Wizards Daughter

"He never had a good voice, at least I wouldn't imagine he did. I never heard him sing, truth be told."

Robert said, "Well, now, the old earl's dead, ain't 'e? Who could sing good with grave dirt in 'is mouth?"

Mumbled agreement. Thank the good Lord no one mentioned there hadn't been a body in the old earl's casket.

Rosalind was gri

"I like my new home, Nicholas. We now have ten additional servants. All will be well. Our new housekeeper is Mrs. McGiver, and I have to hand the prize to her. She's got a backbone, in addition to a lovely voice."

"However you and Mrs. McGiver managed it, I am impressed." He kissed her. The hummingbirds were blurs in the air, swooping closer when he took her to the ground behind a thick-pedestaled sundial. She asked him between kisses if the earl ever visited this small garden.

Nicholas, no fool, said, "No, never. He hated flowers, hated the bright sun. Do you know, I hated leaving you this morning, I ground my teeth, kicked the chair on my way out the door. Do you know you clutched me to you when I tried to leave? Ah, be quiet now."

"Then why did you leave?"

"You had to be sore," he said between kisses. "I didn't want to hurt you. You're better now, aren't you, Rosalind?"

"Oh, yes," she said into his mouth even as she pulled his ears, "I am perfect."

He laughed.

Because Peter Pritchard wasn't a fool either, when he heard voices in the garden he immediately turned himself about and went back into the old earl's library. He thought about the widow Damson, her lovely smile, her pillowy breasts, and decided it was time to pay a visit.

Twenty minutes later, Nicholas helped Rosalind to her feet and straightened her gown. She fussed with her hair. "Oh, dear, how do I look?"

He was so sated, so contented, not a care in his brain, his eyes heavily hooded, that he wanted to fall in a heap and grin like an idiot. His fingers touched her cheek. "You look like a queen." Since this was perhaps not all that accurate, Rosalind punched his arm. He gri

"What's wrong with my eyes?"

He kissed her again. "Not a thing. However, the terms 'vague' and 'dreamy' come to mind." Like his own eyes, he guessed. "That sundial is very old, you know, at least two hundred years. I'm pleased it didn't fall on us when you kicked out with your foot." He lightly touched his fingertips to her cheek. "I am very pleased with you, Rosalind. Very pleased."

Rosalind didn't look up at him. "I am pleased with you as well, Nicholas. I know I should be shocked at what I most willingly wanted you to do to me-again-things that you did to my great satisfaction-again-but I'm not." That tongue of hers licked over her bottom lip. He went en pointe. She stood on her tiptoes and whispered against his ear, "There are things I wish to try, only you didn't give me a chance."

He could practically feel her long white legs, sleek with muscle, squeezing his flanks, and consulted his watch. It was ten o'clock in the morning. Perhaps after luncheon he could take her riding to the small copse where a stream ran through it surrounded by soft grass, and larks sang their sweet songs overhead on the maple tree branches. He beamed down at her. "I will give you a chance. We will ask Cook to make us a picnic."

"Oh, yes. Would you look at all the hummingbirds. Do you know how long they live?"

"Only about three years, I believe."

"They move about awfully fast, don't they? Always moving. Do you think with all our activity we will shorten our lives?"

He stared down at her, kissed her because he simply couldn't stop himself, and said, "I wouldn't mind." He felt the book in his pocket. He cleared his throat. "I couldn't free the last pages. The answers are there, I'm thinking, only something or someone is preventing us from finding them." And he kissed her again.

When she would have taken him behind the sundial again, he raised his head and smoothed his thumb over her lower lip. "What do you think?"

"I think it's time to use your brain rather than other parts, my lord," she said and laughed as she tugged him back into the library. They both stopped cold on the threshold when a scratchy old voice boomed out,

Sins of the flesh Sins of the flesh

A bloodless bore the world would be Without sins of the flesh.

Rosalind shook her fist toward the empty chair. "We committed no sin. We are married. You are surely a lecherous old ghost. Be quiet."

"The thing is," Nicholas said slowly, after hearing nothing else from the old earl for several moments, "my grandfather never sang a note in his life. Why should he begin singing in his death?"

"What?"

He drew in his breath. "I can never remember him singing when I was a boy. I've been wondering how a dead man would begin to sing when the living man never had."

"But that's all he does, only sings out one ridiculous ditty after another, no rhyme nor reason."

"Well, this last one was pointed and fairly accurate, I'd say. I've given this a lot of thought. Fact is, I don't think it's my grandfather."

"Then who?"

"I think we need to go back to Sarimund's century, to someone he knew firsthand. We need to go back to the time of the first Earl of Mountjoy. Fact is, Rosalind, I think our ghost is our long-ago captain, Jared Vail."

"But why is he here? Why did he welcome me?"

Two excellent questions, Nicholas thought, and asked the empty chair, "Are you indeed Captain Jared Vail?"

There was a faint cackle, from behind the wainscoting, Rosalind thought, or maybe it came from that empty spot above a painting of a seventeenth-century Vail with a very elaborate curled black wig, holding a ripe peach in his hand, some sort of ancient ruin behind him.

"So, if you are Captain Jared Vail, why are you glad to see me?" she asked, looking in that direction.

Nothing at all, just calm peaceful air, no lurking ghost to stir it up.

Then the painting cocked itself crooked.

35

Two hours later, Rosalind went in search of Nicholas. She paused when she heard Mrs. McGiver's rich contralto coming from the library. She was singing a clever song about a young girl in Leeds who fell in love with a cooper's son and how things went awry over a beer barrel.

Rosalind moved closer to the library door, listening, then, finally, a scratchy old voice sang out,

Three girls are better than two Two girls are better than one Nail one and it's fun Nail two and swoon Nail three or more And the lion wars.

Praise be, Praise be. I always nailed three Until I had to wed

And take the fat cow to bed. Alas, my cock fell dead, so dead.

She heard Mrs. McGiver's sharp voice, "What a nasty thing to sing, my lord! It was somewhat fu