Catherine Coulter the Sherbrooke Series Novels 6-10 (9781101562123)

by Coulter, Catherine

  They saw so much, Rosalind thought, too much, not, of course, that she hadn’t just dished her biggest fear up to them on a platter. She laughed. “It’s only a fable, Aunt Sophie. I truly would like to be more like the cicada, but there appears to be too much Puritan blood in my veins.”

  Nicholas said matter-of-factly, “Rosalind’s virtue is prudence and mine is patience. What is yours, Grayson?”

  “I hate flattery,” Grayson said, “thus I suppose that I like ‘The Crow and the Fox.’”

  “Ah,” Rosalind said, and poked Grayson’s arm. “The fox flatters the crow, and the crow drops the food in his mouth to preen.”

  “Exactly.”

  Rosalind stuck out her small plate for a nutty bun.

  Nicholas looked at that nutty bun, sighed, and slipped one of the remaining two off the plate onto hers.

  “It is always so,” Sophie said, grinning at him with only a dollop of sympathy, since she wanted the other bun. “Nutty buns are at a great premium in this household. The recipe comes from Cook at Northcliffe Hall. Because my husband prostrated himself at her feet, swore he would sing her arias beneath her window, she deigned to pass the recipe along to our cook.”

  “If you should show me to the kitchen, ma’am, I will prostrate myself as well. However, I don’t know any arias.”

  “Neither does my husband. He is so charming, however, that it doesn’t seem to matter.”

  Laughter. It felt good, Nicholas thought, surprised. He couldn’t remember very much laughter in his life.

  “It is a lovely morning,” he said. “As I recall from my boyhood, this is a precious spectacle that shouldn’t be squandered. May I ask Miss La Fontaine to walk with me in the park?”

  “Which park?” Ryder asked.

  “Hyde Park, sir. I have a carriage outside. I hired it, since the ones remaining at Wyverly Chase are from the previous century.”

  Grayson leaned forward. “Wyverly Chase? What a phenomenal name. I should like to hear the history behind it. It is your family seat?”

  Nicholas nodded.

  Rosalind knew Grayson’s brain was already spinning a tale about Wyverly Chase, so she said, “I understand there is a small artists’ fair this morning. Perhaps his lordship and I could see what is happening with that.”

  Grayson nodded and rose. “I shall accompany you.”

  Rosalind wanted to smack Grayson, but since he had to be a better choice for chaperone than either Aunt Sophie or Uncle Ryder, she nodded. She rose as well, and smiled. “I should enjoy that very much.”

  Ryder Sherbrooke, seeing no hope for it, slowly nodded.

  It was the rare sort of English spring day—a blue sky so bright, a breeze so light and scented sweet with the blooming spring flowers, that it brought a tear to the jaded English eye. They discovered that the small artists’ fair meant to take place in one corner of Hyde Park had turned into an event.

  Hundreds of people milled through Hyde Park to stop at the food and drink vendors and the artists’ stalls, or sit on the trampled grass to watch the jugglers and mimes come to share in the fun and profit. There was a good deal of laughter, some good-natured fisticuffs, perhaps a bit too much ale, and pickpockets who smiled happily as they adroitly worked through the crowds.

  “There is more food here today than artists,” Nicholas said. Both he and Grayson held Rosalind by an arm, not about to let her get pulled away in the boisterous crowd.

  “And drink,” Grayson said. Suddenly Grayson stopped still, stared off into the distance.

  “Oh, I see,” Rosalind said and poked him in the arm. “Bookstalls, a whole line of them.”

  Grayson was eyeing those bookstalls like a starved mongrel. Rosalind, seeing freedom within her grasp, stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “Off you go. I’ll be perfectly safe with Lord Mountjoy. Go, Grayson. We will be just fine.”

  Nicholas’s grin turned into his most responsible nod. “I swear to keep her safe.” After but a moment of indecision, Grayson was off like a comet.

  “He can move very quickly when properly motivated,” Rosalind said.

  Nicholas looked down at her upturned face. “What makes you think you’ll be safe with me?”

