Prince of Swords

by Anne Stuart

  But there seemed to be a dearth of rich, kind, handsome young men offering her their hands and hearts. And even if there’d been a gross of them, she wouldn’t have wanted them. She wanted Brennan.

  And she couldn’t have him.

  She didn’t want London, the great dirty city she’d grown to hate. She didn’t want silk gowns and jewels and servants by the score. She wanted clean air, good food, her painting supplies, and a strong, good man to love her.

  At this point it seemed as if everything was going to elude her. She shook her head, resolutely banishing her self-pity. As long as Jessamine was all right, they would endure. They’d survived on the very edge of the slums of London for this long; between the two of them they would prevail. Jessamine had been loath to give up control of the family, afraid that no one else could keep them safe.

  But the time had clearly passed for Fleur to marry salvation even if she wished to. They would have to find another way to survive.

  She must have fallen asleep. She didn’t hear the knock on the door, yet she knew Brennan would never enter her bedroom without knocking. She simply opened her eyes to find the first rays of dawn streaking through the bedroom, and Robert Brennan looking down at her out of those clear blue eyes.

  “I don’t know what to tell you, lass,” he said heavily. “She’s gone, there’s no doubt of it. So is Glenshiel. His bed’s not been slept in, and two horses were taken from the stables sometime in the evening.”

  “Do you think he kidnapped her?” Fleur asked hopefully. “Could you mount a rescue party... ?”

  “No,” he said. “I think she must have gone with him of her own accord. Either they’ll be back or no. I can’t just take off after him, much as I’d like to.”

  There was something in his face that broke through Fleur’s anxiety. “Why?”

  “Why would I want to go after him? Because he’s the Cat, that’s why. I don’t know whether your sister’s helping him, or whether she just got caught in his schemes, but there’s nothing I’d like better than to catch him in the act. I have no sympathy for gentlemen thieves,” he said bitterly.

  “Then why don’t you go after him?”

  He looked down at her, and his wide mouth tightened in frustration. “Because I can’t leave you here without protection.”

  For a moment she felt a surge of hope, one she squashed down immediately. “You don’t need to worry about me. After all, you’ve made it perfectly clear that the notion of anything between us is completely repugnant to you. Besides, Sally Blaine is hardly likely to toss me out in the road if my sister disappears.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it, miss,” he said, and she hated when he called her “miss.” “And if there’s no problem with the likes of them, there’s Clegg. He’s a dangerous man, and if I’m not here to protect you...”

  “Then let him go after the Cat.”

  “Then it’s your sister who wouldn’t be safe.”

  “What makes you think she’s safe with a notorious thief?” she countered.

  “Instinct. To my knowledge, the Cat has never harmed anyone. Never stolen from anyone who couldn’t well afford to lose a bauble or two. If it weren’t for the fact that he makes a mockery of my work, I’d be half tempted to let him go. But I can’t do that—I’ve made an oath and I intend to keep it.”

  “Aren’t you breaking it by staying here?” She was goading him, she knew it, and she couldn’t help it. Her misery was too overwhelming to keep her tongue still.

  He ran his big hand through his rumpled mop of shaggy blond hair, and the expression on his face was tender and exasperated. “There are, occasionally, things more important than duty.”

  She turned her face from him, no longer able to bear looking at him. “What am I going to do, Robert?” she asked in a mournful little voice.

  “I’ll see you safe, lass. I’ll get you back home, and then I’ll find your sister and bring her to you. I promise you I will.”

  She didn’t dare turn back. She could almost feel his hand, near her face, and she thought if he touched her, she would fling herself into his arms and never let him go.

  She held herself very still, waiting. But a moment later she heard the quiet closing of the bedroom door, as he left her, alone. And staring at her reflection in the frosty window, she could see the tracery of tears on her pale, ghostly face.

  Eighteen

  Things had gone reasonably well up to the very moment of disaster, but Jessamine was not fooled into thinking the night would turn out advantageously. She had read the cards, seen the debacle loom over both of them. By the time they reached Lady Plumworthy’s house, she knew there was no escape—for either of them.

