We've Only Just Begun

Chapter 27 of "A Sword for Wellington", Book Three of The Môrdreigiau Chronicles

Previous Chapter | All Chapters | All Môrdreigiau Chronicles / Next Chapter

The story began in A Grail for Eidothea and continued with A River Trembles. Now the Chosen Court seeks another Arthurian treasure. New here? Save this post and have a binge read. You deserve it.

Hugh placed Eidothea and Jasper to watch the alley behind the tavern. Jasper correctly surmised that Sir Hugh wanted the Chosen Court out of the way. Jasper revealed to Eidothea that he has a lead on what it means to be the Fisher King.

Jasper saw that they are spotted and Eidothea kisses him to conceal the real reason they were lingering in the alleyway. It was a really good kiss. The button’s magic continues to be a mystery.

Gwenddydd and Sir Hugh take the dead assassin to the Duke of Wellington. Llyr reported what happened back to the Chosen Court.

Jasper received a letter from his brother Ladon. Lord Tregallas is dead and Ladon has taken over. The letter asked the agent to capture Eidothea and kill the others. The drawing room door flew open…

While waiting for the duke to appear, Gwenddydd and Hugh sat together in front of the assassin’s corpse.

Hugh cleared his throat, settling on the edge of a chair. “You are an unusual woman.” She darted a wary look at him. “I don’t mean that as an accusation.”

Lifting her chin, she stared at the closed door. “I have little to offer you.”

“Your beauty—“

“—which will fade.”

“Your fire—“

“—which, in time, will be tamed.”

He chuckled under his breath, bending close to her. “Your fire will never fade or be tamed, Gwen.”

She licked her lips, lifting them to his, but he resumed their conversation. “You captured me from the first moment we met. You are not without your faults however.”

“There is plenty to find,” she interrupted, dryly. “No dowry, no breeding, as Lady Meredith puts it. I am not, and have never been, in your league.”

“That doesn’t mean we cannot enjoy each other.” He didn’t deny her lack. She got the impression that at any moment, he would kiss her senseless. She didn’t mind the idea of that at all.

Hugh traced the line of Gwen’s cheekbone with his fingertips. He loved how her eyes grew wide at his touch, almost luminous, with the sweet intoxication of desire. He felt the same way. “Am I in any danger?” he asked, hearing the huskiness in his voice. He’d been in danger since seeing her bloodied and grieving in the stone circle.

“Perhaps,” she murmured.

Her lips remained parted, an invitation he couldn’t refuse. He closed the remaining distance and claimed her sweet mouth. They kissed for an endless moment, their mouths the only connection.

With reluctance, he broke the kiss. ”Even though we are on the eve of war…” Hugh paused. “For the first time, I am beginning to wonder what your future, our future, would look like if they were more than just snatched moments.”

“Like on the rooftop, in the dark.” She sounded a little breathless.

He lowered his voice. “Oh, yes.” She gave a delicious shiver.

“And no interruptions this time.” Her eyes flashed with desire.

“None.” Why did she have this effect on him? She met his steady gaze, trying to still the tremors, the doubts that shook her.

“You tempt me so much,” he said, his voice hoarse. God, how he wanted her. He captured her hand, a thrill shooting through him as he imagined her hand without its ever-present glove. He turned her palm face up, and reached for the buttons. He wanted to kiss her bare skin, to press his mouth against the fluttering, soft heartbeat at her wrist.

She pulled her hand free. “Not here,” she whispered. “Someone might see and not understand.’

He almost asked if she really cared about other opinions. She intoxicated him. He wanted to make love to her. Now. Right here.

“Nobody will disturb us until Wellington arrives.” He glanced at the assassin’s body laid out on a table. Not even a corpse could dampen his ardour.

She folded her hands in her lap, looking serious. Her carriage had a certain military bearing about it. “How close is Napoleon?”

He told her the truth. “He’s consolidating his forces in France before he comes after the King. If you are afraid, you should make plans to return to England.”

His Gwen raised her chin, fostering a warmth within him. “I am not afraid. The duke will soon have his sword. Besides, I would never leave Lady Meredith.”

He eyed her. Did she mean that? “You would never leave her?”

“Lady Meredith has refined me,” she explained. “I owe her a great deal.”

He cleared his throat. “What do you plan to do after—er...”

She stiffened. “Go back home,” she whispered.

“But … Is there anything to go back to? Your circle was under attack.”

She looked down and for a moment, he thought she might cry. “There must be survivors. They cannot all be gone.” She sniffed and lifted her chin, meeting his gaze.

She looked so lost. He saw she fought to hide it from him. Dread built. What about him?

Feeling inept, he patted her hand in comfort and changed the subject. “Let me tell you about my time at Oxford....” Those last days of innocence before Napoleon tore his world apart.

He rattled on. She listened not with that half-bored smiling air like most young ladies, but with an intriguing intensity. She really listened.

He sprinkled his reminiscences with a couple of literary gags. She didn’t even blink at them. She found his tales of physical ineptitude hilarious however.

