The Wedding Night (26 page)

And she wept.

Like a great, spent beast falling back to earth, Jack lowered himself to his elbows, snorting air in huge gulps, his muscles still quivering, his hips still pulsing into her. He whispered, "This, Mairey, my delicious love, is what happened to
Balforge
and his princess."

She kissed his mouth, where he tasted of salt and
their own
erotic fragrance. "You mean she gave herself to him like a wanton?" Mairey clung to his priceless, quixotic romance, not wanting it to end. Not ever.

"Oh, yes." He was still inside her, less full now but a tumid congestion that made her want him again. Right now. "They made love through the night—"

"I'd like that, too."

His dark eyes had taken on a brilliant and determined gleam. "And, much to the joy of everyone in their kingdom, they were married the next day."

Mairey's
heart ka-thumped, and then somersaulted; terror and joy mingled as sizzling steam.

"Married?" He couldn't be thinking that! Wasn't! She tried to sound scholarly, but he was sliding his huge hand between them to cover her breast, finding her nipple with his fingers. That delicate twist, a husbandly fondness that made her gasp. "A princess can't marry a dragon."

"Oh, yes you can, Mairey." He was making slow and devastating love to her ear, to the ridges and the valleys, with his teeth and with his tongue.

"Me, Jack? Why would I marry a dragon?"

His eyes glittered
darkiy
when he turned her chin. "Because you love me as madly as I love you."

Panicked, but slowed by languid limbs and an overwhelming love for him, Mairey tried to scramble out from under his weight, but he was as solid as a mountain, lazing on her like a sun-sated lizard. "I don't like the way this story ends, Jack."

"It's the only possible way." He shifted onto his elbow, his breathing still ragged; still dallying with her nipple, a tether between them that she couldn't break for the budding pleasure that was stirring her hips to move again. "You didn't think I would take your virginity and then leave you?"

"You didn't take anything from me, Jack; I gave myself to you willingly."

"Brazenly, my dear." She felt a dreadful loss when he shifted his legs and slipped out of her. A plea was on her tongue to call him back, but he replaced his fullness with his inflaming fingers, and she was filled again with the shock of bliss.

"Oh, Jack!"

He laughed gently against her ear. "Another reason that I love you, Mairey."

And, shameless bandit that she was, she took his stroking as she had his shaft, her hips meeting and matching him, crying out his name only a moment later, clinging to him, thrusting against him until she was exhausted and breathless, and more in love with him than she could ever imagine. And sadder than she'd ever been in her life.

"There, sweet. You love me."

"Sexual urges," she managed between close-caught breaths that threatened to be sobs.

"In some, perhaps, but not in you, Mairey—else we would have consummated our heady alliance weeks ago." He was nuzzling her neck, her throat.
a
sated beast toying with a mouse. "Under your desk and mine, in the greenhouse and in the broom closet at
Windsor
. But I wouldn't do that to you, Mairey, and you wouldn't do that to us. Not with-out love; not without commitment."

"It's impossible. I can't marry you." Mairey wriggled out from under him and up against the bank of pillows at the headboard, frightened of his certainty and of the vistas that he offered. "Please, Jack, don't ask me."

"I already have, my love. And I do again. Marry me, Miss Faelyn."

 
"No."

He was braced on his elbows, and her legs were spread on either side of his shoulders, knees bent, his face between her thighs and fire blazing in his eyes. Her pulse was still primed for whatever magic he planned, her heart a tattered wreck. But he reached beneath her and the pillows and dragged out a fistful of pristine, white sheet. With indescribable tenderness he wiped the dampness from her thighs and her belly and the place they had joined together.

"We are alloyed, Mairey." The sheet was wet and blood-streaked, the stark evidence of a fairy tale gone terribly awry. He bent his head and kissed her belly; held her with the whole of his hand, his palm pressing against her as though to keep his seed from leaving her. "You and I, and the rest of our lives."

The
Willowmoon
was her life, apart and separate from Jack. It had to stay that way. She loved him too dearly to hurt him, and that's what would happen in the midst of some distant happiness. They would find the Knot and she would have to leave him, stealing his children and his dreams from him when all he had wanted from her was love.

