Earl of Darkness

by Alix Rickloff

  The answer was obvious from past experience. A knee to the groin followed by a fist to the jaw. Subtlety and Cat weren’t exactly friends.

  He sighed. Blinked her away. Forced his mind to an image of Barbara Osborne’s buxom good looks. What on earth did she make of his sudden disappearance? Did she assume he’d taken off with Cat to continue their liaison in the privacy of the country? Had she taken such rogue’s conduct as reason to shift her attentions to another? No, surely she’d wait to hear his explanation before jumping to conclusions.

  But did he really care?

  Of course he did.

  Didn’t he?

  He was giving himself a headache. Trying not to dwell on the problems he’d left behind or the problems he’d brought with him, he picked up the next page in the scattered stack, and found himself chuckling over the recounting of Sabrina’s sudden interest in the healing arts. Not even the dogs had been immune to her mad scramble to bandage anything that came within ten feet of her.

  That had been in the summer of her fifteenth year. The last one she’d spent at home. Father had met his death the following November, Sabrina choosing to remain with the bandraoi sisters rather than return to Belfoyle. Her most recent letter had spoken of her apprenticeship to the order’s infirmarian. Apparently her interest in medicine was more than a girlish fad.

  The next page had obviously been recopied from another work. A recounting by the master mage Garaile Biteri of his first successful passage between worlds. Descriptions of the cold, the pressing weight of emptiness, the creatures inhabiting the abyss. Cat had even translated his father’s margin-scribbled annotations. References to testing the hypothesis at their next gathering when the family would be conveniently absent.

  One entry stung even at a distance of years: “Aidan’s hopeless. I gave him the simplest of spells—Brendan mastered it within hours—and what does my firstborn do? He sets the greenhouse on fire and nearly destroys a small fortune in exotics. When I taxed him with it, he merely shrugged it off as of little consequence. He’s my son, but, by the gods, his lack of interest is infuriating. He may be my heir in body, but it is Brendan who inherited my soul.”

  Aidan read and reread that indictment, resentment riding closer to the surface than expected. Dredging up old hurts and old slights forgotten in the chaos of keeping his head above water. He took a deep breath, exhaling slowly in a bid to calm himself.

  His father wrote only truth. Brendan had been the special one. The one whose Other gifts had shown the greatest promise. Aidan’s interests had always lain in the land, the green fields, the rocky moorland and crumbling cliffs, the overgrown stands of blackthorn and ash. They were his. Every blade of grass and every animal crouched in hiding from the poacher’s snare. Hell, every poacher when it came to that. So from where did his resentment spring? Perhaps it lay more in his father’s neglect of Aidan’s birthright than of Aidan himself.

  He turned to the next entry and another reference to the Nine. He’d seen this more and more as if the amorphous group his father had gathered congealed into something permanent and official enough to need a name. But for what purpose?

  His father’s thirst for knowledge and pride in his talents came through loud and clear. A clarion call to all Other to embrace their Fey-born inheritance, to strive to turn even the least gift to its greatest use. But to be used for what? The Other could never risk exposure. They had nothing to gain and everything to lose should the Duinedon world rise up in answer to what they would surely see as witchcraft and devilry. Did he truly expect Arthur’s return to tip the scales in their favor? Usher in a new era of Other dominance?

  “Still awake?”

  Aidan jerked at the creaky rasp of words inches from his ear. How the hell had Daz snuck up on him?

  “I’m light on my feet, lad,” Daz answered in response to Aidan’s unspoken question, shuffling his feet in what appeared to be a jig. “I move with panther stealth.”

  If that was Daz’s idea of panther stealth, Aidan had to have been dozing. That or stone deaf.

  “My neuralgia is acting up. Can’t sleep. Thought I’d join you, lad.” He dropped into a chair with a glance around the room. His eyes bright, but not wild. His movements holding none of the frenetic tendencies of the madman. He’d even managed to clothe himself in banyan and—both—slippers. “Your young lady gone up to bed, has she?”

