It was not to be, dammit. And then he was there beside her, looking up at the billowing storm clouds overhead, feeling the harsh sea wind whip his hair around his face.
He said, “We’ll be landing soon in Cork Harbour.”
She had her hand firmly on her bonnet. She turned to see her husband, his dark eyes watering from the sea winds whipping about his head. He looked immensely wonderful, but he had changed again. This wasn’t the man who’d groaned and yelled and kissed her numb the previous night. What was wrong with men? Were they all like this—utterly unpredictable, without a single idea how nice it would be to smile and kiss?
“I hope it storms before we land. I love storms.”
“The horses don’t. They don’t like this pitching about a bit. Add rain to the mix and they would want to stomp until they toppled into the sea.”
“It is a pity that they don’t have thumbs—then they could hang on to something.”
He smiled, remembering how he’d hated to leave her, she’d been so warm and soft, a slight smile playing about her mouth. She’d opened her eyes then, looked at him and saw only him, he knew it, smiled at only him. He’d had to leave her, there was so much to be done.
He said, “Pendragon lies only two hours south, right on the coast, at the end of a short promontory. It was built four centuries ago, a sentinel at the edge of the land to watch for enemies. It was burned by Cromwell because the Kavanaghs refused to surrender, then rebuilt by Charles II.”
“The Kavanaghs?”
“My great-uncle, Rodney Malcombe, my grandfather’s younger brother, bought Pendragon with his inheritance when the Kavanaghs found themselves betrayed by the French toward the end of the last century.”
“Napoleon betrayed them?”
Thomas nodded. “It was a question of turning on their neighbors. It was said that the Kavanaghs would butcher a neighbor’s cattle without thinking twice about it, but they simply would not kill the neighbors’ families. The French made them promises, then broke them. The Kavanaghs took what money my uncle paid for Pendragon and went to the Colonies, to a town called Boston, I believe. Pendragon is a grand old place, Meggie.”
Her eyes were shining with excitement even as the wild whipped her bonnet off her head.
Thomas caught it before it whirled overboard and set it back onto her tangled hair. He lightly patted her cheek, leaned down, and kissed her. “I wish I could have stayed with you this morning,” he said, and kissed her again.
Meggie leaned into him, licked his bottom lip, and he stepped back to tie her ribbons beneath her chin. “It simply won’t do for the earl of Lancaster to make love to his bride on the deck of a pitching boat.”
“Why not?”
“Be quiet, Meggie,” he said, stroked his knuckles over her jaw, and grinned at her. He cleared his throat. “We have our own small harbour where our local fishermen moor their boats. We have a small village, Pendragon, that sports a few small shops for the hundred or so people who live around us. Mostly we ride to Kinsale for supplies, just to the south of us.”
“Pendragon,” she said. “It has taste, that word, the taste of adventure and secrets and old passages that no one knows about.” She rolled the name around in her mouth, said it out loud again. “Pendragon. My cousin Jeremy’s home in Fowey is called Dragon’s Jaw. Isn’t that a marvelous name as well? I so wanted to—well, that’s silly, now isn’t it? No, I wanted to visit Dragon’s Jaw. There are these sharp rocks at the base of the cliff just below the house and thus, its name.”
If Jeremy had magically appeared, Thomas would have hurled him overboard without a second thought. She was thinking about living at his home. He was so angry he wanted to curse the billowing sails down, but he knew he couldn’t, and so he said, “Pendragon is very old. It was once very important. Now it is simply beautiful. Now it simply endures.”
Meggie frowned up at him. “What’s wrong, Thomas? You sound as cold and sharp as my grandmother Lady Lydia who can both slice ham and a witless neighbor with just a single glare. She lives at Northcliffe Hall with my uncle Douglas and aunt Alex. She couldn’t come to our wedding because she was ill. However, given the letter she wrote me, she is very pleased that I married an earl who’s an Englishman, not a dreaded Scot like my uncle Colin. Still, given five minutes she could still find something significant lacking in your character.