The Wedding Night by Linda Needham Read Free Book Online

breath, too obviously battling her belief in wonders. "The book is a legend, sir. Any scholar of the Celts knows that."
    Her face was haloed by flaxen curls that frayed from the plait hanging from her shoulder. She smelled of the outdoors, of the wisteria hedge that clung to the stone wall containing the grounds of Drakestone House. She must have come cross-country from the station, walking off her outrage or summoning it to its full-blown fury.
    He fought the urge to wind a strand around his finger and stuck his hand in his jacket pocket instead. "There are many ancient secrets kept from the secular world—or so I understand."
    " Which has nothing at all to do with your absconding with my library. "
    "Oh, but it does, my dear. It has everything to do with it."
    "How, Rushford?" She was a tight bundle of indignity: fuming, curious, prepared to deny that the winter sky could be quite blue at times.
    "The Gofarian , madam. Which, by the way, was at one time a scroll, but is now pressed flat between wooden covers to preserve it. Ordinarily kept in a vault in the minster at York ."
    He was close enough to see her pulse shifting just above the low-buttoned collar of her dark shirt-waist. She feathered a loose spiral of hair into place behind her ear.
    "I suppose you've seen it?" She tossed her head and the strand came loose.
    Jack shrugged for effect. He truly couldn't fathom the value of the fragile, decaying artifacts he'd seen this past week, but he knew that antiquarians and scholars like Mairey Faelyn would have approached the minster's vault in reverent awe.
    "I saw mildew-encrusted rolls of old lambskin: the Dyrgel Gofarian and other manuscripts in bad repair, kept just as secretly. They all looked alike to me—"
    "You're lying." He'd never seen such bright, beautiful intensity. So protective. So provocative.
    I have you, Mairey Faelyn, just where I want you.
    "I couldn't read a word of its Latin, Miss Faelyn. Nor could I decipher its other scratchings ." The moment of truth, the crux of this unlikely partnership, had arrived. "But you can, my dear."
    "Can?" Mairey felt as though Rushford had caught her up in a stumbling trance, tempting her with his impossibilities. "How?"
    "Come," he said, smiling in that sumptuous way. He held out his hand to her, his broad palm bare and exposed, dreadfully inviting, as though if she touched it he would lead her somewhere she shouldn't go. She resisted, balling her fist into her skirts and standing her ground in his unparalleled library.
    His eyes brightened in his conceit, never shifting from hers as he left her for a small table near the soaring windows.
    "Vaults, madam, museums, the archbishop's ear—just as I promised you." Rushford swept aside the red velvet cloth, revealing a squarecornered object nestled in the center. "My credentials."
    He was good, this mining baron, surprisingly theatrical. But she wouldn't be swayed to his side—not even tempted.
    "You're wasting my time, Rushford."
    "I doubt that, Miss Faelyn. Come, see for yourself."
    There was something deeply stirring about the object, about its weight as he lifted it to show her, and the faint ornamenting across its broad face.
    It wouldn't hurt to look. Setting her heart and all her hopes against him, she indulged the wicked man and approached the table.
    In the next instant, the room began to reel. A legend come to life—the Dyrgel Gofarian ; the secrets of the Celtic silversmiths. Most antiquarians doubted it had ever existed. And this marauding heathen had it here in his library! Mairey could hardly breathe, could barely hear for the maelstrom of hope and terror.
    "Where did you get this?"
    "It was delivered to me yesterday under guard from the archbishop of York , at the behest of the queen herself."
    "Impossible."
    "Nothing is impossible, Miss Faelyn." He reached down to touch the page with his bare fingers.
    "Not that way!" Mairey caught his hand in hers, felt the glance of lightning in his fingers. "A