by L. A. Banks
Edward looked at her curiously. "But warding is a form of witchcraft, isn't it?"
Olivia blushed. "My great-aunt was a hedge-witch. She was considered the black sheep in the family, but there was a time . . . when I thought I might follow in her footsteps."
"I never heard anything of this," Kit said, his voice strained.
Olivia looked away. "I suggest that one of you go out the back door and the other the front, and I shall set the wards."
With a doubtful grumble, Edward headed for the front door. Kit slipped out the back. Olivia stilled her mind and drew upon everything she had learned from Great-Aunt Celia. The spell came with surprising ease, reminding Olivia of what she had chosen to give up for the sake of familial duty.
She had no sooner completed her work than the wards chimed, indicating that a friend was attempting to pass. Edward gingerly stepped over the threshold, bolting the door behind him.
"It's the local constable," he said. "He has a dozen men with him, and he says he's come to arrest Emma."
"Arrest her! Why?"
"It's preposterous. They claim that she murdered Kate O'Brennan!"
"I did not do it," Emma said, jaw set and eyes bright with rebellion.
She sat erect on the edge of her chair, her hands clasped in her lap, every inch the earl's daughter and disciplined agent. Edward sat beside her, clearly frustrated by her refusal to let him touch or comfort her. It was as if she had pushed him away both mentally and physically ... as if they were complete strangers who had barely escaped the dreadful mistake of holy wedlock.
Edward had begun to entertain his own doubts. He had confessed as much to Kit, who in turn had warned Olivia of the strain developing between them. But that seemed the least of their worries, given that the constable and his men were lined up directly on the other side of Edward's firewall, waiting for Edward's strength—and his magic—to fail. Kit had not yet returned.
"We believe you, my dear," Olivia said. "However, it is evident that something has led the authorities to judge you a suspect. If ever there was a time for frankness, it is now." She sighed at Emma's stubborn expression. "Were you aware that there were questions surrounding Kate's death? Was this the objection the Eirishman was about to raise at the wedding? And what of the men who abducted you? Can you tell us no more about them?"
"I remember nothing of the questions they asked me, and little of the men themselves. I have told you all I know."
"All you are permitted to say . . . is that it?" Edward asked. "Darling, your future, possibly your life, is at stake. Whatever it is, I will understand—"
Emma cut him off with shockingly cold precision. "Even if—as Edward believes—this constable is genuine, the timing of his arrest cannot be coincidence."
"I had reached a similar conclusion," Olivia said. "But why are these men so eager to take you, Emma? If they are Albion's enemies and foreign agents, how can they be so blatant in their approach, even in a place as isolated as this?"
"They must be using Talent to disguise their purpose from any who might interfere," Edward said, "just as they used it to cloud Emma's memory of her interrogation. Some among them must be highly placed, in Albion or abroad. Their confidence suggests that they have the advantage on their side."
"I fear you may be right," Olivia said. "Whoever they are, they surely won't wait forever." She glanced toward the window. "What can be keeping Kit?"
Edward touched her shoulder. "Christopher can take care of himself."
Perhaps he could, Olivia reflected, but he also had a wild streak that even she could not predict. She muttered something about finding tea in the kitchen, armed herself with a poker from the hearth, and ventured out the back door.
Edward's firewall still stood unbreached, though Olivia knew that Kit must have found a way to pass through it unharmed . . . another peculiar and occasionally useful Black Doggish talent, no doubt. To her eyes and ears it rose as a solid wall of flame, perhaps four feet in width, its upper edge licking at shoulder-height. It would burn most men and women, Talented or not, as effectively as a real fire, though this one made no sound and relied on no solid fuel that Olivia could detect. It would falter when Edward had exhausted his magical strength.
She made her way around the house just inside the wall. At the front of the cottage clustered a group of men. Olivia took a firmer grip on her poker and approached the fire.
"You," she called. "Constable. I am Lady Olivia Dowling."
A stout, thickset man broke away from the others and strode toward her, pausing only when the heat grew too intense for him to bear. He shielded his face with one broad hand and peered through the leaping flames.
