by Gaelen Foley
Ghastly thought.
She shuddered then quietly let herself out of the wrought-iron gate on the opposite end of the park. After closing it behind her, she glanced both ways up and down the cobbled street to make sure no one was about.
She was fairly sure no one had taken note of her presence at the masked ball; now she just had to make it the rest of the way home and back up to her room. The street was empty, the houses still dark on this end of the square.
Moving stealthily, she padded out of the shadows of the plane trees and dashed across the street.
Once more, she slipped down the passageway between the buildings, turning the corner into the mews.
When she reached the back garden of her family’s townhouse, she discreetly removed her disguise on the remote chance she crossed paths with Cousin Tamsin.
Explaining why she was fully dressed in a walking gown at this hour would be tricky enough. If her chaperone caught her sneaking back into the house wearing a Halloween costume, that would be considerably more difficult to explain.
That, Cousin Tamsin would have to report to Mama.
Serena folded up her domino and tucked her black half-mask into its velvet folds. Before returning inside, however, she stood on the garden path for a moment, took a deep breath, and strove to collect her thoughts.
When she looked up at the sky, it was so dark. She could feel the cold of winter creeping in, and her quest tonight had failed spectacularly.
What a waste of time. She had risked life and limb, shared her deepest secrets with someone who obviously didn’t care, and made a fool of herself to boot.
Naively, she had fancied there was some kind of inexplicable bond between her and Azrael, but clearly, she was mistaken.
Still stung by his refusal to help her, she let out a sigh. It was difficult not to take it personally, especially after the scoundrel had been brazen enough to kiss her. Perhaps he thought their former betrothal—and she was still shocked at that news!—gave him the right.
He was wrong.
Well, what now? So he wouldn’t help her. He had saved her life, though.
That would have to be enough. A fall from that height, after all, could have left her crippled or dead, not to mention banished from Society, because proper young ladies did not sneak into gentlemen’s houses.
But having failed to come away with the key information, Serena rubbed her forehead in dismay where her mask had chafed her. Honestly, she did not yet know her next move.
It would help if she could think clearly, but her wits were all muddled up with sensuous memories of his marvelous tongue stroking hers so deeply, and the feel of hard, muscled body holding her close when he’d pulled her up from that ledge. She lifted her fingertips to her mouth, her lips still tingling with warmth and a regrettable hunger for more.
Serena shook herself and looked around, trying to clear her head. The whole row of houses was dark in the back. Even the horses in the stables were fast asleep, and standing there, she felt like the last person left alive on the face of the earth, never mind the house full of revelers on the far end of the square.
She tilted her head back and looked up at the full moon, sitting amid two banks of clouds. The man in the moon seemed to watch her, with his long-fingered, elegant hand propped beneath his silver cheek.
What are you looking at? she thought with a scowl. Leave me alone.
Yet her traitorous heart registered a pang that, after all her months of observing Azrael from a distance, becoming to some degree wrapped up in her fascination with him, the lout had turned his back on her.
He was no elven prince, she thought, squaring her shoulders. He was just another dead end in the maze of her search.
All that was left to do now was cross him off her list of possible leads in trying to solve this mystery and move on to the next step.
As soon as she figured out what the blazes that might be.
CHAPTER 5
Bonfire Night
In the days that followed, Azrael found himself going through the motions of his usual routine, but he kept thinking about Lady Serena and sensed that something inside of him had changed.
He wondered continually about the bond and the history they shared—whether they liked it or not.
Or maybe it was all in his imagination. He wandered through a tangled forest of uncertainty, confusion, for days.
Netherford’s basic male simplicity came as a relief when Azrael went to the Grand Albion, the huge, stately gentlemen’s club that dominated one end of Moonlight Square.
The loud ex-leader of the rakehells still held court there, though his bride had put an end to his infamous womanizing. Fondly, Azrael recalled how he had personally prevented Netherford from being blackballed after the rogue had burned the club’s wager book in a fit of temper.
Another club-mate, Gable, Viscount Roland, newly returned from the countryside, passed around cigars as he announced that his wife, Trinny—the eldest of all those red-haired sisters down the street—was expecting a blessed event.
Netherford took care to introduce Azrael to Lord Roland and to their cheerful blond friend, Viscount Sidney. Azrael appreciated the gesture. He was beginning to see that his friend really was a kinder and more perceptive man than he let on with all his brash joviality and bawdy irreverence.
His fellow duke seemed to have decided that Azrael would no longer be permitted to lurk like a ghost around the edges of the club. His one friend was determined to drag him out into the warm glow of the men’s general camaraderie.
Before he knew it, he suddenly had two friends, then three. He particularly liked Roland’s wry, understated wit, and sunny Sidney’s unflappable cheer.
In any case, Azrael joined in the applause as Roland, the proud expectant father, was soundly cheered for his accomplishment. He even accepted a cigar on the viscount’s behalf, though he despised the things.
A few nights later, he came upon the Netherfords and the Rolands together at some ball; it seemed the wives were good friends as well.
Watching the two men so unabashedly smitten with their brides, Azrael found himself thinking once more about Serena.
