Priceless (8 page)

“Quite a pagan celebration among the peasants, isn’t it?” Lord Gaynor suggested.

Adam lifted his brow, smiled blandly.

“That would be an interesting outing for the entire family. Thank ye for asking us,” said Lord Gaynor.

Bronwyn grinned at him gratefully, but Lady Nora cried, “Impossible! We’re promised to Lady Hogarth’s party that night.”

“A trifle, me darlin’. They’ll never miss us.”

“Not true, dearest.” Lady Nora simpered, but her mettle shone through. “Lady Hogarth is one of my dearest friends, and she’s depending on us. Our daughters will be there, and Lady Hogarth is noising it about as the ‘return of the Sirens of Ireland.’”

“The most beautiful women in London society, together at one party.” Lord Gaynor puffed out his chest. “We must go.”

Bronwyn snapped the hinges of the patch box hidden in her pocket. Her father’s easy dismissal of her as a Siren rubbed at a wound so old she scarcely noticed it. But she didn’t want to be alone with Adam, and so her precious father knew well. “Da,” she protested.

Lord Gaynor shrugged. “Ye’ll have a good time with His Lordship. Olivia can go with ye.”

From the depths of her chair where she hid, Olivia squeaked. Bronwyn sank back on the settee. What good did her absurd da think Olivia would be? Adam alarmed Bronwyn; he frightened Olivia into fits.

“What kind of wholesome entertainment is in store for my daughters?” Lord Gaynor asked, wanting to display interest in the activities. “Do the local folk have a hearty celebration?”

“I don’t know. I bought this property only two years ago,” Adam said.

“That’s right.” Lord Gaynor drew out a long, curved pipe. “This property was the estate of Lord Wilde and his family. They lost it in a reverse of fortune, did they not?”

“Damned fool Wilde thought finance the province of the middle class.” Adam’s mobile mouth curled with scorn. “He’s found that without financial sense, even a noble family can be destroyed.”

Fumbling with his tobacco pouch, Lord Gaynor objected, “One must have charity.”

“No one had charity for me,” Adam retorted coolly.

“No matter how reprehensible your father’s behavior was, ye retained your title.” Lord Gaynor waved an agitated hand. “Surely ye agree the elite of this country need to be preserved.”

“Do I?”

It didn’t sound like a question to Bronwyn, and she watched Adam with big eyes. What kind of background
did Adam Keane come from? When her parents informed her of her betrothal, they told her Adam was a viscount from an old and noble family. Plainly they hadn’t told her his entire history, for his brittle scorn for the unfortunate Wilde family told a story of its own.

Lord Gaynor poured a measure of tobacco into the pipe and tamped it with a silver utensil. “The nobility are the living reminders of England’s mighty past.”

“England’s future is brighter than its past could ever be.” Waving his footman forward, Adam declared, “Let each man make his way on his own, and let the best man succeed.”

Lord Gaynor dropped his tobacco pouch. “Good God, that would be chaos.”

Mab interposed, “Chaos is a strong word, but my son has traveled a road few can imagine. From the depths of bleakest poverty, he raised himself using only his luck and wit.”

“Mab,” Adam interposed. “My bleak past is of even less interest than England’s mighty past.”

Bronwyn didn’t agree. She desperately wanted to know the details, but Adam told the footman, “Have the maid clean the tobacco and finish picking up the glass. Lord Gaynor needs a flint for his pipe.” The man hurried from the room as Adam continued, “I had this house built last summer. Mab and I moved in at Christmastime.”

As Adam spoke, Bronwyn leaned forward and touched Olivia’s hand. Olivia nodded, and the girls rose. “We will retire now,” Bronwyn announced.

Adam rose at once and came to her side. He lifted her hand to kiss it, and somehow his mouth found the pulse beating at her wrist. It leaped beneath his lips, and his gaze found hers. The tide of crimson rose from her toes, dying her chest, her neck, her face.

