The Wedding Night (13 page)

"The Celts, Mr. Richmond. Early Britons. I just wondered where their silversmiths had gotten the metal for their artifacts. I'm an antiquarian, and though I see the elegant work of the Celts everywhere, I haven't the vaguest idea how they got their silver."

"Ah! Well, smelting silver from lead ore is a very old process. A fleck here, a chunk there, melted out of the rock, just as lead and tin are. Silver isn't mined like coal. Not in veins and
stockworks
. At least not here in
Britain
."

Jack decided that the woman had caused enough trouble; God knew where she was leading them all. "What is it you need, Miss Faelyn?"

To be free of you, Lord Rushford
. Mairey had never seen Rushford's map before, the grasping hold he had on the riches of the earth. Nor could she have imagined that his holdings so closely ringed the
Willowmoon
. A chill had come upon her the moment she'd opened the door; it curled around her heart, frightening her to the marrow.

"I'll be right back, gentlemen," Rushford said as he took her hand and slipped it over his arm.

He
skidded
her through the foyer and into the library, scooping her into his arms and depositing her on top of his desk.

"What the devil was that all about?" he asked fiercely, trapping her with his hands on either side of her legs.

"I only stopped in to tell you that I had returned from the Tower."

"And stayed to ask about silver mining? Silver, Miss Faelyn! And the Celts!"

"I was curious." She'd been stunned by the vast scope of his contemptible enterprise, unable to stop her questions. Ripe with splendid news that she couldn't tell a soul, especially not the reprehensible but dangerously attractive Viscount Rushford.

"You picked a bloody bad time to become curious about silver mining."

The very best time, Rushford
. "I'd never seen your map before. Where do you hide it?"

"Damn the map! What do I say when those men stop to wonder who you are, and why you would wander into my office unannounced. They're sure to ask why I have an astoundingly beautiful young woman living in my house."

"In the lodge."
Beautiful?
He thought she was beautiful? Well, and that was the problem, wasn't it—all this crackling attraction between them. She kept forgetting who he was; she needed stark reminders of the danger to everyone she loved, to her village. She needed his towering map that bled black with his mines to remind her that he was her enemy.

"The men are your business associates, Viscount Rushford. They will certainly find out sometime that I live on the estate. Just tell them that I am one of those fusty old antiquarians, and that I've engaged your lodge as a place from which to study its history."

"Not bloody likely. You are neither fusty nor old, as every man in that room was patently aware. Not so easily dismissed."

Mairey felt her ears go crimson at the effort to keep from remembering the graze of his tongue against her lips.

"If all goes well, my lord, one day soon we'll find the
Willowmoon
Knot, and then I'll be gone from your circle and no longer your problem."

Despite all the books and the inch-thick carpets, despite the
tapestried
drapes, her declaration seemed to echo in the library.

He straightened, a tic dancing along his jaw. He looked angry, frustrated.

"Where did you get these?" He flicked his finger across the sagging violets that her sister had surprised her with that morning.

"From Anna. Why?"

Rushford scrubbed his hand across his mouth, calmed considerably. "They're wilted."

"It's been a long day."

"Made longer by
Walsham
, I suppose?" He was folding bits of her skirt between his fingertips, watching her.

"He was … manageable." Mairey hid her amusement; Rushford truly hated the man. She wanted to suspect a healthy dose of jealousy, but that would only rouse too many other suspicions, too
many impossibilities
.

"Did you find anything?"

Mairey had to look him boldly in the eye to tell him this particular lie. It made her heart feel a little hollow.

"Nothing at all, my lord."

Adam
Runville's
last will and testament.

"Will you go again tomorrow?"

I'll go to
Donowell
, as soon as I can get away from you, Lord Dragon.

"That depends. There are other clues to follow." While she bided her time.

"My best to
Walsham
, madam. My worst to him if he should ever touch you wrongly." He lifted her hand in his, pressed a delicious kiss against her fingertips, and then left her to return to his pillaging.

Left her wanting so very much more.

* * *

Jack once again made his way through the twilight toward the lodge, this time carrying a bag of flour. He was running out of excuses, and would have to confess to Miss Faelyn one day soon that he enjoyed her company outside the bounds of their project.
Which would sound something like courting.
Which made beads of sweat pop out on his forehead.