  Alistair moved through the shadows like a cat, silent and unseen, and Jessamine did her best to follow suit. The sight of Isolde Plumworthy’s marble mansion was enough to momentarily panic her.

  “She’s at home,” Jessamine hissed.

  “Not to worry. I expect she’s well occupied with some poor creature like Calderwood,” Alistair replied, unmoved, as he surveyed the edifice. Lady Plumworthy’s town house harked back to the 1600s, and in the following decades other houses had snuggled up close beside it, so that they abutted one another with barely a few feet between them.

  “You aren’t planning to simply walk in, are you?”

  “Dressed like this?” he countered. “Not likely. Besides, the object of this little exercise is to throw any possible suspicion away from me. While the Cat prowls London, the Earl of Glenshiel lies puking his guts out in Kent.”

  “Do they suspect you?”

  Alistair considered it for a moment. “It wouldn’t do to underestimate a man like Robert Brennan. And Clegg has an unfair advantage.” He gave her a wicked smile. “Are you truly afraid of heights, my pet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pity. You’ll get over it.”

  She expected no mercy from him, and he showed her none. The fronts of the houses were stately, inhospitable. At the back was a rabbit warren of outbuildings and sheds of varying height, almost like a staircase leading to the heavens. Alistair scrambled up onto a garden shed, crossed to a stable, then vaulted up an outlying section of one old house. There he paused, looking back at her in the cool night air. “You aren’t going to make me come back for you, are you?”

  She stood on the ground, looking up at him. He was already halfway to the rooftops beyond, and the very notion made Jessamine’s palms sweaty. “You go on ahead,” she said with false cheeriness. “I’ll wait for you down here.”

  As she expected, that pig wouldn’t fly. “Come along, Jess,” he said patiently. “The longer we wait, the greater our chance of being discovered. The garden shed’s quite easy, and I’ll give you a hand with the barn.”

  She glanced behind her. She could run, and this time he might not be able to catch up with her. The mews were deserted, not a soul in sight.

  “I wouldn’t, Jess.” His voice floated down from above, obviously reading her intention.

  She glared at him. “It seems like an eminently suitable idea to me,” she said. “This time you wouldn’t be able to catch up with me, and I really doubt you’d shoot me. It would make too much noise, call attention to you.”

  “A good point.” He sank down on the roof, watching her. “So why haven’t you run?”

  She couldn’t get that damnable card out of her head. The Ten of Swords, piercing his back, bringing all to a desperate end.

  If she ran now, she would never know. He loomed over her from the rooftop, clearly thinking he was invincible, and she knew just how human he really was. And she didn’t want him to die.

  She wasn’t about to examine why. The sudden knowledge was enough, accepted.

  Without a word she started up over the garden shed, scrambling at first on the slick wood, then gaining purchase. He made no effort to help her, merely sat on the higher roof and watched as she made the small leap to the stables. Beneath her a horse whinnied nervously in response to the thudding o
n the roof, and she almost slipped.

  The lower section of the house wasn’t quite as close as she had thought—there was at least a two-foot gap between them—and the next one was a good three feet taller. She stared at it for a moment, picturing her body smashed onto the cobblestones below.

  Alistair had risen with his usual fluid grace and walked to the edge of the rooftop, watching her. “This is the worst section,” he said entirely without sympathy. “If you can make this jump, the rest is quite easy.”

  “You’ve been up here before?”

  “On occasion.”

  She wasn’t quite ready to attempt it. She didn’t know whether she ever would be, but she was more than happy to stall. “I thought you plied your trade while you were a guest in people’s homes. That you simply wandered into their private rooms and helped yourself to their valuables.”

  “Not a trade, dear one!” he protested in mock horror. “Peers of the realm do not involve themselves in trade. Let us say it is my avocation. A way to still ennui.”

