The Dragon's Bride (24 page)

Typical of Nicholas to hit the spot. Or one of them.

“It’s like a nagging tooth,” Con admitted. “Not quite bad enough to drive one to the dentist, but perpetually stealing comfort and rest. It makes no sense. It wasn’t my fault. But I can’t close the door on it. If only we’d found his body.”

“His mother’s the same way, poor woman. She has this obsession at the moment about having the whole British army tattooed to make identification of bodies easier. I gather you are to blame for that.”

“God. I did mention our tattoos, that we’d had them done for that reason. Careless of me.”

“You couldn’t expect her to cling to it, and it gives her a purpose of sorts.” Nicholas took another drink. “I don’t suppose Crag Wyvern helps. I know you never wanted the earldom.”

Con shrugged. “Once Fred died, it was bound to happen one day. I had reason to hope it would be a long time, though. The mad earl was only fifty. The damned man killed himself with a potion supposed to increase longevity.”

Nicholas laughed and demanded details, so Con told him about the sanctum and bedroom—the dried phalluses were a big hit—and what he knew of the mad earl’s eccentric ways.

“I wouldn’t mind a look at those books and manuscripts, you know. I’m a collector.”

“Of alchemical absurdities?”

“Of alchemical curiosities, among other things.”

“You just want the dried phalluses. Slowing down in old age, are you?”

“Creaking and groaning. So, is that the worst of Crag Wyvern?”

Con thought of the fountain, and Susan, the gold, and Susan, and the bath, and Susan, but didn’t know where to start, or even if he wanted Nicholas’s clear eye on these matters at all. He’d come to talk about the inheritance.

“I’m presented with a dilemma,” he said, and gave Nicholas the bare bones of Lady Belle’s letter.

“What an interesting family you have, to be sure.”

“She’s hardly family.”

“She’s Countess of Wyvern, after a fashion. I suspect it would be quite hard to prove that she wasn’t the woman in Guernsey if she stood firm about it.”

Con groaned. “That’s all I need—Lady Belle in residence in Crag Wyvern. Thank God she took it into her head to sail off in pursuit of Mel.”

“You could probably pull some administrative strings to see that she and this Melchisedeck Clyst get good treatment in Australia. Wonderful name, by the way. I wonder if Eleanor would agree to naming our firstborn son that.”

“Probably not.”

Nicholas laughed. “True.”

Con was thinking about what Nicholas had said, however. “If they were treated well, they might stay after Mel’s seven years are up. I suspect there’s scope for a man of his abilities in a raw land like that. But what do I do if she insists her son is the true earl?”

“You have that letter. It should blow her case sky-high. A foolish woman.”

“Apart from the letter, however, it could stick.”

“Ah,” Nicholas said, and drained his tankard. Trust him to see the possibilities immediately. He rose to refill both tankards. “You dislike being Earl of Wyvern so much?”

“And more.”

Nicholas sat down again. “What a very intriguing idea. Deliciously Roguish, in fact. It’s a shame Stephen isn’t here with his legal wisdom, but I can’t see why it shouldn’t prevail. It would create quite a storm in society, and a devil of a lot of talk.”

“I believe I can handle that. It would be a falsehood, however. I may not feel strong allegiance to the Devonish Somerfords, but it goes against the code to put a complete cuckoo in the nest. The whole damn lot will probably come back to haunt me.”

“Perhaps they can only haunt Crag Wyvern. Stay away, and you should be safe.”

Con looked at his friend. “You really don’t see anything wrong about it?”

“I like to look at consequences not conventions. Who suffers? The Demented Devonish Somerfords, perhaps, but they died out without force from you. Who gains? You. This David Kerslake. The local people who will have a resident lord. The smugglers who will have a great deal of security. Is he able to be a good Earl of Wyvern, do you think?”

Con considered it. “Yes. He’s somewhat brash and overconfident, but then, he’s only twenty-four and hasn’t been knocked about enough to age quickly. I’d say he is sound. He’s certainly bright and hardworking enough.”

