by T. S. Joyce
The room had gone still and silent.
I dropped my eyes from the storm brewing in his and tilted my head. Mother wasn’t looking at me or Ralston. Instead, she was glaring at Father.
Her voice held the quiet rage that would rival an impending avalanche. “If you won’t speak against the abuse said to your daughter in your own house, then I will.” She slid a narrow-eyed glare to Ralston. “You’ll not be marrying any daughter of mine. I’ve heard the tawdry things you’ve said to her and turned my head thinking you’re wealth and prestige give you a realm of leniency on such things. Upon further thought and seeing how you speak for myself, I’ve come to the conclusion the prestigious don’t get the blanket of such an excuse. You should be held to a higher standard. I’m sorry Mr. Bastrop. You simply aren’t good enough for our daughter.”
My mouth was hanging open and I closed it with an audible clack. Overwhelming pride filled me as my mother stared that animal of a man down. Father seemed to be in a speechless rage if the purple color of his face was anything to go by, but hang it. Mother had just catapulted herself to heroine status in front of my very eyes.
Ralston’s lips twisted into something akin to a snarl and he looked at one of the men in the corner of the room and nodded. A shiver of fear skittered across every vertebrae in my back as a hundred incomprehensible things passed between them in a breath. The man left and Ralston picked up the spoon and slurped his soup. If a pin dropped in here, everyone could’ve heard it.
“My dear,” he said. “I thought you knew I always get what I want. Your abhorrence for an engagement with myself has only made you a more attractive conquest to me, I’m afraid. You were alluring, and mysterious, and hard to get, until this moment. Now, I’ve lost interest in the chase. My ring is on your finger, and while I won’t drag you screaming to the alter, I won’t have visions of another man in your bed to haunt my sleep either. I have an engagement gift for you.”
One of the servants came in holding a silver platter with a letter. Why did that simple linen envelope put such fear into my heart?
Ralston gestured with a twitch of his fingers. “Open it.”
I opened it and read out loud.
Run.
My fingers froze into clawed things around the letter. He stood and threw his napkin over his soup bowl.
My voice trembled. “Where are you going?”
He made a show of straightening his suit jacket and sleeves. “I’ve come to the realization that I don’t really like the sight of blood or the sound of shrieking, so I’m going to leave before the festivities begin.”
Mother snatched the letter from my hands. “What is the meaning of this? Have you made a threat upon our house?”
“Not a threat, my dear almost-mother-in-law,” he said as five men filed into the dining room with readied pistols. “A promise. Save Lucianna for last. Show her what it means to try and double-cross a Bastrop.”
“Lucianna! Run!” Mother screamed as the first shot rang out.
Father fell and still, I stayed frozen to my chair.
“Go on, little chicken,” a man with a beard and heartless eyes said. “You ain’t gonna make this any fun if you just sit in that there chair all night.”
I couldn’t see Mother anymore in the mass of bodies and pistol smoke. I turned with an anguished noise and ran from the dining room. The men’s laughter followed right behind as I ran for the front door.
“What’s happening?” Bryant asked from the top of the stairs.
The handle of the front door turned slowly and lanterns swayed outside through the window panes. Bryant would never make it down in time to escape them, so I lifted my skirts and charged up the stairs as fast as my legs could carry me. I grabbed my brother’s hand and yanked him into the furthest room down the hall. The study wasn’t big, but we’d discovered something interesting about it years ago. The lower half of the walls were covered in decorative paneling and one of them came loose. There was a hidey hole on the other side and if Bryant and I could just get in there, we’d be safe.
“Where’s Mother and Father?” Bryant whimpered as I clawed frantically at the side of the rust-colored panel.
“Shhh! They can’t help us now. Help me with this.”
