Blood Marriage (11 page)

"This is wrong, Nicholas." Father Vlad sounded weary, as if he repeated an argument made too many times. "Marrying that girl will be a disaster."

"How can marrying a pretty young girl like that be a disaster?" The duke slapped the clergyman on the back. All signs of his earlier intoxication had vanished. He stood straight and strong, his speech no longer slurred, his movements those of a sober man. "The boy needs a wife. Tomorrow he'll have one. And," the duke addressed this last bit directly to his son, "within the year I'll expect a grandson and heir. Pretty little mare, so that should be no hardship, eh, Nickie?" 

Elizabeth twitched her nose, as much from annoyance at being compared to a breeding horse as from the dust of the old fabric. Devlin nodded, but even in the flickering light Elizabeth could tell he wasn't really listening.

"It is wrong," the priest repeated. "
Nedrept
." He lifted the hems of his black robes and started up the stairs. Marlbourne followed.

"Coming son?" 

"Not just yet. I seem to have left something I need down here." Nicholas set his lamp on the flat top of a stair baluster, then blew it out. He stood in the pool of light from the transom and watched until the priest and his father had disappeared up the stairs. He was still looking upward when he spoke.

"You can come out now, Elizabeth." He pivoted on his heel, faced the tapestry and waited. 

Elizabeth fumbled her way from behind the ancient fabric with as much dignity as she could muster and crossed the floor to stand before him in the pool of moonlight, her eyes downcast. Streaks and smudges marred her new dress. The fancy bun Katie had done her hair in dangled in a ball against the nape of her neck. She put a self-conscious hand up to pat what she could back in place. A fat black spider crawled across her hand and up her arm.

Elizabeth squealed. She flapped her arms and hopped about. The spider, having nearly reached her shoulder, clung on tenaciously. Devlin's hand shot out, capturing her wrist, holding it steady. With the other hand he brushed the spider away. The fat fellow dropped to the floor and scurried off into the darkness. Elizabeth shuddered with revulsion. Devlin released her.

She bent over double, shaking her head with such violence that the loose bun beat painfully against her cheeks. Frantic hands brushed at her dress.

"What are you doing?" The amusement in his voice only increased her agitation.

"There could be more!"

"Hold still." His hands were in her hair and she did her best to remain still. Though her hands, bent double as she was, continued to brush at the hem of her gown. What else might have crawled up under it? 

"There," he said. Her hair released from the bun to fall in waves past her temples. "Stand up straight," he ordered. She did and suddenly it all felt strangely familiar: a spider, moonlight, her hair loose, Devlin's hands on her. Isn't this how it had all started just three weeks ago?

He moved around her, running his hands over her arms and back, belly and skirt. He stopped in front of her and eyed her bodice. She blushed and used her own hands to make sure it was clear.

"My hair, please," she pleaded, past caring about her dignity. Having to ask him to check her for bugs after being caught spying on him was humiliating, but she couldn't bear the thought the spider might not have been alone.

Devlin came closer. His fingers framed her face, splaying along the hairline, then combing slowly through her hair. Again and again his hands moved, starting near her face, stroking back to the nape of her neck, with each pass the rhythm becoming slower and more sensuous. Elizabeth clutched the material on either side of his waistcoat to steady herself against the knee-weakening sensation of each intimate pass. Masculine heat radiated from him and some inner decadence urged her to press herself against it. 

His fingers stopped their stroking and one hand wrapped the thick rope of hair at the base of her skull. He pulled back gently, just as he had done upstairs earlier that day, and her face turned up to him. His lips brushed hers, feather-light, then pulled away to hover just above her mouth. His breathing was deep and fast. She could taste his breath, brandy-sweet against her mouth, sense the tension in him. Something primal and feminine deep within her responded. She wanted this man, at this moment, more than she had ever wanted anything in her life. Elizabeth closed her eyes. Devlin moved away.

His hand remained encircled about her hair as he stepped behind her. Then the slow stroking began again, this time starting at the back of her head and traveling the length of her hair to where it brushed past her hips. 

"So, was it a game of hide and seek?" he asked. "Will I find Mrs. Blakely tucked under the stairs? Or the countess behind a potted plant?" His questions caught her off guard. 