“Lord above, get on with it! How many peers of the realm could be described that way?”

Con shook his head. “You make it sound easy. It’s possible he won’t agree.” He was going to have to mention Susan. “His sister is my housekeeper. That letter was sent to her. Before she gave it to me, she’d talked to him, and he wants no part of a fraud.”

“To his credit, but he must be persuaded. We don’t always get to do just as we like. How would it be if I return with you? I can’t resist poking my fingers into such a delicious affair, and I truly would like first pick at the arcane collection.”

“I’d like nothing more, but it’s an oppressive place. I think it truly can turn people mad.”

“If I was going to be driven mad by places, it would have happened long since. Ah,” he added, and rose before Con had heard the footsteps and the childish babble.

A moment later, Eleanor Delaney entered wearing a sprigged gown and a wide, sun-shielding hat tied with emerald ribbons. As always, she looked ordinary, sensible, and very attractive. She was carrying her daughter in her arms, but she put her down as she said, “Con, how lovely. Nicholas said that you would probably ride over as soon as you visited Devon.”

Con glanced at his friend, but Nicholas’s attention was on his daughter.

Arabel, in a copy of her mother’s outfit except trimmed with pink, had toddled rapidly to fling herself at her father, to be swept up and kissed. Then and only then did she look around and give Con a wide smile.

“Crag Wyvern,” Nicholas said to Eleanor, “is apparently full of arcane books and manuscripts.”

Eleanor groaned.

“You wouldn’t want me to miss an opportunity like that, my love. You and Arabel can come too—”

“No!” It escaped Con, embarrassing him, but he went on, “Truly, Nick, it’s an unhealthy place.”

“The air?” Eleanor asked.

“The atmosphere.”

Arabel wriggled to be put down, so Nicholas did, extrading her from her hat, which had fallen down her back and was threatening to strangle her with the ribbons. “Very well. I’ll go over by myself.”

“But not tonight,” Eleanor said firmly. “We’re promised to the Stottfords.”

“So we are. Can you stay, Con? I’m sure they wouldn’t mind an extra guest, especially a temporarily eligible earl.”

“‘Lo!”

Con looked down to see Arabel, now with the lace cap perched on her head, greeting him, he thought. “Hello.”

She raised her arms, and somewhat hesitantly he picked her up. He wasn’t sure he’d ever picked up a young child before. She seemed to be a professional, however, and settled herself, firm and wholesome, on his arm.

‘Temporarily?“ Eleanor asked. ”Are you about to be married, Con? It’s about time. It must be, oh, at least a month since we’ve had a Rogue wedding.“

“Archness does not become you, my dear,” Nicholas remarked. “It would be best to tie all the Rogues up before they wreak more havoc.”

Con had suddenly remembered Lady Anne, however. He should tell Nicholas that he intended to marry there, to tidy up a bit of Roguish mess. But the words stuck. They stuck because he couldn’t stop thinking of Susan.

But he’d sent that letter.

He looked at the pretty child with the chestnut curls who was exploring his shirt and skin with small, soft hands, and the idea of marriage, of children, became appealing in its own right.

Susan’s children…

“Con? Can you stay the night?” Eleanor asked.

He walked over and returned her distracting daughter to her. “Tempting, but I’d better ride back. I made no arrangement to be away.”

“We could send a groom with a message.”

“If he can ride over, so can I.” Con wasn’t sure why he was so insistent on returning. In part, he knew, he wasn’t quite ready for a full-blown exposure to normal people, but he was also anxious to return, and worried about what might happen in his absence.

Susan might disappear.

He had no right to chain her, but he could not bear to lose her yet.

He picked up his belongings, saying, “You’ll come over tomorrow?”

“I won’t be denied.”

“Excellent. And stay as long as you want. It’s just possible you will have an antidotal effect on the place. You can have the Chinese rooms. I’m sure rampaging, fire-breathing dragons have no effect on you.”

“Chinese dragons? I don’t fear them. The scales of the dragon, the Chinese say, are nine times nine in total, and thus the perfect lucky number. It brings storms, but also good spirits, health, and longevity.”

