Memory's Bride

by Decca Price

  She took a tentative sip. Rich cool liquid slipped past her tongue and down her throat, where it left a surprising burn. She tried again and found it more pleasant this time, earthy, tangy and unexpectedly fizzy. A full swallow and the cider went down more smoothly.

  By the time the main door of the public room banged open and Montfort strode into the room, Claire had nearly finished the tankard and felt quite content with the world.

  Montfort reached the center of the room before he noticed Claire off to the side by the wall. She greeted him with a cool nod and his eyes followed her ramrod straight figure as she rose and made her way toward Jane, now polishing the taps, to pay her bill. Good. She was annoyed with him for being late—like kindling waiting for the match to light it, he hoped.

  He was confident he could seduce her with sweet talk and proper drawing-room flirtation, but those sorts of conquests take time. He wanted to play a faster game with her, and any sort of passion once aroused could open the way into a woman’s bed, he had found, especially one who had once tasted the pleasures offered there. Women were schooled from the cradle to conceal their yearnings, but the heat of anger often melted the barriers of resistance. He had once heard of a couple drawn into a feverish union by their battling opinions of Lord Melbourne. The randy former prime minister no doubt would have approved.

  Task completed, she turned to him.

  “Thank you for taking time out of your busy morning, Lord Montfort,” she said, “and for overlooking my rude comments to you yesterday. Will we be riding or is the site close enough to walk?”

  “We can walk. It is scarcely around the corner. After you, Miss Burton.”

  His eyes seemed to glitter in the dim light and she noted again his unconventional dress, the soft hat—which he hadn’t removed—the open sweeping coat that brushed the insteps of his riding boots and added to an impression of restless energy that reached out and caressed her the way heat from a fire warmed the skin as you approached the flames.

  She gave him a wide berth as she moved toward the door but hadn’t gotten more than a few steps when she tripped. Claire’s cheeks burned in earnest now.

  He caught her arm and suppressed a smile as she steadied herself. Then he noticed her slightly unfocused eyes.

  “Janey,” he called over his shoulder. “Have you been serving Miss Burton here your da’s scrumpy?” The girl giggled in response.

  “Lor, milord! She were thirsty and there’s nothin’ better on a fine day. Fort’fyin’ da’ says, you know.”

  “Yes, and your da gets drunk as a lord on it every year at the harvest fete, Janey. Miss Burton is a city lady and you should have warned her.”

  Jane immediately looked contrite. “I’m sorry, milord. No harm intended, I’m sure.”

  Claire jerked her arm out of Montfort’s grasp.

  “Don’t be silly,” she snapped. “I’m perfectly fine. This old floor is uneven in places. Don’t make Jane feel bad when she didn’t do anything wrong. Her father’s cider is very good. I’ll have to check with my housekeeper to see if we buy from him.”

  “It’s also as strong as vintage port, Miss Burton, and I’ll wager you had a full pint of it. I didn’t know the young ladies of Surrey were accustomed to strong drink in the morning—or any time of the day, for that matter. Perhaps I should spend more time in suburbium when I’m next visiting town.”

  “Please, Lord Montfort. Don’t tease.” Then she surprised him. “Clearly, I imbibed too much too quickly,” she said, looking down at the floor. “I didn’t understand about the cider. And I am most embarrassed now. Don’t make it worse. It means a great deal to me to be able to work with you since that may get my school opened quickly. If you don’t respect me, and all through my own fault, I know my task will be that much more difficult because of who you are.”

  Montfort reached a gloved hand under her chin and turned her head up and around so he could look into her face. Tears brimmed in those bewitching blue eyes. He dropped his hand abruptly and stepped back a pace. So much for trying to infuriate her.

  “Consider it forgotten, Miss Burton,” he said in his best drawing room voice. “But do mind your step. The floor is treacherous in spots and we’ll be covering some fairly rough ground before we’re done. Let’s bring the horses with us. You should be able to ride by the time you are ready to go home.”