"I love you, Mairey. We have children to make together. Can't you see that?"

She
could
see it, and it made her weep.

He left his splendorous kiss between her breasts and on her mouth as he rose up on his knees and carried her onto his lap. She took him inside her again gladly, let him increase and come and spill himself into her, until he was kissing the tears from her eyes and off her breasts. "There, now. We'll marry tomorrow—"

"No, Jack. I can't!" Mairey shoved at him, taking unfair advantage of his still-fevered embrace to scramble away, across the bed and over the side. "Don't say that! I can't."

He looked so endearingly confused, confessing his
love
so plainly, his plans for a splendid marriage and even more splendid children.

"Why? Do you have an appointment in the morning?"

"Yes."

Jack was confounded by
Mairey's
refusal of his perfectly honorable proposal, and vastly in love with the lunatic. She was standing in the middle of the room as gloriously naked as the day she was
born,
lying to him about some damned appointment that she thought would get in the way of their wedding day.

"Consider it canceled, sweet. You and I are getting married tomorrow morning." He swung out of bed himself and turned up a lamp to better gauge what Mairey was thinking in her addled head.

"No!" She put her hand out and backed away, as though that would stop him. "I can't marry you at all, Jack. Not ever!"

He walked forward toward her. "Why can't you marry me?"

She countered his steps backward, wringing her hands. "Actually, I'm—"

"Already married?"

"No!"

He'd been joking, but he was relieved to hear her furious denial. She was a complicated creature; had contrary views on life that few other women would ever entertain. He'd gained three steps on her while she stood fox-frozen in place.

"Then why, Mairey? Are you in love with another man? Sir Dithering
Walsham
of the Tower, perhaps?" This one made his heart stop as he waited.

"You can't be serious!" The very best answer in the universe; loaded with satisfyingly appalled horror. She bumped up against his tall-winged reading chair, took a backward step up onto the seat, and stuck her heels into the cushion.

"I'm not serious about
Walsham
, Mairey. But I am certain that you love me."

"I don't."

"You do. And I love you."

"It won't work between us."

"It already has." He was wreathed in her scent. "No!" She laced her fingers, pleading,
her
nose so close to his he could feel her exhaling. "We're different people: I'm a scholar and you're a viscount."

"Then wedding me would make you Countess Scholar, I believe." He knelt in the chair, enjoying the view as lamplight played on her bobbing breasts, the sight making him hard again and aching for her. "We'll change the Rushford escutcheon, my love. Add a phallus
rampant
and a willow leaf
environed
."

"This isn't a joking matter, Jack."

"I've never been so damned serious in all my life. You
are
my life."

"What about the
Willowmoon
?" She closed her arms under her breasts, which only pushed them higher, nearer. "It's … I've got work to do."

"And so have I." He hadn't expected to have to convince Mairey to be his wife, but he would meet the project head on. "But the
Willowmoon
has nothing to do with marrying and
raising
up children together."

That launched her into a full-flight panic. "It has
everything
to do with it!"

He hadn't noticed the fear in her eyes before, couldn't imagine where it was coming from. Mairey wasn't prone to female jitters in any form.

"How does a silver mine have anything to do with us?"

She opened and closed her mouth a few times, before she snorted and threw out a laugh. "I'm your employee."

"You're the woman I want to spend all my days with."

"No! We're partners."

"Indeed."

"I don't love you. I
don't!" Protesting too much, my dear.

"
Ballocks
, madam." She looked small and lost, goose-fleshed and shivering from head to toe. He wasn't sure what was frightening her about his proposal, but he'd be damned if he gave up without a fight. "Tell me why we shouldn't be married. One reasonable reason might satisfy me, though I'm confident that there are none. Debate me with your cons."

"I … I don't have to tell you anything." Her lower lip stuck out in a weepy pout.

"My turn, Mairey. The pros: I am irrevocably in love with you. I am obscenely
rich,
and well-behaved
most
of the time. I love your Aunt
Tattie
and your hat, and the fact that you wised me up to my follies, and I am mad about your precocious sisters. Who, by the way, unanimously agree that I should marry you without
delay.
"

She closed her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide in horror. "You discussed our marriage with them?"