The girl he was to have married.
What if he’d made a colossal mistake, calling off the match? Was that even possible, under the circumstances?
Ah, but he had learned the price of her “friendship,” and it was too steep for him. What was he to do?
He simply couldn’t get involved in her quest. The only way he’d survived all these years was by giving his father’s friends a wide berth.
Besides, he didn’t have the slightest bloody inkling of who her real father was. A mere twelve-year-old at the time of his sire’s death, he had hardly been privy to the details of the group’s activities or who was sleeping with whose wife on any given night.
He had no idea how many men might have been involved at that point. Obviously, Lord Stiver, Azrael’s head guardian, had succeeded his father as the coven’s grandmaster, but there must have been one or two dozen more involved in their ridiculous, horrid rituals. For all he knew, Lady Dunhaven might have lain with any or all of those men.
What business was it of his, anyway? The poor woman. Azrael couldn’t blame the countess for wanting to forget and pretend that that part of her life had never taken place.
His own mother had survived by a similar strategy, slowly disappearing into a laudanum fog.
The drug had killed her one night when she took too much, drifting off into a soul-stealing dreamland from which she had never awakened.
Azrael had envied her at the time.
More days passed, in any case. Gray, cold, empty days. Then it was a week past his masked ball.
He worked diligently, trying to forget about what had happened between him and Lady Serena in that room, and what he wished would’ve happened.
But when the nights descended, his musing about her turned steadily into a craving.
The hunger for even a glimpse of her
lured him out into Society again, just as it had for weeks now, if he was honest.
Ever since he had noticed Staring Girl’s preoccupation with him, he had been more frequently seen at Society events, all in hopes of glimpsing her—fascinated but wary as some forest animal.
Now, however, when he spotted her at some ball or banquet or rout, all he got from her was a distant, courteous nod. Then she’d turn away.
She might as well have run a sword through his heart.
Why her dismissal of him hurt, why it took him aback, he could not say. They were not even supposed to know each other, after all.
As she had told him flat out, they were not friends.
The change in her attitude toward him stung him nonetheless.
Where she used to lurk and stalk and amuse the hell out of him—as if he didn’t notice—now he got no more than a polite nod and a nonchalant smile. The chill was palpable from across a ballroom, especially in the dwindling numbers of the ton present during the cold months.
Azrael felt startled—no, shocked—and oddly bereft when the raven-haired beauty now simply ignored him. He waited, hoping for a change, but Staring Girl had clearly moved on.
She made no effort to come closer, or to contrive to speak to him. Indeed, she seemed completely indifferent to his existence now, while he had been practically obsessing over her.
He felt like such a fool. Anger crept through him as the truth sank in. So, all she ever wanted from me really was information.
Of course. That was the only reason she had let him kiss her. The eager attention she had paid to him all Season long had been driven by nothing but pure self-interest.
It had never had anything to do with him. Once she saw that the answers she wanted would not be forthcoming, she had all but discarded him.
With as little trust as he already had in humanity, her subtle jilt wrenched his gut. Did it not even matter to her that he was a bloody duke? He was the one who’d keep people at arm’s length, thank you very much.
Having it done to him for once was another experience altogether.
Oh, he was well aware that he was being manipulated—not that he could entirely blame her, given the stakes of her search. He mused upon her naughty cleverness as he watched her one night from across the table at a late, after-theater supper. Always she stayed at a tantalizing distance.
Azrael was sure she was deliberately torturing him to try to change his mind about helping her. What most infuriated him, though, was that he actually found himself considering it. God, I must be suicidal.
But it was one thing to live on the outskirts of Society, connected to none.
It was something else again to have tasted the nectar of being open, briefly, with someone who shared one’s deepest secrets, and then to be shunned by that person.
Loneliness he could endure. He’d endured it all his life without complaint. But this…this was like being banished to outer darkness after having a brief moment in the sun.
All he could do was watch her hungrily from afar. Perhaps he was the one “stalking” her now, but turnabout was fair play, he thought cynically.
He pondered her gowns, the white pearls in her black hair, the way she laughed, the way she wrinkled her nose briefly when someone asked her to dance—as though she really didn’t want to, but didn’t wish to be rude.
It depended on the fellow. Some she turned down flat. Some she gave polite excuses. A few, very few, she accepted with a warm, genuine smile—the affable Lord Sidney among them.
That smile wrenched Azrael with seething jealousy. He wanted it all to himself.
Ah, but nobody could not like Sid. Especially ladies, Azrael supposed, glumly deciding as she danced with the viscount that the chap was a lot better-looking than he was, and ten times as charming.
Bleakly, he couldn’t help wondering what reaction he might get if he ever took that step of asking her to dance.
But, of course, it was impossible. If he were seen going anywhere near her in public, the news would go rushing back to Stiver and his cronies, and their dark hopes for Azrael to return to the fold would be ignited anew.
She was to have been his queen of the damned, after all, his prize, the perfect lure meant to bind him in their darkness forever.
A man would gladly give his soul for such a woman.
