Лорен Уиллиг - The Temptation of the Night Jasmine

“Only because I have you as duchess. Someone very wise once told me that the trick of land management is to find a clever wife.”

Remembering the scene outside the Queen’s rooms, Charlotte made a face. “Grandmama is going to be far too pleased. Did you know that she was scheming all this while to catch you for me?”

Robert blinked. “I thought I was the blot on the family escutcheon.”

“Yes, but you’re a ducal blot,” said Charlotte serenely, “and that makes all the difference.”

“I didn’t notice her flinging me at you,” protested Robert, once the ducal blot had firmly blotted the opprobrious words with kisses. “Except for the seating at Twelfth Night.”

“Oh, no,” said Charlotte, eyes shining. In the joy of their reconciliation, the pain of it had leached away, leaving only amusement. “She did you one better than that. She paid Sir Francis Medmenham to court me in the hopes of spurring your interest!”

Robert’s brows drew together. “No,” he said flatly. “I can’t believe — ”

“Oh, yes,” said Charlotte, enjoying herself hugely. “Five thousand pounds’ worth of pretend flirting!”

“That interfering old harpy!”

“That does about sum it up,” Charlotte agreed, with a brisk nod.

“That interfering, ineffectual old harpy!” Robert choked out, sputtering so hard with laughter, he could hardly speak. “If she hadn’t set Medmenham on you, I would have declared myself far sooner! If it hadn’t been so deuced awful, it would be funny. I was so concerned with keeping Medmenham away from you — ”

“That you thought if you stayed away yourself, he would stay away, too?” Charlotte finished hopefully.

Robert nodded, making a mock-comical face.

Later, she might be indignant about the wasted time. Right now, she was too busy basking in the lovely, warm feeling of knowing that her grandmother’s snares had nothing to do with Robert’s feelings for her. Not that she had really thought they did, but it was nice to be told, just the same.

“It must be the first time I’ve ever seen one of Grandmama’s schemes go so badly awry,” said Charlotte happily. “We must be quite, quite sure to tell her. Eventually.”

“We can send her a letter from the ship. Once we’re well out of range of her stick.” Looking thoroughly dazed, he shook his head. “I still can’t believe she paid Medmenham.”

“I’m sure he used the money to good effect,” Charlotte said cheerfully, “paying for your orgies.”

“Not my orgies,” Robert was quick to say, tightening his hold on her waist. “I count myself well rid of the whole lot of them.”

“What do you think will happen to Medmenham now?” asked Charlotte, curling comfortably into the curve of Robert’s arm and tucking her feet up beneath her on the bench. “Did the King punish him for his part in the king-napping?”

“No. There was nothing to prove that he had any involvement in the matter. And given his close relationship to the Prince of Wales, no one wanted to pursue the question.”

“I can see how that would be embarrassing for the King,” said Charlotte thoughtfully. “It would be tantamount to admitting that his own son might have been plotting to depose him.”

“Let them plot all they like so long as they leave us in peace,” said Robert firmly. “No more running around after the King in the middle of the night.”

“And you a Gentleman of the Bedchamber!” chided Charlotte.

Robert grinned a pirate’s grin. “His is not the bedchamber in which I have an interest,” he said.

Blushing a deep, pleased pink, Charlotte wiggled off his lap and held out a hand. “Shall we?” she said breathlessly. “If we ask the vicar nicely, he can start crying the banns this Sunday.”

Robert took her hand, twining their fingers together in a lover’s knot. “No special license?” he teased. “I thought they were all the rage.”

“I like this way better,” said Charlotte, as they strolled through the goose droppings to the little footbridge. As the sun slowly burned through the mist, the air seemed infused with a celestial quality, a golden glaze that blessed the greening fields and the tangled brush of the home woods. “Our banns, called in our church, for our tenants. It shows that we belong to them.”

Charlotte had spoken matter-of-factly, but something about her words seemed to strike Robert. “It has a nice ring, doesn’t it?” he said slowly. “Belonging.”

Charlotte looked out from the footbridge, across the fields where their tenants would graze their sheep in summer, the tangled woods where their children would play, the formal gardens where their daughters would lay trails of tarts to hunt for unicorns. Along the paths lay the bird-pecked remains of the tarts Robert had set for her. It seemed terribly appropriate that the pies that he set out for her should nourish their squirrels and sparrows and swans, all the lovely living things that ran through their land.

And in that moment of magic, as the spring sun slipped through the clouds to dapple the lake with diamonds, Charlotte could have sworn she saw a silvery horn bending to explore the broken bits of jam tart where she and Robert had been sitting only moment before.

On an impulse, she waved.

“What is it?” asked Robert, his fingers twined securely through hers.

“Nothing,” said Charlotte, smiling up at him. “Just a unicorn.”

In our modern age, we tell tales not of mythical beasts but of machines, those massive contraptions beloved by villains on The Avengers , replete with gratuitous knobs and bristling with levers, any one of which could send a deadly ray barreling towards Earth via the moon and a few random planets. They’re the griffins and unicorns of the twenty-first-century lexicon. We’ve all grown up on them. But I had never expected to see one.

I gawked into the dim interior of the ancient tower, straining against the rainy-day gloom. A huge shape loomed up against the side of the tower, stretching practically the length of the room, bristling with levers, spikes, wheels, and goodness only knew what other protuberances. A constellation of smaller machinery clustered around it, an arsenal of ominous equipment.

I was so absorbed that I never heard the sound of footsteps behind me until a tall form blotted out even such small gray light that the cloudy sky allowed.

“Eloise?” it said, in tones of great incredulity and not a little displeasure.

In my surprise, I lost my precarious hold on the door, which would have banged closed, whapping me soundly in the butt if Colin hadn’t grabbed hold of it just in the nick of time.

“The door was unlocked,” I blurted out, sidling around to face him.

“That’s not good,” he said, gesturing me out of the doorway. He frowned at the padlock. “We keep this locked for a reason.”

“I can see why!” I said emphatically. One pull on one of those levers and Mars might be hurtling towards Earth.

“Most of those old mowers have gone rusty,” agreed Colin. “It’s automatic tetanus just from looking at them. And I wouldn’t want a child trying to climb into that old harvester.”

“Mowers?” I repeated, craning to peer through the rapidly narrowing slice of door as he prudently closed it behind him. “Lawn mowers?”

“Scythes, too,” said Colin, fiddling with the lock. “Rusty and bent out of shape. The odd strimmer. There’s even an old Victorian harvester back there. That’s the big beast in the back.”

Victorian harvester, indeed! I wanted to scoff at it. But that lump on the side had looked awfully like a lawn mower, hadn’t it?