‘This is the memoir of Lord and Lady Hereford.’ I produced the huge volume from my travel bag and dumped it in Devere’s lap. ‘Unfortunately, I have not had a chance to read very much of it during the course of this journey, but I believe it could contain relevant information concerning our final destination in the Sinai.’
Devere was delighted and opened the book to peruse the contents, but was distracted from the text when he noticed me undressing. ‘What is on your mind, Mrs Devere?’ He smiled, misinterpreting my intent.
‘You wanted to know all my secrets.’ I removed my shirt and turned my back on him, so that he might undo my corset. ‘If you would be so kind.’
He obliged me, a little puzzled to note the extra padding of the corset, and was smiling broadly when I removed it to expose my fully naked torso. My husband reached out to caress my breasts, which had not been exposed to him since our nights of passion at the Chateau de Vere. During our encounter at the gypsy camp, we’d been in too much of a hurry to bother fully undressing. ‘Not so fast,’ I teased, as I turned the corset upside down and shook the hidden contents onto the bed.
As the gold coins and precious stones cascaded onto our bunk, Devere’s jaw dropped. ‘Where on earth…?’
‘This was my personal insurance policy from Lord Hereford,’ I confessed. ‘I knew that if I declared this gift to you when we married then it automatically belonged to you. Well,’ I summed up, ‘now it does.’
Devere was lost for words.
‘There you have it.’ I pulled on my shirt and sat on the bed beside him. ‘All my secrets.’ Except for the one that I carried inside me, but at this early stage of my pregnancy most women could claim blissful ignorance.
‘There is a small fortune here.’ Devere fingered the jewels, and the coins in different currencies.
‘Certainly enough to get us to the Sinai and back again,’ I proffered.
‘Several times over.’ He gathered the treasure and returned it to the pockets inside the corset. ‘I cannot claim it. Hereford gave this to you and so it shall remain yours.’
‘But, legally, I was wrong to keep it from you,’ I protested.
‘Then you keep it safe for us.’ He handed me back the fully loaded corset. ‘If we need it, I’ll let you know.’
‘No, I cannot let you squander your inheritance on this mission any longer,’ I insisted. ‘This is my quest and I shall pay.’
‘I promised you extensive travel.’ Devere was just as insistent. ‘I intend to keep my word.’
His resolute manner melted my heart. ‘I do love you, Mr Devere.’ I slid closer to him.
‘And I love you, Mrs Devere.’ He kissed me tenderly and placed the corset aside to take advantage of my semi-naked state. Making love on a ship suited us perfectly, for almost everything was nailed down and so less chance of breakage. FROM THE HONEYMOON JOURNAL OF LADY SUSAN DEVERE
Five days after departing the port of Ostia, Lord Devere and I found ourselves off the coast of Malta.
You see, Lord Malory already suspected that our in-laws were headed toward the Sinai. He had decreed that we would all make the journey if my husband and I were not prepared to be forthcoming with information about our kin’s preferred route and hidden agenda.
We may have been the captives of Lord Malory, but we were treated as honoured guests and the vessel was even more luxurious than Molier’s. There was obviously a lot of money being channelled into these secret brotherhoods, for their great fortune was clearly reflected in their assets.
Lord Malory visited us in our cabin’s lounge, just as he had when we’d passed by every other major port along our route to the East. He came to tempt us with the prospect of disembarking at this port and seeking transport back to our homeland if we were prepared to tell all.
‘How many times do I have to tell you? I have no interest whatsoever in my brother’s occult pursuits,’ my husband insisted, keeping to his story, and for all I knew he wasn’t lying. ‘Thus, I had precious little reason to inquire after his travel arrangements.’
We had had this conversation quite a few times now.
Malory said that one reason he was so eager to find our sister-in-law was to inform her that her father had taken ill. The Scottish lord also said that he suspected Ashlee could be in danger from what he described as ‘an abomination of nature’. I could only presume the lord was referring to the unearthly personality of Christian Molier and my guess had been confirmed with a nod. My husband then demanded to know why Malory had not waited for Molier to return to Ostia, where Lord Malory’s private army could have vanquished the threat to our sister before Molier got anywhere near her.
But Lord Malory, who had admitted to being the Grand Master of the brotherhood to which Mr Devere belonged, did not want to prevent our sister and Molier from meeting in the Sinai. The Grand Master was well aware of Ashlee’s miraculous talents and her activities over the years, having been kept well informed by my father, Lord Eric Cavandish, and my aunt, Lady Charlotte, the Dowager Countess of Derby. Malory’s task was to prepare Ashlee for the confrontation. His brotherhood believed that Ashlee’s powerful and pure psychic talent could only have been sent into the world to oppose an equally powerful impure force which had been set free in the world at roughly the same time as her birth.
Lord Hamilton, who had also been a member of the secret brotherhood, had confessed to his Grand Master that he had inadvertently released an ancient, and seemingly malevolent, creature from an underground chamber on Mt Serabit. Lord Malory believed that the creature had assumed the identity of Christian Molier.
‘What are you saying? Molier is an evil spirit?’ My husband and I struggled to accept the credibility of the lord’s claim.
‘No, we believe he is what might be termed undead.’ We were corrected and, quite frankly, left twice as disbelieving.
Needless to say, my husband was not impressed by the description. ‘This is starting to sound like a bad vampire novel.’
Malory informed us that Mt Serabit had a long and illustrious history. All the secret knighthoods that had proliferated around the time of the first crusade into the Holy Land believed the mount contained many unearthly
