Three Weddings and a Kiss Part 12

Though he a.s.sured himself it couldn't be there, his eyes told him it was: a demonic-looking female riding an enormous bay. A tangled mane of fiery red hair flew wildly about her face. She rode boldly astride, a pale cloak streaming out behind her, her skirts hiked up to her knees, shamelessly displaying her ghostly white limbs.

Though it was only a moment's glance, the brief distraction proved fatal, for in the next instant, Isis swerved too sharply into a turning.

Dorian reacted a heartbeat too late, and the mare skidded over the crumbling track edge and down the slippery incline-toward the quagmire waiting below.

The pale mare managed to scramble back from the edge of the murky pit, but she threw off her master in the process.

Gwendolyn leapt down from her mount, collected the rope she'd brought, and climbed down the incline to the edge of the bog.

Several feet from where she stood, the Earl of Rawnsley was thrashing in a pit of grey muck. In the few minutes it had taken her to reach the bog, he'd slid toward its heart, and his efforts to struggle for footing where there wasn't any only sucked Kim in deeper.

Still, the muck had climbed only as far as his hips, and an a.s.sessing glance told Gwendolyn that this patch of mire was relatively narrow in circ.u.mference.

Even while she was studying her surroundings, she was moving toward the mare, making rea.s.suring sounds. She was aware of Rawnsley cursing furiously, in between shouting at her to go away, but she disregarded that.

"Try to keep as still as possible," she told him calmly. "We'll have you out in a minute."

"Get away from here!" he shouted. "Leave my horse alone, you bed.a.m.ned witch! Run, Isis! Home!"

But Gwendolyn was stroking under the mare's mane, and the creature was quieting, despite her master's shouts and curses. She stood docilely while Gwendolyn unbuckled the stirrup strap, removed the stirrup iron, and rebuckled the strap. She looped one end of the rope through the strap and knotted it. Then she led the mare closer to the bog.

Rawnsley had stopped cursing, and he was not thrashing about so much as before. She did not know whether he'd come to his senses or was simply exhausted. She could see, though, that he'd sunk past his waist. Swiftly she tied a loop at the free end of the rope.

"Look sharp now," she called to him. "I'm going to throw it."

"You'll fall in, you stupid-"

She flung the rope. He grabbed...and missed. And swore profusely.

Gwendolyn quickly drew it back and tried again.

On the fifth try, he caught it.

"Try to hold on with both hands," she said. "And don't try to help us. Pretend you're a log. Keep as still as you can."

She knew that was very difficult. It was instinctive to struggle when one was sinking. But he would sink faster if he fought the mire, and the deeper he was, the harder it would be to pull him out. Even here, where it was safe, the soggy ground was barely walkable. Her boots sank into mud up to the ankles. Isis, too, must contend with the mud, as well as her master's weight, and the powerful mire dragging him down.

Still, they would do it, Gwendolyn a.s.sured herself. She looped the reins through one hand and grasped the stirrup strap and rope with the other.

Then she turned the mare so that she'd be moving sideways from the bog, and started her on the first cautious steps of rescue. "Slowly, Isis," she murmured. "I know you want to hurry-so do I-but we cannot risk wrenching his arms from their sockets."

He collapsed as soon as he escaped the mire, but Gwendolyn had to leave him while she returned to the bridle path with Isis. Though the horse had been good and patient through the ordeal, she was restless and edgy now, and Gwendolyn was worried she might stumble into the mire if left unattended. One could not look after horse and master simultaneously.

By the time she'd settled Isis with Bertie's gelding, retrieved a brandy flask from the saddlebag, and hurried back to Rawnsley, he had returned to full consciousness. To extremely bad-tempered consciousness, by the looks and sounds of it.

His black mane dripped ooze from the mire, and he was cursing under his breath as he shoved it out of his face and dragged himself up to a sitting position.

"Devil take you and roast you in h.e.l.l!" he snarled. "You could have killed yourself-and my horse. I told you to go away, curse you!"

A mask of grey-green slime clung to his face. Even under the mucky coating, however, his features appeared stronger and starker than in the miniature. This was a hard, sharply etched face, while the painted one had been sickly looking and puffy.

The rest of him was not sickly looking either. The earl's bog-soaked garments clung to broad shoulders and back, a taut, narrow waist, and long legs-and every inch of that was solid muscle.

The reality was so unlike the picture that Gwendolyn wondered for a moment whether someone had played a joke on her, and this wasn't Rawnsley at all.

Then he pulled off his mud-encrusted gloves and wiped the filth from his eyes with his fingers and looked at her...and she froze, the breath stuck in her throat as her heart missed the next scheduled beat.

Bertie called him Cat because, he said, that's what all the fellows at school had called him. Now Gwendolyn understood why.

The Earl of Rawnsley's eyes were yellow.

Not a human brown or hazel but a feline amber gold. They were the eyes of a jungle predator, burning bright-and dangerous.

Fortunately, Gwendolyn was not easily intimidated. The shock pa.s.sed as quickly as it had come, and she knelt down beside him and offered the flask with a steady hand.