He murmured, “I look forward to Midsummer’s Eve with a fervency I never felt before.” After she choked out some vague reply, he turned to Olivia. His voice softened, he
smiled kindly. “We’ll provide you with a pleasant evening, also.” His courtesy for Olivia was all the more obvious after his ardent handling of Bronwyn.

It made no difference. Olivia scurried from the room as if she were threatened by his masculinity. Although Bronwyn experienced the same reaction, it irritated her to see Olivia behave in such a manner, as though Adam were a satyr.

Bronwyn hurried after her sister and caught her elbow. “Olivia, stop running like a scared rabbit. He won’t harm you.”

Olivia grabbed her in a crushing grip. “He frightens me so. Bronwyn, he looks as if he’s about to gobble you up.”

“After he got over his first disappointment with his homely bride, he’s been all that is considerate.” It was true, she supposed. One couldn’t—or shouldn’t—complain about too much attention. Unbidden, Rachelle’s invitation to join her salon sprang to her mind. “Sometimes I think life would be easier if I were shut away from all this nonsense. If there weren’t any men to fret me with their tantrums. If I could live as I wished without worrying about what society thinks.”

“I wish I could, too. Oh, I wish I could, too.” Olivia cast a fearful glance down the hall to the open door of the drawing room. Pulling Bronwyn along with her, she said in a tone of accusation, “You said he kissed you.”

“Men are supposed to want to kiss their fiancées.”

Olivia shuddered and climbed the stairs. “A man’s baser instincts lead to dreadful acts.”

Bronwyn raced to pass her, stopping her at the landing. “How do you know?”

“Sister Mary Theresa told me.” Olivia folded her hands in front of her.

“Sister Mary Theresa?” Bronwyn was flabbergasted. “That was years ago!”

“I remember,” Olivia said primly.

Bronwyn stepped aside and let Olivia pass, then tagged along behind. “You’ll be along to protect me from his baser instincts when we visit the village.”

Reaching her room, Olivia said, “I’m sorry, but I’m not coming.”

“What do you mean you’re not coming? Da said—”

“I heard what Da said. He said St. John’s Day is actually a pagan carryover from Midsummer’s Day.” Olivia stepped through the threshold and prepared to shut the door in Bronwyn’s face. “I won’t pollute my soul by attending a pagan ritual.”

Bronwyn pushed the door wide and barged in. “Da didn’t say anything about the pagan carryover. Where’d you hear that?”

“Sister Mary Theresa told me to be careful, that the Devil still seeks to reclaim his lost holidays by masking them as Christian saint days.”

Bronwyn took her sister by the shoulders and shook her. “Be careful. We’re Irish, and members of the Church of England, but if any hint that we were Papist came to the attention of society, we’d be pariahs.”

Olivia gulped and whispered, “I know.” Her big blue eyes pleaded for understanding. “I know you want me to come, but my soul would be in peril.”

“What about me? When Adam looks at me, I know it’s not my soul that’s in peril.”

“You shouldn’t go, either.”

Exasperated, Bronwyn paced away. “I can’t tell him no!”

“But that creature will take the chance to kiss you again”—Olivia acted as if the thought could never have occurred to Bronwyn—“and how can you stand it?”

“I stood the last kiss very well,” Bronwyn confessed. “He kissed me until my garters smoked.”

“Bronwyn!”

Not wanting to gaze on her sister’s shocked countenance, Bronwyn studied the toe of her shoe digging against the carpet. “Well, he did.”

“Oh, Bronwyn, this is tragic.” Olivia collapsed onto a chair. “You’re not in love with him, are you?”

“I don’t know.” Bronwyn waved her arms. “I don’t know. I like it when he kisses me, and sometimes when he looks at me, I feel this sinking in my stomach.”

“Because you’re frightened?” Olivia guessed.

“Maybe sinking isn’t the correct word. More like…” Faced with her sister’s blank stare, Bronwyn gave up trying to describe it. “It’s not a bad feeling. Just anticipation, I suppose.”

Putting her fingers to her temples, Olivia whispered in dire tones, “You are in love with him.”

“In love. That’s such a strong term.” Bronwyn meditated. “Probably it’s only infatuation.”

