Wizard's Daughter (Sherbrooke Brides 10)

Of all the ghosts that hovered around Rosalind, the Virgin Bride wasn't among their number. On the other hand, she doubted the Sherbrooke ghost ever would visit her—she had no plans to marry a Sherbrooke and that seemed to be the prerequisite if you weren't of their blood.

Grayson threw down his pen. "When I read Sarimund's sniggering claim, I'll tell you I laughed. I truly thought I would be able to break his code. It's all written with what look like random letters, spaced apart like they're words, only they're not and I can't figure out how to make them into real words. I've spent the past"—he stared over at the or­molu clock on the mantelpiece—"well, since this afternoon trying to figure it out, but I haven't yet succeeded. My brain wants to explode."

Rosalind frowned. "That surprises me since you've al­ways been good at solving puzzles and deciphering codes and such."

"Yes, until now. It's fair to driving me to the edge."

"Does Sarimund use any proper names, or are the names in code as well?"

"Well, he did write one name—Rennat."

Her heart started up a hard drumbeat again. "Rennat?"

He nodded. "Yes, strange name, isn't it?"

Rosalind thought she would expire. "Rennat," she re­peated, her voice a skinny thread of sound.

"It could be a dog, really, but it makes sense to me that if

Sarimund went to the trouble of not encoding the name, it must be a man, an important man."

"Grayson, my dream"—Rosalindswallowed—"that is the name of the old man who came to me in my dream. Rennat, the Titled Wizard of the East—that's who he said he was."

Grayson stared up at her, then threw his nib pen at her. She snagged it right out of the air with her right hand. She always did. It had been a game between them for many years. No spattering ink since the nib was dry. Grayson said, "I can usually count on you for a better jest, Rosalind. Ren­nat came to you in a dream?—that isn't worthy of you. Come now, don't try to make me any more befuddled than I already am."

She opened her mouth to tell him it was no jest, but he'd already turned away, staring back down at the book. "May I look at it?"

He shoved the book over to her. "I'm so bloody tired my mind's decided you're my mother."

"In that case, I could smack you and you'd have to take

it."

Grayson rose and stretched, waved her to his chair. Ros­alind sat down and slowly drew the book toward her. She looked down at the small, spidery handwriting, the faded black ink still quite legible. She lightly touched the pages. "Sarimund never had it printed. So twenty copies were hand-copied?"

"That's what Nicholas said. I don't know. Mr. Oakby at Oxford never said. I don't think he knew either."

Rosalind looked down at the page and her heart nearly stopped. Grayson was wrong. It wasn't a difficult code at all. She reached out and touched her hand to his arm. "Grayson, it's easy. I can read it."

8

Grayson was so startled he spurted out the tea he'd just gulped down, and coughed. "No," he said, staring at her, "that's not possible. Stop it, Rosalind."

"Listen to me, for whatever reason, I can indeed read it. And I did dream of this old man Rennat, it wasn't a jest. I can tell you what he looks like. He spoke to me. Maybe that's why I can read this. It's not in old stilted English, either—it's in modern English. I don't know, maybe he's al­lowing me to read it easily."

Grayson carefully set down his teacup. He looked bewil­dered. "No, that's not possible, Rosalind."

"It's easy, I tell you. All you have to do is switch the third letter of each word to the front, or, if the third letter happens to be a vowel, then it goes to the end or near the end of the word. All vowels represent the seventh, thirteenth, nine­teenth, twentieth, or twenty-fifth letters of the alphabet, and those consonants represent the vowels. All the u's are point­ers to those words that are the subject—it's perfectly clear,

Grayson, in lovely, clear English, not stilted and no strange words from the sixteenth century."

"Yes, yes, you move consonants about and the vowels fail into place and—" He stared at her, shook his head. "Damna­tion, what you said makes no sense at all, it's all nonsense. Besides, if it did make sense, if that was the key, it would take hours to rearrange all those bloody letters."

He took the book from her and saw his hands were shak­ing. Dear God, how he hated this. He looked down at the scrambled letters and heaved a huge sigh. What had she said about the consonants being vowels—and the u's were what? Pointers? "No, you must be tired too, Rosalind. There's no sense to be made of this."

"Bloody hell, you stubborn jackass, it is easy! Be quiet now and listen." She read slowly: "A river slices like a sharp blade through the Vale of Augur, narrow and deep and treacherous—"

Grayson jerked the book from her hands and scanned the page. "You made that up. I don't like you teasing me like this. This dream about Rennat, what you're pretending to read, no one could decipher that code so quickly. You should be writing the ghost novels, not I."