Pendragon

He nearly dropped the brandy bottle. 'Yes,' he said slowly, 'I will. I think you would be safer back at the vicarage, Meggie, or at Fowey.'

'That is possible. However, I'm not going anywhere. If you've forgotten, I'm not yet quite well enough to get up to dance with you just yet, so I would imagine that travel is equally beyond me as yet.'

She was loyal to her toes, he thought, and poured the gentlemen some brandy. He'd eyed Jeremy Stanton- Greville, seen he was still a handsome man, a man he would probably like in any other circumstance, but not this one. No, he would just as soon stick a sword through his belly, curse him and curse Meggie, who was trying her best to show him that she still didn't love the bastard. Hmm. The fact was, she wasn't acting at all like her heart was in danger of crumbling. Not at all.

When Jeremy walked toward him to get his brandy, Thomas saw that he limped. He supposed that he'd noticed before, but it hadn't registered in his brain. Now he wondered why, and hoped it was from nothing that a female would consider vastly romantic.

'Meggie, love,' Tysen said, stroking her hair, 'we all think that you should come back home, just for a little while, until all this is resolved.'

Meggie looked into her father's beloved face, then at Mary Rose, who was nearly wringing her hands she was so very worried for her, and smiled. 'I love you both for coming here. I will be fine. Thomas will make certain that I will remain fine.' She looked over at him, standing there so still, holding a glass of brandy in each of his hands. One for her father and one for himself, she supposed.

'Won't I, Thomas?'

Slowly Thomas shook his head. 'I think you should go back to Glenclose-on-Rowan, Meggie. You will be well enough by next week. If you wish, you can stay at Bowden Close. The servants will take very good care of you.'

Then Meggie looked straight at Jeremy. She was aware that Thomas had stiffened. She smiled at her almost cousin. 'Tell me something, Jeremy, and tell me the truth. Would Charlotte leave you?'

'If I told her to, she would,' Jeremy said, and it was said with arrogance, those words. He sounded infinitely obnoxious.

Meggie just grinned at him. 'Give over, Jeremy. You can't pull that ruse on me anymore. The truth now.'

Jeremy gave it up and said, without hesitation, 'She would stand beside me and fight to the death.'

Meggie said, 'Good for her. You know, truth be told, I did hate her. I wanted to remove her from England entirely, perhaps even smack her in the jaw before I had her kidnapped aboard a ship bound for far-distant places. But now she doesn't seem so bad at all. I dare say I will even come to like her a lot, particularly if she's as fierce as you say she is.

'When you and she visit us here at Pendragon, Jeremy, I dare say we will have tea and I will tell her about the racing cat competition we're going to hold here, just as soon as all this mess is cleared up.'

'Perhaps,' Thomas said slowly, never taking his dark eyes off his wife, 'you will have some entrants in the competition.'

'You never know,' Jeremy said, shook his head at Meggie, and laughed.

'I'm not leaving, Papa. However, I would very much like for you to remain here for a while. With all of you here, why, what could possibly happen to me? Now, I cannot wait for you to meet my mother-in-law, not to mention William and Aunt Libby. Oh dear, Jenny is missing. Nothing is going well at the moment.' And Meggie lowered her face into her hands and sobbed.

Thomas handed both snifters of brandy to his father-in-law and gathered his wife onto his lap. He lay his cheek against her hair and rocked her. 'Everything will be all right, Meggie, you will see. We will find Jenny.'

There was no sign of Jenny MacGraff by dark that night. The search was called off until dawn the next morning. In the meantime, Thomas sent Paddy to question everyone in the village. Surely someone must have seen something. Jenny couldn't simply have disappeared.

Chapter 33

REVEREND TYSEN SHERBROOKE, Baron Barthwaite of Kildrummy in Scotland, looked at Thomas's mother, his head cocked ever so slightly, and said in his deep elegant voice, one brow arched, 'I beg your pardon, ma'am, I am not exactly sure I heard what you said.'

'I said, my lord, that your daughter-well, perhaps it would be for the best if your darling daughter did go back to England with you, don't you think? It simply isn't safe for her to remain here, now is it? No, she'd be far better off away from Pendragon.'

Compared to what his mother had first said, this was a capitulation indeed, Thomas thought, turning an admiring eye to Meggie's father. Just maybe her father could turn Madeleine into a diplomat. That thought would surely give him a headache.

'Evidently not,' Mary Rose said, ready to hit the old harridan in the nose even though Tysen had managed to get her to change her tune quickly enough. 'However, I am very certain that you, ma'am, have made her welcome.'

'I would welcome her even more excessively if she would just get herself pregnant.'

'Quite a feat that would be,' Thomas said, rising. 'Now, Mother, I don't think you should embarrass Meggie's father in exactly this way. You need to learn to pick your moments. Until that happens, why don't you sip your tea until it is time for you to partner Mr. Jeremy Stanton-Greville in whist. I understand all three of our guests are superb players. You are always saying that you would like some competition. You have it. Sir,' he added to Tysen, 'thank you for coming. Now, I will bid you all good night and see that Meggie is settled in.'

Thomas nodded to his three guests and took himself upstairs. He was whistling when he went into the White Room to see Meggie lying on her back, her hair spread on the pillow, lace and satin to her chin, her eyes closed.

He sat quietly in a chair beside her, crossed his legs, and thoughtfully began tapping his fingers as he looked at her face.

'Stop that.'

He'd thought she was asleep and jumped at the sound of her voice. 'How do you know what I'm doing?' he asked.

'You're watching me.'

'It gives me great pleasure to watch you, Meggie.' He paused a moment, continued to tap those long fingers of his together slowly, saying thoughtfully after a few moments, 'When I arrived in Glenclose-on-Rowan to assume my father's responsibilities, to fit myself into my new title, the last thing on my mind was taking a wife. However, it seems that when I saw you, everything just seemed to fall into place.'

Her heart was pounding, slow deep strokes. She didn't say a word.

'The first time I saw you, you were peeling your little brother's sticky fingers off your skirt. Evidently you would give him candy to keep him quiet during your father's service.'

'I remember. It was a new gown. Poor Rory, he was so dismayed that he'd upset me. Oh goodness, then he tried to lick the sticky stuff off the skirt.'

'Yes, and you laughed and laughed, held him close, and the sun burst upon my head.'

Meggie's heart felt suddenly so very full that she wanted to cry. She wanted to leap from the bed and tell him he was a wonderful man, that she would never leave him, that he was hers, forever. But that meant telling him straight in his beautiful dark eyes that she loved him. She wouldn't lie, not about something so utterly important as that. But she knew she wanted him, wanted him to be happy, with her. She knew he was as fine a man as her father was, as her uncles were. He made her wild-no question about that. But the other-that heart-wrenching excitement when she saw Jeremy for that first time so very long ago in London, that soul-wrenching near-pain when he'd smiled at her-no, she'd never felt that with Thomas. She'd never felt it with anyone but Jeremy.

On the other hand, she hadn't felt any of that heart-pounding, near-nausea, light-headed, utterly out-of-control excitement when Jeremy had walked into the drawing room this afternoon. Not a bit of it. Nothing at all. She said to her husband, 'Thank you for making me remember that wonderful moment. I also thank you for writing to my father and for telling me that the sun burst upon your head.'