The sight made his blood boil.
“May I have the lantern?” Her voice was once more a slip of cool calm.
John handed it to her, his fingertips grazing her now-bare ones. Even from this glancing contact, he had to hold back a groan.
He watched her half-lit form flit from stone to stone. She ran her hands over the strange indentations, as if she could read their ancient language by touch. She then peered down over the mosaic and traced her fingers over its design, murmuring and smiling. He could not believe the pleasure he was taking from watching this woman study these crumbling stones. When she sighed and ran her fingers over their edifices, heenviedthe stones.
He had never met a woman who cared more for old stones than for him. When he was himself, he was used to the fawning and simpering of ladies. It was the first time he had been passed over for a ruin. He would have preferred her open and willing in his arms but he could appreciate the novelty of the situation.
Perhaps if she knew who he really was, she wouldn’t ignore him in favor of the ruins. And yet John wanted to believe that she would have ignored any man for these stones. Watching her, he did believe it.
When he thought she had forgotten him completely, her voice floated to him across the darkness.
“You know the story of the Tremberley Ruins, don’t you?”
He smiled at the question. It proved that her mind was only on the stones.
“I thought you said all history was just grasping at scraps?” He wanted to rile her and draw her attention. He was rewarded when her gaze drifted in the direction of his voice.
“Sometimes the scraps have to do.”
“I don’t know it. The story.”
And it was true. He didn’t.
Miss Musgrave raised her eyes once more, searching for his face beyond the radius of the lantern light. She was illuminated—he could see all of her—but he was in darkness. Finally, her eyes located his form in the shadows.
“You are Lord Tremberley’s cousin and you don’t know the legend?”
Bollocks.John Breminster not knowing the story made sense enough but Mr. Overton was a different matter altogether. He tried to find a plausible reason for this ignorance. The younger, poorer branches of great families tended to know the famed stories even better than the dukes and the earls. Lesser relations’ connection to a great family was an asset that needed to be constantly burnished.
He cleared his throat. “I am sure I knew once, when I was a child. But I have forgotten.”
Her eyes narrowed at this inadequate explanation. For what felt like an unbearable length of time, neither of them said a word.
John took a step forward into her circle of light. “Tell me the story.”
She stared at him for another heavy second. Then her gaze turned back to the ruins. “See the mosaic,” she said, pointing downward. “How it has these tiles, and the symbol in the middle—the animal? It’s the triple-tailed horse of the Atrebates. They say the king built this whole site. The entire structure was once a temple with this image at the center. See how they stand in a circle?”
He murmured his assent, moving deeper into the light. He felt he might lose control if he got any nearer to her and yet he couldn’t resist the pull of her voice. The thought that he had been so close to her before, with her arm in his, made him feel a bit light-headed, as though he had been walking along the edge of a steep cliff without realizing it.
“When the Romans invaded what we now call Hampshire,” she continued, her voice going even lower, drawing him another step nearer, “instead of destroying the ruling tribe and its king, they decided it would be wiser to keep them in power as rulers loyal to them. To avoid slaughter, the Atrebates agreed. Looking to cement the loyalty of the local king, who was old and feeble, the Romans demanded that his son, his heir, marry the daughter of their general.”
He was standing in front of her now. If he wanted, he could close the length in one stride. But her eyes were still downcast, trained on the ruins.
“The problem was that the heir loved another woman—who he had known since he was a child. But the Roman general insisted and he had no choice. The heir agreed to marry the Roman girl. When she heard what the heir had promised, the woman he loved drowned herself in the Alre. The heir was devastated. He refused to bed his new bride and never produced a son to replace himself. The tribe fell into ruin. His heartbreak made his sacrifice amount to nothing. Instead of tending to his people, he built this temple. He thought if he built the perfect temple, she would come back to him.”
“And did she?” John asked the question without thinking, needing to know.
Miss Musgrave looked up at him in surprise. “She was dead.”
“Sometimes, in old stories, the dead come back to life.”
She shook her head. “Not in this one.”
The glow of the story, its warm sorrow, snapped the last of his restraint.
John stepped forward and took her bare hand in his own.