Olivia pressed her lips together in a tight line, then said, “Think of Maman. You don’t want to be like Maman, do you?”

“Da loves her,” Bronwyn answered. She didn’t like the way Olivia made her feel—defensive and alarmed about her own common sense.

“And she loves him. With her looks, she could have married any man, but she ran away with Da instead.”

Protective of her dearest father, Bronwyn said, “There’s nothing wrong with Da!”

“Nothing, except he hasn’t any money, and he’s more Irish than English, and he follows his heart.” Olivia counted his deficiencies on her fingers. “Maman’s had to be the brains of the family, and she’s ill suited to that.”

“Yes,” Bronwyn acknowledged.

“Maman could be living in luxury right now, rather than staying in the home of her daughter’s betrothed.”

“It’s not been so awful.”

“Pretending she’s living here because Adam asked her to, when she actually hasn’t the money to open their
London house.” Olivia clenched her fists. “She could be a duchess.”

“I know,” Bronwyn agreed miserably.

“And what does she get for all her sacrifices? Da still finds other women to amuse him. She always knows, and she always eats her heart out.”

Bronwyn shrugged, not indifferent, but very uncomfortable.

With full-blown indignation, Olivia queried, “Don’t you remember when Holly fell in love with her fiancée? They were married and rapturously happy until another pretty face caught his attention. And then another, and then another—”

“You don’t have to harp on it.”

“And poor Holly still loves that man, and every time he finds another mistress she cries and cries.”

“I couldn’t love a man like that,” Bronwyn said with emphasis.

Olivia laughed a little hysterically. “The women in this family don’t have a choice. None of our other sisters love, because they’ve never found the right man. But when one of the Edana women does love, it sticks like tar. Nothing scrapes it off, nothing remains the same. No matter what that man does, we Edana women can’t escape the awful trap.”

Bronwyn turned away from Olivia’s certainty.

“Maman’s beautiful. Holly’s beautiful. Neither one of them can keep the man she loves. Worst of all, Adam is by far the most attractive of the husbands.”

“You noticed, did you?” Bronwyn said dryly.

Olivia leaped to her feet and came to embrace Bronwyn. “I love you dearly, but your looks won’t keep a man by your side. With those mesmerizing eyes, he must have women throwing themselves at him. If you love this viscount of Rawson, you’ll have nothing but heartache in store.”

Olivia’s words struck deep at Bronwyn’s precarious
poise, but she seized the moment to declare, “That’s why you must come with me tomorrow night.”

“No.” Olivia shook her head. “I will not.”

“Yes, you will.”

“No, I won’t.”

“Olivia wouldn’t come.” Seated in the horse-drawn cart,
her skirts spread in a great pile of yellow dimity that draped over Adam’s legs and dangled off the side, Bronwyn bounced along the road to the village.

“Olivia is delicate, isn’t she?” Drawn by his dark magnetism, the setting sun kissed Adam’s face and acquainted itself with his features.

Bronwyn’s fingers itched to touch the spark of gold in his black hair. “I don’t know if delicate is the correct word.” Still peeved at Olivia’s defection, she strove for a pleasant tone; his sidelong glance told her she hadn’t quite succeeded.

“Did she have the headache?”

Bronwyn examined her thumbnail. It had grown out to an acceptable length, and she rubbed the smooth edge with her index finger. “I believe she’s suffering, yes.”

“Your sister seems almost ethereal, untouched by the world.” His carefree handling of the ponies matched his casual outfit of brown breeches and a snowy shirt. His rough stockings and sturdy shoes told the story; tonight he cared nothing for formality.

His carefree demeanor made her yearn to discard the
panniers that held her skirts out so stiffly, to toss aside the decorative petticoat, to remove the stomacher that cinched her tight. Her full and formal wig she’d relinquished for a smaller one topped with a cap. She wished she could run barefoot as she’d done as a child, feeling the grass between her toes.

He continued, “Olivia’s skin is so fair, her hair so dark, she looks like the princess in the old fairy tales.”

