Her Quicksilver Lover: Even Gods Fall in Love, Book 6

by Lynne Connolly

  “A good maid will turn that into something that women will envy. Be ready to take London by storm.”

  Her irritation persisted. “What as? Your mistress? Do you want me to be the queen of the demi-monde?”

  “If it amuses you, then yes. You can be whatever you want.”

  Except his wife. The thought touched her mind and then was gone. She would not force him into anything, and if she did, she’d be no worse than Patrick.

  She gasped.

  He moved closer immediately. “What is it?”

  “I just thought. Patrick Gough is still out there, stirring up trouble. He must have sent my father here.”

  He shook his head. “I rather think he was bespelled. I sensed that about him, as if someone had lent him the aura of godhead. If Patrick is who I believe him to be, he will know precisely who we are. Unless he has finished with your father, he would not send him here in a temper.” Before she could ask him, he added, “Will you tell me about Patrick Gough, please?”

  “Of course.” She was sure he’d tell her in time. Tiredness beat at her, but she could not allow it to vanquish her yet.

  Before she could say anything, someone tapped on the communicating door and told them dinner was served. Lightfoot’s disembodied voice echoed in her mind.

  So it was not until they had settled in the private dining room in Amidei’s chambers that she told him about her would-be husband. Thank goodness, that would never happen.

  “Patrick Gough has sponsored our journal for the last six months, or rather, he sent us enough money so that we did not starve. We would have had to give it up and sell the press, and that was our only means of income. I’d have become a servant in truth.”

  He did not interrupt her, but continued to eat steadily. She followed his example for a few moments. Really, she would put on far too much weight if this amount of food continued to be served to her. “Patrick showed no interest in the paper, apart from requesting us to change its name. It was the London Artificer before it became the Argus. Recently he came to London and finally I met him. He was not what I expected, but my father knew him and introduced us. That was a day before he informed me that I was to marry Patrick, and the Argus would be my dowry.” She swallowed, but forced the rest out before she lost her nerve. How she had sensed something in Patrick and how unreasonable her father became when she expressed her doubts.

  “He might not have been in his right mind. If Patrick is an immortal, he could have penetrated your father’s mind and manipulated it. He would believe whatever Gough wanted him to if that was the case. When he came here today, he had glamour.” He paused. “You could have been killed.” He shuddered.

  “Patrick told me that you were demons and witches. I thought he was mad.”

  “Not mad. Something else.” He pushed his plate aside. “He changed the paper’s name to his own name.” She gasped, but he continued to speak. “I thought it might be your father, until I heard about him. I believe he meant me to. He kept his presence very quiet, did he not? And why would you not marry him, my sweet?”

  “An instinct—a feeling.”

  “Mortals have protections of their own. Listen to your instincts.” He fixed her with his eyes, impressing the importance of what he was saying on her. “I need to find that man.” He sipped his wine before he spoke next. “You told me your father was an academic?”

  She nodded. “He loved my mother more than he loved his work. Marginally.” She took her own wine, letting the cool, clear liquid pour down her throat. Her father was not far from her mind, but she trusted Amidei. She’d seen the incident and much though she wanted to blame somebody, it was not anyone’s fault. Except perhaps her father, for attacking the man Lightfoot was devoted to. That sword must have been very sharp.

  Putting the glass down, she watched the candles in the candelabrum flicker from the tiny draught she’d made. “He married her and came to London to start the journal. My father has a healthy dose of positive expectation. Or he did. He appealed to his family, then to hers, but neither would help. Or they could not, I have no idea which.” Telling him released something inside her, and relief filled her soul. Sharing, that was what she had never known before, except with one other, and recently he’d been too preoccupied to have time for such fripperies. “Will you always listen to me?”

  He picked up his glass and toasted her with it, the wine glittering in the soft light. “Always.”

  The promise made her smile, but a seed of sense at the back of her mind kept her cautious and wary. She could not imagine trusting anyone with everything she had, or anyone having the patience to hear it all.

  With a scrape of wood against tile, Amidei got to his feet and traversed the short distance between his chair and hers. He knelt for the second time that day. Nobody could accomplish the simple act with more grace and elegance than the man she adored. “You can trust me with anything, I swear.”

  “Will you do the same in return?”

  He hesitated, but he said, “Yes. Everything I remember.”

  “You don’t look two hundred and fifty.”

  He got to his feet. “I will promise you something. On your two-hundred-and-fiftieth birthday I have every intention of helping you celebrate it.”

  She pouted. “Only two hundred and fifty?”

  “And all the days of my life.”

  The notion of marriage and respectability left her then. He had just promised so much more. “Mine too.” She rose to join him, cradling his stubbled cheek in one hand.

  “Have you eaten enough?”

  For answer, she tossed her napkin on the table. “I’ve not eaten so much for weeks.”

  “I’ll make sure you never go hungry again.”

  She laughed. “That’s a lot of promises.”

  “And I mean every one.”

  *

  Amidei had a lot of arrangements to make, and not a little planning, but before he did so, he escorted Joanna to where her father was resting.

