Then people spoke of nothing else except the magic lamp for a full week.
People didn’t really speak all that much about the murder of Reverend Mathers, surely a good man, and it was a shame that someone stuck a stiletto in his back, but after all, who was he anyway?
He remained very important to Lord Hobbs and to Lord Beecham. Lord Hobbs could not prove to his own satisfaction, however, that Lord Crowley had murdered Reverend Mathers. Nor could he wring a confession from Old Clothhead, Reverend Mathers’s brother. Helen firmly believed that Gerard had killed Reverend Mathers, but still, they could not be certain. It was damnable to Lord Beecham, but there was nothing he could do about it.
“I have a toast!”
Five hundred pair of eyes looked toward the bride’s father. Lord Prith, a giant of a man who was of vast good humor, proud of his daughter, and seemed genuinely fond of his new son-in-law, stood on the dais in front of the orchestra hired for the reception.
He lifted an elegant crystal flute of champagne. “My beautiful Helen has married a fine man who will give her his all. He will continue to give her his all even as the future eventually becomes the present.
“I wish all of us to drink to their happiness and their immense and endless regard for each other, a regard that surprises even a fond father.”
Helen burst out laughing—there was simply nothing else to do. There was no one like her father. She wished she was close enough to kiss him and hug him for a brief moment, to tell him again how much she adored him, but she was standing beside her new husband, and so she just laughed and waved at her father, who much enjoyed being the center of attention.
The crowd loved this unconventional toast given by the unique and quite eccentric Lord Prith, whose manservant had tears in his eyes as he passed around glasses of champagne to the guests. No one would know that Flock, the manservant, was weeping not with the joy of the day, but because his Teeny had married a certain Walter Jones just two days previous in Court Hammering.
The toast and the manservant’s tears for his beloved Miss Helen and her happiness, were spoken of for a good three days after the wedding.
At exactly 3:57 in the morning, long after all the guests had departed, Lord Beecham lay upon his bride, wondering seriously if he would survive his wedding night, which was only half over. His beleaguered heart was going to pump itself right out of his chest, but before that, he would probably suffocate because he, very simply, could not breathe. He pressed his forehead to his bride’s. “It’s all over for me, Helen.”
It was the fourth time he had loved her.
“It should be.” She managed to purse her numbed lips together, finally, and lightly kiss his neck.
“I did it. I succeeded.” He hauled himself up and managed to balance himself over her, so exhausted, so replete with pleasure and love for the nearly unconscious woman beneath him, with her beautiful blond hair all tangled around her face, that he could have wept with the power of all those wondrous feelings settled deep in his heart.
“Helen, this was quite an accomplishment. We did it.”
“Hmmm?”
“Four times, Helen, not just three. I have managed to break that miserable sameness, that triad cycle that seemed to have us by the throat.”
“We could have stopped at two times, Spenser. That would have broken the cycle too. We could have stopped after one time.”
“No, that would have made me less of a man. A man must always strive to achieve even greater strides. I have strided tonight, Helen. But I fear that I cannot strive more.”
He dropped down beside her and pulled her against him. He managed to kiss her hair. He was unconscious in the next drawing of a breath. As for Helen Heatherington, Lady Beecham, she simply lay there, pressed against her husband, lightly stroking her fingers down his chest. She didn’t have the energy to do more.
She rested her palm on his belly. “There is something I must tell you, Spenser.”
He snorted in his sleep, managed to pull up his head, and kiss her ear. He fell on his back again, but not to sleep. She had his attention.
“I wanted to tell you earlier, but you were so intent upon extending our lovemaking horizons that I didn’t want to distract you.”
“You could not have distracted me. No man could be distracted if he had you, dearest.”
“Yes, you would have been utterly distracted. You would have fallen off the bed, you would have been so distracted.”
He actually managed to come up on his elbow as he gently shoved her onto her back. He leaned down and kissed her mouth, then said, “All right, tell me. Distract me if you can.”
“I’m not barren. Evidently I was just unable to become pregnant with Gerard. The physician told me this sometimes happens. We are going to have a child, Spenser.”
He looked down at her, blinked a couple of times, then flopped onto his back. In the next moment, he slid off the bed onto the floor.
One week later
Lord Beecham awoke to Helen’s soft mouth on his cheek. Nothing unusual in that. He loved it, and he was becoming used to it. He was so used to it that if she didn’t kiss him every morning, he knew he would miss it desperately. He would probably whine and beg.
He sighed and turned toward her. Nothing happened.
He couldn’t seem to move. Now this was odd. She kissed him yet again, her mouth soft and warm against the whiskers on his chin. He was immediately interested, but that was nothing new. And so he tried to bring his arms around her, but his arms wouldn’t move.
His eyes flew open. He saw his bride smiling down at him, her expression so sweet, so tender, and that beautiful mouth of hers touched him yet again.
He said slowly, trying to get his wits together—not an easy thing when he wanted her, something that happened with very little delay. “There is something very wrong here, Helen.”
“Yes, I know, my lord.” She kissed his left ear. “You are now my prisoner.”
She was right about that. He was lying sprawled naked on his back, his arms tied over his head, his legs spread and his ankles tied as well.
