“My great-uncle always used to say that Tintagal was nothing but a heap of rocks, that Arthur could have easily sailed to Ireland, to Pendragon, and spent his final days there. But I wonder.”
“Oh, I remember that now. Pendragon.” She grinned at him. “Let me roll it about on my tongue for a moment.”
He watched her and her tongue rolling around, could practically feel her tongue rolling about on and in his own mouth, and got harder than the mast.
She said, “Do you plan to live most of the time at Pendragon?”
“I haven’t yet decided. Bowden Close is now also my responsibility. Your family is there. We will visit often.”
“That’s good. I would miss my family.”
“Yes, I know. As I said, I don’t wish Bowden Close to be left only in a steward’s hands.”
“My uncle Douglas says that a man is a fool if he ignores what is his.”
“I agree.”
“My father agrees too, which is why he traveled to Kildrummy Castle when he inherited it. We couldn’t live there, however, and we were very lucky. Oliver manages Kildrummy Castle. Actually now it is as much his home as it is ours. Did you know that Oliver was one of my uncle Ryder’s first Beloved Ones?”
“Yes. Your uncle Ryder found him trying to pull himself out of an alley so he could beg for food. His leg was badly broken, you see, and he couldn’t walk.”
“My uncle took care of him until he was eighteen, and then he went to Oxford. He was going to be my uncle Douglas’s steward, but the instant he saw Kildrummy Castle, he fell in love with it. Oliver is very smart and married my uncle’s daughter, Jenny. You met Jenny and Oliver at the wedding. They are very happy.”
Meggie shook his sleeve. “Now, my lord, when will you thank me for last night? When are you going to sing my praises? Tell me you have never experienced such a woman as I? Goodness, Thomas, I laid you lower than a slug.”
“I don’t like the sound of that. You do know that you’re ignorant as a stick,” he added, and lightly touched his palm to her the underside of her breast. “But I have high hopes.”
Meggie didn’t move, became still as a statue and looked up at him, not saying a word. Then she leaned forward, pressing her breast into his palm. Thomas’s breath hitched. He saw one of the sailors coming and regretfully dropped his hand to his side. “Yes,” he said, “lower than a slug. Now, let’s think about the pleasure I gave you. Meggie, the look on your face when I kissed you.”
“Well, I love to kiss you. You make my mouth tingle.”
“No, not on the mouth, Meggie.”
He laughed when she turned even redder, none of it from windburn.
He couldn’t help himself. He smiled down at her, at the loose hair pulled from beneath her bonnet, whipping against her face. “If I hadn’t pleasured you, would you have shot me after you felled me?”
She pursed her lips and he knew, knew all the way to his boots, that she was giving this due thought. Finally she said, “Well, that’s a real possibility. Who knows what you would have demanded to do? Our wedding night was memorable, but I wouldn’t precisely say that it was a memory that I will cherish when I am an old woman. Yes, I might have shot you.”
She was so likable, so damned open and giving. Not a reticent bone in that ever so white body of hers. Her body. No, he wouldn’t think about that, not now, not on board a wildly rocking boat.
He looked out over the billowing wave that would slap the side of the boat in another instant. He waited, put his arm on hers to keep her steady, and felt the taste of the water in his mouth from the wild spray.
He said after a moment, “My mother lives at Pendragon.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” she said slowly, “but you hadn’t told me where she was living. Remember I asked you if your mother would come to our wedding, and you just shook your head and said something about her being ill.”
“That is true. She was ill, just like your grandmother. As a rule she dislikes leaving Pendragon. When I was five, she took me to her brother’s home, to Pendragon. I was raised there.”
“I look forward to meeting her,” Meggie said.
Thomas said not another word.
They turned into Cork Harbour within the hour, where the water was much calmer because of the long curving mole that broke the storm’s might.
A mother-in-law, Meggie was thinking. She hadn’t given the actual flesh-and-blood lady much thought until now that she was going to meet her in a very short time. She thought of her grandmother Lady Lydia and spent a good five minutes praying hard.
