“It’s not important,” she pleaded.
His questing gaze searched her out as the tip of his finger skimmed her cheek. Pushed a tendril of hair behind her ear.
She fought back the shiver answering that gentle caress. Knew he’d not been fooled.
“Are you certain?” he whispered. “Because, for some reason, I find it very important.”
After sending Cat to their room, Aidan strolled back to Danvers, now seated with a bottle of claret and a plate of boiled beef and potatoes.
Of all the thrice-damned things to have happen. To come across someone they knew when he’d worked so hard to remain invisible. At least he might gain something from the debacle. A window to the woman who intrigued him more and more with every passing moment. Much to his growing consternation.
And the detriment of his clothing.
Upon seeing Aidan’s grim-faced approach, the man rose to his feet. Offered a chair. “I hope you weren’t too hard on the girl. I’m sure she didn’t mean to uh, hurl her chocolate at you.”
Aidan accepted the invitation, still dabbing at his waistcoat. “Carlotta is new to the country,” he lied. “She’s a trifle excitable.” He peered over at Danvers. “You made her nervous.”
Danvers adjusted the cuffs of his bottle green coat, rubbed at an invisible spot on his buckskin breeches, clearly both ill at ease in Aidan’s company and eager to push himself into the earl’s good graces. It would be almost too easy to pull information out of this unctuous jackanapes.
“I apologize for approaching her in such a forward way, my lord. For a moment I was certain . . . you see, she was so very like . . .” he broke off. Took a hearty swallow of his wine.
“She was so very like who, Mr. Danvers? I’m curious. Who did you mistake Carlotta for?”
Hesitation passed over Danvers’s features. But only for a moment before his obvious desire to please won out. He leaned forward. “I knew a young woman a few years ago.”
Aidan kept his gaze as bland as milk.
Danvers hurried on. “Our fathers served together in the Mediterranean, you see, and she and I spent much time together growing up. For just a second, I thought your”—he stopped, apparently unsure of what to label Aidan’s companion and not wanting to get it wrong—“but I was mistaken.”
Aidan leaned back. Steepled his fingers beneath his chin, regarding the man with his most supercilious stare. “And just out of curiosity, what happened to the young woman in question?”
Danvers’s gaze went flat, his face pulled to a taut mask of disappointment. “I can only pray she has died, my lord.”
Aidan’s brows shot up. “A remarkable statement.”
“I mean it only in the most sympathetic way, Lord Kilronan.” He rushed to clarify. “Miss O’Connell and I were close once upon a time. But there was a scandal with a young man. Her disgrace humiliated her family and shocked her friends. She disappeared shortly after it became known. None have had word from her since.”
“That’s quite a story.” Aidan masked his surprise in bored cynicism before forestalling the queasy stomach churn of questions by lighting a cheroot on the candle flame. Inhaling on a nerve-calming drag. Grinding the remainder out.
“And what happened to the gentleman involved?” His tone held a whiplash violence that had Danvers cringing, the wrinkled nose and disapproving glare at the unfashionable cheroot wiped from a startled face.
“No one knows, my lord.”
“You mean he disappeared too?” Aidan growled.
“I mean Miss O’Connell refused to reveal his identity. It’s still a mystery.”
A muscle jumped in Aidan’s clenched jaw. Not quite a mystery. Aidan had a name.
Jeremy.
Lazarus prowled the town house from attics to cellars, knowing he’d arrived too late. Kilronan had fled, no doubt taking the diary with him. The only inhabitants remaining, a handful of terrified servants who’d scattered like chickens upon his assault.
He searched anyway. Tearing through rooms. Upending furniture. Emptying drawers and chests and cupboards in a smash of splintered wood and shattered china. Using the pretext of his hunt to ease the roaring fury howling through him like a northern gale wind.
Chest heaving, muscles jumping, he dropped into a chair. Hung his head until the worst passed.
The Amhas-draoi’s attack had weakened him more than he would admit. Even now, he sensed the lingering damage from the magic unleashed upon him. A slowing of his reaction time. A grating shift of tendon against bone as if she’d knocked his entire skeleton off balance. But not even that catastrophic force of mage energy had been enough to stop him completely. He’d suffered. Felt the chill of mortality slide like needles through his veins. Hovered in the white light of eternity for hours or days or weeks. But in the end, it hadn’t been enough to send him back. Send him home.
