She walked past him, leaving by the hall door. His instinct was to follow her, but Beverly got between him and the door.
“There’s something dangerous about that girl, Julien. She is no ordinary housemaid.”
“She most certainly is not ordinary,” Julien said. Was she dangerous? Oh, yes. She was a mortal woman. “I have given her my heart.”
“Your heart is yours to do with as you wish,” the spymaster said. “Your brain belongs to Her Majesty’s Government for the moment. Shall we get on with the assignment?”
“Fine,” Julien said.
The sooner he found the spy, the sooner he could take Grace away from McHeath Manor to start their life together.
* * *
“Julien is mine! I know you’ve been with him! I’ve been waiting for you, bitch!” the woman at the bottom of the stairs shouted at her.
“Witch,” Grace corrected. She was so happy her whole being hummed with joy, which made her reckless.
She took the last step down the back staircase to face the livid Lady Emmaline. The moment she reached the floor, Lady Emmaline’s hand came up, slapping Grace hard across the cheek.
Grace instantly slapped her back.
The noblewoman howled, in surprise, indignation, and pain. “How dare you?”
Grace touched her own cheek, and raised an eyebrow in answer. She started to move past the angry woman.
Emmaline grabbed her arm, not gently. “I’ll have you sacked, you filthy slut.”
“I could use a bath,” Grace said. “If you do not take your hand off me, you will regret it.”
“I? Regret? I’ll have the law on you for striking me!”
She could. A noble and a servant certainly had different rights in the eyes of the law. Rather, the noble had rights, the servant didn’t, no matter how the law actually read.
“I am so glad I am not really part of your world.”
“What are you talking about, you whore?”
By now a couple of maids had stuck their heads out of doorways. The cook stood in the hallway, frowning, her beefy arms crossed. The butler was coming up behind Lady Emmaline. He wasn’t moving all that quickly, obviously not looking forward to being involved.
“Whore? My people would consider an adulteress a whore.” Grace pried the woman’s hand from her. She held Emmaline’s wrist tightly and studied the woman’s palm. Grace traced lines on Emmaline’s hand. “There’s a man at home who loves you no matter how you hurt him. He won’t fight for you even though you want him to. Go home, woman, and save your marriage.”
The noblewoman sputtered. The butler stepped up to them. Grace let Emmaline go. Emmaline was crying. She ran off, her sobs echoing down the hall. Grace couldn’t help but feel sorry for her, even though every word she’d said was true. Well, who was she to judge anyone?
“It is time for you to leave McHeath Manor.”
The butler was absolutely right. Absolutely, totally right. She’d become so emotionally involved with Julien Weaver she’d forgotten her purpose in making love to a vampire. The sexual encounter was over. The spell would work or it would not, but Julien’s part in it was over. Her feelings—and his—made no difference. Her duty was to her family. So, it was time to find Uncle Mungo and be off.
* * *
Chapter Eleven
“You have been crying for three months,” Granny McCoy said. “All this moping must stop.”
“I’ve only been crying when no one’s looking,” Grace said. She didn’t see why her loneliness, and, yes, anguish, as melodramatic as that sounded, should matter to anyone but her. “And I smile all the time.” She smiled now, as falsely as usual, she supposed.
How long was this heartache going to last? Would she always be haunted by a smile, a face, a touch, a scent that were just out of reach? What had he done to her? What had she done to herself?
She took a sip of tea and a bite of biscuit. This made her stomach roil, but it proved she was taking care of herself. The woman seated across the small kitchen table from her nodded with satisfaction. The fire crackled in the stone hearth. Rain pattered against the small window. A deer hound snored, curled on the braided hearth rug. A cat purred on a bench under the window. It should have all been soothing, homey. Grace’s nerves stayed on edge. Which probably wasn’t good for the baby. They kept warning her about all the things that might be bad for the baby. Grace knew whatever might be good or bad for her didn’t matter. She loved this child.
But she also loved the child’s father, and couldn’t seem to get him out of her mind. Or the memory of his touch out of her skin. Sometimes she would wake at night thinking she heard him calling to her. But there were too many guard spells around her for that to possibly be true.
She’d been sent to the McCoy family property in Scotland, where Aunt Meg ruled the comings and goings of the various Travelers with a gentle hand. There was a huge old stone farm house, three cottages, all the farm outbuildings, and always a few caravans of relatives passing through camped in the meadows. Here, Grace was surrounded by loving family, and found no comfort in it. She’d moved into the smallest of the cottages and kept to herself as much as she could. McCoys were gregarious and tended to stop by at all hours for a cup of tea and to check on her well being. Even with all the company she was desperately lonely, and she wanted to be left alone.
“I don’t know why Aunt Meg called for you,” she said to Granny McCoy. “Everything is going well.”
“Why shouldn’t I visit you, child?”
“Don’t sound so concerned. I’ve done what you wanted. Don’t pretend you care.” Her own petulance made Grace laugh. “I’m sorry. It is just that there was no need for you to make the trip all the way from London.”
“I am not a frail old woman, you know. I’m here on holiday while my shop moves location. One doesn’t like to keep the same address for long, now does one?”
