Bride Enchanted (17 page)

His expression changed. “Nor should you.” He stood and put both hands flat on the desk as he stared at her. “As I've said before, I'd prefer if you had as little to do with her as possible. She seems charming, but her intentions are always self-serving and seldom to anyone's benefit but her own. So ignore her, and never worry about insulting me because you do, because so do I.”

Eve smiled. That suited her perfectly.

“I care about our people too,” he went on. “And I too try to help them. But I don't have as much—I
shouldn't call it malice, but I must—in my heart. She can be unkind, even cruel, to those she thinks inferior, and however pleasant she seems when she's with you, you're mortal, so she believes you to be inferior.”

Eve stiffened. There it was again. He was as deluded as his sister. “And you?” she asked.

He stared at her.

“Do you believe me to be inferior?”

“Would I have married you if I did?” he asked in return. His eyes blazed. “Damnation, Eve, what did she say to you to get you to doubt yourself and me again?”

“She was talking about our future,” Eve said, telling half a truth to buy the whole of it. “About the possibility of our having children.”

He stood straight. He frowned again. “I've hopes, I confess, that with you I will,
we
will do just that. Why? Have you any indications?” he asked eagerly.

“No, no,” she said, hating herself for the lie. “I thought…but I was wrong. Still, it's early days yet. Aubrey,” she said seriously, “what bothered me was that Arianna said that if we
did
have a child, she'd have the raising of it. She, and you, and your people. Not me.” She watched his expression. “You said you'd never lie to me,” she prompted gently.

“Early days yet, as you said,” he said.

“Yes, but, if those days ever come?”

“You would, of course, come with me wherever I went,” he said. “If the child was like me, and my sister, it would only make sense to acquaint him with his birthright. But come, its foolishness discussing this now. Obviously my sister upset you more than you know. I tell you what,” he said, as he came out from behind the desk, came to her and put his arms around her. “Why don't we try to see if we can make the question arise…” he whispered against her ear, “among other things.”

She forced a laugh. “Not now. I'm still a bit disconcerted. Let me take a nice warm bath, and then, we shall see what…comes up.” She laughed again.

She wanted to buy herself time to think. The longer she stayed here with Aubrey, the more confused she became. He mightn't have bespelled her, as he believed he could. But she'd fallen so much in love with him that she was afraid that the longer she remained with him, the weaker her own hold on sanity would become. She needed to see things in perspective and that was unbearable to think about when she so much as looked at him. When he touched her, it was impossible. Right now the thought of leaving him was like a stabbing pain in her chest. Soon she believed it
might cut her to the heart, and she'd surely die if she left him.

But now he didn't leave her side and his warm breath on her ear made her shiver. “It's still light, is that what bothers you?” he asked gently. “There's no shame in love by day or night, my love.”

She leaned against him, one hand on his chest, fighting her desire and her resolve. “I know,” she whispered. “But the servants…”

“Think we are holy married monk and nun? I don't think so,” he murmured, as he trailed kisses along her neck. “We don't even have to go upstairs. Look at the rug, the deep chairs, the lovely couch I have here. There's even a floor and a wall or two.” He chuckled. “But that's more advanced, for other times, when there's no question but haste, and no time for questions. The couch? Yes, so I think too.”

He walked her to the leather couch and sat her down. He smiled down at her. “Three steps more,” he said. “One,” he said as he walked to the door, closed it, and turned back to her.

“Two,” he said as he pulled off his shirt. Then he sat beside her and took her in his arms again. “Three,” he said. “We're alone, no need to count any higher or wait a moment longer. Are you fearful of coming to me in the broad light of day? Or
of being here, where we never make love? Please don't be. Even the thought displeases me.”

Poetry, she thought with despair. When he is impassioned he speaks in rhyme, his wild fancy is with him all the time. Ah, it's catching, she thought with humorous despair. But she loved him more each day, even with what she now knew. She found herself wanting him as much as she wanted to comfort him for reasons he wouldn't understand. She shivered as she removed her gown.

He sat back and looked at her for a long moment. Her mind might shy from his intent inspection, but her body responded to his direct brown gaze as it traveled across her like a caress. Her nipples peaked, her color rose, her breathing became rapid.

