“My word, all of Edinburgh must have been invited,” Max’s bride-to-be marveled, watching the latest arrivals from the parlor window of their tower suite.
“And half the empire,” he added, draping his wedding clothes over his arm and kissing Lydia’s rosy cheek. His goddess looked even more delicious when the sun rose and highlighted her glorious hair. He battled the need to kiss her all over one more time. . . “I invited my old schoolmates, remember. And I daresay my mother extended an invitation to every Malcolm or Ives in existence.”
“Well, she only had two weeks to prepare, so maybe not quite all,” Lydia said in amusement. “This lot is too early to have arrived by the Edinburgh train. Perhaps the one from Glasgow?”
“Possibly. Or they rode up yesterday and stayed the night in the village. I need to sneak down to the guest room and pretend I slept there before Lloyd shows up.” He leaned over her shoulder to admire the procession of carts and horses on the rough drive. “They won’t all want to stay the night, will they?”
“If they mean to attend the reception, they might. The ceremony was scheduled late to allow time for the city guests to arrive. Do you recognize those two officious gentlemen wearing suits?”
Max muttered an obscenity as he located the pair.
Lydia glanced at him in curiosity. “Not invited guests?”
He groaned. “My step-uncle and his son. Mother may have invited them, if only to rub their noses in fate. And they probably came from the baron’s place. Isn’t that his carriage following?”
“Crowley has people with him. I don’t recognize them,” Lydia whispered. “Surely the trustees wouldn’t send someone to test me today, of all days?”
“They’re probably old friends of Mother’s,” he said reassuringly. “I’ll clear the rest of the evidence of my existence from the suite. You can invite your family and your nosy Malcolm friends up, and you can hide until this afternoon. The bride needn’t play hostess. Mother will be in her element, greeting guests.”
Max wouldn’t have her fretting on their wedding day. Basking in Lydia’s grateful smile, he gathered up his possessions, then slipped down the hidden stairs to the guest room. He didn’t have to put on starched linen and tails just yet.
While his Ives cousins slept off last night’s excesses, Max went in search of his sons. He found them in the breakfast room—alone. Even the ladies hadn’t come down yet.
“We have a responsibility to entertain our guests,” he informed them, slapping together toast and ham and anything else that would go on toast.
His sons looked interested, if rightfully wary.
“Mr. Lloyd said we were to stay out of the way until the wedding,” Richard said. “But I’m old enough to help.”
“Excellent. We need to keep the ladies and the gentlemen apart, just the way we did last night.” Max thought that would work out as nicely for him as it did for Lydia, if the new arrivals meant her harm. “The ladies will want to gossip and the men will want to do things, like hunt or explore or play cards.” Max was making this up on the fly. It wasn’t as if he had much experience at civilized entertainments. He just knew his gender.
“We can take them to the library to read,” Bakari suggested.
The boys had never seen the journal library, only the reference one in the guest wing and the one passing itself off as a billiard room. “You may ask if they’d like to see the guest libraries if you wish. We do not want them expecting to see Miss Lydia’s private one.”
“But most of them will want to drink and play games, won’t they?” Richard said.
“And eat,” Max agreed. “I believe the ladies have already ordered al fresco dining for early guests. Laddie will direct the gentlemen to the outdoor buffet. Mrs. Folkston will lead the lady newcomers inside to refresh themselves. That’s where you come in.”
Praying to all the omnipotent spirits who had kept him alive this long, Max ate his breakfast and outlined his hasty plan to separate out his uncle and the baron and anyone who might cause Lydia grief. Giving the boys free rein to enlist any of the current guests who might drag themselves out of bed early, he left them bolting down food and making impossible plans.
He’d far rather be digging a sewer than playing host to financiers and aristocrats. He figured he’d make a royal ass of himself before the day grew warm. But Lydia didn’t mind if he was an uncivil ass, he reminded himself. And if she didn’t, no one else mattered.
He wasn’t a man who wasted time on fear, but he was having a hard time convincing himself that conversing with stuffed shirts was necessary. Yanking on a ratty country tweed coat over an old waistcoat and leather breeches, Max set out to act as host for the wedding breakfast and bodyguard for his bride. If he meant to steer this lot to the courtroom to identify him, he needed to play nice.
