The Wedding Night Read online

  “Nothing, Miss Faelyn?”

  She had escaped him but not the sensation of his gaze, which she could feel through her back as she retrieved her Gladstone from the floor.

  “Absolutely nothing, my lord—because I’ve never in all my studies heard of your Willow Knot. So, you see, we have no secrets between us. No common interests. Nothing. But I do wish you well on your quest. Now, sir, I have a great lot of evidence to collect from those children you frightened away, and all before night falls. So if you’ll excuse me—”

  Without a whisper of warning, Rushford was behind and above her, closing his hand over hers around the handle of her travel bag.

  “Enough of your prevaricating, Miss Faelyn,” he said too softly and too close to her ear. “We will discuss the Willowmoon Knot. And we will do it now.”

  “Please sir, I have nothing more to say to you.” Mairey tried to pull away, but she met Rushford’s chest in the curve of her back, her hip against his. Oh, but the underbelly of this poison-barbed dragon was steamy warm.

  “I’ve come too far and too long for this charming dance you’re doing. It won’t dissuade me. You and I are going to strike a bargain.”

  “If you don’t let go of me, sir, the only thing I’m going to strike is you!”

  “And you, my dear, have underestimated my intentions.” Rushford turned her sharply. “I’ve searched for you these two weeks, traveling mudded byways and goat paths, through sorry mining towns like this one.”

  “Chasing your fancies—”

  “Chasing you, Miss Faelyn. And a crest of silver knot-work, no larger than my palm.” He held out his hand between them, a powerful and sinuous scape of dark glove leather, clutched round an imaginary shape that caused Mairey’s pulse to rise and her skin to prickle. “Ancient, struck in the Celtic form—or so I’m told. But you are the Willowmoon scholar, Miss Faelyn. I know that for a fact. You’re the only one in all the world who can find this treasure for me. And you will.”

  Mairey felt exposed, stalked by a shadow who seemed to know her most sheltered secrets. She tucked her courage into the deepest part of her heart and then looked up from the broad fist that Rushford had now made of his hand. He was watching her from beneath his savage brow, waiting as a wolf awaits an unwary hare.

  Rushford. Why did that name terrify her even more than his knowledge of the Willowmoon? She felt blinded and dizzied, confused.

  “Are you an avid collector of Celtic antiquities, Lord Rushford? Is that why you’re so willing to believe in your fanciful bit of crestwork?”

  “Hardly that.” He pulled off his gloves as though he planned to stay to tea. The afternoon sun had tracked through the mill’s clerestory windows and across the floor like a druid’s clockwork, and now branded its blazing brightness onto the fine broadcloth of Rushford’s shoulder.

  A man who tamed fire.

  “Are you an archaeologist?” she asked, drawn by his broad, work-bronzed hands, his able fingers as they fisted his gloves. “Are you looking to pillage treasures closer to home, now that Egypt’s have all been plundered to near extinction?”

  “You know very well why I want the Knot, Miss Faelyn.” His gloves went into his pocket. “The very same reason that you want it.”

  He couldn’t possibly. “Then I wish you luck, Lord Rushford.”

  “I don’t need luck, Miss Faelyn.” He was smiling like a dragon with a belly full of virgins. “I have you.”

  That simple statement of possession, with its immutably present tense, nearly felled her.

  “Sir, if the Knot does exist—if it ever has—and if it should miraculously find its way into your keeping, what could you possibly gain from it?”

  “Silver, madam.”

  The glade of the Willowmoon. Mairey closed her eyes and was there among the willows, her village tucked safely below, her sisters playing in the fallen leaves, her father’s grave and her mother’s.

  “You must be deep in debt, my lord, if a few ounces of silver can add so very much to your coffers.” Mairey tried to be glib, but her words clung in her throat. “Melt down your auntie’s silver sugar basin and save yourself a lot of trouble.”

  “I could care less about the Knot’s history or its meaning, Miss Faelyn—only that on its face is a map that will lead me to an even greater treasure. A network of silver veins so pure that it glitters from its bed in the forest floor.”