20
Pendragon Castle
“SO YOU ARE my son’s new wife.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Meggie smiled as she stepped up to the older woman, who looked a great deal like Thomas, from her dark hair and eyes to her olive complexion. Her mother-in-law, something she’d never had before, someone who was now more a part of her life than her own parents. If Thomas’s mother hadn’t come to their wedding because of ill health, she certainly looked as fit as a top-form racing cat to Meggie now.
Best to begin the way she meant to go on. Meggie gave her a big smile, oozing with respect and goodwill, and offered her a curtsy only a duchess deserved—a royal duchess.
Her mother-in-law said, after looking her up and down, “From my son’s letter, I thought you would look much better. You are not presentable. You are wet. Perhaps even on the frowzy side. The feather on your bonnet is drooping badly.”
“Mother, as you can see, both Meggie and I are soaked to the skin. Just before we managed to steer into the harbor, a big wave struck the port side of the boat. Even Pen got wet, and I can assure you that he wasn’t happy about it. I will take Meggie to our bedchamber now so she may change.”
“My son wrote that you have your family’s eyes.”
“Yes, my lady,” Meggie said. “They’re the Sherbrooke eyes.”
“Blue as a summer sky,” Thomas said, and Meggie, inordinately pleased with this remarkable male offering, turned to him and gave him a dazzling smile. “Thank you,” she said.
“I’m not a ‘my lady,’ ” Thomas’s mother said, her voice all sharp, “not since Lord Lancaster divorced me. But now he’s dead, so I suppose I can now be a dowager countess since my son is the new earl.”
“I see nothing at all amiss with that,” Meggie said, then just couldn’t prevent herself asking, “Thomas really wrote to you about my Sherbrooke eyes?”
“Among other things, as, for instance, the amount of your dowry, which is quite adequate. A healthy dowry goes far in assuring a young bride’s reception. He might have remarked upon things that aren’t quite so adequate, I cannot remember.”
Thomas rolled his eyes. She was his mother and he knew her well, and now he rather wished that—well, forget it. She would never change.
She continued after just a moment of the blank silence, “However, none of this is here nor there for the moment, young lady. Now, as to the other, you may continue to call me my lady.”
“I’m sorry, my lady, that you were ill and could not come to our wedding.”
“That is nonsense. I am never ill.”
Thomas had known from the age of ten that a lie, one with meat on it that promised consequences if discovered, always came to light, and the perpetrator always came to a bad end.
“But why then didn’t you come?”
“Meggie,” Thomas said. “Let it go.” He squeezed her hand. Deep water, she thought, and nodded.
“It is nearly teatime,” the dowager countess said, and pulled out a monocle and placed it against her right eye. It was a rather frightening sight. She said, “Bring her back then, Thomas.”
Meggie thought that her mother-in-law could have spoken to her rather than through her. Not a very good beginning.
“I believe we will both be ready for some tea in a short time,” Thomas said, and turned to Meggie.
She said, “Yes, my lady, I will be delighted to be brought back for tea.”
> Meggie said not another word as she trailed Thomas out of the large, cold, dismal drawing room with its tattered furnishings and thick heavy draperies that tightly covered all the windows.
What a dreadful room.
“My mother is perhaps a bit eccentric,” Thomas said, not looking at her.
“Maybe she should meet my grandmother,” Meggie said, not dropping a bit of her good cheer. “I will probably be able to tell you in a week who would win that battle. I was rather hoping that since she believed my dowry was adequate, I would be treated better.”
“Perhaps it wasn’t entirely ill health that kept her away from our wedding.”
To his surprise and relief, Meggie giggled. “You were trying to save my feelings, and so you told me a very blameless lie.” She sighed. “You did it well, but still, you were caught out. I always am as well. I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what those things you wrote to her about me that aren’t so adequate?”
“I wrote only that you were a brilliant flower ready to be plucked.”
“That’s nauseating.”