"Briefly, at their instigation. They are very wise. And you are my life, Mairey. To the end of my days."

"No, Jack." That faint keening of his name, that plaintive whimper, tugged his heart up into his throat. Then huge tears suddenly pooled in her eyes, soupier than before, spilling over her cheeks in a great wash. She sobbed, her whole sweet face crumpling and working, her shoulders hunched and quaking.

Hellfire! This wasn't going at all well. He lifted her into his arms and held her tightly, fortified by her clinging. "I refuse to say that I'm sorry I love you, Mairey. I won't. It's the bloody truth. If you'll just tell me how I offend you—"

"No, Jack, you don't! It's just that—" A hiccoughing belly-sob shook her. "You're … you're just too … too—"

"Too what?" He was ready for the worst.

"Too
wonderful
." She was howling again in her inexplicable anguish.

"I'm too—"
Wonderful?
Not greedy or pigheaded, not an unredeemable monster? Wonderful he could work with. Irresistible might take a few days.

"So—" A hiccough. "So—" Another sob. "So, you'd better just forget about
meeeee
."

Jack tucked her chin over his shoulder and held her close, letting her tears fall while he tried his most
wonderful
to soothe her.

"Ah, Mairey, if I've learned anything in eighteen years of waiting for my life to begin, if I've learned anything from you at all, it's that I must champion my family with my bare hands and that I must love them relentlessly, as I love you."

Which only brought on more weeping, and led finally, blissfully, in the wee hours of the morning, to a fevered bout of lovemaking that set Jack's ears ringing and had Mairey crooning his name in a most encouraging way.

Chapter 17

«
^
»

"
I
mpossible, arrogant,
pig-headed
man!" Mairey stood in the parlor of the lodge, stuffing her most recent notes from the Gazetteer into her work-satchel, and snuffling away the tears that seemed to burst forth in floods of biblical proportions whenever she thought about Jackson Rushford.

Which was so
bloody
constantly that she'd not only picked up the man's cursing but she'd also lost the ability to put one thought in front of the other.

Six weeks ago the man had resolved that they should be married, and since then he had led an unflagging campaign toward meeting that resolution. Leave it to him to be honorable and persistent after he had deflowered a virgin.

Marry Jack? Ha!
There
was a cautionary tale to be collected and cataloged.

Viscount Jackson Rushford was her greatest enemy in all creation. Even now he was dogging her tracks, eager to accompany her on today's trip to the
British
Museum
, sniffing after the ripening scent of the
Willowmoon
Knot, no longer confused by the scent of red herrings.

To make matters worse, he was damnably cheery, ruthlessly loving, and paid no attention at all to her rebuffs. Which, she had to admit, in recent days had become downright indistinguishable from encouragement.

She couldn't help it. He was masterfully cunning in his crusade. The girls crowded him with their love, charmed him out of a pony for each, and he took it all in his stride, like a huge old hound who didn't mind having his ears pulled, but who would tear out the throat of anyone who tried to harm his family.

His family: that's what they all had become to him. Not a substitute for the one he had lost so long ago, but a new beginning which, as he had stated, he was pursuing relentlessly.

She couldn't deny him a minute of his newfound happiness. It would be cruel of her; would haunt her for all her days if she did. Just as he haunted her nights. She hadn't been sleeping well lately, flopping around in her bed until her nightgown was sweat damp and her head was spinning in circles.

A spinning that sometimes tilted the ground even in the middle of the day.

Her stomach gave a rolling lurch, breakfast bubbled and squeaked for a moment, and settled only when she sat down and gripped the edge of the table to stop it from whirling.

"He's here, Mairey, dear."
Tattie
came trilling through the arch, beaming at whoever was following her—as if Mairey couldn't tell who that was.

"His lordship has come for you."

Jack filled up the doorway with his
height,
and her heart to the brim with his courting smile. Relentlessly.