Her voice was steady, too, as she answered. "No self-respecting witch would go away on a mere mortal's orders. She'd be drummed out of the coven in disgrace."

He took the flask from her and drank, his intent yellow gaze never leaving her face.

"You may not know that all the best witches come to Dartmoor for their familiars," she said. "A black cat is de rigueur. Since you're the only one available-"

"I'm not available, and I'm not a d.a.m.ned tabby, you demented little h.e.l.lhound! And I know who you are. You're the curst cousin, aren't you? Only one of Bertie's kin would come galloping into a mire in that lunatic way and blunder about, risking a horse, as well as her own scrawny neck, saving a man from what she got him into. And I didn't ask to be saved, Devil confound you! It's all the same to me-I've already got one foot in the grave-or didn't they tell you?"

"Yes, they did tell me," she answered calmly. "But I did not come all this way only to turn back at the first obstacle. I am aware it is all the same to you. I realize the mire would have saved you the trouble of putting a pistol to your head or hanging yourself or whatever you had in mind. But you may just as easily do that later, after we're wed. I regret the inconvenience, my lord, but I cannot let you die before the ceremony, or I shall never get my hospital."

In the past, Gwendolyn often obtained satisfactory results from startling statements.

It worked this time, too.

He drew back slightly, and his furious expression softened into bewilderment.

"It is simple enough," she said. "I need you, and you need me-although I cannot expect you to believe that at present since you know next to nothing about me."

She glanced upward. "We are about to be inundated. We will need to find shelter-for the horses' sake, I mean, since you won't mind dying of lung fever, either. That is not altogether inconvenient. Waiting out the storm will give us a chance for private conversation."

2.

"Oh, no, you don't," Dorian said. The words came out in croaks. His throat was raw from shouting the objections she'd been so stubbornly deaf to.

Ignoring her outstretched hand, he staggered to his feet. Staying upright proved even harder than getting up.

Mires, it turned out, didn't simply swallow you. His mother had failed to explain that they chewed first. They tried to suck the skin off your bones and crush your organs and muscles into jelly. Every inch of his body, inside and out, was throbbing painfully. He ignored it.

"There will be no private tete-a-tetes," he said, grasping her arm and marching her to the incline. "We have nothing to say to each other. I am taking you back to the house, and then you will go back where you came from."

"I don't think that's a good idea," she said. Her voice remained level, and she made no effort to free herself from his grasp.

He let go abruptly, wishing he hadn't grabbed her slim arm in that oafish way. She had no choice but to follow him, unless she meant to take up residence in Hagsmire.

He started up the slope alone.

After a moment, she followed. "Why did you bolt?" she asked.

"I took a lunatic fit." He trudged on.

"That often happens when one converses with Bertie for any length of time," she said. "Sometimes I have to shake him. Otherwise, he will go on and on and lose track entirely of what he's saying, and one can grow quite giddy trying to follow."

"I'm very fond of Bertie," he said coldly.

"So am I," she said. "But he is miraculously stupid, isn't he? Cousin Jessica says he was born with his foot in his mouth and has been unable to get it out since. I suppose he must have made the most harrowing vows of eternal devotion to you. He was blubbering into his handkerchief when he came out to tell me you'd bolted. So there was no getting an intelligible explanation out of him. And Abonville said only that he'd made a terrible mistake, and Genevieve must take me back to the inn."

"Obviously you heeded Abonville no more than you did me," Dorian said irritably. "The words 'go away' appear to have no meaning for you."

"If I always did what I was told, I should never accomplish anything," she said. "Fortunately, Abonville is aware that I do not blindly obey orders. And so, when I said I must go after you, and my grandmother agreed, he took Bertie back into the library, and they made direct for the brandy."

They had reached the bridle path. Dorian wanted to get on his horse and ride so he wouldn't have to listen to her, but his leg muscles were giving way.

His hair was thick with mire ooze, and the cold slime dribbled down his neck. Thanks to the slime, he stank to high heaven. He was too tired and shaken to care.

He staggered to a boulder and sat down and stared at his sodden trousers while he waited for his respiration to slow and his brain to quiet.

"It would appear there has been a misunderstanding," she said.

He couldn't understand why she wouldn't keep her distance from him when it must be obvious to her by now that he was deranged. It was certainly obvious to him.

He pushed a hank of soggy hair from his eyes and looked up at her. Though she didn't appear as demonlike as she had before, galloping after him, she still looked like a witch. A young witch, with her sharp little nose and chin and narrow, uptilted green eyes-and the hair, the wild ma.s.s of red hair. It wasn't even a normal red but a strange maroon, glinting fire even in the gloom of the approaching storm.

All the same, strange as she was, Dorian couldn't believe he'd actually mistaken this young Englishwoman for one of Satan's handmaidens.

He should not have let himself become so overwrought, he reproached himself. If he had stayed with the two men and argued patiently and rationally...but he hadn't. Instead, he had run away-from temptation, yes, but they would think he'd fled a mere girl-and now they would have no doubt he was a lunatic! Abonville would probably have him examined and certified non compos mentis.