  They walked no more than half a mile, but Claire’s head throbbed every step of the way. While Montfort tied their horses to a dilapidated fence on the verge of the dusty lane, she pretended to study the vine-shrouded cottage he indicated and steadied herself on a gatepost that no longer supported a gate. That was just visible in the long grass between the road and the front door. Someone had scythed a path just wide enough for them to walk through the overgrown front garden single file and left the long cuttings where they fell.

  The sickly sweet smell of dead vegetation fermenting in the sun made Claire’s stomach heave. Feeling dizzy, she fixed her gaze on the roof slates above the door as though she were considering their soundness. Then, slowly, she took in the chimney, the door lintel, the window.

  Montfort waited, switching his short riding whip against his leg. She wished he would stop. She wished he would go away and leave her there to collect her wits. More than anything, she wanted to lean against him, close her eyes and lose herself in his arms.

  Her eyes drifted shut, then flew open abruptly.

  “I’d like to see the inside, if you please,” she said a little too loudly, her mouth dry. “Do you have a key?”

  He snorted in a most ungentlemanly way. “Even if it were locked, I could easily force the door, the condition this place is in.”

  “But the owner—”

  “Never mind the owner. I’m Viscount Montfort, if you recall.”

  The door yielded to a kick from Montfort’s boot heel to reveal a single, musty room. The added sunlight that poured in when Montfort pulled back the shutters on the lone window by the entrance fell on little more than dust, cobwebs and old straw. An overturned stool lay on the flagstone floor by the hearth.

  An insect buzzed in the rafters. The sound rang in Claire’s ears, as did the sharp clack of her boots on the stones.

  For furnishings, only a few benches and tables were needed. Edward Latimer could tell her how many children to plan for. The thought of Latimer set her stomach fluttering again as she pictured how he would react to her current state—inebriated and alone with the very man he had warned her about only yesterday. He would never call again, and no one in the village would have anything to do with her if the rector abandoned her. The school would fail. She needed to leave. Now.

  “This cottage will do very well for a school. It’s a thousand times better than the place I looked at yesterday,” she said to Montfort, who was watching her closely, as though he expected her to trip again. “You must put me in touch with the owner.”

  “That would be myself, Miss Burton. The Montforts own nearly every place around Oakley Court and the land under the ones we don’t. Except for your precious Joss’s Oak Grove, of course.” His bitterness was palpable.

  “Joss? Oh, you mean Mr. Carter. Josiah.”

  “He was Joss to everyone in Herefordshire, even after he became the grand man of letters. He could fool London, but he couldn’t fool us. We knew him too well.

  “Didn’t you like him, Lord Montfort? You sound angry.”

  “I don’t like to talk about him. We were as close as brothers once. But even brothers can fall out. I’m sorry he’s dead, but those damn books of his—”

  “Lord Montfort!”

  “I beg your pardon, Miss Burton. But it’s the truth. Joss’s novels may have enthralled thousands of readers, but they drove a wedge between him and nearly everyone in this place. What he wrote hurt too many people, people who would have been glad to celebrate his successes, but for the fact that they paid a very real human price for his literary laurels.”

  “Jealous,” Claire sputtered. “He s
aid people were jealous because his novels made him rich and he began life with little but his education.” She started for the door but Montfort slammed it shut and barred her way before she had taken more than two steps.

  “Tell yourself that if you like. I’m sure he did,” Montfort snapped. He flipped the stool over and all but shoved her onto it. “Choose one, Miss Burton,” he challenged, bending close to her face. “I demand to know your favorite among your beloved’s esteemed works.”

  “‘Lady Jacinta,’ I suppose,” Claire said, as she steadied herself on the shaky low stool. “Josiah made history so brilliantly alive in that one!”

  “History?” Montfort laughed. “I think not. But at least you didn’t choose ‘Lord Merdon.’”

  “Papa wouldn’t allow us to read that one,” Claire admitted. “He said ‘Lord Merdon’ was sensational.”

  “I congratulate your Papa on his good judgment. But let’s examine your heroine, shall we? Lady Jacinta was an ancestress of mine. She nearly cost the family their lands and the earl his head during the Civil War.”

