“Would you stop talking for a moment? I don’t know why the two of you are taking this so lightly. This could be serious.”
“I don’t think it is. If it were, there would be ransom demands and they’d go to the old hag, wouldn’t they?”
Claire paused in unbuttoning her gown. “Who?”
“The old hag. The witch. The most hated woman in all of England, Scotland, and, as far as I know, Ireland. But the Scots don’t talk much about Ireland so I can’t be sure about that country.”
“Help me unfasten this,” Claire said, trying to understand what Brat was saying. “And do please stop talking.”
Claire was ready to go in a matter of minutes, and she met Harry downstairs. He was sitting half asleep in the hall porter’s chair. She had to shake his shoulder to get him going. He’d sent a footman to the stables and their horses were waiting for them—as were three men, already mounted, lanterns in their hands and ready to ride.
Claire made a few furtive attempts to talk to Harry about the need for secrecy. She said that Leatrice might be hurt if they came storming into the summerhouse. Harry just looked at her as though she were daft and told his men to go.
Brat, mounted on an unruly gelding, smiled at Claire in a know-it-all way. “Not exactly dime-novel, old West riding to the rescue, is it?” she said smugly.
“Harry’s a Scot,” Claire answered. “They do things differently here.”
“Harry’s English,” Brat said as she kicked her horse forward, easily controlling the big animal. Their father had put Sarah Ann on a horse before she could walk, and the child had taken to the animal as though she were a female centaur. Claire was an excellent rider, but she wasn’t anything compared to Brat.
The six of them went thundering down the lanes. Claire hoped there was no need for secrecy, for secret they were not. They could have been heard twenty miles away. She hoped Leatrice wasn’t in real danger and that it was a hoax.
At one point, when they had to slow down to go single file down a narrow path, Brat turned to Claire and said, “You know, I really love this family.”
Claire grimaced and nudged her horse forward.
When they at last reached the summerhouse, Claire wasn’t prepared for what she saw. The windows were boarded and there was a bolt locking the door from the outside, yet there was smoke coming from the chimney of the little building.
“Open it,” Harry said, not getting down from his horse.
It was at that moment that the vicar appeared. He was a tall man, made to look taller by the fact that he was riding a horse that was too small for him. His clerical clothes billowed out over an enormous stomach and he had whiskers hanging down to his chest. “What’s this?” the man bellowed. “I was dragged from a warm fire and a good dinner to this place. What’s this, young Harry?”
Harry squinted at the man, trying to remember who he was. “I don’t know” was all Harry said, then he nodded at the footman to unbar the door.
Inside the room were two people, both of them stark naked. One, a tall, good-looking man in his early forties, was trying to shield the nude body of Leatrice from the view of the people outside the door. Leatrice cowered behind him.
Claire, once she got her mouth closed from the shock of the spectacle, tried to keep Brat from seeing into the room. She might as well have tried to contain a honeybee with a piece of string. Brat was off her horse in seconds, standing at the doorway and unabashedly staring. Claire was trying not to do the same.
In the next instant the shock was broken by the booming voice of the vicar. He was calling down the wrath of God on the fornicators.
Harry at last got off his horse, went inside the building, and gave his coat to his sister to cover herself. “What do you have to say for yourself, Kincaid?” he demanded of the man who was now trying to cover his private parts.
At the name Kincaid, Claire began to realize what was going on. MacTarvit, she thought, and tried to keep from smiling. He had somehow arranged this.
In the background the vicar was still raging, saying that all hellfire was going to come down on these sinners. Claire was thinking with love of MacTarvit, knowing he was the one who had somehow managed to lock these two into a room and take their clothes from them. And he’d arranged for a vicar to be there when they were found.
“They must be married,” Claire heard herself saying loudly. It wasn’t easy to be heard over the vicar, who was talking about the eternal damnation of these two people.
Claire looked at Harry. “You’re her guardian and you can witness the ceremony. She must be married at once.”