  She smiled up at his dark face, those black eyes of his. “Truth be told, I’d be perfectly safe by myself, as are you, I imagine.” She eyed him up and down. “Were you to dare take liberties with my capable self, I should make you very sorry. I’m very strong, you know. And wily.”

  “And if you take liberties with me, then what am I to do?”

  “Perhaps you could ask me to sing and that would distract me from those liberties.”

  He couldn’t help it, he burst out laughing. Several people turned his way, smiling with him. One, Nicholas suspected, was a pickpocket, one a housemaid with lovely thick black hair, and the third a matron with the look of a baker’s wife, what with the streak of flour down the bodice of her gown, three children clinging to her skirts.

  “It is his passion,” Rosalind said, watching Grayson gracefully weave his way through a group of military men singing ditties at the top of their lungs, their voices well oiled with ale. “Grayson is immensely talented. He began telling ghost stories when he was a little boy. He never stopped.”

  Nicholas said. “Why did you kiss him?”

  That brought her to a halt. She cocked her head to one side, looking up at him. “He is my cousin. He is like my brother. I love him. I have known him forever.”

  “You are no blood relation to him,” Nicholas said, voice hard, dangerous.

  An eyebrow shot up, but she said nothing, merely eyed him. Did she want to shoot him, or kiss him? She wasn’t sure what to make of him. Was this an example of a man’s possessiveness?

  Rein in, rein in. Nicholas said, “I mean to say I heard Ryder Sherbrooke call you his ward.”

  “That too. It’s all rather complicated and really none of your business, my lord.”

  “No, I suppose not. At least not yet.”

  Now, what do you mean by that? she wondered. You thrive on mysteries and secrets, don’t you?

  She ducked past a small boy running full speed toward a pasty vendor. “I am very glad my aunt and uncle didn’t realize the beautiful weather would unleash the population of London into the park. This has turned into quite an affair. Oh, look, there are boys performing acrobatics. Let’s go watch.”

  She grabbed his hand and pulled him to the edge of a circle to watch the three boys. “Oh, one of them is really a little girl. Would you look at how she leaps onto that boy’s shoulders—so smooth and graceful, and she stands so tall on his shoulders—it looks easy, doesn’t it?”

  After he dutifully tossed several pennies into a large top hat, Nicholas bought her lemonade that tasted remarkably sour, and a hot beef pie. They walked away from the crowd to the far side of Hyde Park and sat on a small stone bench in front of a narrow, still pond.

  “No ducks,” Rosalind said.

  “They’re probably alarmed by all the bustle, hiding under those bushes over there.”

  “You’re probably right. But I’ll tell you, these ducks are great performers. They quack and leap about, knowing they’ll get bread and biscuits. Hmm, I hope they’re not in any of the vendors’ pies.”

  “I wager they’re also fast.”

  Rosalind bit into her beef pie, chewed, took another quick bite. “Here, have a bite. A small bite.”

  She fed him a bit of her pie. Nicholas looked at her while he chewed. Her hair was mussed, her color high; she was smiling and looked utterly pleased with herself and her world. Suddenly four young men, all dressed in red, came bursting through the trees to form a half circle around them. Nicholas was an instant away from having his derringer in his hand when they began to sing. Sing! And in lovely harmony. He settled back to listen. He realized soon enough they were singing to Rosalind. They knew her and she them. Now, this was interesting. He didn’t like it, but—when they finished a lilting Scottish ballad about a bonny girl
who loved a one-armed highwayman called Rabbie McPherson, Rosalind clapped and said, “That was lovely, gentlemen, do give Lord Mountjoy another.”

  Another song filled the sweet air, this one sounding like a tragic song from an Italian opera. So she knew them, did she? He didn’t know if that was odd or not. It probably was.

  When they had finished, each of them bowed low, and a short, plump young man with lovely blue eyes said, “Rosalind, we have sung for you. We have sung for your companion. It is your turn now. Come, we will blend our voices with yours.”

  Her turn?

  She laughed, handed Nicholas the rest of her beef pie—telling him to hold it carefully and not eat it—then went to stand with them. She cleared her throat, looked straight at him, and began to sing. The men’s voices came in under hers, harmonizing beautifully, never overpowering.

