The Courtship Page 6

  She rose very slowly to stand over him, her hands on her hips. “There was no chasing. You weren’t doing anything at all.”

  “Psychological discipline. I would have acted when I felt it was appropriate. I am much better at this form of discipline than you are, Miss Mayberry. I would never take the chance of killing my prey, as you just tried to do. A mathematician could have told you that the weight of such a big girl hurtling through the air would flatten most poor mortals, rendering them beyond earthly cares. Behold me. Even I am nearly expired, and I am a very large male mortal.”

  “You are no such thing. I mean, you are large, but you are not nearly dead. You are whining, Lord Beecham. It is not appealing.”

  He sighed. “I fear you are right. The next time you choose to do the chasing, however, I would ask that you consider something along a more intellectual, rather than physical, approach.”

  “I didn’t have time to think of anything else. You see, my father informed me over breakfast this morning—yes, the dining room still reeks of smoke—that he wishes to return home next week.”

  “Ah, then, that certainly changes things. That forces my hand.” He rose, dusted himself off, and straightened her hat, tucking more hair beneath it. Three small grapes decorating her bonnet had come untwisted and were hanging by the side of her cheek. He gently pulled them off and slipped them into his jacket pocket. “Very well, Miss Mayberry, would you like me to bed you and teach you a bit about my sort of discipline before you hark back to the country to all your potbellied squires and all the various and sundry short men who swoon at the sight of you?”

  Her mare lightly pushed her nose against her back. Helen laughed, turned, and patted her. “It’s all right, Eleanor, he is just being outrageous and intriguing me. I would be disappointed with anything less.” With those words, she turned back to him. “Lord Beecham, I don’t want you for a lover.”

  A dark eyebrow shot up a good inch. “I beg your pardon, Miss Mayberry? You wanted to meet me, you threw yourself at me; your ease with men and all their aberrations is remarkable, at least for a woman. Of course, you are rather long in the tooth, so you have had time to hone your skills. If you don’t want me for a lover, then what do you want me for?”

  “I want you for a partner.”

  6

  NOW THIS WAS A KICKER. A woman’s partner? He couldn’t imagine such a thing. “How very odd. A partner, you said, Miss Mayberry, not a lover? Did you happen to rattle your brains when you crashed yourself into me?”

  “Not at all. I have been thinking about this since the first time Alexandra Sherbrooke mentioned your name. I thought, a man with such a demanding sort of life must be quite excellent at devising strategies and organizing details and proper plans so he does not ever find himself at the end when he should be in the middle. You must perform continually at the most rigorously high standards to keep yourself in business, so to speak.”

  “You won’t accept that I am simply quite gifted?”

  “Oh, yes, there is no doubt in my mind about that. I daresay it’s a talent that most men would barter all their earthly belongings to have in a quite small measure. You have talent aplenty, Lord Beecham. But don’t you see? Your gift, your talent, is only the beginning. You must have all the other attributes as well to keep your reputation at such a high level.”

  “Let me see if I have got this correct. You want me to be your partner because I am a fine strategist, I can organize details well, and I always perform at a high level. Does that cover it?”

  “Very nearly.”

  “I assume you are referring to my performance with the fairer sex?”

  “Naturally. But what’s most important, Lord Beecham, is that you set your sights on a goal and you won’t give up until you have attained it. I am right about that, aren’t I?”

  “There is no way you could know that,” he said slowly, staring her straight in the eye since he was only two inches taller than she. He suddenly felt as if he were walking down the street, stark naked, holding an umbrella over his head. Everyone was pointing at him. Everyone knew exactly who and what he was—and what he was was decidedly strange. “That is ridiculous. You are merely guessing.”

  “Well, you see, I met your Mr. Blunder two days ago. No, don’t go home and thrash him. Mr. Blunder holds you in such high esteem it nearly made my stomach cramp. His worship of you positively spews from his mouth. All he needs is a listener. He admires you vastly.”

  “The damned man wants to work me to death.”