He smiled as he bent to pull off his boots, and divested himself of his breeches. Then he lay down next to her on the narrow couch until they were skin to skin, heart to heart. She ran her hands through his clean smooth hair, it felt silken cool as it streamed through her fingers. She felt his hard chest against her breasts, and his arousal against her abdomen. It pulsed like her own heart's irregular beat. There was no need for further kisses or caresses, she was astonished at how ready she was, how much she wanted him.

“Come to me,” she whispered, holding him closer. “Here, now, just like this, and now please.”

“Yes,” he whispered to her. “Whether we prove successful or only appease ourselves. Whether we continue my line, or yours, or only spend joyous time, you are mine, and I am yours, and nothing can change that.”

He put his arm around her waist and raised her bottom from the couch. She clung to his shoulders and opened to him, wrapping her legs around his waist, offering her body to his. As he came to her, she closed her eyes and forgot the future and the past, forgot even to think as she became one with him.

Sometime in the night, he carried her up to their bedchamber, and they made love again on their soft broad bed, slowly, beautifully, and as exquisitely as if they both were dreaming of love.

And when he woke in the morning, this time it was she who was gone before the sun had fully risen.

T
he note she left for him, on her pillow, was simple and concise.

It was a fearsome thing to leave one's husband, Eve thought as the mail coach carried her through the countryside to London. It was wrong and deceitful, and if he'd left her the same way, she wasn't sure she'd forgive him for it. But she had to. Her marriage was becoming too strange, and now she was convinced she was carrying Aubrey's child. Before she went any further, she had to go forth with a clear head. She'd had to act quickly. Soon travel wouldn't be as easy for her as it was now. She didn't want to endanger this babe she carried.

And yet so much as she loved Aubrey, and that was as much as her own life itself, still, under no circumstances did she want that child being brought up by people who shared Aubrey's strange fantasies.

She'd talk to her father. He was not a fanciful man. If she had to, she'd go anonymously to talk with a physician who dealt with weird fantasies people succumbed to, and see if he had any ideas of how to deal with this problem. And she'd also take the time to warn Sherry about Arianna's obsession with him. He was too young and callow to get involved with such a female. However old he was, she didn't want her brother to have to deal with the same kind of problems she now had.

She'd only been gone from Far Isle for a mat
ter of hours, and yet the pain of leaving Aubrey was intense and growing even more so with every milestone she passed on the road. Would he forgive her? Would he come thundering down the road behind her, and tear her from the coach and take her back to the Hall? She half feared that he would, and she half wanted him to do it.

Or would he desert her, as he may have done with other wives before? She hadn't known he'd had three wives when she'd married him. She still couldn't believe it. He may well have had them; a man didn't need to be three hundred years old to have been widowed that often. But had he even
been
married? The things that had sent her flying from him were the things she hadn't known when she'd accepted his hand, his heart, and his body. Or at least, they were the things he hadn't told her.

Even so, she felt guilt and shame. What sort of a person was she, to leave her lawfully wedded husband? Especially if he were ill and suffering delusions? Still and all, what sort of a husband had she, who believed he was an almost immortal magical creature, and who would take her child from her and bring it up to believe that it was magical too?

She raised her chin. She'd go to London and reason out what to do. She'd taken the Royal Mail
coach because it went faster than any other, and she felt more secure in it. The coach would travel onward without stopping for more than changes of horses, all the way to London. She'd sleep sitting up, when she could, and then go straight to her father's house. It had been her home too.

Her father had been in London with Sheridan when she'd last had a letter from him. But he loved his country house too. If he weren't in London now because he'd gone there, she'd stay in London and send for him to come and meet her.

Aubrey doubtless guessed where she was going. Where else should she go for comfort and advice? But if he wasn't pursuing her now, she'd have time to do what she needed.