Bloody hell! He was courting Mairey Faelyn! That explained the gnawing in his stomach and the battering that his heart was giving his rib cage at the moment. Courting!

Hell. No. He wanted to talk to the woman about mining. She'd been interested enough a few days ago to interrupt his meeting; he even had a pocket full of drawings and diagrams to help demonstrate. That he would be gone for the next two days was worth a mention. But delivering the flour from the main pantry … yes, this was the best he'd come up with yet.

Near to whistling, he followed the stream till it widened to a pool, his step lighter than it had been in years.

Courting?

"
Shhh
!"

He stopped at the oddly hovering voice, unable to locate its source. Then came a tugging at his pant cuff. Miss
Faelyn's
shadow-pale face peered up at him from behind a fallen tree, her wide eyes bright and blinking.

"Miss Faelyn?" he asked, his voice sounding harsh in the cool night.

"Down, Rushford, you'll scare them away." She tugged again at his trouser cuff, the gentle pressure bringing him to his knees beside her.

"Scare who?" He noticed then that her sisters were sprawled like wood nymphs in the giant roots that had once anchored the tree to the
bankside
. The youngest was draped precariously on a drooping branch, her fingers dragging in the water.

"The fair folk are out tonight," Miss Faelyn said
,
her words dappled in amusement as she nodded toward the pool. "We're watching them."

"Are you?" he asked, aware of little more than the glint of moonlight on her mouth.

"There's another one, Mairey!" The little voice was bright with awe, and far too loud for secrets. "Look! Look! Do you see?"

"I do, Caro. I see four. Anna?"

"Oh, yes, Mairey, I see them, too."

Jack didn't see anything. Only the woman's moon-bright hair. "Fair folk?"

"There." She pointed at the air above the pond. "Carrying lanterns for dancing at their revels."

Jack saw only the phosphorescence given off by decaying matter in the rushes. "Miss Faelyn, those lights are—"

"
Fairies
, my lord," she said pointedly. He could feel her eyes on him, daring him to contradict her. "What do you call them where you come from?"

"These fairies belong to his lordship." The middle child—Caro, if he remembered rightly, the one who had wielded the poker against him—jumped off the tree to hang off
Mairey's
shoulder, her round little, face between theirs, her eyes sparkling with conspiracy. "They're your fairies, aren't they, sir?"

He looked again at the ethereal illuminations, their feathery lightness matching the stars for acrobatic grace. He remembered his family lying like ragdolls under the open skies, for no other reason than the fact that it was huge and magnificent and they loved each other.

"The fairies aren't mine, Caro," he said, swallowing hard to keep his voice steady, "but they do pay rent to live at
Drakestone
."

"Really, sir?" He heard
Mairey's
soft laughter in her voice, and his ears went hot with pride. "What coin do they use to pay you?"

"Well, candy." Jack caught himself smiling at her, and crossed his legs as she was doing and sat fully on the spongy ground.

"Chocolate candy?" The littlest of the girls slid into
Mairey's
lap and peered into his face, smelling of rose soap and childhood.

The woman was waiting for his answer as readily as her sisters, her eyes sparkling,
her
mouth dew-damp and stunningly inviting.

"Yes, chocolate," he said, delighting in the grin that she gave him, and nearly jumping out of his skin when she patted his hand.

"Poppy's favorite."

"My favorite!" The squeal of laughter would have sent all the fairies in
England
back into their holes, or wherever the devil they lived.

"What's in the sack, sir?" Caro asked, poking at the bag of flour he'd set beside him.

"Candy for the fairies?" Poppy leaned down to look.

"For us, too?" The elder, Anna—the flower thief who had pelted him with apples—knelt down beside him, too much the young lady to squeal or poke like the other two.

And still Mairey said nothing, only smiled from behind Poppy's curls and let Jack blunder around and gain his bearings.

"The sack is only full of flour, I'm afraid."

"Fairy flour to make fairy cakes!" Poppy flung herself out of Miss
Faelyn's
lap and into his, all pointy elbows and sticky fingers, and was circling like a puppy for a better seat.

"Poppy, be careful with Lord Rushford." Miss Faelyn looked pained when she saw where the girl was stepping.

"Jack," he said firmly. "My name is Jack. I feel a hundred years old and a thousand miles away when you call me 'Rushford' or 'my lord'."