"Good morning, my love," he said, as though they were intimately alone and the world belonged just to them and her aunt wasn't glancing eagerly between them, patting her hands together, ready to applaud, or pray, or both. "You look good enough to eat."

"Jack!" Mairey frowned at him, but flushed to the tips of her breasts, which had become tender and weighty since that night she'd spent in his arms.

Jack's smile grew lazy and wicked as he leaned against the jamb, obviously aware of the crimson blush staining her cheeks—and proud of
who'd
caused it.

Aunt
Tattie
only giggled—not a dignified sound from a woman of her age and refinement. "Doesn't our Mairey look pretty today?"

"More lovely every day,
Tattie
. She puts the sun and the moon to shame."

More giggling from a woman who had been perfectly sane and a dangerous she-wolf of the highest rank when they'd first arrived at
Drakestone
.

Now Aunt
Tattie
was Jack's chief promoter. "Doesn't his lordship look fine today, Mairey?" Maybe even a bloody conspirator.

"He's dressed well enough for a trip to the museum." Damn the man for his persistence. And bless him. "We'd best get going. It's nearly eight."

"Shall we,
Mairey?"
He proffered his proper elbow.

"No," she said, answering his artful pun sharply, but receiving a patient, boyish grin in reply. She took his arm, treasuring its warmth, painfully aware that she was playing with fire.

* * *

Jack always looked uncomfortable in
London
's private hackneys. They were never tall enough for his head, nor
was
the foot-well wide enough for his legs. Whether he sat beside her or across from her, riding with him was an intimate affair. Today he lounged in the seat opposite, his knees outside hers, his gaze attentive and too loving.

"I missed you yesterday, Mairey."

I miss you always, Jack.

He'd been in
Manchester
again, systematically combing the parish registries and orphanage files. Mairey had gone with him the first time, to show him his mother's grave. He left a fistful of flowers that Anna had picked, quiet tears that made her ache for him all the more, and a stalwart promise to find his sisters.

He had fired Dodson with an amazing amount of restraint.

"If I kill him, Mairey, I'll go to jail," he'd told her. "I'll never find my sisters, and I'll never be able to take you to wife. The bastard isn't worth it."

Then he had taken up his own investigation with all the fervor of a zealot newly
come
to a demanding God.

In truth he was very good; he had a memory for names and dates and places that made him dangerous—because unfortunately, he had transferred this newfound skill to the investigation of the
Willowmoon
Knot.

Now she replied, "I'm sorry I couldn't go to
Manchester
with you, Jack. But you found a name that might lead you to Emma." He had come home to the lodge elated but wounded by his efforts, and needing a family to share in his joy. Mairey had slipped into his embrace without thinking and had stayed far too long.

"A slim lead. I still can't believe that it's come so quickly." His grin was so natural and hopeful. "I've drafted letters to three manor houses, asking to see their employment records. The letters went out in this morning's post."

"And you did it without me." She hadn't left him stranded.

"
Because
of you, Mairey." He leaned across the cab and took her hands. "Marry me today."

"I can't."

"And you can't tell me why not, when I can think of a million reasons for us to share our lives, starting with the love we feel for each other. Unrestrained and honorable, passionate, and a hell of a lot of fun. Then there is Anna. Caro. Poppy. Your aunt and our unborn children. Family. And your damned phallus collection."

"Jack." He found her smile and made the most of it, nuzzled her chin and then planted a row of kisses along her jaw.

"Then, my love, there's our nightly bath in the same tub. We've more duck houses to build for Poppy and riding lessons for Caro, not to mention fending off the sweaty-palmed young men who will soon be courting Anna in the parlor."

"She's only ten."

"Oh, love, time goes by so quickly." He was so reasonable, so plausible in his dreaming. "And of course, stretching out as far as we can
see,
is our search for the
Willowmoon
Knot and all that silver. Partners, remember?"

He might as well have hit her in the stomach. Mairey shoved at his shoulders and sat upright, banging her head against the little window behind her. She tried not to look his way, tried not to care that she had injured his pride once again.

"All I ask, Mairey, is that you give me one reason why we shouldn't be married. Do that and I'll stop
asking.
"

He stared at her and waited for the answer she couldn't speak. So she turned away and watched the
lorries
go by.

