Bride Enchanted (14 page)

Eve followed her guest blindly, trying to absorb her words. One thing she'd heard concerned her:
Arianna had waited for Aubrey to leave before she came to call. That meant she was keeping watch on the house, or paying someone to do so. And so then she must also know that Sherry was gone. So why was she here, and with such an escort? For the first time since they'd met, Eve felt a shiver of fear thinking of her visitor's possible motives.

“How cheery!” Arianna exclaimed, as she stood by the hearth and rubbed her hands together. She wore a long-sleeved white velvet gown with a green ribbon beneath her high breasts, and her hair spilled like a fall of sunlight to her slender shoulders. The flames in the hearth accentuated her coloring, turning her hair to shades of gold and rose. She was, Eve thought again, beyond mere loveliness. She was entrancing, and it was a very good thing that Sherry was in London. Her escort was breathtaking too, but he had an unsettling stare and Eve wished again that Aubrey were there.

“I'll ring for tea,” Eve said, as she settled in a chair near the hearth. “You will stay for dinner, and the night?” She mightn't like Arianna and suspect her motives, but Eve knew her duties as hostess.

So did Arianna. She laughed gaily. “Oh, no. And I think you know that. My bear of a brother will have a fit if he finds us here. Ours will be a
brief visit, my dear.” Arianna turned from the fire and circled Eve's chair. “But you interest me,” she said. “He's never had anyone like you before. And neither have I. See what I meant, Elwyn? I can't put my finger on it, but it's there.”

“She has innocence and knowledge about her, in equal measure,” Elwyn said, watching Eve with fascination and obvious lust. “Very intriguing.”

“Oh, don't look so panicked to hear a compliment, little sister,” Arianna laughed. “You look like a doe seeing a crossbow aimed at her. Elwyn is only being truthful because I asked it of him. As for me? I'm neither violent nor mad. I simply go my way, and Aubrey goes his. We seldom agree. But on you, perhaps we do.”

“I'm not remarkable,” Eve said, forcing herself not to shrink back in her chair as they both stared. “In fact, compared to your exotic family, I'm plain as dirt.”

“Are you? Then that may be it. There's much power in the earth,” Arianna said seriously, taking a chair opposite her.

Elwyn nodded in agreement, and kept his unsettling, beautiful eyes on Eve.

“Do you know exactly how exotic our family is, Eve?” Arianna asked. “Has Aubrey told you?”

Eve sat still. There was much she wanted to hear, almost as much as she didn't. There was no
sense in lying about it, and much sense in learning more, so long as she didn't find herself prying. So she answered honestly. “I know you and Aubrey are siblings. I know you have no mother or father and that your family has lived here, at Far Isle, or it's site, for ages.”

“Yes. So she does know a bit,” Arianna told Elwyn merrily. “But only a bit, methinks. Where is your charming brother, Eve?” she asked, in a quick turn of subject. “I know he left for London, but where does he stay there? With your father? Yes, so I should think.”

Eve sat up straight. She said nothing as the butler and a footman came in, bearing tea and biscuits. When they had set up a little table between their mistress and her guests, and arranged it with the teapot, cups, and cakes, Eve waved them away. She'd had time to think.

There was little question that Arianna was odd. In fact, it occurred to Eve that Aubrey might well have concealed knowledge of her because he feared no woman would want to marry a fellow with such a weird sister. But Eve had heard stories of her own reclusive grandmother, and a very odd great-great-grandfather, and still, neither she nor Sherry was strange. So that didn't matter to her. But now Arianna was obviously being provocative and challenging. That did matter.

Eve didn't want to argue with her. But she wanted the woman gone. Elwyn did nothing menacing, but his whole demeanor was somehow insulting. He exuded sexual interest, his eyes weighing and judging her as a woman. Instead of being flattered that such a magnificent gentleman was so interested in her, Eve felt threatened.

But, she thought, lifting her head, she shouldn't be afraid. This was her house, and it was her brother she was concerned with.