Sinking to his knees upon the floor, he threw back his head. Raised his fists. Roared his hate and his fear and his desperation to the empty room.
He remained bound to the hunt. Bound to Máelodor. Bound to a life where death could be meted out but never claimed.
The house stood off the main road. Down an overgrown lane shaded by rowan and snarling gorse. A far cry from the wide avenue and rolling park he remembered. Back then, there had been woods to roam and streams to wade. Tracks leading up into the scrubby, windswept highlands of the Slieve Aughty and down toward silty creek beds and swift rivers flowing south and west toward Lough Derg and the Shannon.
Daz had been a presence in Aidan’s life forever. A big, barrel chested, laughing giant with a scoundrel’s tongue and a childish sense of mischief that charmed the Douglas children. Even when the shadows began to form and the golden idyll of childhood faded to an edgy awareness of growing storms, Aidan relied on Daz to bring a bit of the sparkle back. To remind him of a time when he didn’t feel the press of unknown fears weighing him down. When guilty suspicions had yet to take him over.
After the murder of Aidan’s father, Daz had vanished into his mountain holding like a badger to his hole. Returning no letters. Welcoming no visitors.
Absorbed by other worries, Aidan had endured that silence. Until now. Now he wanted answers. Answers that, according to the diary, Daz could give.
Beside him, Cat swayed bleary-eyed and silent in the saddle. They’d been riding without a break since noon, pausing only to rest the horses. Stretch their legs. In the days since their unfortunate encounter with Danvers she’d said no more about the mysterious Jeremy. And Aidan had never again awoken to find her curled sleeping upon his floor.
But he’d watched her from beneath hooded lids as the miles and days passed. Her stubborn chin, her body’s sylphlike curves, her hands fisted with tension on the reins. And jealousy had tightened into a hard, angry knot in his chest. Envy for the man who’d held Cat’s heart. Fury for the man who’d broken it.
“Will Mr. Ahern be able to tell us why the Amhas-draoi believe Brendan sent Lazarus?” Cat asked.
“He’s the son of the notorious Earl of Kilronan. That would be proof enough for Scathach’s trained assassins.” Miss Roseingrave’s accusations still grated. Almost as much as Jack’s willingness to believe. Brendan had been a victim. Not a perpetrator.
“But didn’t he sit in on your father’s meetings? He must have known about the dangerous lines they were crossing. Their experiments with dark magic.”
He gave an angry shrug. “My brother was no participant in an insane Other conspiracy. Brendan was a damned pretty-boy bookworm. Cried like a baby at the slightest bruise. Hated fencing, cricket, boxing. Loathed cliff climbing. About the only activity we both had in common was riding. He rode hell-for-leather. Could manage any half-broke rogue mount my father brought home.”
“People aren’t always what they seem,” she said quietly.
He shot her a look, but her face remained veiled in shadow. Only the ghostly curve of her cheek suspended amid the folds of night.
A rabbit erupted from the
bushes, frightening her horse, loosening her tongue on a well-phrased oath. And the charged moment passed.
The overgrown avenue opened into a sweep of weed-choked gravel before the stately stone house, now swallowed by ivy so that only the upper windows remained completely free of the tangled jungle of green.
Cat pulled up. “Are you sure he still lives here?”
She was right to be skeptical. No light shone from the windows and shrubbery had overtaken the front door. Damn. He’d made no provision in case Daz was gone. Or worse—dead. The diary had so far yielded up no other clues.
Aidan slid to the ground. Looked up at the darkened façade with something akin to hopelessness. Banished it before it took root. “He has to.”
“Who is it, Maude?”
A raspy whine sounded from beyond the crack of the garden door, the churlish housekeeper planting herself on the threshold and refusing to open it wider.
Cat tucked her hands beneath her cloak. Cast a doubtful glance around her. This isolated house was Aidan’s sanctuary? Except for the beefy-knuckled brawler of a housekeeper, Cat had yet to see any defenses that might hold back an attack by the nightmarish Lazarus.
