Chapter 33

33

MERCY KEEP, PRESENT DAY

E llen was asleep, having a sinfully erotic dream, when she heard a soft shuffling of blankets and felt the mattress wriggle slightly beneath her. She opened her eyes slowly and saw the faint glow of an early sunrise lightening the three tall panels of window coverings. She was laying on her side, buck naked beneath the covers and was not entirely certain if she should move, roll onto her back, make waking up sounds, stretch casually… or just continue to lay there like a stone.

She chose the latter and listened, picturing Ben Chase's every move as he tried, as quietly and quickly as he could, to gather up his clothing where it had been scattered across the floor last night. She heard the sound of tight jeans being hoisted up to his waist, followed by a snap and a distinct zzzip . Bare feet crushed softly across the Persian rug. A hand raked through hair to comb it back from his face.

A soft exhale.

Silence.

Was he looking at the bed, wondering if his stealthy sounds had wakened her? Or was he just watching her sleep, wondering, as she was, what on earth they would say to one another in the harsh light of day?

The night had certainly been amazing. They had barely made it up the stairs from the library before they were falling into each other again. And the sinfully erotic dream she had been having was merely a replay of everything they had done with and to each other during the long, dark night.

She should move.

She should turn and stretch and smile at him to let him know she did not regret one single moment of what they had shared together.

He had the most astonishing hands.

Ellen rolled onto her back, her smile firmly in place, but where she expected to see him standing at the foot of the bed, there were only muted shadows. The light was growing stronger through the windows, giving everything shape and substance, but there was no sign of Benjamin Chase.

Ellen rose up onto her elbows in case, for some reason, he had ducked down beneath the level of the bed. Or was hiding behind one of the burgundy drapes that fell from the canopy.

She slumped back down. Of course he would want to leave her room before any of the maids were up and about.

To save embarrassing her? Or to save embarrassing himself?

This wasn't her usual modus operandum: sleeping with a man only a few days after they had met. Purple-haired Payton chided Ellen for being a prude, so she would likely be thrilled to know the prude had succumbed to a devilishly handsome face, a gorgeous body, great eyes, and a dangerously sexy smile.

Ellen groaned and rolled onto her side again. Ben probably didn't know she possessed any such prudish reservations, certainly not after last night. But what about him? He was handsome, virile, hunky. Was any of this out of the ordinary for him?

She buried her face in a pillow and did not emerge again until she heard Miriam tapping on the bedroom door.

Miriam! Good God. One look at the clothes scattered around the room and the state of the sheets and blankets and she would know something volcanic had happened.

Ellen was about to vault out of bed and dash around to snatch up the incriminating evidence when the brass latch turned and the door cracked open.

Ben pushed the door wider with his foot and came into the room. He was mostly dressed—the buttons on his shirt were in the wrong holes—carrying a lap-tray holding a small pot of coffee and a cup and saucer.

"I hope you don't mind. I intercepted Miriam in the hallway and stole the tray she was taking to Veronica."

He closed the door with his foot and brought the tray to Ellen's side of the bed, waiting until she was propped upright before setting it down over her lap. He then leaned in and planted a gentle kiss on her cheek. When he withdrew, he wore a wickedly innocent smile, like a child with his hand in a cookie jar who did not feel the least bit guilty being caught. "Good morning."

"Good morning," she whispered.

His gaze travelled across the silvery tousle of her hair, down her neck, onto her smooth, bare shoulders, and lingered where her hands were clutching the sheet over her breasts.

"I probably should have let you sleep longer."

"I was awake. I heard you get up."

"I thought I detected a distinct change in the way you were breathing. From sleeping kitten to startled deer in the headlamps."

"Whereas I thought I was being cool and discreet."

