The Heart Denied (10 page)

"Here, watch your manners, mate!" the man groused, lurching into Thorne and stumbling backward. "I've a mind to introduce meself to the lady!"

Slowly, Thorne turned to face him. "And I've a mind to toss you out into the road on your drunken ass."

"Ha!" The man stepped back, sizing him up. "You and ten other hearty chaps, mayhap!"

He shrank back as Thorne's eyes pierced him through, but offered a tentative fist until one of his tablemates bellowed, "Keep it to yourself, Fletch! 'Tis late, and your pint's a-wasting, come back and sit down."

Thorne held his stare. "A wise man, your friend."

'Fletch' grunted, stealing one more glance at the prize he coveted before looking back at his companions. The movement threw him off balance. He staggered back to fall into his seat.

Thorne faced the woman again. She'd yet to acknowledge him.
Let her be.
The thought was so distinct that it seemed for a moment Duncan had spoken again.

Thorne sat on the trestle opposite the woman. She flinched, then dragged her gaze upward to meet his own, her expression unchanging--dull, devoid of emotion, the fire gone out of her eyes. He wondered if she even recognized him.

"Caroline."

She did not reply. He saw a flicker in her eyes--pain? He'd always thought women such as she only inflicted pain.

He watched his hand move. Watched it slide unbidden across the table to envelop those cold, pale fingers in the warmth of his palms.

"Caroline."

This time she looked at him, her eyes as eloquent as they had been empty moments ago.
Why
, they asked.
Why?

He lifted her glass of whiskey, helped her wrap her fingers around it. "Drink," he said, and gently withdrew his hand.

She did as he bade her, holding the glass in both hands like a child might, her dark eyes fixed on his face. In four little gulps she finished the whiskey, a tremor seizing her during its final burning descent.

Thorne signaled Duncan for two more.

This time Caroline drank the entire contents of her glass without putting it down, swallowing hard and fast, an erratic pulse beating in her golden throat. Color crept into her cheeks. Her eyes, dark bottomless pools, never left him.

A man could dive deep into those eyes, Thorne mused. Could swim in their depths for days, weeks, perhaps even years, without surfacing for air...

And could just as well drown.

He found his voice, hoarse though it was. "'Tis late, Mistress Sutherland. I shall escort you home."

"I rode, my lord." Her throaty tones nearly sucked the breath from his lungs. "The bay roan. He is quite gentle, just as Toby said he'd be."

"Toby." Thorne frowned. "My stableman? You're acquainted?"

Her hands, trying to corral her raven locks and pull up her hood, went still. "Not personally, of course, but"--she hiccuped--"we've all ridden a great deal, and it
is
his name, after all-"

"His name is Hobbs. Has he been presumptuous, tried to take liberties?"

"Heavens, no! Oh no, no, no." Caroline giggled, an odd sound coming from her, and then hiccuped again. The whiskey had done its work.

"Arthur will settle my account and see to your horse. You're riding with me."

* * *

Leaning against the stable doorway, Hobbs looked out into the night, ostensibly keeping vigil, along with the groom slouched against the wall, for returning guests. But it was Caroline for whom he watched.

Lights twinkled on the hill, the kitchen fire burning well past the usual hour as footmen waited in the great hall. Up the lane, lantern light glowed in the open doorway of the coach house.

The beat of hooves intruded on the soft night sounds; Hobbs recognized the canter of the Arabian. He nudged the dozing groom with the toe of his boot. "Nate, look lively." Nate shot to his feet as Raven rounded the bend with not one, but two, riders.

Watching them dismount, Hobbs narrowed his eyes and shook his head. Leave it to Caroline. Not only had she returned safe and sound, but with Neville himself. As Nate brought the horse in, Hobbs lingered to watch the couple cross the lane and enter the south gardens, Caroline's elbow resting in Neville's hand. At her first little stumble, he tucked her arm firmly through his.

Hobbs darted his eyes to the second-story window at the northeast corner of the Hall. Was
she
watching? He knew those were her chambers. He'd made it his business to know.

Seeing the draperies shift ever so slightly, he smiled.

* * *

Two maids met Thorne in the kitchen, their eyes widening for an unguarded moment to see Caroline "on the arm of the master with her hair unbound like a wild thing," as Ashby later heard one of them tell a scullery maid named Janie.

"Susan, Hillary, help me with Mistress Sutherland's cardinal," Thorne ordered the maids brusquely, dispelling any notion of impropriety, then nodded toward the table, where food lay waiting for the returning revelers. "Send some of that bread and broth to her chambers straightaway. And wake her maid."

