Earl of Darkness

by Alix Rickloff

  Even if he’d not been compelled to follow his master’s commands, these less-than men deserved the death they’d received. They’d failed him. The whole lot of them. The diary was no closer to his hand than it had ever been. Máelodor would be angry. Máelodor would blame him.

  Lazarus closed a fist over his sword’s pommel. Felt his fingers fall into the well-worn grooves of a weapon that had become an extension of his very self. His whole self, for wasn’t that what he’d become—a living, breathing weapon?

  He studied the cooling broken corpses with envy. Wished with whatever tattered remnants of soul left to him that he lay among them.

  Spring found its way even into the neglected garden. Sunlight poured through branches heavy with green, and huge, blowsy peonies nodded in the warm breeze. Here, removed from the suffocating pages of the diary, Cat could imagine away the worst moments of the last days. Pretend Geordie waited for her with a bottle of claret and a good laugh. Pretend she wasn’t being hunted by a gang of cutthroats. Pretend she hadn’t almost kissed a man who made her feel hot and cold and nervous and eager all in the same instant.

  As she strolled the paths, the soupy mental fog accompanying every reading of the diary slowly faded so that the landscape’s graceful unfolding stood out in richly defined clarity.

  Something every other part of her life at this moment lacked.

  Pushing through overgrown shrubbery, she discovered a secluded grotto. A sheltering stand of laburnum surrounding an abandoned and unappreciated statue of Leda and her swan. Sinking onto an iron bench, Cat took in and quickly dismissed the passionate coupling of the woman and her avian lover. Closed her eyes, lifting her face to the healing sun.

  A rustle of boxwood, a muttered, “Ouch! Blasted branch,” and she found herself face-to-back-of-the-head with the man she’d come out here to escape. He looked up from untangling his coat. Started with another muttered oath.

  He couldn’t have found his own secluded piece of garden? He had to invade hers? She rose from the bench, smoothing her skirts.

  “I’ll leave,” she said before he could do more than blink his astonishment at being in her company.

  He recovered with fluid ease. “It’s all right. I’m just not used to encountering anyone out here. Jack’s not much on communing with nature, so I tend to have the garden to myself.”

  His gaze flicked to the statue. Back to her. And what had been mere pleasing artistry suddenly took on looming significance. The swan’s magnificent wingspan combined with Leda’s arched back radiated eroticism with the blunt force of a hammer. Cat clenched her jaw until her teeth ached. It couldn’t have been a rendering of some spear thrusting warrior exterminating a lion. Oh no, she had to be trapped with Aidan amid seduction on a mythic scale.

  “My father had it commissioned for my mother as a wedding gift,” he offered, strain running through his voice.

  “It’s beautiful,” she replied, knowing she sounded insipid.

  “He always teased that his love for my mother rivaled the passion of the gods.”

  A feeling she thought long past tightened her throat. “Now, that’s beautiful.”

  His gaze traveled over Leda’s very evident charms—wide, rounded hips, long legs spread in tantalizing invitation, head thrown back in obvious desire—before he lifted his eyes to hers. The mesmerizing intensity in them pushing past her formidable inner defenses. “Yes, isn’t she?”

  A queer fluttery feeling beat against her insides. Sent unwanted heat pooling deep in her center. She felt his long, slow scrutiny of the sculpture as hands upon her own body. The sure yet gentle touch of a new lover. His increasing arousal. His growing boldness. She welcomed his reckless longing with a spreading fire of her own. Her skin beneath the sturdy gown flushed in anticipation. Her lungs working frantically to keep pace with her heart.

  The outside world shrank down to the space of the secluded grotto, the powerful, stern-faced man in front of her, the measureless depths of his stare. His hands flexed at his sides. His breathing as jagged as her own. The bronze light in his eyes darkening with every passing second they remained locked together in this neverending, crystalline moment.

  He escaped first. “Last night—”

  “It wasn’t your fault—” she interrupted.

  “I should never have—”

  “It’s just—”

  They spoke over each other in their haste to clamber off the shifting sands beneath their feet. To pull free of a quagmire that had cataclysm written all over it.

