“Two for Joy” Harker
“Two for Joy”
Harker
Seventeen days later
The final reading of the banns at last took place, and after the services, Father Kelly and I waited in the churchyard for my bride and our witnesses—Jack and Mrs. Moyle.
Mina had asked the priest to marry us beside her parents’ grave markers.
I had fully expected him to reject the idea as too morbid for a wedding, but Mina knew him better than I did, and he thought it a sweet and appropriate gesture.
While we waited, we watched a group of men from the village digging up the old wheel cross in the churchyard.
That, too, I had expected him to resist, but he said the relic rightly belonged at Roche Rock, where it was originally erected.
And all agreed it was better to be safe than sorry; the cross would be newly erected over the ground where we had burned Goosevar. And where he had murdered Ruby.
Ruby—after Mr. Hilliard’s constabulary colleagues had satisfied themselves as much as was possible in such a strange case—was buried in the Tregarrick family graveyard. I thought it would have pleased her.
Mrs. Moyle was the first to join us in the churchyard, dressed in her Sunday best, glowing with happiness and pride.
My relief that Mina would not lose her dear friend due to the unseemliness of our engagement could not have been overstated.
In the end, we avoided all appearance of impropriety.
Mina, awaiting the day of our nuptials at home with her brother, went to and from The Magpie as usual.
The morning after Goosevar’s death, it brought a smile to my lips to notice her scent on the breeze just as I had nearly every day for the last two years.
The bloodlust had gone, but my sharpened senses had so far remained. I had given up my vital essence, as it was no longer needed, but the purplish tint to my irises, too, had remained. Perhaps both would fade over time. Perhaps not.
It was of no consequence to me either way. Because I had not once, over all the long decades, thought I would ever look to such happiness in this life. Not only the cessation of the bloodlust, but the prospect of a true marriage to Mina.
The priest, Mrs. Moyle, and I hadn’t long to wait. Mina and Jack arrived together, joining us under the hazel trees sheltering her parents’ graves.
Though I had suspected my bride of being an angel before, she now seemed to me a goddess.
I’d insisted on buying her a gown, paying for both her and Mrs. Moyle to travel by train to London and consult a modiste.
Mina was captivated by the city that was the setting in so many of the novels she’d read, and I adjusted our honeymoon plans so that we might spend several weeks there before traveling on to Paris and finally Rome for the winter months.
Having led the life of a hermit, I was quite as excited as she was.
Many of the volumes in my library had once belonged to Oxford or Cambridge scholars, and I planned visits to both of these schools before we left England.
I have no talent for describing ladies’ fashions, but suffice it to say, there were seed pearls and lace and petticoats, layer upon layer. A woman from the village had arranged Mina’s fiery locks in a soft pile of curls atop her head.
Jack brought her to me, and the priest did before God what we had done already before the spirits of Roche Rock, and I felt no more bound to her now than I had in that moment.
But I was happy for her sake that the village of Roche, even if all didn’t smile on us, would accept us as legally, properly wedded.
As for me, this moment was a symbol and celebration of my own miraculous transmutation, worked not by potions or elixirs, by learned men or dusty volumes, but by the love of a maiden for a monster.
When the priest pronounced her my wife, a flutter of wings drew our gazes to the Penrose crosses. A magpie had landed on each, watching us a moment with dark eyes before flitting away. Mina beamed, tears pooling, and murmured, “Two for joy.”
We all then walked across to the tearoom, where we had the dining room to ourselves for a late-morning wedding breakfast hosted by Mrs. Moyle.
When the cold meats, cheeses, scones, clotted cream, and jam had been eaten, and my bride had embraced everyone, I was at last permitted to take her home with me.
It was a golden October day, a nip in the air, but warm enough in the sun. Too fine for anyone but a vampire to spend inside a drafty medieval chapel. So I carried cushions, a rug, and a bottle of champagne up to the battlements while my wife made tea.
Once she’d settled like Venus upon a cloud, we sipped our tea and remarked politely on the wedding and the breakfast while my desire to touch her grew to a fever pitch. But we’d agreed to this small ritual, which I knew made her feel close to her mother, and I wasn’t about to deny her.
When at last we’d drunk the pot, she removed the lid, narrowed her eyes, and peered inside. Her brow furrowed as she turned it this way and that, and finally she laughed. “I’ve no idea. Perhaps we should consult Mrs. Rochester.”
“Here,” I said, reaching for it. As I looked through the opening, a smile spread over my face.
“What?” she said, excited. “Tell me!”
“I believe these refer to your wedding gifts, Mrs. Tregarrick.”
“More gifts, Harker!” Her green eyes danced, her charmingly freckled countenance lovelier than ever in her happiness. “Well, what are they?”
Soberly, I handed the teapot back to her. “I expect you to at least try. Tell me what you see.”