His eyes crossed. “Fate is a remarkable thing. Helen, my dearest, what if you had never even seen me? What if, by some awful quirk of fate, I had never even seen you? What if you had never decided to hunt me down?
“No other woman would do this to me. Ah, Helen, kiss me again, or shave me first, then kiss me, and don’t stop.”
But she didn’t kiss him or shave him. She laughed and stood beside the bed, her hands on her hips. “Oh, no. This is retribution, my lord. Remember when you tied me down? This is revenge.”
“Ah, if I flick my wrist inward, will my bonds slip away?”
“No. I don’t know how to tie a knot that would do that. I fear that you are completely at my mercy, my lord. No escape for you unless I allow it.”
He thought he would expire of unrequited lust at that very moment. He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Will you beat me with a bundle of hollyhocks?”
She gave him a brilliant smile. It was then he noticed that she was wearing a thin silk nightgown, just a single layer of soft silk that was thinner than the film of sweat on his forehead. It was pale cream. He watched her ease one strap off her very white shoulder.
He gulped and felt himself respond, instantly, fully. “What level is this?”
“I haven’t assigned it a level yet. I must conduct the experiment first, then evaluate my results.” The other strap fell off and the gown slowly slipped over her breasts to fall to her waist. “Perhaps it will prove not to be an efficacious discipline. Perhaps you will simply close your eyes and fall asleep again. Perhaps even snore.”
“I am dying here, Helen.”
“That’s good. Just be patient. Just let me tease you a bit more into oblivion.” She looked down his body, came down beside him, and began kissing him.
He arched up, sucking in a roomful of air, his heart speeding up so fast that he knew he would embarrass himself if she continued. “Helen,
you must stop. It is true that I am not a very young man, that one would expect me to have gained more control by my thirty-third year of male life, but it isn’t true. You must stop or I will leave you and that isn’t a good thing to do to a beautiful woman who also happens to be your wife.
“Stop, Helen. Ah, your mouth is so very warm—” He groaned and heaved at the straps around his wrists. They gave just a bit.
She stopped then, and he wanted to weep. His brain was fogged, his eyes were filmed with lust and monstrous need. He saw her stand by the bed again, saw that creamy silk nightgown slip over her hips and pool at her feet. She was all his, this beautiful, devoted woman. He wanted to breathe his last breath with her beside him.
“I am so full of feelings for you, Helen, that they are all jumbled in my poor brain. Just know that I have waited for you all my life. And finally you jumped me in the park and saved me. I love you, Helen. You won’t ever forget that, will you?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “I will never forget. You will not doubt, ever, that I worship you to the ends of my very extremities? That I would do anything to make you happy?” She leaned down and touched the knots on each wrist.
In an instant, his wrists and ankles were free and she was on top of him and he was inside her, and he wondered even as he lost what little control he had, how many decades a man could survive such pleasure without crumbling into dust.
“It is at least a Level Nine,” she said into his mouth. “At least.”
And he wondered what a Level Ten could possibly be.
31
Eight Months Later
Shugborough Hall
JORDAN EVERETT HEATHERINGTON slid into his father’s hands in the middle of a Wednesday night, howling loud enough to make the physician in residence laugh and rub his hands together. “Well done, my lady, very well done indeed. And you, my lord, my congratulations on the birth of your son, although I thoroughly disapprove of you being here, in this very room where your wife has labored long to do her duty by your line. But you did insist, and thus I had no choice in the matter.
“However, pushing me out of the way to receive your son in your own hands is highly irregular. I disapprove. You might have dropped him. And then where would you have been? Your son should have been received by my hands. No, none of this is done. I do appreciate you allowing me to remove the afterbirth, not a pleasant thing to do, but as a physician, I had no choice.”
Lord Beecham looked down at his son, looked at the physician, and shouted, “Flock, come in. Ah, yes, there you are, lurking over there by the door. Do take Dr. Cool ley downstairs and give him a glass of Lord Prith’s newest concoction.”
“What is that?”
“It’s a mixture of mashed apples and champagne. I believe he calls it appagne. He wanted to create something special for the blessed event. He has been working very hard at it. I hope he is still conscious.”
“Eh? What is that you said, my lord? Appagne?”
“You will discover soon enough, sir.” Helen watched her husband carefully hand his son to the waiting midwife, who was crooning to him even before she held him close.
“My love,” Lord Beecham said, as he sat down beside her. “You are brilliant, perhaps even more today than you were yesterday.”
Helen certainly did not disagree with that. After she had been bathed by Teeny and dressed in a fresh nightgown, she fell into a dreamless and deep sleep for the rest of the night.
Toward morning there was a huge storm. Trees were uprooted, rock avalanches ripped down cliffs. Helen slept through it all.
Two weeks later, when Lord Beecham and Helen visited the cave, they found that an entire wall had fallen inward. In that small opening they saw a strange light.
It pulsed, Helen thought, pulsed with a soft yellowish sort of glow. The light seemed to go on forever, extending back into the dirt wall as far as the eye could see.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know.” Lord Beecham reached his hand toward that light. His fingers closed around something solid, something very warm, something that felt as if it were somehow moving, but it wasn’t. It pulsed against his flesh.