  Dear God! Mairey suddenly knew with terrifying clarity why the man’s name had rocked her off balance.

  Rushford Mining and Minerals. Tin and coal.

  And silver.

  Jackson Rushford was a mining baron! She knew the name as she knew the devil’s. A spoiler of willow glades and villages. A thief of souls and childhoods.

  He must never have it—not the Willowmoon Knot or the vein of silver, or her village that nestled in its shadow.

  “Mere legend, my lord Rushford,” Mairey said evenly, surprised that she could look him so plainly in the eye when her world was spinning out of control. “Smoke and shafts of light, nothing more.”

  “And where there is smoke and light, Miss Faelyn, there is always fire.” He was too close again, his eyes too dark and smiling. “And we shall walk through it together.”

  Chapter 2

  “My lord Rushford, I wouldn’t walk through a slight breeze with you.” The brash young woman sniffed at Jack and went back to her battered Gladstone.

  He allowed himself a large measure of satisfaction from her angry frown. Though truth be told, he would have preferred prim-faced outrage and eyes that were pinched and bespectacled, as befitted a scholar. He’d been searching for a pasty-cheeked, hollow-chested girl with limp hair pinned tightly to her pointed head, expecting lank-boned shoulders hunched from overlearning, and an arid wit turned in upon itself.

  Instead, he’d been dancing with dappled moonlight, trying to trap its beams with his fingers, coming away with only the heady scent of peaches and dogwood.

  He spent a silent curse on Dean Hayward and the man’s shabby college. The blackguard hadn’t had the sense to tell him that Mairey Faelyn was as breathtaking as she was brazen. That she wore her stubbornness like a shield.

  His patience with the woman was gone—he had no time for hedging or petty negotiating. There was too much at stake here, a fortune in silver, the very least of it. He would have her cooperation in this venture. Hayward had given his word; plans were in the works. She would carry out the terms to the letter.

  “I’ll brook no more delays and deceptions, Miss Faelyn. The deal has been struck. You will work with me in the matter of the Willowmoon.”

  “Are you entirely mad, sir?” She pried her Gladstone open, glaring at him all the while. “You and I have made no deal.”

  “We have not, madam.” He stepped between her and the doorway—she would not be pleased. “However, Dean Hayward and I have.”

  “Hayward?” She paled, all that dusky pink anger washing from her cheeks, leaving her voice unsteady, with a dread that betrayed her fondness for the treasure. “The dean of Galcliffe College? You discussed the Willowmoon Knot with him?”

  “I’m not a fool, Miss Faelyn. As I assured you, your secret cache of silver couldn’t be more safe than it is with me.”

  “Your assurance?” Blushing color returned as bright spots of outrage. “What sort of agreement has Hayward made on my behalf?”

  “Your cooperation with me on my unnamed project, in exchange for a sizeable annual endowment to Galcliffe College.”

  Her lovely mouth fell open, damp and glistening, obviously awaiting speech. It arrived with a half snort.

  “Then you’re both mad, Rushford. I refuse.” She tipped her nose and turned away to stuff a map and a small book of much-abused paper into her case.

  Jack had never in his life browbeaten a woman, and he was trying his damnedest to temper his threats—for that’s what this erstwhile meeting with her had become—with reason. She was no taller than his chin, as lean as a fallow doe, an
d would probably outdistance him in a sprint. Once he’d released her to flit about the mill, her defiance had seared him. And he hadn’t been able to keep his thoughts or his fingers off her all the time he’d had her pinned against the pole. In truth he’d been roundly aroused by her scent, by her softness and the silver-gold of her hair; had taken foolish liberties and had only let her go when he had regained control.

  A dangerous associate for this venture—but he needed Miss Faelyn and her resources, needed them now, before one of his competitors found her. Whether the silver turned out to be legend or fact, a waste of time or a limitless fortune, she was the only one who could lead him to the truth.

  “It isn’t your business to refuse me, madam. Your salary is paid by an endowment to the college.”

  “Little you know, sir. The endowment was my father’s bequest; he willed everything he owned to the college.”

