Blood Marriage (15 page)

"Well?" Fielding rubbed his chin. He'd arrived at the inn that morning to check on his man. No news would have meant he could return to London tomorrow, but Lennie's face told him he'd be extending his stay.

"The quality have gone to bed. Moon's full, but our groom has a bride to keep him busy. So it's not likely there'll be any killing tonight. But we're in the right place," Lennie said. "Last night one of the maids was lured into the woods with a note to meet me, and--"

"To meet
you
?" Fielding's eyebrows rose as a flush crept up Lennie's rough face. 

He'd worked with the burly runner for six years, having recruited him himself. Lennie had come highly recommended by an acquaintance in the War Office, one who didn't deal with ordinary soldiers. In all the time Fielding had known Lennie, never once had the man said a word about his service to his country. Nor had he shared so much as a single sentence about his private life. It was only by way of his employment records that Fielding knew Lennie Hodges had no wife or children, which in this line of work was probably for the best. Fielding couldn't imagine his granite-souled runner even talking to a woman, let alone sending one a love note.

"The note wasn't from me," Lennie said. "But...she thought it was." Fielding watched in fascination as the man's flush deepened. "Went out to meet me. Fortunately she's a decent type and took another maid with her. That probably saved her life."

"Why would she think
you
would send her a note?" Fielding realized there were more important questions -- like how the maids had escaped, what they'd seen, if they could identify anyone, and if Lennie had been able to get a look at that note -- and he would ask those questions soon enough. But right now he was more interested in the fact that the toughest man he'd ever worked with couldn't meet his eyes.

"I need a pint." Lennie spat tobacco into Fielding's neglected stew and signaled the innkeeper.

Chapter Twenty-One

Nicholas leaned against the door frame, his eyes tracing the graceful curve of Elizabeth's hips beneath her wedding dress. She stood straight and still, her arms at her sides, her back to him. The white negligee lay on the bed in front of her. 

What was she thinking, he wondered. What did she feel? Anticipation? Fear? He was practically a stranger to her and yet, before this night was over, they would be as intimately acquainted as a man and woman could be. Physically. Perhaps he'd been wrong to avoid her for the last three weeks. They'd had little chance to get to know each other, but that was the very thing he'd feared. If she knew him, truly knew him, she would not be here now, standing calmly, awaiting his touch. 

Nicholas's mother had known him. She'd loved her only surviving son as deeply as any mother could. Nicholas had never doubted that. Yet in the end she'd chosen death over the life he could have given her. He'd not take the chance Elizabeth might make that same choice.

From the moment he'd seen her across Mrs. Huntington's ballroom he'd felt drawn to her. Vlad had sent him to taste her blood, to give her the gift of life Nicholas's own mother had refused. He could have done so and walked away as he had dozens of times before. But this time had been different, and the difference was more than the fact that Elizabeth was the first female hemophiliac his mentor had sent him to. Much more.

Elizabeth lifted one hand to the negligee. Her fingers trailed cautiously across the misty white material, as if she petted a tiger. He could see enough of her profile to tell she was biting her lower lip. 

She'd been worrying for weeks that she was deceiving him by not telling him she was dying. Yet all along it was he who had been deceiving her, carefully limiting and manipulating their time together, ensuring she'd had no opportunity to tell him the truth. He'd allowed her to suffer her conscience, afraid that if he let her to be honest about herself with him, he might be tempted to be honest in return. 

Elizabeth's arm dropped back to her side, but her lower lip remained trapped between her teeth. Nicholas left the doorway to scoop the wineglasses from the bedside table with one hand. The glasses clanked together. Elizabeth's shoulders convulsed, but she didn't turn around.

"I need to tell you," she began.

"Shhhh, Elizabeth." Nicholas picked up the wine bottle and went to stand behind her, his body not quite touching hers. "Tell me nothing. Not tonight," he whispered against the back of her neck. 

