The Wedding Night Read online

  “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.

  “Sleep wherever you like, my lord. I wouldn’t be here with you alone in the dark if I didn’t trust you absolutely.”

  He slept the night on a very uncomfortable rug.

  Chapter 10

  Mairey woke to the soft sound of snoring coming from the floor beside her bed.

  “Balforge,” she murmured, rolling quietly to the edge to steal a glance at him. The sight made her blush.

  He was dreadfully handsome—even as he lay on his back, sprawl-legged on the blanket, his pillow astray under one knee, his shirttails bunched to his ribs. His stomach was flat, wonderfully rippled, darkly furred against the white edge of his drawers that peaked out of his trousers.

  Making love until dawn. She wondered what that would have been like—if she’d confessed a similar madness for him. She’d studied artistic renderings of the act of sexual union: Greek statues, Flemish etchings, lovely pastel-hued Oriental paintings, all with couples cavorting together happily, intricately, the women as ecstatically active as the men.

  Hardly the lie-still-and-think-of-England attitude she’d heard rumors about. Jack wasn’t the sort to let a lover lie quietly. He was an explorer, a ravisher, a man of tumultuous endeavors. She suspected they would have been ecstatic together. Until dawn.

  Ah, well. It was an overpowering fantasy, the adult part of her fairy tale. But it wasn’t meant to be.

  She rolled off the other side of the bed, washed quickly under the tent of her nightgown, and then dressed, all the while listening to her sleeping dragon.

  He awoke with a roar and shot to his feet, looking as though he’d had a fight with a cyclone. Mairey left him to dress on his own and did battle with the Potterfell sisters, rescuing the man from his own petard.

  John Runville’s will had been proved in the parish of Donowell, and a list of his household goods had been duly recorded by the archdeacon in the year 1707.

  And, bless them, the clerks of Donowell parish could give lessons to the Keeper of the Records at the Tower. The documents were filed with care and precision and kept in a temperate room on the second floor of the city hall. The registrar had been gracious, helpful, and had left them alone with the registry.

  Mairey was discovering that sitting beside Rushford was much like living in a hut on the side of a volcano. He thumped the table and rumbled out opinions, leaned over her shoulder and caused her heart to tear around inside her.

  “‘In the name of God, Amen,’” he read from the top of Runville’s will, one brow slanted and distinctly piratical when he turned to her. “What is this?”

  He smelled of the Potterfells’ lemon tarts, and his face was shaved so clean that she wanted to run her hands over his skin.

  “In times past, sir, wills all began with a similar divine endorsement. This was a sacred trust. God would condemn those who might try to scuttle the wishes of the deceased.”

  Rushford turned the page over and ran his finger down the list of John Runville’s chattel. “A feather bed, half-dozen trunks, a pair of andirons, spoons…”

  He stood abruptly, straddling the bench. “By God, it’s here!”

  The Willowmoon! Every day another miracle, a step closer. She ought to be as wildly happy as Rushford, but there was a converse effect that she didn’t want to think about just yet.

  Rushford leaned down from his great height, threaded his fingers through the hair at her nape, and brought her mouth so very close to his that she thought he was going to kiss her.

  “I like this game of yours, Mairey Faelyn.” His voice was low and seeking, that possessive rumble she’d come to adore. He touched his lips to her cheek at the corner of her mouth, but he went no further—only murmured, “I like it fine.”

  Her skin on fire for him, Mairey turned her head and caught more of his mouth, stole a half-kiss from him.

  “Do you, my lord?”

  He knew what she’d done and looked devilishly pleased with himself. “It’s like drilling into the earth and bringing up bore after bore of worthless basalt or granite. And then one day, just when you’re about to toss it in for slag, up comes a shining core glittering with gold, winking at you in the sunlight.”

  Mairey felt a great hollow open in her chest; heard the warning echo of the dragon stirring there. She was grateful for the reminder. It made it easy for her to pull out of his entangling embrace.

