Midsummer Night (7 page)

“I mean to help him to shed them all,” I told her stoutly.

She smiled, almost pleasantly. “Then you have much to learn yet about men. If you can help him at all, you will have done more than anyone else.”

She paused and I ventured a question. “Did anything I said cause you to do this? For Brisbane, I mean.”

The smile broadened. “It was your brother, the one called Plum. He came with Mr. Benedick from the Home Farm to find us on the London road. They came with a pig and the chickens and a purse of gold to sweeten their proposition.”

I gaped at her. “Of all the mercenary—”

She held up a hand. “I took the pig and the chicken, and yes, the money, too. It is summer now, but winter comes and we will be glad of the gold when it does. But when they found us on the road, we were not heading to London. We were on our way back here.”

I was suffused with a quiet joy. “You were coming back?”

“Yes,” she said, her manner grudging. “Perhaps some of what you said is true. Perhaps just for today I can think kindly on him as my nephew and wish him well.” She broke off, and when she spoke again, it was with a fresh briskness. “It is time for the past to be the past,” she said, rising and dusting off her hands. “It is time to look to the east. A new day comes for all of us. And yesterday must be buried with the dead.”

As bridal talks go, it was not the most uplifting, but I was grateful to see Marigold unbending in her resentments. They had not made full peace with each other, but he later thanked her and she accepted his kiss. She even went so far as to sketch a brief gesture of blessing over us before we darted through a gap in the hedge and ran away.

I held Brisbane’s hand tightly. “This is appallingly rude, you know. We are supposed to let them send us off.”

“Half of them are too tipsy to stand and the rest are plotting to throw me in the river fully dressed. Do you really want to spend your wedding night helping me wring out my favourite coat?” he asked.

“Brisbane?”

“Yes, my love?”

“Run faster.”

He paused. “Hear that?”

We stood for the space of a heartbeat before I heard it, the bright unmistakable call of the cuckoo.

“This is the day the cuckoo changes his song,” my husband said. “Gypsies say if you run and count the cuckoo’s cries, you will add one year to your life for each cry you hear.”

Together we clasped hands and ran, counting cuckoo songs and laughing as the last of the golden rays of the midday sun fell gently over the land.

Chapter Seven

Get thee a good husband, and use him as he uses thee.

—
All’s Well That Ends Well
, I.i.221

H
e led me to the Rookery, the little house my father had given me. It belonged to the estate but had been sorely neglected until Father had it repaired and refurbished for my enjoyment. Aquinas had opened it up, airing the house and unshrouding the furniture from the dust sheets, and maids had dusted from beams to polished floors, spreading fresh linen upon the wide four-poster bed. The windows had been thrown open to the summer breezes, and as Brisbane pressed me down onto the bed, I smelled the roses at the casement surrendering their perfume at the end of the long day. He put his hands through my hair and the lavender wreath, broken to bits by the exertions of dancing, scattered like so much confetti across the sheets. What followed...well, there are words to describe such a thing, but they are known only to poets. I believed I loved him before that night; I believed I understood what passes between a man and a woman before that night. I believed I knew all there was of intimacy and pleasure and passion and perfect satisfaction.

I was wrong. I went into the room the woman I had always been, but I emerged the next day exactly as Marigold had described—a new creation. I mourned the loss of the beautiful pale violet corset Brisbane had destroyed in his haste, but it was the only casualty of his loss of control, and as I stared mournfully at the shreds of French lace, I marvelled that I had driven him to take it apart with his bare hands. There was power in him, but gentleness as well, and he had given me both.

We spent a few days in seclusion at the Rookery before embarking upon a wedding journey that saw us on a slow tour of the Mediterranean, tarrying wherever we fancied along the way. The summer was hot, but the Mediterranean was deliciously comfortable in the warmth of late October and a sharp breeze rolled off the coast of Africa, carrying with it the scent of spices and antique lands. We were utterly relaxed as the ship drew into the port of Alexandria, the last leg of our honeymoon. I was eager to climb a pyramid and sail the Nile, and the sights and sounds of that first moment on African soil remain with me still. The pedlars, shouting their wares of silks and fruit and donkey rides; the muezzins calling the faithful to prayer, the children laughing and the occasional sharp chatter of a monkey. Alexandria was teeming, tiny sailboats darting dangerously near the great steamships laden with cargo and passengers bound for strange lands.

While Brisbane was busy making arrangements with a porter, I stood upon the deck watching one of the little sailboats as it tacked between the ships, carrying a tardy passenger to the mouth of the harbour where a ship stood waiting. The sailboat slowed, one of the sails snarled about the mast, and one of the young sailors scampered up to work it free. The woman passenger tipped her head back to watch him. Just then, a breeze caught her hat, lifting it from her head. She made a grab for it, laughing, and as she caught it, her eyes locked with mine. Even at a distance, I saw them widen, and then she rose, carefully, as the small craft rocked in the wake of the bigger ships. She dropped a neat curtsey and I inclined my head. She replaced her hat just as the sailor freed the tangled sail. The wind caught it and the little boat seemed to rise up then roll forward, borne aloft on the wind. The tiny figure in the boat turned once, and only once, waving her hand to me in farewell.

“Godspeed, Charlotte King,” I thought.

Brisbane, his business with the porter concluded, turned to me with a sigh. “A fine enquiry agent I shall be if my wife keeps letting all of my best catches slip through her fingers.”

I blinked. “You knew I let Charlotte go?”

He gave me a pained look. “I realise circumstances have not always shown me at my best, but I am a rather good enquiry agent, Julia. It is only in cases where you are involved that I seem to founder.”

“You mean where I interfere.”

“It is our honeymoon,” he said smoothly. “I didn’t like to be rude.”

His tone was just a trifle too casual.

“I should not have let her go without telling you. When did you know?”

“When you allowed her to abduct you.”

I gaped at him. “You knew I allowed it?”

He rolled his eyes. “Julia, you have shown the tenacity of a bulldog upon more than one occasion as well as an appalling ability to elude serious harm. If Charlotte King abducted you, it was only because you permitted it.”

I considered this. “That might be the nicest thing you have ever said to me.”

“Do not accustom yourself to such gallantries,” he warned me. “I still have the darkest doubts about involving you in my work.”

I smiled blandly. That was an issue for another time. “Why didn’t you tell me you knew? You could have stopped her escape.”

“And answer to you for it on our wedding day? Thank you, but I think not. I thought it best to go along with whatever plan you had hatched for her escape and be done with it. And it seems entirely mad, but I suddenly wanted her to have it. I actually found myself cheering for Charlotte King. Not many people best me, you know. I wanted her to have a sporting chance.”

I went onto my tiptoes and kissed him. Behind us a few of the other passengers clucked their disapproval, but I ignored them.

He drew back with an approving smile, his gaze lingering on my mouth. “Not that I object in the slightest, but what occasioned that very public display of marital affection?”

“For being the man I always knew you were.”

I slipped my arm through his and we made our way down the gangplank and into the warm golden sunshine of Egypt. We had planned a leisurely tour and our first Christmas would be spent just the two of us, with no one to think of but ourselves, least of all my family.

At least, that was the plan until Portia and Plum showed up and demanded we accompany them to India.
4
But that is a tale for another time.

* * * * *

4  
Dark Road to Darjeeling

ISBN-13: 9781459254879

MIDSUMMER NIGHT

Copyright © 2013 by Deanna Raybourn

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