He fished out his pocket watch and flipped it open. He handed it to her, pointing to the inscription on the inside cover. “Can you read what that says?”

He watched her stare down at it, her gloved fingertips smoothing over the upside-down writing.

“Part of it is in Latin,” he prompted.

She glanced up at him. “I never learned to read it, only speak it.” She handed it back.

“You cannot read.”

She met his even gaze. “No.” Her stare challenged him to ridicule her, to pity her, to get up and walk away from her.

Never. He took a breath and slowly released. “If you like, I could teach you.”

She reached out and fingered the pocket-watch lying closed in his hand. She came so close to touching him, he wished he were the watch. “What does it say?”

“Fortes fortuna adiuvant.”

“Fortune favours the brave,” she breathed. She looked away, her chin raised.

Somehow, he had managed to upset her. Dammit. “I won’t tell anyone you cannot read.” He dared to touch her hand and leave it there, a reassuring warmth.

She leaned into him. He let his lips brush over hers. She made a soft sound of acceptance and returned his kiss. His arms drew her in and he kissed her as if his life depended on it. In that moment, Hugh was certain it did.

The door opened. They broke apart.

Instinctively reaching for his weapon, Hugh relaxed. With a wry grimace, he noticed Gwen had reached for one as well.

“Wellington has returned,” a young ensign declared. “He is changing and then he will join you.”

“Thank you.” Hugh dismissed the ensign. He returned his attention to Gwen, pulling her to him. He didn’t plan on wasting another moment. “We don’t have much time,” he murmured by her ear. His heart thudded at the light pulse of her breath on his cheek.

He pressed his mouth to her earlobe, smiling at her sharp intake of breath. He teased the rim of her earlobe with the tip of his tongue, thrilling to hear her breathy sighs.

Someone cleared their throat and Hugh and Gwen parted. Wellington stood in a formal stance, but his lips twitched in amusement.

Hugh leapt to his feet, stiffening to attention. Gwen rose, assuming a similar position.

“Well.” Wellington crossed to the table, laden with the dead Frenchman. “You have done it.”

“Yes, sir,” Gwen murmured.

“This is definitely the man.”

“Absolutely,” Hugh interjected.

Wellington nodded. “Then, my dear Miss Jones. You may give me your gift tomorrow.”

“But—“

“Tomorrow. I am late as it is already.” His smile widened. “Sir Hugh, why do you not take the night off and go celebrate? You seem to have already begun.”

They stepped outside Wellington’s headquarters to find the light approaching the golden hour. “Where shall we go?” Gwen asked.

“We should change first,” Hugh replied. “As much as I enjoy you in your blood spattered clothing...”

She glanced down. Blood stains marked her skirt from her stomach to its hem. The blood of two men. Gwen choked back a laugh. “Very well, I will change.” She touched his cheek. “Let us find somewhere quiet to talk.”

“Not just talk, I hope.” Her shy smile shook him more than he imagined.

Hugh hired a fiacre back to the Hôtel Bellevue. They would deliver the good news to his aunt and he would wait while Gwen changed into her riding habit.

But an altogether different scene greeted them. A woman’s shriek burst from the bedchamber. Gwen ran into the room, Hugh close behind. His aunt lay on the bed twitching and screeching, with Mr. Pendyr on his knees on the mattress next to her. Both were naked.

Hugh averted his gaze.

“Miss Jones! Sir Hugh!” exclaimed Mr. Pendyr. Hugh risked a look. The older man had pulled a sheet up over his and Lady Meredith’s waists. “Do the bell pulls even work here? I rang for help ages ago. Help her.”

Gwen hurried to the bedside. “I think she might be having a vision.”

A few hours earlier, one of the hotel staff knocked on Lady Meredith’s hotel suite door. At her beckoning, the man entered. She looked up from her needlework.

“My lady,” he began in heavily accented English, “there is a gentleman who wishes to see you. Would you come downstairs and meet with him in our lobby?”

“Who is it?”

“A Mr. Pendyr.“ The man waited with clasped hands. “I suggest this because you appear to be alone and—”

“Mr. Pendyr is known to me.” Lady Meredith rose, setting aside her embroidery hoop. “I will come down.”

Donning her pelisse and bonnet, she followed the man downstairs. Mr. Pendyr paced near the front doors, looking up as she descended the broad stairs. His smile dispelled the wrinkled jowls.

He crossed the foyer, extending a hand. She accepted it, but released him at once. “Why are you here, Mr. Pendyr?”

Mr. Pendyr sighed. He spoke in a low voice. “My dear Meredith, I could not wait until the next evening event in order to see you. Might we talk?” He gestured to a nearby cluster of sofas and chairs.

Lady Meredith looked at them and then at him. “I think not. We do not have anything to say.”

He bowed his head. “Forgive me, Meredith, but I could have sworn you were as affected by our dance as I was.”

She remembered: the warmth of his hands in hers, curled in the small of her back, the heat of his gaze. She took a steadying breath. “Sir, I am too old for such nonsense.”