“Does it, by gad? I wonder if my mad relative knew that? I’ll go odds he didn’t or he’d have used those rooms himself!”

Con arrived home in the late afternoon, feeling better for time away from the Crag. Feeling better, too, for contact with Nicholas, Eleanor, and their child.

There was such an aura of sanity and good health around them, and yet both Nicholas and Eleanor had been through troubles. They’d not let the darkness drown them, however. They’d fought back, and fought for each other.

He rode into the Crag Wyvern stables at the bottom of the hill rather than riding up and letting a groom bring the horse back down. Delaying his return, he supposed.

He needed time to think.

He’d had hours of riding to think, but had let them wash his mind blank. Astonishingly, he felt better for it. A clean slate.

He chatted to the grooms, noting their watchful eyes. He was key to their lives, and what they really needed was a sane earl in more or less permanent residence. Guests would be especially nice, bringing their own servants for company, and paying generous vails for service.

He left the stables, but instead of heading straight up the hill he turned back to the village and walked to the church. It was not called Saint George’s, but Saint Edmund’s. Of course it had been here long before the first earl’s supposed adventure with a dragon.

He walked up the short path and into the cool interior, which was blessedly deserted.

He’d remembered that there were monuments to the previous earls here. The first earl had a carved marble memorial in front of the altar. Typical grandiosity. And the man had started life as a simple country gentleman. Find favor with a king, then marry an heiress, and here he was in stone robes and lace, his adoring family depicted in miniature all around him.

“Remember, earl, that thou art dust,” Con murmured, “and unto dust thou shalt return.”

Perhaps it wasn’t so outrageous that the earldom return into a bloodline of gentry and yeomen. He seemed to remember that back in Tudor times the Somerfords had been only farmers.

He found the various memorials to the next five earls, but had to go outside in search of the mad earl. The sixth earl had neglected to make provision for his burial, and when Con had been asked for instructions he’d simply told Swann to arrange a suitable grave.

The suitable grave was a box tomb with scriptures engraved on all sides. Reading them, Con thought that the vicar and various others might have gained considerable satisfaction from encasing the old madman inside them.

For we must needs die, and are as water spilt upon the ground. II Samuel 14:14

And the great dragon was cast out. Revelation 12:9

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. Galatians 6:7

Thou hast shown thy people hard things: thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment. Psalms 60:3

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Psalms 111:10

On the top it recorded that James Burleigh Somerford, Earl of Wyvern, had lived from 1766 to 1816 and had passed into the next life dependent on the infinite mercy of the Lord.

Another clever turn of phrase.

Con looked around the pleasant graveyard, which was swept with spring flowers, and overhung by generous trees. A sweet resting place, but not his. Strange. Even in the dusty heat of Spain he’d not felt such homesickness for Hawk in the Vale and Somerford Court as he felt here in this equally wholesome place.

Was he contemplating chicanery simply to rid himself of a burden?

Yes, in part.

He knew he could cut through the graveyard to join the path up to the Crag, and so he took that route. As he went he found himself among the Kerslake graves. He stopped by one tiny stone recording the brief life of Samuel Kerslake, born in May 1799 and dead in June of that year. Susan’s youngest brother, with no record of his parents given at all.

Was the infant to be re-created the Honorable Samuel Somerford, son of Isabelle, Countess of Wyvern and the Earl of Wyvern? Put like that, he could see that it would be just about irresistible to Lady Belle, no matter what David Kerslake thought.

He wandered through the other Kerslake graves, and found one very interesting.

The clock struck five as he let himself out through the small gate and walked the narrow path between green hedges full of noisy, nesting birds. Where the path joined the wider one he encountered a middle-aged countrywoman in broad hat and apron. It was her direct, shrewd look that alerted him to her being more than she seemed, and he wasn’t surprised when a smile lit her face.

“Why, you must be the earl. I remember you now. I’m Lady Kerslake, Lord Wyvern. You and your family dined with us a couple of times many years ago. You’ve hardly changed at all.”

