The Bride of Time (3 page)

“Where are your bags?” the man said. She couldn’t get a really good look due to the fog, but he appeared to be a portly man past middle age, with a pleasant countenance.

“Bags?” she murmured. “I…have none, sir.”

He shrugged. “A mite peculiar,” he said, “but no matter, ’tis less for me to lug.”

“Driver, wait!” she cried as the coachman climbed back up into the box. “I believe there’s been a mistake, I’m not—”

“No mistake,” the man called, meanwhile snapping his whip. “Unless that howlin’ creature gets ya. The master would skin me alive if that was ta happen. Hold on to the strap in there! The road gets rough ahead.”

The horse bolted forward then, and Tessa was knocked about as the coach sped off along the lane. She seized the hand strap and braced herself against the squabs. The tufted leather had a pleasant odor about
it: tangy salt air and sweet-smelling tobacco. It was comforting somehow, and would have relaxed her if the ride wasn’t such a harrowing one.

Tessa strained her eyes, trying to catch a glimpse of the terrain through the isinglass window as the coach tooled on. At first all she saw was the ghost-gray fog. Then a sudden wind swept it away and the land zipping past the window came into view. Rolling patchwork hills silvered in the moonlight stretched as far as the eye could see. Tessa gasped as recognition struck. Crippling chills walking down her spine clenched her posture on the seat, and she gripped the hand strap until it bit into the tender flesh of her palm. For one desperate moment, she tried to call up some such landscape from her past that made this scene seem so familiar. And then she knew. It was the misty rolling patchwork hills of her nightmare, and she was speeding headlong into them.

Chapter Two

Tessa sank back against the squabs, trying to remember if the nightmares had begun before or after she’d seen Giles Longworth’s infamous painting. For the hills in “The Bride of Time,” the hills in the dreadful dreams, and these stretching before her now were the very same. But she could not remember. At first she thought it must all be a dream, but no, it was really happening! Then she thought her imagination had run wild; and why wouldn’t it, living so long in her unhappy condition, and now becoming a fugitive besides? Yes, that had to be it, she decided, until the manor house came into view, picked out ahead by the moonlight on a little rise above the moor. Longhollow Abbey in all its sprawling, castle-like splendor silhouetted against the night sky…waiting for her. All things considered, it didn’t matter how or why.

The coach rumbled to a stop in the circular Welsh bluestone drive, and the coachman climbed down and set the steps. Tessa’s conscience demanded she make one last attempt before exiting the coach, and she held back.

“Sir, wait,” she said.

“The name’s Able, miss,” he said. “Me and m’boy Andy keep the stables for the master.”

Tessa nodded. “Able,” she began again, “I really think there’s been some mistake. I’m not who you think I am, I…” Her voice trailed off as a rumpus began, capturing their attention. The door of the Abbey flew open, and a half-naked woman came running into the drive clutching some anonymous garment to her bare breasts, her long chestnut hair streaming behind her. Her shrill cries fractured the stillness. A man was chasing her. Darkly handsome, he was fully dressed, from his Byronic poet’s shirt and buckskin breeches stretched over his well-turned thighs, to the brown-top turned-down boots defining the long muscular legs propelling him over the drive.

“Better get down outta there, missy,” Able said, taking hold of Tessa’s elbow. “Better do it quick!”

Tessa scrambled down just in time, as the woman almost knocked her over while leaping into the coach. At close examination, Tessa saw that the person wasn’t just half-naked; the woman didn’t have a stitch on underneath the garment she was clutching. The moon showed the round globes of her bare bottom clearly.

“You’ve been well paid for services rendered,” the man seethed, having reached the coach. “And poor services you’ve given for that king’s ransom, I’ll be bound. Give back what you’ve stolen, you thieving slag, or I’ll have the guards from the Watch in to sort you out!”

“Go ahead, and won’t I have a mouthful ta tell ’em, ya drunken whoremaster!” the woman retorted.

The man flashed wild eyes as dark as sin toward the coachman, who had started to climb back into the box. “Able, do not set whip to that beast until I have back what is mine!” he warned.

“No, sir!” the coachman said, plopping down on the seat above as if such a scene was a matter of course.

“You’re off your head, ya bloody lunatic!” the woman shrilled, latching the coach door as the man took hold of it. She attempted to roll the window closed, but his quick hand stopped it. “Leggo o’ that!” she cried.