"Are you a hundred years old, Lord Jack?" Anna had taken Poppy's place in Miss
Faelyn's
lap.

"Are you?" Mairey asked, smiling. "Thirty-three." He grunted as Poppy dropped into place and lounged against him, a bare foot kicking the fallen tree.

Caro was now hanging on his shoulder, draped over his back, whispering, "I know how to make fairy cakes."

"With honey?" he ventured.

The little girl's eyes grew wide, as though he possessed magic and was willing to use it to better the world. "Then you know, too! Mairey! Can we make fairy cakes tonight? Can we?"

"It's late for cooking cakes, girls," Mairey said, to a chorus of groans. "Aunt
Tattie
will be asleep."

"We'll be quiet!"

"Yes, I can imagine that happening." She raised a brow at Jack, inviting him to remember the sounds of a household full of children.

"Please, Mairey," Anna said, old enough to rally her patience, but ready to spring away like a gazelle.

"All right. If you're quiet."

Anna snatched up the bag of flour and dashed down the shadowy path with Caro on her tail.

Miss Faelyn got up, dusting off her skirt. "Will you come, my lord?"

He didn't see how he could get away. The realization that he didn't want to came over him in a rush of yearning. Poppy had a hold of his neck, and Mairey had a grip on his heart.

Where else would he go?

"I'm not any good with a cook pot, Miss Faelyn."

"I know." Mairey could well imagine her dragon curled up in her aunt's kitchen, warming his belly on her stove, snoozing after inhaling a plateful of cakes—his mouth sweet with stolen honey. She ought to have sent him back to the main house for safekeeping. But he had managed to stand so easily with Poppy in his arms, and the little scamp seemed extraordinarily attached to the giant.

Ah, Poppy. I know the feeling too well.

"I can't stay long," he said, as though he knew her thoughts. "I need to be off to
Cornwall
before daylight."

Mairey felt her face go pale, and hoped that he couldn't see in the near darkness. "Until when?"

"Two days, maybe a little longer."

Long enough for a trip to
Donowell
without him—a prospect that didn't rest as comfortably as it might have a few weeks ago.

"Come, my lord, we've got fairy cakes to make."

"Indeed."

Chapter 9

«
^
»

M
airey made
Donowell
by late afternoon the next day, and found a room in a small inn on the sea cliff, run by a pair of elderly maidens. She was standing in the nave of Holy Martyr's Church a half hour later.

Rushford was in
Cornwall
. She had followed him secretly to the train to be sure,
then
left on a different track. Yet still she watched over her shoulder for him, feeling like a sneak-thief. Her father had spent all his life plotting out the places where the queen's stolen treasury had been recovered. It had taken Mairey less than two weeks to find Adam
Runville
, his will, and a list of his possessions that meant the world to her cause:

…
six
gilt knives,
bonne
-handled; one
silv'red
disk, anciently ornamented; one brass
ewere
…

One
silv'red
disk,
anciently ornamented.

All because of Rushford—the very man who must never see the fruit of all his beneficence. She would spend the remainder of today and tomorrow following
Runville's
trail, and then return to
Drakestone
without him knowing that she had ever come.

The deception made her jaw hurt and her heart ache.

But she would persist, for the
Willowmoon
Knot. For love and devotion, for her village, for the glade, for her sisters and her father.

She forced the chant into her thoughts, trying to rid them of the sound of Jack's close and gentle laughter, and the disarming way it reached down into her chest and lifted the breath right out of her. The way the moonlight made his eyes sparkle, made his fine teeth gleam through his so very reluctant smile.

He'd won Poppy with that smile, and had threatened
Mairey's
composure when her small sister had slipped her hand into his and dragged him along the path toward the lodge.

He'd looked lost and found again at the same time, and if she hadn't known better, she might have believed she'd seen tears welling like stars in his eyes.

Impossible dragon.

Filling up her mind with more productive images—of slag heaps and gaunt children—she shouldered her bag of foolscap and carbon and went in search of Sir Adam
Runville
.

Holy Martyr's had once been a priory, its chapel an echo of
Canterbury
cathedral. In the long centuries since, it seemed that every family in the parish had commissioned a bronze plaque or stone marker to commemorate the loss of a loved one. The walls and floor were nearly paneled with them. She hoped Adam
Runville's
heirs felt as much dedication to his memory.

