle, had been enthroned in one of Fern Court’s charming guest suites. Lorraine had been asleep for more than an hour, having drifted happily off almost at once, after receiving Mrs. Coniston’s soothing ministrations to her sore ankle.
Lynden had stayed awake, not only bathing, but scrubbing and rescrubbing her hair with a fine rosewater rinse to remove the last vestige of the acrid smoke smell. After Lynden’s bath, Mrs. Coniston had laid out a familiar high-necked white flannel nightdress, but Lynden rejected it and self-consciously asked for a magnificent and rather shockingly transparent black lace negligee from her trousseau. She dabbed on a touch of French perfume, climbed into bed, and dismissed Mrs. Coniston for the night, graciously deigning not to notice the discreetly delighted smile on that lady’s face.
Alone, bathed in the golden light of a single candle, Lynden picked up her lacquered hairbrush, her finger tracing her initial which was inlaid on the back in mother-of-pearl. She sat quietly on the bed, brushing her hair, until there came a knock from the door connecting her room with Melbrooke’s. The knock was an unalarming, gentle one, and yet Lynden’s pulse achieved its fastest pace of the whole eventful day.
“Come in… Oh, Melbrooke, it’s you!”
He entered, his gray eyes shining. “How surprised you look. Were you expecting someone else?”
Lynden set the hairbrush down on a bedside table. “No, but, well—you ought to be chivalrous enough to let me pretend to be surprised. I see you’re wearing your banyon. Mrs. Coniston helped me into this negligee and left here looking smug, and there’s no doubt your valet knows what you’ve been about. So I suppose we’re the object of the most mortifying speculation in the servants’ quarters! Tomorrow I shan’t have the nerve to rise from my bed!”
“God knows what kind of speculation that would give rise to.” He sat on the edge of the bed, giving her a caressing smile. “Never fear. We’ll circumvent the gossips. I will arise betimes and muss my bedcovers. That will really confuse them.”
Lynden’s cheeks grew pink. “To think at first I thought you a most sober gentleman. Instead, My Lord, I find you are an accomplished flirt! You don’t look angry, but I wonder—are you very much vexed with me for going to the castle today?”
“More with myself for having left you with the opportunity.” He took her hands in his, kissing one and then the other scraped, bruised palm. “Your wounded hands reproach me for having underestimated your determination.”
“They may reproach you, but they sting me! I’m sure if my Uncle Monroe were here, which I am very glad he is not, that he would say I came by my just deserts. I daresay when you found me in the fire trench, I looked like the Witch Woman of Wetherian!”
“Who?”
Lynden giggled. “Never mind. I’ll tell you another time. I’m just glad to know you’re not horribly vexed with me. Besides, now you’re probably England’s only leading poet with the distinction of having a wife who’s been tossed into a dungeon!” She crossed her hands in her lap and looked down, the dark curls falling forward over her shoulders. “I do have one more thing that I must confess. I—no, wait. I’ll get it.”
“More notes from Lady Irmingarde?” he asked.
“I wish it were,” said Lynden, climbing from the bed and opening a drawer in her writing desk. She handed Melbrooke a folded slip of paper. “It’s from Lady Silvia. A servant boy brought it from Crant and I ought to have given it into your hand without opening it, but I didn’t.”
Melbrooke opened the note and quickly skimmed the contents. He looked up at her. “Lynden, my poor child. When did you get this?”
“Weeks ago, on the day of the big rain.”
“And you believe since then that I’ve been continuing to see Silvia?” He stood, placing his hands on her bare shoulders. “Is that why you held yourself back from me? Now I understand! Lynden, this note is a hoax. While it’s true that Lady Silvia and I had a connection before I met you, on the first day after our arrival at Fern Court I rode to Crant Castle and told Silvia that it must end. No doubt she deliberately meant this note to come into your hands, merely to distress you.”