As Caroline allowed Thorne to guide her up the stairs, a wave of exhaustion washed over her. With it came the terrible emptiness she'd felt after Horace's departure this afternoon. To her horror, tears rolled down her cheeks. She tried to swallow her sobs, but a tremor gave her away. Suddenly the stairsteps loomed frightfully close.

In one dizzying moment she felt herself swept up and cradled by a pair of unyielding arms. Held fast against the firm breadth of Lord Neville's chest, she was carried to her chambers, her silent tears spotting his velvet waistcoat.

Her maid cried out as Lord Neville brought Caroline through the door.

"Hush," he told the girl. "She's conscious, just unsteady on her feet. Ashby, is it?"

"Aye, M'lord." Ashby stepped back as Lord Neville crossed the bedchamber and eased Caroline onto the canopied four-poster.

He gestured toward the tray. "Your mistress needs rest, but first she needs strength. Do not let her sleep 'til she eats."

Ashby bobbed her head. "Aye, M'lord, I'll see she swallows every morsel."

"Mind you don't force it down her gullet," he said mildly. "Be gentle with her. She's had a bad shock today."

"Aye, M'lord, I know."

 He turned to Caroline. "Rest well. Should you need anything during the night, send Ashby to my--to Dame Carswell's chambers, topstairs, first door to the right."

Caroline managed a wan smile. "Thank you. My apologies for disrupting your evening."

"'Twas no trouble," he said. As Ashby approached with the tray of victuals, Caroline watched Lord Neville stride to the curtained archway.

Suddenly he paused, then turned around, his eyes piercing hers through the dimness. "As I am to be married today," he said, "to a lady who considers you her dearest friend, 'twould seem odd for you to continue addressing me by my formal name."

As late as the hour was and as poorly as Caroline felt, she did not miss a single one of the three implicit messages Thorne Neville had just delivered while giving her first-name privilege.

I am to be married. Gwynneth is a lady. She believes you to be her friend.

Caroline nodded. "Goodnight, then...Thorne."

He seemed to study her. She made her expression inscrutable.

"Good night," he said at last, and moments later closed the door with quiet finality.

"Milady?"

Elaine heard no reply. Yet the flickering firelight under the door indicated her mistress was up and about.
As I would be
, she thought glumly,
were I to marry Thorne Neville today.

She touched the handle, then recoiled as she heard the drone of a voice inside. She clutched at her middle, sickened by the thought that Lord Neville could be in his fiancé's chambers at this hour.

Her dismay vanished at the sound of a door closing on the west gallery. Even at that distance and through the murky light, she sensed Lord Neville's eyes upon her. She dipped her knee and saw him nod as he headed for the stairs.

Slowly, Elaine eased her mistress' latch open and pushed the door ajar.

The Honourable Miss Stowington knelt not on the rug but on the bare oak floorboards, her head bowed and her eyes closed, a string of beads threaded taut through her fingers. "Holy Mary, mother of God," she intoned, "pray for us sinners..."

The prayer died on her lips. Elaine watched, first in bewilderment as her mistress' pale face crumpled, then in growing horror as the prayer took a new direction.

"Pray for me," the young woman pleaded through soft sobs, "for absolution for the sin I must commit, the Original Sin of carnal knowledge, which you yourself were mercifully spared, Virgin Mother, but which I must commit for the man that is to be my husband. Please, Holy Mother, entreat our Father to strengthen me and give me fortitude to endure such pain and abasement!"

Elaine brought a shaking hand to her mouth.

The bride-to-be opened her eyes as the sun broke over the horizon, one pale beam lancing a window and striking the rumpled bed directly in front of her.

Clutching her beads to her chest, she astounded Elaine by smiling through her tears.

"Thank thee, Blessed Mother," she said fervently, "for hearing my prayer."

* * *

The Church of Saint Michael reeked of roses, incense, and tallow. With every seat filled, villagers stood five deep in the vestibule and spilled out into the churchyard.

Gwynneth floated up the nave on her proud father's arm, looking like a hesitant angel in a gown of satin, lace, and seed pearls, her trembling hands clutching a Venetian glass bead rosary and a posy of roses plucked from the very hedgerows planted in her honor. Rosebuds and baby's breath wove through her hair, while her veiled headdress displayed the traditional sprig of rosemary for keeping one's husband faithful.  Her wedding gift from Thorne, a circlet of matched pearls imported from the Arabian coast, adorned her slender throat.