"No, nothing like that." 

His fingers reached the tips of her hair and brushed against her bottom. An odd quiver spiraled low in her stomach. Tomorrow night he would be her husband. How would he touch her then? How would it feel?

"What then?" he asked. 

For an instant she thought he was echoing her own thoughts, but of course he was curious about finding her behind a tapestry.

"I was about to go upstairs, but then someone came and... I hid." This would be the perfect time to tell him the truth, to tell him how her father had died, how her brothers had died, how she bore the same cursed blood and would die soon as well, and why those stairs that were no problem for others were agony for her. But his fingers were trailing through her hair, brushing her back, her waist, her hips, hinting at things to come. Would it be so wrong to just enjoy this moment? She could tell him in the morning, when he wasn't touching her like this.

"Elizabeth," he said. "Heaven's Edge is not a prison. You are free to come and go as you please in this house. You needn't hide. Not from me."

"It wasn't from you," she murmured. "At least not in the beginning."

"Who then?" There was a strange edge to his voice that might have alarmed her if she hadn't been so mesmerized by the motion of his hands.

"The Fosses. Amanda and Leo." Elizabeth thought of the playful way the couple had caressed one another. Would Devlin be that type of husband? Playful, teasing? Would she have been that type of wife, one who took pleasure in seducing her husband? She would never find out. She would tell him the truth in the morning. "I didn't realize at first who they were and I...I didn't feel up to facing anyone. It was easier to hide and wait until they left the house."

Devlin's hands stilled midway down her back. "Leo and Amanda left the house?"

"Yes. They went moth hunting in the woods." 

Devlin's hands gripped her shoulders and spun her around. One finger reached up and traced a line down her neck. His expression was so intense she expected him to kiss her. Instead, one strong arm went around her back, the other behind her knees. He scooped her up off the floor. 

"Time for bed," he said. To Elizabeth's astonishment, despite carrying her weight and without benefit of light, Devlin took the stairs two at a time. Her betrothed was an astonishingly strong man. She expected him to set her down when they reached the landing, but he carried her down the hall to her room, setting her on her feet before her door. He stepped back. He wasn't even breathing hard.

"Goodnight, Elizabeth," he said.

"Goodnight." She pushed open the door and waited. For what she wasn't sure. Another kiss perhaps? 

He shook his head. "Tomorrow, Elizabeth." 

He turned on his heel and headed next door to his own room. From the dimness at the opposite end of the hall where the countess, Harriet, and presumably their new companion were staying, Elizabeth heard the soft click of a door shutting. She waited to hear Devlin's door shut as well, before closing her own. 

A lantern burned on the small table beside the bed, a glass of water beside it. The bed covers had been turned back invitingly. Katie may have deserted her post for Margaret's sake, but she hadn't entirely neglected her duties. Elizabeth removed her evening gown and hung it over a chair. What would Katie think when she found the gown in the morning, smudged and dirtied? It didn't really matter. Katie had her secrets and Elizabeth had her own. 

She ignored the sheer red negligee Katie had laid out in favor of a familiar old nightgown. It covered her from neck to wrist to ankle in a modest swathe of soft pink flannel trimmed with faded ribbons. Elizabeth sat down before the dressing table mirror and brushed out her hair, each stroke reminding her of a warmer touch. When it was smooth, she braided it in two thick plaits and tied the ends with matching ribbons. The girl staring back at her from the mirror looked far more familiar than the elegantly gowned lady who had descended to dinner just hours ago.

Shielding the lamp flame with one hand she passed on bare feet through the dressing room that divided her room from her mother's. To Elizabeth's relief her mother was resting quietly despite the kitchen maid snoring on the sofa near the fireplace. Cook had been sending a different girl each night to sit with the dying woman. They were supposed to remain awake, but few did. Not that it mattered. Since her mother had been in Dr. Bergen's care she'd slept through the nights, and through most of the days as well. Rarely was she cognizant enough of her surroundings anymore to converse. Death was close, but it had been a long journey and she and her mother had wasted none of it. Both were too acquainted with loss not to have said all they needed to say, loved and shared with abandon, while it had remained possible. Yet the anticipation of loss still tightened Elizabeth's throat as she knelt beside the bed to pray. 