“Yes, I thought you’d like that. Truth is, she didn’t want to come because she is the most perverse woman in England. I could have been marrying a princess, and she still would have sniffed and stuck her nose in the air.”
“That’s all right then. Perversity is interesting.”
“I just hope you will still think that in a week from now.” Thomas nodded to a desiccated old man who looked like he was in horrible pain. He was walking slowly toward them, his back terribly bent, an occasional moan slipping out of his mouth.
“My lord,” the old man said, rolling the lord around on his tongue. “Aye, what a lovely sound that be.”
Thomas said, “Barnacle, do see to our luggage.”
“Aye, my lord, but it will be an awesome struggle, as ye well know, since ye have cracked my poor back for me many times for me over the years.”
“I know, Barnacle. What I meant was, get Ennis to fetch the luggage and you will instruct him as to how to carry it and where to place it.”
“It is good of ye to be more specific, my lord. Be she the new ladyship?”
“Aye,” Meggie said. “That I be.”
“Yer pretty, all that hair what can’t make up its mind what color it is. Yer not all that big, leastwise not as big as his lordship has become. Mayhap ye’d walk on my back for me when it gets all knotted up?”
“I would be delighted to walk on your back, Barnacle.”
The old man nodded, threw back his head, and yelled, “Ennis! Get yer skinny buttocks and yer strong back in here, lad.”
Meggie was sure she saw one corner of Thomas’s mouth turn up a bit, but he said nothing.
Barnacle made his way slowly back to the front door.
Meggie said, “Barnacle looks as if he’s nearly dying with pain, Thomas. How bad is it?”
“Not at all bad.”
“But he looks like he’s ready to yowl in agony. I even heard him moaning. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Few people have. Actually, I’ve seen him practicing his agony in front of the mirror. He nearly caught me because I laughed, I just couldn’t help it. I was about fourteen at the time. I don’t doubt that his back bothers him a bit, but most of it’s a sham. He’s done it since before I was born. The old bugger will doubtless outlive all of us, even with his back nearly bent like a horseshoe.”
“That look of his does have a potent effect,” Meggie said.
“You sound impressed.”
“Oh, I am. He looks to be a splendid old man. Did you ever walk on his back for him?”
“When I was a boy. Now it’s your turn. He will grunt and groan and enjoy himself immensely, and complain the whole time.”
“He is an unusual butler, Thomas. Ah, I wonder what you will think when you meet Hollis, my uncle Douglas’s butler. He’s more distinguished than the king.”
“It wouldn’t require all that much.”
She smiled and said, “Barnacle. That is a very strange name.”
“You haven’t begun to see all the strangeness at Pendragon yet, Meggie.”
“Thomas, why didn’t your mother wish to come to our wedding? Besides just being perverse?”
He looked her straight in the eye and said, “She didn’t want me to marry.”
“Me?”
“No, anyone. She believes I’m too young, but she’ll come to love you, Meggie. How could she not?”
“Maybe she doesn’t like the fact that my father is a vicar. Maybe she thinks I’m not well enough born for her son the earl.”
“No,” her son said with a goodly dose of cynicism, “she just doesn’t want to relinquish the reins of control here at Pendragon.”
“Well, I don’t have to, you know, I—”
“Meggie, you are my wife, the countess of Lancaster, the mistress of Pendragon. Pendragon is your responsibility. Don’t forget about what your uncle said about responsibility.”
“No,” Meggie said slowly, “I won’t.” She turned and looked around the entrance hall. It wasn’t dreadful at all. It was cold and dismal, like the drawing room, but it had some majesty to it, soaring up three stories to the blackened beamed roof. There was a huge old chandelier hanging down from that immense height. Meggie hoped the rope holding it was very sturdy indeed and wondered when it had last been checked and cleaned. Probably not since it had been rebuilt after Cromwell had burned it down. She looked down when her heels clicked on the marble floor. Those black-and-white tiles were lovely. All they needed was a good scrubbing, maybe three good scrubbings. The filth didn’t hide how impressive they still were. Suits of armor lined one wall, one after the other, and at least a half dozen sconces soldiered along in a straight line above them. The sconces and the armor looked like they hadn’t been used or cleaned or polished for at least a century, maybe two.