  “He told me it was amazing what you could grasp with only the most scant of explanations.”

  “I am beginning to feel ill myself.”

  “He said when you set your sights on something, normally—in his experience at least—it was a lady. But if it wasn’t a lady, then it could be a problem you wished to solve, a situation you wished to resolve, two enemies you wished to bring together to become friends, a political compromise to keep two sides together, whatever. He said you never faltered, never settled for half measures or defeat. Mr. Blunder believes you can do just about anything, my lord.”

  “Ah, I see now how you so easily pried him open. You took him to Gunther’s, didn’t you?”

  “Why, yes, his favorite ice is raspberry. I saw him standing there, in front of Gunther’s, with the look of a man who would give his last guinea for just one lick. He was very easy, truth be told. He kept eating and talking. And I kept ordering more ices for him and listening. Perhaps I ate an ice or two myself.”

  “When I came riding today,” he said slowly, looking around at the half dozen people strolling through the park around them, “I hadn’t expected any of this. Even Reverend Older, a delicious old eccentric, doesn’t compare to you. I am not used to surprises of this sort, Miss Mayberry.”

  “Just wait until your birthday, my lord.”

  He laughed, a full, rich laugh that wafted through all the splendid old oak and maple trees surrounding them. It was getting easier, sounding positively natural now, this magnificent laugh of his. Luther raised his head and snorted. Eleanor started toward him. He lifted his hand and she rubbed her nose against his palm.

  He looked over at Miss Helen Mayberry—her dark-blue riding skirt stained and wrinkled, her riding hat askew, the little bunch of grapes in his jacket pocket—and said, “What if I told you I would prefer to be your lover rather than your partner?”

  She took a step closer to him and stared him straight in the eye. “Have you no curiosity, my lord? Don’t you wish to know what this is all about? Don’t you wonder why I, a woman of infinite resource, am in need of a partner?”

  “No.”

  It was her turn to laugh. “I will say this for you, sir—you are certainly not short.”

  “As in I haven’t swooned at your feet?”

  “I can’t imagine you ever swooning at anyone’s feet.”

  “I haven’t. Now, tell me what use you have for me, as your partner.”

  She was searching his face, for signs, he supposed, that he would give her a full hearing. “Talk to me, Miss Mayberry.”

  “This will take a while. May we sit over on that bench?”

  She walked beside him, her stride as long as his, at least in her riding habit. Blond hair was creeping out from beneath her riding hat. He stopped her and tucked it back under. Then he took her chin in his palm and turned her to face him. He studied her upturned face. He rubbed a bit of dirt from her cheek. He brushed his palm down the back of her riding habit, smoothing out wrinkles. There were also wrinkles down the front of her that needed smoothing, but he controlled himself. “There, you are once again presentable. A partner—something I had never considered. What possibly could a lady involve herself in that would require a partner?”

  She sat down, smoothing the front of her own gown and skirts. “It isn’t that I really need a partner, it is just that I need a pair of new eyes, and behind those new eyes I require a very sharp brain that would bring new ideas, new perspective. You would
bring me that and possibly more.”

  “Tell me what you are involved in, Miss Mayberry.”

  “I told you that I own an inn in Court Hammering called King Edward’s Lamp.”

  “Yes, you told me. Somewhat unusual occupation for a lady, but I suspect you would try your hand at whatever interested you. Why do you call your inn King Edward’s Lamp?”

  “I knew you would immediately peel the bark from the tree. I knew I was right about you. There is such a lamp, you know, called King Edward’s Lamp. At least I believe with all my heart there is. I discovered the myth of the lamp when I was still in the schoolroom. My father happened to come across this ancient text in an old chest shoved into the corner of a friend’s library. The friend had died and bequeathed all the contents of his library to my father. It was written in very old French, but I finally managed to get it translated.”

  She was thinking about that manuscript and that lamp, he thought, looking at her face. She was looking beyond him, beyond the park, to something he couldn’t see or feel, something that moved her unbearably.