"Discretion being the better part of valor, I think it only fair that I set you at ease. No. I do not make a habit of seducing young ladies whom I have just met. You may recall me saying: I am actually quite shy and tend to run in the other direction from single women. And single beautiful women usually render me a stammering fool. That would hold doubly true if that single, beautiful young woman was also my employer. Thus, if I have created any awkwardness between us or am the cause of any regrets on anyone's part…"

Ellen reached up and pressed her fingers over his lips to cut him off. Her eyes searched his for as long as it took for her to read the sincerity behind his words, and for the halting motion of her fingertips to turn into a caress. "I do not regret a single moment. Not one. And I don't recall hearing you stammer at all."

"There is still time," he said and leaned in for another kiss. This time his mouth covered hers; the kiss was longer, sweeter, and if not for a loud banging noise and voices out in the hallway, it might not have ended there.

"Ethan," Ben said, straightening. "He is taking the early train out of Lincoln to London."

"Yes, he told me. He has papers to file with the court."

"Ah. And speaking of papers, we have one very important one waiting for us in the library."

"I need to shower," she murmured, blushing.

"As do I. Shall we meet in the breakfast room? I warrant I could eat an entire chicken, never mind the egg. "

Ben, Ethan, and Veronica were already in the process of devouring an enormous buffet of bacon, ham, biscuits, eggs, and sausage when Ellen arrived in the breakfast room. Sunlight was streaming through the mullioned windows, silverware was glittering, glassware was gleaming, and Ethan was expounding on train timetables. Veronica had her head in a romance novel, nodding to herself between mouthfuls. Mrs. Winklebottom was standing by the buffet server and as Ellen walked in, gave her a head-to-toe once-over before setting her lips in a grim, slightly disapproving line.

She couldn't possibly know… could she?

Ben glanced up from his heaped plate and smiled. His hair was still damp from his shower and fell in tight curls across the nape of his neck. Both he and Ethan scraped politely to their feet as Ellen joined them at the table with a plate of toast and jam.

"I was just advising Benjamin that I would be gone two or three days at most," Ethan said. "I trust you will not lack for company in the interim."

Ellen could swear she heard Mrs. Winklebottom snort softly.

"I'm sure I will find a bazillion things to keep myself busy," Ellen assured the solicitor. "I really should start by making some phone-calls home."

"Good. Good. If you think of anything you need, anything you want, anything at all, please do not hesitate to call me. I don't believe in email, but Ronnie is usually sitting by the phone waiting to pounce if it rings."

Veronica glared at him over the top of her novel. "Disturbs my reading time, it does. All the thousands o' calls ‘ee gets during a day."

"Rest assured," Ethan predicted with a wave of his fork, " you will be disturbed even more once the word is out that the heir to Henry Ward's estates has taken residence in Mercy Keep. Which reminds me, Abigail, any reporters who appear at the door are to be soundly drummed off the property. If they persist in gathering at the gates, they should be firmly but politely discouraged from doing so. I shall deal with the lot of them on my return."

"I could as easily deal with them at the end of a broom," she said. "Or pepper ‘em with buckshot."

Ethan coughed to dislodge a crumb in his throat. "I have no doubt you could, Mrs. Winklebottom, but I rather expect Miss Ward… er, forgive me… Miss Bowe would prefer not to have harassment charges leveled against her in the first week."

The housekeeper commented by way of a pfffft and left the room by way of the butler's pantry.

Ethan sighed and looked at Ellen. "Do not let her intimidate you, Miss Bowe. She is an opinionated old dragon, quite set in her ways, but she will respond favorably to a firm voice of authority."

"That why she always gets yer ballocks in a twist?" Veronica asked sweetly.

"My ballocks are quite comfortably aligned, thank you. Now, if you can tear yourself away from heaving bosoms and swashbuckling pirates, we must be on our way if we hope to catch the early train out of Lincoln Central. And I would caution you, If you are coming to passages that make you blush and squirm and clutch your heart with palpitations, I shall put the length of a rail car between us."

Veronica snapped her book shut. "Jealous, are you?"

Ethan rolled his eyes, sighed mightily, then stood. "Benjamin, I shall leave it to you to see that Miss Bowe feels welcome in her new home. "

Ellen did not dare look at either man as Ben nodded with a perfectly straight face and said, "I will do my utmost best."

