The Heiress Bride (37 page)

He laughed aloud now, and felt himself coming out of her. He shut his mouth. He didn't want to leave her. Just thinking of himself in her, just feeling the softness of her, the heat of her, he swelled and eased more deeply.

“No, that was your nonsensical idea. Don't rewrite the past, Joan. I know our first time—”

“First time! You ravaged me three times!”

“Very well. It wasn't well done of me and I did apologize to you if you'll recall. Also, if your memory wasn't completely burned out in your recent pleasure storm, I told you that it wouldn't ever hurt again, but you refused to believe me. Now you know that I was telling you the truth. I told you this morning that men are useful creatures. We're good for protection—if you allow us to protect you—and we're useful at giving you pleasure. Now that you know all about pleasure, why then, should you like to do it again?”

She looked up at him. She looked ready to spit in his face. Her blue eyes were narrowed to slits. She said, “All right.”

He loved her slowly and it lasted longer than three minutes this time, which pleased him. When she twisted and moaned, he closed his eyes against the soul-deep pleasure of it and let his own release take him.

“Admit it, Colin, you have been laughing at me, haven't you?” she said later as she shifted herself to her side.

“A bit, perhaps. Up my sleeve, for the most part. You were so sincere, so convinced that my body
couldn't possibly fit with yours. Yes, it was amusing, when it wasn't painful. You see, I wanted you very much. Ah, perhaps I want you again. What do you think? No, wait, it will be the infamous three times again. Think carefully before you answer, Joan.”

“All right,” she said immediately, and arched up to kiss him.

 

They were late to dinner. They were more than late. Philpot and Rory were serving blueberry-and-currant tarts when they arrived. Philip and Dahling had already eaten and been duly removed by Dulcie back to the nursery.

Serena, the brothers, and the wives were there. Aunt Arleth was in her room and would remain there until her brother sent a carriage to fetch her home.

Douglas raised an eyebrow but kept his mouth shut. Sinjun wondered at his discretion until she saw his mouth was full with tart.

Ryder's mouth was full only of wickedness. He sat back in his chair, his hands clasped over his lean belly. His blue eyes gleamed with devilment. “Sinjun, I think you have a look on your pretty face that makes me want to kill Colin. You're my baby sister. You have no right to look that way, no right to do what you've quite obviously done with great abandon.”

“Be quiet,” Sophie said, and stuck the tines of her fork into the back of his hand.

“It's true,” Douglas said, once he'd swallowed the tart, and prepared to launch his own salvo.

“Don't you get into it,” Alex said. “She's a married lady. She's no longer ten years old.”

“That's a fact,” Colin said, grinning at his new relatives, kissed his wife's nose, and seated her in
the countess's chair. “Actually that's two facts.”

He strode to the head of the table, eased himself down, raised his wineglass, and said, “A toast. To my wife, a beautiful, quite challenging lady who's been mired in female confusion and wrong thinking to the point that—”

“Colin! You will be quiet!” Sinjun heaved her soup spoon at him. It fell short since the table was twelve feet long, clattering against a vase of daffodils.

Philpot cleared his throat loudly but no one paid him any heed.

Serena sighed, looked from Colin to Sinjun, and said, “Colin never looked at Fiona or at me like that. It's not just a man's lust he's taken care of, no, it's something beyond that. He looks like a cat who's eaten more cream than he deserves. I think he's very selfish. I hope he vomits up all that cream. I think you've quite ruined him, Joan. Philpot, would you please give me some tarts?”

Philpot, poker-faced, gently placed the plate of tarts in front of her.

“I'm relieved he's beyond lust now,” Ryder said in great good humor to his sister. “You have a witches' brew, little sister? Perhaps you've been sharing that recipe with Sophie here? She is so greedy, so without pity for me, that it requires all my nobility to remain bravely standing in the face of her demands. Regard a man who's striving with all his might to provide her with another child. She won't leave me alone. She's after me constantly. I am safe from her only at the dinner table.”

“Surely she will stab you again if you don't close your mouth,” Alex said. “I just hope, Sophie, that when you're with child again, you will turn green and lose your breakfast just once.”

“Oh no,” Sophie said. “Not that, never that.
Besides, I'm much too nice a person to have that happen. I think it's your husband, Alex. It's he who makes you sick.”

All three wives were laughing.

Douglas was frowning at his sister-in-law.

Ryder puffed out his chest. “No, Sophie will never know a day's illness. I will simply forbid her to.”

Alex just shook her head back and forth and said to Sophie, “Sometimes I forget what they're like. When I'm reminded, why, I realize that life is more than sweet, it's delicious. It's even better than those blueberry-and-currant tarts Douglas is gobbling down.”

“Now that you've spoken the pure truth,” Douglas said, “I beg you not to run out of here toward the basin Philpot set in the entrance hall.”

“I would that we shift the subject a bit,” Sinjun said.

“Yes,” Ryder said, “now that Douglas and I see that you're pleased with this man, Sinjun, we will move on to other matters. Douglas and I have given this situation a good deal of thought, Colin. It seems to us that the person who told Robert MacPherson that you'd killed his sister is quite likely the same person who killed her himself.”

“Or
her
self,” Alex said.

“True. But why would anyone want Fiona dead?” Sinjun asked. “And to have Colin there, unconscious by the edge of the cliff, all ready to blame because he couldn't remember anything. It was a carefully thought-out plan. Serena, do you know of anyone who hated your sister that much? Someone who knew enough about potions and such to erase Colin's memory?”

Serena looked up from her tart, smiled vaguely at Sinjun, and said in her soft voice, “Fiona was a faithless bitch. I quite hated her myself. I also know
enough about the effects of opium and henbane and the maella plant. I could have done it quite easily.”