"Lady Olivia," he said. "It would be best for everyone if you would encourage your companions to give themselves up. Lady Emma is assured of a fair trial under the law."
Olivia smiled. "I'm certain that Lady Emma would be more inclined to cooperate if she had not already been kidnapped and questioned by persons unknown." She cocked her head. "Yours is an honest face, Constable. I'm sure you have no knowledge of such activities."
"I do not, my lady." He glanced behind him. "Can you name the men who committed this alleged act?"
"Unfortunately, I cannot, and Lady Emma was subjected to a Talent which impaired her memory of the event. You can see why she is not keen to trust anyone at the moment."
"Nevertheless, I am the duly appointed representative of the Crown, and I—" He stopped as a man came up to join him, and bent his head to listen to the other's low-voiced words. He straightened. "Under the law, I am permitted to take any action necessary to serve my warrant, and . . ."
Olivia didn't hear the rest of his speech. Her attention was riveted on the man who had spoken to the constable ... a man whose face was hidden under a low-brimmed hat and high collar, a man who walked with a slight limp that no one but an Anatomist might remark. She released her breath and allowed her Residual gift to take command of her senses.
She scanned down the length of the man's right leg and found the healed fracture, the peculiar pattern of the break, and the thickness of long-healed tissue where the bone had penetrated flesh. She remembered when the accident had happened. She had been there, along with her father, on the day that the dashing Sir Valentine Crowley—for whom she had nurtured a devastating childhood infatuation—had tumbled from his horse at a flying gallop.
She made her decision in an instant. "Sir Valentine," she called.
He stopped in the act of turning away, his heartbeat reaching a furious velocity. She felt the blood surge into his muscles.
"Sir Valentine. Do you not remember me? Olivia Dowling?"
He faced her slowly under the constable's curious eye. "Lady Olivia," he said without inflection.
"Sir Valentine?" the constable said, clearly surprised. "When you came to me about Lady Emma, I'd no idea who you—"
"It would have been better if you hadn't recognized me, Olivia," Valentine said, "but I didn't know your grandmother had died."
"She hasn't," Olivia said, bewildered. "I seem to have obtained some of her Talent Residually. It is a mixed blessing. . . ." She trailed off, well aware that something was badly amiss. "Why should I not have recognized you?"
He sighed, his shoulders rising and falling, and tipped the brim of his hat. "What do you want, Livvy?"
"An explanation. Why have charges been brought against Lady Emma? How are you involved in this?"
Silence. Then the constable made a low, startled sound, and Olivia saw the gun pointed at his chest.
"I had hoped it wouldn't come to this," Sir Valentine said, "but it seems there is no help for it now." He met Olivia's gaze through the fire. "Tell Lady Emma, Lord Edward, and your friend Mr. Meredith that we will not be going away until she gives herself up. We have the numbers and the Talent. We—"
His sentence ended in a soft oomph as the constable lunged for the gun. The weapon's report boomed and echoed. A body sprawled on the earth,
and it was not Sir Valentine's.
"A pity," he said. "But you must understand that we will have Lady Emma sooner or later, and it will go easier with her if you surrender."
Sickness clutched at Olivia's stomach. Her blood turned to ice, and she clenched her fists in impotent fury. "Who are you, Crowley? What are you? Did you abduct Lady Emma?"
"The less you know, the better for you."
But of course she could already guess. "My captors are almost certainly the enemies of Albion," Emma had said. And here was one of them in the flesh.
"If you will kill a man in cold blood," Olivia said, "murder him . . . why should we believe you will not do the same to us?"
"Because you have no choice." He raised the gun. "Lord Edward's firewall may hinder a man, but it will not halt a bullet."
Olivia stared at the gun, her mouth gone dry. "The others must know I am gone by now. They will have heard the first shot. Edward and Emma are both resourceful; they'll get away—"
Sir Valentine gestured to the henchmen gathering at his back. "Even if my men fail to catch them," he said, "your friends are sure to submit when I inform them that you will bleed to death if I do not send for a physician immediately." He took careful aim. "It won't kill you, my dear. There will be time—"
A mass of black fur and muscle soared out of the air on the other side of the firewall, crashing into Crowley with a roar like an oncoming locomotive. A chorus of yells and snarls beat against Olivia's ears.