  “But the funds are managed by Dean Hayward and a Board of Endowments.” An ill-advised, idealistic arrangement on the father’s part, but it had provided the perfect opportunity for Rushford Mining and Minerals.

  “My father set up the endowment so that I might carry on his folklore research after him. The trustees would never break my father’s will. Not unless they’ve made a deal with”—the young woman’s opinion of him had bordered on distaste from the beginning and an unreadable fear for a while; it now changed to open loathing in a single breath—“a devil like you. No. I refuse to believe they would do that to me.”

  “For the opportunity of a limitless endowment?” Jack drew closer to her furious packing. “For a library to rival the Bodleian, for a museum that would put the Ashmolean to shame, an endowment for a Geological Chair? My dear, such a fortune would tempt the angels themselves.”

  “I’m not a bondswoman, Rushford, nor a slave.” She retrieved a pencil from under a bench, grabbed up the cloud of hair that had loosed itself from its bonds, gave the mass of it a twist, and then stuck the pencil into the resulting nest. “My time is not yours to buy, let alone Dean Hayward’s to sell.”

  He’d been foolish to look for innocence in all that beauty. She was devious and resourceful, crafted to the marrow in stubbornness: a formidable adversary.

  But she had a price. Everyone did.

  “You’ll be handsomely provided for, Miss Faelyn; your salary plus a substantial royalty for your cooperation.”

  “A royalty?” She laughed deeply in her throat, as though he had offered her a piece of green-molded bread. “You can sit on your royalties, Rushford, and hope they hatch into fat diamonds for all I care. Let Hayward do what he wants with my father’s endowment. I won’t help you.”

  What the devil did she want with a silver mine, this wispy girl? Not money, not security; neither had tempted her. Yet, her desire for the Willowmoon and its riches blazed so brightly that it burned him; was so unyielding that it disappointed him to his soul because it felt so much like greed.

  He’d come upon her among the flock of children, had heard their ringing voices and her laughter even before he’d stepped into the mill and found a mother bear and a den of cubs.

  What moved her to such fierceness: blind loyalty, love, commitment to a cause? Her dreams for this Willowmoon were impossible, whatever they were.

  “You’re quite foolish, madam, if you think you can keep an entire silver mine for yourself.”

  She threw up her hands, then fisted them against her slender hips. “You’ve found me out, my lord,” she said, catching him straight on with her glittering gray gaze. “I have a huge, aching need to find the silver before anyone else does. I want it. It belongs to me. I plan to pit-mine it with my bare hands and become grotesquely wealthy beyond all my dreams.”

  “Absurd.”

  “Why? Scholars have grand dreams, just as mining barons do.”

  “Have you a pick, my dear? A shovel?”

  “No.” That stubborn chin went into the air and stayed.

  “A cart to carry the silver ore to a smelter?”

  “I’ll find one.”

  He nearly laughed at the image: Miss Faelyn strolling across the village green to the train station with her single load of ore, cart by cart.

  “Have you enough capital for augers to drill into the earth, for the sledges to haul the ore out of the shafts, for rails to carry the coal to market?”

  “I will find all that, too.”

  “Enough for the great steam engines, enough to house two thousand workers and their families?”

  “Of course I do, Rushford.” She stooped to collect a handful of rubble off the floor. “I’ve at least that much hidden here in my shoe.”

  “Dammit, woman! How do you expect to turn a profit on your discovery?”

  “I have my ways, Rushford.” Into her satchel went stones and feathers and sticks; items he would have tossed into a hedge. “And it’s none of your business.”

  “The Willowmoon and its silver are my business, madam.” He met her, nose-to-nose, as she stood. “I’ve a royal warrant from the queen herself, and a grant from Parliament to find and exploit the mineral worth of the Commonwealth. All of which supersedes any claim you might make on anything you find. You cannot remove a single ounce without my permission.”

  “Well, then.” She crammed her ridiculous hat on her head and raised the brim in a mock salute. “My very best wishes to you in your search, sir. Do write to me in care of Galcliffe College and tell me of your progress.”

