The Wedding Night (14 page)

"Now, now, sister. Children will come to these two in God's time. You see, my dears, neither of us have been married, but we can well imagine the trials of a young bride and the demands of an older gentleman."

Older?
He was barely past thirty.

And Mairey was sneering at him.

"Come, Wife," he said, hunching over to avoid smacking his head into the ceiling beams—though it might serve to knock some sense into him. "You and I have some important matters to discuss."

The leave-taking was a gauntlet of patting and taking and more fertility suggestions, but Jack finally herded his 'bride' through the
Potterfell
parlor and up the two flights of narrow stairs to the garret room. She was muttering as he ushered her through the door, but he paused on the landing long enough to give the misses below a final wave before he shut the door and faced the fuming Miss Faelyn.

"Oh, damn you, Rushford!" She drew herself up for a huge blow. "Damn you!
Damn
you!"

"Yes, you're probably right." He locked the door pointedly behind him, hoping to rouse the anger he'd felt that
noon
when he'd returned to
Drakestone
early, and
only
because he couldn't stay away. Because even a single night seemed too long. "But once a man is past redemption he really hasn't anything to lose, has he? Now, madam, you will show me Adam
Runville's
will, and then you will tell me why you skulked away as soon as I was gone."

"I don't have his will. And I don't skulk."

"
Runville's
probate record, then."

"I only have a copy, and I didn't bring it with me."

"Liar." He could see that well enough in the side shift of her eyes, a glance that swung back full of self-righteousness.

"I traveled lightly, Rushford. I only meant to be here overnight." She stood like a sentinel in the center of the small room.

"You're a brilliant researcher, Miss Faelyn; you would never have left such an important document behind, would never have relied only on your memory. Let me see the copy."

"I don't have it."

He could play her game; he knew rules that she hadn't even dreamed of and had the will to enforce them. "Then take off your shirtwaist."

The woman blushed instantly all the way to her hairline. "What did you say?"

"You heard me clearly. I meant what I said. Now." Jack took a threatening step toward her. "Take off your shirtwaist."

"I will not! And you, sir, will die trying to take it off me!"

He'd die
of
it, of the sheer pleasure. She'd covered her bosom, her hands and arms crossed like wings against a storm.

"Then so be it." He took another, more menacing step; allowed her to dash behind a chair, deeper into the room. The move gained her nothing. It trapped her completely against the window wall and the dying light of the day, and made golden webs of her hair.

"You're a monster, Jackson Rushford." She was breathing as though he'd chased her down a wooded path.

"And you are a liar, Mairey Faelyn. I want to see the copy of
Runville's
probate record. I know that you keep your precious notes in there." Jack pointed to the woman's bosom, where her outrage billowed against the wool of her jacket. He hoped to hell that his own cheeks weren't flushed as hotly as they felt, because his imagination was suddenly overfilled with plans for her creamy breasts, as it had been since he'd met the woman. And the room was just too close for that kind of imagining. "I've seen you stash your notes in your … between your … my our damn shirtwaist!"

Her eyes had grown enormous in her outrage. "You're mad!"

"Perhaps, Miss Faelyn. But if you don't remove your shirtwaist so that I may retrieve this copy from its hiding place, then I shall remove it myself!"

And he would find that place far too enticing. She was too lovely, smelled too fragrant. He'd never had to threaten a woman to remove her clothes, and prayed to God, who had once walked the earth and fought all of its temptations, that the foolish woman would cooperate and show him
Runville's
record. But he would have it one way or another, if only to make a point that he was in charge and that he would not tolerate secrets between them.

"Very well, Rushford. If you insist. But I am disappointed in you!"

She shrugged off her jacket, revealing tiny pleats of linen, and rich, round,
unstayed
bouncing that entreated his hands like just-picked summer pears. And now the foolish woman was reaching behind her neck for … what? The buttons of her shirt-waist…

He shouldn't have dared her, and was about to call back his demand when she tugged a silver chain from beneath her crisp collar and slipped it off over her head. A tiny key dangled from the end.

"The copy of
Runville's
probate record is there in my
Gladstone
, in an envelope. You're welcome to it. It's nothing more than I told you when you asked."

Swallowing hard, Jack
thunked
the
Gladstone
onto the chest at the foot of the bed and managed to fit the key into the lock on his first try. She stood over him as he fumbled past her silky smallclothes and her stockings before finding the envelope and the probate records.

"There, you see," she said, her indignant huff riffling the underside of his jaw. "Just as I told you."

It took all his concentration just to read, "'…six gilt knives,
bonne
-handled; one
silv'red
disk, anciently ornamented; one brass
ewere
…'"

"One
silv'red
disk, anciently ornamented," she repeated, retrieving the note and stuffing it back into the envelope, as though that were the end of it. "The
Willowmoon
Knot."

"That's all? You came all this way, made this fuss for a '
silv'red
disk, anciently ornamented'?"

"It's the
Willowmoon
Knot, Jack. What else could it be?"

"A fish plate, a pot lid, a coronation medal." He dropped onto the
bedchest
, utterly bewildered and frustrated to the core.

"I'm sorry, but that is the way and the risk of looking for treasure. Down one trail until it's cold, then up the next. If you find it too frustrating, then maybe next time you should stay behind and leave it to me. I was right not to wait for you."

"You couldn't have been more wrong." He'd partnered himself with a lunatic: a head-spinning, riddle-speaking lunatic, one whom he would and might have to follow to the ends of the earth and back again. "You could damn well have left me a note."

