Immortal Warriors 02 - Secrets of the Highwayman

by Sara Mackenzie

  If that information hurt him, he didn’t let it show.

  Melanie wiggled the book in front of him. “Read the last entry.”

  He took the book and opened it, flicking to the back.

  A monstrous injustice. I wish I could restore Ravenswood to its rightful owner.

  After a moment he looked up at her, an expression in his eyes that might have been hope.

  “What does she mean, ‘a monstrous injustice’?”

  Melanie shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything. She was going a bit gaga, judging by some of the other things I read in there.” Then, at his blank stare, “Senile, losing her mind.”

  She held out her hand for the diary, but he didn’t give it back. Instead, he smiled, managing to appear devastatingly attractive despite having been dead since 1814. He’d said that Pengorren was good at manipulating people, but Nathaniel was pretty damn good at it himself.

  “Do you mind if I hold on to this? I would like to read the rest of it.”

  “If you like. There are more of her diaries over there, on the shelf above the desk.”

  He didn’t glance in the direction she pointed; his gaze was fixed on her. He was measuring her, deciding what to tell her, how much more she could take.

  “I need to find out what happened here after I died. I need to know if I was the only one who saw something unwholesome in Pengorren. I need to know if it was my failure to act decisively,” he added bleakly, “that led to the destruction of my family and my own death, or whether it would have happened anyway.”

  “How will that—”

  “I tried to send Sophie away, after I saw her and Pengorren together, but it was too late. She refused to go. She wouldn’t listen to me. She looked at me as if she hated me for even suggesting it.”

  “Nathaniel—”

  “I was never the perfect son or brother, Melanie, but now it’s time to rise to the occasion. I’m twenty-seven years old and I have to grow up and be a man.”

  Melanie would have said he was already a man, but her heart was thudding, she felt light-headed, and her hands were sweaty. He had that effect on her. Not that she liked what he made her feel, the way she seemed to spiral out of control when she was around him. She had her own life, and now it was being hijacked by a man who wasn’t even alive, someone who had literally attached himself to her and followed her home. It seemed incredible. Beyond belief. One moment she was here doing her job, and the next…Her job.

  “I’m in line for a partnership with my firm,” she heard herself say. “I’m twenty-nine, and it’s something I’ve been working steadily toward ever since I joined the firm. You might not think it’s much compared to what you’ve been through; but it’s my goal, my future, and it’s important to me.”

  “I’m not asking you to give up your future, Melanie.”

  “No? I thought that was exactly what you were doing. You want me to dash off with you instead of acting responsibly. I’m here to do a job. Call me shallow, but I dream about an office with my name on the door, clients who respect and trust me, a smart apartment on Canary Wharf with the Thames flowing past my front door.”

  Nathaniel’s stomach rumbled, loudly. She glared at him, and he shrugged, the corner of his mouth quirking up, and his eyes gleaming with wicked amusement.

  “My apologies,” he said, “but even dead highwaymen get hungry.”

  “You’re hungry?” She couldn’t help but be surprised.

  “Yes.”

  “But…do you eat?”

  “Do you?”

  “It’s not the same, I’m not a-a…” Melanie eyed him suspiciously. “What are you, anyway?”

  “I’m a man. I’m not sure for how long, but for now I am a mortal with a mortal’s needs and wants and desires.”

  There was something almost suggestive in the way he said it, dropping his tone like that. Melanie ignored the innuendo, concentrating on him as a man who needed feeding.

  “Come on then,” she said, and led him down the stairs and into the kitchen.

  Nathaniel followed her, enjoying the sway of her hips in the strange trousers she wore. He’d thought for a moment there that he’d lost her, that maybe he’d laid it on too thick. I have to grow up and be a man. Nathaniel grimaced. A bit emotive for him. Not that he didn’t mean what he’d said, but he usually preferred to keep those sorts of inner feelings private.

  What was it about Melanie that made him blurt it out? Open himself up to a woman who was very much a stranger? The need to gain her help so that he could save his family and himself might have something to do with it, he thought wryly. Simply put, he was desperate.

