The Enchantress (Book 1 of The Enchantress Saga) (31 page)

She could feel his heart beating against her cheek pressed tightly to his chest, and her own arms could scarcely encircle his back he had grown so big. Not fat, she could feel his bones beneath her fingers. He had just developed girth in the months they had been apart. She could feel his mouth in her hair murmuring words of love and then she raised her head, and that face she had seen in so many dreams, that mouth of such gentleness came down on hers, and for Mary Allonby it was the sweetest moment she had ever known in her life. Sweeter than the first kiss, the first embrace. She knew this was so sweet because it was the prelude to giving herself completely to Brent; to becoming one with him, his wife.

His mouth moved from hers to her throat and, lower down, she could feel his hands trying to slip in between the folds of her bodice. Reality came back and with it thoughts of her brother or the gypsy, maybe, looking out of an upstairs window at them.

‘Brent! You have grown so broad.’

‘Aye, ‘tis the good life of the sea.’ He held her away from him and took in every inch of her precious body.

‘And you have grown too, as your brother said. So comely, yes, and a little rounded. Oh Mary, when can we be wed?’

‘You still want to be wed, Brent?’

‘Can you doubt it? Urgently. Immediately.’

‘It is what I want, too.’

‘Despite the war?’

‘
Because
of it,’ Mary said pressing her head against him again, wanting once more to hear that firm steady heartbeat.

Stewart had heard the hooves and, giving time for his sister and cousin to be reunited, joined them where they had remained by the side of the house. It was a relief to him to see them clinging to each other as though they could never bear to be parted. He, too, had wondered what changes the intervening months might have brought, feared the effects on his sister’s happiness. But there, they clung to each other and he knew all was well. He held out his hand.

‘Brent.’

‘Oh, Stewart! John is coming more slowly over yonder fell.’

Brent glanced upwards. ‘I think he wanted to be tactful.’

‘Aye, he did well. I see you are of the same mind Brent.’

‘More than ever. When can we be wed, Stewart?’

‘I have told the priest. He is ready to marry you as soon as you wish it.’

‘Then fetch him to the chapel as quick as you can and let us get wed.’

Like many of the old Catholic families the Grange had a small chapel where the priest said Mass when he came by. There was a priest at Keswick, Father Bernard, who lived by staying with one Catholic family then another. John knew where he was now and had already sent word to him.

‘He will be here by tomorrow.’

‘Then tomorrow we will be wed, Mary?’

‘Yes. Tomorrow. Oh, Brent I can scarcely believe it.’

‘We are just doing, Mary, what should have happened months ago.’

Brent pursed his mouth in the stern expression Mary knew so well.

‘Do not be angry, Brent. We have each other now.’

‘I am not angry, merely sad we wasted so much time.’ He kissed her lightly and took her hand.

‘I must wash after my journey. Is my room ... ?’

‘Oh, Brent we have two guests. I’m sure they will bring us luck. They are gypsies and one of them hurt her foot. I’m afraid they are in your old room ...’

‘Never mind,’ Brent said, ‘soon I will be in
yours
.’

‘I put you next to Stewart, that is the room
next
to mine.’

‘I’ll go and wash and change my clothes and be with you soon, sweetheart.’

Brent waved and went into the house as John clattered up and, eyes shining with happiness, Mary turned to greet him.

The hot noon sun gleamed on the stairs. Huge beams, in which the dust rose, shone through the long mullioned windows that illuminated the staircase, panes of blue and rose and yellow making the sun spots glisten with a thousand colours. Brent loved the old house, the smell of beeswax and candles. He leapt up the stairs four at a time and then went quickly along the gallery that ran the length of the hall.

And there she was, coming towards him as in a dream. The dark hair, the supple body, the face that he knew so well but which had remained shadowy for him, became clear. The most beautiful woman in the world; the goddess always seen in moonlight or in the myriad beams of the dancing, coloured sun. Dancing; she was a dancer and her quick, sure-footed steps, her lithe, graceful body with upraised arms clicking her castanets were as vivid at that moment as when he had last seen her. She saw him; but still she came on and he thought she was a vision, a ghost and would walk straight through him. But she stopped just in front of him and he could smell her tantalizing body smells, a haunting heady perfume that became dear and familiar to him as the mist that had obscured his memory finally dispersed.