The sweet scent of her started an ache deep within him. Nicholas forced back his hunger. She believed he'd offered to marry her to save her reputation. That had never been true. He was a wealthy man with a sizable fortune and multiple estates of his own, independent of his father. It would have been simple enough to have sent her to live in comfort far away from anyone who knew or cared she'd once been caught in an indiscreet misadventure. He didn't need to marry her to protect her from gossip. Nor did he need to marry her to protect himself from the embarrassment of losing his fiancée to his friend. There would have been a storm of gossip, but he'd have weathered it easily enough.

No, he'd forced Miss Elizabeth Smith into marriage for one reason: because he wanted her. Because from that moment in Mrs. Huntington's ballroom when he'd first looked into her eyes, he'd known she was his with a fierce and unreasoning instinct that went beyond logic or sane thought. He wanted her -- blood, body, and soul.

And last night, the way she'd responded to him, here in this room before dinner and later at the bottom of the stairs, had put any doubts he'd had to rest. She wanted him as well. 

Would she still, once she knew the truth?

He thrust the question from his mind. He knew the answer, but tonight he wanted to pretend, if only for a little while, that he was an ordinary man about to share the ordinary joy of a wedding night with his beautiful bride.

"Don't move." His breath stirred a tendril of dark hair against her cheek. 

He tucked the bottle of wine under one arm and moved around and past her, pulling the negligee from the bed as he went. She made an inarticulate sound of surprise as he left the room. The things he needed were already laid out on the bed in the blue room. Nicholas stuffed most of them into a leather satchel, folding the negligee and putting it in as well. The bottle of wine and the wine glasses he wrapped in cloth and tucked into the bag last. He exchanged his wedding suit for a more practical pair of black leather breeches, a simple white shirt, loose necktie, and a dark jacket. His wedding shoes he replaced with polished Hessian boots. He threw a cloak over his shoulders and tossed a smaller hooded cloak across one arm. Then he picked up the satchel and returned to Elizabeth. 

She was standing right where he'd left her. Her fine dark brows knit together at the sight of him dressed for the outdoors. She opened her mouth to speak, but he tossed the leather bag on the bed and pulled her hard against him, covering her mouth with his.

It was a mistake. The wild blood roared through his veins at the taste of her. When her arms came up to circle his neck, something akin to madness threatened to overtake him. It took every ounce of his will to release her and step back. He thrust the cloak into her hands, then retrieved the bag from the bed.

"Put it on and come with me." Giving her no chance to reply, he left the bedroom and went to wait at the top of the stairs. He didn't have to wait long.

The cloak sat askew on her shoulders. She hadn't even taken the time to button it. Only the tie at the neck held it in place, drawing a thin black line across her delicate throat.

"Devlin? Where are-?"

"Don't speak," he commanded, his voice harsher than he'd intended.

To his surprise she obeyed him. He steeled himself against the heady scent and feel of her, swept her off her feet and carried her down the stairs. They crossed the entry hall, passed through the eerie silence of the kitchens, and out the side door into the night. 

Wispy clouds drifted loose in a sky made nearly starless by the full moon. The scents of soil and the tender green plants of early summer danced together on a night-cool breeze. The buzz of insects droned in the near distance. A horse whinnied.

Nicholas put Elizabeth down on the tallest of the mounting blocks outside the stables. She sat with her feet dangling above the ground while he pulled her hood up to cover her hair and buttoned the cloak over her wedding gown.

"Now will you tell me...?" Her voice trailed off as Nicholas's father came out of the stable leading two horses -- one a roan mare, the other a black stallion.

"Pretty night isn't it, Elizabeth?" the duke asked. He passed the reins of the stallion to his son. Nicholas handed back the leather satchel and his father tied it behind the roan's saddle.

"Stand up." Nicholas took Elizabeth's hand to steady her. "On the block," he added when she looked at him in confusion.

Once she was standing, he released her hand and swung himself up onto his horse. The duke mounted the roan. Nicholas grinned at the little squeal Elizabeth made when he wrapped an arm around her waist, lifted her off the block, and sat her across his thighs. Pulling her tight against his chest, he kicked the black stallion into a gallop. His father followed them across the broad expanse of moon-bathed lawn toward the forest.