She scoured the walls, reading every plaque, walking the length and breadth of the entire sanctuary, deciphering the worn letters in the crypt stones embedded in the floor. She checked the Lady Chapel and the transepts, rounded every pillar, and was about to take her search outside into the churchyard when she remembered the tower.

Two winding stories later, in the middle of the spiraling steps, just below a narrow arching window, she found the name that made her heart quicken.

Adam
Runville
. Dates, titles, praise, and prayers for his soul. The thieving devil.
Did your queen ever learn of your duplicity? And was that the
Willowmoon
Knot, Sir
Runville
—the "
silv'red
disk, anciently ornamented?"

Wishing her father
were
here to share her success, Mairey dropped her hat at her feet, then unrolled a thick piece of parchment and fished around in her bag for a block of rubbing carbon.

She almost wished Jack were here with her. Not the rapacious Viscount Rushford of Rushford Mining and Minerals, but the Jack who had helped her
make
fairy cakes with her sisters.

By the time Aunt
Tattie
had come down the stairs, roused from her bed by the unstoppable merriment, everyone and everything was sprinkled with flour.

Griddle cakes
, the man had called them, best eaten with thick maple syrup on a cold morning in the
Yukon
. Poppy never left his side; Anna was completely in love; Caro had found a best friend; Aunt
Tattie
was flirting wildly; and Mairey had wanted to cry.

She still did, because there was no cake-making Jack. He was part of her fairy tales. Dragons never won the maiden—she had best remember that.

Mairey fit the parchment against the bronze plaque, squaring her arm and elbow across the top edge to hold it fast against the wall, and started rubbing the block lightly over the page. As awkward as it was, there was no better way to copy a bronze. The block hit the rim of the raised crest beneath and bounced out of her fingers. She muttered, "Blazing toads," as the piece rolled two steps down the spiraling stairs—

And up against a pair of expensive boots, dusty and dreadfully familiar.

"Do let me help you, Miss Faelyn."

She looked up into Rushford's eyes, feral and dangerous, and utterly cold.

"How did—"

"How did I find you?" He covered her hand against the wall and the parchment with his own, hot-palmed and huge, invading the cool spaces between her fingers. His eyes were shuttered and as dark as the
midnight
of his hair, gleaming blue-black in the evening light of the window. "Your sisters thought I ought to see that you hurried home to them. I thought so, too."

Mairey couldn't read him at
all,
he was closed down so tightly.

"You were gone to
Cornwall
," she said, trying to erase his suspicions with a smile that felt as feeble as it must look.

He put the lump of carbon in the short span between them. "Show me."

"Show you what?"
Runville's
will? How could he know about it? And what the devil would she tell him?

"Show me how to take a carbon rubbing. Isn't that what this method is called, Miss Faelyn?" His question brushed against her ear as he leaned in to take a closer look.

"A rubbing, yes." Her fingers were cloddish and trembling as she took the carbon from him. "You start like this," she said, feeling his gaze shift to her mouth and then to her eyes. "Hold the carbon flat and … and work the edge of the letters."

Her hair was a curling mess after all her travels, her plait fallen to the front, and in the way of her rubbing. But she was caught like a rabbit, unable to shift in any direction without moving against the man.

"Is the Knot here in
Donowell
, Miss Faelyn?" He lifted her plait off her shoulder and smoothed the curls at her nape, making her breath rattle. "Is that why you came here?"

"I don't know yet where the Knot is."

"But
Runville
had it at one time, didn't he?" Rushford shifted his length to the same stair as hers, and she was caught even closer, his knee bent into the back of her own, his weight and warmth against her skirt heating through to her drawers and collecting like honey low in her belly.

"Yes. I think so."

"Think so, madam?" His words tucked themselves behind her ear, felt more like a lover's caress than the inquisition she knew them to be. "You must have found his will in Cromwell's probate courts or you wouldn't be here."

"I did." Her confession slipped out like an inevitable sigh, leaving her nothing of her own to defend herself with. "I found it this morning, just after you left."

"Imagine." He said nothing more as she worked at the rubbing, holding the parchment against the wall for her when it would have slipped. She still couldn't read him; kept waiting for him to shake the truth out of her. Her nerves were raw and throbbing when she finally finished.