“Schoolmates,” he muttered as he left by the garden door. “Courts. Judges. No murdering of uncles,” he reminded himself as he walked toward the gathering guests.
“Or barons,” he added, noting the man Lydia had identified as Lord Crowley studying the sloping field at the back of the castle. Max headed for the stable, where a number of gentlemen were admiring each other’s horseflesh.
Out of pure spite, Max stood there, waiting for his elegantly attired guests to either recognize him or mistake him for a servant.
A less stylish gentleman standing to one side studied Max surreptitiously. Max returned the favor. There was something familiar about the slouching shoulders and skinny frame—
When the visitor pulled out thick spectacles, Max grinned. “Percy! I didn’t think you’d come.”
His old classmate pushed his wide-framed spectacles up his nose just as he used to twenty years before. Stepping up now that he was recognized, he held out his hand. “You haven’t shrunk and you still dress like a coachman, Dwarf.”
The mention of the ridiculous nickname swiveled a few heads in their direction.
“You came in on the Glasgow train?” Max asked. “Have you breakfasted? Or are you just waiting on those other well-fed idiots to finish bragging about their steeds?”
More of the braggarts pivoted to study him.
“A bite wouldn’t be amiss,” Percy admitted. “I was trying to determine if any of the braggarts might be you.”
Max chortled and held out his hand to another almost-familiar stranger who dared approach. “And I suppose you’re all here to see how I managed to persuade any woman to marry me?”
“We’re more interested in how you managed not to get yourself killed.” One of the horsemen joined in. “I can still take you in the ring if you’re as obnoxious as I remember.”
“Dingo! Did no one ever teach you not to antagonize your host? And I thought I was uncivilized!” Max shook hands all around, desperately attempting to place faces with names while retorting to insults. Dingo wasn’t the man’s name, of course, but as schoolboys, they’d lived by irrational sobriquets.
“I’m more interested in the castle than why you’re alive or need us,” Percy said diffidently. “My students will want to hear all about it. That tower is a perfect example of medieval architecture at its best, even if it has been mutilated for modern use.”
Opportunity knocked. Vowing to make Percy godfather to his next-born, Max swung his arm to indicate everyone join him on the gravel drive back to the untended lawns. A few gardeners had arrived these past weeks to clip and mend, but it was much too late to return the landscaping to any former glory.
Max pretended he didn’t see his uncle and cousin conversing with more officious gentlemen on the far end of the buffet. He helped himself to ale and regaled his guests with castle history and lies while they worked their way through the generous repast the kitchen had provided.
Decked out in newly acquired suits, his sons worked the crowd, directing the gentlemen to the stable, to a tour of the “Roman cellar,” to the guest door and library. Mrs. Folkston—also garbed in new finery—discreetly guided female guests to the main entrance and accommodations.
A man nearly as broad and dark as Max stepped up to introduce himself. “I’m Simon Blair, Drew’s cousin. My wife and your bride are acquainted. I’ve built mines. How filthy will I get if I poke around a bit below the tower? Olivia won’t appreciate mud.”
“Maxwell Ives, pleasure, sir. I’ve heard about you. The front section of the tower should be safe, but once you wander deeper, I make no promises. Maybe after the ceremony? I’d love to have an expert opinion.”
Blair slapped him on the back and moved on, bringing Max face-to-face with his uncle.
Max waited to see if his uncle might acknowledge that Max really was his nephew. From the look on his uncle’s face, Max assumed hell would have ski slopes and ice-skating rinks before that happened.
Refusing to allow ugliness to mar his wedding day, Max regaled the rest of his audience with the growing fiction of a wealthy Roman engineer building the first tower with plumbing and baths and the proceeds of a silver mine.
By this time, the Pascoe twins had wandered out, thwarted in their efforts to woo nubile young ladies. They contributed their version complete with Roman ghost and buried treasure.
Even the baron listened—which nicely kept him from bothering Lydia. A keg of ale was emptied and a second arrived. The tour through the cellar gained more interest as more guests trickled in and heard exaggerated tales of silver mines. People would believe any story told by a person of authority, poor fools.
Apparently satisfied with his perusal of Lydia’s grounds, Lord Crowley took advantage of a pause in the storytelling to introduce himself.