Harry looked startled. “I’m not sure Mother—”
“Their souls are in jeopardy,” the vicar shouted. “They must be made to pay for their sins.”
Claire looked at Leatrice. With her long hair down about her shoulders and her legs bare beneath Harry’s coat, she looked a great deal better than she did in the ruffled clothes she usually wore. Claire raised her eyebrows in question to Leatrice and Lee gave her a little smile and a nod.
“Harry, they must be married at once! Now. This minute. You can’t let all these people see something like this and expect to stop the gossip. Your family name will be ruined.”
“I’m not sure…” Harry said.
Claire could see that even now the hold his mother had over him was formidable. “Harry, I understand,” she said softly, but making sure that the wide-eyed servants around them heard. “If you don’t have the authority to force a man who has defiled your sister to marry her, I quite understand, and I’m sure everyone else here understands too.”
“I think I have—I mean, I do have the authority, but—”
“We’d better go,” Claire said. “I just pray that your sister does not bear a child from this.” She looked at the men standing by the wall and gawking at the whole scene. “We must swear you all to secrecy. No one must hear of what has gone on here tonight.” Her voice told that she didn’t believe there was much chance of the secret being kept. “Come with me, Leatrice. You may ride with me.”
Harry gave a sigh that was probably audible a half a mile away. “All right,” he said, then looked at the vicar. “Marry them.”
Claire felt a little thrill of triumph go through her and she tried to think of what she could do to repay MacTarvit for having arranged this. The vicar told one of the grooms to give Kincaid a coat, then he began the ceremony. Claire was so thrilled at what was taking place that at first she didn’t listen or pay attention to what was being said. She glanced at her sister and saw that Brat was staring at the vicar with a frown of concentration. Claire looked between Leatrice and Kincaid toward the vicar, and as she did so, he looked straight at her.
He could disguise his shape and his voice and his mannerisms; he could change the way he talked, but he couldn’t hide those eyes. Trevelyan looked out at her from under bushy eyebrows and his expression was one of such smugness that she glared back at him.
For the rest of the “wedding” Claire had to clamp her jaws together to keep from speaking out. After the “ceremony” Harry dutifully kissed his sister, then shook hands with James Kincaid and got back on his horse. Claire imagined he was not looking forward to telling his mother what had happened tonight.
Claire dawdled in the summerhouse, even after two of the grooms doubled up and gave a horse to Leatrice and James. Claire watched the “vicar” mount his small horse and ride away. “Go with Harry,” Claire said tightly to her sister.
“What are you going to do?”
“Nothing that is any of your business. It’s well past your bedtime.”
“Yours too. You’re going to see that man, aren’t you?”
“Why in the world would you think I’m going to visit a man at this time of night? I want to enjoy the night air. Go back with Harry.”
“I’ll hide all your jewelry and I’ll tell Mother about those books you have hidden in the false drawer of your big trunk.”
“You really are the
most infuriating child. I can’t take you where I plan to go. It’s very important that it’s kept secret.”
“Does this have to do with the man you visit in the west wing?”
Claire glared at her.
“All I have to do is tell Mother there’s another man and she’ll—”
“Shut up and get on your horse.”
Brat smiled at her beautifully, as she always did when she got what she wanted.
It didn’t take Claire long to ride back to the west wing of the house. When she’d dismounted, she looked at Brat and started to try once again to get her sister to go back to the main house, but she didn’t waste her breath. Right now she was too angry at Trevelyan to worry about her sister.
She climbed the old stone stairs quickly, taking note that at intervals burning torches had been set in the walls, as though Trevelyan were expecting a guest.
She walked through the room with his writing tables, not wanting to think of the last time she had seen them. Brat was right behind her, her eyes wide as she looked about the place. There were masks and cloths and spears from Trevelyan’s travels hanging about the room. Oman stood to one side and smiled at Brat as she walked past. The child grinned back at him.
