Page 55

CHAPTER 55

Maarja wanted to rush to Raine and hug her. To dance and laugh with the joy of a life returned to the earth. To congratulate her for being on her feet and ask how it was possible.

Instead she looked, terrified, between Fedelma and Raine.

The breeze waved the willow branches. An incongruously chirping bird broke the utter silence. No one moved or breathed.

“Maarja and Dante, please step aside.” Raine stood upright, barely touching her walker, laser gaze focused on Fedelma. “This isn’t your fight anymore.”

Dante took Maarja’s arm and walked with her up onto the dais. Maarja thought he’d leave her there, return to the battle, but he stood shoulder to shoulder with her and watched the drama. She glanced at him and nodded in satisfaction.

In her ear, he said softly, “So that’s where Andere disappeared to.”

For the first time, Maarja took note of the man who stood beside and slightly behind Raine. Andere, the butler with the lemon drops, the one who had dug Raine out of the rubble of the first explosion, the man Dante labeled as descended from a long line of Arundel sycophants. “That explains a lot,” she murmured.

“Doesn’t it?” Dante answered in the same tone.

“Did you think I didn’t know about you fornicating with my husband?” Raine asked Fedelma. “Did you think Benoit would deign to hide his sexual activities from his wife? He wanted to make me miserable. I didn’t care about him, and he wanted to make me jealous. He bragged about using you to make a bodyguard for my son.”

“He didn’t use me. I offered myself!” Apparently a point of honor to Fedelma.

“He laughed at you for being offended that you hadn’t been chosen as his bride. He wanted a virgin and an aristocrat, and you didn’t fit in either case.” As Raine deflated Fedelma’s confidence, she smiled in bitter triumph. “He also didn’t appreciate that you’d killed your husband. Lambert was one of his trusted officers.”

“He didn’t know that!”

“He did. If there was anything to do with slimy, underhanded tactics, Benoit knew all about them.”

Maarja softly said, “It’s like the shootout at the O.K. Corral…with geezers.”

“Female geezers,” Dante agreed, “and all the scarier for that.”

“He should have chosen me,” Fedelma cried. “He wanted to breed children with the superior Arundel genes. I can scheme. I can influence. I was fertile. I would have stood beside him and served him, and the day would have come—”

“Yes. He believed he could breed the son he wanted with the proper breeding cow.” Raine used the term in scorn and derision. “If he’d had a sister, he would have fucked her to get the results he wanted. I was Benoit’s first cousin, and the next best thing. With me, he intended to breed an Arundel even greater than himself.”

The rifle zoomed in on Dante, standing calmly, shoulders relaxed, hands loose. “Your son is as weak as mine. As Nate. As Connor.”

“My son is The Arundel.” Raine projected her voice like God giving his commandments to Moses. “Fedelma, Dante is your commander. You defy him with your actions. Put down your weapon, and take your punishment.”

Fedelma’s face contorted. Her rifle swung with swift surety toward Maarja. The barrel paused, steadied… Her eyes narrowed. Her finger tightened on the trigger.

Nate sprang toward her.

“Mother, no!” Connor shouted.

In that split second, Maarja wanted to drop, wanted to run, wanted to do as Dante did, to bravely stand and defy this madness.

Beside her, there was a blur of motion.

A shot rang out. Or was it two?

Fedelma flung out her arms. Her chest exploded. The rifle fell, unfired. She slammed backward and disappeared into the pit that had hidden her since her escape from the house.

Screams erupted all over the backyard.

Maarja gasped, and gasped again, as if the air was life and rescue and sustenance. She looked around to see Raine, handing her pistol to Andere, who holstered it.

Dante performed one of his magic tricks and whatever he held disappeared somewhere on his body. A pistol? Of course. He wouldn’t come to his own wedding unarmed. Turning to Connor, he said, “Check on that, would you?”

Connor nodded, tight-lipped and pale. If he was moved by his mother’s death, he showed no sign.

Nate sat down hard, but he wasn’t tearful, simply weary and injured.

On Maarja’s side of the aisle, someone sobbed in fear and panic. Someone said, “Is that woman dead?” in tones of such horror Maarja wanted to snap out a few pithy words like, Focus! and Do you not recognize that this bitch caused this whole murderous kerfuffle?