“Oh, your face!” Arianna trilled. “You worry about Elwyn? Do not. He's merely puzzled that you don't melt for him as all females do. And me? It's clear you think me as mad and as bad as that fellow Byron. I'm neither. I am flighty, though. I admit that. I find it dull to keep my mind on one subject too long. I like to flit about in conversation as well as actions, like a bee in blossoms. You gather more that way. I tell you what, Eve, my dear, tell me nothing now. No, not a word! Come to know me better and you'll see there's no harm in me. Then tell me anything you wish, or I ask.”

She leaned forward, her blue eyes suddenly keen. “Have you considered the thought that Aubrey doesn't want us to be friends because there are many more things he doesn't want you to know about?”

Eve had. She sat still. Then she tried to steady
her thoughts and her hands as she poured tea for her visitors.

Arianna laughed. “Well, there we are, because there are many things I could tell you, but they'd only make you think me madder or stranger. And I so want you to like me. You might, in time, actually find you'd like to come live with me! I know Sheridan would. My home is so fine. You've never seen the like. I promise you'll fall in love with it and with my neighbors, and with the whole world around me.”

Arianna's smile was so warm and winning that Eve began to believe her. “You don't have to like me, dear little sister,” Arianna went on, “though I vow you would, should you come to stay with me even a little while. But the things you'll see, the things you'll learn. And the food! My cook is magical. We should have such a good time. I cast no aspersions on dear Aubrey, but this house is so
natural
. Nature is beautiful, but even she needs a helping hand. My gardens are fantastic. I have roses that bloom in the snow, and honeysuckle that perfumes the air all year. My friends are delightful, colorful, and sweet enough to match my flowers.”

She playfully swatted her cousin. “And not all the men are as obvious as Elwyn here. At that, I
can promise you that he'll mind his manners in future. Our life is simple but grand. But you still don't trust me. So what to do? I know,” Arianna said, clapping her hands together like a child. “Ask Aubrey some questions. Once you know more, you should be able to do more, and especially, you'll come to see that there's no harm to come from me to you or yours. Let me see, how to broach the subjects to him, because he's so prickly? Ah, yes. Ask my brother how old he is.”

She rose from her chair, leaving her tea untouched, and stepped closer to Eve. “That's a good start. Because I'll wager you never did, or if you did, never got a real answer.”

Eve frowned. She hadn't thought about that. She guessed Aubrey was her senior by some seven years, and when she'd asked him, he'd smiled and said, “you flatter me.” And then she'd forgot to ask more. She scowled. How could she have forgotten to ask more? But what difference did it make?

Arianna nodded. “Insist on that answer, and much will follow. Then, if it doesn't, let me see…ah yes! Ask him how many wives he's had.”

Elwyn chuckled as Eve's eyes widened. She'd never thought of that either. Had he married more than once? He hadn't said—but then he hadn't mentioned his first wife. She felt cold.

“Good, good,” Arianna said, pacing. “And then, only one more question. Ask him that and the rest will tumble out.”

“What rest?” Eve asked, growing impatient and afraid. “What are you saying?”

“Nothing and everything. You've probably asked him why he married you, and he likely answered in loverlike phrases. That's all to the good, and probably true. But ask him what it is he most wants from you. Yes. That should do it. When you ask he must tell. And in truth, I've told you nothing; you must discover everything yourself. He must tell you, so I've been fair to my brother and our code. Although, I vow I'd be more honest with Sheridan than Aubrey was with you.

“But I must leave now,” Arianna said, lifting her head. “Aubrey was quick about his errands. I think he feels that I've returned. So I'll go. But know this, little sister. I'd never harm your Sheridan. It's only that he may be as useful to me as you are to my brother. And you are, never doubt it. It may be, we must see. Adieu. But remember, if ever you should need me, send word. Just ask anyone here in the house, or in the village. Or call to me. I will come. I am not your enemy. Believe me. Adieu, Adieu,” she said as she danced from the room. Elwyn quickly followed her.

Arianna snatched up her cape from the footman, gave Eve a brilliant smile, and left the Hall with her cousin. They went out into the growing darkness of the snowy afternoon, and were gone into shadows even as Eve heard Aubrey's carriage hurrying back down the drive.