Bryant’s smaller fingers found purchase and wedged the side out. I pulled it and shoved him inside. When I was in with him, I pulled the hand grips on the inside of the panel and tugged it back into place. Intricate designs had been carved into each decorative piece and ours was no different. We scooted as far back into the tiny space as we could. If we got lucky, they’d scan the room, figure we weren’t here and move on. Maybe they’d eventually give up.
I cradled Bryant into my side and stroked his hair. His eyes were filled with fright here in the shadows, and he leaned his head against my shoulder. The clunking of boots sounded against the wooden floors and a man with a gun stuck his head into the room. He searched behind the desk and left. I would’ve sighed in relief if I wasn’t petrified to even breathe. Bryant whimpered and I threw my hand over his mouth. The sound of the boots stopped. The smell of lantern oil burned my nose but there weren’t any lanterns in the study. Only candles.
Bryant shook beside me and I pressed my lips against his hair and moved my body to protect his better.
“It came from over here,” one of the men said. The thump of boots returned. Through the pattern of the panel, I could see the bottom half of the room. Four sets of boots filtered into the small study and made scuffing sounds as they looked around. I jumped when the desk crashed over on its side. One pair stayed with the toes pointed directly at our hiding place and my heart hammered so loudly, they’d surely hear it.
One of the men said, “I think I’ve found our little chicken, boys,” just before shots rang out and filled the night.
The sound of gunfire was eternal. Pain ripped through me time and time again and I held onto Bryant as long as I was able. I slumped to the side just as a pair of bare feet came barreling through the door. He wore a servant’s pants but they were much too short. He was faster than I’d ever imagined a man could be and yells ripped from my murderers as he fought them. Through the pistol fire, he seemed to dodge the searing bullets or not feel them at all. None of them slowed his determination to fight them all. I had to be imagining things. The pain that threatened to pull me beneath consciousness supported that theory.
The last man dropped to his knees and with a jerk of his body and a sickening cracking sound, he fell forward with open, vacant eyes staring at where I lay. I couldn’t drudge up any sorrow for the man’s demise. At least a tiny bit of justice had been served while I lived to see it. We were avenged. The panel was ripped away and tossed against the opposite wall like it was weightless. Bryant lay motionless in my arms and I hugged him tighter. My sweet boy. My brother. He was gone and soon I would join him. Tears streamed down the corners of my eyes as I gathered my strength to thank the man on behalf of my family.
The stranger crouched down in front of me and cursed softly. He didn’t wear a shirt and his skin was scarred and taut over musculature like I’d never imagined a man could have. He looked like a statue. His eyes glowed a crystalline blue color and the right side of his face had been marred by something he probably shouldn’t have survived. Flames lit the wall behind him and I smiled. He might look like an angel, but he hadn’t come from heaven.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“Don’t thank me yet,” he drawled.
“No,” I argued when he gathered me to him. I clung tightly to Bryant. “I can’t leave my brother.”
“He’s left you.” His strange, icy eyes held a thousand years of sadness. “We have to go before this place burns to ashes.” He pulled my arms away from Bryant and I cried out at the loss of my brother’s warmth.
My struggles were futile and weak. “He might still be alive, like me.”
“He don’t have a heartbeat,” the man said, just before he kicked through a locked balcony door. “Nobody in t
his house does but you and me.”
My stomach lurched as he jumped two stories to the grassy lawn below. The impact was soft and didn’t seem to hurt him, and I closed my eyes against the pain coursing through my pierced body. The loss of my family seemed very far away. Such things didn’t happen to wealthy. We’d been good, honest people. Cruelty didn’t touch us in our manors and summer homes. Not like it did to the lower-born. There was safety in money.
The man’s heart drummed against the side of my cheek, slow and steady like the hammer of a blacksmith. Like he hadn’t just killed a slew of men and jumped from a burning house. The night was dark and the fog thick like a suffocating blanket. The glowing slivers of his eyes were all I could make out. Hours ago, I would have been terrified by the demon’s eyes, but I’d seen too much now. I wasn’t scared of anything anymore.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
He frowned off to his left like he didn’t know for a moment. “Gable,” he said in a rich, deep voice. “Gable Dawson. What’s yours?”
