The Demon's Bride by Jo Beverley

you were the one.”
    “The one for what?” asked Rachel, coming out of hiding.
    “Why, the one for the Bride. The Bride’s always the one on the point of marrying. Has to be really, the way it can take them.”
    Rachel gasped. “You mean . . . it usually . . .”
    “Tends that way, yes, miss, though there’s some as say that it’s just the excitement and the excuse. I’ve never seen it take anyone like tonight, that’s for sure. I reckon tonight were a proper Dym’s Night. The land’s all set for a while now.”
    “Yes, it is,” said Rachel, then she spoke more loudly, so more could hear. “I have to tell you something, something I learned tonight. Dym’s Night comes of the joining of the Christian rhythms with those of the ancient earth. The date doesn’t matter, only that everyone believes it’s the right night. No calendar change can alter it.”
    There was a murmur of relief.
    “What happened to Meggie Brewstock, then?” Mark asked. “Did Waldborg kill her?”
    “The spirit never kills. The third earl came as you did, but later. When he dragged her away, the bond was too great. She died of the shock.”
    The experience was rapidly fading into a magical dream, but Mark could imagine the effect of being ripped out of it. “Damnation. If I’d arrived later, I could have killed you.”
    Rachel took his hand. “But you didn’t. And you came to save me.”
    Ada Brewstock stepped forward. “It were as you said, miss. Grandad told me before he died. They had to knock out the earl, you see, to try to save her, but it were too late. Said poor Meggie looked so awful they couldn’t have people see her like that, so they threw her on the fire and claimed it were an accident. She’d not completed her part, so that were a bad year in the land, and for many a year after.”
    “So the impoverishment of the estate back then was entirely the third earl’s madness.”
     
     
    “Your ancestor felt some of what you felt this night,” Rachel said to Mark. “That drove him mad.”
    “Aye,” said Mistress Brewstock. “It’s not a mystery for men.”
    “Are you still sane?” Rachel asked him.
    “No, I’m madly in love.” He kissed her, despite their audience.
    “You don’t regret it, then?”
    “No,” he said, and it was true. “I regret nothing.”
    She turned and drew the blade out of the earth and handed it to Michael Bladwick. “Keep it safe.”
    “Aye, Lady,” he said, not at all prosaically. “That I will.”
    People seemed to want to gather around Rachel, talking, but mainly touching. Mark noted how they all called her “Lady” and he didn’t think it was a reference to her future as his countess. It was as if she were magic, and perhaps tonight she was.
    He knelt and tested the ground with his fingers—the ground from which she’d just drawn the blade. It was hard earth over chalky rock, with no crack or crevice that he could detect. Was he to believe this? That spirits could rise in the eighteenth century?
    Whatever had happened, he knew he was changed without hope of recovery. His land was no longer maps and ledgers and rents to be spent, but a living thing in his charge, and perhaps now it would be more bountiful—because of a Dym’s Night.
    He hoped so. He was called to cherish it as potently as he had ever been called to a woman.
    Except one.
    He stood and looked across to where she was talking to her father. Probably duly reciting all the details for one of his damned books. That dress outlined every lush curve of her passionate body, the bodice was far too low, and no woman with hair like that should be allowed to let it hang free in public.
    He commandeered Sir George’s cloak and went to wrap it around her. “No details of all this are to be published,” he said to her father.
    “The routine details, perhaps,” countered the vicar calmly. “But as for the rest, I doubt it would be believed. However,” he said with a direct look, “I think a wedding is in