  Aidan stepped into the breach opening between them before she could drag herself completely clear. His hand found her cheek. Traced the silver line of her scar with a touch that had already claimed her in a thousand secret places before he’d ever laid a finger to flesh. His lips parted as if he meant to speak, and she found herself leaning in to hear. Instead, he lowered his head. Slanted his mouth against hers, his warmth as welcome as the May sunshine.

  This was wrong. All wrong. The Earl of Kilronan didn’t steal kisses from women like her. He could have anyone he wanted. Could snap his fingers and have them lined up awaiting his choice. Her head knew it. Her heart knew it. Her body didn’t give a damn.

  If Leda could surrender, so could she.

  Take that, Miss High-in-the-Instep Osborne.

  Cat answered Aidan’s kiss. Opened to him, letting his tongue dip within. Swirl and tease in a playful exuberance that conflicted with his usual sober caution. His hand found her hair. The other curving around the back of her neck. Drawing her closer until the buttons of his coat bit into the fabric of her gown. Until the rise and fall of his chest rested beneath her own open palm.

  He lifted his head, the slow burn of his gaze illuminating a glimpse of her past. The alluring beguilement of forbidden fruit. The desire to be loved so fierce within her that any scrap resembled a feast. And waiting at the end, the empty, gnawing hunger when reality hit.

  She stepped back, his hands falling away, his features blurring behind a wash of idiotic tears. She wiped them away with her sleeve.

  “Excuse me,” all she managed through lips still tingling from his kisses.

  He let her go without comment. Watched her push back through the boxwood in silence. Never once tried to follow her.

  At the terrace steps, Cat met the housekeeper. “Have you seen His Lordship? I’ve looked all over and can’t find him anywhere within.” She scanned the garden, her hands fluttering uselessly at her apron. “He has guests. Lady Osborne and Miss Osborne are here.”

  “There he is.” Cat pointed toward the shrubbery, the secluded stand of laburnum, Leda and her god hidden away in eternal orgasm.

  Aidan emerged, his body stiff, face set in rigid lines.

  As Mrs. Flanagan descended to impart her news, Cat slipped within. Made her way with steady steps to her room where she could contemplate the perfection of his kiss in solitude. Slow her frantic heart. Regroup.

  She would take it as she found it.

  Geordie would have been proud of her.

  Aidan watched her lips move. Caught the play of eye and toss of head signifying interest. The adroit movements of her body assuring him of her attraction while hoping to ascertain his own.

  And Barbara Osborne was attractive. Hair the summer yellow of wheat. Eyes clear and blue. A body that enticed from the point of her dimpled chin to the sleek length of her legs. Not that he’d seen her legs. It had been Cat’s limbs he’d been fantasizing about ever since he’d seen them encased in those damned sexy trousers. Asking—no, begging—to be skimmed with a lover’s touch. He cleared his throat. Focused on Miss Osborne’s smile. The symmetry of her face. There was no denying the gods had been good to her.

  He swallowed, slapping a mental hand to his forehead.

  Gods led to Zeus led to Leda led to that thrice-damned statue. The kiss it inspired. The flare of luscious heat it ignited. He shifted in his seat.

  When had he begun thinking with his lower extremities? Here sat his future. Equal to
him in rank, in background. Possessing the drive and ambition and energy as well as the sizeable dowry to fully restore his family’s wealth and rightful place in society.

  Miss Osborne was everything he wanted and needed in a wife. So why was it Cat who kept provoking him into one awkward situation after another? What impulse had him seeking her out just to be near her? What elemental urge kept overriding good sense? Whatever it was he needed to get a grip on himself. He was no longer the immature scoundrel led by his cock.

  Miss Osborne tipped her head in expectation. Damn. Had she said something? Was he supposed to answer? He looked from her to her mother, praying for inspiration. Settled for, “I defer to your judgment. As always.”

  It worked. She sat back, pleased with herself. Her mother preening as if the marriage banns had already been read.