A
ubrey came in from the cold. His high cheekbones were touched with a rosy gold flush and the breeze had mussed his hair, but his eyes were as dark as storm clouds.

“Where are they?” he asked, as he stripped off his greatcoat and handed it to a footman. “My guests? Never mind. Probably gone by now. Where's my wife?”

“Here,” Eve said quietly from where she stood in the doorway of the front salon.

She looked subdued, pale, and slight as a shadow. Her usually impish grin was gone and her clear eyes looked dulled. His heart sank. Arianna had been here. He didn't know what she'd said, but he suspected it had been too much, and much too soon. He had been married to Eve for only a matter of months and had hoped to keep things to himself for a while longer. No, in all honesty, he'd
wanted to keep them from her until he no longer had any choice, and that might have been decades from now. But one look at her showed him that it was already far too late.

“What did they say?” he asked.

“Nothing we can discuss here,” Eve answered.

He hesitated. “The open air is best for truths, but it's snowing.” He essayed a smile. It wasn't returned. “Do you want to come upstairs to our bedchamber?”

She shook her head, looking even more wary.

“I didn't mean that,” he said quickly, realizing that she thought he meant to make love to her to win her over. “I don't mean to cloud the issue. I just wanted privacy. Very well then, will you come into my study so we can discuss it in comfort?”

She followed him to his study. He showed her to a chair, and waited as a footman hurriedly piled logs on the hearth and refreshed the smoldering fire until it blazed. Then Aubrey let the man out and closed the door behind him. He stood there a moment, his back to Eve, wishing he could pray. Instead he called on all his powers of persuasion. Then he turned to Eve. “My sister was here. Who did she bring with her? What did she say?” he asked again.

He realized she hadn't asked him how he knew his sister had been there at all. Her grief
and confusion over whatever Arianna had said and whomever she'd brought with her was too all encompassing for those trivialities. Instead, she gazed at him with those bright, thoughtful brown eyes that had first called to him.

“She brought her cousin Elwyn,” Eve said. “He didn't say much, which was as well because I didn't like him much either. But he did nothing.”

“You didn't find him fascinating?” he asked in puzzlement.

She shook her head. “He tried too hard to make me think he was, I think,” she said.

He was surprised, and laughed with relief. “My clever, sensible Eve, you never cease to astonish me. He sets females longing for him wherever he goes.”

Eve shrugged. “I didn't.”

“Well and good. He's a nasty piece of work.”

“As for your sister, she said she only came to tell me I'm always welcome at her home, which sounds lovely, and to assure me she wasn't my enemy. She also asked after Sherry. Somehow, she knew he'd gone to London, but she didn't know where.”

Aubrey let out a pent-up breath. Then he checked. If it wasn't so bad, then why was Eve so sad? He waited.

“She also told me there was much you hadn't
told me,” Eve went on in a colorless voice. “And she told me what I must ask you if I want to know what it is. I have questions for you. And each hurts to even think about, Aubrey.” Her voice broke; she looked away and took in a shuddering breath.

Before he could answer, she continued. “You say you never lied to me. But now I see that not lying isn't being truthful. Dreadful, incredible things have occurred to me. Ignorance isn't bliss, not anymore. I love you, that hasn't changed. But now I know I don't know you.” Her eyes met his. “You're too handsome, too wealthy, too sophisticated, and too clever to instantly fall in love with a woman like me. In time, perhaps, it might have come to be. But you never gave it time. I always worried about that, and always said it, and you always flattered it away. But I also always knew it was true, though I chose not to. Now, I choose to. And so I've three questions for you, ones I never thought to ask before.”

Arianna's questions. Aubrey strode to the window and looked out at the snow. Three questions: that had the stamp of Arianna on it. So his time of peace was over. It was a time for answers, and without trickery, deceit, or any attempt to charm Eve out of her mood or the truth. He thought about his new wife as he waited for her questions.

