Rennat, and he told me I would come into my own and to obey the Rules of the Pale, and he kept repeating it.'
He stared at her. 'Rennat actually appeared to you? He told you you would come into your own? Those were his words?'
She nodded, searching his face. 'So the Rules of the Pale must fit in all this mess somehow. What is this all about, Nicholas? Who am I?- What am I?'
Nicholas smoothed his thumb over her palm. 'I kept dreaming about you, the little girl with the rich red hair and eyes as blue as the summer sky, and the beautiful haunting voice. I knew someday, Rosalind, knew all the way to my soul that I would find you and I would save you since you were now my debt. It was time, you see, it was the right time, and something deep inside me knew it was the right time. And so I came for you.'
'To pay Captain Jared's debt?'
'Yes.'
'You came to London, you saw me, recognized me, married me. A debt is one thing, but-why did you marry me, Nicholas?'
Not a single word came to his brain.
'You didn't succumb to the coup de foudre, as the French say, did you? You did see me across the ballroom, but your heart didn't fall to your feet, did it? You said you recognized me, Nicholas. And you came to me. Why didn't you simply tell me who you were, what this was all about?'
'I couldn't very well tell you when I had no idea what I was to do. What would I have said to you? Besides, whatever
I could have said, you would have believed me mad. Your Uncle Ryder certainly would have put his boot to my back and kicked me out.'
'So you believed so strongly in this debt business that you married a girl you didn't even know?'
38
'There was more to it than that, Rosalind.'
'Yes, there was the Rules of the Pale. And Sarimund and your grandfather-who just happened to have another sort of Rules of the Pale written by this Sarimund character. Now that's a universe of madness in itself, isn't it? You must have been so excited when it turned out I could read the bloody thing-but the Rules of the Pale didn't tell us anything, nor did the scribblings of Sarimund that your grandfather had in his possession. He couldn't read it either. That's what you told me.'
'No, he couldn't. And it drove him to near madness. The hours he spent trying to decipher it. I can remember him sitting up until late into the night studying the code, trying to figure it out.'
'But he couldn't, because it isn't really a code. It's magic, some sort of enchantment.'
'Yes, perhaps so. Who knows?'
'So since I'm the only one who can read the bloody thing, I must be magic as well. Do you agree?' She laughed over his silence, an ugly sound because it was filled with fear and something else he couldn't identify. 'Oh, yes, I'm so magic I was nearly beaten to death. I'm so magic I can't even remember who I am or how I could possibly be anyone's debt.' She jumped to her feet and paced the length of the library. 'That visit of Rennat the Titled Wizard of the East in my dream-and what does that ridiculous title mean anyway?- I'm to come into my own. How would he know that? Why did he come to me? What does he want me to do?'
'Perhaps Rennat was the wizard or being who saved Captain Jared's life. After all, he isn't a simple plain wizard, he's the Titled Wizard of the East. Perhaps he also caused the storm, the being who brought the huge wave that destroyed Captain Jared's ship and killed all his men. He set it all up so Captain Jared would believe he did owe him a great debt.'
'You believe Rennat brought the storm? That bespeaks a power neither of us can comprehend, Nicholas. Could a wizard do that, even a wizard with a bloody title?'
'I don't want to believe it but there doesn't seem to be a choice for me. It also means that this is a very powerful being, if this being did indeed bring Captain Jared Vail under his thumb. It can only mean that Jared Vail was the only man to pay this debt. If it wasn't Rennat, was it Belenus, the wizard Sarimund wrote about at Blood Rock? Or Taranis, the Dragon of the Sallas Pond? He was the god, after all, supposedly immortal and all-powerful. Is that why we were led to the Rules of the Pale? But again, why Grayson and not one of us?'
She walked over to the big mahogany desk, pausing a moment by the ghost's chair. She leaned down to say into an invisible ear, 'You might try to be of some assistance here. A song perhaps that isn't lewd, a song that really means something.'
There was nothing from the chair.
Rosalind sat behind the desk in the overlarge leather chair. 'Let me get a piece of foolscap and a pencil. I want to list out all the questions. Then we will try to go about answering them one at a time.' She sat down and began writing. He watched her silently until at last she looked up at him. She said very precisely, 'The question at the very top of my list, Nicholas, is why did you marry me? You are the only one who knows the answer to that question. Tell me now.'
His brain, working at a furious speed until this moment, shut down. Nothing at all came out of his mouth.
She said, her voice utterly expressionless, 'Very well, I don't really blame you for keeping quiet. Your answer wouldn't be excessively gratifying to a new bride, would it? So allow me to answer it for you. You married me because you knew if you were ever to figure out this debt business, figure out what exactly was owed to me, figure out exactly what you had to do in order to rid yourself of the wretched dream, and this immense sense of obligation you feel, that the men of your family have felt for many generations, then I had to be close to you, I would have to be tied to you. Yes, I can understand that you would be terrified I would get away from you.
'So as I see it, you married me because you felt you had to.' And she wrote it down.
He lunged to his feet. 'Bloody hell, no!'
She looked him dead in the eye. He was pale, his eyes blacker than midnight. Slowly, at last, he nodded, and his black eyes were now desolate, his face leached of color. 'Yes, that is what happened.'
Rosalind slowly rose, the pencil still in her hand. 'So much has happened since I met you, so many inexplicable things. I'll wager it's because the two main players are finally together. Do you remember I asked you once if your grandfather was a wizard and you told me you didn't know? But then you told me he knew things, guessed things that no one else would know?'
'I remember,' he said. 'There was something in him, something magic. I can say that now without feeling contempt for myself.'
'I accept that your grandfather was magic. This magic goes all the way back to Captain Jared Vail, it simply has to, and it puts magic in you as well. No, don't argue.
'Now, do you believe this being who saved Captain Jared is some ancestor of mine?'
He didn't want to answer, she saw it clearly, but finally he said, 'It is possible.'
'All right, if Captain Jared was a wizard, and Rennat the Titled Wizard of the East saved him in order to wring agreement from him, then it also makes sense that he knew I was in trouble-or would be in trouble-and in need of saving whenever the time was right. You know, when something bad would happen to me.'
Slowly he nodded.
'Do you believe I'm a witch, Nicholas? Do you believe that someone tried to kill me because they recognized me for what I was, recognized I was from this long line of wizards, and was afraid I could harm them in some way? And so this someone tried to destroy the witch, or tried to destroy the spawn of this long-ago wizard?'
'I don't know.'
He walked to where she now stood, and placed his hands on her shoulders. 'I simply don't know, Rosalind, but I do know that everything is becoming clearer.'
'Nothing is clear at all, Nicholas, save that like the Wyverly heiress, you married me because you felt you had to.'