The shine of tears through her veil surprised Thorne. Sentimentality wasn't a trait he would have ascribed to her.

Arthur was soon handing Thorne a gold-and-emerald band to be joined to the emerald solitaire on Gwynneth's finger. "With this ring, I thee wed," Thorne repeated after Father Chandler, "and I plight unto thee my troth."

Standing behind Gwynneth and lacking her usual golden glow, Caroline stoically held the bride's posy and wedding gift to the groom, a gold signet ring featuring the couple's initials entertwined with a rose vine on a background of jet. She passed the latter to the priest.

Gwynneth took the ring from Father Chandler. As she slid the unaccountably cold metal onto Thorne's finger, Thorne caught himself gazing at Caroline instead of his bride.

The awkward moment passed into a guilty memory as Father Chandler signed the cross. "In nomine Patris," he intoned, "et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti...Amen."

Forty long minutes later, the
Missa Contata
was over.

* * *

Regaled by a crowd waving streamers and tossing flowers along the way, the newlyweds rode to the village green in a coach drawn by four plumed Percherons. Lizzie and Duncan tapped a dozen kegs of ale, and when everyone had eaten their fill of roast capons and suckling pig, the dancing began. The first dance, a reel, started off to an uproarious cheer as the bride partnered her groom and then her strutting father.

Watching Radleigh and Gwynneth, Thorne looked up to see John Hodges wending his way through the throng.

"A word, sir?" the doctor murmured when he reached him. At Thorne's nod, he led him away from the noise of pipe and fiddle to the edge of the green, and fell into step beside him. "Yesterday at the Hall, I sensed something more than a fainting spell had occurred. I thought perhaps with a day's passing, you might be more inclined to confide."

Hesitating at first, Thorne related his ancestor's tragic fate, then quoted Gwynneth's chilling words and told the doctor of her demented struggle to mount the parapet.

"Well I've something to tell you," Hodges said, breaking stride to face him. "Some weeks ago, I believe you hired a man or two from the village to keep watch from that very tower."

"I did."

"Well, one of them came to me with what I thought was a tale conceived at the bottom of a bottle, but now I wonder."

"Go on."

"He told me he had become 'infernally cold', if you'll pardon the paradox, on his third watch, colder than he'd ever been in his life. No reason for it, he said, as it was a balmy enough night in these parts. Thinking he'd caught a chill, he relied on his wife's care but, as he needed the compensation, returned to his post for the next three watches." Hodges eyed Thorne intently. "Following the sixth watch, he came to me and said he'd not go up there again."

"Why?" Thorne made his tone flat, his expression stony.

"It seems the night before, during his watch, he was...well there's no other way to put it. He was shoved from behind."

"What the deuce?"

"Indeed, shoved hard enough to lay him flat on his belly across the parapet. He said it quite knocked the breath out of him, but he'd the presence of mind to twist himself right 'round to see who'd done it."

"And?"

"No one."

"What do you mean, no one?" Thorne demanded with a growl in his voice.

"He said there was 'nary a soul in sight', and that 'no one but the devil hisself' could have reached the stairs before he turned 'round to see. Claims the door at the top of the stairs was shut tight at any rate."

"Bollocks. He was three sheets to the wind, as you first suspected--though how he smuggled a flask past Pennington is beyond me."

"There, you see? And why come to
me
with such a tale? His wife nagged him to see me on account of his sore belly, but I'd the distinct impression he was more desperate to confide."

"Desperate to convince his wife he wasn't tippling on the job, you mean. Look, Hodges, I'll admit to feeling out of sorts yesterday, hearing such words from Gwynneth in that strange voice. But you're not a fool, doctor. Surely you can see that Gwynneth fell victim to her own sensitivity. And to my lack of it."

Hodges looked unconvinced. "Well I'm glad you 'fessed up, as I can best treat my patients when I know something of their proclivities. But just for my own senseless curiosity, how long had it been, before these night watches, since anyone was atop that tower?"

"Your curiosity is more than senseless, 'tis ridiculous," Thorne said dryly. "But to humor you, not in years. As a lad I was permitted a look with my tutor, and once I took a young lady out on the battlements, to impress her..." His voice faded away. If only the memory would, as well.

"But that was fifteen years ago," he resumed abruptly. "Until the watch, no one had been up since. And I have never," he scoffed, "felt an odd chill there, nor was I ever 'pushed' by anything but a gust of wind."

The two men strolled back toward the revelers. "You should be dancing," Thorne chided Hodges, "not chasing ghosts. Do you not see that bevy of unattached young ladies looking our way?"

