Lyons Gate

Another voice, this one much higher and louder, trumpeted from the shadows back near the kitchen. “You miserable fat-tongued dead-witted slug! Don’t you dare speak of my precious mistress like that. My mistress is the best thing that has ever happened to Master Jason. She makes him laugh and smile and, well-all have heard him groan.”

Petrie, in a dressing gown as black as a priest’s robes, puffed himself right up. “And what about her, Martha? I’ve heard her groan so loud I feared for the newly hung chandelier. It’s disgraceful that a supposed lady would enjoy, well-”

Martha flew at him, her white nightgown whirling around her ankles. She jumped on him, took him to the floor, a tangle of black and white. She grabbed fistfuls of his hair and began banging his head against the tiles. “You wretched water-piddled trout-brain! Like every other man in the universe, all you can think about is this yelling business. Of course she yells, you cracked pot, she should yell. Do you think the master has no skill at all? You think he’s a clod of a lover? You think he shouldn’t yell as well? You think my mistress is a clod? Never mind that, men don’t need to have skill applied to them to make them yell. Have you no working mental parts at all? No feelings in your heart?” Bang, bang, bang. Petrie groaned.

Jason said as he lifted her off Petrie, “No, Martha, don’t kill poor Petrie. This thing about men’s hearts, I fear in many it’s lower, much lower.” He realized in that instant that Petrie was staring up at Martha, a very strange look on his face, almost as if he were in very bad pain, which he should be.

“Master Jason, you may drop her back down on me, if you wish, sir. I don’t mind, the pain in my cracked head is nothing. Her breath is very sweet, it has quite left me wondering what has happened. I am adrift, waiting for enlightenment.”

Martha shrieked, tried to kick him.

Hallie said, “Martha, thank you for standing up for me. Now, both you and Petrie take yourselves back to bed.” She paused a moment, staring down at Petrie, who hadn’t moved and who looked both baffled and appalled, his dark hair standing in clumps on his head where Martha’s strong fingers had nearly pulled them out. “You will go back to your own bed, Petrie. You will think of no other bed except yours. You will not think of Martha’s sweet breath. All is well. We are no longer arguing. Master Jason simply wanted some brandy. Perhaps you know. Can one heat brandy?”

Petrie said, “Well, back in 1769, it’s said that old Lord Brandon was suffering from an ague. His valet, an ancestor of mine, heated him a snifter of brandy over a small hob in the fireplace. It was told me by my mother that the heated brandy made him well within a half hour.”

“I’m going to sleep with Henry in the stable,” Jason said, and marched toward the front door.

“You won’t be happy walking out there barefooted,” Hallie called after him. “Petrie, why don’t you fetch your master’s boots, put on your own as well, and the two of you can snuggle down together in the warm straw on either side of poor Henry.” Hallie smiled at both of them impartially, and walked toward the kitchen. “Jason? In case your mood changes, I will take a very close look at the kitchen table.”

Jason was dressed and on Dodger’s bare back within ten minutes.

CHAPTER 39

Corrie rubbed the cramp in her leg. She never should have let James arrange her in such a position, ah, but it had been such fun. She rubbed some more. She’d swear she had never used that particular muscle in her life. Perhaps she should rub in some of her mother-in-law’s special warming cream that seeped to your bones.

She heard something. She froze, cramp forgotten, instantly as still as James, who was lying on his back, breathing deeply in sleep, nearly dead, he’d told her before falling on his back, an angel’s smile on his face.

She heard it again. A noise coming from the window. Good heavens, this was the second time. When Corrie crept toward the window, a poker in her hand, she saw it start to slowly inch upward.

She watched her brother-in-law ease the window up far enough so he could swing his leg over the sill and climb in.

“I was hoping for a villain this time,” she said, and gave him a hand. “I was armed and ready.”

“Thank you for putting down the poker, Corrie. I’m sorry to come in through your window again, I know it’s late.”

“Not that late. I felled poor James. That’s him, snoring from the bed.”

She sounded quite proud of herself. Jason touched his fingertips to her cheek. “I’ll wake up the sluggard. He doesn’t deserve to sleep.”

Jason shook his brother’s shoulder. “Wake up, you pathetic excuse for a man.”

James, as was his wont, opened his eyes without hesitation, and focused instantly and clearly on his brother’s a

“You don’t deserve to, damn you. Get up, my world has ended and you’re lying here, thinking about how wonderful life is. You don’t bloody deserve it.”

James, still light in the head and heart, said, “All that?”

“What’s wrong, Jason? What’s happened?”

Jason looked with a good deal of affection at his sister-in-law, whose white hand clutched his sleeve, her worry for him shining in her eyes, though in the dim light it was hard to know for sure. “You look ever so nice with your hair all wild around your face, Corrie.”

James bolted upright. “Don’t you admire her, you dog. Damn you, you’ve got a wife of your own. Step away from her before I flatten you.”

“What’s wrong, Jason?”

“I’ve left Lyon ’s Gate,” Jason said, and stepped back from his sister-in-law because he knew when his brother was serious. He slid down to the floor, leaned his head back against the wall, closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around his bent knees.

James pulled on his dressing gown, eyed his wife’s revealing nightgown, and said, “Get back into bed, Corrie. I don’t want Jason to get any ideas.”

“Ideas? How could he possibly be thinking about me and this lovely peach nightgown when he’s left his home?” Corrie lit some candles, then slipped back into bed, drew a deep breath. “You’ve left Hallie?”

Jason said, not looking up, “The nightgown is lovely, Corrie, but I’m not thinking about you under it. My life is ripped apart. I meant to go sleep in the stables, but I came here instead. I don’t know what to do.”

James patted his wife’s cheek, tucked more covers over her, then pulled his twin to his feet. “Let’s go downstairs and have a brandy. You can tell me what’s happened.”

“Do you know if heated brandy is good, James?”

When the brothers stepped into James’s estate room, it was to see their father pouring each of them a snifter of brandy. He was wearing a dark blue dressing gown whose elbows were worn nearly through. “So,” Douglas said, trying to sound calm, when in fact, his heart was racing, and he was terrified, “why, Jason, did you leave your home in the middle of the night, and your wife of not yet a month?”

James said, “Actually, it’s not all that late, not even midnight yet.”

“Don’t make me shoot you, James,” his father said.

Jason gulped down the brandy and fell to coughing. When he finally caught his breath, his father poured him more. “Slowly this time. Get ahold of yourself. Tell us what’s happened.”

“I don’t think brandy needs to be heated. My belly is on fire. It’s Hallie.”

Both Douglas and James remained silent.

Jason sipped at his brandy. “I’m very sorry to break in on you like this, but I just didn’t know where else to go. Well, like I said, I was going to sleep in the stable, but I was afraid Petrie would come with me.”

Douglas said, “What did Hallie do?”

Jason sipped brandy.

“What did she do?”