  See the flight of the moon

  Through the dark stretch of night

  Bathing the earth in its radiant light.

  All those in love who look to the sky

  Fear not the death of the night’s final sigh.

  When she sang the final haunting word, she dropped her head a moment, then raised her eyes to his face. It was the voice that made you weep deep inside where you didn’t even know tears resided. It wasn’t the child’s voice, but it was still the same voice. The men applauded her even as he sat there stunned, mute, unable to move. Even though he’d known, still he trembled at the knowledge of what she was. And what he was to her.

  She asked after a moment, “Ah, did you like it?”

  He nodded, still without words.

  He watched the young men move away and he still sat there on the bench, the rest of the beef pie clutched in his hand. He said slowly, looking up at her, “You spoke of Grayson’s talent. Your voice, it is something one can scarce imagine. It sinks deep.” He simply hadn’t realized how deep.

  6

  “What a lovely thing to say.” Rosalind laughed, suddenly uncertain. “But I am nothing compared to Grayson.”

  “You are different from Grayson, more powerful.”

  “Oh, well—” She laughed as she reached into her small reticule and scooped out some pennies. He watched her race after the young men. He heard laughter, then the first line of another familiar song, this one faintly Germanic.

  When she came skipping back to him, he handed her the rest of her beef pie.

  She ate it. “Gerard thanks you for the money.”

  “They were your pennies.”

  She shrugged. “Yes, but it is always the gentleman who must pay. It’s some sort of ritual, so I suppose you must pay me back.”

  “You are temporarily short of funds?”

  “Actually, those four pennies were the last of my fortune until my allowance next Wednesday. It is difficult, but I must give up a pound of my allowance for the collection plate.” She sighed. “It is the right thing, of course, but when one is in London and visits the Pantheon—” She sighed, looking at him beneath her lashes.

  He said nothing, his eyes still brooding, resting on the bushes behind her.

  “What is wrong, my lord? You look fair to gut-shot. Are you temporarily penniless as well?”

  That brought him back. This smiling girl was not a haunting vision of another time with a siren’s voice to bring a man to his death—no, at least in this moment, she was a young lady who’d spent all her allowance. “Fair to gut-shot? I don’t believe I have ever before heard a young lady say that.”

  “On the other hand you have been gone from England for many years. What do young ladies in Macau say?”

  “The young ladies in Macau are mostly Portuguese, and there isn’t an equivalent in Portuguese for ‘gut-shot.’ But in Patuá—that is a local language developed by the Portuguese settlers who came in the sixteenth century—” He paused, leaned down, picked up a skinny branch, and tossed it. Who cared about a language spoken by very few people in a settlement on the other side of the world?

  “Patuá—what a lovely name. Do you speak the language?”

  “One must.”

  “Say something in Patuá to me.”

  “Well, there is a Patuá poem a friend of mine turned into a song I’ve always believed very pretty—”

  Nhonha na jinela

  Co fula mogarim

  Sua mae tancarera

  Seu pai canarim.

  He shook his head at her. “No, I will not attempt to sing it. You would run away, your hands clapped over your ears.”

  “Not I. I have great fortitude. Now, I don’t have the least idea what you said, but the sounds are nice, like soft music.”

  “I’ll translate it for you:Young lady in the window

  with a jasmine flower

  Her mother is a Chinese fisherwoman

  Her father is a Portuguese Indian.

  “Imagine, you left England when you were only a boy and you went to this place where there are Chinese fisher-women and Portugese Indians—a place so very different from England. Were you treated well there—a foreigner?”

  No one had ever asked him that. Slowly, he nodded. “I was fortunate enough to do a good deed for a rich Portuguese merchant in Lisbon. He gave me a flattering introduction to the governor of Macau, who happened to be his brother-in-law. I was treated well because of him, even though I was English.”

  “What was your good deed?”

  He laughed. “I saved his only daughter from a rather oily young man who was plying her with champagne on a balcony under a vastly romantic Lisbon moon. She was foolish, but her father didn’t realize it then. She was very angry at me for that rescue, as I recall.”

