Stranger

by Zoë Archer

  “DOES THIS HURT?” HE ASKED.

  Because it was hurting him.

  Beneath his hands, her breathing quickened. “N-no.” She stared at him, eyes wide but unafraid, and her soft, pink lips parted slightly. “It feels … nice.”

  He was braced over her now, his body stretched alongside hers, so that he had only to lower his head to touch his lips to hers. Thoughts of the Heirs, the Primal Source all dissolved like vapor beneath the sun of his and her shared awareness. Her gaze flicked down to his mouth, as well, and the dropping of her lashes and flush spreading across her cheeks revealed that not only had she shared his thought, but wanted it, too. What would she taste like? Both the scientist and the man within him needed to find out.

  Slowly, slowly he bent lower, suspended in liquid time. His heart slammed within the cage of his chest, and he was tight and hard everywhere. He cradled the juncture of her neck and jaw, feeling the rush of her pulse at that tender convergence. Such delicacy. Combined with remarkable strength.

  “You’re a very courageous woman,” he breathed, close enough to count freckles.

  She brought her hand up to curve around the back of his head. “I know,” she answered.

  He smiled at that, a small smile. And then he stopped smiling, because he kissed her.

  The Blades of the Rose

  Warrior

  Scoundrel

  Rebel

  Stranger

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  STRANGER

  The Blades of the Rose

  Zoë Archer

  ZEBRA BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2010 by Ami Silber

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

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  Special book excerpts or customized printings can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write or phone the office of the Kensington Special Sales Manager: Attn. Special Sales Department. Kensington Publishing Corp., 119 West 40th Street, New York, NY 10018. Phone: 1-800-221-2647.

  Zebra and the Z logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4201-1986-2

  eISBN-10: 1-4201-1986-2

  First Printing: December 2010

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Zack,

  sometimes strange but never a stranger,

  my heart will always know yours

  CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Chapter 1 Shipboard Meetings

  Chapter 2 Tenacity

  Chapter 3 Miss Murphy Makes the Leap

  Chapter 4 Unfamiliar Territory

  Chapter 5 Sleeping Arrangements

  Chapter 6 Catullus in the Dark

  Chapter 7 Question and Answer

  Chapter 8 Rex Quondam, Rexque Futurus

  Chapter 9 The Silent Village

  Chapter 10 Mr. Graves Takes Control

  Chapter 11 Of Scarabs and Sulfuric Acid

  Chapter 12 The King and the Heir

  Chapter 13 A Hunger Not Sated

  Chapter 14 Crossing the Boundary

  Chapter 15 Shelter

  Chapter 16 The Hazards and Habits of Otherworld

  Chapter 17 Courage

  Chapter 18 Perilous Crossings

  Chapter 19 Conundrums

  Chapter 20 The Silver Wheel

  Chapter 21 The Blades of the Rose

  Chapter 22 Siege

  Chapter 23 Through the Fire

  Chapter 24 Aftermath

  Epilogue The Once and Future Blades

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to superagent Kevan Lyon and wondereditor Megan Records for loving my crazy adventurers as much as I do. And thank you to the many people whose support and encouragement helped make the dream of the Blades of the Rose a reality: Andy and Christina Blaiklock, Lorelie Brown, Pauline DiPego, Jerry DiPego, Gene and Janice Fiskin (hi, Mom!), Kathy Harmening, Carolyn Jewel, Carrie Lofty, Tiffani McCoy, Julia McDermott, Courtney Milan, Martti Nelson, Elyssa Papa, Jeffrey Silber (hi, Dad!), Liz Thurmond, and Lisa Zalokar.

  Chapter 1

  Shipboard Meetings

  The steamship Antonia, two days from Liverpool, 1875.

  Three guns pointed at Gemma Murphy.

  She pointed her own derringer right back. Two shots only. Maybe she could get her hands on one of the revolvers aimed at her. Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that.

  A sane person would have fled the cabin. But Gemma wasn’t sane. She was a journalist.

  So, instead of running, she confronted three faces ranging in expression from curious to outright hostile. And their guns.

  The culmination of weeks of hard travel. On the trail of a story, she had journeyed all the way from a small trading post in the Canadian Rockies, across the United States, to New York, where she boarded the Antonia. Horseback, stagecoach, train. Clapboard boardinghouses with thin mattresses and thinner walls. Food boiled to inedibility. Groping hands, speculative leers. Rats and dogs.

  She’d faced them all, pressing onward, always a day behind her quarry—but that was deliberate. She couldn’t let them see her. To be seen was to risk being recognized. Maybe she flattered herself to think that any of the people she followed would remember her. After all, she had only seen them twice, and spoken with one member of their party once. Weeks, thousands of miles, had passed since then.

  But there was a strong disadvantage to being a redhead. People with bright copper hair and freckles had a tendency to be remembered—like a flare’s afterimage burned into the eye. Sometimes Gemma used her appearance and gender to her advantage. It always helped a reporter to have an advantage. Other times, her looks and sex were a damned pain in the behind.

