Darkwitch Rising

  In response, he leaned forward and very gently kissed the unmarked nape of her neck. “Who?” he whispered.

  “John…”

  He kissed her again, this time a little lower, and again on unmarked skin. “Who?”

  “A fiend,” she said. “His name is malevolence incarnate.”

  Again Thornton’s lips touched Noah’s back, lower yet, and she shuddered.

  “I shall kill him,” he said.

  Noah jerked away from his hands and mouth, pulling her bodice over her shoulders again. “John, no. Don’t. Please. There is nothing you can do.”

  “Yes, there is,” said Catling. “Reverend Thornton, if you please, we travel also to London. Will you accompany us? Mama cannot look after me herself. She shall fall, and fail. I cannot have that.”

  “You travel to London?” said Thornton, sparing Catling a sharp glance for her strange words. “Why?”

  “I have a friend there, who has asked me to stay during the joyous time of King Charles’ restoration,” said Noah.

  “And his name?” said Thornton, hating the tightness in his voice. He had thought to have put his need for Noah a long way behind him. He had hoped that his new wife would make him forget his once-lover.

  Forget how the land rose to meet him when he touched her.

  Ah…how foolish he had been.

  “Jane,” said Noah softly. “Jane Orr.”

  Thornton cursed himself and his jealousy, and cursed the night the sixteen-year-old Noah had first come to his room. Better ignorance of her, than knowing her, and knowing he could never have her love.

  “Catling,” he said. “Please go to the innkeeper’s wife, and ask her for a bowl of warm water, with some mint steeped in it, and bring it to me. Your mother’s back needs to be washed.”

  Catling nodded, rose, and left the room.

  “I find it most strange,” Thornton said, “that I should issue such a request to a child only just turned a year old and watch her walk from this room as might a five- or six-year-old child. Woburn gossips, Noah, about what could have bred such a girl on you.”

  “She had a most magical and powerful father,” Noah said. Her voice was very soft, and she still sat so that he could see little of her save her back and shoulders.

  “Most apparently,” Thornton said. He hesitated, then added, “Who you love greatly…”

  She twisted about to look him in the eye. “What do you want to hear, John?”

  He sighed. “I do not want to hear…oh, Noah, I do not know what I want to hear.” Hesitating, he reached out a hand, slipping it inside her open bodice, caressing her breasts and belly.

  “Don’t, John,” Noah said. “What do you want? To force such a sorely wounded woman to your will?”

  He hissed, pulling his hand sharply away from her. “Where was your magical and powerful lover then, when you were so cruelly injured? Why cleave to him so faithfully, when it is I here with you now, and not he? Why love him so greatly, when it is apparent he has deserted you and your child?”

  “You cannot understand,” Noah said, then stopped and began again. “I’m sorry for what I said. I was too tart.”

  He gave a hollow laugh. “You have made it plain enough to me that what we once had is now gone, Noah. But as you see, I am a weak man.”

  Noah took one of his hands in hers, waiting until it had relaxed before speaking again. “John, you promised to aid me if I should need it. Will you do so?”

  Thornton bit back his almost instinctive response: Your lover is not here to aid you now. He sighed. “Aye, of course.”

  “Accompany us to London, for we have sore need of your care. But—”

  “Ah, that ‘but’.”

  “Once we have arrived, then leave me, John. Where I go, you cannot follow.”

  “You go to your lover.”

  She gave a small, sad smile. “I wish that were so, but, no, I do not go to him. He is lost to me for a long time, I think.”

  “I will accompany you to London, then, where I shall leave you. Noah…”

  “I know,” she said, and gave his hand a squeeze.