After Ethan had departed, Mrs. Winklebottom requested a few moments to go over some general housekeeping preferences, including likes and dislikes for meal planning, schedules for some activities she might want to enjoy. She informed Ellen that the vicar, the Reverend Mr. Podd, had called to inquire if he might visit the next day if it was convenient.

"Like as not to lay first claim on Master Henry's belongings before some other charity rushes the gates."

"Tomorrow will be fine. Perhaps we can take an hour or so before then and you can help me decide which items should go?"

Some of the stiffness left Mrs. Winklebottom's chin at the request and she nodded. "We can do that in the morning. The vicar usually expects a meal or tea and cakes when he comes, so shall I extend an invitation to one or the other?"

"Tea and cakes, I think," Ellen said. "I'm not really up to hosting a lunch yet, I don't think."

Mrs. Winklebottom offered no encouraging words to contradict her.

By the time Ellen found her way to the library, it was past eleven and Ben, at first glance, was nowhere to be seen. Neither were any papers, the box containing the folio, or his laptop.

"Over here. "

She looked around and saw that a tall section of shelving was actually a door that opened into an adjoining room. As muted and warm as the lighting in the library was, in the anteroom it was bright and harsh and sterile. There were no curtains on the two tall panels of window; the room itself was perhaps fifteen feet long and twenty wide, most of it occupied by tables and equipment, charts and microscopes and various instruments for which Ellen could not begin to guess the function.

"My office-slash-workspace," Ben explained. "I am not entirely certain what purpose it served before I took it over—possibly a smoking room or a second reception room—but Henry allowed me to make all the modifications I needed. That included new flooring, scraping a century of fusia-colored wallpaper off the walls, adding ventilation, lights, etcetera, etcetera."

Ellen noted that he had set up his cameras and filters on one of the tables. His laptop as well as a second computer with multiple monitors was beside it. Shelves on all the walls held an array of reference books, and in one corner of the room, there were bottles and pots and beakers alongside glass cases that contained artifacts from the Keep that were in various stages of cleaning.

"Mrs. Winklebottom asked me if I was satisfied with Miriam's service. Apparently, Veronica complained that her coffee arrived late."

"Abigail is a nosy old dragon; nothing much escapes her. She will have her tin foil antennae up now."

He sat down in front of several open books and indicated an empty chair beside him.

"I have not been able to find any reference to Princess Eleanor being in France in 1210, nor anything to suggest she was not securely locked away in one of John's castle prisons. She spent time in Corfe, a rather dreary castle on the coast, but was apparently moved in land after a rescue attempt failed. She was also held at Marlborough, at Gloucester, and Bristol, where she died in 1241. She spent thirty-nine years in prison all told, the longest imprisoned English royal in history."

"Not a record I would want to hold," Ellen said.

"Indeed. But neither John nor his son Henry III could afford to let her go free—or marry for that matter. A husband could raise an army to back her claim to the throne, and yet, if the Langton document is genuine, which I have no reason to suspect it is not, Eleanor did marry. How, why, and to whom remains a complete mystery."

" If it actually happened."

"What do you mean?"

She shrugged. "Just a shot in the dark, or a case of watching too many murder mysteries, but you don't suppose Langton would have fabricated the marriage, do you? If, as you say, the archbishop and the king were at odds, or if he suspected John had already had her murdered like her brother, it would have forced him to produce Eleanor to prove she was still alive."

"Court intrigue was at a peak and yes, that could be a possibility. But again, there is no record of any such rumor or postulation. Something like that, a challenge by Langton to the king to produce the Pearl of Brittany to disprove a marriage… it would have earned a footnote in history at the very least. There is nothing like that mentioned through her thirty-nine years of captivity. Her other betrothals, yes. She was nine when she was promised in a royal marriage the first time, then again when she was eleven, again when she was fourteen. She was eighteen when she fell into John's clutches in 1202. "

"So… she would have been twenty-six in 1210?"