  “And fill your pockets.”

  “It does have that felicitous side effect,” he said. “Are you going to stand there all night, or are you going to jump?”

  “What if I fall?”

  “I imagine it would hurt,” he murmured without a great deal of sympathy.

  “What if I died?”

  He glanced down at the ground below. “I would think that would be highly unlikely. You might break a leg at the absolute worst, but in truth I think all you’d suffer would be a few bumps and bruises. Now, a fall from the heights of the roof would be a different matter. That could kill you quite handily.” He smiled at her sweetly. “Come along, my pet, and I promise I won’t push you from Isolde’s rooftop.”

  “Were you considering it?”

  “The thought entered my mind, I must admit. It would tidy up things.”

  “Wouldn’t my family wonder what I was doing here?”

  “Oh, you wouldn’t be recognized. I’d see to it that you’d fall facefirst. You’d be smashed up quite nicely.”

  Jessamine swallowed. “Are you trying to frighten me?”

  “You don’t frighten very easily, do you?”

  “I never have.”

  “Make up your mind, Jessamine. You’ve come this far already. Take the final step.”

  Marilla’s voice echoed in her head, warning her. She would lose everything, perhaps even her life. All she had to do was turn and go back.

  “I hope you’re prepared to catch me,” she said.

  “Trust me, Jess. You’re safe with me.”

  “No, I’m not,” she said. And she leapt straight into his arms.

  He caught her. The force of her landing knocked them both over, and they went down on the slanted roof, rolling, heading for the side, when he stopped their almost certain plummet. He was on top of her, his long legs entwined with hers, and the sensation was shockingly intimate in the scant covering of breeches. She might just as well have been naked with him.

  He was breathing heavily, as was she, and he stared down at her, a strange expression in his golden eyes. The sky was ink-black overhead, with tiny pinpricks of stars piercing the darkness, and then he moved his head and blotted out the light as his mouth caught hers for a brief moment before he rose, pulling her with him.

  “Well done, Jess,” he said. “But next time warn me when you’re about to leap.”

  “I thought you said that was the worst of it?”

  “I lied,” he said cheerfully. He tugged at her, but she held stubbornly still.

  “Before I go farther, I want you to answer me one question,” she said.

  “You are a stubborn thing, aren’t you? Ask me anything you like as long as you promise to stop arguing with your fate.”

  “Why?”

  He glanced at her in the darkness. “Why?” he echoed.

  “Why would a peer of the realm, no matter how impoverished, become a common thief?”

  “Jessamine, you wound me!” he protested. “There’s nothing the slightest bit common about my thievery.”

  “Why?” she persisted. “Does it have something to do with your brother?”

  For a moment she thought he wouldn’t answer her. Then he laughed, a soft, faintly bitter sound on the night breeze. “You’ve been reading too many novels, my pet. I’m not haunted by a desperate need for revenge. My brother chose his own fate. I imagine he drank and gamed to while away the intolerable boredom of London society. I choose to steal diamonds instead. It will probably end as badly, but I’ve enjoyed myself far more than poor James ever did.”

  “Is that a good enough reason to become a thief?”

  “To relieve boredom? Undoubtedly. I have no affection for London society, or for much of anything at all, except pitting my wits against a locked-up house and a pile of priceless jewels. Is that answer enough? Will you come with me now?”

  She didn’t move. His mockery was in full force, and she believed him when he said he cared for nothing and no one. Or at least she believed that he thought it was true.

  What a fool she was to think there was salvation in a man who’d chosen lawlessness. He would die, and he would bring her down with him.

  A chill breeze slid across her face, and she could taste the sea and the promise of snow. And suddenly she didn’t care. For the next few hours she would do as he bid, and she wouldn’t think, wouldn’t question. For the next few hours she was his. “Answer enough,” she replied.

  He moved upward with unerring precision, taking her along with him. Higher and higher they climbed, over rooftops and dormers and odd gables, past windows that were shuttered, darkened, brightly lit. Past sleeping children and active lovers, past crowded ballrooms and empty schoolrooms, until they reached the slate-covered roof.