  “I am lost in you, Noah. I was lost that first night you came to me. Lost in you…”

  Seven

  Luton, Bedfordshire to Langley House, Hertfordshire

  The next day at mid-morning they set out from Luton. Noah looked much better for sleeping well, and she had enjoyed the good food provided by the innkeeper’s wife. She appeared fit enough to ride, so Catling rode behind Thornton, while Noah kept her own horse. It was a fine day, although there was a strong westerly wind blowing, and for the most part Thornton let his worries abate. Noah’s back had looked much better in the morning, and he chose to believe that she was, indeed, visiting her friend Jane Orr in London, so that she might enjoy the festivities surrounding the king’s restoration.

  Noah had meant to travel to London via Watford today, but Thornton persuaded her to a slightly different plan. He meant to stay this night with friends who lived close to the manor of Bushey Park, just north-east of Watford. Thomas and Leila Thanet would provide much more comfortable accommodation than a crowded public inn and, Thornton argued, better care for Noah should she need it.

  Noah had not been sure of Thornton’s suggestion—how would John explain both her and Catling?—but acquiesced after only a short hesitation. Thornton had argued that it would be safer for her and Catling if they stayed at the Thanets’ Langley House, and to this Noah had no counter.

  The way from Luton to the Watford region was gentle and easy. They passed between ranges of hills on either side during the morning and, in the early afternoon, stopped in the fields of St Albans, where they rested and partook of some food they carried with them.

  “What shall you say to the Thanets about myself and Catling?” Noah asked as they stood up from their picnic, brushing down their clothes from the grass seeds and flowers which clung to them.

  John Thornton shrugged slightly. “That you chose to accompany me to London to see your friend Jane Orr,” he said. “Perhaps following the death of your husband.” He looked significantly at Catling.

  “I would prefer that you told them the truth,” said Noah.

  “What? That you are the scandalous companion of Lady Anne that so much of the county has gossiped about?”

  Noah flushed, and Thornton fought away a twinge of guilt.

  “Noah,” he said, “it is best not to tell them all the truth. We need not speak of a deceased husband if you so wish—the Thanets shall merely assume it, and assume Catling is his child.”

  Noah hesitated a moment longer, then nodded. Thornton aided her to her horse, lifted Catling to his own, and then himself mounted, leading the way back to the road and the way south.

  From the fields of St Albans it was but a two-hour ride at a sedate walk to where the Thanets lived in their large red brick house. Thornton told Noah and Catling that Thomas’ great-grandfather had been a successful merchant during Queen Elizabeth’s later years. With the riches he’d made from his business he’d purchased an estate just to the north of Bushey Park, and built Langley House in the showy Elizabethan style. There the Thanets settled, selling their business and engaging, over the next two or three generations, in a gradual process of gentrification.

  “Thomas’ father represented the county in the House of Commons,” Thornton said as they turned their mounts down the long drive towards the house. “Now Thomas hopes to do the same in Charles II’s new Parliament.”

  “It shall be a grand new age,” Noah said, but something in her voice made Thornton look at her sharply.

  “You don’t think so,” he said.

  She gave a slight shrug. “So much can always go wrong.”

  Thornton grunted. “You are a pessimist, indeed.”

  “Indeed,” she said, and Thornton would have challenged her on that had not the front doors of the house opened that instant to reveal a well-dressed man and woman, presumably the Thanets, hurrying to meet the man
, woman and child approaching the house.

  “John!” Thomas Thanet exclaimed, catching at the reins of Thornton’s horse as Thornton dismounted. They shook hands enthusiastically, then Thornton stepped forward and kissed Leila Thanet’s hand. “I am so happy to see you well,” he said, glancing at her rounded six-month belly.

  Flustered, Leila stepped back from Thornton and looked to Noah, as well as to the little girl still sitting on Thornton’s horse.

  “John,” she said, her smile broadening, “you did not tell us you were bringing your new wife with you! What a wonderful surprise.” She looked over to Noah, who was staring at Leila with a shocked expression. “Welcome, my dear! You cannot know how happy we are to know that John has found his soul mate at last!”

  Before Noah could open her mouth to protest, Thornton said, “She is my life, Leila. I cannot imagine existing without her.”

