didn't re-ally care, not after so many years. Without your coming, there would never have been a mystery, no debt I knew of, that my adopted family knew of. In the long view of things, what does a simple song have to do with anything at all?'
'Richard tried to take you.'
'Yes, he did, and that is quite interesting. I wonder why he did. To keep us from getting married? So that I wouldn't bear you an heir? So that he could kill you at his leisure and then take the title and estate? We'd only just met, Nicholas. Why would Richard act so speedily on something that probably wouldn't even come to pass?'
'I don't know Richard, I don't understand him. Was that his motive? It sounds logical, given that he's a very angry man, mayhap a very bad man, albeit too young a man to be so accomplished at sin already.'
'You indeed look like brothers, nearly twins, save you do look a bit older. He is only twenty-one, so very young to be thinking of murdering his brother, or murdering me.'
'You've seen what a rotter Lancelot is. Can you imagine what he will be like when he is thirty? If he lives that long. As for Aubrey, who can say? At our wedding breakfast, he was certainly interesting and clever for one so young.'
Rosalind said, 'I agree you are not blessed in your remaining relatives. Do you think perhaps Richard wanted me for himself-for some reason we don't yet know? Or perhaps he saw me and he is the one who fell head over heels in love? The infamous coup de foudre? He had to have me or die trying?'
'Now that's a mawkish thought.' Nicholas took a step toward her. Rosalind looked him squarely in the eye, then down at his outstretched hand.
'Don't,' she said.
He drew a deep breath, but didn't back away. He dropped his hand to his side. She saw a flash of anger in his eyes, but he said only, 'The fact is, you are very important to someone. The people who tried to murder the child, are they still about? Would they recognize you like I did? And Rennat the Titled Wizard of the East-who is he to you? What is he? A long-ago ancestor? Or perhaps simply a beneficent being assigned to look after you? If so, he didn't do a very good job of it when you were eight years old. Who are your parents? Are they still alive? Where are they?'
'You know I have no answers to these questions. You also know when I finally spoke, I spoke fluent English and Italian. Which am I?'
'I told you I would send off inquiries and so I shall.'
'Just what would you inquire about?'
'That's easy enough-any renowned wealthy family who mysteriously lost a child ten years ago. No, don't doubt that. How else could you speak two languages fluently? Your English is obviously a lady's English; your Italian, I am certain, is the same. Well, let's see.' He spoke Italian to her, not an educated, aristocratic Italian, since he'd learned it from an Italian mistress from Naples, but he did indeed know educated Italian when he heard it. In the next moment, she answered his question about her favorite hobbies in smooth upper-class Italian.
Nicholas nodded. 'Ryder told me your clothes were well-made, though ripped to rags. And there is your gold locket. Someone will recognize it.' He said it with absolute conviction. 'Now, after you left me alone with the old earl's ghost, I finished reading Captain Jared's journals. I told him his assistance was worth spit, that he hadn't written a single helpful thing. He didn't even tilt the chair.'
'Perhaps he is embarrassed.'
'I'm thinking he simply doesn't know himself since he never found the little girl to whom he owed his debt.'
She said, 'For me, it always comes back to why would anyone wish to murder a child?'
'Don't forget that whoever it was, he didn't get the job done. He failed. Now that is something to consider, isn't it?'
Now that she thought of it, she realized he was right. 'Surely it wouldn't be all that difficult to kill a child. It's not as if the child could defend herself.'
'And why on the docks in Eastbourne? Say you are Italian, then why were you here in England? Were you with your parents? Were you kidnapped from them here? No, that can't be right. Your parents would have raised a mighty hue and cry and Ryder Sherbrooke would have heard about it. No, you were likely taken from Italy. By whom? And why would he or she or whoever want to murder you here? In Eastbourne?'
'For that matter, why not simply toss me over the side of the ship in the English Channel?'
He sent his fist into the wall right beside Captain Jared's portrait, making its heavy gilt frame tilt. When he faced her, he looked dangerous, his eyes dark, opaque, vicious, she thought, his mouth cruel. 'Bloody hell, don't be angry at me, Rosalind. I did what I had to do.'
She sighed. 'I know.'
He felt a surge of relief, felt the rage fade a bit. 'You do?'
'Of course. Tell me, Nicholas, when all this is resolved, will you journey back to Macau? Are the laws different enough there to enable you to have a wife in England and one in this Portuguese colony?'
He froze. He looked primed for violence, his face now even harder, colder. He said very precisely, 'You are my bloody wife. You will remain my bloody wife until the day we die.'
'No,' she said, her face still, 'I am your debt.'
She heard him cursing as she walked away from him down the long gallery, vicious curses. She didn't recognize many of the animal parts he used so fluently. She did understand the occasional reference to a woman whose ears he wanted to box.
When Nicholas walked into the master bedchamber late that night, Rosalind wasn't where he'd believed she would be- namely, in bed. He didn't expect her to want to make love to him, but he'd believed she'd be there, possibly pretending sleep, he didn't know, but she'd be there. Perhaps because she feared a ghost's machinations, and his company was better than none at all.
At dinner, she'd spoken calmly, detailing plans she'd made with Peter and Mrs. McGiver for improvements within the house and work on the grounds. She'd played the piano, and he leaned his head back, closing his eyes to listen. And when she'd added her voice to the songs, he'd sighed with pleasure. When she crashed down on the final chords of a Beethoven sonata, they both looked up to hear applause coming from the corridor outside the drawing room. Peter Pritchard stuck his head in, smiling, pointing to the audience of servants.
She'd played a song for Mrs. McGiver to sing, and that had been very fine indeed. Then all the servants had been encouraged to sing, and they'd had an impromptu musicale. It had been, he thought, quite nice.
Where the devil are you, Rosalind?
Yes, she'd been calm whenever she'd spoken to him or looked at him. Nicholas realized finally, after following her up to bed, that he'd thought of more questions, and decided that once they made their way to the cursed center of this maze, he never again wanted to hear another question in his natural life. Ah, but if there was magic in him, maybe nothing in his life would be natural. If he'd had magic in him from as far back as Captain Jared, then why had he been forced to eat roots in Portugal when he'd been a starving twelve-year-old?
As he paced the large bedchamber, he remembered that storm in the Pacific, near the Sea of Japan, when one of his sailors had nearly been swept overboard and Nicholas, through sheer luck-or something else-had managed to loop a rope around the mart's flailing hand, surely an unlikely feat, and haul him upright. The first thing the sailor had done was cross himself a good six times, others of his men as well, and none of them had ever looked at him again in quite the same way. On a very deep level, they'd feared him.
The candlelight flickered.
'Go away,' he said.
The light calmed. That ancient old sea dog was ready and willing to keep him company, but not his wife.
He went to the adjoining room door and turned the knob. It was locked. She'd locked a door against him.
He knocked on the door. 'Rosalind, let me in. I wish to speak to you.'
Nothing.
'Dammit, I'm your husband. You will obey me. You will open this damned door now.'
'I know well who you are, my lord. I, however, have nothing more to say to you. Go away. Good night.'
His booted foot itched to break down the door. Instead, he walked quickly to the main door off the hallway. It was locked too. He felt like a fool. He stood against the opposite wail, his arms crossed over his chest, staring at the locked door, and finally managed to calm himself. Let her stew. Let her get cold during the night without him to
