by Lois Greiman
The redhead turned to stare, eyes wide and sparking as she raised her fist again, but Faye could tolerate no more.
“Enough!” she rasped, and in that instant the teapot hurtled through the air, emptying its contents on the crackling chapeaus.
The fire fizzled out. Not a murmur of noise interrupted the sudden silence as every breath was held, every eye turned to her.
“Enough,” Faye whispered, and, turning, left the room.
Chapter 14
He was dead.
Rogan stood amid the swirling mists, looking down at the scene below him. Down at himself and the man who lay sprawled at his feet. Gregor Winden. Dead. Shot through the heart, though pistols were not Rogan’s weapon of choice. The muzzle smoked as he dropped it beside his thigh.
He felt no remorse. There was little reason to pretend otherwise. Winden had hurt Charlotte. Charlotte the beautiful. Charlotte the kindly. The bastard had bruised her, and therefore deserved to die. It was as simple as that, and he was a simple man. When he set his mind, he carried through. It was what he had been taught.
But sometimes things were not as they seemed.
Memories roiled in, painful, disorienting. The images below him stirred and shifted. A comely woman looked down at him. But something was askew, off kilter, for there was glee in her bonny eyes, malice in the twist of her lips as she turned toward Winden’s tiny child.
Rogan awoke with a start. He sat upright, muscles aching with tension. The dreams had found him as they so often did before battle. Nights of insomnia oft brought hours of deep unconsciousness; but he dare not sleep so soundly, for he could not count on his strange premonitions to warn him of trouble. More than a few good Tommies had been found in their bedrolls with their throats slit. It had happened to a score of his comrades. Indeed, he should make certain his men were safe before…
But one glance at the embers glowing in the grate reminded him there was no army massed against him. No need for the keening worry that nagged at his soul. Indeed, no need for him to sleep in naught but his plaid. But the blankets had seemed stifling. Confining. He needed his right hand free in case the attack came…
He drew a heavy breath. Reality eased in a few sparse inches. He was not in some corpse-strewn Dutch province. He was in London, had arrived here to do his uncle’s bidding. But once again he had failed, he thought, and turned miserably toward the window.
It was in that instant that he saw her. She stood not ten feet from his bed, golden hair loose about her pale shoulders, falling like a gilded waterfall across her ivory-clad breasts.
And suddenly three years slipped away and once again he was in the throes of love so intense he could barely breathe.
“I trusted you,” she whispered, and though her face was barely visible in the moon-stained darkness, her hands looked demure and pale, clasped as they were against the soft sweep of her graceful gown.
But he would not be duped by her innocence. Not again.
“Mild as Mullen!” he rasped, rage spewing through him. “What have you done with the child?” Jerking back his plaid, he lurched to his feet.
It was then that the apparition gasped.
Reality settled uncertainly into place. He peered through the shadows.
“Who are you?” he rumbled, half-afraid to hear the answer, to know the truth.
“Why did you do it?” she asked, and in that instant he recognized the lyrical music of her voice.
Ripping a shred from the paper on his bedstead, he gave it a quick twist and thrust it in the embers in the hearth.
Light flared as he straightened, then sparked across ethereal, pixie features.
“What the devil,” he rumbled and froze. What was she doing there? In the flesh. In his room. But no. He shook his head. She was just one more in a long line of apparitions. Still, there was something about her eyes that showed a depth and substance that no artist could—
But suddenly she reached out and struck the twist of paper from his hand. It tumbled to the floor, where she snuffed it out beneath her slipper.
“…thinking?” she gasped.
He raised his gaze from the charred paper to her face.
She was scowling as if she were the one surprised by this odd turn of events. As if he were the intruder. “Are you trying to set yourself—” She began and motioned to his body before turning her face abruptly away.
He glanced down. It wasn’t until that moment that he remembered he was naked.
Reaching out, he yanked his plaid from his bed and dragged it in front of him. He was almost beginning to believe she wasn’t yet another dream, another ragged hallucination. Or if she was she was a potent one, for his fingers were beginning to sting as if burnt.
Wrapping the long woolen about his waist, he placed another log on the grate and waited for light to flare across the room. But it failed to chase away the dream.
She stood perfectly still, watching him.
He glanced at the door, then at his bed, trying to retrace where the world had gone mad.
“Did you hurt your…” She glanced at his hand and froze.
Looking down, he realized he’d not bunched the fabric properly over himself. He also realized the thought of her affected him rather noticeably. Readjusting his plaid, he hoped his first assessment had been correct, that she was naught but a misty shard of his imagination.
She averted her eyes, slightly flushed, and he scowled.
His dreams were often sad. Sometimes bawdy. But never shy.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, and even to his own ears the tone sounded frightening.
Her eyes flickered closed for a moment, but determination bunched in her jaw. She raised her chin and stepped toward him.
“I’ve come for the truth,” she said.
He was almost tempted to step back, though he’d been taught early and often that retreat was the role of cowards. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Why?” she asked.
He glanced toward the bed again and was half-surprised to find that he wasn’t there, sprawled across the heavy duvet left by the owners. What did that mean? That he was as mad as a sequestered monk?