Con felt as if no scrap of that innocent youth remained, but as he bowed he thought that such a positive statement doubtless came naturally to her. So this was the generous woman who had given a good home and unstinting love to her sister-in-law’s carelessly discarded children.

“Lady Kerslake, I do remember. You were very kind.”

“Oh, nonsense. A family of interesting strangers is an entertainment in these quiet parts. Are you walking up to the Crag, my lord? I’m going along that way a bit to see Will Cupper’s grandmother at the stables.”

They turned to walk together. “Susan says you don’t plan to live at the Crag,” she said.

“I know it will inconvenience the area, but I do have a home in Sussex. And,” he added, “Crag Wyvern is Crag Wyvern.”

“It is, isn’t it? You know at various places along the coast the earth has given way now and then. I have thought it would be nice. But only if no one was injured, of course.”

They shared a laughing glance that reminded him of Susan. So much of her must be from the family that had raised her—a good, solid family, all in all.

He was wondering what effect it would have on the Kerslakes if David established a claim to the earldom. He suspected that they were not the sort of family to enjoy the attention and speculation that would have to come.

At least the story was to their credit.

“I gather the Crag is built on a piece of reasonably solid ground,” he said. “My relatives here have been peculiar, but not entirely crazy.”

They had come to the stables and paused. “The first earl chose the building site, Lord Wyvern. I fear it has been all downhill since then. The lack of progeny could be seen as a sign of divine wisdom.”

“I noticed in the churchyard that a Somerford woman married a Kerslake. Did that happen often?”

“Not to my knowledge. They’ve been peculiar all along. That would have been my husband’s great-grandmother, I believe. A beauty, they say, but wild. The story goes that she danced herself to death by going to an assembly too soon after the birth of her third child.”

Con sighed, looking up again at the house. “Do you think it’s impossible? That anyone who lived there would be bound to go mad?”

Of course, David Kerslake wouldn’t have to live there if he didn’t wish to. He could build himself a house in the village here. But Crag Wyvern was still a burden any Earl of Wyvern had to bear.

“It’s not a wholesome house,” she said, “but it’s the blood that is least wholesome, and that, thank heavens, has died out. Probably the place could benefit from some modern improvements and a lot of activity. My daughter Amelia has a great desire for you to hold a ball there.”

“A ball! Would anyone come?”

“My dear Wyvern! Come to see the new mad earl? Most of the county would walk there in their bare feet.”

He laughed. “A fashionable crush should certainly exorcise some ghosts.”

“And if you need relief, come to dinner. You and your mischievous secretary. Take potluck. You will always be welcome.”

“And Susan?” he asked, deliberately using her first name and watching for a reaction.

“She’s always welcome, of course.” She cocked her head, her eyes holding an appealing, practical wisdom. “You were good friends, I think, all those years ago. When we’re young we tend to take such friendships for granted, thinking the world full of them. In time we see that they come rarely in life and should be treasured.”

He noted the message. “Thank you. I do hope we can take up your invitation, Lady Kerslake, before we leave.”

He opened the gate for her, closed it, and went on his way.

A rare and precious friendship. It was true, and he hadn’t considered it that way, being generously provided with friends.

Or was he?

He, Van, and Hawk, being so close in age, and bound together by geography, had been destined to be friends. They were bound by time and proximity, but were in fact quite different in their natures. If they’d met elsewhere—at school or in the army, for example—they might not have formed such a close bond.

The same could be said for the Rogues. Nicholas had deliberately gathered a varied group. There were commoners and aristocrats, scholars and sportsmen, thinkers and men of action. They even had their republican rebel in Miles Cavendish, the Irishman.

There was a strong bond, but within the group other friendships had formed. During school terms Con’s closest friend had been Roger Merryhew, who’d joined the navy and drowned within sight of England in a storm.

And then there had been Susan.

He and Susan could never be only friends and yet they could not be more. He’d sent that damned letter to Lady Anne. Though he’d love to wriggle off the hook now, he could not in honor do so.