When she rose, she tucked the comforter more snuggly around her mother's fragile form and went to stand at the window. Pulling aside one pink curtain, she looked out over the starlit lawns to the forest beyond. Were Leo and Amanda enjoying their night in the woods? How was Margaret's quest for a husband succeeding? Had she and Katie discovered yet if Lennie was interested in something more permanent than a cuddle in the moonlight?

Elizabeth let go of the curtain. But before it fell back into place a movement at the edge of the woods caught her eye. She opened the curtain again, but was too late. The shadowy figure, visible for that short instant at the edge of the trees, was gone. Had it been a man or a woman? She wasn't sure, though it had moved in a decidedly human fashion. So intent was she on the edge of the woods, that a second figure was halfway across the lawn before she noticed him.

The evening clothes he'd worn at dinner were gone. Exchanged for the same traveling clothes he'd worn when he'd come to her room that afternoon. As she watched him disappear into the line of trees, alarm tingled in her limbs and crept toward her spine. She rolled her shoulders trying to shake it away. There could be any number of reasons Lord Devlin might take a walk in the night. So why did she suddenly feel so cold?

Elizabeth remained at the window for a long time, but nothing moved on the lawn below or in the forest beyond. A clock was striking eleven when she fetched a blanket and pulled a chair to the window. She fell asleep waiting for Devlin to return.

Chapter Sixteen

The screams weakened to little more than sobs. Yet the horror and anguish within them only grew deeper. Elizabeth struggled against the nightmarish noise, willing herself up out of the dream. Her eyes flew open. For an instant she was comforted by the reassuring sight of pink curtains, the familiar softness of the sickroom chair. Then the sobs rose once more, as if echoing up from the very bowels of the house, until they again became full-throated screams. Mother? Elizabeth came out of the chair so quickly she nearly overturned the table where the lamp still burned. Her joints hissed with pain at the sudden rising, but the room was quiet, her mother serene in sleep, the kitchen maid snoring undisturbed on the couch. 

The screams weakened again, disintegrating into garbled pleading. She couldn't make out the words, but she recognized the voice. That the unfailingly stoic Margaret was hysterical made her heart clench. Elizabeth tossed a blanket around her shoulders, grabbed the lamp, and hurried out into the empty hallway to the stairwell landing. 

Below, the front door of the house stood open to the night, moonlight creeping in to glisten over the dark, wet trail leading from the threshold, across the entry, and up the stairs. Halfway up the stairs Margaret lay crumpled, gasping and wailing. The maid reached out a shaking hand, trying to drag herself up another step. Ignoring her own pain, Elizabeth struggled down the stairs, pulling the blanket from her shoulders as she went. 

"Margaret? What has happened?" Elizabeth wrapped the blanket around the maid and cradled the woman's head to her shoulder. "Did Lennie hurt you? Where's Katie?" 

At the mention of the other girl's name Margaret wailed louder. On the landing above a crowd of women in night hats and wrappers had gathered. Countess Glenbury, Harriet, and Mrs. Blakely peered down at Elizabeth and the maid. No one came down the stairs. 

"What is going on here?" the countess demanded, then didn't wait for a reply. "I've seen this too often. These maids think they can flirt with a man and there won't be a price to pay. When things happen the way they do with men, the girl gets overwrought."

"Be quiet, Countess Glenbury!" Elizabeth said. "And if you can't be helpful, go back to bed."

The countess huffed. Harriet said, "What happened?"

"Nothing that need disturb you ladies." The front door clicked shut. Devlin's voice was firm as he mounted the stairs."Go back to bed. I'll take care of Margaret." 

He lifted the maid as easily as he'd lifted Elizabeth earlier that evening. Then he carried her up the stairs, past the ladies on the landing, and down the hall to Dr. Bergen's room. He looked as if he meant to kick the door open, but Elizabeth, having steeled herself against the pain and rushed to follow him, opened it first. Devlin laid the maid on the doctor's bed.

"Go to your room, Elizabeth." He started to tug the boots from Margaret's feet. Elizabeth gently pushed him aside.