On Gentle Wings Page 7

  He actually glowed, too, as if the Star of Bethlehem itself was suspended behind his head. He’d told Grace the most wonderful stories about kings and queens and knights of old; but best of all, he assured her that Isobel was meant for her Papa and Destiny would eventually triumph over the crafty machinations of men.

  But right now, Grace realized, Destiny needed a helping hand. Or a subtle shove.

  Chapter Seven

  Kit hadn’t felt so alive in months. Or years. Riding always brought out the best in him, but today it was better than ever; and the only possible reasons he could attest it to were that Elspeth was gone or that Isobel was here.

  The latter possibility startled him. Riding alongside Isobel, atop his own golden mount Aurelius, Kit felt liberated. It was a beautiful day. It had been a long time since he’d even bothered to notice whether it was cloudy or sunny; and yet the very air seemed vibrant now, heavy with the rich scents of summer, exhilarating to the depths of his soul.

  Dear Jesu. He was in love. The emotion was almost foreign to him, so rarefied that he hadn’t recognized it for what it was. He loved his girls, of course. With all the fierceness and devotion a proud father was capable of. But this was different. This was the love of a man for a woman.

  What woman? Surely not Isobel, his coltish little ward, the brown-haired waif with her great grey eyes! Nay, Kit thought, it must be simple lust, the sort of desire a lonely man feels upon meeting a likely wench. A wench like that dazzling Madame Mysterie from the masque.

  ’Twas the first natural male impulse he’d felt in years. After all, he’d been without benefit of female companionship for a long time. In twelve long years, Elspeth had never welcomed his affections; and aside from one brief, ill-fated affair, he’d never stepped outside the bonds of matrimony to seek relief. He was, Kit thought bitterly, the consummate family man. The consummate fool, more like.

  Many men kept paramours at court. Lord knew he’d had enough offers. Obvious offers delivered via batting eyelashes and coy simpers. Nothing mysterious about that, he supposed, though he was intrigued by “Madame Mysterie.” She was the first woman to truly capture his interest. It hadn’t merely been her luscious figure; but of course, there was no overlooking the prospect of that …

  “How am I progressing?” Isobel asked. She sounded breathless, but not nearly as nervous as she had been just a half-hour before. Distracted from his reverie, Kit glanced over and saw that her cheeks had a healthy flush and her grey-blue eyes were sparkling. Though she still clutched Mystery’s mane in a death-grip, at least her posture was more relaxed and she almost appeared to be enjoying herself

  “Marvelous!” he assured her, punctuating his praise with a broad grin, which flagged the color in her cheeks even higher. “Why, I predict within a week you’ll be tearing across this very same meadow at a gallop.”

  Something changed in Isobel’s expression then; he realized too late what he’d said.

  “But I leave tomorrow,” she said softly as her brow furrowed and her gaze fixed on the trail ahead of them.

  “Well, surely your husband will keep a horse or two about,” Kit said, awkward as a green lad as his renowned silver-tongue failed him for once.

  She shook her head. “I doubt it. The Plummers are very poor. Peasants, really. I’m sure they can’t afford to keep magnificent animals like Mystery.” She reached down and patted the mare’s coppery neck — with affection, rather than fear, he noted. Isobel was coming along quite nicely in her riding lessons.

  Kit had no idea what the real source of her fear was, and even gentle coaxing had been unable to bring the story to the surface, but he suspected something traumatic had happened to her by way of a horse, long ago. Pity he didn’t have more time to work with her. He saw potential there. Isobel had a graceful seat and light hands. Her respect for the power of such an animal meant she could become an excellent rider, in due course.

  He was silent for a moment, thinking. At last he said, “I don’t want you to give up riding, Isobel. ’Tis important to me. In fact, my wedding gift to you shall be the choice of an animal from my stables.”

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly.”

  “I insist. I caught you admiring that little pale gold filly by my white dam. Her sire was Aurelius, y’know. She’s already broke, so she’s yours from this moment on.”

  “Thank you, but no.” She shook her head, looked away, and Kit was distressed by her poignant misery. He knew the prospect of her marriage held no joy for Isobel; indeed, it held no especial delight for him or his girls, either.