“Helen,” he said very quietly, “I have found something that shouldn’t be here, something that isn’t like anything we have ever known.” Slowly, very slowly, he grasped the object between his hands and pulled it toward them.
It was a filthy old lamp.
Neither of them said a word. They could only stare at the thing. Helen ripped off a long strip from her petticoat, and Lord Beecham lightly began to rub the lamp clean. Some minutes later, they saw the dented old gold of its surface. The lamp was small, not longer than two of Lord Beecham’s hands, fingertip to fingertip, perhaps as tall as one of his hands, fingers extended. It was immensely heavy. Lord Beecham handed it to his wife.
Helen cupped it in her palms. It didn’t seem quite so heavy now. “The lamp,” she said, tears in her eyes. “I cannot believe it was here all the time. But why wasn’t it in the cask?”
“Maybe as an extra protection in case someone, like you, found the cask. It must be the lamp that King Edward the First received from the Knight Templar.”
“Or perhaps it was originally in the iron cask and it removed itself further inside the cave wall. Yes, it is the lamp, and it is so very warm. There is something alive about it, something that makes little sense to me, but it must, to someone.”
“It was hidden in the dark,” he said. “Very deep in the cave wall. Perhaps it was hidden there for more protection or more likely, I believe now, to keep it buried.” It made him want to withdraw, to forget anything like this damned lamp that wasn’t of this world, that shouldn’t be here, held in Helen’s hands, looking all sorts of benign, when he knew, he simply knew, that it held more power than was wise.
“It isn’t real, Helen.”
She was stroking the lamp. She sat down on the cave floor and held it close to the branch of candles they had brought into the cave with them. She tried to lift the golden lid that was shaped like a small onion. It didn’t move. It seemed all one piece, even though there was a dirty seam. “What do you mean, it isn’t real?”
“I don’t know. I just said it. What do you want to do with it?”
She said without hesitation, “You remember how King Edward laid the lamp in the queen’s arms when she was so very ill? And she survived? I want to see if it will help Mrs. Freelady. I visited just yesterday, and she is very near death.”
Lord Beecham didn’t think that was a good idea, but it was Helen’s lamp and her decision. Mrs. Freelady spent the night with the lamp held to her chest, Lord and Lady Beecham in the next room. When they looked in on her early the following morning, she was dead.
Helen said nothing at all, just took the lamp back to Shugborough Hall. Word got around, as word always did, that the lamp had been found.
Late one night, not three days later, three men tried to steal it. Lord Beecham awoke to hear Flock yelling at the top of his lungs. He shot one of the men in the arm, but the fellow’s cohorts managed to get him away.
He lit candles and stared at the bloody lamp that sat atop the mantel in the drawing room, just sat there, all old and dented and harmless-looking. He rolled his eyes and went back to bed.
The lamp had done nothing save sit there since they had found it. It didn’t pulse or give off any light. It didn’t disappear and then reappear again, it didn’t do anything remotely remarkable. Lord Beecham was beginning to believe that he disremembered any sort of magic attributes.
It was just an old lamp. If it had ever been magical, that magic was long gone.
Only two days after that, an old woman tried to steal the lamp. Lord Prith tucked her under his arm and carried her away. She never stopped yelling that the lamp was evil and she had to destroy it.
So many years, Helen thought, as she stroked the lamp. So many years she had searched for it, and now that it was hers, it appeared to be exactly what it was—an old, dented lamp with n
othing at all magical about it. It didn’t disappear, or change shape even once. It just sat there on the mantel, looking decrepit. But all the writings, warning of this and that. Why, really, had King Edward buried it? Nothing about the damned lamp made sense.
There were no answers. King Edward hadn’t found the answers either. The lamp simply sat there on the mantel through two more attempts to steal it.
32
Two Months Later
IT WAS EARLY SPRING, the wildflowers just beginning to bloom, the air soft and scented with salt and pine trees. Lord Beecham stood just behind his new wife on the promontory, his hands splayed over her now flat belly, looking out over the sea, watching the storm come closer. The waves were whipping up, huge spumes of water striking the black rocks just off to the left, sending arcs of water thundering into the air. Birds shrieked and wheeled in the air above them.
He kissed her ear. “Did I tell you that I have already bought your Christmas present?”
“Christmas is still nine months away.”
“I dream of sitting in front of our Yule log with you at my side, opening your present. Perhaps there is some champagne in there. Perhaps your father will concoct a special Christmas drink. Perhaps it could be champagne mixed with smashed holly berries. A lovely red color.”
She was still laughing when he said against her ear, “Have I told you recently that I love you?”
She turned slowly in his arms and kissed him full on the mouth. Her breath was warm and sweet. “Not since this morning, just before you fell asleep again, and I’m not really certain that you even knew what you were saying. I had quite wrung you out, my lord.”
“I have been wrung out so much since I met you, Helen, I have decided that a man who manages to find a woman who fits perfectly against him and knows discipline—all levels of discipline—is not only the luckiest bastard on the earth, he is also the one with the biggest smile on his face, at all times.”