He surged up over her at that, capturing her mouth, surrounding her with his strong, possessive arms.
When at last he allowed her to draw breath she saw that he was frowning sternly at her. “We’ll marry in three months. You’ll wear the Wakefield emeralds and the earbobs I’ll have made, but mark me well, you are confused. No one would look better in those emeralds than you. Your cousin might be a pretty face, but you, my darling, courageous, maddening, seductive, mysterious, wonderful Diana, you are the Duchess of Wakefield. My duchess.”
Epilogue
Tam cried out his sister’s name, expecting Lin to turn to ash before his eyes. But a strange thing happened when Lin touched the earth: nothing at all. She bent her head and whispered something into the ear of the little white dog, whereupon the animal leaped from her arms to the ground and stood wagging his tail. Immediately the wild hunt’s horses and riders fell from the sky, each one assuming his mortal shape as he landed on the earth. The last to descend from the sky was King Herla himself. He stepped from his horse and as his booted foot touched the ground he drew a deep, shuddering breath, tilting his head back to feel the rays of the dawning sun upon his face.
Then he smiled and looked down at Lin, his eyes no longer pale. Now they were a warm brown. “You’ve saved me, brave little maiden. Your courage, cleverness, and unwavering love has broken the curse set on me, my men, and your own brother.”
At his words the men of his retinue threw their hats into the air, cheering.
“I owe you everything I have,” King Herla said to Lin. “Ask what you will for your reward and it is yours.”
“Thank you, my king,” Lin said, “but I want for nothing.”
“Not jewels?” asked King Herla.
“No, my king.”
“Not land?”
“Indeed not, my king.”
“Not horses or cattle?”
“No, my king,” Lin whispered, for King Herla had stepped closer as he had questioned her and she had to tilt back her head to look him in the eye now.
“Nothing I have will tempt you?” King Herla murmured.
Lin could only shake her head.
“Then perhaps I should offer myself,” Herla said as he sank to his knees before her. “Wonderful girl, will you have me as your husband?”
“Oh, yes,” Lin said and all about her the King’s men cheered again.
Then King Herla married Lin in a ceremony that was quite nice but not nearly as grand as his first wedding so many centuries before. After that, he cleared the dark wood of brambles, tilled the fields again, rebuilt his crumbling castle, and caused fat cattle to graze upon his lands. The people were once again content and well-fed. And if King Herla ever felt the urge to go a-hunting, he ignored it and turned to see the smile of his wise queen instead, for he’d already found and captured the best quarry of all.
True love.
—from The Legend of the Herla King
MEANWHILE…
“Nine fucking years.”
Apollo sat on an overturned tin pail and watched as his good friend, Asa Makepeace, thrust the bottle of wine gripped in his fist into the air, a defiant salute.
“D’you hear me, ’Pollo?” Asa demanded, waving the bottle so wildly he nearly boxed Apollo’s ear with it. “Nine fucking years. I could’ve been whoring or drinking or pottering about the continent, seeing places, and instead I was working, nay, slaving on this very pleasure garden, building and planting and coddling fickle actresses and more fickle actors and now, now it’s nothing but a smoldering pile of shit. I say again: nine fucking years!”
Apollo sighed and drank from his own bottle as Asa continued to repeat his profane refrain. Apollo’s bottle was half gone, which was good since he no longer cared that the wine stank of smoke. They sat in the only part of Harte’s Folly still standing: the actor’s dressing rooms behind the stage.
Or what had once been the stage. That part of the theater, and indeed the rest of it, was a still-smoldering blackened mess of fallen beams and debris, too hot to sift through to see if anything could be recovered, although Apollo was very doubtful on that score.
It might have been nine years of Asa’s life lost tonight, but it was also the last bit of capital Apollo had to his name gone, too. Just before he’d woken that dreadful day to find three of his acquaintances bloodily slaughtered around him, he’d taken that capital—a tiny legacy from his father—and invested the lot in Harte’s Folly. At the time it had seemed a sound financial move: he was terrible with money while Asa seemed on the verge of wealth and prosperity with the pleasure garden. Apollo hadn’t expected too much—maybe enough made in interest to keep himself and Artemis.