“Never describe it so,” she scolded. “It’senchanting.”
“It does have one or two charms, for all that.”
He rattled off a few basic facts about the castle, how the original structure was built five hundred years ago by the first Earl of Cassin. King Edward had granted the title and considerable lands to the family in gratitude for the first earl’s bravery in the Hundred Years War.
No one knew if the first earl purposefully erected the castle amid so many Roman ruins, or if ancestors discovered the ruins in subsequent years, but the grounds were awash in Roman artifacts, and Cassin’s brother, Felix, had devoted his life to their excavation and study.
The castle itself had been improved, he told her, shorn up and modernized over the years, but only in fits and starts, when money was available.
Unlike the property of many of the landed noblemen of the day, the tenants on the estate’s vast acreage existed in a symbiotic relationship with the Caulder family; they earned their living from Caldera, but at the same time they supported the estate.
“But does it have all the trappings of a real castle?” Willow asked. “Bats and ghosts, moats and dungeons, and fireplaces large enough to stand in?”
“Well, I believe I may have already mentioned the dungeon,” he said, winking at her, and Willow felt herself blush. Their lovemaking had taken on a playful naughtiness in the snug little Harrogate inn. Willow’s body responded to the memory, already pining for the next night spent in his arms.
He went on, “Moat? No, but we have a lovely stream over which we are just about to cross—see the little bridge? Bats? Probably, as I have not been here to rout them out. Ghosts? Not that I am aware. Large fireplaces? Yes, two of them. Very smoky. A great nuisance. After I save the tenants and teach us all to raise sheep and provide guano fertilizer to the world, I shall learn some new way to ventilate the place. One thing at a time.” He gave her another wink.
Willow smiled and watched the castle grow larger and more imposing with each lurch of the carriage. The walls had appeared almost lavender in the distant mist of the morning, but now she could see the stonework was a light, weathered grey. The knobby wall of old stones, deeply pocked and blackened at the edges, reached four or five levels and higher to towers or turrets. Willow counted three or four walks that stretched from one end of the wall to the other, each at different heights. The walkways widened where balconies jutted out, typically beneath a window. She was put immediately in the mind of Rapunzel or Romeo’s Juliet. Windows abounded, in fact, scattered in no particular order, and Willow was alarmed to see that many of them were without glass.
“But is the castle open to the weather?” Willow asked.
“Oh, that,” Cassin said. “Never fear. The wing of the castle in which the family lives is fully sealed from the elements. Glass in the windows. Doors that open and shut with working locks. Vermin controlled by aggressive cats. But the whole of the structure is too large and open to efficiently heat in the winter. We’ve been forced to leave non-family areas vacant and open, almost like a folly, while we reside in the family wing. There is plenty of room in the occupied areas of the house, but the entire castle, fifty bedrooms in all, would be too large for our modest brood.”
Willow nodded, marveling at this undiscovered part of her husband. Lord and master. Economizer. Router of bats. The need was obvious, certainly, considering the size and age of the castle. But it was yet another reason it must be so difficult for him to leave home to mine fertilizer on the other side of the world.
She glanced at him. He gazed up at Caldera with a critical eye but also with an expression of affection that made her heart flip. Willow looked at the approaching structure, feeling herself fall in love with it because he loved it. And also because—well, it wasa castle.
When the carriage passed through the outer curtain wall, the wild beauty of the trees along the carriage path gave way to a lush garden, formally manicured. A carpet of bright-green grass stretched on either side of a gravel walk, and smoothly clipped topiaries of different heights lined the distant edge. Low flowerbeds of April bulbs swayed gently with colorful blooms, and mosses and ivy frothed beneath the trunks of stately, intermittent trees.
“Brent,”Willow whispered, “it’s breathtaking.”
He shot her a proud smile, but his attention was on the wall, the garden, the great arched double door in the center of the largest, most central building.The keep,Willow assumed.
“It’s oddly quiet,” he said. “Too quiet.” He looked around, his eyes narrowed. “This garden is my mother’s pride, and I’ve never once seen it without at least three gardeners busily at work. And where are the stable boys to mind the carriage? I’m away not even a year and the whole lot goes to—”
Running footsteps interrupted him, and they turned to see a boy dart around the far corner of the keep.
“Lady Cassin!” the boy exclaimed, shouting back in the direction he had come.
Cassin signaled for the coachman to stop. Before the tiger could help them out, Cassin pushed the carriage door open and clipped down. The boy froze, and Cassin smiled at him. He turned and lifted Willow to the ground.
The boy shouted again. “But itishim, my lady! His lordship is home! Lord Cassin has come home!”
A moment later, one side of the keep’s giant door made a loud clang and then creaked open, revealing a thin, middle-aged woman in a black crepe dress.
She paused, leaning against the door and shading her eyes with her hand, peering out. When she identified the shape of Cassin, she let out a sob and ran to him, her skirts flying behind her.
Cassin took two steps toward her and caught her in his arms.
“Mother,” he said, his voice cautious.
“Brent,”she sobbed, “thank God. You’re home. It’s Felix . . . ” She dissolved in a fit of sobbing.
“Yes, the cows, I heard, Mother. No, please, no hysterics. We will send for the best—”
“No, no, it’s too late, Brent. My son . . . my poor son Felix. He’s dead, Brent. Felix is dead.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-SIX