  So what was he waiting for? What kept him from forming the words “Will you marry me?” and taking the final steps to securing his future? It was honor, surely. Pride, certainly. Until he’d freed himself from the chains of the past, he didn’t feel comfortable declaring himself.

  That meant deciphering the diary.

  For all that her presence disturbed him. For all that those vibrant green eyes and sexy sweet body sparked an attraction harder and harder to ignore. For all that every encounter left him seeking out cold baths and a stiff drink—that meant Cat.

  He absently pitched a pebble into the fountain. Then another.

  After playing host to Miss Osborne and her mother for a good hour, he’d shown them out to their carriage. Miss Osborne’s lips curled in a seductive pout as she sought to coax him into joining them at the Rimshaws’ card party later. Her mother beaming her agreement. At least he had one parent’s approval for his courtship.

  He made his regrets, pleading the lingering effects of his attack, which seemed to satisfy her for the moment. But it was clear he would need to act soon or risk losing her interest.

  He tossed another pebble.

  His eyes followed the contours and curves of the statue as if drinking in the flesh and fire of the real thing. But whereas Leda remained cold and untouchable, the arc of her spine, the hollow at the base of her throat, the moment of ecstasy all rendered in endurable marble, Cat’s thunder-cloud personality and mercurial temperament made every moment fraught with cliff-scaling thrills. A pulse-pounding sensation he’d not experienced for longer than he liked to admit.

  He flicked a last pebble into the water.

  But excitement didn’t feed the bulldog creditors hounding one’s door. Money did. And that remained the purview of Miss Osborne and her well-heeled father.

  Rising from the bench, Aidan dusted off his breeches. Wiped his hands. Took a deep, careful breath. And deliberately turned his back on a statue built in honor of love.

  A last sparkling shaft of evening sun streamed through the tall library windows. Fell across the page Cat read, picking out one single sentence near the bottom.

  Her gaze dropped to the swirling clash of letters, forcing her mind to pick apart the strange pairings of vowels and consonants. Unstressed. Stressed. Long. Short. The diary resisted her translation, seeming to squirm and writhe against her grasping for its meaning. Every word fraught with a double dose of illness and a headache like a drill to her brain.

  But in the end, sense came from the foreign gibberish inked upon the paper.

  She read it. And again. And even a third time. Disbelief giving way to shock. Then finally—

  Horror.

  “Oh gods,” she gasped. “He couldn’t. Not his own son.”

  “You read it wrong. It’s a mistake. It must be.”

  Aidan fought his panic with a long, slow drag on his cheroot. It didn’t help. He tossed it in the fire, unable to even look at the paper Cat had shoved into his hands.

  “I translated it twice more. No mistake.”

  Aidan forced himself to read the words Cat had carefully written out for him. His stomach rolled, cold sweat breaking out upon his skin, and he looked away. “Father would never have gone through with such a plan.”

  “That’s not what it says here.” Cat tore the paper from his limp fingers. Read it out loud. “It’s decided we need a blood sacrifice. Brendan has been suggested as one with the required power.” She scowled, eyes flashing. Her shoulders tight, motions jerky and quick-tempered. “Not even a spark of outrage, Aidan. What kind of man blithely agrees to murder his child in the name of . . . of . . . what? We don’t even know. It doesn’t say.”

  “It must.” He strode to the diary, lying open upon the desk. Scanned the pages as if through sheer willpower he could decipher the crazy slant and jump of his father’s writing. Immediately, his stomach rose into his throat and he bent double, clutching his gut.

  Cat was there. Slamming the book closed. Shoving him into a chair until the worst passed. Giving him time to recover before she slid into the seat opposite, features brittle with determination. “I looked already. I read ahead a dozen pages and more. There’s no reference to a sacrifice other than these few passages. If it’s in there, I haven’t found it. Or he hid it in meanings inside of meanings. It certainly wouldn’t be the first riddle I’ve uncovered.”

  “Damn it, Cat. What’s the point of translating the damn thing if I end with more questions than when I began?” Tightness banded his chest, whirling nausea dragging him like an anchor.

