Timeless Desire (5 page)

“The troops are hooking the cannons to wagons.”

“Fools.” He rose, wincing, from his seat at the desk and limped to her side. “They intend to form a line behind the wall, from Bowness-on-Solway halfway to Carlisle. And when it’s dark, they will pelt the Scottish hills with cannon shot.”

She gazed into the collection of houses across the river. “But there are so few homes. It hardly seems worth the trouble.”

“There is one of some interest.”

He turned her gently to the west. There, beyond the wall, on a rise nearly as high as Bridgewater’s castle, stood another castle. It had two towers and a rampart flying a yellow flag. Panna could see its rhythmic flap against the purpling evening sky.

“Ah.” Two castles, one English, one Scottish, situated so each owner could keep the other in his sights, preserved from violence only by the exigencies of Hadrian’s bucolic wall. She thought of the line from that Robert Frost poem.
Good fences make good neighbors.

Panna watched him as he observed the gathering troops. The light from the firepots reflected in his hair. His profile was so like the one in her library. How had a sculptor in 1901 captured someone who’d been dead a hundred and fifty years with such accuracy?

“Will they destroy it?” She pointed to the other castle.

Bridgewater laughed. “They might wish to, but it would be even harder to take that castle than this one. And destroying it would be damn near impossible. Instead, their cannon fire is meant to be a show of unity and strength. Tis a bloody waste of gunpowder, if you ask me.”

It sounded as if no one had. “I take it you don’t agree with the decision.”

“A soldier always agrees with the decisions of his commanding officer,” he said, his finger tracing the edge of the wound to his brow. “Especially when one’s commanding officer also happens to be an earl.”

“At some point do you intend to tell me what happened?”

He gave her a look. “I don’t know. Do you intend to tell me how you managed to get into a locked and guarded castle?”

She opened her mouth and tried to formulate some fabulous lie, but even after a frenzy of mental acrobatics nothing materialized.

The corner of his mouth rose. “So I thought. Tis best if we stop asking questions, since neither of us seems very good at lying, aye?” He held out his glass.

She clinked her glass against it and they drank. His lips curved into a full smile. “The evening is taking a turn for the better,” he said.

“I’d say that was a compliment, but you had nowhere to go but up.”

He laughed.

Don Alfonso’s brandy was loosening her tongue. “Okay, personal questions are forbidden, but surely not every sort is? I have a number I’d like to ask.”

“Good heavens. Shall I sit down?”

“Quite possibly. First, may I say I love your library?”

“You may, but it’s not really a proper question.”

She went to the bookcase beside the wide hearth. The space above each row of books seemed to sparkle, and only after a moment did she realize that the backs of the cases were leaded glass, too. Her eyes ran excitedly over the titles, a number of which were in Latin or Greek. “History. Greek. Medicine. Maps. A biography of Saint Peter. Oh, my goodness! A copy of John Donne’s poems!”

She pulled the handle of the case, but it didn’t budge. She gave him a look. “Locked,” she said sadly.

“Good Lord, the look on your face. Twould shame a saint.” He made his way to her side and pulled a set of keys from his pocket. He found the one he needed and, with a quick turn, the door was open.

She pulled out a handful of books and placed them on a table at the edge of the hearth. A volume entitled,
Animals of the Orient
was the one on top. She plucked it from the stack and sank to the floor. The illustrations had been hand-colored. The endpapers were trimmed in gold leaf. The crackle of the page sent happy shivers down her spine.

“Have I lost you?”

She realized she hadn’t said anything in a full minute. “It’s stunning,” she said. And priceless. The sale of a single book like this might save her library. Not that Panna was the type of woman to steal, of course. But, oh! If she were . . .

“I’ve seen a look like that once before,” he said. “Twas on an adder—just as it was about to swallow a weasel whole.”

She laughed. “I should like to swallow this whole, consume every last page of it. Look at that mongoose. Look at that peacock.”

“I have a peacock, you know.”

“You do?”

“Aye. He walks the upper courtyard, and a more ill-natured fellow you have never met. But he is the color of snow. Tis very rare.”