Trevelyan was in his bedroom, standing by a washbasin and pitcher, looking in a mirror and trying to remove his false beard. He’d already removed his vicar’s robe and his padding and now wore snug buckskin knee breeches and a big linen shirt; his legs were bare from the knee down. The eighteenth-century-style knee breeches must have come from the trunk of an ancestor, but they suited him.
He turned and smiled at her when she entered. His look told her that he expected praise for what he’d just done.
“How could you do that?” she asked. “You’re no more a man of the cloth than I am. They’re not married.”
He gave a little laugh of dismissal, then looked behind her. “Is this your beautiful little sister?” He walked past Claire and studied Sarah Ann for a moment. “I had been told what an enchanting child you were, but no one told me half of it.” He lifted Brat’s hand and kissed first the back of it, then the palm.
“Trevelyan!” Claire snapped at him. “Just what do you think you’re doing? She’s a child.”
“She is on the verge of womanhood,” he said, still holding Brat’s hand and looking at her. Brat was gazing at him with wide eyes and as though she were going to fling herself on him at any moment.
Claire pulled her little sister’s hand from Trevelyan’s.
Trevelyan winked at Brat, then went back to the basin and mirror and started pulling on his beard again. “Now, you were saying.”
“That you acted as though you had the right to marry them and you didn’t. They’re going to Mr. Kincaid’s house tonight thinking they’re married and they’re not.”
“Is that all? Damn!” he cursed when the beard threatened to take some of his skin away with it. “I’m a Master Sufi, remember? Would you like to see my diploma? It’s fourteen feet long and quite beautiful.”
“Yes,” Claire said before she thought. “I mean, no. We have to get them married. Properly married.” She couldn’t bear another moment of seeing him struggle with the beard. “Sit down and let me do that,” she said, pointing to a chair at the foot of the bed.
Trevelyan went to sit on the chair and Brat climbed on the bed, sprawling on her stomach, her chin propped in her hands as she stared at Trevelyan, who was no more than a couple of feet from her. Claire poured hot water into the basin, put a cloth in, wrung it out, then placed the cloth on Trevelyan’s face over the false whiskers.
“We have to get them a proper vicar. They have to be married properly.”
“Religion is a matter of opinion,” he mumbled through the cloth.
“It is not,” she said, then continued before he could say another word. “There’s God and that’s it.”
“I guess it’s how you interpret God that matters.”
She took the cloth from his face, then slowly peeled the whiskers away. “What did you put this on with?”
“Something Oman made.” When the whiskers were off he turned to look at Brat, who was watching him like a snake watching its prey.
“Claire,” Brat said, her voice absolutely serious. “I think he is possibly the most handsome man in the world.”
“What a delightful, intelligent child,” Trevelyan said.
Claire groaned then turned a stern face to her little sister. “Don’t say anything to him. He isn’t what you think he is. He’s different from other men. He…he goes around the world doing things with women. He hasn’t any heart or soul. He isn’t involved in life. That’s why he can pretend to be a vicar and pretend to marry someone. It’s all a joke to him. All of life is a joke to him. He doesn’t participate in life; he just observes.”
This speech seemed to have no effect on either Trevelyan or Brat. They kept looking at each other.
“You’re the explorer,” Brat said at last.
“I’ve seen a few things.”
“Yes, I’ve read—” Sarah began.
“Brat!” Claire said, but her sister didn’t jump at the sharp sound. She couldn’t seem to take her eyes from Trevelyan’s. Claire placed herself between the two of them. “My sister has never read anything in her life. She terrifies her governesses and they don’t dare demand anything of her. She—”
“I’ve read the dirty parts that were written in Latin in the back of your books. Claire translated the chapters and I, ah, found the translations.”
At that Claire turned to look at her sister, horror in her eyes.
Brat looked around her to Trevelyan. “What is infibu…”
“Infibulation.”