* * *

Susan couldn’t imagine where Con was. It wasn’t the housekeeper’s place to be fretting over her employer’s whereabouts, and yet she couldn’t help it. Had the letter so disturbed him that he’d ridden off a cliff?

Then she heard that he was back safely, and soon that he was sitting down to dinner with de Vere. She tried to put him out of her mind and, having made sure all was in order for the next day, retreated to her rooms.

Then Ada came to knock on the door and tell her that the earl required her presence in the library.

Oh, no. Not again. Tonight she would be strong. “Give him my regrets, Ada. Tell him I’ve retired with a headache.”

“If you wish, ma’am, but your brother’s there.”

“David?” She stood and hastily pinned up her hair. “Very well.”

She entered the library, wary of a trap. However, she found David there with Con. They were flipping through a portfolio of drawings they’d spread on the long table.

“Look at these,” David said to her. “The original designs for the Crag.”

He seemed completely unaware of any tensions or problems!

She went over, even though it brought her close to Con. A darkly thoughtful Con. Unease prickled through her. Why had he summoned David here? What did he intend to reveal?

“They were stained glass,” she said, looking at a meticulous design for a set of glazed doors. “And one of the crazy earls had smashed them playing a ball game.”

She caught a look from David that suggested that he wasn’t completely unaware of tensions. Of course, she’d spilled the fact that she was in love with Con. She could only pray her brother wouldn’t embarrass her.

Con firmly shut the portfolio. “I’ve asked you here for a reason, Kerslake. Take a seat, if you please, and you too, Susan.” He sat on one of the library chairs, looking somber, and every inch the earl.

Susan and David sat on the opposite side of the table.

“Kerslake,” Con said, “Susan showed you that letter from your mother.”

“Yes. I hope you’re not worried that I’ll try to act on it.”

It was all Captain Drake, and bloody arrogance.

“Not worried at all,” Con said. “In fact, I hope you will.”

Susan looked between them. David glanced at her.

“You want me to attempt to claim the earldom?” David asked. “Why?”

“Because,” Con said, “I don’t want it.”

“You look sober.”

“I am, and damned serious to boot. Listen. Even if the earldom was the wealthiest in England, and Crag Wyvern a place of beauty and refinement, I would not want it. I am foolishly attached to the place of my birth, and my father’s title is good enough for me. I’ve accepted my duty, as we’re all trained to do, but now I’ve been presented with an escape, and with your help, I intend to take it.”

“And without my help?”

Susan realized that Con could use the papers without David’s consent.

But after a moment Con said, “No. I won’t force it on you.”

David looked at Susan again, but she had no wisdom to offer. This had taken her completely by surprise.

“But I don’t have a drop of Somerford blood in me,” David said at last.

“That’s not entirely true,” Con said. “You probably don’t pay attention to your familiar graveyard. The Kerslakes and Somerfords have intermarried at least once. Your great-grandmother was a Somerford.”

“Lord, the one who danced herself to death? Mad blood, and it’s a mere drop, thank heavens.”

“Yet probably more than I share with this branch of the family. It’s six generations since the first earl’s younger son left here and ended up in Sussex. Since then, there’s been no mingling at all.”

David leaned back in his chair. “Perhaps I don’t want it.”

“We could fight over it. Loser wins all.” Only a hint of humor suggested Con was joking.

“Do I want that kind of attention? Notoriety?” David surged to his feet and paced the room. “Captain Drake should be a shadowy figure.”

“Then be shadowy. But instead of seeking the protection of the earl, you can protect yourself.” Con put a piece of paper on the table. “Here is Isabelle Kerslake’s sworn, signed, and witnessed testimony that she married the Earl of Wyvern in Guernsey, and that her three children were all sired by him. I have already destroyed her letter.”

David froze to stare at him. “You really do want to get rid of this, don’t you?”

“With all my heart, but not casually. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t think you would be a good ruler for this part of England.”

David flushed slightly at that, with pride. The favorable judgment of a man like Con was an accolade.

“There’ll be a horrendous amount of talk,” Con added, “and it will touch all your family.”