All Azrael knew was that, in hindsight, he’d had no idea how much he’d enjoyed their silent game of cat-and-mouse all Season long until it had abruptly ended.
With a sickening feeling, he began to think their little game might just be the closest thing he had to a true connection with any eligible female.
Pathetic. Just pathetic, he thought for the umpteenth time the next day as he hurled his knife across his own, empty ballroom, practicing, while Raja gnawed contentedly on a large bone nearby.
Azrael narrowed his eyes in satisfaction as his blade bit deep into the target on the other end of the ballroom.
As for his sorry state of affairs when it came to females, well, he had done this to himself. Now he’d merely have to live with his choices.
He supposed he should probably find some other young lady to pursue. But the thought of marriage made him shudder.
No. No more strangers in his home. Especially not on a permanent basis.
A wife would hardly let him use the ballroom of his mansion as a studio for training at arms. Which seemed a great deal more practical to him.
He hurled two more of his throwing knives in rapid succession.
“Ahem, Your Grace, if I may interrupt?”
Azrael immediately tightened his hold on his throwing knife and turned toward the doorway of the ballroom, where his butler waited.
“Yes, Grimsley? What is it?” he asked, chest heaving with his exertions.
“Excellent news, sir,” the bald, gloomy fellow intoned, folding his bony hands behind his back. “Your man Jenkins has just sent a note that Lord Tobias Guilfoyle has returned to Town.”
“Is that so?” Azrael murmured, taking a step toward his butler, while Raja pricked up his velvety ears and paused in gnawing his treat.
Jenkins was one of Azrael’s most discreet, loyal, and intelligent footmen. Perceptive, quick-witted, and literate, the man could’ve easily gone to work for Bow Street, but Azrael paid much better.
Given his roster of high-placed foes, it profited Azrael to secure the services of such a bold and capable fellow. While the rest of the footmen polished silver and served meals, Jenkins frequently served as an extra set of eyes and ears for Azrael whenever he needed them. Jenkins also kept him apprised of servant gossip from around Moonlight Square and elsewhere.
Servants missed little in a household, after all, and what they didn’t know, they could learn. But normally, they only trusted their own kind.
In any case, the day after the masked ball, Azrael had assigned Jenkins to pin down for him the habits and location of Serena’s former suitor. He was very keen to have a word with the folklorist regarding his potentially deadly work in progress.
Jenkins’s initial report was that Lord Toby was out of town on another research excursion, this time to Cornwall.
Apparently investigating tales of Cornish pixies.
Azrael could only shake his head at this. He’d sent Jenkins back to watch the house, with orders to report to him when the daftling returned.
Apparently, today was the day.
“Did Jenkins say where the lad is now?” Azrael asked, toying with his knife and wiping his forehead with a pass of his arm.
“Yes, Your Grace. Jenkins stayed on his trail when the gentleman went out this morning. Lord Tobias has presently settled in to do a bit of writing, it seems, at his favorite coffeehouse, Killigrew’s, in Bury Street, near the British Museum.”
“Excellent,” Azrael murmured. “Have Paulson ready my carriage. I’ll go at once, before we lose him again.”
“Very good, sir.” His bald, creaky butler bowed out and then went to alert the coachman.
&n
bsp; Azrael crouched down on the edge of Raja’s pallet, taking hold of the animal’s leash.
“Perhaps I should take you with me, eh?” he said while he scratched his magnificent pet behind the ear.
Raja purred loudly, pushing his huge head against Azrael’s hand like an oversized housecat.
He smiled, amused at the thought, but, of course, bringing the leopard out to a coffee shop would draw far more attention than he wanted for the occasion.
Besides, he trusted he did not need the leopard’s assistance to put the fear of God into this lad, which he fully intended to do today.
For all their sakes.
# # #
A short while later, Azrael stepped into the coffeehouse from the quiet side street not far from the British Museum, leaving a vortex of dead leaves swirling behind him on the pavement. He paused to pull the door shut against the day’s chill, then glanced around the low-ceilinged coffeehouse.
At once the smells of the place washed over him. Generations of pipe smoke and coffee grinds. He could almost hear the endless hours of political and literary arguments that this place must’ve heard over the decades.
It was warm and oddly homey, though. A cheerful fire blazed in the wide stone hearth, and the place was certainly quiet enough for the author to get some writing done.
At once, Azrael spotted him. It was easy to do. The place was practically empty.
The gray light of the early November day revealed a curly-headed young man hunched over a round table near the mullioned bow window. The table was piled with books and papers, and the writer seemed to be very much in his own world, a skinny fellow, rumpled and ink-smudged.
He looked at one stack of papers, then scribbled hurriedly on another, pausing every now and then to try to blow the ink dry. In between sips of coffee—Azrael guessed that was what the folklorist was drinking—he sprinkled a pinch of drying sand on his page and hastily blew on it before setting it aside, turning to the next.
And they say I’m odd.
Azrael took off his hat, then drew off his gloves as he slowly approached the scuffed round table where the chap was working. Under his arm, he had tucked his copy of Volume One. He took it out now, after stuffing his gloves into his pocket.