“No,” demurred Mr. Pendyr. His frown deepened the wrinkles upon his brow. “No, you are most certainly not. If you will not sit, then walk with me.”

She agreed. They left the Hôtel Bellevue and strolled along the footpath, heading toward the Parc du Bruxelles. She walked beside him, her arms and legs stiff.

Mr. Pendyr tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow, patting it. She tugged to free herself but he held firm. “Why do you insist on keeping your distance? Can we not enjoy each other’s company?”

“Why do you even want to?” Lady Meredith twisted to look at him, being only a little shorter than he. “I cut you off and have shown no interest—”

“Because you are beautiful. Because when I see you I remember the summer we spent together. Had your brother’s senses been less addled by your lovely friend, could he have stopped you from loving me as you did? It was a true melding of minds, Meredith, as well as—” He stopped.

“It is well that you stop. My foolishness could have ruined me,” Lady Meredith snapped. The chill of her near-ruin still haunted her.

“It was perhaps foolish to love so freely,” Mr. Pendyr agreed. He could not look away from her, stumbling over an uneven flagstone.

Lady Meredith caught at his arm.

He steadied, his fingertips trailing down her arm from elbow to wrist. “I do not regret a moment of it. Only that I let you go at the end.”

“Of course you do not regret it.” She bristled. “You are a man. It no doubt enhanced your reputation.”

He frowned, his hand encircling her wrist. “I spoke of it to nobody and retreated into my books, waiting for your letters.”

“But you married.”

He nodded. “And I loved her.”

Lady Meredith sniffed. “Well then.” Part of her quailed at that. He had loved his wife? He had known love again? That didn’t seem fair.

He regarded her. “Meredith, let me kiss you.”

Her eyes widened. “What? No—”

“Believe me, I understand.” He directed them down an alleyway. His grip loosened and she shook him off. She glared at him.

“Tell me no,” Mr. Pendyr’s voice lowered. “Tell me you don’t wish for my mouth on yours, my body next to yours. Tell me you don’t want to explore me, to discover how my body has changed over the years and yet is still me. Tell me you don’t want to be held, kissed, loved.”

Lady Meredith licked her suddenly dry lips. Her mouth had fallen open at his declaration. Her gaze traveled to his mouth, his chest, his hands, his — she swallowed — his groin.

She dragged her gaze back to his face. He had aged, his dark hair graying. Lines ran deep at the corner of his eyes and at his mouth, signs of deep grief. He had become a husband, a father, a widower … but he had not forgotten her.

“Gerald.” She took one step toward him.

He swooped, gathering her in his arms and stumbling back against the alley wall. He let his coat get covered in brick and plaster dust instead of hers. His hand closed at the nape of her neck and he kissed her.

His kiss was both strange—for he tasted differently than she remembered—and yet also familiar. She kissed him back. This moment did not matter. It would pass and she would go back to being Lady Meredith Rathven, leader of the Craiglyn Stone Circle, and Gerald would go back to his books.

Just like before.

His hands roamed, setting her senses alight, until she could not breathe, could not think. Just this moment without end, her heart bursting with the desires of youth.

He nuzzled at her neck and dipped lower toward her cleavage, undoing her pelisse buttons as he went. She buried her hands in his hair, panting, almost sobbing, with the joy of it.

Gerald broke off the kiss but her lower body still wriggled against his. “Your hotel is closer. But we could get a carriage—”

She caressed his face. “The hotel. Give me a few minutes, I’ll—”

He shook his head. “I will give you precisely one minute. I am not letting you out of my sight.”

Lady Meredith stepped back, straightening her bonnet, which had fallen askew, and buttoned her pelisse. She hurried back to the main thoroughfare.

Behind her, she heard Gerald emit a low moan, followed by his booted footsteps. She quickened her pace.

It felt like the entire hotel watched them, although later Gerald would tell her that not one person looked their way.

Afterward, tangled in the sheets, Meredith lay with her head on Gerald’s shoulder. He stroked her naked side.

“Do you remember the time you read our palms?” Gerald asked drowsily.

She startled, propping herself up on an elbow. She stared down at him. “Why would you ask that?”

He pulled her in close. “You never told me what you saw in my future.”

She shook her head. “And I won’t now.”

He tucked a greying brown curl back behind her ear. “How bad could it be? I have lived this long.”

Meredith sat up, sighing and reached for his hand. She did not bother to cover herself. She closed her eyes and began praying to the Lady. She felt Her presence, a steady and true lightness. Taking several deep breaths, she opened them and peeked at Gerald’s palm.

At first, she saw nothing but the criss cross of lines. His heart line tangled across his life line and— Her sight blurred.

“No!”

What—you thought that we would find out who opened the drawing room door so dramatically??? Next week … although, this does give you hints.

Thoughts about today’s instalment? Comments? Share below or join the Chat!

Did you know you can subscribe for free and have these instalments delivered to your inbox? Thank you if you already subscribe! I appreciate you being here!

Subscribe to The Môrdreigiau Chronicles:

Previous Chapter | All Chapters | All Môrdreigiau Chronicles / Next Chapter