The Courtship (Sherbrooke Brides 5)

Life had seen him coming around the corner and smacked him between the eyes.

Whatever had happened between them, repeatedly, and even more repeatedly after that, he was prepared to face head-on. He just couldn’t face it with her anywhere in the vicinity. Seeing her, listening to her talk, looking at her, any of it, all of it, turned him into a cock-hard fellow with no thought of anything at all but being inside her and hearing her yell out his name when she clenched and shuddered beneath him. Ah, the pleasure, that gut-deep, nearly painful pleasure. He had promised her that next time she could be on top. He nearly swallowed his tongue at that thought and the incredible image it brought clear to his mind.

After Lord Prith and Flock had left for their evening walk, Flock bemoaning his fate—namely a future without Teeny being his wife—all the while Lord Prith was walking out the front door beside him, Lord Beecham said to a very silent Helen, “I am going back to London tomorrow. I need to go to the British Museum. I need to speak to scholars I know there. I am at a standstill with the scroll.”

She didn’t like it, he could see that plainly, but what didn’t she like, specifically? Him leaving her? She wanted him with her? He began to glow.

“I don’t want to let the scroll out of my sight,” she said, and his innards tightened alarmingly. The damned scroll. He stopped glowing.

“I will make a copy of it,” he said, all clipped and cold, as he rose.

“You are my partner. I don’t want to let you out of my sight either.”

Partner, she said, not the man she’d willingly lusted with nine times in three days. He thought in that moment that he would simply burst with rage. He was on her in an instant, his hands hard around her upper arms and he was shaking her. Not that he could shake her very much because she was nearly as tall as he was, and strong. But she didn’t retaliate, just stood there and let him shake to his heart’s content.

“You don’t trust me, is that it?”

“I don’t know you all that well.”

“Damn you,” he said, “you have made love with me nine times in three days.” It felt excellent to just say it, yell it actually, right in her face. “You don’t know me? Jesus, Helen, you know me all the way to my toes. Yes, I did manage to get my boots off before I fell on you this afternoon. You think I would steal this wretched scroll and go haring off on my own? Steal from you?”

“I know that you are a passionate man. In that, you are true to your reputation. As a partner you have been superbly satisfactory to date.”

“But?”

She just shook her head. “It is so very important to me, Lord Beecham.”

More important than I am? he wanted to ask, but he managed to keep his mouth shut. He ground his teeth and left her then, without a backward glance, and went to her study. He spent the next hour carefully copying the leather scroll. He oiled it again, smoothing down the cracked humps in the leather, then gently laid the cheesecloth on it once more. When he came out of the study, Helen was on the third step of the staircase.

“Do you wish me to take this copy or not?”

Very slowly, she nodded.

Lord Beecham left Shugborough Hall at six o’clock the next morning, damp fog enclosing everything in filmy gray, his luggage and his valet Nettle with him.

16

“I HEARD YOU AND REVEREND Mathers had your heads together,” Reverend Older said to Lord Beecham two weeks later when he collared him on St. James Street just beneath the bow window of White’s. He leaned close, looked around furtively to ensure that no one could overhear them, then loosed his hot, excited breath in Lord Beecham’s face.

Lord Beecham raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t used to a furtive Reverend Older. He felt excitement rippling through the man. What was going on here?

“Don’t fret yourself, my boy. Old Clothhead Mathers told me all about this find of yours—an ancient leather scroll written in Pahlavi that speaks of a very old magic. This is a wondrous thing.”

Naturally, Lord Beecham thought, he and Reverend Mathers had agreed to keep all of this between them. He had believed the man would hold silent—indeed, Reverend Mathers had sworn himself to silence because, as he had told Lord Beecham, “this incredible scroll, my lord, it makes up for all the miserable years of mediocrity I have known. To be a part of this, ah, it will give all of us proud modern men amazing insights upon the ancient world. I thank you with all my heart. No, sir, no one will ever learn of this from me.”

Lord Beecham had known Reverend Mathers since his Oxford days. An honorable man, a scholar, a man more attuned to the mysterious ancient past than to a present he found unimaginative and trivial. Lord Beecham had been a fool, and he hated the bone-deep feeling of betrayal. Because he was not a man to spill his guts at the first attack, or even the second, for that matter, his expression remained impassive, his eyebrow elevated. He looked faintly annoyed. But his heart was pounding, slow, deep strokes.

Reverend Older leaned forward, patted Lord Beecham’s sleeve and dropped his voice to a near whisper, “Now, don’t you worry, my lord. None of this will go beyond me, Reverend Mathers, and his brother. You see, Reverend Mathers didn’t willingly tell Old Clothhead, no; it seems that my friend talks in his sleep whenever he is unduly excited or worried about something. Old Clothhead said his brother spoke of strange and magical things and this ancient old scroll written in Pahlavi that would tell all about it. Of course, Reverend Mathers would have brought you to me eventually. I am renowned for my knowledge of old myths that have a grain of truth to them. I searched you out, my boy. I am here. You may now ask for my assistance.” Reverend Older finally pulled away a good six inches from Lord Beecham’s ear and beamed at him.

“Yes, I propose that we be partners, my lord,” he continued. “I can assist you in ways you never dreamed possible. We will explore all those possibilities together. Now, do tell me all about it.”

The man talked in his damned sleep. Lord Beecham wanted to laugh at the vagaries of fate, but his uppermost reaction was vast relief that Reverend Mathers had not intentionally betrayed him. And apparently he had not said all that much specific in his sleep, thank God, which was why Reverend Older was here, now, trying to whisper in his ear. He smiled down at Reverend Older and said pleasantly, “No. There is nothing to tell. This is all a fabrication by Old Clothhead. You should not encourage him to drink so much brandy.”

Lord Beecham had seldom if ever seen a frown on Reverend Older’s face. There was one now, deepening the lines alongside his mouth. “Come, my boy, you don’t wish to be the coy one here.”

Yes, now he could hear the frustration, the burgeoning anger.

“I can help you. I can do incredible things for you. Now, where did you come across the scroll? Have you managed to translate all of it yet? Does it give exact details about any sorts of magical instruments or objects?”