by Lois Greiman
Faye’s heart beat like a drum in her chest. The enemy had been reduced to one now. But for the life of her she couldn’t decide if that made matters better or worse.
She clenched her empty hand and dredged up every molecule of courage she ever hoped to possess. “I wished to apologize.”
He said nothing.
She was holding her breath but managed to force out a few more syllables. “Usually I’m…”…safely hidden away in Lavender House. “…as mild as Mullen.”
His brows lowered even farther.
“Surely you’ve heard the term,” she said, mimicking Rennet.
“Aye,” he said. His tone was devilishly low, frightening in its intensity.
“I didn’t mean—” she began, but words failed her, so she thrust the package at him, pushing her arm out to its full length. “Here.”
He didn’t reach for the package, didn’t move at all, but remained exactly as he was, like a burly predator planning his attack.
Her hands were beginning to tremble. She steadied them and lifted her chin. “Please. Take it.”
He did so finally, slowly, engulfing it with his hand.
“It’s a gift.”
He raised his gaze to her.
She tried to think of something clever to say, but his steady, quicksilver eyes had driven every potential witticism clean out of her head.
He shifted his weight. “I’ve not received a gift from an adversary before.”
“An adversary!” she said, and almost bolted, but he motioned languidly toward his eye.
“Oh.” She contained a wince. “I just…” It looked so horribly painful, so hideously raw. “Sometimes I become a bit skittish in social circumstances.”
Silence pulsed around them, broken by naught but the distant sound of a baying dog.
“Skittish,” he said finally.
“Yes.”
“Were that all me Tommies were so capricious.”
She blinked.
His expression didn’t change in the least, but there was something in his haunting silver eyes. Something that almost spoke of humor. “Surely we would rout our enemies in a matter of minutes.”
The world went quiet, focused, cleared. And she realized suddenly that he almost seemed…uncertain. Yet he stared at her, as solemn as a dirge, not moving closer, not retreating.
She cleared her throat and lowered her eyes. “You should open your gift.”
Silence again. She tried a tentative glance. He was gazing contemplatively at the package in his hand.
“Might it contain a wee warrior even smaller than yourself?”
She scowled. “No.”
He tilted his head the slightest degree. “Are you familiar with black powder?”
“Do you think I mean to harm you?” she asked.
“For reasons entirely unclear to one such as meself, the possibility did cross me mind,” he said. Despite herself, Faye felt her lips twitch the slightest degree, but she had learned better long ago than to be charmed. Learned, ached, paid.
“Here,” she said, and, reaching out, took the package back. Their fingers brushed. And with that quick exchange came a flash of errant feelings that tingled through her system like static electricity. Not quite painful, but almost.
Her breath hitched up tight, and in the pit of her being, she felt a strange, shooting star of something. But it was only her cowardice, she was sure of it. Unwrapping the package, she lifted the contents for him to see.
He peered at the gift, unspeaking for a moment. “A rock,” he said finally.
Their gazes met with a velvet clash. “Bloodstone,” she corrected, and lifted the russet amulet by its leather thong. Her heart felt strange. “’Tis said to be a warrior’s friend.”
“Then mayhap you’d best wear it.” He was staring at her again, making her chest feel too tight for her heart.
She shifted her gaze away, then forced herself to meet his eyes again. “Ancient healers believed it to be advantageous.”
Behind her, a horse trotted down the street, the two-beat gait sharp and staccato in the fresh-stirring day. McBain glanced up, looking over her head. Like his chest, his throat was broad, she noticed. Broad and dark and corded with unquestioned strength.
“You should not converse with the likes of Rennet,” he said, his words slow and cadenced as he brought his attention back to her.
Startled by this change of dialogue and frightened by his…well everything, it was all she could do to hold his gaze. But amid the fear there was a spark of something else. Something never before felt and therefore unidentifiable.
His eyes were as sharp and low-browed as an osprey’s. “Terrible things occur even in the best of houses. You should not risk yourself beyond your husband’s protection.”
She drew a careful breath and forced herself to speak. “I have no husband.”
He stared at her a moment, then shifted his gaze back to the street behind her. “I am sorry.”
Interesting. Not a spark of pain sounded in her head. Not so much as a dull throb to suggest an untruth. Why? Did he find her so unappealing that her widowed status prompted not the least bit of interest? “That I am not wed?” she asked.
He was silent for a long moment, but finally he lowered his attention to her face again. “That I made you revisit tender memories.”
“I’ve been alone for quite some time.” She was skirting the issue, avoiding the pain, but his next question forced her hand.
“How is it that he died?”
“He drowned.” She refused to wince. “Broke through the ice while returning to our modest but happy home in Imatra.” She’d mimicked that particular lie enough times so that it should no longer spark an ache in her brow, and yet it did.
He watched her in silence, and there was something about his expression, something about his solemn, silvery eyes that sounded a warning bell in her head, that jumbled her nerves and forced her litany.
“His name was Albert. He was the youngest of three, born on the third of June in 1782. He had fair hair and blue eyes and was but seven-and-twenty when he…”
She fell silent, though it was all but impossible to do so. What would she give to be normal?
