The Light in the Darkness (4 page)

Sapphira looked exasperated. “Pray do not speak in riddles. Whom does he intend to marry?”

Sighing, Kayne explained the entire situation to her in as few words as possible. “I believe I’ve seen the girl at the Pine Tree Ordinary,” he added. “Not only is she extraordinarily plain, I suspect she is simple. I still cannot believe Grey intends to go through with this farce.”

“He cannot!” Sapphira said vehemently. Her blind eyes were filled with alarm. “Kayne, we must stop him. This arrangement is not fair to either of them.”

Kayne groaned. “There is nothing we can do, Sapphira. You know as well as I do that when Grey is set on a course of action, nothing can turn him aside. We can only let him muddle through as best as he can.”

“We are to stand by and watch him ruin his life?” Sapphira responded indignantly.

Kayne smiled sadly. “My beloved, we have stood by and watched him ruin his life these past seven years. There has been nothing we could do about it before.” He bent his head in sorrow. “And there is nothing we can do about it now.”

Carey O’Neill was as startled by the news as his father had been half an hour earlier. “You must be joking,” he said incredulously.

He was seated in the Pine Tree Ordinary, with an ale before him, despite the fact that it was barely noon. Due to the hour, the taproom was virtually deserted, empty of acrid pipe smoke and ribald conversation, and Jenny was free to talk with him as she had not been last night. He looked up earnestly into her features. “Surely,” he said with
great intensity, “you are joking with me. Tell me you are jesting, Jenny.”

Jenny stared down at him blankly, and he sighed. He should have known better. Jenny Wilton never joked. “Very well, obviously you are not joking.” He shook his head, causing some of his dark russet hair to spring loose from its queue. “I cannot
believe
you are going to marry Edward Greyson, of all people.”

Jenny looked at him shyly. “I understand,” she said humbly. “I’m naught but a tavern wench, and ’e’s … well …”

“It’s not that,” Carey said sharply. He had inherited the broad, amiable features of his father, along with his mother’s merry blue eyes, but his face was neither merry nor amiable at this moment. “Your uncle and I had agreed—” He broke off whatever he had been about to say, looking irritated. “Well, that isn’t relevant any longer, since your uncle has apparently struck a bargain with Greyson instead. The simple fact is that Greyson is very definitely not the sort of man you should marry.”

Jenny smiled slightly—very slightly. She had known Carey O’Neill for years now, and as she grew into young womanhood he had begun speaking with her, actually
talking
to her—a novel thing in Jenny’s experience. Most customers spoke to her only to demand ale or make crude comments. Her uncle’s communications with her were generally limited to oath-laden reprimands and well-placed blows. Her aunt, a pale, timid woman, never spoke at all if she could avoid it.

Carey and Jenny had had numerous conversations in the ordinary over the past two or three years. A year ago she had even begun meeting him outside the ordinary, near the small creek that separated the ordinary grounds from O’Neill land, on those rare occasions when she had completed her duties and was able to slip away from her uncle’s watchful eye. She knew perfectly well her uncle would have been infuriated were he to find out she had been meeting a man in the woods, yet Carey had always
been a perfect gentleman, never so much as touching her or trying to kiss her, content only with her company and her conversations. He was virtually the only man in her life who had ever treated her as a human being. Of course, she thought, he had never prevented her uncle from striking her the way Edward Greyson had last night.

No man had ever protected her from her uncle’s wrath before.

And yet Carey had always been kind to her, invariably taking care to thank her when she brought him ale, oftentimes regaling her with entertaining stories, so that she looked forward to their all-too-brief conversations. Nor did he ever join in the raucous laughter at her expense when her uncle punished her for some real or imagined failing. She thought of Carey as a friend, the only friend in her lonely existence, the nearest thing to a brother she had had since losing her own brother eight years before. Surely, with his obvious disquiet about her impending marriage, he was demonstrating more concern for her than her uncle ever had.

Of late, however, their relationship had changed somehow. There was something about Carey’s expression when he looked at her, something that was not brotherly at all, something that filled her with a nameless apprehension. It puzzled her, but she was unable to determine exactly what was going through his mind these days.

Your uncle has apparently struck a bargain with Greyson instead.
What in the world did he mean?