  “Tell me,” he said quietly.

  “Actually, I don’t know all that much, but enough, truly. It was an account written by a Knight Templar toward the end of the thirteenth century, telling how he had broken his vows to his order because of his love for his infant son. It seems that King Edward saved the boy’s life when three Saracen warriors were going to spit him and his servants on their swords. The boy was wounded when Edward rescued him. The king took the boy up before him on his war horse and rode with him back to his camp, which wasn’t far from a huge Templar stronghold.

  “The Templar wrote that when he arrived at the king’s camp, he found his small son in the queen’s arms, being fed by her own hand, his wounds attended to. Such was his gratitude that he broke his vow of secrecy he wrote, giving the king a golden lamp that would make him the most powerful man in the world.

  “Then he took his son and left the king’s encampment. The last line written in the manuscript was the plea for forgiveness for his crime against his order.”

  “I remember hearing of a golden lamp,” Lord Beecham said slowly, looking down at his clasped hands between his buckskinned knees, “very, very old, that came to England and then was lost. Some old scholar at Oxford spoke of it to me. I had forgotten. But, Miss Mayberry, even that scholar was not at all certain that it wasn’t just another myth, a strange tale woven in, like so many other strange tales, with all the happenings in the Holy Land.

  “I am willing to concede that the Crusades were extraordinarily brutal, that what men did to men will never again happen. But this is magic.”

  “I don’t believe in magic.”

  “I know it exists,” she said, leaning closer, her gloved hand on his arm. “I do not know if it is indeed some sort of magic, but I believe it to be. Otherwise why would the Knight Templar give it to King Edward? If not magic, then what is the lamp? Surely he would not give the king a simple lamp to thank him for saving his son. More than that, where is it?”

  He continued to look at her, one eyebrow raised, saying nothing.

  She drew a deep breath. “I finally found another reference to it six years ago. It was in the old Norman church in Aldeburgh that sits atop a cliff right above the sea. I have made friends with a good many churchmen and scholars over the years, telling them only that I am fascinated by myths that relate to the crusade made by King Edward the First.

  “The vicar, Mr. Gilliam, in Aldeburgh told me that he and his curate had been digging through the remains in the old Norman church after there was a mud slide. He said he had found some very old parchments he believed would interest me.

  “They were written in Latin. Finally, I was able to translate them well enough to realize that they were about the lamp. I tell you, Lord Beecham, I thought my heart would burst I was so excited. Robert Burnell, the secretary to King Edward, wrote them. I know all about Burnell. He was very smart, cynical yet tolerant of his fellow man, very devoted to the king. He says the king didn’t know what to do with the lamp, that he was at once afraid of its power and on the other hand disbelieving that it was anything more than just a Saracen lamp that was old and worn, that for some reason had come to be prized by the Templars and hidden away by them. He said he had never seen the lamp do anything at all until—”

  “What have we here?”

  They looked up to see Jason Fleming, Baron Crowley, standing right in front of them, lightly tapping his riding crop against his right boot.

  Lord Beecham didn’t like Crowley, an older man who knew too much and appeared to make a lot of money off what he knew. He drank too much, gambled too much, and wenched until he should have dropped over dead from the French pox, but he hadn’t yet done so. He habitually wore a sneer that made Lord Beecham want to smash him in the nose.

  He gave the man an emotionless look, nodded, and said shortly, “Crowley.”

  “Who is the lovely lady, Beecham?”

  “No one to interest you, Crowley. Your horse looks restless.”

  “I have seen you, my dear. I believe it was just last week at the Sanderling ball. You were with Alexandra Sherbrooke. Everyone remarked upon your rather obvious attributes.”

  Helen, who had not entertained a single notion about like or dislike of this intruder, said immediately, “My attributes might be obvious, sir, but your rudeness is even more apparent. Indeed, it is rather transparent.”

