Catherine Coulter - Pendragon

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Pendragon: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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Catherine Coulter gives romance a gothic twist as she continues her bestselling saga of the Sherbrooke family into the next generation. Tysen Sherbrooke's daughter, Meggie, is 19 now, old enough to know the joys of love – and its sorrows. When the man she has secretly loved since childhood unwittingly breaks her heart, Meggie marries another man, Thomas Malcombe, Earl of Lancaster.
In the spring of 1824 she arrives at her new husband's castle, Pendragon, on the coast of Ireland, only to find, amid the strange local folk and fascinating twists and turns of the vast keep, that there is more to her handsome husband than she was told before they wed. She's willing to dismiss the nasty rumor she'd heard about a girl he'd ruined – until she comes to suspect that she was brought to Pendragon for some sinister purpose…

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"Well, I can't go back. You see, I didn't tell Thomas the precise truth. I was sent down, but just for this term. I will go back again, it's just a matter of time."

"Why were you sent down?"

He flushed, turned, and tried to pet Oscar DeGrasse, one of Lord Kipper's mousers, long, lean, short-haired, black as a moonless night, with a chewed-up left ear. Oscar arched his back and purred.

Meggie didn't have much hope for Oscar. True racing cats were born with a goodly amount of arrogance, a cold and snarling sense of self, and woe be to any other cat who challenged him. They were disdainful, they were tough. They would burst their hearts to win. Oscar was asking to be petted. It wasn't a good sign. She'd asked Lord Kipper why the name DeGrasse, and he'd said, quite in a straightforward way, that it was the last name of one of his long-ago mistresses who'd been an excellent mouser in her own right, very dedicated to catching her prey and consuming it. When Meggie had asked him what that meant, he'd just laughed, and lightly touched his fingertip to her mouth. "A roundabout allusion to something you should know about by now."

She'd jerked away. He was a dangerous man; it was stupid ever to be alone with him. Unfortunately he was undoubtedly one of the guards who, when he visited, stuck close to her. Too close for Meggie's comfort. There were always two guards, not just one. Meggie sighed. She wished William would go away. She wanted Thomas. She wanted him to smile at her, kiss her, tell her what had happened to make him go away from her.

She wondered where he was right now. During the day she was never alone, thus here was William. And, of course, Thomas slept with her every night She would lie there on her side of the bed listening to his deep smooth breathing.

He hadn't touched her in two weeks. She'd tried only once to initiate lovemaking with him, and he'd pulled away, saying only, "I'm tired, Meggie. I'm also not interested. Go to sleep."

It was worse than a slap in the face. She wanted to scream, perhaps even yell right in his face, but in the end, she whispered, "What's wrong, Thomas? I don't understand."

And he'd said his favorite litany, "I don't wish to speak of it. Go to sleep."

She hadn't touched him since. He had fast become a stranger who stayed close to her at night, to protect her. At least he didn't want her dead. He just didn't want her for a wife either.

And now here was William hanging about her, and she knew that Thomas had set him to be another guard.

"Why were you sent down, William?" she asked again even as she thought of Ezra, big, fast, and gray with a white face, from Horton Manor. The squire's wife claimed he could fly faster and straighter than an arrow on the wing. What she'd seen of Ezra's talents the day Thomas took her to visit was him rolling across the floor with one of the squire's children. She decided that she would simply have to set up a competition of sorts to see how many country folk hereabouts were interested.

William was still stroking Oscar, now on his back, all four paws sticking into the air. "That's disgraceful," Meggie said, frowning at the cat. "That cat has no sense of self-worth. Why were you sent down?"

William cleared his throat when he saw her eyebrow arched at him.

"I, er, got a local girl pregnant, maybe, one really never knows, and her father wanted to kill me."

"Not an uncommon reaction, I should say. Was she prettier than Melissa Winters?"

William's jaw dropped. He tried to say something, then shut his mouth fast as a clam trap.

"You are a miserable human being, William," Meggie said, so furious with her half brother-in-law that if she wouldn't hang for it, she would have cheerfully stomped him into the ground. "You probably should have been strangled at birth. Saved everyone a lot of difficulties, particularly the female of the species."

"But it wasn't my fault," William said, and Meggie knew a whine when she heard it, having four brothers and so many dratted boy cousins about. She was so furious with him that she jumped to her feet, her fists at the ready. She wanted to fight him, to sock him in the jaw.

"The girls just hold you down, William, and rip off your clothes?"

He looked shocked that she, a vicar's daughter, would speak so bluntly. She just stared him down until he said, shrugging, "Well, no, but they're the kind of girls who are with ever so many men, and I'm just the one who always gets caught. It wasn't my fault. But you didn't like me before you saw me, Meggie. Why?"

"Melissa Winters, you dolt. I know all about how you blamed Thomas for that. You're a dishonorable cretin, William."

"But it was Thomas who got her with child," William said. "At the time I was in Glasgow with Aunt Augusta."

Meggie couldn't help herself. She slammed her fist into his jaw, a really solid hit that sent him reeling backward, his flailing arms nearly hitting Oscar DeGrasse. Oscar screeched and leaped straight up and backward, an amazing feat that Meggie couldn't help but admire. William couldn't catch himself and went crashing down on his back. He didn't move, just stared up at her, trying to catch his breath.

"Thomas is honorable," she said between fiercely gritted teeth. "You ever say something like that again, and I will kick you in the ribs after I've knocked you down."

William whimpered and didn't move.

"Thank you."

Meggie whirled about to see her husband standing in the doorway to this big sparsely furnished room, his arms crossed over his chest, one of his favorite poses. The irony of that thank-you had hit her square in the nose. She raised her chin. "You are many things, Thomas, but dishonorable isn't one of them."

"No," he said. "I'm not." He walked over to William and held out his hand. William looked at that hand, and Meggie thought for a moment that William would whimper. She said, "Oh, for goodness' sake, William, be a man and take your brother's hand. He won't kill you. He is more civilized about things like that than I."

"But you still might."

"That is true. Go away. I'm trying to train these cats."

William dusted himself off, gave his brother a very uncertain look, and was out of the room very quickly.

Thomas said slowly, "You defended me."

"What would you expect me to do? Tell your dimwitted half brother that you ignore your new wife, that you treat her like she bores you silly, and thus he can say anything at all he likes about you?"

"No. You're not like that."

"Is it possible that another man did impregnate Melissa Winters?"

"No."

"William said he was in Glasgow with Aunt Augusta."

"He was. I sent him there after I beat him to within an inch of his life."

"Well, good." Meggie wiped her hands on her skirt, looked over at Oscar, who was now curled into a tight ball, sleeping in a corner. "He doesn't look like much of a winner, does he?"

"Niles says he's fast."

"Did you see him execute that backward leap?"

"I wasn't looking at him at the time."

"What's wrong, Thomas?"

"I came to get you for tea, Meggie. My mother, Libby, and Lord Kipper are in the drawing room. Cook has already brought the tea and cakes. You're the only one missing."

"And William."

"Undoubtedly Barnacle will nab him."

"I see. All right," Meggie said, then looked over to see Barnacle grimacing toward them, his face contorted in awful agony.

She just looked at him, an eyebrow arched. "You're supposed to nab William."

"I'll nab him all right, but this is more important. It's vital to set things in their proper order and his lordship-our lordship, that is, my lady-is the most important thing hereabouts in any order. He has told me to tell you that he wishes to see you at your convenience in the estate room. And here he is telling you all by himself-and here I am doing the telling as well, but no matter. Two times is better than a chance on none doing the telling."

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