  She turned a rounded-bottomed hip to him, hitched her sagging Gladstone over her shoulder, and started away as though he’d let her go.

  “Stop right there, madam.” Two steps, and he had hold of her arm and turned her. “We are associates now.”

  She sighed with great drama and cast her defiance to the timbers above. “I’m not in the least interested in helping you find your next breath, sir, let alone waste my time helping you look all over hell and gone for a mythical piece of Celtic knot-work. I’ve got my own work to do, including another week of field-collecting.”

  “A week. Today is Saturday. Good. Then I’ll expect you to report directly to me on Monday next at ten in the morning, at Drakestone House, London, where you will commence your work.”

  She blinked up at him, settled on a scowl that winged her brows. “Oh, do you, sir? And just what is it you envision I would be doing at this Drakestone place?”

  Jack knew better than to take the woman’s question as a change of heart—more a change of direction, another of her diversions. That she had the interest to ask at all was as significant as hell. “You will be conducting your investigation into the whereabouts of the Willowmoon Knot.”

  “Ah.” She nodded, gave him a cheeky perusal that licked along every nerve. “How would I go about doing that, sir?”

  The amused bluntness of her question caught him broadside, exposing a weakness in his plan. He hadn’t the slightest idea how to begin such an investigation. He opened mines, not museum vaults. That’s why he needed her, damn it all. Yet he couldn’t very well admit that.

  Jack shrugged as though he knew the how of her work as well as she did. “I’ll provide whatever you require for your quest, Miss Faelyn.”

  “What do you mean?” Her question was quick, incisive.

  He could only guess at the needs of an indignant lady antiquarian with sun-silvered hair and luminous eyes. Antiquaries usually liked dusty darkness and cubbyholes.

  “I will see that sealed vaults are open and available to you.” He was pleased to see the quirk of her brow and the bob of her hat brim—here was a clue. “That records are exposed; that contacts are made with anyone, anywhere, anytime. Ask me, my dear, and all the resources of the kingdom shall be yours.”

  Confusion softened her brow and lit her eyes with a flash of possessive anger. Her breathing came more swiftly, raising her chest and parting her rose-damp mouth.

  Desire. Hope.

  Ah, yes, Mairey Faelyn. There was the fault in her stone-walled defenses. Resources. She needed
resources.

  She needed him.

  Jack held back his smile for the damage it might do to his credibility, as well as to his strategy, and yet he felt the smile—and a long-forgotten rush of happiness—deep in his gut, like hearthfire and a warm brandy.

  “Well?” he said instead, mortally satisfied when her anger flared again with a clear-eyed vengeance.

  “No, thank you, sir.” She yanked at the brim of her hat, tipping the front upward so she looked like a field-lass in a blowing wind. “Let Dean Hayward sell my soul to the devil; let the queen issue her royal warrants; let Parliament grant you the moon and all of its cheese, sir—I don’t need anyone. And, my dear lord Rushford”—she shook her head gravely—“I certainly don’t need you.”

  Jack watched as the woman dodged her airy way through the bedraggled mill, watched her skirts catch on a rusted gear, and finally allowed himself his chest-stuffing smile at her grumbled “Great sizzling toads!” as she yanked them loose.

  A moment later she was gone from his sight—but not in the least from his senses. She was the wild, heady rose in his nostrils, peach down and heavy cream against his skin. Though she couldn’t have meant to, she’d left him something of herself: a single, sinuously long strand of her hair, caught up near his shoulder in the dark nap of his greatcoat.

  Pale, precious silver.

  “I need you, Mairey Faelyn.”

  And soon you’ll know just how much you need me.

  Mairey escaped through the mill door and out into the blaze of afternoon sunlight with an utterly amazing amount of grace, considering the terror pooling in the pit of her stomach.

  “Brimstone-hearted dragon!” She was breathing like a blast furnace, hot nerves and sizzling anger all caught up in a conflagration that made her hurry away from the mill.

  Curse and bury the man! He’d known everything. As though he’d searched through her heart while she wasn’t looking.

  Museum vaults! Church crypts! Oh, Papa, just imagine!