  Kit was stunned to recognize this harsher emotion. He was jealous! Jealous of the notion of Isobel leaving them, of proceeding meekly to the altar to wed a man she didn’t love, and bedding the same ungrateful fellow. In fact, the very thought sent a fierce flush of heat coursing through his blood; he felt his neck redden and his hands tighten on the reins.

  “Let’s stop at the river.” They were almost there now, and Kit focused his attention on the broad silver ribbon winding through the alder and willow trees. He tried again to understand what was happening to him.

  He’d felt the same peculiar possessiveness when helping Isobel select her trousseau, On the one hand, he wanted her to have the very best, as befitted one of the family; but on a deeper, more instinctive level, he hated the thought of a crude Cornish peasant mauling Isobel, tearing the gossamer-thin, hyacinth night rail from her body, carelessly shredding it and her heart in his rough, callused hands.

  “Isobel.” His voice was unusually husky. When the horses stopped at the river’s edge and she looked at him, so trusting and innocent with her ash-brown hair swirling about her shoulders, Kit felt something tug at his heart. Sweet Jesu, his heart. So he still had one, after all.

  Just as their gazes met, and locked, Mystery shied. A shadow seemed to wing across the serene water — was it a cloud? — and the next he knew, the mare had reared and Isobel screamed. She tumbled to the grassy bank as Mystery kicked up her hooves in a final display of upset and fled the scene.

  Cursing, Kit leapt down from Aurelius and ran to the young woman.

  “Dear God. Isobel!” The fear Kit suffered was very real, as was his concern. To his relief, she was conscious. He knelt in the grass in order to support her head and shoulders. “Are you hurt?” he demanded. “Damme, Isobel, answer me.”

  To his considerable surprise, she sat upright, brushed the dirt from her outfit, and laughed. Not a chuckle, but a definite and hearty show of mirth. “I — I can’t believe it!” she gasped.

  “What? That you fell? It happens. Even to the best of riders. Look, the important thing is that you keep smiling, and get right back on again — ”

  “I don’t think I can.”

  “I know you’re frightened, but you weren’t really hurt. I don’t know what spooked Mystery, but ’twas probably just a marsh bird, or something — ”

  “Nay, I mean I can’t.” She reached down to massage her right ankle, and winced, even through her laughter. “You see, I think I’ve sprained my ankle.” And for some reason, this seemed enormously amusing to her.

  Somewhat nonplussed, Kit said, “Well, I suppose we could ride double on Aurelius — ”

  The second he suggested it, the stallion he’d left peacefully grazing suddenly jerked up his head, snorted suspiciously and took off at a full gallop for home.

  “What the devil’s going on?” Kit exclaimed. “Maybe it’s a ghost.”

  “Or one of Grace’s angels?”

  “We’re far closer to the cemetery than heaven.” Kit shook his head. “But I don’t think my staid, serious father would ever pull such a stunt.”

  “Cousin Elspeth, then.” Isobel spoke lightly, but there was tension behind her words. “Mayhap she doesn’t approve of our outings.”

  “Then hang her, I say.” The words slipped out before Kit could stop them; surprised, they looked at one another, and a second later both chuckled easily, companionably.

  “Isobel,”
he murmured, tasting her Christian name on his tongue. ’Twas like summer itself, her name, sweet and ripe with promise, like the woman beside him now lifting her lips to his. “Isobel,” he whispered again, wonderingly, as his mouth shadowed hers with tender, hungry possessiveness.

  Isobel was the first to break away. She could lose herself too easily in fantasy, clinging to a ridiculously thin thread of hope. Kit didn’t love her. How could he, when he was planning to meet his precious “Madame Mysterie” this very night? Aye, she’d overheard him telling Jem earlier to ready the coach, because he was going to Summerleigh. Kit was searching for a fantasy just as she now desperately clung to hers. But hers was fading fast, despite the desperation of her grip.

  “No, I’m sorry. I can’t.” The words escaped her in a broken rush; and despite the intense pain of both her ankle and heart, Isobel rose and began a determined hobble back in the direction of the manor house. She had to get away. She had to think. Most of all, she knew she had to pack. For tomorrow was her wedding day ….