“I don’t understand ye,” she said calmly. “Ye left the tavern when ’e came in, and ye didn’t see the fight. ’E struck my uncle and nearly broke his jaw, ’e did. ’E’s a fine man, a good man.”

Carey bit his lip as he placed his tankard of ale firmly onto the table. He had known Grey for years, and had never made any secret of the fact that he despised him. It infuriated him that Grey was permitted to visit at Windward Plantation and was treated as an honored guest,
rather than as the dog he was. And even more irritating was the fact that his father seemed to treat Grey more like a son than he treated Carey. No, he thought bitterly, Kayne treated Grey as an
equal.

He struggled to keep the bitterness out of his voice as he spoke. “Jenny,” he began carefully, “I don’t know what accounted for his uncharacteristic behavior last night, but Greyson is
not
a good man. I don’t wish to frighten you, but I can’t let you go into this marriage unaware of what he is.”

Jenny’s unchanging features managed to take on a cast of stubbornness. Having decided that Greyson was a hero, she did not particularly want to hear him denigrated. “My aunt is waitin’ for me,” she reminded him. Jenny was incapable of engaging in an argument, and thus had become a master of avoiding conflict. “There be a passel o’ dirty linen that needs a good washing.”

Seeing that she did not want to listen to him, Carey caught her arm to prevent her from leaving the table. “Jenny,” he said urgently, pulling her down so that she had no choice but to sit in the chair next to his. “Don’t marry him. Please, you must believe me. You know nothing of Virginia society, and I have known Greyson for a very long time. He is a very bitter man. He’s a rakehell. And—and—he’s a murderer.”

Jenny stared at him in blank surprise. “How d’ye know?”

“I don’t know it for certain,” Carey confessed. “It was never proven. But nearly everyone believes he was guilty. He murdered … well …” Carey paused, then burst out angrily, “I don’t understand why my father continues to permit the man into his house. He treats him like a son, whereas I—”

Jenny gave him a sympathetic look. She was aware of the frequent conflicts Carey had with his father, for he spoke often about their disagreements. Into her mind, which was more astute than either Grey or Kayne realized,
crept the suspicion that Carey was jealous of the friendship between Greyson and Kayne O’Neill. No doubt that served to explain why Carey had so often lately been at the tavern in the middle of the day, morosely sipping ale after ale, rather than at Windward Plantation. It also explained why Carey had stalked out of the tavern last night, scowling blackly, when Greyson walked in. “Never mind,” she said gently. “It may be true, but I can do naught to stop it now anyway. ’Twas arranged between my uncle and Mr. Greyson last night. I will be wed in three weeks.”

“Jenny, you
can’t
.”

Jenny lowered her eyes to the table and spoke so softly he could barely hear her. “I want to marry ’im, Carey.”

She wanted Edward Greyson to take her away from the tavern and her empty, lonely life here, wanted it more desperately that she had ever dared to want anything. She remembered the way he had looked last night, staring down at her from the back of his massive black stallion, his cloak swirling about his shoulders in the cold January breeze, his features lean and predatory, like a hawk’s, and as impassive and unyielding as if they had been carved from granite. He had looked every inch the hero he had acted. And then he had done the heroic thing in asking to marry her.

The only thing that had worried her was the look of disdain Carey had cast Greyson as he left the tavern. It had been more than evident that Carey disliked Edward Greyson, and she valued Carey’s opinion. But now she felt she understood the reasons behind Carey’s attitude, and her concern abated, leaving nothing but admiration for her hero in its place.

Apparently Carey saw she could not be swayed from this path, for an expression Jenny could not interpret crossed his broad face—an expression of loss, she thought. Perhaps even of envy. “I understand,” he said. The anger that had filled his voice was gone, and he spoke in his customary gentle tone. “God knows Greyson is offering you more than I could—though perhaps not as much as you
think.” He paused, giving Jenny only a brief moment to contemplate that puzzling statement, then went on heavily, “If you find you need help, will you find a way to contact me?”

“Of course.”

“If you ask for my help,” Carey went on, “I will—I will take care of you. I promise. And if you must, you know how to use the knife.”

