Free Midsummer Night by Deanna Raybourn Page A

but winter comes and we will be glad of the gold when it does. But when they found us on the road, we were not heading to London. We were on our way back here.”
    I was suffused with a quiet joy. “You were coming back?”
    “Yes,” she said, her manner grudging. “Perhaps some of what you said is true. Perhaps just for today I can think kindly on him as my nephew and wish him well.” She broke off, and when she spoke again, it was with a fresh briskness. “It is time for the past to be the past,” she said, rising and dusting off her hands. “It is time to look to the east. A new day comes for all of us. And yesterday must be buried with the dead.”
    As bridal talks go, it was not the most uplifting, but I was grateful to see Marigold unbending in her resentments. They had not made full peace with each other, but he later thanked her and she accepted his kiss. She even went so far as to sketch a brief gesture of blessing over us before we darted through a gap in the hedge and ran away.
    I held Brisbane’s hand tightly. “This is appallingly rude, you know. We are supposed to let them send us off.”
    “Half of them are too tipsy to stand and the rest are plotting to throw me in the river fully dressed. Do you really want to spend your wedding night helping me wring out my favourite coat?” he asked.
    “Brisbane?”
    “Yes, my love?”
    “Run faster.”
    He paused. “Hear that?”
    We stood for the space of a heartbeat before I heard it, the bright unmistakable call of the cuckoo.
    “This is the day the cuckoo changes his song,” my husband said. “Gypsies say if you run and count the cuckoo’s cries, you will add one year to your life for each cry you hear.”
    Together we clasped hands and ran, counting cuckoo songs and laughing as the last of the golden rays of the midday sun fell gently over the land.

Chapter Seven
    Get thee a good husband, and use him as he uses thee.
    — All’s Well That Ends Well , I.i.221
    H e led me to the Rookery, the little house my father had given me. It belonged to the estate but had been sorely neglected until Father had it repaired and refurbished for my enjoyment. Aquinas had opened it up, airing the house and unshrouding the furniture from the dust sheets, and maids had dusted from beams to polished floors, spreading fresh linen upon the wide four-poster bed. The windows had been thrown open to the summer breezes, and as Brisbane pressed me down onto the bed, I smelled the roses at the casement surrendering their perfume at the end of the long day. He put his hands through my hair and the lavender wreath, broken to bits by the exertions of dancing, scattered like so much confetti across the sheets. What followed...well, there are words to describe such a thing, but they are known only to poets. I believed I loved him before that night; I believed I understood what passes between a man and a woman before that night. I believed I knew all there was of intimacy and pleasure and passion and perfect satisfaction.
    I was wrong. I went into the room the woman I had always been, but I emerged the next day exactly as Marigold had described—a new creation. I mourned the loss of the beautiful pale violet corset Brisbane had destroyed in his haste, but it was the only casualty of his loss of control, and as I stared mournfully at the shreds of French lace, I marvelled that I had driven him to take it apart with his bare hands. There was power in him, but gentleness as well, and he had given me both.
    We spent a few days in seclusion at the Rookery before embarking upon a wedding journey that saw us on a slow tour of the Mediterranean, tarrying wherever we fancied along the way. The summer was hot, but the Mediterranean was deliciously comfortable in the warmth of late October and a sharp breeze rolled off the coast of Africa, carrying with it the scent of spices and antique lands. We were utterly relaxed as the ship drew into the port of Alexandria, the last leg of our