"Well, no, not really. But you are very big, Nicholas, and I'm not. Surely the men in all those pictures, as bountifully as they were portrayed, they still aren't built like you are."
I 'm deformed?
"Still, to be fair, despite your size, it wasn't really so very bad after a while." She leaned up and kissed him, a shy kiss, on his mouth. And fatigue suddenly fled. He wanted to make love to her all over again, right this instant, but he didn't move. It was difficult being sensitive to the fact that she must be sore. He nibbled on her chin, whispered in her mouth, "Thank you for explaining everything so clearly to me."
"I hope your grandfather isn't standing in the corner watching us."
He only smiled and kissed her again, on her mouth, a bit swollen, he could feel it, and so he licked her bottom lip. "You're my wife now, legally now."
"And you're now my husband, legally now."
"Ah, I'm much more than that, Rosalind." The words spilled out of him. "I'm the man who sought you out in London, the man who knew who you were the moment he saw you, even before he saw you, the man who must figure out what—" He broke off, cursed himself along with the goat's boot, then realized it didn't matter. Rosalind was asleep. He eased away from her to lie on his side beside her. He stroked her hair, easing out the tangles, picturing her head thrashing on the pillow when she'd fallen headfirst into her first orgasm, not a timid little orgasm, but a loud, ankle-thrumming, bone-melting orgasm. He gently pressed the wild curls behind her ear. "Yes," he whispered against her temple, "you're now legally my wife."
He spooned her, his hand on her belly, and kissed the nape of her neck. She tasted like salty jasmine.
He'd listened to men over the years talk about their mistresses and their wives. The biggest difference, they'd say and laugh, was that a wife followed you to your grave, or placed you in it, whereas a mistress perforce caressed whatever it was you instructed her to caress, and hopefully she would mourn your death perhaps a week before finding a new protector.
Wives, the talk usually continued, were to be taken quickly, without fuss and candlelight, in hushed darkness, a husband fast, done, and gone, all modesty preserved. Whereas a mistress, she was fashioned to enjoy a man, to enjoy his slavering all over her.
He'd always believed the men idiots.
Tonight, he'd proven it. He imagined that Ryder Sherbrooke would agree with him wholeheartedly.
He wondered what it would be like to have Rosalind take him into her mouth. He nearly shuddered himself off the bed.
He fell asleep with her scent in his nostrils, the taste of her on his mouth.
He didn't love her, couldn't love her, for a man couldn't love a debt. Could he?
33
Nicholas handed her the ancient leather book. "Here is my grandfather's copy of the Rules of the Pale. As you can see from the meager number of pages, it appears only to be an extract."
"Perhaps this is something of an introduction that will have explanations." But her voice didn't hold out much hope.
Rosalind sat in his grandfather's chair by the fireplace. The seat was w
arm even through her petticoats and her gown, and that made her wonder, but since there came no moans or groans when she'd sat down, she would deal with the possibility of sitting on a spirit. Hopefully the old earl was prowling elsewhere this morning, perhaps still hovering about in his former gloomy bedchamber, or standing on the other side of the room, watching her in his chair.
She let the skinny volume fall open at random. It was in the same code, she recognized it, and she could read it as easily as the other. She read:
The wizards and witches who reside on Mount Olyvan are an unscrupulous lot, endlessly contentious and vain. They hurl spells and curses at each other, so vicious the heavens hiss.
I realized at last that they could not leave Mount Olyvan, perhaps they could not even step off of Blood Rock, this cold and grim fortress that seems older than the Pale itself. Not one of the residents seemed to know where the fortress name came from, or the fortress itself, for that matter. I asked Be-lenus and he said vaguely, "Ah, we are from before time decided to travel forward." What a typical wizard answer, I thought, and wanted to kick him.
Another time I asked Belenus how old he was and he ran large fingers through his thick red beard, showed me his white teeth, and said finally, "Years are a meaningless measure created by men who have to count them to ensure they get their fair share, which men never do because to kill each other fulfills them more than continued life." On this, I fancied he had a point.
I asked Latobius, the Celtic god of mountains and sky, if he was really a god, if he was immortal, and he raised his hand and a flame speared out from the tip of his finger and exploded an exquisite glass sculpture across the vast chamber. From King Agamemnon's palace in Mycenae, someone had told me. I remember the shards flew outward, cascades of vibrant color.
And I thought, You are a wizard, not a god, and I pointed my finger and hurled a spear of flame at a sconce on the stone wall. To tell the truth, it relieved me to see it burst apart. We both stood there watching the heavy shards hit the marble floor and scatter. He said nothing. It was difficult, but I didn't either.
And Epona? My son's mother? I never saw her again after the sixth night I spent in her white bed. What are these beings?
I knew there were servants, but they were only flashes of shadow and light, as if they moved about in a slightly different time and place, out of phase, like a moon hovering just outside your vision. They certainly kept the fortress clean, its inhabitants well garbed, but they were separate from the witches and wizards, separate from me as well. Did they take their direction from something outside the fortress? Perhaps they were guards, or bodyguards. There were cooks too because the meals were splendid.
"Where are the servants?" I once asked Epona. She wore only white, her gowns always spotless. Her bedchamber was also completely white, it seemed to me the air was white around her. "We call them only when we need them," she told me, but that didn't sound right at all. "So they are not really here then? Where do they go? Where do they come from?" But she only shook her head, smoothing one white hand through my hair, and began kissing down my belly. And I wondered, before my brain became nothing more than empty space between my ears. Do you have any idea who or what these creatures are who serve you?
Rosalind raised her face. "Nicholas, this book isn't an extract from the other, it's completely different."