This place was magical! The stuff of dreams. She felt like Dorothy in the Emerald City.

A voice sounded in the hallway, and the look of concern that came over Bridgewater’s face made her stop instantly. He held a finger to his lips and pointed with the other hand to a small alcove out of the direct sight lines of the entryway. She complied at once, abandoning the book. He returned to his desk and picked up a piece of paper there.

Someone knocked, and the door opened. Bridgewater’s shoulders relaxed. From where Panna stood, the visitor seemed to be a servant carrying a tray of food. Of course, she’d also learned things were not always what they seemed in this place.

“Please, if I may say, sir,” the man said in a low voice, “this is an outrage. They are—”

“Reeves,” Bridgewater said sharply, and the man stopped. Panna felt the stabbing realization that Reeves was about to say something Bridgewater didn’t want her to hear.

“Leave the tray there.” Bridgewater gestured to the table next to the hearth.

Reeves deposited the tray as directed. Then he raised the hanging leaf on the table and drew out a narrow gate leg to support it. As he did, Panna saw the back of a red-coated soldier come into view at the door. Bridgewater stiffened visibly. Panna withdrew farther into the alcove to ensure she could not be seen by the soldier, nor by Reeves unless he turned.

“Make it quick, man,” the soldier said to Reeves. When Reeves finished laying out the place setting, he began to look around the room. It dawned on Panna that he must be looking for a chair.

Then she spotted the cane-backed chair beside her. She gasped. There was nowhere to go. She backed against the wall and said a small prayer.

Reeves reached the entrance to the alcove and did a stutter step when he saw her.

The soldier straightened. “What? What is it?”

For a long moment there was silence, then Reeves said, “This is filthy. I’ll flay the girl who cleaned this room.” He grabbed the chair and gave Panna an apologetic look.

“Nobody cleaned it, you fool,” the soldier said. “No one’s allowed in. Not until my orders change.”

“Let us hope that is soon,” Reeves said, sniffing. He set up the chair at the table. “Will this be enough for dinner?” Reeves asked Bridgewater carefully. “I can certainly bring more if you require it.”

“He’s not getting more,” the soldier bellowed. “He’s under arrest.”

“Thank you, Reeves,” Bridgewater said. “This will suffice.”

“May I recommend the soup, sir? Tis most appetizing this evening.”

Bridgewater’s brow rose. “I look forward to it.”

The man bowed and exited, followed, Panna assumed, by the soldier, for she heard the door close and Bridgewater appeared at the alcove’s entry to wave her out.

“Are you being held here?” she demanded. “In your own house?”

He held up a hand, listening. “There,” he said after a long pause. “You can talk. He just closed the door at the end of the hallway.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And you’re being held?”

“Is that a question?”

She began to protest and then saw his smile.

“Aye.” He offered her the chair at the table. “I am. The English army has accused me of collaborating with the Scots.”

She declined the chair, too unsettled to sit. “Are you?”

He gave her a thoughtful look. “Of course not. I am an English citizen. My grandfather is a Scot, though, and that may have given them some pause.”

A marriage of mixed nationality. Odd at the time. Odder still for a nobleman. She grabbed a hunk of cheese and a fig from the tray. “But surely they knew that when you joined.”

“Tis not illegal to have Scots blood running in one’s veins. At least not yet.” He inclined his head toward the food. “Do you mind if I . . . ?”

“Not at all,” she said, nibbling the fruit. “Please, go on.”

He took a seat. “However, my grandfather is more than just a Scot.” He blew on the first spoonful of soup. “He is the chief of Clan MacIver.”

She stopped chewing. “Good
Lord
.”

Scots blood would be an awkward thing in the highly regimented caste system of English noblemen. But to have a clan chief in one’s family—especially if one was a senior army officer—would have to be a social and political time bomb. The clashes between the clans and the English army had long made the borderlands a bloody and dangerous place. Sir Walter Scott had made a name writing stories about it, not to mention any number of other historical fiction writers.

“Your father married the daughter of a
clan chief
?”

Bridgewater froze. He put down his spoon. “I think I have answered all the questions I should care to, if you don’t mind.”