“A gentleman,” the housekeeper shouted over her shoulder. “Says his name’s Kilronan. Says he knows you.”
“Kilronan!” The whine rose to a shout. “It can’t be. Kilronan’s dead. They’re all dead. Get rid of him, Maude. He’s an imposter. One of them.”
The housekeeper started to shut the door, but Aidan jammed his foot in the crack. “Tell him it’s Aidan.”
Maude rolled her yellow eyes, sighing with enough force even Cat, standing a foot away, smelled the sour odor of gin on the housekeeper’s breath. “Says his name’s Aidan.”
A pregnant silence from the inside of the house. Someone heard. Someone considered. “Aidan Douglas?” came the same whiny voice. “Kilronan’s oldest boy? Let him in, Maude. Let him in, you horrible strumpet.”
The housekeeper cackled, smoothing a hand down her apron front as she curtseyed them in. “Have it your way, ya old grump-necked curmudgeon. Come in, milord. Milady.”
“In for a penny . . .” Aidan murmured as he ushered Cat ahead of him with an encouraging smile.
A man stood at the far side of the room, dressed in the style of an earlier century—clocked stockings, knee breeches, and a frock coat that had once been a beautiful midnight blue, now faded with wear and age. Evidence of former strength was still visible in his huge hands, broad shoulders, but age had shrunken his frame, leaving him hunched and crooked.
Lank, gray hair hung to his shoulders while spectacles perched on a red-veined nose, enlarging a pair of rheumy eyes. Crumbs spotted his front, stains blotted his rumpled breeches. And—Cat looked again to be certain—he wore only one buckled shoe.
He studied Aidan through a narrowed gaze before his haggard face broke into a relieved smile. “Dear me, it is you. Come in, lad. Come in.”
Aidan seemed as startled as Cat by the man’s odd appearance though he hid it behind a polite bow and a smooth courtier’s smile. “I apologize for not waiting for an invitation. I wrote but never received an answer to my letter. Decided to risk it.”
Ahern harrumphed away Aidan’s apology. “Always welcome. Always welcome.” Before mumbling, “Thought you were one of them. Never rest. Never give up until it’s done. Until we’re all gone.” He began rummaging through his pockets. “Maude? Look alive. Prepare rooms for our guests, you bitter old shrew. Can’t you see they’re exhausted?”
Maude shook her head. “No use shouting at me, you old fool. I’ll see to it. Never you fear,” before shuffling out of the room on muttered curses.
Cat shot Aidan a sidelong look, but he ignored her. Tightened his grip on the saddlebag slung over his shoulder. “I came to ask your help, Uncle Daz.”
Ahern never paused in searching his pockets. Pulled out a piece of string. A stone. A shriveled, green leaf. “Don’t know what help I could give a young sprig like you. Why don’t you ask your father? Always was right brilliant when it came to things like that.”
“My father’s dead, Daz,” Aidan answered smoothly. Tossing his saddlebag onto a table. Unbuckling the flap. “He was killed six years ago.”
“Kilronan? Dead? Of course he is.” Out came the broken half of a bird’s egg, a crushed flower bereft of most of its petals, a feather. “Scathach and her cursed Amhas-draoi killed him.”
Aidan paused while Cat gave a don’t-look-at me shrug.
“That’s why I came to see you,” Aidan plowed on. “I thought you might be able to help me.” He withdrew the diary. “With this.”
Ahern finally looked up. Gagged on a wheezy breath, his face blanching to a ghostly white. “Kilronan’s diary.” Met Aidan’s eye with a gaze sharp as a blade. “It’s no wonder you’re running, boy. You’ve got a devil by the tail, for certes.”
Aidan stretched his bad leg toward the parlor fire, hoping to ease the cramps knotting his muscles. Endless days in the saddle had worsened the plaguey effects of the old wound.
Daz watched him with an unflinching stare. “Still bothering you, is it?”
Aidan lifted a brow in surprise.