Looking as he had looked when she first saw him, Dante produced la Bouteille de Flamme from somewhere on his person—damn, he was good with those magic tricks—and held it over his head and hers. In a controlled voice that somehow reached to the edge of the gathering, he said, “Arundel blood bought this bottle. Daire courage retained the stopper. Maarja and I united them. Do you know what that means?”

The groom’s side of the aisle were sullenly picking themselves up off the ground, pretending to be busy, avoiding his eyes.

Dante exuded power and darkness. “Do you?”

People stopped clattering the chairs and stood still. Nods and a few gave voice to a subdued, “Yes.”

He swept them with a dark gaze. “Do you who insist on tradition and the ancient feud dare to dispute the reality of this omen? Come forth and test the strength of this bond. Come to me and test the strength of the seal!”

One of the teenagers swaggered forward, smirking, challenging him. “I’ll do it.”

Dante gestured her forward. “When you do, Lucy, when you find it is sealed, you’ll kiss Maarja’s wedding ring and bless her for what she has brought us in peace and future prosperity.”

Lucy stopped in her tracks.

Dante was projecting now, the guy in charge who challenged anyone to defy him. “Maarja brings us at last into the New World, the land of milk and honey where peace shall reign and those who wish for dissonance will fade into a world not associated with the Arundel lords. Those who wish for death, for crime, for war, that is your privilege—but remember, once you have stepped from beneath the umbrella that I hold to protect my kin, you can do whatever you wish, but the Arundel shield is no longer yours.” His eyes glowed with gold molten lava and dark hard rock.

The Arundel side of the aisle stared as if stricken.

The Maarja side of the aisle stared as if they didn’t quite get it, but they were pretty sure they were accessories to some scary cosmic event.

Dante took Maarja’s ringed hand in his and held it over his head. “Here I have placed the ring of peace. Eat, drink, dance. Pay homage or not. That is your choice. If you wish to handle your life without the restrictions I impose and demand, as is my right as the leader of the Arundel family…leave now. Follow Fedelma and Jack into oblivion.” His voice dropped an octave, a threatening tone that sounded bearlike in its intensity. “Follow them to hell.”

Maarja looked over the stricken and indecisive Arundels, and she had to have her say. “He’s right, you know. You can go to hell in your own way.” She met the gaze of the smart-ass Arundel teen. “Some of you will. Please be prepared for the consequences. We have united the bottle and the stopper. We are married. We are producing the next Arundel baby—and she will be powerful. She will be a kicking, screaming, demanding brat of a child who makes you laugh as her father and I wring our hands in despair.” She put her hand on her belly. “If you wish to stay and laugh, and be a part of our conjoined families, do so. But do it with a whole heart.” She swept the upturned faces with her gaze. “The next person who wishes to play the role of Fedelma—” she gestured toward Connor, who dragged the body onto the lawn “—will answer to me. I am not so kind in my killings. If you don’t believe me, you can ask Jack.”

“Jack’s dead,” Lucy snarked.

“Yes.” Maarja smiled in her best imitation of Dante’s shark smile, and she pointed at the bruised and stitched wound under her jaw. “By my hand.” She offered her ring to the teen. “Do you want to be the first?”

Lucy hesitated. That was not the role she’d envisioned for herself in this scene. But with every eye on her, she had to make a decision, and she made the wise one. She came forward, took Maarja’s hand, bowed over it, and kissed the ring. For good measure, she took Dante’s hand and kissed his ring, too.

Behind her, an orderly line of Arundels formed, although predictably, a few hung back.

Lucy started away, but Dante called her back. He handed her the bottle. “Test the seal,” he challenged.

She did, gingerly at first, then with more vigor. “Fuck! How’d you get it on there so tight?”

Everyone in the family used that word, and flagrantly. Mentally, Maarja dug in her heels. Darned if she was going to learn!

Dante intoned, “The fires of love and fate fused them into one.”

“This would be a great video game!” Lucy changed from a smart-ass to a smart kid. “Okay if I design that, Cousin Dante?”

“Go for it, kid,” he said.

The tension in the backyard perceptibly relaxed.

The line, which had rapidly become a reception line, moved forward, with hand-shaking, congratulations, some laughter, and a lot of ring-kissing.

“I’m getting sick of having my hand slobbered on,” Maarja muttered to Dante.

“Not a problem. We’re out of here.” He gave her the dark and golden-eyed Arundel stare. “Law enforcement has arrived on the scene.”