  “It isn’t a game, my lord.” She yanked Runville’s will off the table and scooted away to the opposite side of the room, where the light was stronger and the air was less heady. “We’re far from done here.”

  His frown was quizzical, patient. “Yes, I know.”

  “John Runville might have had the Knot when he died, but he bequeathed it and ‘various pagan artefacts’ to the Moorlands Museum.”

  “And where would that be?”

  “According to Runville’s will, it’s in York.”

  Another day with Rushford in tow, another step closer to the Willowmoon.

  “The minster storage vaults hold many a treasure, Lord Rushford, since the museum facilities in Yorkshire are far too small to display everything. But I don’t recall ever hearing of a Moorlands Museum.”

  The minster storage vaults weren’t in the minster at all, but in a low building near the deanery, with yards, maybe miles, of shelves, and row after row of boxes.

  “We’ll have a look anyway,” Jack said, convinced that every antiquarian was fusty, rumpled, and stooped. Every one of them but his own Mairey Faelyn.

  God, she’d almost kissed him, and would have done so if he hadn’t spooked her. She’d smelled of whimsey and violets—still did, though she had closed up tightly for some reason.

  Certainly not from maidenly embarrassment. She’d never blinked when he had supported various parts of her as she’d scrambled around on the crates and trunks in the Tower. She’d told him pointblank that she was a virgin. And just last night she had not only invited him into her bed but had also stared unflinchingly at his erection.

  And then there was that kiss he’d purloined a few nights ago—that luscious ruse about the honey.

  His partner was becoming an unexpected, incorrigible complication. She was also, at the moment, spinning another of her fairy tales for still another enchanted admirer, though this one wore a cassock.

  “You see, sir,” Mairey was saying, “Lord Rushford has commissioned my father—a London silversmith—to design and cast a Celtic brooch for Prince Albert’s birthday. At Queen Victoria’s direct request, you know.”

  “Yes, yes.” The curator smiled indulgently at Jack, then went back to smiling at Mairey.

  “And since my father was unable to attend his lordship himself, I’ve been assigned the task of showing him some historical examples of Celtic artifacts. We’ve been through the British Museum, the Ashmolean, and a dozen others, but his lordship says that he won’t be satisfied until he sees everything.”

  She gave the curator a sharp little huff of impatience, with a nod toward Jack, which seemed to satisfy the man that they were dealing with just another persnickety member of the peerage. In a few more minutes they were rid of the curator and alone in another vast vault, oil lamps blazing, and Miss Faelyn’s eyes bright with passion for this treasure of hers.

  Was it incomprehensible for him to wish they burned as brightly, as enduringly, for him?

  “Remember now, Rushford. The Knot is about four inches across and a quarter-inch thick, with serpentine patterns on its face.”

  “Or so you believe.”

  She sighed. “Belief is all we’ve got.”

  She sent him off on his own quest, making him promise to show her anything at all that might
be made of metal, reminding him that silver could tarnish to coal black. Every door and drawer he opened revealed an oddity: stuffed owls, caches of glass beads, or Roman coins.

  The woman was in her glory, sharing her discoveries and her laughter with him. She brought life and light to stone statues with her stories of magical springs and great serpents, and gave warmth to the sinuous tracings of bronze.

  She was singular and impossible and he was falling madly for her.

  “What have you got there, Rushford?” she asked, fitting her fingers lightly in the crook of his elbow to peer into the coffer in his arms, heating the spot in an instant.

  “Arrowheads, it says here.” He brought the box down and opened the lid. “Flint.”

  “Elf bolts, my lord.” Her smile was teasing, daring him to doubt her facts.

  “My name is Jack,” he said. “Will you call me that?”

  Her eyebrows twitched into a tiny frown. “Why?”

  “Besides making me feel decades older than you, Miss Faelyn, I’d like very much to call you Mairey.” Jack felt a telling warmth radiating from his chest. “It’s what I call you in my head, how I think of you. And I don’t much like having to remember whether I’m talking to you or just thinking about you.”