“Your father, then,” he said.
“What?” Her voice was barely audible to her own ears.
“Mayhap your sire could accompany you if you feel it necessary to commune with men in the dark of—”
“My father is dead.” The truth. It had escaped. She felt panic bubble up like a fountain inside her. But wait! All was well, for this once the truth meshed with the lies she’d been fed with such cautious regularity.
“Certainly, you have a guardian.” He looked grimmer still. Enraged almost, and that anger seemed to fuse her tongue to the very roof of her mouth.
But she had made a vow. Thus she raised her chin and struggled for haughty. But truly, normal would be a welcome surprise.
“Can I assume you do not trust Lord Rennet?” she asked.
He nodded solemnly.
“May I ask why?”
He didn’t blink. Possibly ever. “He is a man.”
She felt her eyebrows lift of their own accord. Curiosity edged off fear. “You don’t like men?”
“It would be imprudent to trust them.”
Then she was certainly no fool, but she was intrigued. “Them?” She canted her head a little, trying to figure him out, to see through his mask. Everyone wore a mask.
“Us,” he corrected.
The rumble of his voice sent an odd, inexplicable shiver through her. Part fear, part something else, but she held her ground. “Do you always warn your victims, Mr. Mc…” And dammit, she’d lost his name.
“My victims call me Bain,” he said.
“Bain.” It suited him. Not as well as Lucifer, but well enough.
He nodded. “How do yours refer to you?”
“I have no victims,” she said, and for a moment he only stared, studying her face as if it were a portr
ait to be memorized. The sight of his colorful eye made her want to squirm, but she squelched the weakness.
“I am surprised they are not strewn about your feet like fodder,” he said.
She scowled, but he didn’t explain.
“Your friends then,” he said. “What do they call you?”
“Faye.” It was not her given name, but none but a very few knew that.
“Faye.” He said the word slowly. “As in wee folk?”
“Wee folk?”
“Pixies and their contemporaries.”
“I suppose so,” she said though she had no wish for him to associate her with anything otherworldly.
He nodded curtly and backed toward the door. “My thanks,” he said, “for the…rock.”
“Wear it,” she said.
He paused, broad fingers folded over the stone, which he glanced at before bringing his stormy gaze back to her. “Your pardon?”
“Against your skin,” she said, and touched her own throat. His gaze followed the movement, but his body remained absolutely still. The air seemed suddenly motionless.
“Very well,” he said, and bowed as he backed away.
“Now.” The single word came out too sharp, too panicked. She almost closed her eyes against her own foolishness. “If you please.”
He was staring at her again. Perhaps he thought her beautiful. Entrancing even, she thought breathlessly, and knew all the while it was far more likely he found her odd.
“It has healing powers,” she said.
He scowled. He was, without a doubt, more accomplished at scowling than anyone she’d ever known.
“According…” she added hastily, “according to the ancients.”
Their gazes welded, then, “Very well,” he said, and, bending his brawny neck, slipped the leather over his head. It caught on the dark length of his hair, and he lifted it, baring the masculine strength of his throat for just a moment.
He’d folded the billowy sleeves of his simple tunic back from his wrists, and the muscles in his enormous forearms bunched as he pushed his hair aside. The neckline of his shirt shifted, revealing a few hard-honed inches of his chest. She watched the movement, feeling strangely breathless as the umber stone brushed past the soft fabric of his shirt and bumped gently onto his skin. The string was longer than she’d intended. Perhaps she’d thought, as she’d spent the sleepless night preparing the stone in the light of the gibbous moon, that he was even larger than he was. But that hardly seemed possible, for in the broadening light of day he looked as if he’d been hewn from stone, every muscle chiseled just so. His shoulders were bunched, his chest summer-tanned and mounded, his—
He cleared his throat, and she dashed her gaze away. Good heavens! It was clear now. She had entirely lost her mind.
“Thank you,” she said, then jerked her gaze to his, for even she wasn’t entirely sure what had prompted her appreciation. Surely it couldn’t be the fact that he had bared a few inches of his chiseled person. He was, after all, the enemy. “For…” She motioned stiffly toward his chest. A man like he would have nothing to fear. Nothing at all. And how wonderful that would be. “…agreeing to wear it. It looks…” She stopped, unsure where her thoughts were headed. “It will help mend your wounds.”
“A pity it wasn’t gifted to me years ago, then. ’Twould have come in handy on the battlefield. But…” His silver-frost eyes almost seemed to sparkle for a moment, and she found, once again, that she was holding her breath. “I did not expect London to be so fraught with dangers.”
“My apolog—” she began, but he interrupted.
“There is a hunt.” He blurted out the words.
She stopped, breath held, lips still parted. “What?”
He looked peeved, at himself or her, she wasn’t sure which. “There is to be a foxhunt tomorrow.” He paused. A muscle ground in his powerful jaw. “They ride at dawn from the Black Swan.”
She should breathe soon, she thought, but she didn’t.
He scowled over her head and into the distance. “…me.”
She allowed one careful breath. “I beg your pardon.”
