The Prisoners of Wyvern Castle

Madeline confesses how her brother forced her to marry

A violin. The earl had been forced to marry her to save his violin. Madeline could not make sense of it; he was a man, and more to the point, an earl. Who could make him act against his will? But Madeline remembered his sister's cold eyes and shuddered. If anyone could, it would be Lady Wyvern. Why, just the fact they were here, in Wyvern Castle, the family seat of the Earls of Wyvern, showed the lengths to which the woman would go. What did Lord Wyvern think of his lady entertaining her lover under this roof?

There was a supper in the sitting room downstairs, Morris said, and Morris's own niece waiting to attend the countess in her bedchamber.

"I will wait a while with the earl," Madeline told him, and the man bowed his way from the room.

The earl was talented. Living retired at Graviton Manor, Madeline had not been to the concerts or musicales or other ton events she read about in La Belle Assemblée, but she had heard enough travelling musicians to know a masterly hand when she heard it.

His long, supple fingers on the bow, on the strings, coaxed forth a torrent of sound that filled the room; at first a sobbing lament, a paean of loss and pain, slowly transforming into dawning delight, and then wild joy, that set her foot tapping with the urge to dance.

She had no idea how long she sat there, lost in the music. When Morris returned to light the candles and lamps, she was surprised to realise the whole afternoon had passed, and the only light in the room came from the last rays of the sun lingering on the stones of the western windows.

His task finished, Morris started to speak, but Madeline waved him off, unwilling to break the spell, so he left the room again.

Something, though, must have disturbed the earl, for he let his hands fall with a deep, satisfied sigh. "She is well," he announced. He crossed the room with firm, certain steps, then stood for a moment before an empty table, the violin in one hand, bow in the other.

"Her case?" he demanded. Madeline hurried to bring it to him, laying it open on the table.

He tenderly placed the violin into the waiting velvet-lined recess shaped to fit, and Madeline held the lid for him while he fitted the bow into its place.

"Thank you."

"You are welcome," Madeline responded.

He flashed a quick grin in her general direction, which made him look even younger. "You have been sitting here the whole time, have you not? You must be famished. I am famished. Shall we go and find supper?"

She took the hand he offered and followed his lead to the door, tugging slightly when he veered too close to the frame. He responded with another of those quick grins and let her guide him safely onto the stairs where he skimmed his free hand down the wall until they reached the sitting-room level.

Morris waited for them with a young woman he introduced as his niece, Polly Morris. She was short and wiry like her uncle, but not uncomely, her sturdy gingham gown covered by a white apron, a few strands of dark hair escaping from her neat, white cap to curl around the thin face.

She bobbed a curtsey, colouring a little when she murmured "Miss" in greeting, then corrected it to "my lady."

"She's a good girl, my lady," Morris assured Madeline.

"I am sure she is," Madeline agreed, thinking the woman no longer a girl. Polly was at least Madeline's age of twenty-two. Most of her mind was on her new husband, the earl, who had dropped her hand and was feeling his way forward to the table where supper was laid.

"My wife and I will serve ourselves," he announced, his hands skimming across the table and stopping to explore when they encountered a plate or a bowl. "Morris, you and the maid can wait up in the bedchamber or outside the rooms, as you wish." He took a seat at one of the two chairs pulled up to the table, licking a finger that had explored a bowl of cream, then stood again, abashed. "I beg your pardon, Madeline. I should have waited until you were seated. Please..." He waved, and Madeline sat in the chair Morris held for her.

The earl had his head turned, clearly listening, and when Morris and Polly disappeared around the corner of the steps leading to the bedchamber, he smiled at Madeline again.

"You do not mind, I hope? I thought we should talk without my sister's spies lurking." He shrugged, an oddly elegant movement. "You could be one, of course. Are you? And would you mind preparing something for me to eat while you answer that? Some meat on a slice of bread would be easy. Something I can hold in my hands without giving you an utter disgust of me. I am not tidy with a knife and fork."

The earl's preference had been considered, with slices of bread and meat available.

"I do not mind," Madeline said, and busied her hands while she thought about how to answer the earl's question. Bluntly was best. "I am not your sister's spy or my brother's. But I imagine that is what a spy would say. Here, my lord. Lamb between two slices of bread, and I have spread a preserve on the bread."

"Thank you. You can call me Rupert if you like. I do not think you are a spy. I do not think the Ice Dragon—my sister, I mean—cares that much what I do, as long as I do not try to escape or to kill myself. And the servants can prevent that. But why would you marry me if you are not her creature? Can you tell me that?"

"The world has no shortage of women who want to marry an earl," Madeline retorted. She was not one of them, though. She could imagine nothing worse than living the kind of life that countesses followed, as far as she could tell from the pages of Ackermann's Repository and The London Gazette. The London she yearned for—museums, libraries, and bookstores—was a far cry from the London such exalted ladies inhabited.

And yet, here she was.

Rupert laughed, a short, unamused bark. "A blind boy earl imprisoned by his sister and her lover? Hardly. If you sought social success, Madam Countess, you face disappointment."

"I sought to stay at home with my books and my work in the parish," Madeline retorted. And if she had occasionally daydreamed about marriage, it was of marriage at her own level in society, after a respectable courtship.

Her new husband echoed her thoughts. "Yet, here you are." He took another bite of his bread, and chewed meditatively.

Madeline busied herself with her own meal: a serving of pie and some sort of ragout. She could understand Rupert's need to know her motives, but she cringed at the thought of explaining exactly what her brother used to compel her. Perhaps it would be enough just to hint. "Graviton threatened me."

"He threatened me, too. He and the Ice Dragon said they would chop my lady into pieces—my violin, that I inherited from my mother—if I made a fuss or refused to say the vows. What have they taken off you? I will ask for it back. They usually let me have what I ask for. As I said. She just does not much care."

Madeline blushed. "I have it yet. But Graviton said it would be taken from me by force if I did not marry...."

Rupert frowned. "What is it? Do you have it with you? Shall we hide it to keep it safe?"

Madeline could feel the blush spreading all over her body. "I... that is, it is not that kind of a..."

Rupert looked bewildered, and well he might. She was going to have to tell him. "Graviton said he would give me to his friends to... well, to use. Without benefit of clergy. He said I would fetch a tidy sum because..." her voice trailed off.