  “Hours ago.” His young lady. It sounded so possessive. So permanent. So completely the opposite of what he needed. Barbara Osborne would be his young lady. She would. Really. Once he returned to Dublin, it was as good as done. So why did the thought of tying himself to her seem more and more odious, yet opening himself to Cat came natural as breathing? Or should he say, panting.

  He grimaced against a renewal of his earlier lecherous aches.

  “Sweet lass.” Daz levered his leg onto a padded footstool. Settled deeper into his seat with a satisfied grunt. “She’s had a difficult road.”

  Aidan shot him a pointed look. “She’s told you of it?”

  Daz returned the glare with a knowing smirk. “Doesn’t take the gift of the seer to see the child’s been hurt. There for anyone with eyes. Even you.” His gaze grew worried. “Maude says you came back from a walk about the grounds looking as if you’d been kicked between the eyes by a mule. More than once.” Shook his head. “Working the mage energy, weren’t you, lad?”

  Why did Aidan have the sensation of being caught with his hand in the biscuit jar?

  “And if I was?”

  “You know you and the magic don’t get along. Never have. Why risk injuring yourself?”

  “Because if I don’t I may as well stake myself out for Lazarus and let him have a nice easy go at me,” Aidan answered, sharper than he’d intended, but the reproof stung. Especially after reading his father’s indictment. “I refuse to let my deficiencies win. I need every weapon at my disposal to defend myself. And this damned diary.”

  Daz rubbed a thoughtful finger alongside his nose. “Ah yes, Kilronan’s diary. The trouble in a nutshell.” His pale gaze raked Aidan with the blistering power of a torch. Seemed to strip him down to bone. “What do you seek among its pages? Your father’s motivation? That’s easy. He was driven by pride. Misplaced arrogance. Thought he could remake the world the way it should be. Ignore the way it was.” He flicked a careless hand in Aidan’s direction. “Do you look for approval? You won’t find it among those pages. He loved you. But he despaired of you. Your lack of skill. Your lack of ambition.”

  “Loved me? Are we speaking of the same man?”

  “Aye, but he wanted more from you than you could ever have given. Your complete devotion. Your undivided loyalty. And your unquestioning enthusiasm. He gave up on you when he saw you for the flawed vessel you were. When he finally admitted to himself your powers would never rival his own.”

  “I tried. Hell, I damn near turned myself inside out trying.”

  Daz ignored him. “Brendan had it all. Gave it all. In the end, Brendan turned out to be just as flawed—in his own way—as you were.”

  “How do you know this?” Aidan’s voice came raspy with emotion, his throat closed around the lump. “How can you say these things?”

  “I was your Uncle Daz, wasn’t I? Kilronan’s best friend. His trusted confidant. I may not have been one of the Nine, but I saw it all. Knew it all.”

  The Nine. There was that term again. “Who were they, Daz? What really happened to make the Amhas-draoi come after them? Tell me the truth.”

  The air seemed to thicken around the older man. Aging his features. Deepening the wrinkles in his face, the worry in his eyes, trembling his hands as they clutched the arms of the chair. Had Aidan gone too far? Would his question send Daz back to that shadow-filled world of delirium? He worked his jaw as if chewing his words carefully.

  “What really happened? What did we do to have the Amhas-draoi after us?” Even his voice creaked, his stare turning inward to a time and place Aidan could not follow. �
��The true question, lad, is not what did we do, but what did we not do?” He shuddered, licking his lips. “The diary can tell you some of it. The meetings. The experiments. The speeches and posturing. But it can never bring to life the real terror of those days.”

  He paused, leaving Aidan stretched and waiting. Frightened. Sick at heart.

  “Your father originated the idea—organize the Other. Unite them in common cause against the Duinedon oppressors. A rope of many strands is always stronger than a single thread. That’s what he used to say.”

  Luck favors the strong. His family’s motto. His father’s battle cry.

  “The Nine grew from there. A spreading menace threatening to devour us all. We ignored the warning signs. We were justified. Had right on our side. But when words weren’t enough to advance our cause, we turned more and more to violence and murder. Our dream had become our obsession.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t you?” Daz’s harsh, level gaze speared Aidan to his seat. “I think you understand all of it, even if you won’t admit it to yourself. Your father. Your brother. We washed ourselves in the blood of anyone who stood against us. Disagreed with us. All in the name of our Fey inheritance. Our race. We sought to use our powers to unleash magics locked away in the void of the Unseelie. Imprisoned for good reason. No human can control those forces. They act according to their own will. They do not ally and they do not supplicate.”