“Oh.”

“Let's go another step,” Douglas said. “Serena, who hated Colin?”

“His father. His brother. Aunt Arleth. Toward the end, Fiona hated him because she was so jealous of him and he didn't love her. She was even jealous of me, but I never touched you then, Colin. I was very careful.”

Colin went very still. He slowly lowered his fork back onto his plate. He said mildly, belying the pain Sinjun knew he must feel at Serena's words, “My father didn't hate me, Serena. He merely had no use for me. My brother was the future laird. I wasn't important. I understood that as much as I realized it wasn't right or fair, as much as it hurt me. It would be like Joan and me having a son and disregarding him because Philip is the firstborn.

“As for my brother, why, Malcolm had no reason to hate me, either. He had everything. If there was any hate to be festered, why, I should be the one brimming with it. As for Aunt Arleth, she loved my father and hated her sister, my mother. She wanted my father to marry her after my mother died, but he didn't. It's true she dislikes me amazingly and believed my brother was a prince among men, but I doubt even she understands why. It was as if she feared me, perhaps, because I was also a son, a possible future earl.”

“I don't hate you, Colin.”

“Thank you, Serena. I truly don't know how Fiona felt about me before she died. I pray she didn't hate me. I never wished her ill.”

“I would never hate you, Colin, never. I only wish I had been the heiress. Then you wouldn't have had
to go to London and marry her.”

“Ah, but I did and there's an end to it. And you, my dear, will go to Edinburgh to live with your father. You will go to parties and balls. You will meet many nice men. It is for the best, Serena.”

“All adults say that when they wish to justify what they're doing to someone else.”

“You're an adult,” Sinjun said. “Surely you don't wish to remain here at Vere Castle.”

“No, you're right. Since Colin won't make love to me now, I might as well leave.” With those words, she rose from her chair, not waiting for Rory to assist her, and, oblivious of the stunned silence, wafted her way from the room.

“You have very odd relatives, Colin,” Douglas said.

“What about your mother, Douglas, and how she treats me?”

“All right, Alex. Most families have strange members,” Douglas said, grinning at his wife. “Serena . . . I don't know, Colin. She seems fey, if you know what I mean. Not daft, not really, just fey.”

“Yes, as if both her feet weren't quite planted firmly on the grass. She's always fancied the notion that she was a witch, and she's dabbled with her plants for many years now.”

“But you don't believe she would kill her own sister. And drug you so you would take the blame?”

“No, I don't, Joan. But as Douglas says, Serena is odd. She always has been. Fiona adored her though, insisted that she live here with us, though I wasn't overly pleased about it.”

“Did she try to kiss you in front of her sister?”

“No, Alex, she didn't. That began after her sister died. When I brought Joan back, she tried to waylay me behind every door.”

“It would be nice to have some clarity here,” Douglas said.

“Perhaps,” Sinjun said, “we should call Dahling. She has opinions on everything and everyone.”

“Joan,” Colin said suddenly, frowning down the table at her, “you haven't eaten and it doesn't please me. I must insist that you regain your strength. Philpot, please serve her ladyship a noble plate.”

At that, both brothers and both wives looked at each other, then burst into merry laughter. Colin blinked; then, to Sinjun's surprised delight, he flushed, again.

 

Colin, a celibate for too many weeks, had no difficulty in pleasing his wife yet another time before they slept. And Sinjun, laboring under misapprehensions for too many weeks and delighted with her newfound knowledge, was nothing loath.

They both slept deeply until suddenly, without warning, Sinjun was instantly awake, her eyes wide open to the darkness of their bedchamber.

There, shimmering in a soft light with her brocade gown weighted down with dozens and dozens of glistening pale cream pearls, was Pearlin' Jane, and she was upset, Sinjun knew it, deep down.

“Quickly, Aunt Arleth's room!”

The words were loud in Sinjun's mind, so loud she couldn't believe that Colin hadn't come roaring awake.

Then Pearlin' Jane was gone, vanished from one instant to the next. Not like the Virgin Bride, who gently eased out of view, slowly moving away until the shadows and she became one. No, Pearlin' Jane was there and then she wasn't.

Sinjun shook Colin even as she threw back the covers.

“Colin!” she shrieked at him as she pulled her discarded nightgown over her head.

He was awake and confused, but her urgency shook him. “What, Joan? What's the matter?”

“Hurry, it's Aunt Arleth!”

Sinjun ran from the bedchamber, not bothering with a candle. There was no time.

She shouted as she passed by each brother's door but she didn't slow.

When she reached Aunt Arleth's room, she flung open the door. She stopped on the spot, frozen with horror. There was Aunt Arleth hanging from a rope fastened to the chandelier in the ceiling, her feet dangling at least a foot from the floor.

“No!”

“Oh God.”

It was Colin, and he shoved her aside as he ran into the bedchamber. Quickly, he grasped Aunt Arleth's legs to push her up, relieving the pressure of the rope around her neck.

Within moments, Douglas, Ryder, Sophie, and Alex were crowding into the room.

Colin held her firmly against him, yelling over his shoulder, “Quickly, Douglas, Ryder, cut that damned rope. Perhaps we're not too late.”

There was no knife to be found, so Douglas stood on a chair so he could reach the knot at the base of the chandelier. It took him several moments, moments that stretched longer than eternity, to untie the knot. Slowly, Colin eased Aunt Arleth down into his arms and carried her to her bed. He gently untied the knot about her throat and pulled it away.

He laid his fingers to the pulse in her throat. He slapped her face several times. He rubbed her arms, her legs, slapped her again, shook her. But there was nothing.

“She's dead,” he said finally, straightening. “Dear God, she's dead.”