  ~*~

  “You have to go tonight, Isobel.”

  “Don’t ask this of me, girls. Please!”

  “You have to tell Papa,” Grace added, chorusing after her sister. “You have to tell him the truth.”

  “And since when are you the champion of truth, Elizabeth Grace Tanner?” Isobel demanded, hands on her hips. Boxes and trunks were scattered about the room, half filled with her new trousseau. A trousseau that might have brought her joy was she to wed another man. But she couldn’t stay angry at the girls for long. She was too upset and shaken by what had happened at the river. Kit had kissed her, Isobel Weeks. Not his “Madame Mysterie.” The thin ribbon of hope was fragile, but hadn’t broken yet.

  Damme him, Isobel thought. T’would serve Kit right if he were forced to face the bitter, painful truth, just as she was doing now! She surprised herself by suddenly saying, “All right. You two win. I’m going.”

  Both girls clapped with glee and then rushed to help her get ready. A few hours later, Isobel stood in the very same spot she had a fortnight before, ushered limping into Summerleigh by her unusually solicitous host; Lord Tempest. Nervously smoothing the folds of her gold-embroidered gown, she peered through the eye slits of the velvet mask, searching for the man whose heart she must break.

  A few seconds short of midnight; Kit came into view. Her heart pounded against her ribs, slamming against the whalebone busk with every breath she took. How could she shatter him so cruelly? But she knew she must. His obsession for “Madame Mysterie” would die tonight; along with her last hope. It was the only way, she knew, to free them both from a lifelong prison of futile dreams.

  “M’lady,” he greeted her, raising her hand to his lips. He whisked a burning trail of passion across the backs of Isobel’s fingers, and she closed her eyes in secret pain. “I feared you might not come.”

  “I had no choice,” she said, which was true. Tears pricked her eyes, but she forced them back. “Perhaps the gardens would be more discreet, monsieur?”

  “As you wish.” Kit bowed again, releasing her hand to take her arm instead, whereupon he drew her possessively to his side. Isobel was careful to disguise her faint limp as a seductive sway as they walked together into Summerleigh’s magnificent gardens. The flowers wore a shimmering mantle of white, like their eccentric owner. White roses, white stock, towering hollyhock and Isobel’s favorites, the Michaelmas daisies, all glowed like pearls in the moonlight.

  Turning to face Kit in the garden, she began, “I fear I can lie no longer — ”

  “Nor I. I must be blunt or I shall lose my nerve. You see, I love another. ’Tis for this reason alone that I came tonight. I would not wish for you to harbor false hope.”

  “Hope?” The dazed echo left her lips as Isobel stared at Kit through her mask. “Then you did not come to arrange an assignation?”

  “I must admit, ’twas my initial reason for wanting to meet you again. But much has happened in a fortnight.”

  “I see.” Isobel bit her lip. She was relieved, on the one hand, yet secretly crushed, for she knew the only reason Kit would have surrendered an evening with his “Madame Mysterie” was because he had found another woman. A noblewoman, surely, with royal connections to the queen, or mayhap the daughter of an aristocratic neighbor whose lands he wished to adjoin to his own.

  The deceit she was perpetrating upon him gnawed at her heart. She reached up to remove her mask, knowing no words would soften the blow she was about to deal him.

  “Nay” To her surprise, Kit stopped her, his hand closing gently about her wrist. “Allow me.”

  Isobel stood frozen with fear and dread as he reached behind her wig to untie the strings. Shutting her eyes, she awaited the inevitable cry of rage or disappointment and instead heard only the whisper of her own skirts in the wind and felt the warmth of his breath upon her cheek.

  “Sweet Isobel,” Kit murmured, and when her eyes flew open, wet with tears and wide with shock, she saw mirrored in those green-gold depths neither surprise nor rage, but rather the tenderest of love.

  “How did you know?” she whispered.

  “The girls told me. Aye, I was angry at first, but it soon occurred to me just what a clever little minx you are. Then I had a rather hearty laugh over it. You’ve changed, Isobel. You’ve always been good and kind and wonderful with my daughters; but there’s a part of you as mysterious and exciting as any woman on earth, and that’s what I glimpsed that first night at Summerleigh.”