I can't marry you, Jack, because I love you far too much.

* * *

The expansion of the
British
Museum
was only eleven years old, and already its storage vaults were bursting at their seams with new artifacts arriving weekly from
Egypt
and the Orient, the priceless and the profane crammed into every square inch of space that wasn't used for display.

With the aid of the
Gazetteer
, a stiff-nosed curator, and Jack's Moses-like letters of patent, they were once again in a cool, airless basement, alone with some of the greatest treasures of civilization.

Mairey had prepared a false set of notes for Jack and had sent him whistling off to a vault around the corner from where she had intended to look.

If the astonishing theory that she had formed from the
Gazetteer
was correct, if the Knot had somehow managed to make its way from Yorkshire into the possession of the amateur archaeologist Sir Edmund
Larkenfield
sometime before 1778, then it might well have been sold to the British Museum in 1810, along with the rest of
Larkenfield's
collection of antiquities—which had remained scattered through this warren of rooms, virtually unpacked and
uncataloged
, for nearly fifty years.

She had only come this far because of the man in the next room. She had never felt so wicked, or so angry. She loved Jack as she loved her life, and all this deception was beginning to drown her.

As Mairey studied her own encrypted notes, she was struck by a wave of deceit that made more of those fat tears form in her eyes, made her stomach pitch again with regret.

Deception
.

She was an expert at it now. She could have gone on the stage, would have been the talk of
London
with her sleight of hand.

Deception
. Letting Jack believe that they were working toward the same goal, when in actuality she was planning to steal the Knot before he even knew that she had found it.

Let him go on looking until his hair grayed and his shoulders stooped, and the light in his eyes had dulled. Mairey would be long gone with the
Willowmoon
, living secretly in her village, where she'd have to exist on the sweet memories of her handsome dragon.

Yet there was something in all this convoluted deception that she had never considered, probably because finding the Knot had never seemed so possible before: what would happen
after
she had rescued it, after the disk of silver was tucked safely away in the glade?

What then?

A little bell of jangling, implausible joy began to ring in her head. She'd been thinking in all the wrong directions.

What if she
did
find the
Willowmoon
, and what if Jack
wasn't
with her at the time? What if he never actually saw it? Then he could never identify the
markings,
never even know that it had been found. Therefore—and this was the glory—cloud miracle and the happy ending—he could never use the map as a source to the silver.

A marvelous pantomime was mounting itself in her brain. Gaslights, costumes, lots of singing. And a pair of lovers whose stars might just become uncrossed.

Let's say that she opened this random drawer in front of her and found the
Willowmoon
Knot lying there, winking at her, saying, "Good morning, Miss Faelyn and isn't it a fine day." After she picked herself off the floor, all she'd have to do would be to pocket it and say nothing to Jack.

It would be gone—just like that. As though it had never been a threat.

Oh, Lord, the Knot would burn like molten lead. But at the end of the day, after
pretending
to look for it, after combing through the catacombs with Jack, his partner, his love, the mother of all his unborn children would just leave the museum, clinging to his steadfast arm, savoring the weight of the
Willowmoon
as it jostled against her thigh.

She would feast on the sunlight as Jack escorted her down the wide stairs and into
Great Russell Street
. She might even stop him on the steps and kiss the daylights out of him. Yes, she would definitely do that. In fact, she'd make love to him on the way home in the hackney, and then demand that they be married on the spot.

He'd like that.

Then when Jack went on another of his treks to
Manchester
or to one of his mines, she would take a quick day-trip to her village, bury the Knot where it would never be found again, and make it home to
Drakestone
in time to have dinner with her husband.

A fairy tale come
true! Why hadn't she thought of it before? Once the
Willowmoon
Knot was discovered, it merely had to vanish without a trace. There was nothing in the Faelyn family pledge that demanded she entomb herself with the Knot like one of the pharaoh's servants. She didn't have to hide out like a bandit, because no one would ever know that she'd taken it. Once she had rescued it and its map was removed from public memory, then her job was done.