“Is it because you do not trust yourself?” she asked.
He froze. His chest burned with an odd heat, but her eyes were entrancing, distracting him from that quandary. “I trust myself a good deal, lass,” he said. “It does not mean you should do the same.”
“I should not trust you?”
Others had. It had been a mistake. “How did you arrive here?”
“That hardly matters.” She took another step toward him. He felt her presence like a tangible force. Felt his heart thump in anticipation.
“Why would you do it?” she asked.
He scowled, fighting the confusion, the disorientation. It was still entirely possible that he was dreaming. He’d seen her here before, after all. But usually she wore fewer garments. Beneath his plaid the woolen felt itchy to his growing desire. “I do not know what you mean,” he said.
“Despite everything, I found you rather allur—” She stopped herself. “Force was not—” Her eyes spoke of a sorrow deeper than time. “Power should not attack weakness.”
He was trying to follow her thoughts, but he had not slept well for some time, and insomnia was not a boon to clearheaded thought. “You think me…” What? What exactly. “Powerful?” It was the only attribute he would allow himself to believe.
She scowled a little, like an irritated pixie. “Your size alone should suggest as much.”
“Some are not what they seem.”
“No.” She was within reach now and still her eyes looked tortured. Everything in him ached to touch her, but he would not. He would hold steady. Hold back. “But that does not mean we deserve to be hurt.”
Something twisted in his gut. “What is it you’re trying to say?”
Doubt flickered through her bottomless eyes. “You were at Lord Lindale’s estate some hours before, were you not?”
Her voice was as dulcet as a rock dove’s.
“Aye. You know well enough that I was.”
She seemed to be holding her breath as she took one more abbreviated step toward him. “In his library,” she intoned.
It was as if a fist gripped his heart as he gathered her meaning. “That I was not,” he said.
She scowled, gritted her teeth, then, taking the final step that separated them, she reached out and curled her fingers around the amulet that lay against his chest. The coolness of her skin met the heat of the stone in a sudden clash of feeling.
“We…” She seemed to be struggling to speak, to remain as she was, looking up at him, eyes as wide as forever. “We kissed in the garden.” Her voice was nothing more than an entrancing whisper.
He managed a nod, though it was difficult to do even that much.
“But you wished to do more.”
“Aye.” There was little point in denying the truth. Little point in even trying.
“But we were interrupted.”
He could do nothing but stare. She was bewitching, intoxicating.
“You are not a man accustomed to disappointment,” she whispered, and suddenly her mouth twitched as if she could no longer contain the sadness.
He curled his hands to fists, but kept them carefully at his sides, lest he touch her and burst into flames.
“There you are wrong, lass,” he murmured. “Disappointment is oft my companion.”
A flicker of confusion shadowed her face for an instant, but she continued.
“You followed me into the library.”
So the rumors were true. She had been accosted in Lindale’s house. Anger roared through him, but he held it at bay. Great pain had taught him to do that much. And pain visited him now, for he knew the truth. She believed him to be her attacker. Shame smote him, shame melded with anger and guilt and hurt. The need to defend himself warred with the self-sustaining desire to prove that he did not care. He longed to walk away, to play the disdainful rogue he would never be, but he could not. Her gaze was all-consuming. “Had I known you were destined for the library, I might well have done so.” For it had taken all his willpower to let her leave him. “But I did not.”
“You preceded me there then.” Her tone had gone sharp. It twanged something inside of him, drawing at the truth.
Pain sharpened in his chest, but he had no intention of explaining himself. “I am a mercenary,” he said. “Surely I look more the sort to burn libraries than occupy them.”
Her gaze never wavered, and again that something twanged in his chest.
“I can read,” he admitted finally.
She stared at him, pulling at his soul.
“Well into the night if circumstances permit,” he admitted. “But I prefer to sketch.” His uncles had found it disconcerting to find him bent over the nub of a pencil on the eve of a battle, but there was something soothing about the stroke of each solid line. Something hopeful. Something sustaining.
“Sketch?” She looked confused, as if the question was not the one she wished to pose.
He gritted his teeth, but nodded reluctantly toward his bedstead. The drawing lay angled across the smooth wood, the bottom torn away.
She scowled down at it…a picture of a dove perched atop a saddle, and he hoped with all his might that she would not see the resemblance, would not know he had seen her face with each careful stroke. Had remembered the way she held her head, the way her lashes brushed upward just so.
Surely she would not realize his obsession, for no man could capture her essence.
But her eyes fluttered to his. “It looks like…” She paused. He held his breath. “The eyes almost look…human.”
His face felt hot. “’Tis merely something I do to pass the time.”
“Were you thinking of…” She began and stopped herself again, but in that moment she stepped forward and put her fist against his chest. “You were in the library,” she said. “Admit it.”
The world ached, but he was not surprised. There was no reason she should trust him. Indeed, he had told her as much, but the truth was too seductive, too alluring. “I was not,” he admitted, and slowly her fingers opened to spill softly against his skin.