  She studied him from beneath those fret-winged brows, a grin at the corners of her mouth. “Are you so easily confused?”

  That was neither the question nor the answer he was looking for. “Will you call me Jack?”

  More frowning, as though he’d asked her to bear his children. Then a noncommittal “I shall try.”

  “May I call you Mairey?”

  “If it’ll help keep your thoughts sorted, I suppose you’d better.”

  Rascal woman.

  The rear of the room was more organized and better labeled. Against one wall was a set of wide, flat, glass-windowed drawers.

  They found blue glassware in one, then a drawer each of tiny stone heads and animal figures. When the next two drawers revealed golden Celtic torcs and silvered utensils, Jack couldn’t help but hope for the next one. Its window was obscured by a cloth, and the drawer was unmarked.

  “Valuable?” he asked.

  “Could be sensitive to light or dust.” Mairey cast him a hopeful smile and pulled the drawer to its fullest extension, then lifted the cloth away.

  “Phalluses,” she said with a little sigh.

  “What did you say?”

  “Phalluses—carved out of stone. Ah, and here’s one of wood. All of them Celtic, I believe.”

  There were two dozen of them, in various sizes and states of repair, but each one in full arousal. She picked up a thick stalk of limestone, carved a few thousand years before, looking every inch its fleshly double. “These are penises, Jack. The male member. Surely you recognize—”

  “I’m fully aware of what they are, Miss Faelyn.” The woman picked up another and studied its tip with exacting care. “What I can’t fathom is how you could possibly know what they are.”

  She laughed lightly and looked up at him. “The phallus is a fundamental and pervasive symbol in antiquity—as common as flint arrowheads and stone axes. I have a collection of my own in my library.”

  “Of arrowheads and stone axes.” Please, God.

  “Yes, and of phallic objects.”

  “A collection of them? Good God, Mairey, where did you get such a thing?”

  “Post-Roman.” She examined another, holding the perfectly proportioned length of pink-speckled granite to the light, her fingers gripped around its shaft in a gesture so innocently, dizzingly sensual that Jack thought he might have to leave the room.

  “My grandmother started the collection, and became quite the expert, in fact.”

  “Your grandmother.” Of course. Why not? These Faelyns were an eccentric lot.

  “My mother enlarged it…so to speak”—she smiled—“and now the collection is mine.”

  Jack hoped to hell she didn’t look carefully at his trousers. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Are you uncomfortable with the subject, Jack?”

  “Hell, yes!” The woman’s brows shot into her hairline at his bellow. “No! I’m not uncomfortable! What I mean is that—frankly, Miss Faelyn—”

  “Mairey. Because you are speaking aloud at the moment, not just thinking—”

  “Yes, Mairey. It’s just that I’ve never in my life had a conversation with a woman while standing in front of a drawer full of…of…” Completely drained of words he could use in public, he flapped his arm in the direction of the drawer.

  “Ancient stone phallic objects,” she offered.

  “Exactly.” Not that he was intimidated by the specimens in the drawer, or by the one she was fondling. He would measure up against the lot of them quite nicely, thank you. He nearly said as much, but Mairey had gone back to her minute examination, and he was having trouble breathing. “This isn’t a subject to be discussed between a man and a woman.”

  “My parents did.”

  Jack felt feverish. Sweat ran like molten rivers down his back as the woman handled one ancient but hugely virile penis after another.

  “In fact, my father presented my mother with a phallus on every one of her birthdays that I can remember.”

  “Christ, woman! They were married to each other.”

  “Devoted.” She shut the offending drawer and opened the one below it. “Ah, ha! Just as I expected, Jack. You see, the Celts had a great reverence for their women, too. A belly-goddess.”

  The figure in Mairey’s hand was beautiful and lushly primitive, with large, ripe, pink granite breasts at rest on a belly full of child, and a glistening, hand-polished cleft between her kneeling thighs.