Bronwyn smiled, a mere curving of the lips, and touched the modest wig covering her own scorned locks. “She looks like the rest of my sisters.”

“You’re different.”

“So I’ve been told,” she said in brittle agreement. In the silence that followed, she scolded herself. Adam admired Olivia; who did not? For the first time in her life, she didn’t want to hear someone praise her sister, and that only because of this inconvenient emotion stirring in her.

“Will your father be angry with you for coming with me?” She didn’t answer, and he added, “Alone?”

She almost laughed aloud. “I can handle Da.” Seeking to mend her bridges, she waved at the village cuddled into the hollow before them. “Olivia’s going to be sorry she missed this. I can smell the food cooking.”

“See the bonfires on the hills?” He pointed his whip. “That’s a tradition on Midsummer’s Eve. The villagers believe it welcomes summer.”

She grinned as they rattled into the village square. “So this really is a pagan celebration?”

“Let’s say it’s a Christian celebration with pagan roots.”

One of the villagers standing in the doorway of the tiny inn hailed him. Adam greeted the man by name and came to a halt.

“M’lord, a pleasure.” John wiped his hands on his apron. “We was hopin’ ye was comin’, but ye missed th’ cheese rollin’.”

“My misfortune,” Adam said, grinning.

John agreed solemnly. “’Twas a hearty sight.”

“What is a cheese rolling?” Adam quizzed, echoing the question in Bronwyn’s mind.

“Ye’ve never attended a cheese rollin’?” John studied them as if they were strange creatures. “We take a big wheel o’ cheese, see, an’ roll it down th’ hill, an’ th’ boys chase it, an’ th’ winner gets th’ cheese.” Seeking to comfort them, he added, “Still an’ all, ye’re here in time fer plenty o’ games. Th’ men are playing marbles now. Th’ boys’ll be tacklin’ a greased pig. We’ve got wrestlin’ with some o’ our best men t’ bet on, an’ this before ’tis total dark an’ we can light th’ bonfire in th’ square. Son, take th’ lordship’s horses an’ put them in me stable.” A ten-year-old ran to the ponies’ heads, and Adam descended to help Bronwyn down.

“Is this yer lady?” John asked, not bothering to hide his fervent interest. “The lady ye would wed?”

“Indeed it is.” Adam wrapped his hands around Bronwyn’s waist and swung her down. He kept his hands there while he gazed at her, and a hot blush worked under her skin. “Lady Bronwyn Edana, daughter of the earl of Gaynor.”

“A fine lady t’ come t’ our humble celebration,” John said.

Crowding close under the villager’s arm, a woman Bronwyn suspected was his wife asked, “But did ye come without a chaperone?”

Adam let Bronwyn go, and she turned to the woman. “My sister was ill. Mab will be along later, and for this brief visit I decided to trust Lord Keane.”

“Did ye now?” The woman examined Adam with a critical gaze. “No doubt ye could trust him with yer life. But with yer virtue?” She twisted her thumb down and turned profile in the doorway. Her belly, swollen and waiting to be delivered of its burden, gave a visual warning more potent than words. “Don’t let yer trust carry ye too far.”

Nudging his wife behind him, John sputtered and apolo
gized. “Ye’ll excuse Gilda, m’lord, she’s in th’ last stages an’ taking advantage o’ me soft nature.”

Adam grinned again and without words invited Bronwyn to share his amusement. She couldn’t help herself. She responded. In the radiance of his pleasure, she realized Gilda’s warning came too late. Bronwyn would trust Adam. Trust him with her life, trust him with her virtue, for no better reason than an instinct that claimed him as hers.

“Look at the flames licking out of those barrels.” Standing on the top of the knoll, on top of a rock, Bronwyn clapped her hands like a child given a sugar plum. “Why do they roll them down the hill?”

Adam stood below and watched her excitement in the flickering light of the bonfire. “It’s a tradition,” he said, as he’d said so many times this evening.

“Have they always done so?”

Smiling faintly, he said, “I suppose. You’ll have to inquire.”