Thomas seemed to see nothing amiss. He said with a negligent wave, “The armor—it’s Flemish, for the most part, fifteenth century. My uncle bought them from a viscount in Surrey who’d lost all his money, and had them carted here.”
Then he said as he pointed to the huge oak staircase that could accommodate a near battalion marching side by side, “The house is old. Since it was originally built in the late fourteen hundreds by the Kavanaghs, it was added to over the years, then destroyed, rebuilt, and ended up looking like this. Both my great-uncle and my uncle did very little. You will find it somewhat drafty. Now that I have access to unexpected funds I will finish off all the necessary repairs.”
“Is that why you married me, Thomas? You needed my dowry?”
“Yes, that’s exactly the reason.”
“Good. I hope there is enough for everything you wish to do.”
He said, “You amaze me, Meggie, the way your brain works. No, I didn’t marry you for your damned dowry. You will forget that.”
“I never thought that you did.” She was looking at his mouth. He started, then took a step back. He pointed to the very old paintings climbing up the wall beside the staircase. Meggie, engaged, said, “Are these your ancestors or Kavanaghs?”
“My uncle claimed they were all Malcombes. They are so old, no one, however, really cares. In the master’s bedchamber there are portraits of Malcombes. A gloomy bunch. A couple of rogues, an out-and-out scoundrel, a womanizer, and a prominent member of the House of Lords.”
“Now you are the earl. You will do something amazing, Thomas, I just know it. You have a strong sense of duty, your brain is quite fit, and you don’t indulge yourself overly.”
He appeared startled. “You really believe that?” he asked slowly, stopping on the stairs and looking down at her. You believe that my brain is better than that damned Jeremy’s? Is my sense of duty greater?
“Oh yes, certainly. I’m your wife and I should know all your good points as well as your bad. Now, your uncle was, of course, your father’s younger brother?”
“That’s right. He made his money in trade, some
thing my mother doesn’t like to speak of, but his brain served him well. I happen to agree with him. Making money all on your own isn’t a bad thing. In my case, it was necessary because there wasn’t much.”
Meggie looked down at the stair railing that needed polish very badly. “Actually, I’ve never really had to think about money or the lack of it. My uncle the earl manages vast estates and is very rich, but it all comes from old wealth, you understand. Uncle Douglas is an excellent caretaker and more, he has added to the coffers through his fine management. At least that’s what I overheard his estate manager saying.”
“However would you, a female, know of that?”
She said without guile, “I have told you, have I not, that I have been a great eavesdropper in my time? My father would sometimes come to me if he suspected something and needed it verified. I just wish I’d eavesdropped when Jeremy and my father—no, never mind that, it isn’t at all important.”
Thomas wished Jeremy were here right at this moment, standing on the stair next to him. He’d pick him up and hurl him to the marble floor, then stomp him. He wanted to hear his jaw snap when his fist hit him.
He said, “Whereever did you get this eavesdropping tendency?”
She said easily, thinking everything was just fine, “I inherited it from my aunt Sinjun. I fear it is a lifelong habit, my lord.”
“I will keep that to myself. I will also be watchful of what I say when you don’t appear to be around.”
“Wise of you. Now, my uncle Ryder inherited a huge amount of money from my great-uncle Brandon as well as a sugar plantation in Jamaica. As for my father, thanks to Uncle Douglas, who has always tended his money, he is also rich. Then Kildrummy Castle came into our lives and that brought more money into my father’s pockets. Not that he ever noticed or spoke of it.” Meggie looked at him closely. “If you did marry me for my money, why then, I think you made a very wise investment.”
“Thank you. I agree. It was actually far more that I’d expected.”
“How much was it?”
He stopped again, looked down at her, and said slowly, “One doesn’t speak of that to a lady, surely you know that.”