  “Could that account for your brother’s disappearance?” Her voice came low and uneasy. “Could your father have—”

  “No.” He flinched, coming up hard against the edge of the desk. “And don’t even suggest it.”

  Her brows rose in unvoiced cynicism. “If your brother were still alive, wouldn’t he have gotten in touch with you after your father’s death? Six years is a long time to stay away without any word whatsoever.”

  An argument he’d held with himself many times. If Brendan lived, why no letters? Visits? Why had he cut himself off so completely from his family? There had to be an explanation, but he refused to consider Cat’s. That Father had—no. Impossible.

  Closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers, he tried gathering his scattered thoughts. Shifting the few puzzle pieces they had, but no picture emerged beyond the one Cat had produced with her outrageous suggestions.

  “My father couldn’t have done it. He loved Brendan.”

  She stood close behind him. Her cheek a soft curve at the corner of his eye. “Maybe so. But it’s clear he also planned a sacrifice. Could this be why the Amhas-draoi marked him for death?”

  He breathed in her lavender scent. Felt the pounding rush of his blood settle as he traced the faded marks of the crescent and broken arrow on the diary’s cover with one slow finger. “I don’t know.” He lifted his eyes to her worried gaze. “And for the first time, I’m not certain I want to.”

  Curled like her namesake on a chaise lounge, Cat’s head ached with a buzzing tightness, so that any flick of her eyes sent the pain flexing down her spine and into her stomach. The diary lay open on Aidan’s desk to the page where she’d left off, her corresponding sheet of translation trailing from the comprehensible to near chicken scratch as the sickness increasingly turned interpretation to torture.

  But no more references to the ritual sacrifice of Aidan’s brother. No more clues as to why it had been planned and whether it had been achieved. One more mystery to add to the growing list.

  Closing her eyes, she snuggled deeper into the cushions. It had been an interminable day with no end in sight. She’d been locked away with Aidan since after supper and now all she wanted was the sweet oblivion of bed. Alone.

  She slit her eyes to take in the strong-jawed features, lips she now knew could tease her into stupidity, a stare with a hypnotist’s stun power. She curled tighter into her seat.

  Yes. Definitely alone.

  Thankfully, he’d made no more mention of their kiss. And, both grateful at his discretion and perturbed at his nonchalance, she’d settled into igno
ring it too. Or as much as she could when forced to spend every waking moment in his somber company. She sank back.

  The soft weight of a lap rug across her shoulders broke into the troublingly delicious vision of Aidan that had survived every attempt to exorcize it. She opened her eyes to catch him watching her, the concerned look on his face adding kindling to the dream spinning.

  “You look awful,” he explained.

  She fought her fantasy with sarcasm. “Just what every woman wants to hear.”

  Laughter teased his mouth into a rare smile. “I only meant you seem wrung out and tired.”

  A squirmy feeling that had nothing to do with the diary shivered her stomach, and she offered him a more gracious “Thank you.”

  That should have been it. Quick. Over. Back to work. Instead, Aidan’s mesmerizing stare speared her in place, enough heat within it to make the lap rug irrelevant. Her skin flushed, her body going uncomfortably warm. How did he do that? One glance in her direction and she went stupid for him. It was embarrassing.

  “Cat, I need to—”

  She leaned forward, held her breath.

  “That is, we—”

  His stare burned a hole straight through her.

  Then just like that, he blinked. Cleared his throat. And dropped his gaze to the pages in his hand. “Yes, well I suppose we should get back to it.”

  A mental sigh deflated the growing excitement. She scrubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. Wished she could scrub her mind as easily. “I suppose we should.”

  Silence resumed as they retreated to neutral corners. She settled deeper into the cushions, wrapping the rug tight about her shoulders. Tried erasing the pulse-pounding memory of his kiss from her mind. Stripping away the image of that fathomless bronze gaze.

  “Here. Now this looks interesting.” His tone overly brisk and businesslike as he slid into the chair behind his desk. Scanned the page greedily.

  “Yn-mea esh a gwagvesh. A-dhiwask polth. Dreheveth hath omdhiskwedhea.”