The idea was parent to the action. Holding her skirts, she leaped from the rock. Adam thought he heard a ripping sound, but, unperturbed, she bounded to the fringe of the bonfire. Giving way good-naturedly, the villagers closed behind her. They’d come to like her as she cheered the marbles and the wrestling. She’d laughed until she cried as the boys struggled to hold a greased pig, and she’d not taken offense at the curiosity of the villagers for Adam’s betrothed. She’d drunk ale with them, chatted with them, thanked them for inviting her, and she’d made them her adoring disciples.

Now she had to yell to have herself heard above the roar of the conflagration, and Adam moved closer to hear her say, “You make a bonfire. You fill barrels with flame and send them down the hill. What other things do you do at Midsummer?”

To his surprise, the villagers laughed in a knowing fashion.

One of the men, well fortified with liquor, said, “Well, this is a great time t’ drink ale.”

“How so?” she asked.

“’Tis church ale, an’ all th’ profit from th’ brewing goes t’ th’ church.” His bushy eyebrows wiggled. “’Twouldn’t be reverent t’ refuse a drink.”

He staggered sideways. “I can see you’ve done more than your share to support the church,” Bronwyn teased.

One of the unmarried girls pushed forward. “M’lady, see that moon?”

Bronwyn stared up at the round globe lifting just above the horizon.

“That’s the Midsummer moon, an’ it brings a turrible madness,” the girl explained. “A love madness. Any girl seeking t’ know her future husband should place a garland o’ flowers under her pillow. Whoever she conjures will be th’ man.”

The villagers laughed and clapped as she removed her garland and placed it on Bronwyn’s head.

Adam pushed forward to his betrothed and settled the flowers closer against the itchy wig. “It gives me pleasure to know you’ll dream of me.”

Bronwyn’s eyes fell beneath his gaze; the villagers snorted and coughed. John presented them with two tankards. “This round of ale’s on me. Come down th’ hill now, m’lord an’ lady, an’ start th’ dance fer us.” He pulled his forelock. “When ye want t’, a’ course.”

Adam looked at Bronwyn inquiringly, and she nodded. “Let’s go,” she agreed, accepting the ale. “I’ve never been to a Midsummer’s Eve dance before.”

“Nor I.” He offered his arm, and she took it without hesitation. She stumbled and would have tumbled down the hill, and he noted that his lady seemed the worse for the drink. Mentally he tallied the tankards and asked, “Bronwyn, would you like to refresh yourself?”

“Take me to the inn,” she answered instantly, and grinned at him.

How could he have ever thought her homely? That smile of hers lit her face like a fairy light. Her body moved with a grace that made a man think of long, slow loving. When he’d been beside her in his office he’d been unable to keep himself from touching her. As he’d expected, her shape had been augmented by stuffing, but not totally. Above the wad of cloth dwelt a breast, round and sensitive, and he’d liked its shape. Finding it had ignited his curiosity, and now he wondered what other mysteries his fiancée concealed.

His own curiosity had brought him too many sleepless nights.

Mimicking his thoughts, although she didn’t realize it, she said, “You’ve fulfilled a great curiosity of mine.”

“In what way?”

“I had read about Midsummer Night and the Irish celebrations in the Gaelic manuscript I was translating, and—”

“Translating?” He recalled the tale Northrup had told him. “You mean reading.”

Her hand flew to her mouth, her gaze to his face. She looked the picture of guilt, and she agreed, “Reading! I meant reading.”

She lied. There was no doubt. He’d questioned enough cabin boys and seamen to know shame when he saw it. Lesser men than he could decipher her gestures, but what did it mean? Surely his little noblewoman couldn’t read Gaelic. Elaborately casual, he asked, “Where were you reading such a thing?”

“In Ireland,” she answered. “Look at the stars. They’re big and bright, without a cloud to hide them.”

Trying to distract him, and none too cleverly, he diagnosed, “That’s right, you lived in Ireland as a child. That’s one island I’ve never visited.”

With the mood swing of the tipsy, she twirled around,
laughing. “You should go. It’s the most beautiful place on earth.”

Without exerting his imagination, he could imagine the urchin she had been. “Did you run free during your time there?”