“The snuff box!” the man said, extending his free hand, palm upward, long fingers working anxiously.

Tessa took note of the dark hairs curling on the back of the man’s hand. There was a ragged scar on the back of it, close to the wrist, that looked fairly recent. He hadn’t seemed to notice her at all, yet he was close enough to touch, close enough for her to feel his body heat and smell his musky scent wafting toward her from the sweat glistening on his skin. He smelled pleasantly familiar, of cheroot smoke and brandy drunk recently, and something more: fresh oil paint, linseed oil, and gum spirits. She breathed him in deeply and gasped. That was it! He smelled of the
gallery
.

“Here’s your damn snuff box!” the trollop snapped, lobbing it at him. It bounced off his broad shoulder and hit the ground. “It ain’t decent anyway, what’s carved on it.”

The man stooped to retrieve it, and Tessa gasped again. It was a rather large piece which appeared to be solid silver, with a naked couple engaged in the sex act embossed in bold relief on the cover. After examining it, he polished the piece on his shirtsleeve and thrust it into his pocket.

“Quite so,” he said. “But it would have brought a pretty pence, decent or no, at the Truro market, now wouldn’t it? Lucky for you it hasn’t been scratched or dented. Then you would have really felt my wrath. It was a gift from the Prince Regent himself.” He caught Abel’s eye. “Take her back to the brothel,” he charged.

Abel raised his whip and Tessa stiffened. Was he just going to leave her there with this drunken madman? A
strangled sound left her throat at the prospect, and the man’s eyes flashed toward her.

“Who the devil are you?” he demanded, scrutinizing her. How he towered. How black his eyes were, dilated in the darkness, how they shone in the nimbus of lemon-colored light haloing the carriage lamp. Trust her to come fresh from one theft into the midst of another, was all she could think under that fierce gaze, and another sound leaked from her. What on earth could she tell him?

He didn’t wait for an answer. “You intercepted Andy, I take it?” he said to the coachman. “It’s just as well. He hasn’t the knack for procuring.”

“Well, no, sir, not exactly,” Able said. “She’s—”

“Silence! Be still!” the man thundered. Seizing Tessa’s arm, he spun her to and fro, taking her measure. “Hmm,” he said. “I suppose she’ll do.”

“But Mr. Longworth, sir—”

The sharp-voiced creature in the coach interrupted the flustered driver. “If ya know what’s good for ya, you’ll climb right back inta this coach with me and come away, missy!” the woman barked. “He’s a bloody Bedlamite, he is, and worse, a drunken rakehell! Ya better get in! You’ll come to no good at Longhollow Abbey, ya mark my words!”

Muttering a string of blue expletives, Giles Longworth strode to the front of the coach and gave the right nervous leader a slap on the rump, setting the vehicle in motion.

“But, sir!” the coachman cried, scrambling to grab hold of the ribbons still wrapped around the brake as the horses plunged forward. “ ’Tisn’t what ya think. She ain’t—!”

“Yes, yes,” Longworth called. “Just get the trollop gone before I change my mind and have the guards in anyway. I’ll see to this one.”

Able said more, but his words were wasted, drowned out by the lightskirt’s obscene parting remarks shouted over the racket of the horses prancing over the gravel drive.

Longworth turned to Tessa. Oh, it
was!
She’d known that long before Able called him by name. He was much handsomer than his portrait suggested, and much more frightening.

“Where the devil did Andy find you?” he asked, circling her as he spoke. “Not in that brothel on the moor, by the look of you.”

“I…he…” she stammered. She had no idea what to say, what he would believe. She didn’t know what
she
believed. And where had the pain in her knee gone? It was as if it had never been socked at all. It was passing bizarre. Somehow one moment it was early morning in London, the next it was the dead of night in Cornwall—at least a two-day journey in such an antiquated carriage. After the scene she’d just witnessed, how could she tell him the truth: that she was fleeing the London police who suspected her of theft?

“And what manner of frock is that?” he went on, seeming not to expect an answer, much to Tessa’s relief. Whether that was just a quirk of the man’s nature or by-product of the brandy he’d drunk, she was grateful for it. “It is so…form-fitting, and your ankles show. Have you grown out of it or what? It does look somewhat threadbare.”

Tessa glowered at the hulking brute. She wanted to say that, after what she’d just seen, he was in no position to criticize exposed ankles. Discretion, however, checked her tongue.