  Lord Crowley took a step back. His well-formed mouth grew ugly in its sneer. “Is this your first assignation with Lord Beecham, my dear? I beg you to have a care. Beecham is a dangerous man. He won’t treat you as well as I would.” He bowed. “I am Crowley, you know. And you are?”

  She smiled up at him, showing lots of white, locked teeth. “I am a lady, sir.”

  “Go away, Crowley. The lady and I are busy.”

  “Busy doing what?”

  Lord Beecham rose slowly. He eyed Lord Crowley for a very long time. The man fidgeted. “Actually I will tell you, Crowley. The lady and I are partners.”

  “Partners in what?”

  “That is not any of your affair. Go away, Crowley.”

  “You begin to interest me, Beecham.” Then he gave a small salute to Helen with his riding crop, turned, and gracefully mounted his horse.

  “Stay away from him,” Lord Beecham said, looking after Crowley until he disappeared from view. “I have the reputation of a seducer, surely a harmless pursuit when all is said and done. Lord Crowley has a flair for evil.”

  “What sort of evil?”

  Lord Beecham said briefly, “He feeds on helplessness. Now, where were we?”

  “Robert Burnell and the lamp. He said he’d never seen it do anything save just sit there and let the king and queen rub it endlessly until Eleanor grew violently ill in the fall of 1279. Some sort of fever was raging through London, and the queen, along with three of her ladies, became very ill. All of the ladies died. The king was distraught. He took the lamp—it was a last resort, Burnell wrote, because the physicians had given up—and he put it in Eleanor’s arms.” She shuddered.

  “Well, what happened?”

  “She survived.”

  Lord Beecham said slowly, “As I recall, Queen Eleanor bore more children that I can count. If she could survive all that childbirth, it seems to me that surviving a fever would be nothing to her.”

  “She was pregnant nearly every year,” Helen admitted, “but still, the fever was virulent, and it did kill all three of her ladies. Don’t be so cynical, sir.”

  “What did Burnell write about that?”

  “He claimed that the king wrapped the lamp in a bolt of exquisite crimson velvet from Genoa and set it beneath glass. He proclaimed the lamp magic and set guards around it. Then one morning, the king unwrapped the velvet to look at the lamp.

  “It was gone. In its place was a silver lamp, ugly and quite new. The king went on a rampage. The guards were questioned, brutally. No one admitted anything. The
n, the next morning, the gold lamp was back. Everyone believed that the guard who had stolen it had been so frightened that he simply returned it.

  “But you see, it happened again the next week. One morning the gold lamp was gone and in its place was the ugly silver lamp. The following morning, the gold one was back.”

  “Where did the lamp go?” Lord Beechem asked. “What magic made it disappear only to reappear?”

  “King Edward brought in scholars, Burnell wrote, but none of them could figure it out. The king himself even slept by the lamp for a week, to guard it. The same thing happened. The lamp disappeared, then reappeared. Everyone proclaimed the lamp to be magic. Churchmen said it was evil. They wanted it destroyed. The king refused, saying it had saved his queen.

  “Finally, Burnell wrote, the king, because of the pressure from the Church, buried the lamp near Aldeburgh, right on the coast. Supposedly when the queen was ill again, he sent men to fetch it. They reported that they could not find it. The queen died. It seems that the lamp disappeared.”

  “Which of Burnell’s versions do you prefer?”

  “I believe the king buried it in Aldeburgh. Why else would Burnell write about its being there? I think the men who were sent to bring it back simply didn’t go to the right place. It only makes sense, don’t you think?”

  “The lamp could simply have disappeared again. You have searched?”

  “I bought the old Norman church and the land surrounding it.”

  He raised an eyebrow to that.

  “No, my father didn’t buy it for me. I earn my own way, Lord Beecham. I run an excellent inn.”

  “How do you propose that you and I proceed? You have found two accounts about the lamp. I will concede, for the sake of argument, that it did exist; its properties, however, are quite murky. You have doubtless sifted through every grain of sand to find more clues. What now?”

  “There is something else, but I don’t want to tell you until you agree to be my partner. I haven’t even told my father.”