“No. No, no.” She shook her head so hard that her wig slipped, and a bit of moonlight gleamed close by her hairline. “We had a governess, a Miss O’Donnell. In that lovely brogue of hers, she called herself a distressed noblewoman and made it sound like an honor. Da paid her to teach us, and teach us she did.”

Homing in on the information he sought, he put a foot upon a boulder and propped his arm against his knee in a nonchalant gesture. “What did she teach you?”

“Everything. I thought my head would burst before she was done stuffing it.”

“Embroidery? Harp? Deportment?”

“Miss O’Donnell? Not at all. Well, deportment,” she allowed. “Miss O’Donnell believed in deportment. But mathematics, languages, history mostly.”

“Languages?” He slid her a keen glance, but she had turned her face into the breeze and didn’t see it. “Is that where you learned to read Gaelic?”

“No, that’s where I learned to read Latin,” she corrected, not suspecting how she betrayed herself. “The manuscripts were at the convent where we—Olivia and I—went to learn harp and embroidery. I found one old manuscript written in both Latin and Gaelic. I’d heard the peasants speak Gaelic, of course, but this wasn’t the same kind of Gaelic. This was”—she struggled to define it—“archaic. I would have never battled through, but the text was interesting.”

“About Midsummer Night?”

“About Druids, bards, and a world long vanished.” Solemn, she shook her head. “Gaelic is difficult.”

“What did Miss O’Donnell think of such a thing?”

“She’d had brothers, you see, and learned everything
they’d learned. But she said if I were to get an education, I’d have to do it myself. She said as soon as I came to England, all I’d learn is how to dance and simper and use a fan.” She drooped. “She was right.”

He wrapped his arm around her waist and started them back down the hill. “Is that such a dreadful thing?”

His touch seemed to wake her to her circumstances, and she tensed. “Not at all,” she said.

She sounded silly and feminine, but her own natural intelligence made it a parody. Tomorrow he would worry about it, about her intelligence and how it clashed with his own needs. For now, satisfaction struggled for dominance. Another bit of the mystery surrounding this Edana changeling had been solved.

At the inn, Gilda greeted Bronwyn with another tankard of ale. “Havin’ a good time, m’lady?”

“Marvelous.” Bronwyn sipped the rich brew and queried, “Have you got a room where I can repair a little of the damage this good time is inflicting?”

“A’ course. Give way fer m’lady. Don’t crowd m’lady.” Gilda pushed through the throng of curious, thirsty revelers to an upper-level hall. Opening a door, she asked, “Will this do, m’lady?”

“It will do nicely, I’m sure.” Bronwyn glanced around at the simple decorations. “What a homey place.”

Pleased, Gilda said, “It’s our room, John’s an’ mine.”

“I recognize your light touch,” Bronwyn praised. “I could use a little help, too, if you would?”

As if she’d been waiting for the invitation, Gilda stepped inside and shut the door.

“Do you have a pin?” Bronwyn lifted her skirt, revealing a silk petticoat beneath. “I stepped on my hem and it ripped at my waist. Look.” She stuck her finger through the hole and wiggled it.

Gilda giggled and opened a drawer in the dresser. “I can sew it on ye easier than I can pin it. I was a seamstress
before I married John, an’ I’m handy with a needle.”

“A fortunate circumstance for John.”

“I sew his shirts better than he’s ever had them sewed before, an’ I stitched all th’ clothes fer th’ babe,” Gilda agreed, placing a stool beside Bronwyn and kneeling on it. “Since John got t’ keep th’ inn, it’s been a happy time fer us.”

“Keep the inn? Were you about to lose it?”

Gilda pinned the hole firmly before she answered. “Last year’s Midsummer celebration wasn’t nearly as cheerful, I’ll tell ye.”

“Why?” Bronwyn asked.

“All th’ lands had just been sold t’ Lord Keane, an’ we didn’t know what kind o’ landlord we were getting. Everyone was afraid they’d have no homes.” She glanced up and winked. “I got married because o’ His Lordship.”