  Alistair pulled her up the last increment, moving a few feet away as she regained her bearings. And for a moment, for one of the few times she’d been in his presence, she forgot about him as she looked at the vast city spread out around her.

  It was beautiful, enchanted. Even at that hour, lights were everywhere, like tiny jewels in a velvet cloak. In the distance she could see the river and the Palace of Whitehall, farther on was the rounded dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Beyond that lay the slums, with Spitalfields on the outskirts, sinking into morass and decay. And to the right stood the great mass of the Tower of London, oddly beckoning.

  She pulled her gaze back, to the wonder around her, to the stars shining down just for her. “It’s rather magical, isn’t it?” she whispered hesitantly.

  “I didn’t know you believed in magic.”

  She glanced at him. “I read the cards. I know more about magic than most people do.”

  “Then why are you afraid of it?”

  “I’m not afraid of anything.”

  “You’re afraid of me,” he said softly.

  She was silent, unable to refute him. She glanced up at the stars again, drinking in their brilliance, and she could feel the unaccustomed weight of her unbound hair down her back.

  “You still haven’t told me why you didn’t run,” he said. “What did your magic cards tell you? Did they tell you I was your destiny?”

  “No.”

  “No, I’m not your destiny?”

  “No, they didn’t tell me that,” she said irritably. “It’s cold up here. Are we simply going to stand around talking?”

  “I could warm you,” he said. “What did the cards tell you?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it....” She started past him, not even certain where she was going, but he caught her, bringing her up against him.

  “What did the cards tell you, Jess?” he murmured, his mouth hovering over hers. “Am I going to die tonight? Did you come along so that you could watch?”

  She stood utterly still in his arms, past the point of dissembling. “I saw disaster. Destruction. It would mean nothing to you, but it was the Ten of Swords, which signals complete chaos. Things will never be the same
.”

  “How delightful,” he said, and his lips were unbearably close. Tantalizing. “Are you going to try to save me? Or will you help me to my well-deserved fate?”

  If she kissed him, it would be the beginning of the end. Marilla had warned her—you can’t serve two masters. The cards need her pure, undefiled energy.

  And Alistair MacAlpin would defile her. Most thoroughly, most gloriously. Leaving her with nothing, not even the cards.

  She knew it, and she couldn’t help it. She rose on tiptoe and brushed her lips against his gently, her hands lightly touching his face. “I’m not going to let you die,” she said quite firmly.

  She had taken him off guard. He stared at her, too startled to take advantage of her hesitant kiss, and by the time he’d shaken off his bemusement, she had already moved safely out of reach to the edge of the building and the series of houses that lay out in front of them, the copper roofs, the flatter slate ones beckoning in the starlight.

  “Which one is Lady Plumworthy’s?” she asked when he came up behind her, breathing a silent sigh of relief when he didn’t touch her.

  “The far one, with the steep copper roof. Lower than the rest, you’ll be pleased to note, in case we have to make a hasty exit.”

  “I’m not a cat—I can’t see in the dark,” she replied with some asperity. “I’ll have to take your word for it.”

  “You mean you’ll trust me? Will wonders never cease? One piece of advice, Jessamine. Don’t look down. Don’t give in to temptation and glance over the sides of the building. Even cats aren’t overly fond of surveying such a drop.”

  “All right,” she said.

  “And do exactly as I tell you. Since you’ve decided to become a willing partner in this little expedition, you need to realize I’m the leader.”

  “Who says I’m a willing partner?”

  “You did. When you didn’t run.”

  She followed him, of course, across the thick slate tiles of one roof, the steep copper panels of another. Past stonework and chimney pots, past flocks of night birds and a chill wind that whipped through Jessamine’s thin clothes and tossed her hair in her eyes, climbing up and then down, an obstacle course of architectural wonder, until they ended on a high stone terrace.