  Noah was furious. She stood in the centre of the large and well appointed bedchamber to which Leila had led them (Catling, who Thornton had explained was Noah’s child from a previous marriage, had been taken to meet the Thanets’ children), her face flushed and her posture stiff.

  “You did not tell me you had married your Sarah!”

  “I thought you would be pleased for me.”

  “I am! I am! But I would not have stayed with you in the manner I did if I had known you had married…and now the Thanets think I am your wife, and—”

  “And if you tell them not, after having allowed Leila to show us to this private chamber, what shall she think? That I am disporting myself with some strumpet from Watford? Or a whore I picked up along the roadway?”

  “This,” Noah waved her hand at the bed which took up almost half of the entire space of the chamber, “is a lie!”

  Thornton sighed. “How can we now explain that—”

  “Explaining now will take a greater skill at diplomacy than either you or I possess, I think. What should have happened, the moment Leila mistook me for your wife, was to set her to rights, not to stand there like a lovelorn donkey and say, ‘She is my life. I cannot imagine existing without her’.”

  “And that was the truth, Noah,” Thornton said quietly. “To have said anything else would have been a lie.”

  Noah’s shoulders slumped, her anger draining away. “Gods,” she said, “how I have mismanaged this.”

  She turned away, walking to the bed and stroking the beautifully embroidered coverlet. “Here we are, arguing as if we are, truly, a married couple.”

  He said nothing, and she looked back to him.

  “John, what will you say when one day Thomas and Leila meet your true wife? And what shall Sarah say when she knows you have stayed here a night with a strange woman in your bed who you passed off as her?”

  Thornton shrugged. “I shall think of some explanation.” In truth, Thornton did not like to think what would happen once his new wife heard of this. He hadn’t meant to say what he had when Leila called Noah his wife…but the words somehow had slipped out and, as he had just said to Noah, they were the truth.

  Noah rubbed a hand over her forehead, as if her head ached. “Well, at least we shall be gone in the morning.” She studied the bed once more. “And thank the gods the bed is wide enough that we may keep fully half an acre between us during the night.”

  Thornton had noted not only Noah’s hand rubbing at her forehead, but her slight wince as she had turned to the bed. “Your back, Noah? Does it pain you.”

  “A little.”

  “I shall ask Leila for some soothing water and—”

  “For sweet Christ’s sake, John, you cannot let her see the welts. She will think you one who prefers to take his pleasures through pain rather than gentle caresses!”

  “I shall wash your back myself,” Thornton said, “and how could I manage this, if Leila did not think me your husband? You can afford no one else to see those wounds if you do not want them calling the sheriff so that your attacker might be taken into custody.”

  “Catling—” Noah stopped short, and Thornton wondered why she could not rely on Catling to wash her back for her.

  “Catling is a wondrous child,” said Thornton, “but those wounds need more care than she can give.”

  Noah sighed, and sat down on the bed. “I have no concern for myself with these lies in which we have enmeshed ourselves, John, but for you. When the Thanets—when your wife—discover the deception you have played—”

  “Then I shall live with the consequences,” said Thornton. “Now, rest, for I am going to ask Leila for the water with which to soothe your back.”

  Eight

  Langley House, Hertfordshire, Idol Lane, London, and The Hague, the Netherlands

  Thornton knew almost as soon as he rose the next morning that they would not be riding anywhere that day. Selfishly, he was glad. Once he’d stepped from the bed, Thornton had opened one of the shuttered windows, expecting to see bright sunlight.

  Instead all he saw was the unrelieved gloom of rain lashing against the panes of glass. He recalled the strength of the westerly wind of yesterday. A late spring gale had blown in from the Atlantic and, if his experience was any judge, would take all day to blow itself out.

  No one but a fool would try to ride in this.

  “John?” Noah was sitting on her side of the bed, shivering in her thin linen nightgown. She reached for a shawl and wrapped it about her shoulders as she stood and walked over to join Thornton.

  He nodded to the storm outside. “We’ll be staying here this day.”