Daz merely smiled. “I remember the night your father received word you’d been wounded. Your mother burst in despite all his warnings never to intrude. Shoved the damned letter beneath his nose and told him to hell with his warnings, his son and heir was dying.” He shook with wheezy laughter. “Never saw your father so flummoxed—or so scared.”
“Scared I might die?”
“Aye, that for certain. But scared of what the others might think—thought they’d see it as a weakness. Fear for one measly son when the entire fate of the world of Other hung in the balance. Perhaps if it had been Brendan, they’d have felt differently. They respected him. You?” His hands opened palm up in a surrender gesture.
“Not at all,” Aidan finished the unspoken thought.
Daz leaned back in the chair. Closed his eyes. “You lacked the qualities they admired.”
“In other words, I didn’t have Brendan’s abilities with magic.”
He’d always known it, but hearing Daz admit his father’s partiality stung. Even now.
Daz opened his eyes. Stared Aidan down, no trace of madness in his pale gaze. “It was Brendan finally made your father see reason. Called him the worst sort of coward if he didn’t ignore their disapproval and go to you. I’d never seen your father so wroth with the boy.” He cackled, slapping his thigh. “But he went.”
He’d come all right. All the way to London. Burst into Aidan’s rooms on Henrietta Street like a force of nature, his cold fury obvious even through Aidan’s agony-laced laudanum haze. Taken the first opportunity to rake him over the coals for the scandalous affair, going into great length about Aidan’s stupidity, his disastrous lack of discretion, the folly of his immature behavior.
He’d never stopped regretting that ill-fated duel. And not solely because of the lameness still afflicting him after so many years. But because of the final wedge it had driven between him and his father. A gulf that never had a chance to be repaired.
But if it took Brendan’s rebukes to rouse his father to attend what could very well have been his son’s deathbed, what did that say about the strength of that relationship? Had the bond between him and his father been more one-sided than he’d thought? Had Father truly cared about any of his children? Or were they mere pieces to be used and discarded as needed?
Aidan sought to make sense of it all while fighting the dull press of old regrets and new questions. Felt the stab of a headache erupt behind his eyes. He sought escape in the facts he did know. The diary. Lazarus. His father’s emerging villainy. The accusations of the Amhas-draoi.
Daz had risen to stab at the fire with a poker, the sparks crackling up the chimney. The light etching his face into harsh lines of light and shadow. The glow of the flames reflected in his haunted eyes.
So far, Daz’s confusion at their arriva
l had given way to an encouraging lucidity. But would it hold? Or was it as ephemeral and changing as the flickering light from the hearth? With no way to tell and no other place to turn, Aidan ventured to brave the subject he’d avoided so far this evening.
“Earlier tonight, you recognized the Kilronan diary.”
Daz stabbed the grate, sending up a new shower of sparks.
“Someone’s after it, Daz—a Domnuathi.”
The man’s hand tightened around the poker handle, his face twisting into a grimace of pain or fear or both.
“The Amhas-draoi are after it too. They want to use it as a lure to capture whoever is manipulating this creature.”
“Not over. Not over,” the man mumbled, one hand on the poker, the other diving into his pocket. “I knew it wouldn’t be over. Not until all of us were dead and gone. Not until he was dead and gone.” Daz pulled out a stone. Tumbled it in his hand. “Not over. Not over.”
“Who?” Aidan asked, barely breathing for fear of breaking the spell. “Who still lives who knows about the diary? Who has the power to raise a soldier of Domnu? What’s so special about this diary?”
“We ran. We hid. Escaping like rats from a sinking ship. They found us. They hunted us. One by one.”
“Who?” Aidan interrupted. “Who ran?”
“He survived by cunning. By stealth. They pitied me. Spared me. I wasn’t worth much. Never worth much.” Daz’s breathing came shallow, his chest heaving as if he was being chased by evil memories. His eyes fixed and glowing like coals upon the writhing fire. “And young Brendan?” he hissed. “Where is he? Did he survive? Or did he meet the end they planned for him?”
Aidan leaned forward, heart thundering. “What end? What did they plan?”
“The Nine agreed. The Nine are no more. The High King remains lost so long as the diary remains lost.”
Earl of Darkness Page 12