“Yes, what is it?”
“Why don’t you come and sit on my lap, you pretty child, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
When Brat started to get off the bed, Claire twisted her arm so she yelped in pain. “Trevelyan, stop it. She’s just a little girl.”
“Of course she is,” Trevelyan said in a sarcastic way, then looked back at Claire. “Did you come here to complain to me? I don’t know what made me think so, but I thought you might have come to thank me. MacTarvit said you wanted Lee and Kincaid married and they are.”
“They aren’t really married. They’re just living together. Tomorrow you have to go to them and tell them the truth, that it was you who performed the ceremony—if it can be called that—and that they must go to a proper man of God.”
Trevelyan’s face lost its good humor. “I’ll do no such thing. I am as qualified to marry people as anyone is. I daresay more so. I doubt that your average country vicar has been through what I have to earn his certification.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then you explain it to me. What is the point?”
“They have to be married properly. By a man with a proper religion.”
Trevelyan was no longer laughing. He got up from the chair and went to the basin to wash his face. “You little prude,” he said. “There are many religions and Sufism is just one of them. Leatrice and Kincaid are as married as any two people can be.”
“And what does that mean? That they’re as married as two people can be?”
“Just what I said. In some places marriage is a very flexible thing. The ways of the Western world would seem absurd to the people in those places. The very idea of staying married to one person forever is ridiculous.” He dried his face, walked to the big wardrobe along one wall, and opened it. Claire had never seen inside it. It was filled with boots: soft boots, stiff boots, leather boots, painted boots, embroidered velvet boots.
“Oooooh,” Brat said and came off the bed to stand by him.
Trevelyan looked down at her with an adoring smile.
“May I try them on?”
“You may do anything you like,” he said in a caressing voice.
“Stop it!” Claire half shouted. “She’s a child.”
Trevelyan pulled a
pair of boots from the wardrobe and sat down to put them on. “In some countries a fourteen-year-old girl is considered too old for marriage. Men like to get them young; then they can raise them to be the way they want them to be. If a man wants a woman who contradicts everything he says and tells him he’s wrong at every turn he can raise her to be that way.” He lifted one eyebrow at Claire. “I’ve not heard of a man wanting those traits in a wife, but then I’ve seen some strange things.”
He pulled on a boot. “Could you explain something to me? Before you knew that I was Captain Baker, you couldn’t say enough good about him. I heard he was a great man, that the world owed much to him. I heard that you believed that Captain Baker and only Baker could get into Pesha, that no other man was man enough to get into the city. But now that you know that I am Baker, I can’t seem to do anything to please you. My drawings, which you once loved, you now hate. You no longer seem to think my books are enlightened—now they’re too dirty for your precocious little sister to read, and you think that being a Master Sufi isn’t enough to enable me to perform a simple marriage ceremony.”
She looked away from him, for all that he said was true. “Heroes aren’t real,” she said at last.
He put on the second boot and stamped his foot to the floor. “Oh, I see, now I’m a bloody hero.”
“Don’t curse in front of my sister.”
He moved to stand in front of her, glaring down at her. “I’ll bloody well curse any bloody time I want to. You’re the one who wanted Lee married to Kincaid and I did it for you. I got them there and locked them in together. I even crawled through the attic and pulled up their clothes using a hooked pole. I’m the one who arranged it all, yet you can’t even say thank-you to me. All you can do is complain.”
When Claire didn’t say anything, just stood there with an obstinate look on her face, Trevelyan walked to a chest and threw back the lid. He rummaged inside for a moment, then withdrew a sheaf of papers. “If you’d rather that Leatrice wasn’t married by a Master Sufi, what religion would you prefer?”
He pulled a few papers from the portfolio. “An English religion? Here are certificates saying I’m qualified to perform services in four English religions. Or would you prefer an American religion? American certificates are the easiest to obtain. All you do is tell someone that you have the ‘call’ and you’re considered one of them.”