  “How did you communicate with everyone in Macau?”

  He shrugged. “I suppose you could say that I have a gift for languages. I already spoke Portuguese and I learned Mandarin Chinese and Patuá very quickly.”

  “I speak Italian,” she announced, and puffed up.

  He smiled at her. “You’ve got me there,” he said, even though he was perfectly fluent in Italian.

  “Have you missed England, my lord?”

  “Perhaps. At odd times, like on a day like today, but, on the other hand, it’s hard to remember days like today.” He raised his head and sniffed the jasmine that grew not two feet away from them.

  He said, “Tell me about your parents.”

  She jumped to her feet, dusted her hands on her skirts. “I believe I wish to see that one juggler we passed earlier.”

  Nicholas rose and offered her his arm. “As you like.”

  Grayson found the two of them clapping their hands along with the crowd of people standing in a circle around a giant of a man who was juggling five ale bottles. Every few minutes he snagged one of the bottles out of the circle and drank it down even as he continued to juggle. By the time every bottle was empty, he was staggering. Still, he never dropped a single bottle.

  It was Grayson who had to pull out the rest of his coins to place in the giant’s huge boot. Rosalind noticed Grayson’s eyes were shining with excitement as he pulled them aside. “Just look what I found in a stall leaning against an old oak tree, set completely apart from the other bookstalls. I don’t know why, but I went there like a homing pigeon.” He held out an ancient and tattered bloodred leather-bound book set gently on his palm, but didn’t let them touch it. “An old man was sitting on a rickety stool surrounded by piles of old books, whistling. But this one—the old man held it out to me and smiled.” He added, his voice more reverent than a vicar’s, “I couldn’t believe it. It’s an ancient copy of Sarimund’s Rules of the Pale. I didn’t believe any of them had survived.”

  “Who is Sarimund? What is a pale?” Rosalind stuck out her hand, but Grayson simply pulled the book to his chest, cradling it.

  “No, it is too fragile. The Pale, Rosalind, is a place that’s beyond us, on the other side, mayhap in a different time. An otherworld, I suppose you could call it—it’s where all sorts of strange beings exist and stranger things occur, frightening thin
gs, things we mortals cannot understand. At least that’s what an ancient don at Oxford told me about it. Mr. Oakby didn’t believe any more copies existed either, but here it is. I found it.” Grayson was trembling with excitement. He said, “It’s incredible, I cannot believe this old whistling man had a copy of it, that he actually handed it to me, as if he knew I would give most anything to have it. Do you know what? He refused to take any more than a single sovereign. My lord, you are looking strange. Do you happen to know of Sarimund? The Rules of the Pale?”

  Nicholas nodded. “I know that the Rules of the Pale is about the exploits of a wizard who visited the Bulgar and somehow managed to penetrate into the Pale, and wrote down rules he discovered in order to survive there. He found his way back out and there the book stops. As for Magnus Sarimund, I understand his home was near York. He was a Viking descendant, claimed one of his ancestors had once ruled the Danelaw. A marvelous fiction.”

  “Fiction? Oh, no,” Grayson said. “Surely not.”

  Nicholas said nothing.

  “I did not know Sarimund’s history,” Grayson said. “A Viking descendant—you must tell me everything you know, my lord. I must write to Mr. Oakby at Oxford. He will be very excited. What luck for me. Imagine finding the Rules of the Pale here in a bookstall in Hyde Park.”

  Rosalind grabbed his arm. “Wait a moment, Grayson. I remember now. A pale isn’t some sort of otherworldly place, it’s nothing more than a commonplace stockade, a protective barrier of some sort. I remember reading of an English pale that encompassed some twenty miles around Dublin—a long time ago, built as a defense against marauding tribes. To be safe, you stayed within the pale, or the stockade. If you were outside the stockade, or beyond the pale, as the phrase goes, then it meant back then that you were in real danger.”

  Nicholas nodded, saying, “I recall there was also a pale built by Catherine the Great to keep the Jews safe. But this place by Sarimund, it is another kind of pale entirely.”