  They found him, not in bed, but sitting in a wing-chair by the fire, his feet on a large, padded footstool. He looked completely at home, the flamboyant banyan someone had found for him fitting him perfectly. A sea of bright emerald green silk met Amidei’s dazed eyes. His arm—what was left of it—was bound neatly and held close to his body.

  He gazed at Amidei. “I have either leaped into a nest of madmen or I have been driven mad myself. Which is it?”

  “Neither.” After seeing Joanna seated, Amidei flicked back the skirts of his coat and joined her on the sofa. “You were enchanted, bespelled.”

  Spencer regarded him thoughtfully. “A few days ago I would have laughed you to scorn. Now I know you tell the truth. I make a point of not believing things I have not experienced for myself, and yesterday, I did. I am a man of rationality, and I pride myself on my practical nature. I did not imagine the events of yesterday. I trust you will not disabuse me and try to tell me I had a bad dream.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it, sir,” Amidei said.

  “That man—Patrick Gough, I mean—entered my head. Does that make me sound mad?”

  “Not where I come from, sir.”

  “He was quite open about it. He sent me in here, told me that you were seducing my daughter, and gave me a weapon.”

  Amidei nodded, his mood guarded. After all, he had done so.

  Spencer frowned. “He wants Joanna, says she is his reward. He wants to destroy you, too, and this club.”

  That came as no surprise to Amidei. Argus would want his revenge. But Joanna—no, she was his. He would protect her with his life.

  But Spencer sighed and passed his hand over his forehead. “I tried to keep my daughter pure, but I was always aware this might happen. She has been so used to going about on her own. I would have kept her protected, as someone of her birth deserved, but I had not the means. My family cast me off when I married her mother, and we have not contacted them since. We are related to the Spencers of Marlborough, you know.”
>
  Amidei was not entirely surprised to hear that. After all, before his marriage Spencer had been in a respectable profession, and by all accounts, comfortably off.

  “Very distantly,” Spencer said. “But Joanna is a headstrong girl and she will have her way.” He regarded his daughter and shook his head. “I owe you my life.”

  “I owe you your arm,” he said bluntly. “May we call it quits?”

  Spencer inclined his head. “Agreed. But my daughter, that is different.”

  “No harm will come of our liaison, sir, I promise you.” That was all he could say for now. “However, sir, I should warn you that once the man has invaded you once, he has the means to do it again. Even in this place, which I’ve protected as much as I can, he may reach you.”

  “I wonder how you trust me here.”

  Amidei refrained to mention that he had set footmen to guard Spencer. The man would discover that soon enough. “You are welcome here, sir. I expected to find you in bed.”

  Spencer pulled a face. “I am not accustomed to lounging around in bed all day. But I will undertake to rest.”

  “Does it hurt, Papa?” Joanna said. Her voice was full of tears. Unashamed, Amidei put his hand over hers.

  “Like the very devil,” her father admitted. “But it could have been worse.”

  Her father had taken events in a remarkably sensible way, but for a man who accepted what he could experience, Spencer could hardly deny it.

  Shortly after, Amidei took his leave, without mentioning where he was going. He left Joanna with her father.

  As he changed into plainer clothing, he gave the order to incorporate the bedroom she was using into the suite. She was part of him now and he would never willingly let her leave. In fact, that morning he had made other arrangements to secure her future. Not that she would thank him for it.

  Amidei and two of his burliest footmen took a hackney to the offices of the Argus. He watched the city pass by in all its garish and drab glory. In all his life he could not remember another city like this, although perhaps Rome had been this great once upon a time. London was the largest city in the world, its vibrancy a living thing. No wonder the gods had come to rest here. Or rather, to take a stand.

  The Titans could not win. They believed in running the world, making sure they were in control and everyone else played the games they set, not their own. While Argus was not a Titan, he was definitely on their side. In the old legends, Argus was a giant who was in the service of Juno, and after his death she took his eyes for the peacock. Mercury had killed Argus. History might repeat itself in that regard, at least.

  The carriage drew up outside the house. It seemed a bit smaller and more insignificant than it had been before. The brass plaque outside was stained already, the acrid smoke from London’s many fires doing their work.

  He leaped down to the cobbled street, disdaining the use of the carriage steps. Joanna had given him her father’s key, so he did not have a reason to smash the door down, although the exercise would have eased his mind. She would never return to this place again, and once he had done, he was sending a team here to pack their personal possessions and put them into storage.

  As he put the key in the lock, the door swung open, creaking gently. He had not needed to use the key. The smell of a printing press surrounded them, but Amidei held up a warning hand.

  “A man so poor would not leave his assets unguarded,” he told the footmen. They flanked him, but he led the way, dipping his hand into his pocket to retrieve a pistol, primed and ready for action. He didn’t need it, but if he was dealing with mortals as well as immortals, they would understand the weapon’s import.

  The press lay silent, but when he glided across the floor, taking care to skim an inch above the warped, polished boards, he touched it and felt the heat emanating from it. Several pieces of paper, spoiled ones, lay on the floor. He retrieved one, glancing at it to make sure it was legible, folded, and pocketed it.

  “Stay outside. I will call you if I need you.”