The horses' hooves pounded the ground like muffled thunder as they passed into the shadows beneath the trees. Nicholas didn't bother to slow down. The loss of the light from the full moon was no impediment to him. Both horses followed his lead with a blind trust built over many years together, and the trees flew past them on either side with dizzying speed. Though the men and the horses had spent their lives traveling these paths, the woman who sat pressed against him had no way of knowing that. He'd expected her to bury her face against his chest as they raced through the woods. Instead she threw her head back against his shoulder, allowing the hood to fall away, and she laughed. There was such freedom and joy in the sound Nicholas couldn't help but laugh as well.

He bent his head to nuzzle his lips against her jaw. To his surprise Elizabeth turned to him, her face flushed with excitement, and pressed a timid kiss on his mouth. 

"Wait on that a while longer," the duke's jovial shout came from behind them. "Don't want to scare the animals...or me."

Elizabeth jerked away and Nicholas could happily have knocked his father out of his saddle and left him butt-bruised in the middle of the forest. His new bride no longer laughed at the night wind rushing into her face, but she was still smiling. Nicholas drew her tighter against his chest and thighs. Her smile became at once shy and radiant with anticipation. That should have pleased him; instead dread gripped his heart. 

From the moment Elizabeth had thrown his cloak about her shoulders and allowed him to take her from Heaven's Edge, she'd placed herself irrevocably in his hands, requiring no explanations, trusting him to keep her safe. Very soon now she would realize her mistake. What would he see in her eyes when that moment came? Horror? Revulsion? He slowed the stallion, but they were already entering the clearing. 

He would do what had to be done. He had no choice.

Moonlight bathed the tumble of buildings before them with a ghostly glow. Nicholas reined the stallion to a halt on a low rise above where the land dipped into a deep ravine, a dry moat. On the other side of the ravine, tumbled gray stones ringed the ruins of a small castle. Two of its towers had fallen into piles of rubble, but the two remaining rose like pale gray sentinels on either side of the main building. In an upper window of one tower a faint light flickered. The duke stopped his roan beside the stallion.

"So what do you think of our little treasure, Elizabeth?" the duke asked. "It's called Maidenstone." 

"It's beautiful," Elizabeth answered, her face reflecting her delight. 

Nicholas frowned up at the candlelit window of the tower. How beautiful would Elizabeth feel it was after tonight? 

"It's over five hundred years old." The duke's pride was obvious. "But it hasn't been occupied in two hundred years. Not since one of our ancestors decided he preferred the ease of a country house to the dubious comforts of a castle and built Heaven's Edge." 

"We're staying here tonight?" Elizabeth asked.

"All Devlin brides do," Nicholas said, and abruptly kicked the stallion into a trot. 

They crossed over a wooden bridge and allowed the horses to pick their way through the rock-strewn courtyard. When Nicholas dismounted before the high stone archway of the main entrance and reached up for Elizabeth, she slid willingly into his arms. They secured the horses and the duke led the way through the splintered remnants of an iron-hinged door. Just inside, Elizabeth stopped.

"Should we not light a candle? I can see nothing in this darkness. How will we find the way?" she asked. 

Neither man answered. Nicholas took Elizabeth's hand in one of his, resisting the urge to use his other to smooth the frown lines that puckered between her brows. He pulled her gently forward. She came, haltingly.

Despite the fact that the castle's outside walls had crumbled in places, protected as it was from the weather, the interior of great hall was in surprisingly good condition. Dust and a scattering of dried leaves blown in during the previous autumn covered the stone floor and the once gray walls were smoky with the soot of hundreds of years of warming fires, but the stone itself was level and solid, if slightly worn by the centuries. The wooden stairs that curved up to the second floor were a different matter. Every few generations a Devlin lord had taken enough of an interest in preserving the family heritage to play at patching the roof, but eventually leaks on the second floor trickled down to slowly rot the once sturdy oak stairs, the decay helped along by rodents and other pests. Fortunately, their business would not require climbing those stairs tonight, and the ones to the tower room were built of the same gray stone as the walls. 

"Please, Devlin, may we light a candle?" Elizabeth made a weak attempt to pull her hand from his.