“Best not to,” Grace agreed.
Traveler witches—all witches—had long ago learned it was safer to remain secretive and elusive. If they were really needed, fate had a way of making sure they would be found.
Granny ran a tea shop. She sold not only fine teas but tinned biscuits and herbal concoctions—such as tisanes, philtres, and spells—and took the occasional fortune telling client. Grace had learned her own skills at reading palms and tea leaves at Granny’s knee in her various tea shops.
“Now, finish your tea, Grace, and let me take a good look at the dregs of the leaves. Even if they only tell me you’re pining for a vampire you cannot have.”
* * *
Julien paced the windowless room of the London house. It was lit only by the fire in the hearth.
“I think I am going mad, Matri, since she disappeared. I know how melodramatic that sounds, but the hole in my being grows and grows.” He had explained about meeting, making love to, and then losing Grace. “I am sorry to sound so weak over a mortal woman, but I cannot deny these feelings. Or the pain.” Pain that was as physical as it was mental. “My head aches all the time. It feels like I am repeatedly running into a wall.”
“Perhaps you should stop trying to find this mortal girl.”
Julien whirled to face the head of his Family. She was his great-grandmother. She sat in a chair so ornately carved, gilded, and upholstered it might as well be a throne. And why not? Considering she was Matri of the Family, the female vampire whose word was law, whose every decision was instantly obeyed by the females and Primes of every Weaver House. She was the one they went to for help, and advice. After three months of hell Julien had finally come to her.
The Matri folded her hands in her lap and gazed at him serenely. Serene, but stern. Any protest he might have made died in his throat at her look.
“Do you truly want to continue this liaison with a mortal, even a psychic one? Think and answer clearly, my dear boy.”
Thinking clearly had not been what he’d been doing lately. He took a seat on the edge of a sofa. Beneath the steady gaze of the h
ead of his family, Julien made himself go through all the implications and complications of the situation.
“Yes,” he said at last. “I cannot want anything else.”
She nodded. “I suspected as much. You are bonding with the mortal.”
Julien thought he should be surprised at her words, and deeply ashamed. He was neither. Of course he had suspected psychic bonding. “It began the first moment I caught her gaze,” he said. “It was the most wonderful moment of my life.”
She nodded again. “I have a bondmate. I recognize the feeling. I think you came here hoping I would order you to give up your quest to find the mortal. You hoped I would telepathically make you forget her.”
“I—”
She lifted a finger to silence him.
“Bonding with a mortal is rare, but not forbidden. Find your mate. Bring her into our world. I welcome her into Family Weaver.”
Relief flooded him. The Matri was wrong in supposing he wanted to forget Grace, but one did not contradict the head of the Family. “But how do I find her when she does not want to be found?”
“Do not suppose she is the one who does not want to be found. If you are bonding, so is she. There may be others who think they are protecting her from a vampire.”
It had not occurred to him that others might be involved. She was a witch. What did he know about mortal witches? If he wanted to find Grace he had better find out.
He stood and bowed to the Matri. “Thank you for your help.”
She dismissed him with a wave of her hand, and the barest of smiles. “Bring your mortal to me when the bond is secure. I would like to meet her.”
* * *
Julien recognized the carriage waiting before his townhouse door as he rounded the curve onto Mayfair Crescent. He considered quickly turning and walking away as not even his shadow had yet to be caught in the glow of the nearest gaslight. It was Lady Emmaline who stepped out of the shadows, making him pause as she rushed toward him.
He held a hand up. “I told you before that I do not want to see you.” Anger roared through him at the sight of the mortal. Not so deadly strong as it had been on the day Grace disappeared from McHeath Manor, but still strong enough to tinge his vision red with blood lust. Emmaline had been so pleased with her role in Grace’s leaving, initially taking all the credit for it. She had not understood she was in danger of losing her life for having ‘the silly bitch sacked and turned out’. It had become evident after much questioning of the staff that no one had sacked Grace, because no one had any memory of having hired her. A guest’s coach and driver had also left that day. No one knew who the guest was. It turned out the mystery was all of Grace’s making, but that did not stop Julien from being furious at Lady Emmaline’s attempt to interfere.
She stopped a few feet from him, and wrung her hands. “I thought of something that might help you find her, Julien. Please listen. I only want to help.”
“As you were so helpful before?”
She flinched at his bitter tone. “No! Will you listen if I tell you that I am not helping for your sake, but for hers?”
“Why would you want to help a servant?”
“Because she did me a great kindness. I thought it was an insult at the time, but she read my palm and told me to return to my husband. I couldn’t get her words out of my mind. I did return to Henry.” She gave a breathless little laugh. “I am happy with him, Julien. But that is not the point.”
“What is?”
“She read my palm. She told my fortune. She mentioned her people. Perhaps she is some sort of gypsy. There are many fortune tellers in the city. Perhaps you can discover something about her from them.”
“Gypsy? Grace hardly looks like a gypsy.”
“Aren’t there folk who travel with the gypsies sometime? Irish and Scottish travelers?”
Grace was certainly Scottish.