He lowered his gaze, and suddenly she wondered if he, too, was holding his breath. “Perhaps you would deign to join me.” He said the words clearly now, succinctly, as if he was being ultimately careful to force out each syllable. And at the meaning of his invitation, the world seemed to give way beneath her feet. She couldn’t join him. She didn’t like men. Didn’t understand men. Didn’t trust men. But he looked almost…almost as if he were blushing. And…well…she had vowed to see this mission through to the end.
“I…” she began, but he was already shaking his head.
“My apologies,” he rumbled. “I did not mean to…A lady such as yourself…Horses. Odiferous beasts that…” He drew a breath. It made his chest swell, made the brooch lift and fall. He nodded his head curtly. “My thanks for the stone,” he said, and turned toward the house.
“I enjoy the smell of horses,” she said.
He stopped. Turned back, scowling again. “A frail lass such as yourself can certainly find more appropriate pursuits than—”
“I am not frail,” she said though in truth she was. Had always been. Tenning had told her as much, but for reasons she could not explain, she had no desire to lie to this man. “I’ve no wish to be frail.”
He stared at her, expression so solemn it all but broke her heart. “I’ll not have an injury on me conscience,” he said, and reached for the knob behind him.
“I shall be there,” she said, shocking herself with her own ridiculous words.
The tendons tightened in his throat as he turned toward her, casting the leather thong out in sharp relief. They stared at each other for a hundred lifetimes. “Do you have a mount, then, lass?”
“Well…no.”
“Then it seems—”
“She’ll ride Antoinette,” said a voice.
They turned in unison toward the door, but it remained firmly closed.
Faye turned her questioning gaze to McBain, but he said nothing.
“Antoinette?” she asked.
“The Irishman’s mount,” he rumbled.
“Why is she named—”
“I’ve thought it unwise to ask,” he said.
She searched his eyes for humor; but if he thought himself funny, he gave no indication. “I’ve no desire to put him out,” she said.
“If only you could.”
She scowled, but he shook his head, unwilling to explain. “The mare is large and—”
“I’ve no trouble with large…” she began, then caught herself. The blush started from her toes. “Horses!” she said quickly. “I have no trouble with large horses.”
She almost thought she heard someone chuckle from the far side of the door. She lifted her chin.
“I’m an excellent equestrienne.”
McBain was gritting his teeth. “I do not think this a good idea.”
Why? What did he have to hide? “Then I shall find my own mount.”
“I did not mean—”
“I will be there,” she said again, and managed to turn away without passing out.
Chapter 5
Why would a woman of Faye Nettles’s faerielike quality, a woman of beauty and refinement, agree to ride with the likes of Rogan McBain? True, initially, he had thought her nervous around men. But she had come to his house unescorted at dawn. Surely that spoke volumes. But what did it say exactly? No one in this bloody city was what she seemed to be. That much he had learned long ago.
Bain sat ruminating. Beneath him, Colt stood quietly, paying no heed to the bevy of elegant mounts that pranced and strutted about him. Seventeen hands at the withers, he was built more like a draft animal than a riding hack, but he had served Bain well for more than a decade. Too well to trade him for some posh Thoroughbred with more pedigree than practicality.
But perhaps these other steeds had not seen the world as Colt had seen it. Perhaps they had not t
asted death. Reaching down, Bain absently placed a hand over the roughened scar that bisected his stallion’s crest.
Beside them, a flashy chestnut reared, nearly dislodging his rider.
Straightening, Bain swore under his breath and wished for the hundredth time he had never considered such a ludicrous idea. Perhaps Mrs. Nettles was an accomplished rider, but perhaps she was not, and he had no wish to be the cause of some disaster. Hardly that, for his intent was to draw as little attention to himself as possible, to find a way to perform his task and leave with no one the wiser, or at least no lives lost. No additional lives lost.
He shifted his weight and watched the mob around him. Half the riders already seemed besotted, which was just a damned foolish way to ride. Then again, what did he care? He had come, after all, only to learn what he could. The inebriation of others might help that cause.
Indeed, Connelly had suggested that it might be wise to get wee Faye inebriated. Of course, Connelly was an unmitigated ass. Then again, intoxication could only make a brute like Bain look better in her eyes. It was not his place, after all, to make certain she was safe at the end of the day. He was not her caretaker.
Through the warbled glass of the inn, a small lass looked out at the world. A mobcap sat crooked on her head. A tray of crockery teetered in her hands. Wee Cat would be about that size if she yet lived. But she had succumbed to a fever a few short days after her father’s death. Charlotte had told him that much though she had said little else. Bain winced at the memory of his own pleas, his own profession of undying love. He had fought the duel to save her from Winden’s cruelty. But Charlotte had turned away, had shut the door, had taught him a lesson of betrayal he would not soon forget. To this day he was unsure whether her stories of abuse at her husband’s hands were fabricated or real. Just as he was uncertain of the cause of wee Cat’s death. Had the child been taken by a fever as her stepmother had professed or was there something more sinister afoot? The glittering ton might yet think Charlotte the epitome of gentility, but he had learned far better. Few people were what they seemed to be. Even Mrs. Nettles could not be as perfect as—
His thoughts crashed to a halt as a flash of blue caught his attention.