  The eerie silence magnified every sound from the street. Every time a horse passed and the rumble of carriage wheels followed, the sound echoed around the empty rooms.

  The first floor rooms were quiet and still, waiting for their owners to return. An old shawl was carelessly thrown over the back of a chair in the cramped front parlour, and opposite, a tobacco jar and a rack of clay pipes indicated who used the chair the most. A sofa leaned to one side, its left front leg at a different angle to the rest of the supports. This whole place was a death trap. It should be condemned.

  Amidei caught the scent of stale pipe tobacco, and made a mental note to get some for Charles. He sensed Joanna here. Not a smell, or a touch, but an intangible presence that told him she’d been there. He’d spent last night wrapped around her, holding her and watching her sleep. He could not regret meeting and falling in love with her, although just last year he’d sworn that he’d never fall into that pit again. It wasn’t a pit, it was a mountain.

  He went back outside on to the landing and put his hand on the shiny latch of the back room. It was another parlour, smaller than the first, shelves ranked high either side of the alcove caused by the chimney breast, piled with books and papers, yellowed and dog-eared. A heavy round table in the centre of the room indicated its use as a dining-parlor, and four mismatched dining chairs stood against the walls. But there was nobody here.

  Amidei returned to the landing and back to the stairs leading to the bedroom floor. He would search those, then the attics, because he knew, he felt, the presence of someone here. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled with awareness.

  He snapped his senses into high alert when a board creaked above. Since he was using his trick of hovering, he wouldn’t make a sound, but he was too wary to go racing up a floor. That creak could be anything, since this house was old and in a state of ill-repair. Even a mouse running across a floorboard could have caused that. How could Joanna live here, when the place was liable to collapse at any minute? Who knew how much rot lurked in the timbers, and damp ate away at the fabric of the place.

  The acrid smell from soot and burning wood increased, stinging his nose. Lifting his hand to rub it, he became aware of a presence, something that encompassed the house and the ones on either side, like a warm blanket enclosing it, soft and reassuring.

  Except that it was not.

  Danger growled when the single creak turned into two, then three, and the fabric of the house creaked heavily, groaning as the house lurched. The floorboards jolted out of place, and had Amidei been standing on them, his foot might have fallen through the gap that opened up.

  Plaster fell on him as the ceiling fell apart. He dodged the timbers. The house was falling apart like a house made of cards, as if a giant had flicked a corner with his finger and started the collapse.

  Mice scurried over the floor, racing down the stairs, tumbling and hurtling in the direction of the open front door and escape. Amidei had no chance of reaching it.

  Dust fell, and pieces of plaster smacked to the floor around him, one hitting his head, other, smaller pieces pattering down as the house crumbled.

  By the time he reached the front door, he’d be supporting the weight of the whole house. Even he could not sustain that kind of damage. But Amidei refused to die here, would not allow himself to be beaten by a foe that lurked, one who refused to meet him face to face.

  With a bellow of “You know where to find me!” he took a few steps and then hurled through the paint-blistered window at the end, heedless of the shattering glass that ripped at his clothes, his face, and his hands. Putting all his strength into the act, he soared out—and then up.

  People were racing out of the houses in the street, screaming and yelling in alarm as Amidei let himself fall, gritting his teeth for the hard jolt when he hit the ground.

  Or rather, Cooper the footman. The two men he’d brought with him had run across the street, and now they were staring up at the house in al
arm. A bunch of people had gathered to gawp and more were joining them. Amidei could have used his special ability and flown, but if he’d done that, he might have caused more alarm. Better to let it be seen as a natural disaster and a lucky escape.

  Bits of glass, plaster, and timber scattered around him as he let himself go, only holding his trajectory back as much as he dared.

  Amidei braced himself and aimed for the footmen. He did his best to control his fall, but Cooper would still suffer a few bumps and scrapes.

  He swore, Cooper swore, and they ended rolling apart on the filthy road, the sky obscured by the debris that was showering the onlookers with bits of glass, plaster, brick, and household objects. Amidei and Cooper turned onto their stomachs, covering their heads as the bits rained down. Blood oozed over his face from the small cuts caused by the glass and the familiar itchy feeling of flesh healing crept over his body.

  After about five minutes, the deluge lessened and Amidei dared to scramble to his feet. His footmen were already standing, staring agape at the hole where the house had been a few minutes ago. Now split beams and a fraction of the roof on the right-hand side were all that remained of the building.

  The street was in chaos. Two women paused to ask Amidei if he was all right. “I seed you fly through the air,” a woman with a dewdrop hanging precariously off the end of her nose said. She sniffed and used her sleeve to wipe the drop away, but another formed immediately.

  “I’m fine. I was lucky to have my fall broken.”

  The second woman cackled. “Otherwise you might have been broken, sir. I always said that ’ouse would be the death of somebody. Was there anybody in there?”

  “No. Only me. I think,” he added hastily. He’d sensed a presence, but now realisation lanced through him. Argus had been watching. The man was said to have a hundred eyes, but not all those eyes were his own. In some legends he used his ability to enter other creatures to use their eyes. That meant he was nearby, because mind-to-mind contact did not travel far.