The edges of my vision looked fuzzy and collapsed inward until only the shining blue of his eyes held me. “Lucianna,” I whispered as the world went still and black.
Chapter Three
Gable
“Doc!” I yelled, banging my foot against his ramshackle door. He stirred inside and I closed my eyes against my impatience with human slowness.
He opened the door and pulled his glasses over his nose. “Gable?”
“I need your help.”
His eyes crashed onto the still form of the girl in my arms and widened. “You know I can’t help her if you bit her.”
I shoved my way past him and set her on the unmade bed. “Does it look like I bit her?”
Doc squinted and pulled his glasses in closer. His voice was quiet and sad. “Oh, dear. Fill that water bucket and be quick about it.” He flew into action and ripped the laces of her dress. “Help me turn her.”
The water sloshed as I slammed it against the table and pulled her over. Doc examined her bare back, and try as I might to be a gentleman, I couldn’t keep my damned eyes from the silk of her pale skin. It glowed like the moonlight and looked softer than gently rolling creek water.
Doc slapped my hand. “No touching.”
I pulled it away. I hadn’t realized I was.
“They all went straight through her but this one.” He pointed to her hip.
I’d known that from the second I saw her brother laying in her arms. The bullets had gone through her body and landed in his. Neither one of them was meant to live.
He handed me a bundle of white linen strips. “Hold these on the others. Put them on there tightly. She’s bleeding too much.”
My nose told me as much from the moment I walked in that room of death. I pressed the cloth on two of the holes and leaned forward onto them. A sheen of sweat brushed her forehead but she didn’t even utter a groan of discomfort. She’d be gone soon.
Doc pulled the open skin on her hip apart and jabbed a long pair of what looked to be scissors into the wound.
“Shouldn’t you put some of that sleeping cloth on her like you do to me?”
Doc talked as he worked, never slowing in his probes. The tool made a wet sound against her flesh. “She won’t physically bite my arm off like you could, and we don’t have time for all of that. She’s too far gone to feel much anyway. There.” He pulled a deformed bullet from the hole and dropped it onto the table and probed again without hesitation.
The metal made a tiny blood puddle on the grain of the worn wood and I couldn’t seem to take my eyes from the contrast. “Is there more bullet in there?”
“No.” He pulled a sliver of white from the hole and dropped it on the table. “It skimmed her hip. The bone stopped it but it took damage in doing so. We’ll get these slivers out and it’ll be less painful on her later. She’ll always limp, but with a little luck there won’t be any grinding in there.”
Another red stained sliver plunked onto the table. When a tiny bone graveyard graced the wood grain, Doc stitched her up.
The night was infinite and in the first traces of blue light that told of the dawn, he finally finished putting the last of her bandages on.
I pulled her hands over her stomach and covered her with a blanket before collapsing into the chair in front of her face. We’d cleaned the blood and finally, I saw the girl I’d pulled from hell. Her hair was blonde but a shade I’d never in my life seen. It was so light it was almost white. Her perfectly arched eyebrows were light brown and her petit nose flared slightly when she took a breath. Her lips were full and deep pink, and her skin was almost as pale as her hair. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and something deep inside of me was cut open with her pain.
I rubbed my hands over my face. I needed to get a grip. The girl likely wouldn’t last the day and the wolf inside of me was already howling his allegiance.
Doc sat in an old rocking chair and rubbed his knuckles lightly over his lips. “How did this happen?”
“Came across them in a big old country manor. Someone sicced a bunch of armed men to kill the entire family, servants and all, but I didn’t catch why.”
Doc’s eyes were troubled. “Did she tell you her name?”
“Lucianna.” I dragged my gaze away from the girl. “Do you know her?”