  “But she saved everything!” Claire protested. “She sacrificed herself so that her husband could put down the rebellion and return this region to King Charles!”

  She tried to rise for, but Montfort placed his hands on her shoulders and firmly pressed her down. Despite his supple leather gloves and her serge riding jacket, the physical contact sent a jolt down her spine as though he had touched her bare skin.

  “It is a romantic tale, isn’t it? But Joss’s version is a pretty lie at best. Would you like to know the truth, Miss Burton? Would it please you to know that Jacinta cared only for herself and her own pleasure? She was no better than a harlot, really, with her scarlet lips and long golden hair. She took several men into her bed while the earl, her husband and rightful lord, was away fighting for the king, and she didn’t care which side her lovers supported as long as it was the winning one at the time. In fact, the abbey changed hands at several points during the course of the war, and so did your precious Jacinta. She offered her body to whomever was on top, so to speak.”

  He brought his face closer to hers and her lips tingled as his warm breath touched them. “And oh, the climax of Joss’s story is the worst lie of all. In Joss’s version, Lady Jacinta rushes from the abbey in the dead of night to warn her husband of an imminent rebel offensive. But in reality, it was the old earl who flew home to Montfort Abbey by moonlight. He intended to confront his wife about her rumored betrayals and instead, he ended up surprising Jacinta in flagrante with one of her paramours. What happened after that is not fit for the ears of gently bred ladies, Miss Burton—are you certain you want to hear how the tale really ends?”

  Claire couldn’t help herself. A distant part of her knew she was supposed to be shocked, but Montfort’s passion was galvanic. She felt Jacinta’s fear in her bones. Her pulse raced.

  “Yes,” she said, meeting the dark eyes inches from hers. “Finish it.”

  As many times as she replayed what happened next, she could never decide the sequence of things. But which of them made the first move was irrelevant. Their lips met, hesitantly for an instant and then, as though he intended to devour her, Montfort clutched her in his powerful arms and pulled her off the stool. Had she been less tall, he would have lifted her from the ground entirely, no more mindful of her weight than if she were a feather.

  His mouth covered hers with firm insistent pressure, urging her to respond. Her hands were trapped against his chest, so she grasped his lapels and clung to him to keep from toppling backward. That pulled him closer and, as her lips involuntarily parted, he slipped his tongue into her mouth and explored its tenderest parts. The sensation was altogether alarming and thrilling, heightened by his musky scent and the bristled contact of his moustache against her petal-soft skin. Like a newborn kitten, she blindly moved her lips against his.

  Heat shot directly down through her midsection and her knees melted. She felt herself open in places she never knew existed.

  Then, as abruptly as it started, it was over.

  “Finish it? Odd you should use those words,” Montfort said, thrusting her back and pacing away as though nothing had happened. Her head swam, the buzzing grew louder in her ears and she panted for breath, but he looked as though he had done nothing more than help her up from the stool.

  Gracelessly, she groped behind her and half fell to the stool.

  “Family history has it those were the words Jacinta spoke before her husband finally ran her through with his rapier,” he said. “He forced her to watch as he killed and mutilated her lover, and then dragged Jacinta back to her chamber by that magnificent hair, dispatched her and propped her body in the turret window with her hair cascading down the wall.”

  Claire gasped.

  “Yes, that part was true,” he continued. “She flaunted that famous hair at her window to signal her lovers. This time it was the Roundheads’ undoing, because the earl had informed his own troops that a view of his lady’s mane from the parapet was the signal to attack.

  “Fools who venture into the ruins today swear they know which stones fell from beneath the window when the Roundheads destroyed the tower during the siege, because they’re stained with Jacinta’s blood.

  “That’s horrible,” Claire exclaimed. “I’ll never be able to look at the window in the library again. You’ve ruined a beautiful story forever!”

  “No wonder you loved Joss Carter. Do you also prefer whitewash to the truth?”

  “No, no,” Claire responded. “But surely you must admit some artistic license? Josiah wasn’t actually writing history...”