Eve drew herself as far away as she could from the old lady who dozed on the carriage seat on her right, and the rotund gentleman who sat snoring on her left. She closed her eyes to ignore the two gentlemen sitting opposite her. She couldn't sleep and didn't expect to. Instead she thought of her husband, and grieved for him, for herself, and for their child to be. Because she feared that this short leave from Aubrey might become the end of her marriage. But whatever she did, she couldn't just think of herself anymore. She had other lives to protect. Not just Aubrey's. But his child's as well.

The journey took a day and a night. Eve was weary and aching in every limb when the Mail stopped at the Bull and Mouth, the famous coaching inn just inside London's ancient wall. She left the coach on stiffened legs, took her hastily loaded cases, summoned a hackney, and directed him to her father's town house. Only when she looked out the window as the hackney finally slowed, and saw the familiar house, did she breathe easier. The knocker was still on the door; her father still lived there.

She was home. Eve longed for her own home, Far Isle, as she stepped out of the hackney. But at least here she could think her own way through this tangle without the distractions of duty and honor and the only man she'd ever loved.

Her father was shocked. She'd expected that and was prepared.

“No,” Eve said, stripping off her gloves as she sat down in his study with him. “I am not hurt. I was not brutalized. I still love my husband.” She leaned forward and looked at him earnestly. “But I
am
alone. And I came without his knowledge. Because I need advice.”

Her father winced.

“I won't discuss anything intimate,” she reassured him. “I just need some counsel.”

Malcolm Faraday sat back in his chair and tried
to look competent by taking off his spectacles, and polishing them.

“By the way, before I say another thing,” Eve said. “Where's Sherry? I don't want him hearing this.”

“No fear of that. He just left. Off to Tattersalls to see a horse, or off to a friend to talk about a horse, I can't keep track of him. He should be preparing to go back to University, but he isn't. I'm glad you're here, you can try to talk some sense into him.”

“I'll try, I promise you that,” she said. She looked at her father, and then away from him. The poor man was worried about why she was here. So was she. But it was hard to tell him about it.

She didn't want to betray Aubrey's secret obsession yet, and had tried all the way here to think of a way to creep up on it, so that it sounded less terrible. Her father wasn't a dictatorial fellow. But there was every chance he'd try to keep her away from Aubrey forever if he felt she was in any danger from him. There were such things as madhouses. And her father had friends in high places. For all his wealth Aubrey seemed to know no one, and certainly no one with any kind of judicial power in London. She wouldn't tell her father about her condition for the same reason. At any rate, it was far too early in the day for that
information. Nobody would guess it except for Aubrey's weird sister, Arianna.

And too, once this was resolved, if she did go back to Aubrey and learn to live with him, Eve didn't want her father prejudiced against him forever. It might just be a strange turn of mind that sometimes happened with brilliant people, an idiosyncrasy she could live with. She could live with it more easily if no one else knew about it.

“Aubrey is a fine man,” she said as preface. “He makes me very happy. But some things I've learned since we married confuse me.” Her expression brightened. “Mind, these were things that Aubrey's sister hinted at. You never met her. She's lovely. She lives somewhere nearby, and I've discovered that she's a very strange woman.”

“Ah!” her father said. “A strange sister. Every family has one of those. Why, my own Aunt Elizabeth collected cats. Dozens of them. Her husband, Uncle Roland, moved out of the house because of the stench.” He grew thoughtful. “Now I think back, perhaps she wasn't so strange. Fifty stinking cats were actually a deal better than one Uncle Roland.”

“She's not that sort of strange,” Eve said quickly. “She's charming. Sherry met her and was mad for her. But she's told me some tales about Aubrey that he doesn't deny, and they upset me.”

“Aha!” her father said wisely, laying a finger aside his nose. “Now that's something I know something about. She's possessive of her brother and worried about your stealing his affections away from her. A common thing, child. It happens all the time. Aren't you possessive of Sheridan? You're always giving him advice and looking out for him.”

“This is different,” Eve said. “She told me to ask Aubrey some questions, and I did. I didn't like the answers. Did he tell you that he'd been widowed three times before he met me?”

Her father's eyes widened. “No. Never. Did his wives die from some misadventure?” he asked at once.

“I don't think so, or she'd surely have asked me to ask him about that. He doesn't lie to me. Perhaps it would be better if he did,” she murmured.