  “I have to keep moving, John.”

  There was a terrible tightness in her voice, as if she were frightened, and Thornton put an arm about her shoulders and drew her in close.

  Noah’s eyes were fixed on the rain pelting against the window, and she didn’t object to his touch.

  “Noah,” he said, “no one should ride in this rain and wind. If you don’t kill yourself then you’ll kill your horse…and, by God Himself, you couldn’t want to take Catling out in this?”

  She shivered again, and Thornton pulled her a little closer. “What are you frightened of?” he said.

  To that Noah gave a small shake of her head. “I have to keep moving.”

  “Why? Will your friend Jane Orr pout and sulk if you be delayed a day?”

  “Not her,” Noah whispered, and before Thornton could ask her Who, then? there came a knock at the door, and it opened before either Thornton or Noah could respond.

  It was Thomas Thanet, wearing a thin, loose coat over his own nightgown. He grinned at the sight of Thornton and Noah standing so intimately close at the window.

  “You’ll be staying a while, then,” he said. “Poor weather in which to be travelling.”

  Thornton’s arm tightened about Noah as he felt her start to move away. “Aye,” he said, smiling easily. “Shall we stretch your hospitality to breaking point?”

  “We’ll be glad of the chance to keep you a while longer,” said Thomas. “Leila was saying to me last night that she regretted not having the chance to know Noah better. Why, my dear,” he said, his eyes now on Noah, “before dinner she’ll have pried from you every secret you harbour, I swear.”

  Noah smiled wanly, and Thornton felt her shiver once more.

  It was, all in all, a dismal day.

  Despite Thomas Thanet’s initial cheerfulness, by the time everyone had breakfasted the grey, frigid rain had affected the mood of the entire household. Catling retreated into a sullen silence, Noah responded only grudgingly to every question Leila asked, and Thomas Thanet himself descended into a fug not unlike the outside weather.

  “Your wife is most reticent,” Leila Thanet confided to Thornton in the mid-afternoon. Noah had just taken Catling to the bed in the chamber she shared with one of the Thanet girls.

  “She has had ill news regarding a friend,” Thornton said, now regretful that he’d put Noah in this position. He hadn’t realised how greatly Leila would pester her with questions, and over the cours
e of the day had noticed Noah’s posture becoming stiffer and stiffer. He thought it might partly be due to annoyance at Leila’s probing, but knew too well that her back was most likely paining her. The welts had gone down from when he first saw them, but they were obviously still extremely painful. Noah wore the bare minimum of clothing needed for modesty—her figure was good enough for her to manage without the corsets that most gentlewomen wore under their tightlylaced bodices—but even the soft linens of her chemise and light material of her bodice must cause constant chafing against her back.

  Not for the first time this day, Thornton thanked God that at least Noah was being removed into the relative safety of London from whoever it was at Woburn who had caused her injuries.

  Weyland paced back and forth in the kitchen of his house in Idol Lane.

  “She’s not moving,” he said.

  “Dear God,” Jane said, and lifted a hand from where she rolled out pastry on the table to wave it at the window, “look at the weather. This storm has enveloped half of England…no one is moving!”

  “But I require her to move,” Weyland said. His face was working, as if he battled something within himself. “She can’t think she can get away with this. She can’t!”

  He lifted a hand—

  “No!” Jane cried, starting away from the table to where Weyland stood. “Don’t—”

  She stopped, then dropped to the floor, clutching her belly, her face screwed up in agony, a single whimper escaping her opened mouth.

  “Don’t speak so sharp to me,” Weyland hissed at her, then his eyes lost his focus, and he spoke a single word.

  “Noah.”

  And that single word was followed in Weyland’s mind by a single, simple, telling phrase.

  I’m sorry…

  Thornton saw her go rigid, saw her face go bloodless, saw the panic and terror in her eyes, and, while he did not know the specifics of what was happening, knew he had to get her to their chamber as fast as he could.