He didn’t respond in words...but he swallowed convulsively.
She took her time chewing the chicken before swallowing it with relish. Then she gave a little shiver of delight. “Mmm. Delicious! I only wish you could share it with me.”
“Quite.” He sank into his seat at the head of the table and sprawled across it, regarding her under lowered lashes. “Is that why you summoned me, madam wife? To watch you feast?”
She batted her eyelashes at him. “Sharing a meal is the bare minimum expected of any married couple, is it not? And don’t worry...” She nodded to the single clay mug set at his place, filled with a dark, unappetizing liquid supplied by the local butcher. “Your own sustenance is here as well.”
“How thoughtful.” The words were a snarl.
Margaret poured fragrant gravy over her roast potatoes, watching his hot gaze follow each decadent swirl. “You’ve taken such care to keep me safe within these walls. How could I not return the favor? From the state of the house when I arrived, I could tell just what a social nature you must have. Apparently, you wish us to be each other’s only company—so from now on, we shall simply share every waking hour. Never a moment apart nor any pause for breath! Thatiswhat you were hoping for, is it not?”
“Enough, madam. You’ve made your point!” Scowling, Lord Riven snatched up the clay mug and took a long swig. He grimaced as he swallowed, but he didn’t set the mug down. Instead, he held it close to his chest as he regarded her broodingly. “I take it you weren’t satisfied by my arrangements for your comfort.”
“Wouldyoube satisfied by imprisonment, no matter how comfortable your environs?” She’d meant her words as a challenge, but she was startled by the visible hunching of his broad shoulders in response, as if he were absorbing a physical blow.
His voice, when it finally emerged, was a low and bitter rumble. “Unlike you, I’ve had plenty of practice.”
“Now, whatever can you mean by that?” Margaret frowned and lowered her fork. The supernatural creatures of the world had never been her area of academic focus. While her primary academic rival at Morningford College had put most of his attention into those commonplace, salacious details, she had kept her own focus on the remarkable gem itself—but studying the legends of the Rose of Normandy meantsomesupernatural knowledge was inescapable. “There’s no element of a physical cage in vampirism. Despite some of the more gruesome myths, no grave dirt is involved or needed. So long as you’re not caught out by direct sunlight?—”
“I am, in fact, aware of the rules of my own condition,” he said tightly, “but there’s a good deal of my history that youdon’tknow, despite your sharp wits.”
“Then tell me—or at the very least, grant me the means to find it out!” Abandoning her meal, Margaret sat forward, resting her elbows on the table like the bloody-minded scholar she was, not the ladylike puppet her family had tried so hard to mold her into. “There’s not a single mention of the Rose of Normandy in your library, so you must keep those records hidden elsewhere. Don’t tell me you handedthemall over to your man of business along with the gem.”
The silent curl of his upper lip was all the answer that she needed.
She nodded firmly, her thesis confirmed. “Of course, the next question we ought to answer is how your man of business even knew you had the gem—and hemusthave known in order to agree that transaction with my family. You didn’t mention it to him or any of his predecessors, did you?”
“Believe it or not,” her husband drawled, “I’m not in the habit of spilling my family’s secrets over wine like a drunken fool.”
“No, really? And yet you seem so talkative and prone to idle chatter.” Margaret rolled her eyes. “Well, we’ll simply have to solve that mystery before we get it back.”
“‘Get itback?’” Lord Riven repeated, his voice rising. “Madam, are you perchance hard of hearing? I am quite certain I already told you that the gem was handed irrevocably to your family in exchange for our marriage. The contractual terms are clear. Even should we dissolve our own connection, thus giving up my home and land and?—”
“Yes, yes, yes, I understand. They won’t be legally required to give it back even in that case...ifthey do have it themselves, which I doubt.” Margaret tapped one finger on the table, her brows lowering with concentration. “I cannot imagine my aunt and uncle, of all people, having any interest in a supernatural relic—but we’ll sort that mystery out along the way.”
“We...will?” Her husband’s tawny eyebrows rose.
“Well, naturally,” said Margaret impatiently. “Firstly, there isnochance in the world that I would ever come so close to the actual Rose of Normandy without even seeing it for myself—and secondly, without regaining the Rose, how am I meant to reverse your curse?”
Lord Riven stilled, his massive figure suddenly a frozen sculpture. Only his light brown eyes flared with uncontrollable emotion.
Attentive researchalwaysled to success—and Margaret had made careful note of the way he’d spoken of his own condition in their battle last night.
“Come now,” she said, “you werelistening, weren’t you, when I told you how many years I’ve spent studying the tales and legends of that gem? Your family may not have understood how to reverse the transformation once it was cast, but I promise you, Ido—and I’m more than willing to help you solve that little problem in exchange for my own freedom.”
Margaret’sunfortunate new husband might be stubborn, hard-headed, and prone to growling over perfectly reasonable points of logic, but to her relief, he wasn’t nearly as committed to martyrdom as she’d feared. When she arrived at the library the next morning, she found an ancient wooden chest sitting beside the wingchair she had claimed. On top of the chest lay a small piece of paper covered in an untidy scrawl:
Handle with care, if you please.
Oh, for goodness’ sake! Did he still understand so little about her?
But Margaret had already spent years proving herself against every male scholar who’d been made furious by her arrival at Morningford College, including the latest smugly entitled Morningford descendant, who’d grown up on its tree-lined campus and fully expected to take every top prize himself by right of birth. So, she only rolled her eyes at the patronizing tone of her husband’s instruction before pushing open the chest and diving into exactly the sort of wonders she’d always dreamed of discovering.
Even mere dilettantes, of course, knew that the legendary Rose of Normandy had been the means by which the first werewolves—those infamous ‘Wolves of Normandy’—had been created by William I to power his invasion of England in 1066. Vampires had been the gem’s next magical legacy, an act of furious new creation by King John when too many of his own lupine barons collaborated with the French in their attempted invasion of England in 1216. However,no one—except, apparently, the obscure Riven family, hidden deep within the ominous green depths of Dartmoor—had known exactly what happened to the Rose in the centuries afterwards.
For at least some time, the royal family had certainly held it with their other, less magical and dangerous crown jewels, but once the Wars of the Roses had begun and the ‘ruling family’ become more of a temporary condition, the Rose of Normandy had become a hotly-sought item of power, passed back and forth in a series of bitter betrayals and bribes. Even now, no historian could say for certain which family—Lancaster or York—had been the one to wield it on that final, monstrous day when the shambling undead rose on Bosworth Field. Both armies had been cut down in the wreckage of that battle, and it had taken years for the successful Richard III’s armies to destroy the final remnants of that horror.
The Yorks, of course, all claimed that it had been the vicious upstart Henry Tudor who had done it, the gem smuggled to him beforehand by his treacherous mother. The Lancasters, licking their wounds (sometimes literally, in wolf-form) claimed that, on the contrary, it was Richard who had done it in vile desperation to hold his throne, and all his claims otherwise were lies meant to smear the blame on their dead champion.