“Then his being so often a widower is solely misfortune,” her father commented. “I don't like his secrecy in the matter, I can tell you that. But what is the problem? Is it that he grieves for his late wives? Or compares you to them? Is he too possessive because he fears for your life? Is that what bothers you? The longer you're married, the less that will happen,” he added helpfully.

She shook her head. “No, he never mentions them. He says he loves and has loved only me.”

“Well, there you are. And, come to think on, it does explain why he was so eager to marry you. You're a fine, healthy young woman, Eve. Anyone can see that. And you're sensible. Perhaps his other wives were slaves to fashion, always denying themselves good food and dosing themselves with medicines to improve their looks. I hear that some cosmetics are decidedly harmful, and anyone can see you don't use a pinch of them.”

“But I wish he'd told me before we wed,” she said.

He nodded. “As do I. He should have at least told me, you know. But that's done and past. Tell me, if you'd known, would you have broken off, would you not have married him?”

She looked down at her fingers. “No,” she said. “But it would have given me pause, and made me more indecisive.”

“As it would have given me pause,” he agreed. “Yet since it's a sad thing, but a done thing, I suppose I can't blame him for not mentioning it. It might have presented obstacles, and he didn't want to put himself in a bad light. You're sure they died naturally?”

“Yes,” she said, looking up. “I believe him in that. I suppose I could have dealt with his lack of honesty and the fact that he was thrice widowed, in time. The thing is that he also said that he
sought me out because of my family history.”

Her father frowned. “A devotee of genealogy, is he? Our family has no stain on our name, but no honors. I can't see what attracted a man like him particularly. He must have been jesting, Eve.”

“He said it was my mother's family, and something that happened with them, ages and ages ago,” she said evasively. “Can you tell me anything about them?”

Her father shocked her by leaning back and roaring with laughter. When he stopped, he looked at her, smiling. “That old chestnut!” he said, wiping his eyes. “And he heard about it? I'm not surprised. Your mother told everyone within earshot. Well, life is strange, after all. I wish she were here to hear this. She'd have been very proud. She and her family told the wildest tales about their origins. They were a good solid family from the West Country, mind you. No titles, no honors, but proud of the fact that they'd been here forever. And she did mean that. She said her family had been here in Britain before the Druids. Before the Saxons too! Backbone of Britain, she said. She said that when more and more foreigners, like Angles and Celts and such, came here, her people avoided them, then moved west, and then slowly disappeared. All but for her branch of the family, that is.”

He looked sad. “Their luck did run out. I'm sorry to say there aren't many left of them now. But if Aubrey sought you out for that reason, it only means that he's heritage mad and family proud. It's a common trait. And so you should be proud of them too.”

“I don't think that's what he meant,” Eve said slowly. How could she ask him more and yet not betray her husband? She'd have to be oblique. “Father, did my mother ever tell you strange tales about any magical abilities in her family?”

He shook his head. “No, never. The reverse, in fact. She said her folk were the most commonsensical in the whole of England, and that they didn't hold with such nonsense.”

“I see. But did she ever mention any woman in her family, once upon a long time ago, marrying into an even older family?” she asked desperately, thinking he may have forgotten something. “Perhaps one that knew the old magic that folklore tells about? Herb lore and healing or such,” she added quickly.

“Never heard that. Not likely either. Heard about how clever her family had been: plain, practical, resourceful, and inventive folk. They were hardworking and honest, she'd say, not a poseur, or a blustering fop, or a climber in the lot. ‘Much done and little noted,' she said was their motto,
although on no coat of arms. They were proud people, but mainly artisans, leatherworkers, smiths and such. They didn't hold with nobility or royalty. She'd sometimes tell me that they'd be ashamed of her for marrying someone so English as I am.”

He sighed. “That was when she was vexed with me. But, Eve, my girl, you didn't leave Aubrey and come all the way to London to ask me that, did you?”

“No, not entirely,” she said, rising from her chair. “I might go to see some people here in Town, I might do some shopping too. Mostly I need to be alone. Aubrey can be quite overpowering. He's gentle and kind, but it's hard for me to even think when I look into his eyes.”