She let out a disgruntled sigh and stared back through the opening. “A crown, maybe, just under the handle? And now I’m thinking that’s a house on the bottom. Yes, definitely a house.”
“First the crown,” I said. “I have donated a great deal of money to Church of England charities with the express view of achieving knighthood so that you may be styled Lady Tregarrick.”
Her eyes rounded. “Harker!” She let out another ripple of laughter. “But I have everything I need to be happy right here.”
“I’m glad to hear it, but it made me happy to do it. Of course there are no guarantees, but as we’ve seen, the leaves are never wrong.”
With a wincing smile, she said, “Was it truly a great deal of money?”
“It was, but we have a great deal more than we need.”
Her brows lifted. “I’m almost afraid to ask about the house!”
“Little mystery there, my love. This chapel will be cozy enough for a while, but it’s no place to raise a family.
After our engagement was announced, I hired an architect to design a new house.
Once the design is complete and we are on our honeymoon, Jack will be put in charge of overseeing the construction. ”
“Jack!” Her eyes filled with tears again, and from her confectionary cloud, she produced a handkerchief.
Mr. Hilliard had made sure Jack didn’t lose his job over his missed shifts, but I had told my bride’s brother that there was no need for him to return to the clay pits unless he wished to.
That I would be happy to put him to work on the estate, to send him to school, or to send him abroad—as long as he gave up drinking, because it was breaking his sister’s heart.
(He informed me that he hadn’t drunk a drop since the night he shot me.) While he had yet to make up his mind, he had agreed to help us with the construction while he considered.
One sparkling tear avoided the handkerchief and slid down Mina’s cheek, and I moved closer. Laughing, I wiped it away and said, “A poor bridegroom I make. Half the things I say to you these days make you cry.”
“How can I not when I’m so happy?” Her voice was creaky with emotion. “And whatever am I to give you?”
I shook my head and put a finger to her lips. “You have taken away my loneliness and given me the world. Everything I have given you is meaningless in comparison.”
She took hold of my hand and held it in her lap. “There is something else I wish to give you now. I would have already, the night we were truly wed, had it been possible. And all the nights since then, had we been able to spend them together.”
My heart pounded, and I felt the fire in my blood. My voice deepened as I said, “That is a gift I will happily accept.”
She frowned, and in a quiet voice she said, “I worry . . . will it be as . . . as pleasurable . . .” Her cheeks went red under the autumn sunshine. “I mean, now that you no longer need . . .”
I raised an eyebrow. “Now that I no longer need worry I might lose control and end your life?”
The edges of her smile reappeared.
I got up and arranged the remaining cushions behind her. While I was there, I began to work at the pearly buttons that ran along her spine, my heart heaving against my healed ribs. After an eternity of slipping fingers and under-my-breath oaths, the top of the dress at last fell away.
I moved around her and took hold of her hands, raising and extracting her from both the dress and the engineering works that supported it. I stepped back, knees almost buckling as I took her in—chest and shoulders bare, corset hugging her waist and framing her breasts.
How many times over these last weeks had I dreamed of this moment?
Her soft smile was beckoning as she kicked free of her shoes and pushed her gown to one side with a stockinged foot.
I moved close again, removing the pins and mother-of-pearl combs from her hair, letting out a long breath as it finally cascaded around her shoulders. Burying both my hands in it—a thing I had longed to do since the first day we met—I bent to her ear and murmured, “Sit down.”
We sank onto the cushions together, and I eased her back, lowering over her. I kissed her, a gentle caress that grew harder and more insistent as desire took us both. Her back arched, her chest pressing against me as a hungry sound came from her throat.
Her hands began working, tugging my coat down my shoulders until I cast it off.
Then unbuttoning my waistcoat, her eyes never leaving mine.
When that, too, was dispensed with, she untied my cravat and worked at my shirt buttons, finally peeling down my braces and slipping her hands inside the white lawn.
“Mina,” I breathed, shuddering as I ran a hand up over her corset, tugging at the edge so I might feel one berry-red nipple harden against my tongue.
She gasped and wriggled against me, and I reached down and loosened her corset strings so I could plant a kiss in the valley between her breasts. Then another above it, and another, until I’d left a trail of them up to her chin.
“Will you kiss me, Harker?” she pleaded, echoing a moment I well remembered.
“I intend to spend the rest of my life making it up to you for ever having to refuse such a request.”
Our lips came together, swollen with need, bodies aching. I trailed my fingers down her waist, over her hip, and down to the hem of her shift, slowly raising it. She shivered as my fingers traced her thigh, and again she arched against me.
I felt her legs spread beneath me, and her hands worked free my trouser buttons.
“This is new to me,” she whispered, hands moving down my back, leaving trails of fire.
I smiled and cupped her cheek, using my thumb to smooth the anxiety from her face until finally she smiled, too.
Settling gently between her legs, I said, “We shall master it together, my love.”