Her face was as gilded as a waxing moon. And even as he knew he should draw away, he wanted most desperately to reach out, to take her in his arms, to propel her to the bed behind her. But he remained, though she trilled her fingers across his chest. Feelings smote him like an axe, driving toward his heart, tearing his flesh asunder.
He let his eyes fall closed against the rocking sensations, gritted his teeth against the agony as she pressed her palm to the inferno of his skin.
“Where did you come by these?” Her musical voice seemed to echo inside his own skull, but for the life of him he could not quite decipher her meaning, for with the touch of her skin, it almost seemed that he could feel a sliver of her emotions. Fear, perhaps, yet naught but confidence shone in her eyes.
“The wounds,” she said.
It took every ounce of his strength to pull his gaze from her eyes, to lower it to his own chest. Four furrows had been scratched into his skin, plowing bloody tracks from clavicle to nipple.
He shook his head. The injury was already healing. Almost gone in fact, and he had no intention of sharing the shameful truth. Far better, far safer, that she believe the worst of him.
“Where?” she asked again, and let her eyes fall closed. Against his naked chest, he felt her intensity burn brighter.
Heat seared him like a torch, but he could not draw away. Neither could he lie.
“The foxes,” he said, though the words were little more than a murmur between gritted teeth.
She opened her eyes with a snap. “What?”
He tried to keep his mouth closed. “They were more spritely than anticipated,” he admitted, and at that precise moment a yip echoed from the bowels of his rented home. It sounded far away and muffled, yet he was quite certain she had heard it. He almost swore, but she was already reaching for the twist of paper on the floor. In a second the wick on the nearby lamp flared, but she was already turning away. For one fractured moment Rogan contemplated grabbing his breeches, making himself decent, but Connelly might have returned, and God knew the Irishman was anything but.
By the time he reached her side she had already opened the door to the alcove beside Connelly’s bedchamber. A fire red tail was just disappearing into an overturned wooden crate spread with a blanket. Then, for just an instant, it was replaced by a pointy nose.
She stared, silent, absorbed.
He scowled, absently rubbing his chest. Damn fox.
“You found them,” she said.
He gritted his teeth against the sensations caused by her nearness and forced out a denial. It was like pushing a brick through his pupil. “These English think it good sport to chase them,” he said. “In time the young ones will be of some value.”
She narrowed her eyes. Somehow, he felt the movement in his throat. “Are you saying you plan to sell them to the hunters?”
“What else?” he asked, but even that was almost too much to manage.
“So you did not intend to save them?”
He forced a laugh, but in that instant, she reached out and pressed her hand to his wounds.
He clenched his jaw, trying to hold back the truth, but the words came nevertheless. “’Twas a foolish notion. The wee beasties fight like cornered Frenchmen. But when I set my mind to a thing, ’tis all but certain I will do…” He paused, feeling doltish.
“You went into the woods, through the rain just because you believed me to be distressed by their plight?”
He tried to lie, but nodded nevertheless.
“Well, you were wrong,” she said, and pulled her hand away. “As I told you before, they are naught but vermin.”
He stared at her, drinking her in, doing his best to read her. “I am not certain if you are so poor at acting that you cannot hide the truth, or such a
fine thespian you only seem to wish to,” he admitted.
“Whatever are you talking about?”
There was depth to her, depth and light and strength. He was sure of it. But he had been sure before. Had been sure and forfeited his soul. “You try to hide the sadness,” he said.
Surprise shone on her ethereal face like light on magic. “What would I have to be sad about?”
He waited, watching her, knowing he should turn away before it was too late. “There was trouble at Inver Heights,” he said.
“Trouble?” She seemed to pale. Was that something a woman could contrive? “No.” She shook her head. “No trouble. Silly me. I but had a fright and thought—”
“Did he hurt you?”
“Who?” Her voice was breathy.
“The man you believed to be me. Who was it? Rennet? Was it he?” The thought roiled like poison through his system. But she shook her head. “A servant then? Lindale?”
“No.” She denied all, gaze held fast on his. “I am well, Rogan.”
It was the first time his name had brushed her lips, and the feel of it wafted through him, lighting his thoughts like wayward moonbeams.
“Did he touch you?” he asked, and slowly, ever so slowly, she reached up to caress his cheek.
Feeling flowed through him. Hope and fear and forgiveness, as sharp as shards. And though he knew he should pull away, he could not. Indeed, he seemed to be drawing closer, pulled under her spell, nearing her lips.
“So how are our wee bloodthirsty—”
Bain jerked away from her touch. Sanity rolled in almost immediately, followed by a forsaken sense of abstract loneliness.
But Connelly, never in tune with subtle nuances, spoke again, and when Bain glanced his way, the Irishman was grinning like a monkey in a sugar cabinet.
“And to think I had all but given up on you, McBain.”
Chapter 15
She had tried to think, had tried to sleep. But was successful at neither. Thus she had enlisted Joseph to drive the landau early through the streets of London. She could have had Sultan saddled instead, of course, but the idea of riding alone in the darkened confines of a closed carriage, unseen and unjudged, was too appealing. There was something about the rhythmic movement of a pair of beautiful steppers that helped to sort her thoughts. And think she must, for her mind was all a-muddle.