"d.a.m.n me to h.e.l.l," he muttered.

"I don't mean to plague you," she said, "but I cannot work out what happened, exactly. What did they say about me that made you bolt? I have been wracking my brains, but all I could think was that Bertie-"

"I didn't know what to do with him!" he snapped. "The silly sod wants to stay with me-to the tragic b.l.o.o.d.y end-and I'll never get rid of him without resorting to violence." Then they'll lock me away, he added silently.

"I can make him go away," she said. "I'm one of the few people who can actually communicate with him. Is that all?"

"All?" he echoed. "No, that isn't all. I want the lot of you gone. I don't need Bertie about, sobbing the instant my tragic condition is hinted at. I don't need Abonville telling me what's good for me and what I ought to do. I've had a lifetime of that. And most of all, I don't need a wife, d.a.m.n and blast him!"

The demons in his breast cried that a wife was what he most needed, and conjured erotic images he hastily thrust away.

A pucker appeared in her brow. "That is odd. I should not have thought Abonville would misunderstand. His English is excellent. Or have you changed your mind about getting married? I do wish you would explain, my lord. It is very difficult to respond sensibly to a situation when one is so utterly in the dark."

"I did not change my mind," he said, beating back an insane urge to smooth the furrow from her young-too young-brow. "I vaguely remember Abonville's and your grandmother's visit-whenever it was-and his explaining how he and I were cousins about a thousand times removed. That's all I remember, and it's amazing I recall so much, considering I had swilled about a gallon of laudanum shortly before he arrived."

Her expression cleared. "Oh, I do see now. Some individuals become extremely docile under the influence of opiates. You must have amiably agreed with every word they said-and all the while you had no idea what they were talking about."

Thunder grumbled in the distance, and black clouds were ma.s.sing above their heads. She appeared to heed the threatening weather not at all. She only watched him with quiet concentration. The steady green perusal was stirring a dangerous yearning in his breast. He beat that back, too.

"I tried to explain," he said stiffly, "but he refused to listen to me."

"I am not surprised," she said. "He was sure to think the Rawnsley he encountered the first time was relatively sane-because that Rawnsley sensibly agreed with everything Abonville said. Today, when you disagreed, he was bound to ascribe it to a temporary fit of insanity."

"The thought has crossed my mind," he muttered.

"Many people respond to seemingly irrational behavior in the same way," she said. "Instead of listening to what you said, he probably tried to drum rationality into you by repeating his point over and over, as one drums the multiplication tables into children. Even medical experts, who ought to know better, believe this is an 'enlightened' way of dealing with individuals in an agitated state."

She wrinkled her pointy nose. "It is most annoying. No wonder you lost your patience and dashed off."

"That was a mistake, all the same," he said. "I should have stayed and reasoned with him."

"Waste of breath," she said briskly. "Your mental balance is in doubt. The explanation must come from one whose sanity is not doubted. I will explain to him, and he will listen to me."

She paused, looking about her. "The storm is not rushing upon us as quickly as I expected. For once, Providence shows some consideration. I should have hated going back without having the least idea what was wrong. Not that I am altogether happy with the answer. Still, one cannot hold a man to a promise made when he was not properly in his senses."

Bertie had said she wasn't the moping sort. Even so, the faint note of resignation in her voice made Dorian feel guilty. She had saved his life. Though he wasn't at all sure he'd wanted to be saved, he could appreciate the courage and efficiency with which she'd acted. She'd also calmed him. She'd listened. She'd understood.

He looked away, wondering how much of an explanation he owed her and how much he could trust himself to utter.

A jagged branch of fire darted over a distant ridge. The heavens rumbled.

He brought his gaze back to her. "Does it not strike you as...morbid?" he asked. "That I should take a wife, now of all times?"

She shrugged. "I can understand how it might seem so to you. Yet it is not much different than a decrepit old man marrying a young woman, which happens often enough."

It did happen, Dorian knew. Such a marriage meant a few months, perhaps a few years, of catering to a drooling invalid. The reward of a wealthy widowhood and independence more than compensated, evidently.

He was hardly the one to revile a woman for acting out of greed. It wasn't as though he'd ever been a saint.

Moreover, he was aware that some women had remarkable powers of endurance. Was there so much difference, he wondered, between lying with a man who was as good as a corpse and lying with a drunken, l.u.s.ting oaf, insatiable while the need was upon him and soddenly morose afterward?

That was the man he'd been, not so very long ago.

He shuddered-at the past and at what his future held if he yielded to his baser self and took what she offered.

"We had better start back," she said. "You are tired and wet and chilled."

She turned and moved toward her horse.

Dorian rose and followed, relieved that she sought no further explanation. Though he'd already said more than he wanted, he still wanted to tell her more, to explain. But that would mean describing the sordid life that lay behind him and the helpless imbecility that lay ahead. Better to leave it as it was, he told himself. She seemed to accept the situation.