She flushed, realizing her rudeness. She’d asked the question as if she were examining the breeding history of a horse she was buying.

“I’m sorry. That was rude.”

He bowed. Then he leaned back in his chair, considering her closely. “It’s odd. You ask about things most people already know.”

“Do I?” She struggled to keep her face neutral.

“Aye. My grandfather. The peacock. The castle on the distant hill. Where is it you call home? That is not an English accent, nor even Welsh. There is something guttural and German to it to my ear, and yet it is not German.”

“No. I am from—” She considered. “Penn’s Wood. In the colonies.”

His pupils widened. “Penn’s Wood? The land of William Penn?”

She nodded, pleased he knew her home. “Do you know him?”

“I have been introduced, yes.” A wry smile came over his face. “He’s a bit of a frothing dog, don’t you think?”

“William
Penn
?” She’d never thought of William Penn being anything except the figure on top of the Philadelphia City Hall and the face on the oatmeal box.

“I am not a religious man,” he said, returning to his soup, “and religious men make me wary; anyone with fanatical leanings does.”

Not a religious man? The man whom she’d first seen on his knees, praying? She thought his statement was a convenient untruth, though what or who it was convenient for, she didn’t know.

The cheese was marvelous—fresh, with a grassy tang. She wondered if there were cows out on those darkening hills. Cows, peacocks, cannons, border intrigues—this was better than a novel, she thought. Then she remembered Bridgewater’s bruised side and battered face and felt guilty for her blithe observation.

“And what brings you to Cumbria?” he asked, looking absently into his bowl as he scraped out the last spoonful. He stopped for an instant, obviously startled, then broke his gaze and brought the soup to his mouth. “My apologies,” he said distractedly. “We have an agreement. No more questions.” He pushed the bowl away, tapping his fingers on the table. Whatever had come to him was still occupying his thoughts.

She finished the cheese, watching the ebb and flow of tension in that aristocratic profile.

Then he stood. Affability restored, he carried the decanter to the bookcase she’d opened, snagged her glass from the floor, and refilled it for her.

“Was that the man who beat you?”

“Who? The guard? No,” he said amiably. “He and his companion held me.”

His fingers brushed hers as she accepted the glass, leaving a warm tingle. She gazed at her hand as if she’d never seen it before.

“Is something wrong?”

She hid her hand, startled. “No. It’s nothing.”

He refilled his own glass and sat down again at the table. That look of smoky desire had returned to his face, and she felt a light giddiness spread through her, like the bubbles in champagne.

“Do you let the soldiers borrow your books while they’re here?” she asked. “Or the townspeople?”

He looked at her in some surprise. “No. Of course not.”

Panna’s desire to keep her twenty-first-century self under wraps battled with her irrepressible evangelism on the topic of library access, and she knew which would win. “Oh, but you should!”

“I’ve spent half a lifetime building this collection. You can hardly expect a man to let his books be scattered like seeds to the wind.”

“But that’s exactly the right analogy,” she cried. “Think about how much knowledge you could sow by sharing your books with the people who live around here.”

“Do you have a library like this in Penn’s Woods?”

“I do.”

Something flickered in those gray-blue eyes. “Your husband’s?”

“Oh, no,” she said, the quickness of her reply surprising her. “I’m a widow. The library is just one I can use. In fact, I help take care of the books there.”

“A library keeper?”

“Yes.”

He studied her appraisingly. “How very interesting. I have heard of such a thing, though I admit I have never heard of a woman doing it. And this gentleman, the one who owns the library, he is wealthy?”

She could hardly blame him for assuming the library’s owner was male. She imagined there weren’t many women owners of anything in the eighteenth century. And in this case, the “owner,” as it were, certainly was. Andrew Carnegie had been as rich as they come.

“He is.”

“And how does my library compare?”

How like a man to ask such a thing. She looked around the vast room, her eyes trailing up the towers of wood and glass to take in the gleaming volumes. Her fingers tingled for the chance to hold them. Yet, what a thing to lavish on a single person. “For an individual, your collection is immense, and from the pieces I’ve seen, I think you have a very, very fine eye.”

“Do I hear a ‘but’ in there?”