He'd come to care for her very much, far more
than he'd ever done for any woman. It wasn't just because of the treasure she now bore. It was the woman herself. She reached him in ways no one, not even one of his own people, had ever done. Eve touched his heart even though he'd doubted he had one, just as she inflamed senses he'd thought were long jaded. He still hadn't sorted them all out, except he knew he was happy with her.

He cared about what she thought of him, which was why he'd never tried to influence her feelings for him except by common, human means. And now she wanted the truth, years too soon, and so now he might lose her, forever. Or at least lose her love. He knew, in his bones, that she'd never love another as she had loved him. And that she'd never leave the child she didn't even know that she now bore. But she might refuse to let herself love him from now on. That was a loss he couldn't begin to contemplate. But he had no choice.

“Fire away,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back as he stared out the window into the storm.

“How old are you, Aubrey?” she asked quietly.

“Ah!” he said, as though she'd struck him. “Good, very good, Arianna got right to the heart of it, didn't she? I'll answer you, Eve. But I think it's best that I know all three questions now, be
cause they're all of a piece, and may be best answered together.”

“How many wives have you had, Aubrey?” Eve asked softly.

He nodded, his chest growing tight. “Ah, yes, to be expected. And the third question?”

“That,” Eve said, “I now see must come last of all.”

“Very well,” he said.

“No!” she said. “Please, turn and face me so that I can see you when you answer me.”

“That will be harder for me,” he said quietly, but he turned to face her. In truth, were she just any woman, it would be easier for him, but he refused to try to influence her by anything but facts. He realized he'd said that out loud when she took in a deep breath, folded her hands in front of her, and waited for him to say more.

“And it's also rare for me. All of this is, Eve,” he said. He shook his head, and walked close to her. He dragged a chair from behind his desk and placed it next to hers. There he sat, and looked at her, his eyes searching her expression for every nuance of change as he spoke.

“You will not choose to believe me at first,” he said. “And then you'll think about it. And then?” He shrugged, an ineffably sad expression on his
own face. “You will decide. My age, Eve? I'm old, older than any man you've ever known. But then, that makes sense, because I am not a mortal, human man.”

She sat wide-eyed and still.

“Shall I go on?”

She nodded.

“At least you're not laughing,” he sighed. “My people, my folk, my troop, have lived here at Far Isle or what came before it, from time out of mind. It could be argued that we're more British than any of you latecomers: you Celts, Angles, Romans, Vikings, Francs—all you latecomers. We were born on and of this very earth that is Britain. But we're not precisely humankind. We're an older race. We look the same. We feel many of the same things. Three things differentiate us. We live for ages more than you do. Maybe that's why we're not bothered with religion, or the other superstitious emotions that you have in plenty. We don't care about our souls, if we have them, because we've never seen them. Nor do we worship any higher powers. We can think of no one higher than ourselves.

“We can also cast spells, which are only light enchantments, over humankind. That's also partially why we were, in our racial youth, amused by your kind and treated you with no respect. We were callous and thought you inferior, and used
you only for our own pleasures, which were self-serving and chiefly mischievous.

“As time went on, we began to see your qualities. You were capable of being fully as wicked as we, equally as intelligent, and quite as conceited. The problem was that your kind are mayflies compared to us. We no sooner came to know you than we lost you, so we considered you of no account. But your race was intelligent enough to accumulate wisdom and pass it on. And mankind is ambitious, far more than we are. Is it your fear of extinction that makes you so? We don't know. But you began to grow wiser as a race, and as you did, to distrust us, and with good reason. So we began to keep to ourselves more. In fact, were it not for one thing, we would retreat to our own realm, which is really exquisite, and you would see us no more.”

He waited for her to ask. She wasn't dull. She'd put it together. He watched her eyes, those sincere earth brown eyes, and he vowed that if humans did indeed have souls, he could see hers there.

“You're not joking,” she said flatly.

“No.”

“But you must be.”

“No,” he said.

“It isn't a game?”

“No.”

You believe what you're saying?”

“Yes.”