  As soon as she learned that her quarry had booked passage on the Antonia, bound for Liverpool, Gemma also reserved a cabin on that same ship. To follow at sea, even a day behind, meant the possibility of losing them. So, for the past week onboard the ship, she’d led a nocturnal existence. Staying in her cabin during the day, to avoid being spotted. In those close confines, she wrote articles until her hands cramped. She had little to go on but speculation. That did not stop her from piecing together events with her own prodigious imagination. Night saw her skulking about the ship, getting some much-needed fresh air. And, once the other passengers had retired for the evening, listening at doors.

  Her quarry met in one another’s cabins. Often, their conversations held no information. But tonight had been different.

  “When did the Heirs activate the Primal Source?” The woman’s voice. Her English accent was refined, but her words were tough and strong.

  Gemma pulled from her pocket her notebook and began scribbling furiously in it.

  “Some two and a half months ago.” Another English voice. One of the two men. His voice, so impeccably British in its accents, was deep and sonorous. Even now, with a door between them, his voice played havoc with her normally reliable sensibilities. She remembered the impact his voice had on her at the trading post, and ruefully reflected that none of that impact had been lost in the intervening time and distance. “But they haven’t the faintest idea what to d
o with it.”

  “That’s why they came for me in Canada,” said the woman.

  “If the Heirs can’t use the Primal Source,” the second man noted, “then there shouldn’t be any danger.” The accents of western Canada marked this man’s voice, yet he held a natural authority in his tone.

  “It does not work that way,” the woman answered. “The Primal Source has the power to grant and embody the possessor’s most profound hopes and dreams.”

  “Even if said possessor does not actively attempt this?” asked the Canadian.

  The woman replied, “All the Primal Source needs is to be in close proximity to the one who possesses it, and it can act on even the most buried desires.”

  Good gravy! What could this Primal Source be?

  Just then, a sailor on watch walked through the passageway. He looked at Gemma, standing alone outside a cabin door, with a curious frown.

  “Can I help you, miss?” he asked.

  “Just looking for my key,” she murmured, careful to keep her voice down. Her notebook was concealed in the folds of her skirt. “I’m such a ninny—I can never remember where I put it.”

  “The purser can get you another one.”

  “Oh, no,” Gemma said. She made some wave of her hand, the universal sign of a woman who doesn’t want to be a bother. “I’ll find it. Please, carry on with whatever you were doing.”

  “Are you sure, miss?”

  Blast these polite sailors. “Yes, quite sure.” She smiled and, God help her, fluttered her lashes. Gemma never considered herself a beautiful woman—red hair and freckles weren’t often considered the height of female loveliness—but she did know that batting her eyelashes generally worked as a distracting device.

  Correct. The sailor, hardly more than a boy, flushed, stammered, and then ambled away. The moment he disappeared down the passageway, Gemma pressed her ear to the cabin door, notebook at the ready.

  “And what are the Heirs’ deepest desires?” This was asked by the Canadian. He was the newcomer in the trio, she deduced.

  The reply came from the Englishman, an answer arising from long experience. “The supremacy of England. An empire that encompasses the entire world.”

  Gemma pressed her hand to her mouth, horrified by the idea. It seemed the stuff of a despotic nightmare, to have one country in control of the whole globe, with one set of laws. One monarch. The American in Gemma rebelled at the idea. Nearly a hundred years ago, her country had been forged in blood, fighting to free itself from the tyranny of oversea rule. Thousands of lives lost to secure freedom for its citizens. And to lose it all again? Just as every other nation would lose its independence?

  The woman added, in hard, bleak tones, “Somehow, the Primal Source will embody this. Which means destruction and devastation on a global scale.”

  “Unless the Blades stop the Heirs’ dream from manifesting,” said the Englishman.

  “I pray to God we aren’t too late.” This, from the woman. A grim hope.

  On that somber note, the voices within wished each other a good night. Gemma scurried away, into the shadows, to watch from a safe distance. Peering around the corner of the passageway, she saw the door to the cabin open, yellow lamplight falling into the corridor. A woman and man emerged, holding hands. The woman was fair in coloring, slight of build, but she radiated a steely strength matched by the bronze-skinned man beside her.

  When they stepped into the passageway, the man tensed slightly. The change in his posture was so subtle, Gemma barely saw it, but the woman felt the change at once.

  “What is it, Nathan?” she asked.

  He peered around, much the way a wolf might search for prey. “Thought I sensed something … familiar.” He gazed up and down the passageway with sharp, dark eyes, and Gemma could have sworn he was actually smelling the air.

  She flattened herself against the bulkhead, hiding, heart knocking against her ribs. She’d come too far to be found out now, so close to the story.

  She heard the man take a step in her direction, then stop. “It’s this damned sea air. Can’t get a bead on anything.”