"What would that note have said?" She leaned down to him, her nose an inch from his. "'Found clue to the treasure. Am going to
Donowell
to pick it up.' You'd have skinned me for breaching your security."

"You're intelligent enough to have been more cryptic than that." He stood up and she stayed, her chin nearly touching his chest. "My point is that you're a woman. You shouldn't be traipsing around the countryside without an escort. Without me."

"It's what I have always done."

"Not any more. Not while you and I are partners. Do you understand me?"

"So very, very well, sir." She circled behind him and dumped the contents of her
Gladstone
into the middle of the bed. "Now, please, go take a long walk. I'm tired, and I would like to wash up and go to bed."

"Oh, no, madam. I'm not going down those stairs alone. You'll have to trust me that I will keep my back turned." Jack shoved the chair toward the window and dropped himself onto its
flowerflouncy
cushion.

"Afraid to face the Misses
Potterfell
and their questions about our troubled 'marriage'?"

"Terrified, madam."

"So am I." He loved her laughter, loved that she was ever free with the rippling rise and fall of it, whether she was angry, wistful, or plainly amused—as she seemed to be at the moment.

He heard the dash of water in the basin and a rustling of clothes, apparently taking his promise to avert his eyes as gospel.

Not wishing to disabuse her of the notion, he settled firmly into the chair, enjoying the sounds of her, enjoying the soft, evening breeze as it blew in off the blue-dark sea through the open window.

He still didn't know what to make of the woman's artful trip to
Donowell
, or of her conveniently discovering
Runville's
probate records the moment he was gone to
Cornwall
.

She'd told him all she knew of the
Willowmoon's
history, and was forever regaling him with her Celtic legends. Yet sometimes he felt that his sense of control over the situation was entirely an illusion, concocted by Mairey for his benefit

He wanted to believe that she was plain-dealing and honorable. But too often he recalled their initial meeting: her outrage and her refusal. And her absurd declaration that she would mine the silver with a shovel if she found it. His partner was as passionately intent upon the treasure as he was; she had been raised up from childhood to see its discovery.

But Mairey Faelyn wasn't a fortune hunter. She was crafty, intelligent, and heroically devoted to her family; her clothes were simple, and she found her pleasure in telling fairy tales to her sisters. He couldn't imagine her sweeping through
Paris
on a shopping holiday, throwing lavish dinner parties, or buying villas in
Spain
.

"What will you do with your part of the
Willowmoon
treasure, Miss Faelyn?"

"Do with it?" She became so silent that he thought she had vanished. He almost turned to see for himself, but then she spoke. "I don't know. I haven't thought that far."

He heard her strike a match,
then
her corner of the room filled with light. The sea breeze gusted and nudged the window on its hinges, the gentle movement catching her reflection in a single pane.

The glass was old and rippled, making silvery clouds of her nightdress and her hair.

He would have closed his eyes, but there was no rest for him there.

"Thank you, my lord." He heard the bed creak, and he turned slightly in the chair, wondering if she'd meant that she was safely tucked beneath the counterpane and that he was free to move.

"For what?" He stood casually, hoping for the best.

"For keeping your word." She was sitting in the middle of the bed, covered to her waist by a quilt of blue-printed country scenes, bent over one of her field books, making small notes with a pencil.

"What's that you're writing?"

"'Sleeping with a robin's egg beneath your pillow helps'… Hmmm." She looked up at him and touched the end of her pencil to her mouth. "Do you suppose that Miss
Potterfell
believes that the robin's egg aids in the conception of a child, or that its presence under the pillow acts as an agent to increase passion, thereby bringing the hopeful parents together more fervently?"

Jack knew his mouth was agape, but he couldn't help it until he took a deeper breath. This wasn't a subject for idle conversation.

"I don't know, Miss Faelyn. But I'll be damned if I'm going to go downstairs and ask her."

"I didn't mean you to ask. I should have done so myself, but I was too furious with you at the time." She was looking around the room, studying every stick of furniture. "Where are you going to sleep?"

"On the floor." He'd decided on that strategy the moment he'd seen the bed.

"That's absurd. There's room here." She patted the pillow and moved to the left side.

There was nothing like confession to clear the boards and point out the threats. "Do you know that I'm mad for you, Miss Faelyn?"

She put her notebook down on her lap. "What do you mean, 'mad'? What have I done now?"

"I mean that I feel very much like one of your
Oxford
swains. Every thought I have in my head right now involves making love to you until dawn."

"Really?" Damn the woman for not being shocked, appalled,
threatened
at the very least; for searching his face and then lighting so boldly on the front of his trousers.

"Really. So I am trapped here with you, madam, in a very precipitous state—"

"Hoisted on your own petard." She cocked her head, smiling—actually waiting for a reply—not a bit repentant over her inexcusable knowledge of the male anatomy. What else did she know? And who the hell did she learn it from?

"If we weren't all the way up in a third-floor garret and if the ocean cliffs weren't a hundred feet below—"

"And if the formidable
Potterfell
sisters weren't just outside our marital chamber, waiting for our reconciliation and news of a child on the way, you'd take yourself off to a dip in the ocean."

"Exactly." The word came out in a strangled heap.

She leaned over to the bedside table and blew out the light, plunging the room into a milky, moon-on-the-sea darkness. She made soft noises into her pillow, sighs that he wanted to feel against his mouth. He was still hard as a rock for her, his fists clenched as firmly as his teeth.