“Ah,” she said, and sat and thought a moment. “Nor are you mad,” she whispered, as though to herself. “At least I don't think so. So what could be your reason for telling me such a tale? Ah, it's a jest between you and your sister? Some sort of test for me? Or is Sherry in on it? I don't think it's amusing. Please stop it. I don't find it funny; it's frightening me, and it's cruel of you all to tease me so.”

“It's neither a joke nor a test, nor am I teasing you.”

“Of course, no human male could be as beautiful as you are,” she mused. “And you never do have a blemish or a skin problem; you wake as handsome at dawn as you are at night, and however much I look at you, one glance at you and you always take my breath away. It's more than infatuation. I feel it here,” she said, her fist to her chest. She cocked her head to the side “Have you truly enchanted me then?”

He smiled. “No, I have not.”

“Never?”

“Once,” he said. “The first time we made love. I didn't want to hurt you. I did, but I didn't. It was only for a moment. Never before that, and never again.”

She laughed and put both hands to her head. “Oh, I must have run mad then. Or you have. This is the most peculiar conversation.” She lowered her hands. “But ours always was a peculiar relationship, wasn't it? Why should a little brown girl like me attract a man such as you? Very well, finish it. Tell me, Aubrey, all of it. How old are you? How many wives have you had? I may even believe it's true as you speak to me. I'll doubt it the minute you step away. I'll wonder back and forth through a week of nights or more, but you know? In the end, I'll think less of you, or of myself, for not seeing the cruelty, or the madness in you before this.

“If it is madness, Aubrey,” she said, leaning forward, her eyes huge and sincere, “we'll seek physicians for you, I promise. But you've never shown any hint of it. Oh, damnation. Have done. Now, will you share the jest? Or do you still intend to continue with this story of yours?”

“I'll continue with the truth,” he said. “I have lived three centuries.”

“Ah! And so you knew good Will Shakespeare?”

“You're joking now,” he said. “You're shocked, and with good reason. Say then, I've known many men and women.”

“Why are you here then?” she asked patiently,
watching him closely. “When your own country is so much more beautiful and your own people, to judge by you and Arianna, so much more beautiful too?”

“We like diversity,” he said. “This land was all ours once. Now it's becoming too crowded and too different. Your people discovered iron centuries ago. We've never liked it. It stings to the touch, it jangles our nerves, and it's the antithesis of trees, leaves, and grass, even of living rock. Your people used it only for hunting once, and to put on horse's hooves. Now you build gates and towers of it. They're talking about laying down iron tracks across the land, for iron beasts to travel on.” He shuddered. “Our own land becomes more pleasant by the day to us. And yet, and still, there's no question that you still fascinate us.”

“Oh, and so what exactly are you, Aubrey?” she asked, as though she were asking if he wanted some tea.

“We are called by many names. Elves, faerie folk…”

But she was laughing. “Oh, I see. “Where the bee sucks there suck I?'” she quoted. “You must have known Mr. Shakespeare. But it's not midsummer, and where are your wings? And shouldn't you be much smaller? Come, what's the jest, Aubrey? I've had enough.”

“No jest,” he said quietly. “Humans have depicted us as they need to see us, but we are as you see.”

“How many wives?” she asked so conversationally that he realized she disbelieved him entirely.

“Three,” he said. “I was faithful to each of them in turn. I nursed them until their deaths. I took them away from here as they aged. I don't age, you see. The differences between us became too much for them to have their friends see, and for me to risk being seen. One lady I took abroad. I couldn't stay long because I can't leave my own spot of earth for too long. But she was ill, and died soon after we left, and was peaceful at the end, looking out at the sea.” He turned his head and avoided Eve's eyes. “She couldn't bear to look at me at the last. She was vain. It made her ill to see her face in the glass and then mine. That, I couldn't help.

“When the other two grew old and sick, we said we were going abroad as well. But I took each in turn back with me to my country. The gateway to it is down at the end of the lane, in the wood, beneath a burrow, under a tree and in a hillock. The Hall has its reputation for a good reason. Worlds intersect here and always have done.