  “Father had to know he could never hope to achieve such a victory.” Now his voice came as quick and shaky as Daz’s. “The Duinedon far outnumber the Other. A hundred to one? A thousand? Even if we resorted to using our powers, the mortal world would crush us as easily as breaking an egg. We bleed. We die. There’s nothing special about us that way.”

  “Yes, but if we had a leader. Someone to rally our scattered numbers and show us what we could be.”

  “Arthur,” Aidan murmured.

  “Brendan’s idea. He came up with it. Followed it through. Fought for it. Was even prepared to sacrifice himself on the altar of his cause.” Daz slumped back, his face as gray as his hair. “It never got that far, though. Instead of a grand and glorious end, Brendan found naught but an ignoble death.”

  Or had he only made it seem so?

  Light-headedness. A frenzied horror. A sweep of gut-churning heat followed by teeth-chattering cold. Aidan slumped against the wall of the upper corridor. Squeezed his eyes against the pictures in his head.

  He and Father scaling the cliffs below Belfoyle. Brendan laughing as he and Aidan thundered neck and neck down the gallop. Father, a stern disciplinarian, yet always willing to take the time to listen to his children. Brendan, a rival in so many ways, but a friend as much as a brother.

  Plotters in a scheme to rearrange a world order? Evil conspirators in a plan to raise a dead king? Ignite a brutal war of supremacy between Other and Duinedon? Bloodthirsty, conscienceless killers leaving a trail of bodies behind them as they worked their dark magics?

  He couldn’t believe it even as he knew it for fact. It was what he’d feared. And so much worse.

  He shoved off the wall. Stumbled like a drunk down the narrow passage. If he could just get to bed. Fall into oblivion and wipe out the incessant drumbeat of Daz’s voice, killing off cherished memories with the downward stroke of the executioner’s axe.

  He made it ten paces before his damned thigh gave out. Sent him reeling to his knees on an anguished moan born of poorly healed muscles and an ache grinding his tendons like a millstone.

  Rage boiled through him like a sick, black cloud. Anger tensed his arms. His shoulders. Squeezed his brain. Set him on fire. Father’s crimes had not only crushed him and those friends who’d joined him, but whole families had been torn asunder. Lives ruined. Futures blotted out with the finality of an Amhas-draoi sword thrust.

  He dropped his gaze to his hands, the heavy weight of the Kilronan emerald on his hand like a stone pinning him to the dragging fortunes of his house.

  His family. His life. His future.

  Propped against the wall, his leg stretched in front of him, he rested his head back against the wall. Fisted his hands at his sides and let the grief and pain pour out of him in dry, wracking sobs.

  “Aidan? Are you all right?”

  The familiar lavender scent. The smoky, sexy boudoir voice sliding like honey along nerves shattered to the breaking point. He opened his eyes. Lifted his arms. And kissed her.

  It was grief. Exhaustion. Pain.

  Not desire. Not tenderness. And definitely not love.

  Cat knew it. Ignored it. After all, she suffered from the same rampage of emotions.

  His mouth on hers came warm and brandy laced. His hands cradled her face, skimmed her throat, threaded through her hair. His body shuddering from some inner maelstrom.

  “We can’t . . . the corridor . . . the floor . . . it’s cold . . .” What she meant to say was “no, we can’t because it was absolutely, positively, no-doubt-about-it the wrong thing to do. They’d regret it. It would complicate an already complicated relationship. She’d promised herself not again . . . never again.”

  Somehow it hadn’t come out that way.

  “Aidan . . . someone will come . . .” She spoke between kisses, between trembling caresses as she responded to his attentions with embarrassing eagerness.

  He grunted in a typical male answer. Drew himself up, dragging her all-too-compliant body with him in an iron embrace. As if she might run if he released her. A wise idea if she could only get her legs to work. Tear herself away from the drugged heat of him.