“Henry, Baron Crawley, your bride’s neighbor.” He held out his plump hand.
Instead of shaking it, Max shoved a mug of ale in it. “I don’t believe Lydia invited you.”
“I had guests who were invited,” the baron said offhandedly. “And visitors from Miss Wystan’s trustees wished to have a word. Perhaps now is the time?” He gestured at the two suited strangers who’d arrived with him. “They’ve obtained the test the Librarian must pass before she can claim her full status.”
Lydia soothed herself with tea and toast and the journal that had called to her last night. She knew any moment her mother and sister would knock at her door, and the rest of the wedding party would follow. But for right now, for these few moments, she happily translated Latin and inscribed what she learned. This was her true calling.
The journal writer was a woman, naturally. As best as Lydia could tell, the book was written before the outer walls of the tower were completed. She read with fascination about life in the inner tower before it became a library. The woman was too busy to write as much as Lydia would have liked to read. But she spoke of the kitchen housed outside the old walls in a stone outbuilding that had been there as long as anyone remembered. The remains of the Roman encampment? She mentioned the cistern and the well and her gratitude that her husband’s family had such amenities.
She also mentioned a bathhouse, an armory, and a dungeon, which might also have been built from Roman ruins. So this had not necessarily been a Malcolm stronghold from the beginning.
Of course, it hadn’t. Malcolms married warriors and lords in those evil days when women who knew how to read and write or lived alone were called witches. Or they became nuns, which probably wasn’t a good option for half-pagan descendants of Druids.
Dungeon? The tower had a dungeon? Did Max need to know that? How did one fit a dungeon in with a cistern and well?
She had just begun reading about a village of craftsmen growing up outside the tower walls when the inevitable knock sounded on her door. With a sigh, she set aside the journal.
Her mother and sister strode in bemoaning Lydia’s shabby gown and braid. Behind them followed the ladies Lydia had only recently come to know—Lady Phoebe, Lady Dare, and Olivia Blair, who lived half way to Glasgow and had children to mind, so didn’t visit often. She must have been on the early train.
The ladies descended on Lydia in exclamations of joy and admiration, steering her toward the bedchamber as if they’d lived here all their lives. Lydia began to feel a trifle better about her wedding day.
“We left our men outside with Max,” Phoebe said. “He has his sons leading tours beneath the tower. They’ll be digging up the Roman bath if we don’t start this ceremony soon!”
Lydia could only imagine. . . She almost laughed at the vision of Max and his best men walking up the aisle in mud-encased shoes or worse. “Surely the marquess and the earl aren’t out there, are they?”
“The marquess?” her mother asked in astonishment, stepping away from Lydia’s elaborately gowned entourage. “Surely a proper lord would not dig under the tower?”
“The earl is an Ives. I don’t know about the marquess, but Ives curiosity is greater than common sense.” Lydia hugged her mother. “Do not fear. We will all be as grand as you wish for a few hours.”
“Your hair, we must start with your hair!” Olivia cried happily. “I have brought an assortment of pins and combs and ribbons you can pick through as you like. I know you disdain ornament, but today, you must shine.”
“I was very shiny last night,” Lydia informed her. “Lady Agnes emptied her jewel box over my head.”
“I wish I’d had my camera here.” Lady Dare was setting up said camera. “In the future, we’ll all have glamorous portraits of our wedding days to hang on the wall. Real people, real memories, not artificial backgrounds and fake poses for a painter.”
“Posing for a camera is equally artificial,” Olivia pointed out.
They quarreled amiably as they brushed and pulled and tugged at Lydia’s hair. If she believed the ladies, her hair wasn’t as vulgar as she thought. They exclaimed over the color and the fineness and the frizzy curl as if it were a stack of gold instead of a haystack. Of course, Max claimed to like it, too, but he’d say anything to persuade her into bed.
She’d drifted off into a vision of their honeymoon night when another knock resounded on the outer door.
“That must be our tea.” Uninterested in hair or clothes, Lady Phoebe was rummaging through books on the bedchamber shelves. “I’ll fetch it.”
When she returned, she was grim and pale and holding a letter instead of a tea tray. “The trustees have sent the committee to test your librarian skills. Why would they do that on your wedding day?”
Lydia was in too much shock to even consider an answer.