‘Analee,’ he said.

So this was the
gadjo,
this was Mary’s betrothed, the man she had fallen in love with as he lay recovering from an illness. Of course he was her cousin, a relation by blood; they even looked so much alike. In a way, she realized, she had always known it. The feel of the house, the familiarity, the peace, the sense of home-coming that was so unusual. She had slept in Brent’s bed; had looked on the view that had given him so much pleasure as Mary had brought him back to life – to a life of which Randal had nearly deprived him.

‘It is you,’ she said.

He tried to reach out for her but she stepped back. It was much too dangerous she knew; besides he had easily forgotten her, fallen into the arms of another. Yet the look on his face ... it was as though something had come to him from a long way away, something strange.

How could he explain how he had forgotten her? Brent gazed at her and saw the bewilderment on her face. In an instant he remembered everything; his first meeting with her, his search for her, hunting her, possessing her. He remembered her dance in the tavern, the way she had danced just for him.

‘Analee, how could I have forgotten you?’

‘Then you did forget?’

‘Everything. Until now, until I saw you.’

‘You were very ill,’ she said gently. ‘After the blow on the head?’

‘I remembered nothing.’

‘And fell in love with Mary. She is very sweet ...’

Mary. Brent closed his eyes. Mary ...

‘I …’

‘She loves you Brent; loves you so much she can’t wait to marry you.’

‘But I ...’

‘You can’t go back on her now. It would kill her. I know her; in a short time I have become her friend.’

He had such a desperate look on his face that she began to suffer too.

‘Besides, I am married as well,’ she said. ‘It cannot be for us again.’

Brent’s face seemed to swell with an awful rage and he tried to grab her shoulder, but still she backed away from him.

‘
You
married! Then you didn’t remember either.’

‘Oh, I remembered, but I had no choice. The man who nearly killed you captured me. It is a gypsy tradition that if you capture a bride she must marry you whether she wants to or not.’

‘Then you are not really married; not in your heart. It is not too late.’

She began to walk away from him, slowly back down the corridor and he followed her.

‘It is too late, much much too late. Make your life again ...’

‘Of course I can’t make my life again now I have found you. You
are
my life. Analee let us go now. Let us ...’

 Sadly Analee shook her head.

‘No, no ... abuse the hospitality of the sweet people here? I love them, Brent, and they like and trust me. Mary is a lovely girl,
your
sort of girl ...’

‘She’s my cousin ...’

‘Your
people. We are not meant to live as normal people, Brent. There is something about you and I that is doomed. You would never forgive yourself as a man if you deserted Mary now. We could never be happy in a life built on such sorrow. You would soon tire of the wandering life Brent; life with me ...’

‘I’ve been a wanderer too on the seas, Analee. Let us go somewhere and talk about this. There is some solution.’

He gazed at her and she knew the solution lay with her. She nodded, as if agreeing with him.

‘We will meet later, after dinner. We will find a solution.’

He grasped her hand, and the thrill of the feel of her flesh was like nothing he had known before or since, not with Mary, not with anyone.

‘No,’ he said desperately. ‘Let us now ...’

‘After dinner,’ she said. ‘Behave normally now. Do as you would do.’

She gazed up at him, her
gadjo,
Morella’s father, and gently let her hand pass across his face as though to etch his features on her palm. Then she turned abruptly into the room she shared with Nelly.

Brent Delamain, his mind in a turmoil, waited for the dinner to begin. How could he guard his expression when Analee came into the room, avoid showing that, for him, she was the only woman in the world, the one it seemed to him he had always sought? In every other woman he had been trying to find Analee, and when he had found her he had lost her, and then found her again ... and now he was being told it was too late.

He had wanted to follow her into her room, but she shut the door and he stood gazing at it helplessly for some time before finding the one meant for him and throwing himself  in despair on the bed.

 ‘Womanizer!’ they would all say. ‘Brent Delamain never changes. He came to marry Mary and made off with someone else.’