"Yes, why?"

Ellen leaned back slightly. He didn't notice for a moment, but when he did, he arched an eyebrow inquisitively.

"I turned twenty-six last month."

He was quiet as he studied her face, then offered up a smile. "Sheer co-incidence. And not nearly as unnerving as masonry crumbling out of a seven-hundred-year-old carved initial." He touched her arm reassuringly then turned back to his books, but stopped and looked at her again. "I don't suppose Enndolynn Ware mentions how old she was when she wrote the folio?"

Ellen shook her head. "Not in as far as what I've read, which isn't much. But Ethan seemed to think she was born around 1273."

"Far too late to be one of the witnesses to the marriage. Which is my way of making a clever segue into the possibility of raising the signatures, if they are, in fact, even signatures. After all these years the smears could be splashes of ink. Or mud. Or someone's dinner."

"What can I do to help?"

"You can kiss me for luck," he said. "Then draw the blinds."

Ellen complied with both requests then took her seat again to watch him work. He had his cotton gloves on again and handled the vellum with reverent care. He started at the top of the page and used a jeweler's magnifying eye first, looking for cracks or splits in the ink that might suggest the document was written much later than the thirteenth century.

"I'm not an expert in determining the age of inks or papers, but there is nothing to indicate the use of chemical oxidants to artificially age either the vellum or the ink that was used."

He carefully moved the sheet until the dot over one of the words was situated under the microscope. He adjusted the magnification and focus, then let Ellen peek through the eyepiece.

She wasn't sure what she should be looking at, but the tiny dot of ink showed up as a Mad Max landscape of black grooves and worm-like strands covered in a tangle of fine hairs.

"The ink most commonly used by scribes and churchmen in the thirteenth century was called iron-gall. It was made from three main components: gallnuts, iron vitriol, and gum Arabic. Without getting too bogged down in details, a gallnut is a hard pellet that forms on the bark of a tree after an insect lays its eggs inside. After the larvae hatch and fly away, the nuts are harvested and crushed to a powder. Iron vitriol was made from ferrous sulfate, and gum Arabic was basically dried sap from acacia trees. The tannic acid in the gallnuts reacts with the other two ingredients and turns the concoction into a black paste. Those same acids, even after the paste has been mixed with wine or rainwater to thin it, are what make the ink sink into the writing surface of the vellum, which is itself comprised of many layers of thin wood pulp. It is that sinking effect that I hope I can raise by using micro spectrophotometry."

"In English that would be--?"

"Ultraviolet light."

"You could have just said that."

"And miss an opportunity to astound you with my vast knowledge of scientific instruments and chemical trivia?"

"Happily, yes."

"Neophyte. "

"Braggart."

"I prefer to think of it as being self-assured."

He moved the Langton document onto another workspace, positioning it so the bottom half was under a large square light box. He flicked a switch and a faint purplish light caused the sheet of vellum to glow, making Ellen think of nights at the bar when so called black lights were used to turn bright colors neon. A camera was mounted alongside the box, and he worked the shutter a dozen times or more, altering the angle and magnification. He changed filters on the light several times and repeated the process then turned the light off and sent the digital photos to the computer.

"I tried to convince Henry to invest in a scanning electron microscope. It can magnify a particle up to one hundred thousand times the original, using an electron beam rather than a light beam to see things even the ultraviolet and infrared misses. He didn't quite go for the million-pound price tag."

"I can't imagine why not."

He laughed softly as he started pulling up individual pictures. "You share your uncle's dry wit. He was pretty sharp for an octogenarian."

Ellen thought of her father, who had been eighty when he died, yet was vigorous and robust, easily mistaken for a much younger man. He had fathered Ellen when he was fifty-nine and later, when she was in high school, had run a full marathon alongside her. She had never really thought of him as an old man, not until those last few months after the stroke had left him almost catatonic. His beautiful silver-blond hair had gone dull gray seemingly overnight. His muscles had collapsed and the weight had melted away until he was not much more than skin and bone.