  But in his heart he knew he was undervaluing himself. And her. This wasn’t just about desperation; there was more going on between the two of them than either of them would admit.

  After his awakening by the queen, she had led him to the door that crossed from the between-worlds to the mortal world. But he had been little more than a shadow. A ghost. He’d tried to make himself known to people, appearing before them, but he’d only ended up scaring them. They didn’t understand, and what they didn’t understand frightened the wits out of them.

  That was when the queen had told him what he must do. He must wait until Melanie Jones came to him in the past, and then ask her to help, and she must agree. Most importantly, he must gain her trust.

  Except that Nathaniel couldn’t wait that long—the old recklessness coming out in him again. So he’d come to her in his ghostly form and raced her along the lane. He grinned now, remembering it. He hadn’t felt so good for a long time, and whatever she might believe to the contrary, he knew Melanie had enjoyed it, too.

  Now, thanks to Melanie, he was once again a living, breathing, warm-blooded man. And at the moment Melanie’s curves were warming his blood more than usual.

  “I don’t suppose you spent much time in the kitchen when you were here the last time,” Melanie said, with a glance over her shoulder.

  Was she trying to annoy him, make him bite? Nathaniel knew his easygoing manner irritated her, but she was like a permanently overwound watch.

  “You’d have servants to see to mundane things like cooking and cleaning,” she went on, casting him another little glance to see how he was reacting.

  “Of course,” Nathaniel said in a bored voice, “doesn’t everyone?”

  Would she be like that in bed? Overcautious, precise, warily watching every move he made? Or would she lose all her inhibitions completely? He’d seen a glimpse of what she could be when she raced his ghost. Nathaniel let himself fantasize. Melanie Jones, skin flushed, slanting eyes shining, her mouth swollen from his kisses. She’d probably never allowed herself to unwind long enough to really enjoy a man.

  Nathaniel knew he’d like to be that man.

  They reached the kitchen, and he stopped, looking about him at the big echoing room with its myriad shelves, long, solid table, and enormous wood-burning stove. Things hadn’t changed since he was a boy, well, not much. There were a few modern additions, but not many. If he closed his eyes he could see the servants hurrying about preparing food, or giggling over some silly joke. Dorrie and Tamlyn and the rest, and Mrs. Vercoe, the cook, like Wellington, ordering her troops into battle.

  “Well?”

  He blinked, focused. Melanie was standing by the table holding a jar in each hand.

  She seemed to understand his dislocation. “I said do you want peanut butter or marmite?”

  “Peanut butter? Marmite?”

  “Marmite’s a popular English spread, dark and yeasty. Salty. You either like it or you don’t. Peanut butter is peanuts and…butter. It’s your choice. Eddie doesn’t run to haute cuisine, so we’re left with just the two basic food groups.”

  “Eddie?”

  “The caretaker. Remember? You saw me talking to him in the garden. He lives in a cottage in the grounds.” She set down the jars and began to open the lids. “I’ll have to think up some story for him if you�
�re going to be around here for a while. Or maybe you could hide whenever you see him? No, that wouldn’t work. He’d probably think you were a burglar. Or a ghost.” She smiled wryly.

  “I can claim to be a distant relative of the Raven family.”

  “Wrong side of the blanket.” She said it like it was a private joke. Melanie finished spreading the contents from the jars onto buttered slices of bread and held one out to him. When he took it, cautiously, she licked her fingers.

  The sight of her delicate pink tongue made him hot. Like the burst of heated air after a cannon was fired, it took him by surprise, momentarily stopping all thought. He felt disoriented, confused, adrift.

  “What?” Melanie said. She frowned and tucked her hands into the pockets of her trousers, suddenly self-conscious.

  He realized then that he was staring at her as if she were one of those strange sea creatures that were washed up after a storm on the little half-moon beach below Ravenswood. He used to examine them when he was a boy, spending hours dreaming about where they’d come from and what wonders they had seen before they came to his isolated Cornish shore.