"Kit!" she cried.
The huge head swung toward her, and Crowley's gun cracked. The Black Dog's growls snapped off in a shriek of pain. Sir Valentine's underlings summoned their courage and began to close in. Sir Valentine heaved himself up, face and neck streaked with blood, eyes wild. He aimed at the crouching canine.
Olivia had no thought for herself, no doubts about what she could and could not do. She closed her eyes and envisioned Sir Valentine's body ... his heart pumping the fluid of life, his stomach busy with digestion, his muscles tensed to kill. A strange darkness overwhelmed her, a bitter new knowledge that bubbled to the surface of her consciousness like some noxious gas beneath still, dark waters.
She gave a little twist to the image in her mind, shifting molecules with the force of her will. Crowley's agonized cry was more terrible than anything Olivia could have anticipated. Sir Valentine dropped the gun and doubled over, clutching at his belly. The henchmen stared from him to Olivia, blanched as one, and fled.
The strength drained out of Olivia's legs like hot air from an aerostat. She struck the ground with enough force to empty her lungs, and as she struggled to breathe she took in the bizarre tableau of a gibbering Sir Valentine, a bloodied and limping Old Shuck, and an unnamed constable rising from the dead.
"There, now," the lawman's voice floated through the firewall. "You'll be fine, my lady."
Olivia got to her knees. "But you ... I saw you—"
"I thought it best to play dead," the constable said, relieving Crowley of his gun. "He only nicked me on the shoulder. Not as good a shot as he believes. And as for your friend, here . . ." He regarded the Black Dog with wary respect. "He is your friend, I take it?"
"Indeed." Olivia still felt a spot of nausea, and a distant horror at what she had done, but there would be time to deal with that at a more suitable moment. "Kit! Can you come over to me?"
The Dog growled, plunged through the firewall, and abruptly vanished. Kit stood in his place, his clothing only slightly askew. Blood welled from a wound in his right leg, rapidly soaking the black wool of his trousers.
"It's nothing," he said gruffly "It didn't hit anything important." He felt for the spectacles that no longer sat on his nose. "Blast it, I lost them. Pardon, Livvy."
He sounded immeasurably weary and hurting, but he was alive. "We must get you inside at once," Olivia said. "And your arm must also be seen to, Constable."
"It's Greaves, my lady," he said. "At your service. I'll secure Sir Valentine while you lower the firewall. And we'll need reinforcements to round up Sir Valentine's lackeys." He squinted at her thoughtfully. "Begging your pardon, but why did Sir Valentine conceal his true identity when he presented me with the warrant for Lady Emma's arrest? Why does he want her so badly that he'd shoot us to take her?"
"I suspect I know only part of the story, Greaves." She told him of her belief that Sir Valentine had abducted Emma once, and that he or one of his men was an Inquisitor intent on gaining some coveted information that only she possessed. "The rest may be beyond my province to explain, but we shall have answers eventually."
She tore off a wide strip of her petticoat and bandaged Kit's leg while Greaves handcuffed the weeping Crowley. She and Kit plodded back toward the house, where Edward met them.
"Thank god!" he cried, extinguishing the firewall with a twitch of his fingers. "We heard the shots, but Emma fainted just when I was about to look for you." He offered Kit his shoulder. "What the hell is going on?"
Olivia explained as best she could, finishing as Greaves joined them. The constable deposited Sir Valentine in the pantry and braced the door closed with the heavy kitchen table. Greaves remained behind while Kit, Edward, and Olivia entered the sitting room to find Emma perched on the edge of the settee, herlips curled in a mocking smile.
"What have we here?" she asked. "Two dogs and a bitch limping in with their bedraggled prey. You timed your rescue exquisitely well, Eddie dear."
"Emma?" Edward said, leaving Kit in an overstuffed armchair. "Are you all right?"
"Better than I've been in months." She stretched her arms high above her head. "So well, in fact, that I have no intention of going back."