No one would ever trust him again. They would say he was fickle, undependable. Above all, they would say he was not fit to serve the Prince. All these thoughts and more, warred with his own desire. They fought within him, so that when at last he appeared downstairs Mary, running up to greet her beloved and seeing his expression, had asked if he were ill? She had expected him down hours before, anticipating him running into her arms. But he told her he was merely tired and then his eyes had wandered over her head looking for something. He was looking for something now, Mary thought, or someone – his eyes kept staring at the door. He looked ill at ease, unhappy. The relaxed lover she had greeted only hours before behaved now like some sort of fugitive, his face pale, his eyes restless. Was he in trouble?

But Stewart and John appeared not to notice and happily discussed the nuptials that would take place on the morrow as soon as the priest arrived.

‘We had best begin,’ John said at last. ‘I know not where our guest is. What is her name?’

‘Analee.’

Analee ... Brent closed his eyes. Oh that word ‘Analee’ – it rang in his mind with all the force of an echo that had been lost and forgotten and now resounded louder than ever. ‘ANALEE...’

‘She is very beautiful,’ Mary said, glancing slyly at Brent. ‘All the men fall madly in love with her.’

‘Ah, really?’ Brent tried to be jocular. ‘Well give us the chance then. Pray, where is this Analee?’

‘Betty has gone up to fetch her. Maybe she is shy with the company.’

Any moment Analee would come through the door, Brent thought. And she would stand and stare and he would ...

‘Miss she has gone!’ Betty flurried into the room carrying the large tureen of soup. ‘Gypsies! Made off with the family plate for all we know.’

‘Gone?’

Mary looked up suddenly, but it was not Mary who had spoken. It was Brent. He even seemed half to rise from his seat and then thought better of it.

‘How “gone” Betty?’ Mary said calmly. ‘And Nelly, too?’

‘Both miss, and the room as clean as a whistle and the bed turned back.’

‘How very unusual,’ John said offhandedly reaching for the soup ladle. ‘As you say, gypsies I suppose, Betty.’

Stewart too seemed disturbed. He had been so looking forward to wandering in the garden after dinner with Analee, maybe casting the spell together with her by the lake.

‘But they were not
like
that!’ Mary said, her mind preoccupied by the mystery, but above all by the stricken look on Brent’s face, the way he had half risen at Betty’s news. ‘At least Analee was not. What can have sent them away?’

‘Very impolite,’ John said. ‘Soup, Brent?’

‘Please. Maybe they came to some harm?’ Brent was trying to control his voice, his emotions, still the pounding of his heart. He wanted to get up and run from the room mount his horse; they could not have gone far ... He felt panic rising and subsiding in waves, like a terrible fear that is felt and repelled in turns.

‘Harm? What sort of harm? No, they have had enough and gone. Never mind.’ John passed Brent his soup bowl and turned with a question to Mary.

‘Please.’ Mary nodded to her brother, ‘but
I am
sad about it. I so like Analee. I hoped she would be here for our wedding.’

Wedding. Brent felt a tremor run from head to foot. It was as though he was passing through a nightmare. He was going to marry Mary tomorrow. Analee had betrayed him.

‘What is it with thee, Brent? I think you are still fatigued.’

Stewart too had been observing the strange behaviour of his cousin; how restless and anxious he seemed, how he wriggled about in his seat. How pale and haggard he was after appearing so comely and well on his arrival.

‘I hope you are not ill,’ Stewart added, thinking of the outbreak of the pox that had occurred recently in Keswick.

‘No. Naught ails me at all. Maybe weary with the journey.’

‘Or nervous with excitement, I’ll swear,’ John said smiling broadly. ‘A bridegroom at last, eh, Brent?’

Brent took a spoon to his soup. The nightmare showed no signs of ending; indeed it was worsening. Every moment Analee was getting further and further away. He put down his spoon and said with pretended calm,

‘Maybe we should seek the gypsies lest they have come to some harm in this light. ‘Tis dark outside.’

‘Aye,’ Stewart got up. ‘I do not think Analee would behave thus. I agree with Brent. Excuse us, Mary.’

He grabbed a candle from the table and, followed by Brent, hastened through the hall up the stairs. The candle fluttered, lighting up the dark corridor as they passed along, throwing great shadows on the wall. The door of the room was open and, as soon as they entered, it was obvious that it was empty – it had that forlorn, deserted air such as a room does when the inhabitant has packed up and gone away.