  Melanie was a bit like that. She was strange and exotic, and he wanted to examine her, find out what made her the woman she was.

  Nathaniel bit into the bread. The dark marmite spread was very salty, catching him by surprise, and he pulled a face.

  She laughed at his expression. “Marmite not to your liking then? Here, try the peanut butter.” She handed him another slice, and he sampled this one more cautiously. Still salty, only this time crunchy as well.

  He swallowed with difficulty. “Mrs. Vercoe, our cook, always had food put away in the pantry. Saffron cake or some pasties, even star-gazy pie, if she felt so inclined.” He gave her a hopeful look, but he could see she was unmoved.

  “I’m sorry, but cook doesn’t live here anymore. You could ask Eddie, if you don’t frighten the wits out of him first. And that reminds me—he’s seen your portrait, so he’ll notice the resemblance.”

  She folded over one of the slices of bread and began to work her way through it.

  “Who’s Suzie?” he asked, laying his own slice down.

  Her eyes assessed him. “My sister,” she said, when her mouth was empty. “My older sister. She lives in a flat in Shepherd’s Bush—the better part. Divorced, two kids.”

  “Divorced? You say it as if it means nothing. In 1814 the only way for a couple to be granted a divorce was by Parliament.”

  She thought about that, starting on another slice of bread. “Bummer.”

  He choked. “Are you divorced?”

  “Uh-uh. Never married. I’m a career girl.” Then, seeing his blank look, “I live for my job.”

  She knew the concept, where a woman was concerned, was alien to him. The women of his day were supported by their families until they married, and then they were supported by their husbands. What a terrifying thought, women doing as they pleased!

  “Have you any family? Other than Suzie?”

  “My parents, but I don’t see them all that often. They divorced when I was young, after we lost everything. My father played the stock market,” she added, and there was tension in her shoulders, in the line of her mouth. “We went from being relatively well-off middle class to poverty-stricken and on-the-streets…or near enough. Everything I am now, everything I have, I’ve worked bloody hard for.”

  Melanie sounded proud of her achievements, and why shouldn’t she be? It was true, all her hard work had paid off, or it would soon, when she became a partner. She might be driven, she might even be a control freak, but Melanie would never allow herself to be placed in such a vulnerable situation again.

  “No man at the moment then?”

  “Man?”

  “Lover.”

  The question threw her. She stared at him, trying to think of a flip answer when she was tempted to tell him to mind his own business. Maybe she just wouldn’t answer. But he wasn’t going to let her get away with that.

  “I’ll keep your secret, I promise. Word of a Raven.”

  She laughed.

  Nathaniel folded his arms and leaned back against the counter, watching her. There was the hint of a smile on his mouth, and a lock of hair had fallen over his brow. He’d crossed his legs at the ankles, and his tight-fitting trousers showed up every muscle in his long legs. Her gaze slid up, over the waistcoat and the blue jacket, clinging to his chest and shoulders. The neckcloth was looking grubbier than it had, and not quite as neatly fastened, and there was golden stubble on his jaw, but that only made him look more sexy.

  She met his eyes. They were gleaming through the fringe of his lashes. He was returning her perusal with interest and a double dose of smoldering sexual desire.

  “I told you, there’s no one. I’m not interested in men at the moment. I’m a career girl.”

  Abruptly Melanie looked away and took a quick bite of her peanut butter sandwich. She tried very hard to swallow. Nathaniel Raven wasn’t a man you could easily ignore, but for her own sake she had to try. She was almost certain that if she gave him the slightest reason to do so, he’d reach out now and pull her into a hot and heavy embrace. He’d probably have her up on the counter in no time. I am a connoisseur of women’s undergarments. Yeah, right.

  Her fingers twitched as if she could feel him already, and she curled them into tight fists. No, she thought. No, no, no! But deny it all she might, the sparks were still flying between them. Making her feel wildly, vibrantly, wonderfully…

  …alive!

  Eleven

  It was late afternoon, and Melanie sat at Miss Pengorren’s desk in the torn leather chair, trying to ignore her headache while sorting through the old woman’s papers. Nathaniel was browsing his way along the bookshelves that covered part of one wall. That was why, she supposed, the room was called the library, even though it was a fairly modest one.