“Well!” said Lynden, looking confounded. “Then I suppose I’m come by my just deserts this time, as well, for opening letters not addressed to me, because I was distressed. Very distressed. But I wonder. Was it very painful for you to break off with Lady Silvia? You must have liked her very much.”
He had one hand on her cheek. At her last statement he bent over to kiss her lips softly. “In all the time I knew her, never enough to ask her to marry me. But in ten minutes of talking to you, Lynden, not only did I not regret that we were to marry, but, had your uncle and aunt not decreed our wedding, I would have returned to Downpatrick Hall, courted you until you gave in from sheer exhaustion, and married you with all the pomp my mother could desire. Have I shocked you, my love? Before, it always seemed too soon to tell you, but I think I must tell you now that I’ve cared deeply for you from the very beginning.”
Lynden’s brown eyes widened. “I don’t believe you. Why, you’re only saying that! How could it be true?”
He cupped her face in his hands. “Easily, so easily, my dear. It seems that falling in love with you is the most effortless thing I’ve ever done. I had this made to remind me of it.” He took from his pocket a small jewelry case and handed it to her.
“Oh, Melbrooke, not more jewelry. Surely…” She opened the box, revealing a tiny, exquisitely detailed diamond and emerald kite blessed with a silver neck chain for a tail. Her eyes filled with tears.
“Do you like it?” he asked.
Her voice seemed to have deserted her; she nodded, and he took the beautiful little kite from its velvet nest and clasped it in place about her neck.
“You’re trembling. It’s too cold for you.” He lifted back the bed covers and helped her into the bed. She moved over to make space and looked at him shyly.
“Are you coming into bed, too?” she asked.
The gray eyes sparkled tenderly. “I’m afraid that it’s my most cherished ambition.”
“Are you going to take off your banyon?”
“It is the customary procedure,” he admitted. “Do you object?”
“No, but you will notice I am closing my eyes.” She could hear his light laughter.
“Very proper,” said Melbrooke.
“Justin. You don’t really think so!” She felt the bed give as he joined her, and heard his husky voice near.
“No, dear, I don’t really think so. You can look now. I’m modestly covered with the blankets.”
She opened her eyes to see Melbrooke smiling at her, leaning on one elbow, his tawny hair glowing in the candlelight. He reac
hed over and gently stroked an inky curl from her forehead.
“If you want to know the truth, Justin, I may have a reputation for being quite brazen, but at the moment I’m feeling shy.”
He kissed her shoulder. “That’s not unnatural.”
“Perhaps not, but I wonder if you would mind—that is, could we talk a little first?”
He drew her to him and she felt the warmth and hardness of his body. One graceful hand was on her back, and the other softly brushed the strap of the nightgown away from her shoulder.
“Talk before, during, and after, if you like. Have we any more outstanding business?”
“There is the matter of Lorraine and Kyler’s wedding. You know, at first I thought I wouldn’t like to be a great lady, or at least, that I wouldn’t be very good at it, but at Lady Silvia’s ball I saw dozens of things that she might have done to make it a more exciting affair, if only she’d thought of them! I think I might find a fair amount of challenge in being an important society hostess. I should like to launch my career at it with Lorraine and Kyler’s wedding. What do you think of this: instead of the usual humdrum organ processional, we could have the entrance hymn blown on trumpets? And at the ceremony’s climax, two thousand white doves could be released in the air.”
His lips touched the curve of her throat. “Two thousand birds inside the church?”
“No, not inside the church, of course. Only think of the mess.” She cuddled closer into his arms. “Did you notice I put on perfume?”
“Yes.”
“It seemed like the right thing to do, though it made Mrs. Coniston smirk! Justin? I wanted you to know that I’m sorry I had such mistaken ideas about poets. You’re not in the least foppish and, besides, you’re a splendid boxer, as I saw tonight. And so incredibly clever. It was one thing to figure out that we had to search beneath the flower dome, but how did you ever think to look inside the helmet on the suit of armor?”