Wizard's Daughter (Sherbrooke Brides 10)

He felt a surge of relief, felt the rage fade a bit. "You do?"

"Of course. Tell me, Nicholas, when all this is resolved, will you journey back to Macau? Are the laws different enough there to enable you to have a wife in England and one in this Portuguese colony?"

He froze. He looked primed for violence, his face now even harder, colder. He said very precisely, "You are my bloody wife. You will remain my bloody wife until the day we die."

"No," she said, her face still, "I am your debt."

She heard him cursing as she walked away from him down the long gallery, vicious curses. She didn't recognize many of the animal parts he used so fluently. She did understand the occasional reference to a woman whose ears he wanted to box.

When Nicholas walked into the master bedchamber late that night, Rosalind wasn't where he'd believed she would be— namely, in bed. He didn't expect her to want to make love to him, but he'd believed she'd be there, possibly pretending sleep, he didn't know, but she'd be there. Perhaps because she feared a ghost's machinations, and his company was bet­ter than none at all.

At dinner, she'd spoken calmly, detailing plans she'd made with Peter and Mrs. McGiver for improvements within the house and work on the grounds. She'd played the piano, and he leaned his head back, closing his eyes to listen. And when she'd added her voice to the songs, he'd sighed with pleasure. When she crashed down on the final chords of a Beethoven sonata, they both looked up to hear applause coming from the corridor outside the drawing room. Peter Pritchard stuck his head in, smiling, pointing to the audience of servants.

She'd played a song for Mrs. McGiver to sing, and that had been very fine indeed. Then all the servants had been en­couraged to sing, and they'd had an impromptu musicale. It had been, he thought, quite nice.

Where the devil are you, Rosalind ?

Yes, she'd been calm whenever she'd spoken to him or looked at him. Nicholas realized finally, after following her up to bed, that he'd thought of more questions, and decided that once they made their way to the cursed center of this maze, he never again wanted to hear another question in his natural life. Ah, but if there was magic in him, maybe nothing in his life would be natural. If he'd had magic in him from as far back as Captain Jared, then why had he been forced to eat roots in Portugal when he'd been a starving twelve-year-old?

As he paced the large bedchamber, he remembered that storm in the Pacific, near the Sea of Japan, when one of his sailors had nearly been swept overboard and Nicholas, through sheer luck—or something else—had managed to loop a rope around the mart's flailing hand, surely an unlikely feat, and haul him upright. The first thing the sailor had done was cross himself a good six times, others of his men as well, and none of them had ever looked at him again in quite the same way. On a very deep level, they'd feared him.

The candlelight flickered.

"Go away," he said.

The light calmed. That ancient old sea dog was ready and willing to keep him company, but not his wife.

He went to the adjoining room door and turned the knob. It was locked. She'd locked a door against him.

He knocked on the door. "Rosalind, let me in. I wish to speak to you."

Nothing.

"Dammit, I'm your husband. You will obey me. You will open this damned door now."

"I know well who you are, my lord. I, however, have nothing more to say to you. Go away. Good night."

His booted foot itched to break down the door. Instead, he walked quickly to the main door off the hallway. It was locked too. He felt like a fool. He stood against the opposite wail, his arms crossed over his chest, staring at the locked door, and finally managed to calm himself. Let her stew. Let her get cold during the night without him to warm her. Let her be fright­ened of all the unknowns all by herself. Curse her.

When he finally fell asleep, alone and naked in that big bed, a heavy dose of fatalism settling into him, he realized what he wanted was to make her angry enough to try to mur­der him. He yearned for violence, violence he could handle, anything but her polite disinterest.

He thought he heard an ancient old voice humming and resolutely ignored it.

At exactly three in the morning, Nicholas sat straight up in bed at a deafening roar. Windows shuddered, the room rocked. Thunder, he thought, heart racing, it was only thun­der. It was odd, though, because it hadn't looked to storm when he'd finally fallen into his bed. Another clap of thun­der shook his had. Suddenly, a jagged sword of lightning struck directly into his bedchamber and he was bathed in light. Only thing was, the light didn't fade. It was as if a daz­zling sun was trapped in his bedchamber. This isn't right, isn't right at all.

He looked toward the windows as he jumped out of bed. And waited, standing by his bed, but there were no more slashes of lightning, no more thunder to rattle the windows and shake the room, but still, the huge bedchamber remained pure white. And he thought, No, this is whiter than sunlight. This is something else entirely, only he didn't have a clue what was happening. The Pale, he thought, this is a message from Rennat.

40

He remained standing beside his bed, breathing hard, won­dering what the devil was going on, trying not to let his imagi­nation run wild and his heart slam out of his chest. Or perhaps—he said, "Are you here, Captain Jared? If this is one of your bizarre performances, stop it at once, do you hear me?"

No sound, nothing at all, just the empty stark white. Dead white, he thought, as dead white as the face of a bandit he'd killed outside of Macau the previous year.

He heard Rosalind scream.

He ran to the adjoining door, kicked his foot into the wood close to the lock, but the door didn't give. He cursed, then rubbed his injured foot. Not broken, thank God. He pounded the door. "Rosalind ! Open the damned door!"

Suddenly, the door swung wide open and he was nearly blinded. The countess's bedchamber looked even whiter than his own vast room, the white light nearly blinding. He could see every corner of the room, every detail of the furnishings and draperies. Even the light layer of dust on the vanity table glittered the same dead white, as if encased in ice.