  He swallowed hard, his pulse dancing madly, his own phallus as alive as if it were sheathed within Mairey.

  “I suppose your grandmother collected those, too.”

  “Oh, no,” she said, smiling fondly at the figure. “But my grandfather did.”

  Jack threw out his hands. “Well, fine. Fascinating. But it’s time we get back to looking for that Willow-knotty thing.” He broke away to a place where he could adjust his clothes, grateful for the fullness of his greatcoat.

  Jackson Rushford, you’re a prude!

  Mairey never would have credited it for an instant. But he had turned as red as a beet the moment she had opened the drawer, and redder still with every phallus she’d picked up.

  She hadn’t meant to tease him, but he was disarmingly handsome with streaks of crimson on his cheeks and smudging his brow.

  And all that tight-lipped stammering! The blustering! She’d nearly laughed. But he was a prideful man, and as much as she distrusted him, she would never purposely hurt him.

  She had always found the ridges and curves of stone-worked penises elegant and…well, oddly stirring. But still, they had only seemed like ancient carved stone to her.

  Until today, when Jack had taken such a blushing interest in the stones she held in her hands. They’d seemed heavier with him looking on, vibrant, and warmed through to the core.

  Organic. Yes, and alive.

  Mairey flushed to the tips of her toes.

  Every single, lovely one of them had been Jack’s penis! That’s where her imagination had gone, running wild in the woods—no wonder she’d been light-headed!

  She peeked around the corner of the next set of shelves. Jack was rattling through a cabinet of goblets, scrubbing at his hair and muttering, his coat buttoned to his collar.

  What the devil was she going to do with the man? With the days and the weeks and the years stretching out before them? She loved being around him, loved his humor, and the way he smelled of sandalwood soap in the morning and woodsmoke in the evenings. His nightly visits to the lodge had become a precious end to the day.

  “Excuse me.” The curator came through the doorway, a piece of paper fluttering in his hand. “Ah, Lord Rushford! A telegraph message for you.”

  Jack took the note from the man and read
it swiftly. “My God, no. Not Glad Heath.”

  “What is it?” Mairey ran to his side, fearing news from Drakestone—Caro falling out of a tree or Poppy lost in the woods.

  “A cave-in. Christ.” He’d gone pale, his great hands shaking, even as his jaw squared and he looked up at the curator. “Can I get a message sent back?”

  “Certainly.”

  Jack was already scrawling something on the back of the telegram, efficient and furious.

  “Tell them I’m on my way,” he said, handing the note to the man.

  “I’ll see to it, my lord.” The curator left on the run.

  “The Willowmoon will have to wait, Mairey. Come.” He grabbed her hand and her satchel and started down the hallway, as though she would naturally agree to follow him anywhere.

  Mairey twisted out of his grip and drew away against the cold wall. “Where are you taking me?”

  “I’ve got a ceiling of coal collapsed in one of my tunnels. You’re coming with me.”

  Trouble in your lair, Sir Dragon? “To one of your mines? Where?”

  “Two hours by train. I don’t know what I’ll find when I get there.”

  Death, surely. And broken lives. A chill shuddered through her. He couldn’t force her to go with him. Not to a mine.

  “I can’t help you, Jack.”

  He slipped his fingers through hers, brought their clasped hands between them, and kissed her knuckles. “And I can’t think of anyone who could help me more.”

  “How?” Her heart was in her throat: a coward’s heart that didn’t want to know what kind of man she had grown so fond of.

  “Bring your fairy tales, Mairey—the children will need them.”

  Chapter 11

  Glad Heath was a devilish place. Its slagbarren mountain and bristling silhouette of infernal machines was visible for miles before the train thundered out of the dark moors and into the brightly lit station that served the spur line into Rushford’s colliery.

  The platform was swarming with men running alongside the railcar as it steamed to a stop.