Jenny nodded. When she and Carey had begun meeting at the creek, they had spent much of their time simply talking. But Carey had also invested some time in teaching her how to use a knife in self-defense, even showing her how to throw it accurately. She had become quite adept at it. He had taught her when her figure first began to take on the curves of womanhood, and at his insistence she always carried a knife in the pocket of her petticoat. For some reason she was unable to understand, he had wanted her to be able to protect herself. It had never occurred to her that he might have planned on keeping her for himself, for, with her utter lack of vanity, she was incapable of such a thought.

She knew, however, that she could never use the knife. Submission to the inexplicable rages of men had been beaten into her for too long. And surely she would never need to use it on her soon-to-be husband, the man who had saved her from her uncle’s fury. She was calmly certain he would never hurt her.

“I ’ave to go and work now, or my uncle will be getting annoyed,” she said. “And don’t worry, Carey. I am doing the right thing. I’m certain.”

She thought over what Carey had told her as she walked to the back of the ordinary. There an enormous cast-iron pot full of dirty sheets and boiling water was being stirred by her aunt, a quiet, withdrawn woman who had long ago been cowed into perpetual silence by her husband’s rages.

Edward Greyson was no murderer, Jenny thought, remembering how he had protected her last night. He was an
extraordinary and heroic man. Of that she had no doubt. It was inconceivable that he could be a murderer. Or was it?

Then she remembered the expression on his savage face when he struck her uncle, and suddenly she was not quite so sure.

J
ennifer Wilton Greyson had never been so wretchedly miserable in her entire seventeen years of life. Even her uncle’s beatings had been bearable compared to the endless agony she was suffering through now. Every muscle in her body ached from riding steadily for two days. She wondered, for the millionth time, why the stranger she had married had not simply sailed from his plantation to Princess Anne County. Virigina was riddled with creeks and rivers that made it painfully difficult to get from one point to another by land. Roads were rarely wide enough to accommodate coaches, except in larger settlements such as Williamsburg and Norfolk, and a rider frequently had to pay a ferryman to cross bodies of water, while his horses swam behind. Sensible people generally traveled by water if they were going any great distance.

But when she had diffidently asked Grey why he had ridden all this way, he had said only, “I like to ride.”

His replies to her timid attempts at conversation had all been terse, almost angry, and she had long ago abandoned any effort at drawing him out. He was a strange, silent, brooding man, and she had been quickly intimidated into silence. She realized that she had very little to say to him anyway. They had virtually nothing in common. He came from a sophisticated, educated world, whereas her world was a backwater tavern.

And she was discovering now that it had not been such
a bad world. This outside world appeared to consist of nothing but endless forests sliced through by rivers and swamps. They rarely caught sight of cultivated fields as they rode down the narrow dirt path. There was virtually nothing to look at to distract her mind from her aching muscles, aside from the occasional egret lifting gracefully away from a creek bank, or more rarely, a fox slinking through the underbrush.

Her physical discomfort was bad enough, but her mental discomfort was worse. On the long ride, with little else besides her misgivings to occupy her mind, she had found herself wondering repeatedly why Edward Greyson had married her. He seemed to have no interest in her at all, never speaking to her voluntarily and rarely glancing in her direction. More puzzling was the fact that, although they had stopped at inns for the past two nights, they had slept in separate chambers.

Jenny was an innocent, much more so than Grey would have believed, but she knew enough of such matters (for the walls of the ordinary had been none too thick) to know that couples traveling together generally shared beds. And she knew that this was expected of married couples—though heaven knew she had seen few enough married couples at the ordinary. Most couples spending the night there had had a more improper and less permanent relationship.

She looked ruefully down at her gown. Although it, like her other two gowns, was woven of coarsely woven wool, called homespun, it had been dyed with indigo, a plant grown specifically for its blue dye. She had always thought it was the prettiest of her gowns. Accordingly, she had worn it to her wedding. But even at their wedding, she reflected, Grey had scarcely glanced at her. They had been wed in the Lynnhaven parish church, with only Kayne O’Neill and his wife, Sapphira, as witnesses. Kayne had watched the ceremony with an odd expression of pity on his handsome features, and after the ceremony Sapphira had pressed her hand, and whispered, “Good luck, my dear.” But Grey had said nothing, had not even kissed her.
He had simply gone through the ceremony with the same expression of cool detachment that he wore now.