"Where do your theories take us next, Miss Faelyn?"

Us
. There would be no putting him off now; he would be more suspicious than ever. The chessboard was clear again; he would know as much about their progress as she did. Except that, in the end, she knew where the treasure lay. That knowledge would have to keep her going.

"
Runville
had an heir—a son, John."

"As the plaque reads."

"We need to find the son's will, which could be either here in
Donowell
or in
York
—"

"Why
York
?"

"It depends on which prerogative court proved the will after John died. And from there we follow the trail of bequests until it dead-ends."

"My schedule is clear, madam. Take all the time you need."

Oh, go dig in your coal pit, Rushford!

"It's too late this evening. We'll have to continue in the morning." She rolled up the parchment. "I'm staying at an inn at the edge of town—"

"At the Belle Heather, with the elderly Misses
Potterfell
. So am I." Without a glance at her, Rushford scooped up her satchel, took her arm, and started down the stairs with her.

"What?" Mairey stopped dead. They'd had only her room left. The other had been full.

"I told them that my dear wife and I had a falling out—" A simple tug on her arm and she was hurrying after him.

"Your
wife?"

"That I'd been a damned
fool,
and that I had hoped to make it up to her tonight with flowers … and a little old-fashioned romance."

"You
didn't?"
Stunned, Mairey stopped on the stairs again, and again the brute tugged her along after him, lifting her with such ease that she never missed a step.

"Yes, my dear, romance. The ladies seemed quite concerned over the sorry state of our marriage."

"Jackson Rushford, how could you?" The tower door loomed darkly below, and Mairey tried to race ahead to be free of him and his meddling arrogance.

But he held her to him in the well of darkness and spoke his threats against her hair. "I could and did, madam, because I doubt very much that the Misses
Potterfell
would have approved my sleeping in your room tonight without our being married."

"You're not sleeping in my room!"

"Oh, but I
am
, Miss Faelyn." He was steaming heat against her nape, lifting her hair—and, oh, the blazing stars, were those his lips? "You see, my dear, I'm not letting you out of my sight. Not until we've found the
Willowmoon
Knot and all its precious silver. Maybe not even then."

His last threat frightened her most of all. Not because she wanted to be free of his prison, but because—dear God—she'd grown too fond of it.

* * *

Everything in the Belle Heather made Jack feel enormous, a fuming, foul-tempered giant in the tree-root home of a pair of ancient
,
chittering
elves—from the low, timbered ceilings, to the small windows, to the diminutive
Potterfell
sisters themselves. They were fretting over the deliciously cunning Miss Faelyn as though she'd come limping home from
Waterloo
on crutches, were forcing a biscuit and a cure-all cup of tea into her hands.

"You should have told us of your husband troubles when you first arrived, Lady Rushford. You poor, frightened dear. And so newly married."

"So very newly married." Mairey was having her hand patted by one of the sisters and was sending Jack a blistering, narrow-eyed scowl over the woman's bobbing, blue-gray curls. She'd gotten herself into this particular spot. She'd run from him at the first opportunity, with a fistful of information that she had intended to hide from him. He'd had no choice but to find her and keep her.

Keep her? Like keeping a handful of diamond dust from blowing through his fingers. Damn the woman!

"Have you dears any children?" The other Miss
Potterfell
had toddled over to Jack and was smiling innocently up at him.

"Children?" He'd almost bellowed the nonsensical word, but it had softened in his throat to a breath of air that made him look across the room at Mairey. He remembered her mimed belly at the Tower and the stirring it had caused in his chest.

"Not yet," he whispered through a peculiar tightness in his chest, imagining children with Mairey Faelyn. Bright haired and wild, reckless hearted, like she was. And they'd have all those incorrigible aunts to love them.

Anna and Caro and Poppy. And his own sisters. And a doting grandmother who must have other grandchildren already.

He wasn't very good at keeping the people he loved. Love was trust and devotion. He was careless.

Not like the dragon-hearted woman who, at the moment, looked as though she might castrate him with her bare hands if she could get close enough.

Children?
His chest felt huge, and stuffed with hope and fear.

"Sleeping with a robin's egg beneath your pillow helps, or so I've heard," said the first Miss
Potterfell
.