  “Artistic license,” he sneered. “I’m doing you a favor, Miss Burton. When you look at that lovely window in ‘your’ library now, you can consider it a warning to traitors and adulterers. Lady Jacinta was not sacrificing herself to warn her husband of an impending attack—that was Joss’s nonsense. The real story is about two angry people who hated and deceived each other.””

  “Is the world so ugly, then? Is there no room for beauty, romance, hope?”

  “Not if it is purchased by sacrificing the truth.”

  “But surely art is meant to uplift us, to show us what we can be, and not force us to grovel in our baser natures?”

  “Is it base to be human, Miss Burton?”

  Claire huffed out a mirthless chuckle and gestured to Rhys’s large signet ring, deeply incised with the figure of a dragon. “You are fierce on every subject, aren’t you? So much that I think I begin to understand the Montfort family motto—if that’s not one of Josiah’s fictions, too. She grasped his hand and reads the words in Latin inscribed around the sigil.

  ‘Trifle not with the dragon,’” Claire parsed slowly. “Do I translate that correctly?”

  “Very good. You are a scholar, then?”

  “You give me too much credit,” Claire said stiffly as she dropped his hand. “I often sewed in the room my brother and his tutor used before Cam went to university. I liked to listen to the stories of antiquity they studied together.”

  “And what does your learned brother think of this madness of yours, Miss Burton?”

  “Madness!” she retorted. “Yes, I suppose it is. But I hope you will not judge me too harshly for it.”

  “I don’t quite know how to judge you, Miss Burton, nor frankly, should you care. My opinion is not worth the bother, I assure you. But let us return to the purpose at hand. I’ll send my steward over tomorrow with a lease, if you wish.” He shoved open the cottage door and left her to follow or not as she wished.

  Montfort squinted in the bright sun, his thoughts addled. That kiss! He had kissed more women than he cared to count, and in more productive ways. But Claire’s kiss—the only word he could apply to it was “sweet.”

  It warmed the center of his being like the cider that had so obviously thrown her off kilter.

  But she had kissed him. It was like the mouse turning on the cat. He said he didn’t know what
to think of her. That she baffled him would be closer to the mark. She was clever, he’d give her that. If she had fallen to Joss’s wiles, he’d wager it had been once only and she hadn’t enjoyed it. Her Sunday-school guilt would have seen to that. No wonder she wanted to bury herself in the wilds of Herefordshire. She probably did daily penance or, worse, told herself it never happened.

  But an affair with Claire Burton began to offer charms beyond the tangible. Yes, he’d get his land back, but how satisfying it would be to see her blossom as a woman under his hands, to find joy in their coupling. She seemed imminently teachable and more willing to learn than she realized.

  But that kiss—he’d been kissed like that once before. Honestly. Fervently. With no thought beyond the moment. No calculation. Before Lucy spurned him, she had kissed him like that. But Montfort sensed a generosity in Claire that Lucy lacked. If Lucy was a cool draught of water for a thirsty man, Claire was a bountiful spring waiting to be tapped.

  Minutes passed. He ran his tongue over his lips, recalling the taste of Claire’s lips. Her perfume—lily of the valley?—lingered in his nostrils. He straightened his lapels, stared at the ground, adjusted his trousers. If she had noticed the quickening activity there during their embrace she had given no sign. Finally, he planted himself akimbo by the gate and stared up into the sky, braced for her reproach.

  A lark soared amid trailing veils of cirrus, the liquid notes of its song falling to the earth below like crystal shards. Then she stood by his elbow and spoke.

  “Lord Montfort,” she said, her light voice mingling with the clear trills of the bird. “Where is my horse?”

  He started and looked toward the road. His bay hunter, still tied to the dilapidated fence, pawed the dirt restively. Claire’s horse was gone.

  “He can’t be far,” Montfort said. “We were inside for only a few moments.”

  She looked dazed. The scrumpy must still be at work.

  “The question is, which way! Did he wander down the lane or was he tempted afield by all this,” she said, taking in the cottage and its overgrown surroundings with a sweep of her arm and nearly overbalancing.