“This costume is the height of fashion where I come from,” she got out. “And it hardly signifies. I’m afraid there’s been a mistake. You see—”

“That there has,” Longworth interrupted, taking hold
of her arm. “And it just left in that coach you arrived in. Well? Come along. Half the night’s been wasted. Let’s see how well you do while I’m still in the mood, eh?”

They had nearly reached the entrance to the Abbey when the heart-stopping howl Tessa had heard earlier came again. Longworth stopped in his tracks, glancing first at the moon, then toward the patchwork hills at the edge of the open moor. It was a brief hesitation. When he turned back, his countenance had changed. There was suddenly a haunted, almost feral look about him. In the light of the imperfect moon beaming down, Tessa watched his fine lips form a thin bloodless line, and his dark eyes recede into the deep shadows beneath the ledge of his beetled brow. His jaw muscles had begun to twitch. Whatever moved him then had sobered him, and from the look of things, Tessa decided she liked the drunken, savage Longworth better than the image he presented to her now.

“Come,” he said, leading her inside.

There wasn’t a servant to be seen as Longworth rushed her up four flights of carpeted stairs to a rooftop solarium, its domed glass ceiling a window to the star-studded vault of the night.

A huge easel and an opulent chaise lounge stood on the far side of the room, alongside a table heaped with artist’s materials. A rumpled bed dominated the shadowy space on the opposite wall, which called to mind the naked doxy who had just fled the Abbey. Adrenaline surged through Tessa’s body as it struck her that she was evidently that creature’s replacement.

Her protests unheeded, Longworth strolled around her again, his boot heels echoing on the bare floor. When he plucked the three tortoiseshell pins from her hair, Tessa cried out, reaching for them.

“How dare you! Give me those!” she demanded.

Holding her at bay with one massive hand on her
shoulder, he thrust the pins into his pocket. Her long chestnut hair had fallen down her back, teasing her buttocks. Whatever next? Tessa didn’t dare imagine. She swung at him with both hands balled into fists, but his arm was too long for her to make contact.

“Stop that!” he growled through clenched teeth. How strong and white they were, especially his canines, catching glints from the nearby candles. “You’ll get them back when we’re finished. Stop that infernal jigging about! One might think you’d never done this before. Stop it, I say! And get out of that rig.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“That ridiculous rag you’re wearing. Take it off.”

Tessa gasped. “I will not!” she breathed.

“Am I to be forever doomed to frustration at the hands of bird-witted females?” he snapped, speaking to whom Tessa couldn’t imagine; certainly not to her. More likely some demon dredged up from the dregs of alcoholic derangement. “Ah! Of course!” he blurted, as if a light had gone on in his fogged brain. Producing several crumpled notes from the pocket of his buckskins, he slapped them on a nearby drum table with flourish. “Do forgive me,” he said. “There then, now get out of that costume and let us get down to it, eh?”

“I will not disrobe before you, sir,” Tessa assured him. “You are quite mad, I—”

“Very possibly,” Longworth interrupted. “And I will stay so ’til we get on with this. You’ve been paid, now take off that frock, or I’ll do it for you.”

Tessa backed away. The man was in earnest. There was no use trying to reason with a madman, and she made a dash for the door. He caught her in one stride and spun her into his arms. How strong he was. His eyes were wild feral things flashing in the candlelight, devouring her. When he began probing her collar front and back, she screamed.

“Let me go at once or I’ll bring this house down!” she shrilled.

“Not before I get my blunt’s worth!” he said, fumbling with the neck of her frock. “How do you get shot of this deuced thing?”

“I’m no Penzance roundheels!” she cried, swatting his hand away. He winced when the blow grazed the scar near his wrist, but her anger was such that she could not raise an ounce of compassion. “Oh yes, I’ve heard all about the harlots you Cornish have out this way,” she went on. “They put Whitechapel unfortunates to shame. It was one of those trollops that left here naked in your coach just now, wasn’t it? Well, I am no such creature. I’ve been trying to tell you there’s been a mistake. Let me go! You will
not
get me into that bed, sir!”

He froze as if she’d struck him, his gaze a study in confusion. His hand fell away from her Brussels lace collar. He’d managed to free four of the tiny buttons that had challenged his thick fingers, exposing the notch at the base of her throat.