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Follow love and it will flee.
Flee love and it will follow thee.
–Thomas Howell, Devises
She was back at Camden House late that night, the stone city closing around her like a burial cairn.
Seeing her worn-down look, Pym suspected the worst. “Has his lordship ended his earthly career?” he asked in shocked tones.
Annis uttered a brittle laugh. “His lordship possesses recuperative powers that are little short of amazing. He is far from sinking into the grave, I assure you.”
“I am relieved to hear it, madam.”
“Is there anything I should be informed of?” she asked dully, not really caring if there was or not.
“All runs smoothly. There is, however, a trifle of news that might interest you.”
Even in the midst of her misery, Annis regarded him with suddenly wakened curiosity, for Pym was not the chit-chat type. But his news was of such magnitude that even the dead would have to wake in their graves to chat about it.
Beau Brummell was gone from England!
The outrageously original personality that had dominated the ton for so long had fled to the continent, his creditors baying at his heels. It was either leave England or be clapped up in some filthy, abominable, horribly gauche debtors’ prison, and that, the Beau could not abide. His intimates swore, however, that he would be back in England as soon as his finances improved.
But Annis did not think that Beau Brummell would be back—ever.
One who did not give a damn whether Brummell came or whether he went was Lord Ryder. He was back in town and in a black humor, for he saw how neatly he had been caught in his own trap.
So this is how the chase ends, he thought bitterly.
He had offered her honorable marriage, tempted her with dishonorable pleasure. But to no avail. She didn’t trust him with her land. She didn’t want his child, and she wouldn’t have him. What a sorry figure he had cut in this affair. Englamoured, ensnared, and in the end, forsaken.
Despite his smarting pride, he took himself off to the chambers of his windy solicitor, Sir Barnard Nye, to whom he related something of his difficulty.
“Let me see,” winded Sir Barnard, “if I comprehend your lordship’s desires in this matter. You wish to lead to the hymeneal altar a widowed lady who is the possessor of a substantial estate with accompanying chattels, outbuildings, equipages, livestock—”
“Yes, yes,” he said impatiently.
“But before doing so, you wish the lady to divest herself entirely of all her property?” Sir Barnard’s tone indicated that he found this passing strange. “In point of fact, you wish the lady to bring nothing in the way of a dowry to the marriage.”
“Not a penny, not an acre, not a bauble, not a button. She comes to me in her naked shift or not at all.”
“As your advisor in matters of finance, I am of the opinion that this would be a most imprudent marriage to enter into.”
“You do not have to tell me that,” Ryder said grimly. “I know it already. What I want to know is how it can be done.”
“Oh, there are sundry ways to contravene the husband’s rights under the Marriage Laws, ways that will withstand challenge in the courts from any party, living now or yet to be born. Nuptial agreements, equitable or irrevocable trusts, entailments, or signing over for a nominal consideration to another family member. But all hinges on whether the lady will consent to a divestment. In the circumstances you relate, it would cost the lady everything.”
“I see,” said Nick Ryder, sounding remarkably subdued for Nick Ryder.
****
On the day before Lady Camden and her family were to return to Camden House, Annis received a letter from Nick. It took all her courage to open it. She was certain that by now his anger had cooled, and he was writing to renew his proposal. But how could she withstand his pleas and entreaties? Her heart was already breaking as it was.
She needn’t have worried. The writing was unsigned and it read: Tonight. Midnight. The stable. Be there.
It was a summons, and like a fool, she climbed down the alder tree to answer it.
The stable was empty of carriages, horses, and grooms, all having been employed to transport Lady Camden and the Robson family to Briarly Grange. The first horsebox contained a single mount, Ryder’s horse. A lantern hung on the wall. She walked toward the faint light and Nick stepped out of the last horsebox.
“You’re late,” he said by way of greeting. “Take off your clothes.”
She stared at him in shock. “What?”
“As I recall, you promised to be my mistress. Well, dear mistress, I’ve come a-calling.”
“And as I recall you called me a whore and sent me packing. And if you think that I would ever consent to...to...in such a place as this...”
“Changed your tune, have you?” He advanced upon her, whipping off his black riding cape. “I knew you’d renege.”
“Lower your voice. The servants—”
“Will hear nothing and see nothing. Most are gone with Lady Camden, and the rest sleep on the opposite side of the house, as well you know.” He pulled his shirt off over his head, his braces hanging looped from his breeches.
“But your servants? What must Sloane and the grooms think?”
He gave a harsh laugh. “Do you think I’d be fool enough to tell them I’m reduced to coupling in a stable?”
“That is not going to happen.”
“No?” He put his hands on her shoulders, confronting her with the heavy strength of his arms, the naked expanse of his chest with its furring of dark hair. “Is it not indeed?” he asked with purring menace.
He was not going to be easy to deal with, Annis apprehended. And when he bent his head to take her mouth, she realized an additional fact that made her absolutely certain he was not going to be easy to deal with.
“Nick!” She wrenched herself away from him. “You’ve been drinking.”
“Don’t let it worry you. I’m not so foxed I can’t get what I came for.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Don’t,” he growled and took her face between his hands. He kissed her bruisingly, forcing her lips apart, thrusting his tongue into her mouth, pressing his body against hers so she could feel his thick-muscled lust hard against her belly.