It would be most ironic if Emmaline had found him a clue when all his supernatural and Beverly’s government contacts had done no good at all.
Julien took Lady Emmaline’s hands for a moment. He gave them a friendly squeeze. “Thank you. Perhaps this will help. And may you be happy with your husband.”
He kissed each of her gloved palms, and hurried away.
* * *
Chapter Twelve
“You should ask me how I come to be here.”
Grace sighed, and turned onto her back. She was used to hearing Julien’s voice in her sleep, but this time it seemed clearer than usual. And the usual affection was not in his tone.
“How did you get here?” she asked. Talking in her sleep, she supposed, or at least in a half-waking dream.
“With the aid of a werewolf, if you must know.”
“Werewolves exist? I had no idea.”
“Nor should you. What matters is that I am here, and you have much explaining to do, my dear.”
He didn’t sound friendly, but at least Julien had called her ‘my dear’.
Grace opened her eyes. And there he sat on the end of the bed.
“Thank the goddess!” she shouted.
She sat up quickly and would have leapt into Julien’s arms but he stood and backed away. He put his hands behind him.
She threw off the covers and stood before him in her nightgown and bare feet, her hair in a thick braid down her back. He looked her over, hunger in his gaze. She looked just as hungrily at him.
“Werewolf?” she asked, when she couldn’t take the tension growing between them any longer.
“Followed the scent of a witch from an empty shop in London all the way to this farm. The physical scent, as all the mental signs of the McCoy family are masked and hidden.”
“Really? I did not know that.”
No answer.
“So. Did you catch your spy?”
“Yes. It turned out to be Lady McHeath.”
“Ah. Is she rotting in prison?”
“Of course not. She was passing information to pay off her husband’s debts. She is now being paid more to pass false information to the Russian ambassador.”
“Such are the ways of the upper class.”
“I suppose. Are you a prisoner?” He looked around her comfortable bedroom. “You are alone in this cottage. Could you leave the farm if you wish?”
Grace wanted to hold him, to kiss him, to be comforted in Julien’s embrace. She sat down on her bed and folded her hands in her lap. Looking up at him, she said, “It is all a bit complicated, my dear.”
“Are you a prisoner or not?”
“Sit down,” Grace said. “You have every right to be angry, but I will not be loomed over in a threatening manner.”
Julien dropped down beside her. Even though he didn’t touch her, she was aware of his size and warmth, and comforted.
“I could easily rip your head off, you know,” he said.
Might as well get it over with. “Yes. But that wouldn’t be good for the baby.”
Julien surged back to his feet. “What?” He paced back and forth, but the attic room with its sloping ceiling didn’t give him much space to move. When he stopped to face her again, he said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you pregnant.”
Grace fought a sudden urge to cry. “I am not sorry. Except for using you. I am very sorry for causing you pain. Neither of us were supposed to be hurt by this. The whole purpose of the spell was the creation of a child.”
“Spell? You used me in a magical spell?”
She nodded. It would be selfish to point out that she was used, too. She had obeyed Granny McCoy reluctantly, but she had obeyed.
His outrage and fury filled every corner of her being. The heat of his look melted all her defenses, and Grace began to cry.
* * *
Julien found himself kneeling in front of Grace, her hands in his. “Oh, no, my dear, don’t do that.” He was still angry, but he couldn’t bear upsetting her, either.
She sniffed. “I deserve to be upset.”
“Possibly, but we must think
of the child.”
He handed her the handkerchief from his vest pocket. She wiped her eyes. Then blew her nose on the embossed Irish linen. Rude on purpose, he could tell, when she looked at him over the edge of the cloth.
He sat down beside her. He put his arms around her shoulders and she leaned her weight against him. “I’ll hear the whole story, if you please.”
“Before you decide whether or not to rip off my head?”
“Your head is safe, but don’t count on your relatives being so lucky. This is all about your family, is it not?”
“There is no evil intended,” she told him. She put her hand over his heart. “I promise you.”
“No black magic?” he asked. “No dark witchcraft?”
“Oh, please!” She put her other hand on her abdomen. “McCoys follow the Traveler Craft.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“It means I’m a good girl, I am. McCoys are good witches.”
“Then why do you want a vampire baby?”
“We want a vampire’s baby—a perfectly mortal child, as you know he or she will be. The baby will be mortal, but highly psychic. This gifted child will take to the practice of magic because of the blending of our type of mental gifts with your kind’s mental talents. We’ve been doing this for a long time, I’m told. Every few generations we mate with one of the supernatural kind—vampires, faefolk, nephelim, someone whose magic we can—”
“—steal.”
“—blend with ours. It keeps us strong in the Craft. I didn’t know anything about this myself until a few months ago, when Granny McCoy chose me to—”
“Seduce me.”
“Which wasn’t all that difficult, was it?”
Julien laughed. “No. Unless—”
“I used a spell on you?” She was indignant. “I most certainly did not. We don’t try to make people do anything against their will. That’s bad magic, and very dangerous. You were perfectly cooperative.”
Stealing Magic (Vampire Primes) Page 6