  After they’d eaten—well, Melanie had eaten, and Nathaniel had made faces and reminisced about his cook—she’d decided it was time she did some work. What she really wanted to do was to get as far away from him as possible. This attraction between them was like a ticking time bomb, just waiting to go off. But after he’d listened to her excuses, he’d smiled and promptly followed after her.

  Melanie glanced across at him. He had taken out one of the books and was flicking through the pages, pausing now and again to read. He seemed completely focused on what he was doing, but Melanie knew that, despite his air of relaxed ease, he was one of those men who seemed to know exactly what was going on in the room around him. He was probably aware of her right now…

  “Here’s something,” he said, and turned, catching her staring.

  Melanie jumped and began fumbling with her piles of bills, knocking some of them to the floor in her haste to pretend she wasn’t doing what she so obviously was. Watching him.

  “What is it?”

  He didn’t answer, and when she found the nerve to glance up at him again he was leaning against the bookshelves, one eyebrow quirked inquiringly. He knew she was attracted to him, of course he did. It was all a game to him, but it wasn’t a game to her. Melanie had sworn long ago that, after her father destroyed her life, she’d never let another man close enough to do it again. She’d had lovers, but she hadn’t been in love, and one of the reasons for that had been her determination to stay clear of the sort of men she knew would hurt her. The sort of men she craved.

  I’m like a junkie, she thought, but my weakness is for Nathaniel Raven. I can’t afford to take even one bite, or I’ll be hooked.

  “Well, what have you found?” She sounded irritable, as she re-sorted her papers.

  “I’ve found a book called The Raven’s Curse—delightful title, by the way. I have an entire chapter to myself,” he said, as if it didn’t really bother him at all.

  “I’m not surprised you have an entire chapter to yourself,” Melanie replied.

  He laughed and walked over to a leather armchair, throwing hi
mself down into it with careless grace. “You disapprove of me, don’t you, Melanie?”

  “I don’t approve or disapprove of you,” Melanie said levelly, turning back to her work. “I don’t have an opinion, Nathaniel. I’m not interested.”

  “I don’t believe you.” His voice was low, teasing.

  “Believe what you like.”

  Melanie picked up her pen and began to make lists. She made a list of the phone calls she needed to make, and another list of the ones that could wait, and then a third list of those calls she’d need to discuss with Mr. Foyle. By the time she had finished to her satisfaction—lists always made her feel better—Nathaniel was once more deep in his book.

  He was frowning, stroking his strong chin with one long finger as he pinned the book on his thigh with his other hand. If only he wasn’t so distracting, Melanie thought in frustration. If only he wasn’t here.

  Before she knew it, she was watching him again, and it wasn’t until his deep voice made her start that she realized it.

  He was reading aloud: “Nathaniel Raven was a complex character, angelic one moment and demonic the next.” He shook his head in disbelief. “That sounds a little extreme,” he said. “I was never angelic.”

  Melanie, who had taken a sip of her coffee, coughed. He observed her catch her breath and mop at her streaming eyes, his expression outwardly sympathetic, but his eyes were full of laughter.

  “Should I read on?” he asked her innocently, and then proceeded to do so without waiting for an answer. “The Ravens were comfortable rather than rich. Unfortunate investments by an ancestor during the eighteenth century South Seas bubble had seen them lose an estate in Derbyshire and with that went much of their wealth, but they continued to be well thought of in Cornwall. The elder Nathaniel Raven was a scholar, a gentlemanly man, more used to the pen than the sword, but when his son showed himself to be a far more restless character, the father wasted no time in purchasing him a captaincy in an army regiment.”

  Nathaniel Raven looked up. “Restless,” he murmured. “Is that where I went wrong? Should I have been a bookworm like my father? And yet I don’t think I had it in me. Cornwall seemed so far away from all that was important in the world, and I wanted to fight Napoleon. I wanted to be a part of history.”