She struggled against his kiss, twisting her face away, angry and hurt. “I’m leaving—”
“Oh, no, mistress mine. You’re staying until I’m done with you.”
He swung her up in a flurry of skirts and imprecations. He carried her to the horsebox farthest from the door and tossed her into it. Fortunately for her backside, it was filled with hay.
She scrambled to her feet, but he tripped her down, his body coming heavily down on hers. She struck at him and managed to pull a handful of black curls out of the back of his head, which he must have found distracting because she was able to slither out from under him and stagger to her feet in the dimly lit stall.
He was up and after her in an instant, reaching out a long arm to sink his fingers in the tangled mass of her hair and pull her back. His other arm went around her waist. He lifted her up, pinning her straw-covered back against his heaving chest, even as her dangling feet tried to kick his shins.
He pulled her head back and panted in her ear. “Don’t you understand? This is the last of it for us. You’ll go back to Devon, and I’ll be damned if I crawl after you, begging for a taste. So this is the last.”
She went still in his grasp, knowing it was true, and that it must be, even though parting from him would be a sorrow greater than death. He let her down to the planked floor, and she turned slowly to face him. Even when he came to her filled with strong drink, harsh words, and scornful lust, still he was like a spell in her blood.
There is no future, there is only past.
There is only this night, and the night goes fast.
Hurry, hurry, for this is the last.
She kicked off her slippers and slowly, slowly lifted her skirts to untie her stocking garters. He watched her, savoring her with white-hot desire. She flung herself against him, toppling him into the straw, tearing at his clothes.
They coupled in fierce, hot silence, trying frenziedly to exorcise themselves of each other.
****
Ryder may have been the intemperate drinker, but Annis was the deeper sleeper. By the time she awoke on her bed of straw, he was gone. But he had covered her with his black riding cloak and tucked the edges around her before leaving.
Touched to her heart by this gesture, she wrapped the cloak around her, climbed back up to her darkened room, and gave way to tears. She saw all too clearly how things stood with her. There was a great well of longing within her to love and be loved, and it was no use telling herself that Russell Fulton had poisoned the well for all time. She was sick with wanting love, her whole body yearned for it.
And yet Nick was nothing like the man of her girlish imaginings. In her attic room at Robson Minor, she had dreamed her innocent dreams of a flaxen-haired witch man who would share her secret knowledge and help her bear the burden of it. Nick was nothing like that, and he never would be. And she didn’t care. She didn’t care. What she felt couldn’t be unfelt.
I love him, Devona. I love the black knight. What am I to do?
Devona’s answer came, as always, in the form of a memory—the memory of a day when the two of them had walked a stream bank overgrown with alders.
“Mark ye, your birth tree, child. It was sacred to the Old Ones, and some say the piskies will make their houses under alder trees.”
“Oh, I should love to see the piskies and their cunning little houses!”
“Fie, child, piskies are scarce in these times, and they are silly, useless creatures besides. It is not they who give your birth tree its worth. The true worth of the alder is in its power of divination. Certain signs precede certain events, and the signs can be read by those who have the Sight. Certain answers will be offered to those who ask the right questions. Are you listening child?”
“I’m listening.”
“Alder must always be mated with fire, to release its beneficial properties. When alder wood is fired, it makes the best charcoal, when the bark is boiled it makes the best dye. Now I will teach you the ritual of augury by alder just in the way it was done by the priestess who went into the sacred alder groves in search of answers and omens. Do you mark me, child?”
“I mark you, Devona...”
Still wrapped in Nick’s cloak, she went to her balcony and stood beneath the spreading branches of her alder tree. It had given her good service this Season, bearing up nobly under all the upping and downing. Now she would ask one more service of her birth tree.
She plucked a leaf from it, and inside her room, she cast her circle and lit a candle. She put the leaf to the flame and gradually it was devoured. She breathed in the smoke, opened her mind in the night dark, and began the ritual chant,
Alder, true-divining tree,
By the power of fire and leaf,
Send to me a certain sign,
To cure the curse of doubting mind.
****
In what was left of the night, Russell Fulton came to her as a bedside specter.
His body was the same as when the stallion Nero had finished with him, crushed and dragged, bloody and torn. His eyes were open, staring, and glowing red.
Russell Fulton walked, and the workings of the bones within their sockets showed through his mangled flesh. He passed, invisible to living eyes, through the streets of the stone city. He followed a trail marked in blood, the blood that came from the cut of the lash. In his hand was a fine and bloody whip that had tasted a certain woman’s flesh and hungered for more.
He followed the trail to its end. The walls of Camden House did not stay him from his spectral visitation to the woman who bore his name to the world and the secret signature of his whip upon her body—the girl-witch who had defied him, defeated him, and let his murderer go free.
She had the scent of a man about her. It gleamed on her body like oil of musk—earthy, potent, virile.
The whip twitched in Russell Fulton’s broken hand. The crushed fingers caressed the bloody lash. He had sworn that she would never have another man to comfort her, that he would possess her from beyond the grave and blight her life to her last living day. He stood over her bed and watched her sleeping, his red eyes fixed and gleaming and hungry.
Annis awoke to the sound of her own screams echoing through the empty halls of Camden House.