Carys had been sure they’d find Buttercup feasting on the vegetables in the kitchen garden or stealing apples from the orchard, but there was no sign of him in either location, so she and Tristan ventured into the woodland that surrounded the formal gardens.
She was glad she wasn’t wearing skirts. Brambles scratched at her hands and clawed at her breeches, while the uneven ground threatened to twist her ankle at every step.
“Buttercup!” she cooed. “Where are you? Come to Mummy.”
Behind her, Tristan snorted in amusement, so she pushed back a tree branch and let it go, stifling her own laugh as it slapped him in the face.
“Bloody hell!”
A plop and a sucking sound indicated that his pristine boot had landed in a muddy puddle, and she grinned. The possibility of a fully disheveled, mud-spattered Tristan was delightful.
“My God,” he muttered. “I feel like I’m in one of those Shakespeare plays where everyone gets lost in the woods and blunders about like idiots.”
“Like A Midsummer Night’s Dream? I love that one.”
“Of course you do,” he groused. “You thrive on chaos. I bet you like the ones where the girls all dress up as boys too.”
“They’re fun. I bet you like the stuffy, serious ones where everyone dies. Like Macbeth, or Hamlet.” She wrinkled her nose, even though she knew he couldn’t see her in the darkness. “So gloomy.”
“This feels very much like the one that has ‘exit, pursued by a bear.’”
“That’s A Winter’s Tale. Poor Antigonus gets eaten. But don’t worry, Buttercup only likes sweet things. You’re too bitter to interest him.”
Carys listened for his reply, but heard only the sound of sliding pebbles followed by a splash and another curse.
“Damn it all! These are my favorite boots!”
“Watch out for the little stream!” she called back cheerfully.
He gave an enraged growl.
Carys scanned the trees. They’d been walking for at least half an hour, by her reckoning. This particular patch of woodland was almost untouched. A few animal runs crisscrossed the ferny floor and in the shifting shadows every rock, bush, and stump looked like a bear.
Tristan cupped his hands around his mouth. “Buttercup, you hairy little miscreant!” he bellowed, in a voice he’d probably last used to direct troops on the battlefields of France. “Where the bloody hell are yooooou?”
Carys glared at him over her shoulder. “Don’t shout at him like that. He won’t come if you sound angry.”
Even in the semidarkness she could see him roll his eyes. “We’ve gone so far we’re almost on Montgomery land now. My new house is just over that rise. We should go back.”
Carys bit her lip. He was probably right. They’d looped around the eastern edge of the estate, and even though it was hard to tell in the darkness, they couldn’t be too far from the road to Trellech. Where on earth was Buttercup?
She was about to turn around and face defeat when she heard a faint puffing sound, and a flare of glowing blue light shimmered to life just ahead of them.
She gasped in delight. “Oh, look! Fairy fire!”
Tristan stepped up next to her and squinted. “What? Oh.”
“I’ve only ever seen it once before,” Carys whispered reverently. “When I was a little girl. Welsh folklore says it’s a light held by the fairy folk, the pookas—naughty goblins who lead travelers astray. The humans follow the light, thinking it will lead them to safety, but when it goes out they’re left lost in the bog.”
Tristan snorted. “In English we call it a ‘will-o’-the-wisp’ or a ‘jack-o’-lantern,’ which I suppose is the same thing. A little sprite called Will or Jack holding a light.”
“It isn’t always dangerous. In some stories, if the travelers are kind, it guides them out of the woods, and leads them to gold and treasure!”
“There’s no need to whisper,” he scoffed. “There’s nothing magical about it. It’s a perfectly natural phenomenon caused by swamp gasses escaping from the marshy ground.”
Carys glared at him. “You’re so blasted logical, Montgomery. Don’t you believe in magic?”
He shook his head and tilted his chin at the flickering light. “Another name for that is ‘ignis fatuus,’ which is Latin for ‘foolish fire’ or ‘giddy flame.’ Because only a fool would fall for its tricks.”
She put her hands on her hips. “Not everything can be explained in a logical, scientific way.”
“This can.”
“Yes, maybe. But not everything.”
He lifted his brows in that condescending manner that made her want to kick him in the shins. “Name something.”
“All right, clever clogs. What about love? That’s not logical or scientific. But it definitely exists. It makes people do all sorts of extraordinary things. If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is.”
Tristan couldn’t decide whether he wanted to strangle Carys or kiss her for her stubborn, irrepressible optimism.
Here, in the moonlight, dressed in those damned alluring breeches, she looked like a naughty little wood sprite herself. And just like the pookas, she had an uncanny ability to lead him astray. Here they were, tramping around some godforsaken bog when they could be warm and clean inside. Kissing. Or, better yet, in bed.
His boots were never going to be the same.
He wasn’t entirely sure about his mind either.
Or his heart.
He huffed out a breath, half-amused, half-exasperated. Forget the fairy fire, she was the giddy flame. La Fiammetta, with her red hair and her endless intrigues and adventures. Following in her wake would lead to disaster of the worst kind. And yet he was powerless to resist her special brand of magic.
Ignis fatuus. Tristan suppressed a snort. How apt. He hadn’t mentioned it to Carys, but the Latin word fatuus gave rise to the English word infatuate. That was clearly his current problem; he was infatuated with her, like half the other men in the ton. But unlike the other men, his obsession with her seemed to be permanent.
There was no time to dwell on the subject, because Carys thrust her pert nose in the air and sent him a withering glance.
“You, Montgomery, have the emotional range of a … a rock.” She pointed toward the fading blue glow. “I’m going that way.”
“Toward mortal peril or untold riches,” he said drily. “My money’s on the peril.”
“Follow me or not, it’s your choice.”
A twig snapped off to their right and Tristan stilled. He tilted his head, his senses honed from years of listening out for enemy patrols and ambushes. The hairs on his forearms prickled.
“Wait!” He reached out and caught her arm. “Listen!”
Carys, thankfully, did as she was told.
“Do you hear that?” he whispered. “It’s coming from over there.”
They both squinted into the darkness. Sure enough, a rustling that wasn’t the wind in the trees could be heard. Something large was pushing through the undergrowth.
“It could be poachers,” she murmured. “Or a stag.”
He leveled his pistol toward the sound.
The ferns rustled, and he caught a glimpse of dark fur.
Carys let out a sigh of relief.
“Buttercup! There you are! Who let you out, hmm?” She thrust the metal music box into his hands. “Quick, turn the handle.”
Since there was nothing else for it, Tristan lowered the pistol and cranked the little handle on the side of the box. A tinkling, slightly off-key tune sprang forth, and Carys took a breath and began to sing.
“Bobby Shafto’s gone to sea,
Silver buckles at his knee;
He’ll come back and—”
A deep growl interrupted her serenade.
Carys stopped with a surprised little gasp and Tristan ceased turning the handle. In the sudden silence the growl came again, and Tristan’s stomach plummeted in dread. The low vibration indicated an animal far larger and far angrier than Buttercup.
“I. Don’t. Think. That’s. Buttercup,” Carys whispered.