  “But I was playing a role,” she protested. “The unaccustomed part of a coquette.”

  “Were you? I think that woman exists, too, love, were you to bother looking for her.” He caressed her cheek where hot tears now mingled with his fingers. “Don’t cry, sweetheart. All is not lost. In fact, I daresay we should be celebrating this eve.”

  “Why?” she cried brokenly. “Tomorrow I must leave and wed that despicable Tom Plummer.”

  “Must you?” Kit mused, so carelessly it shocked her.

  “But you heard my uncle. I must be delivered to the altar by the end of the month.”

  “And so you shall be. Indeed, I’ve already taken the liberty of choosing your wedding gown. It awaits you at Ambergate along with our girls.”

  “Our girls?” Isobel echoed, thoroughly confused and panicked now. “What do you mean?”

  “Why, I mean to marry you, Isobel Weeks,” Kit said, putting a playful spin on the words while she still groped to grasp what was happening.

  “But my uncle … the constable … the Plummers …”

  “Shan’t dare to interfere. For I learned just today that your uncle is dead, Isobel. Simon Taggart passed away six months ago.”

  Astonished, she stared at him. “Then who came to Ambergate? I swear ’twas him, Kit, in the very flesh. I should know!”

  “Mayhap ’twas a rare joke. I only know when I checked again at the inn, I learned he had never been there; indeed, further inquiry, in Cornwall produced evidence of the old toad’s departure from this earth quite some time ago. It seems fate has conspired to throw us together, Isobel, in a most peculiar way.”

  “But what of the queen? And your responsibilities at court?”

  “I anticipate no interference from Bess; rather, she hinted only recently that I should consider marriage, as does she.”

  “Yet I am scarcely titled as she would wish,” Isobel murmured, understandably frightened at the thought of crossing Elizabeth Tudor as others had done, to their eternal regrets.

  He continued stroking her cheek. “Trust me, Isobel. We shall have no interference from that quarter.”

  “Then I needn’t leave?” The tears flowed faster now, tears of joy, tears of relief.

  “Not now, not ever,” he assured her.

  “And the girls?”

  “Await our return at the house. Susan has convinced us all that a country wedding would be most charming, and I quite agree.”

  “Are you truly sure?”
>
  “Never more so,” Kit said quietly, searching her eyes, impressing upon them both the intensity of his love and devotion. “Isobel, will you become my beloved bride, a mother to my daughters, and of any future children to come?”

  “Aye,” she whispered, reaching up to weave her hungry trembling fingers through his tousled auburn hair. “A thousand times, yes! Oh, Kit, I never dared dream of such happiness.”

  “Nor I.”

  A snuffle came from the shadows after the couple disappeared into the depths of the garden. Tempest stepped into a patch of moonlight and wiped his teary face on his impeccable white velvet sleeve.

  “Well, I did it,” he said with patent satisfaction. “I wove my first, real miracle.”

  “And your last,” came a disembodied voice from the depths of night. “Time to come home, Tempest.”

  “Certainly, old man. After I receive my wedding invitation.”

  ~*~

  Lord Tempest did receive an invitation to witness the most shocking marriage of the year, the wedding of Sir Christopher Tanner to Mistress Isobel Weeks. ’Twas an indecently short time after his first wife’s death that Kit Tanner remarried, the court gossips whispered, but on this particularly beautiful day of August 31, 1579, none of the major players truly cared what others thought.

  Least of all Anne, Grace, and Maggie, who wore matching white taffeta dresses, Madame Louise miniatures of their mother’s gown. Auburn beauties all, they flanked their parents with the beatific expressions of absolute angels, and only Grace knew from whence an especially giant bouquet of Michaelmas daisies had really come. The card read, simply:

  Je regrette … I was forced to return to the Continent quite suddenly, but my wishes for eternal happiness are with you always … ton ami,

  Percival Tempest.

  And just as the good reverend pronounced Kit and Isobel man and wife, little Grace cast her gaze heavenward, and winked.

  ###

  From the Author