The stroke had taken away his ability to speak, but his eyes had stayed bright and alert, watching her every move, trying hard to communicate his thoughts. She had often seen tears of frustration and sadness, and had thought it was because he was leaving her all alone. But now she could not help but wonder if all of this… the castle, the family, the history of her ancestors was the cause of those tears. Had he wanted to tell her she was not alone, but had run out of time?

"Hello in there? Anyone home?"

Ellen blinked and looked at Ben, startled out of her thoughts. "I'm sorry. I was sort of lost for a moment."

"So I gathered. Was it something I said?"

"No. No, it was just a memory. Did you know my father and Henry Ward were twins?"

His eyebrows arched slightly. "I only found out a few weeks ago that Henry had a brother. Ethan never mentioned the twin part."

"My father never mentioned any of this—" she waved a hand. "None of it. Not that he had brothers, a family, or that he'd had a whole other life here in England before he moved to America. I still have to pinch myself to make sure this is not all just a dream. And now it has become a dream with witches and lost princesses; images in mirrors and a folio that only I can read. How is any of this even possible?"

"I don't have any logical answers for you. But since you are speaking of impossible things, take a look at the screen."

Ellen had almost forgotten why they were sitting in the sterile white room. She looked at the computer monitor and saw nothing but dark blotches until Ben started manipulating the pixel saturation. It took a few adjustments for the blotches to start to take on the vague appearance of a signature.

Ben adjusted it further and the faint, ghostly script started to take shape. A highly stylized R was the first letter that became identifiable, followed by squiggles and gaps in the pixels. Then an L took shape with a flourish, followed by more illegible scrawls, a large W, squiggle squiggle, that ended in several elongated scrolls beneath the signature that resembled flourishes she had seen before in calligraphy.

Beside the signature… if that was what it was… was a second, shorter line of illegible markings.

"What do you see?" Ben asked.

"R something, L something, W something," Ellen said with a frown. "And beneath it, possibly an M."

He was grinning like a Cheshire cat, barely able to contain his excitement. "I think the first signature is that of Robert Lucien Wardieu."

It was Ellen's turn to arch her eyebrows. "And the second one?"

"Not everyone could read or write, remember. They would put their mark on the page and if the document was important enough, someone would add the name beside it. In this case, the one person I can think of offhand whose name begins with an M is Marienne FitzWilliam. Robert Wardieu's wife. She was not of noble birth and therefore it's possible she would not be able to write more than her first name. I am going to run the photos through some other software and hopefully we can bring up more of the signatures, but I think those two were our witnesses."

"There must have been a dozen men with the initials RLW."

"Quite possibly there were," he nodded. "But not all of them would have this—" he flipped to another photo, a magnification of an oval shadow on the vellum. Ben worked his magic again and the lines and pixels came together, presenting the impression of a crest. One that had likely been pressed to the page by a ring. And one that Ellen was more than passingly familiar with, as it adorned nearly every keystone above every doorway and arch in the stronghold once known as Bloodmoor Keep.

"If I may summarize," Ben said, taking her cold hands into his. "We have a document written by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, claiming to preside over the marriage of Eleanor of Brittany and the totally unknown Henry de Clare, witnessed by one of the great champion knights of Europe, Robert Lucien Wardieu and his wife, in a location where the princess could not possible have been. Said document somehow found its way into the possession of an accused witch named Enndolynn Ware some eighty years after the fact, and has been passed down through God only knows how many generations to one Ellen aka Enndolynn Eleanor Bowe, whose father's actual surname was Ward, which, along with Ware, is a perfectly logical derivative of Wardieu. Did I miss anything?"

Ellen stared, not daring to break her gaze away from his. In the silence they could hear a clock ticking somewhere, and the faint hum of the computer.

"The only thing we lack," he answered for her, "would be the string tying it all together."

As one, they turned and looked at the carved oak box containing the rose folio.

"I think," she said quietly, "this might be a good time to start reading."