The doctor chuckled. "I see a new wife awaiting her wandering husband."

Thorne grinned as Gwynneth, tapping her foot with the commencement of another reel, waved at him.

"Well, M'lord," Hodges said, "send at any time, should you or your lovely wife require my services." Watching Gwynneth, he failed to see the smile his remark prompted.

"I sincerely hope, Doctor, we shall have need of you before the year is out."

* * *

Leaving the villagers to carry on the celebration, the wedding party and guests returned to the Hall for a late supper, some to depart that evening, others the next morning.

Caroline Sutherland would be among the latter. To Thorne's relief, she'd declined the invitation to stay, saying the sooner she faced Horace and their difficulties, the better. She promised Gwynneth to visit in the near future.

Escorting Gwynneth to her chambers before supper, Thorne felt his blood quicken. Although they would maintain separate chambers for awhile, he now had all rights to enter hers at any hour. "I shall be in the study when you come down," he told her, hoping to relieve any anxiety she might feel, even as he lingered on the chance she might invite him in.

"I shan't be long," she said shyly, dashing his hopes, and then glanced behind her.

Only then did Thorne see Elaine Combs. Looking pale and somehow resolute, she stood waiting to either serve or be dismissed.

And service it was. Standing out in the gallery, Thorne closed the door, but not before seeing what could only be relief in the maid's dove-gray eyes.

* * *

The door stood ajar. All tapers were extinguished. Only a small fire vied with the light of the rising moon.

Halting just inside the curtained archway, Thorne observed his bride sitting in a window seat, her posture predictably tense, her profile pensive and pale.

Her eyes widened as she turned to see him. He'd tied the sash closed on his black silk dressing gown after his bath, leaving a triangle of dark-furred chest exposed and his long, damp hair unbound.

She stood up from the window seat. With the moonlight behind her and the fire to the side, she presented a breathtaking display as she approached, her full-breasted slenderness undulating beneath a cloud of embroidered lawn and Battenberg lace.

Thorne's heart skipped a beat.

She stopped two paces away. Slowly, Thorne began to circle her, and she to turn with him. His eyes rose, from the shadowy peaks of her breasts to her slender throat, where her pulse beat like tiny bird's wings frantically seeking escape--and then to her face, at last fully illumed by the moon.

There the spell was broken. Never mind the rose-petal bath he could smell on her skin, or the lily-of-the-valley woven into hair that was brushed to spun gold. It was her eyes. He'd seen that look on a hare as he stared down his flintlock at it. A look that said
I'm done for, and I've nowhere to run.

"You look...beautiful." He ran a hand over his fresh-shaven jaw to cover a rueful smile. "Let's have a brandy, shall we?"

"Yes, let's," she said hastily. "I shall pour it, like a good wife."

And a very nervous one, he mused, seeing her hand shake as she poured a generous measure into each snifter. Seated in the oriel window with her, his bent knee nearly touching hers, Thorne raised his glass. Gwynneth touched hers to it with a tentative smile. Together they sipped the fiery liqueur and gazed across the shadowy landscape.

"We're in for a storm," he observed, watching the stars disappear one-by-one. A faint rumble reached his ears.

"Yes, I smell it in the air." Gwynneth gripped the sill as the beeches across the road began swaying and waves scuttled across the moonlit beck. Strands of her hair fluttered on the first cool gust of air. "Shall we close the sash?"

Thorne shook his head as Gwynneth made to rise. "Not yet."

"I'll close the others." She sprang from the window seat and flew about the chamber, pulling in sashes and fastening shutters. Thorne saw her glance longingly at the fireside chairs before she returned to the window seat, where she huddled in the corner and hugged her knees to her chest beneath her shift and wrapper.

"Do you mind not going abroad just now?" he asked, hoping conversation might relax her.

"Not at all. I'm quite content here. And I am glad that your home-"

"Our home," Thorne broke in gently.

"Glad that our home," Gwynneth amended, "is the place which holds your heart."

He smiled. "I suppose it does rather hold my heart."

"As opposed to your heart being held by a person," she said, eyeing him closely for the first time all evening.

It was his turn to look away. "'Tis a dangerous thing, Gwynneth, giving someone your heart. People are careless, fickle...and they've a tendency to die."

Thunder rumbled. The moon's halo began to disappear. Gwynneth looked out at the blackening sky and then turned wide eyes on Thorne.

"Are you afraid of storms?" he asked, surprised.

"A little."

"Are you afraid of me?"

She shook her head.