  He backed her the few paces to her bedchamber door. Nudged it wide. Steered her unresisting body toward the bed, kicking the door closed behind them.

  Moonlight glanced off the dented suit of armor. Picked out the trim on a broken gilt-rimmed platter. Highlighted Aidan’s auburn hair with strands of gold. Bounced off the green of his emerald ring. These snatches of observation buried themselves within her. Points in time she knew she’d remember long after the physical acts of the night had faded. Long after she’d come to her senses.

  His gaze swept the cluttered room. The flickering candle. The book turned facedown upon the pillow. “You were reading.” He picked it up, checking the title. Flipped her a smile that never reached his eyes. “Not exactly a comforting bedtime story.”

  She pulled the book from his hand. Closed it, setting it aside. “I wanted to know more about this Máelodor.”

  His mouth thinned to a snarling whiplash, the harsh angles of his face hardening to granite fury. “I know more than I care to. About all of it. Oh gods, Cat. Father and Brendan—” he looked away, swallowing the rage and sorrow that had brought him here. To her. To the point where any solace would suffice.

  The mattress sank beneath their weight, Aidan coming over her, his hungry, desperate stare sizing her up her. Making her all too aware of her thin chemise, her chilled body, and all it implied. She sought to cover herself, but he captured her hand. Threaded his fingers with hers. Refused her attempt at modesty.

  No wonder.

  Modesty at this point seemed a bit too little too late. And anyway, he’d seen her before. Dismissed her as not his type. But that was then. This was now. And his type was a willing female with all pertinent parts. Escape without the hangover.

  “Don’t,” he murmured. “I want to see you. Need to see you.”

  “If you’re expecting luscious curves and ample flesh, you’re in for a shock,” she joked, though neither of them laughed.

  “I know exactly what I’m getting, a chuisle.”

  He lowered his mouth to hers in another bone-melting kiss. Clasped her other hand so she lay imprisoned and exposed under his triangulating hunter stare. The casual endearment skewered her with dangerous precision. A vulnerability she’d thought long callused over. But now, her skin prickled and flared, heat warping the barriers she’d erected after Jeremy, need battering the walls built stone upon stone upon the lifeless body of her
son.

  She looked inward for repulsion. Panic. A sick memory to dull the sharp crush of desire, but no images assailed her with gut-freezing horror. Instead a hole had opened, a chasm where life poured in. Drowned the past.

  He tasted of brandy and smoke, his velvet tongue teasing her with the promise of what awaited if only she had the courage—or the stupidity—to accept it.

  Off went the waistcoat. The neck cloth.

  “Catriona,” the rough-edged purr of her name ignited long dormant passions.

  She arched into the hard-packed muscles of his chest. Desire like a physical pain between her thighs. A greedy craving for fulfillment.

  She rubbed against the bulge in his breeches, thrilling to his hiss of pleasure. To the knowledge of her own sexual power.

  He released her hands on a groan. Dragged her chemise up and over her in a slick rake’s move that had her naked and quivering, her body one giant exposed nerve. His eyes and then his hands glided over her in lush seduction—the column of her throat, her pebble-hard breasts, the flat of her stomach. Ending at the junction of her legs.

  Her breath caught on a strangled whimper as she pushed up into his touch. Willed him to satisfy the wicked, pressing urgency vibrating through her. Once committed, her inhibitions burned off in a dirty passion, swamping her with a wet, throbbing heat.

  She fumbled with his breeches in a desperate move to have him inside her. Shoved them down over his hips, but he was quicker. Kicked himself free before dragging his shirt over his head.

  His gyrations rocked the bed. Knocked the table. The book hitting the floor with the explosive power of a gunshot. Startling them both out of their inescapable whirlpool descent into sex. He remained poised above her, Cat reading second and third thoughts on his face. Hesitation in the tension stringing his body.

  And what a body it was.

  No extra flesh or rich man’s excess marred the lean strength of his chiseled frame. The whipcord slide of honed muscles. The packed ridges of a stomach begging to be caressed.

  Washed in silver blue moonlight with dark pools beneath his candlelit eyes, he seemed something out of fantasy. A lover born of her wildest, most erotic imaginings.