He closed his eyes and exhaled loudly. “She’s Lucianna Whitlock, the only daughter of the wealthy Whitlock family, and one of the most sought after eligible ladies in London. Even I, a penniless retired country doctor, have heard of her beauty.”
“I don’t understand. If she’s so important, who’d want her killed?”
“I have an idea of whom, and he can’t be touched so you get any ideas of revenge out of your half-crazy head right now. Ralston Bastrop’s been courting her for the better part of two years, along with every other bachelor with a name, but he’s the one who’s come closest to success. The day I heard of their intended engagement I instantly pitied and prayed for the poor girl. He’s a depraved man who lives above the law. I’ve lost many a patient to his cruelty. What happened to the rest of the family?”
“They’re dead. Someone lit the house up before they were even finished with the massacre. They were all dead before the flames got to them though.” I couldn’t think of anything worse than dying by fire, and the remembered flames licked the dark behind my eyelids.
“Tragic, but it just might save her. The bodies will be hard to tell apart. They’ll think she died in the fire like Bastrop wanted.”
“What about that?” I pointed to the diamond ring that glistened on her finger in the early morning light. “I’m assuming he left that bauble on her for a reason.”
Doc frowned at the gemstone. “Probably. If she lives, she can’t stay here.”
“I’d never keep a liability in your home, Doc.”
“I don’t mean that, Gable. I mean she can’t stay within reach of Bastrop. If he gets an inkling she’s still alive, he’ll search the world for her. No one escapes him.”
I let out an explosive sigh and murmured, “Shit.” I knew one place he couldn’t touch her. I thought there’d be no reason to ever go back and here she was, sleeping like some angel fallen straight from the clouds. “Guess I’m goin’ back home after all.”
Doc pulled his glasses off and pressed against his nose with thumb and forefinger. “Gable, you’re a good man, but you have to face your past at some point or you’ll never learn to live.”
****
Lucianna
Murmured voices danced across my ears, fading in and out in a meaningless jumble—just a slew of wordless syllables in a tongue I couldn’t understand. Not until a man said, “Lucianna.” The way my name tumbled from his lips was like a song. It brushed my skin and brought a warmth my body had been lacking. The voice was deep and so rich, it brought a thirst to my dry lips. A strange accent caressed it.
I opened my eyes so I could see the bringer of my name, but everything w
as dull and blurry. Disappointed, I blinked again and again until my vision cleared. A tiny, one room cottage with a creaking bed held me like some cage for a bird with a broken wing. My wings were more than broken though. The searing pain that licked my skin told me as much. A short, balding man with glasses stood over a pan of what smelled deliciously of fried eggs and the other, the one with the warming voice, sat in front of me. He’d stopped talking and now stared at me with eyes the blue of the first winter snow. It was those shocking eyes that brought everything back. The night crashed down on me like a hundred felled trees. “My family,” I whispered through parched lips.
His head lowered and thick, dark lashes shielded those glorious eyes from me. “All dead.”
It was the worst combination of two words imaginable. All dead. What those two words did to my insides was unbearable. Ignoring the shooting pain, I rolled until I faced the wall and silent tears ran down my face. The sorrow was my own. I didn’t know these men and I wouldn’t share. I was supposed to die with Bryant, and now I was alive to feel all of the soul singing pain and loss instead. It was my punishment for surviving. For fighting an engagement to that monster. For being born with looks that were so coveted they’d brought an end to everything I cared about.
Quietly, I sobbed, “You should’ve let me die.”
“I couldn’t. I couldn’t get to you fast enough. Your brother’s death is on me. I couldn’t take your death on top of my soul either.”
I sniffled. “Nothing’s on you, sir. Ralston Bastrop carries the blame.”
“Don’t say it like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re naming a kill. Naming a kill that won’t be yours will poison your life.”
“How do you know?”
The chair creaked and his boots shuffled on the wooden floor boards. “I know a lot about pain, Lucianna. That’s one you won’t want to bear.”