  “We’ll get you on land again soon. Come to bed,” murmured the woman, and Gemma knew from the throaty warmth of the woman’s voice, bed was precisely the destination in mind. Gemma’s own face flushed to hear the husky promise in the woman’s words. Words one would speak to a lover. And it affected the man, most definitely. Gemma thought she heard him literally growl in response, before their footsteps hurriedly disappeared toward their stateroom.

  Once they had gone, Gemma poked her head around the corner again. She saw the third man in the group standing outside the cabin, locking the door. He was a tall man, and had to bend a little to keep from knocking his head into the low ceiling. Gemma recognized his long, elegant form immediately, and would have lingered longer to observe him, but she did not want to risk being spotted. So she pushed back into the shadows, listening to him lock his door. It seemed to take rather a long time, but at last he straightened and began walking.

  Straight in her direction. On feet well used to keeping silent, Gemma hurried away.

  She waited in the stern for several minutes. Once she felt confident she wouldn’t encounter any of her quarry, she jogged quickly back to the cabin. She pressed her ear to the door. No sound within. Bending low, she looked at the small gap between the door and the deck. Dark. The lamps inside were extinguished. He wasn’t inside—unless he’d come back within minutes of leaving and immediately gone to sleep. Unlikely.

  Now was her chance to do some investigating. Surely she’d find something of note in his cabin. A fast glance up and down the passageway ensured she was entirely alone.

  Gemma opened the cabin door.

  And found herself staring at a drawn gun.

  Damn. He was in. Working silently at a table by the light of one small lamp. At her entrance, he was out of his chair and drawing a revolver in one smooth motion.

  She drew her derringer.

  They stared at each other.

  In the small cabin, Catullus Graves’s head nearly brushed the ceiling as he faced her. Her reporter’s eye quickly took in the details of his appearance. Even though he was the only black passenger on the ship, more than just his skin color made him stand out. His scholar’s face, carved by an artist’s hand, drew one’s gaze. Arresting in both its elegant beauty and keen perception. A neatly trimmed goatee framed his sensuous mouth. The long, lean lines of his body—the breadth of his shoulders, the length of his legs—revealed a man comfortable with action as well as thought. Though Gemma had not been aware how comfortable. Until she saw the revolver held easily, familiarly in his large hand. A revolver trained on her. She’d have to do something about that.

  “Mr. Graves,” she murmured, shutting the door behind her.

  Behind his spectacles, Catullus Graves’s dark eyes widened. “Miss Murphy?”

  Despite the fact that she was in danger of being shot, it wasn’t until Graves spoke to Gemma that her heart began to pound. And she was absurdly glad he did remember her, for she certainly hadn’t forgotten him. They’d met but briefly. Spoke together only once. Yet the impression of him remained, and not merely because she had an excellent memory.

  “I thought you were out,” she said. As if that excused her behavior.

  “Wanted to get a barometric reading.” Catullus Graves frowned. “How did you get in?”

  “I opened the door,” she answered. Which was only a part of the truth. She wasn’t certain he would believe her if she told him everything.

  “That’s not possible. I put an unbreakable lock on it. Nothing can open it without a special key that I made.” He sounded genuinely baffled, convinced of the security of his invention. Gemma glanced around the cabin. Covering all available surfaces, including the table where he had been working moments earlier, were small brass tools of every sort and several mechanical objects in different states of assembly. Graves was an inventor, she realized. She knew her way aro
und a workshop, but the complex devices Graves worked on left her mystified.

  She also realized—the same time he did—that they were alone in his cabin. His small, intimate cabin. She tried, without much success, not to look at the bed, just as she tried and failed not to picture him stripping out of his clothes before getting into that bed for the night. She barely knew this man! Why in the name of the saints did her mind lead her exactly where she did not want it to go?

  The awareness of intimacy came over them both like an exotic perfume. He glanced down and saw that he was in his shirtsleeves, and made a cough of startled chagrin. He reached for his coat draped over the back of a chair. One hand still training his gun on her, he used the other to don his coat.

  “Strange to see such modesty on the other end of a Webley,” Gemma said.

  “I don’t believe this situation is covered in many etiquette manuals,” he answered. “What are you doing here?”

  One hand gripping her derringer, Gemma reached into her pocket with the other. “Easy,” she said, when he tensed. “I’m just getting this.” She produced a small notebook, which she flipped open with a practiced one-handed gesture.

  “Pardon—I’ll have a look at that,” Graves said. Polite, but wary. He stepped forward, one broad-palmed hand out.

  A warring impulse flared within Gemma. She wanted to press herself back against the door, as if some part of herself needed protecting from him. Not from the gun in his other hand, but from him, his tall, lean presence that fairly radiated with intelligence and energy. Keep impartial, she reminded herself. That was her job. Report the facts. Don’t let emotion, especially female emotion, cloud her judgment.