"Going back?" Olivia echoed. "Emma, we have the man who abducted you, and the others have fled. You're safe—"
"Safe." She laughed. "If it were left up to Eddie, I'd be dead. Fortunately, I have the competence he has always lacked." She smiled at her stunned fiance. "Did you think I'd willingly marry you for anything but your money, Eddie dear?"
Olivia approached Emma as she might a mad dog. "What is wrong with you, Emma?" She narrowed her eyes, aware of a raging turmoil inside the other woman, a battle every bit as ferocious as the one that had taken place outside. "No," she whispered. "It isn't. . ."
"What's the matter, darling? Cat got your tongue?"
"Who are you?"
"That is what I wondered for some time." Greaves stood in the doorway, Sir Valentine's gun in his hand. "Fortunately, Lady Emma was happy to tell me once we were alone." He grinned. "Now perhaps we can finish our interrupted conversation."
"Greaves?" Edward said. "What nonsense is this?"
Kit stirred in his chair, and the pistol swung toward him. "No nonsense," he said grimly. "But I think we have made a serious error in judgment."
Emma stared at Greaves. "You fool," she breathed. "We could have been allies, if only you'd been patient and not let your fears of exposure overwhelm you."
"Exposure," Olivia said. "Then Greaves is . . . both he and Sir Valentine—"
"Are Burgundian agents," Emma finished. "They made fools of you all."
"Sir Valentine has run off, the filthy coward," Greaves said. He gestured with the gun. "All of you, over there with Lady Emma."
"She isn't Lady Emma," Olivia said.
"You're wrong," Emma said. "The one who occupied my body was the imposter." She glared at Edward. "The one you almost married. The one who tried and failed to kill me."
Edward's mouth dropped open in shock. Kit growled. A great many things began to make sense to Olivia.
"It was Kate," Emma said. "Kate who seized my body when her own was dying."
Greaves clucked reprovingly. "But it isn't that simple, my dear, and you know it." He turned to his captive audience. "You see, dear Emma was indeed a very skillful Albian agent at the Burgundian court. . . and also my lover. I had been a confidential agent for Burgundy working in Albion until a year ago, and it was her task to discover what Albian in
telligence I had collected during my time here. But she forgot her sense of objectivity and became infatuated with the subject of her observation. She was persuaded to transfer her allegiance to Mother Burgundy. Quite a coup for me-"
"Liar," Emma hissed. "I have never seen you before yesterday."
As Olivia watched in amazement, Greaves's face melted into a completely different visage, and his stout body lengthened to aristocratic lines. Emma gasped.
"Serge," she said.
"You are not the only one with a useful Talent, my dear."
"He's a Pretender," Kit muttered.
Serge bowed. "That is my particular skill, as Emma's is—" He gave a grunt of surprise, and his body began to shake. The gun twisted in his hand as if it had developed a life of its own.
Olivia glanced at Emma. She was smiling in bitter triumph, and there was no further doubt in Olivia's mind.
"Puppetmaster," Olivia said. "You are a Puppetmaster!"
"Very astute of you," Emma said. "While Serge's Talent may be dramatic, mine is ultimately more useful. . . particularly when I need to rid myself of witnesses who might interfere with the new life I shall make for myself in Albion." She stroked her lower lip. "Who shall I start with first? The big Dog?"
Slowly, fighting her silent commands with rigid muscle and clenched jaw, Greaves turned his pistol on Kit.
"No!" Olivia cried. "Kate!" She stepped in front of Kit, who tried to shove her out of the way. He lost his balance and stumbled. Greaves aimed anew.
"No!"
The voice was both strange and familiar. Emma closed her eyes, and when she opened them they shone with blessed sanity.
"It's all right, Lady Olivia," she said. "I have control again." She stared at Serge. "Tell them the whole story, Beaumarchais, or I shall let Emma shoot you."
The Burgundian's mouth worked, but his face was pale with relief. "Oui," he said hoarsely. He looked at Olivia. "All I said before was true, but I . . •" He swallowed. "Lady Emma did plan to defect to Burgundy but her scheme was uncovered by her maid and fellow agent, Kate O'Brennan ... a very skilled Eirish commoner with several Residual knacks of use in our profession. Emma well knew that Kate would try to stop her, and so she resolved to kill the girl."
