by Alexa Egan
“You know what I’m talking about. Things aren’t right here. Too many secrets. Too many silences.”
Sarah’s chest tightened, but in no other way did she indicate that Hester’s words worried her. She pecked the old woman on her cheek and offered her a reassuring smile. “You know me. I’m always careful.”
“That’s not what that mark on your neck says.”
But Sarah chose not to hear her.
The corridor outside the bedchamber smelled musty and damp, and a draft leaked under a padlocked door to the left that must lead into the crumbling west tower. Repairs had halted when the guests arrived, but signs remained everywhere, from the piles of rubble to the locked doors behind which chaos and construction lurked.
And an injured shapechanger hid.
In her frantic self-recrimination, she’d almost forgotten, but it was too amazing. The Imnada were real. Creatures from her imagination come to life. Who would seek to destroy one of them? Why? And might Sebastian be next?
“On your way to visit the barrow ruins up on the moor?” Katherine Duncallan slid a door key into her apron pocket and brushed dust from her hair. Had she been checking on the repairs . . . or on the wounded stranger, Lucan? She must be in on the secret, but Sarah dare not ask. “Let’s hope the weather holds. Mr. Chapp at the Home Farm says a storm is brewing.”
Hearing Hester’s warning repeated verbatim sent a shiver dancing up Sarah’s spine. She clutched her reticule until the eerie sensation passed and fell into step beside Katherine as they headed toward the main staircase. “How do the repairs progress? James seemed at his wit’s end from all the construction.”
“If all goes as promised, we should be able to reopen that part of the house by summer, though it’s not as if we need the extra space. A visit to the Duncallans is hardly the invitation of the year these days.”
“I hope my presence hasn’t made things difficult.”
“In what way?”
“Don’t play coy, Katherine. If you hadn’t noticed, I’m not exactly accepted by the Patronesses of Almack’s. It costs you and Duncallan socially to have me here. Then I make things worse by having Christophe intrude with his Italian entourage.”
Katherine placed a sisterly hand on her arm. “You’re our friend, Sarah. No matter what those old cats of the ton say. As for the prince, how can I be annoyed about royalty gracing us with its presence?” Her eyes scrunched as she grinned. “He’s positively delectable, and it’s obvious he dotes on you. Might there be a wedding in your future?”
Sarah lifted a brow in sly amusement. “That would certainly turn London on its ear.”
“For a few months, but it’s amazing the protection from scandal a crown can offer.”
“More like an invitation to scandal, I’d say.”
Sebastian crossed the hall below them, disappearing into the library. For the first time, Sarah noticed his confident easy bearing and the way his clothes hung on his lean muscular frame with a casual elegance born of breeding and innate self-assurance. Sebastian had nobleman stamped in every drop of his blue blood. This was a man who bowed to few. A man who took his place in Society for granted. A man who could choose a wife from the daughters of dukes and the sisters of marquesses.
“Does your prince make you feel like this? Does he tempt you? Do you lose control?”
His words pounded in Sarah’s skull and made her breath catch. “I grew up in a hovel on Rag Lane scrabbling for enough to eat and dodging the Watch. I can just imagine how the upper ten thousand would react to my stealing such a prize.” But did she speak of Christophe or Sebastian when she spoke those words?
Katherine had no time to respond. As they stepped off the stairs, a startled cry of distress sounded from the library.
“That was Melissa.” Katherine hurried to throw open the door, Sarah right behind her.
Light spilled from the windows, illuminating the tableau before them like a scene upon a stage. Sebastian’s arms encircled Lady Melissa’s waist, her hair tumbling from its combs, the collar of her gown askew.
“It’s not what it seems.” Sebastian disentangled himself from Lady Melissa as he cleared his throat.
“Lord Deane attacked me in a fit of passion,” Lady Melissa bristled as she pulled the collar of her gown up to cover the strap of her chemise. “Look at my gown. He nigh dragged it off me.”
“Come, Melissa,” Katherine said stone-faced. “Let’s retire to your chamber before anyone sees you so discommoded.”
“You’ve seen me . . . seen us,” she whined.
“Yes, but Miss Haye won’t say anything, and you know you can rely on my utmost discretion.”
“What of him? He needs to make it right. Do the honorable thing.”
“Who ever told you His Lordship was honorable?” Katherine answered with a faint smile.
Lady Melissa cast a swift puzzled glance over her shoulder at Sebastian’s arrogant and impassive countenance, her lip caught between her teeth, a frown furrowing her alabaster brow as if she sought to argue further. Instead Katherine steered the girl with an iron grip from the room, leaving Sebastian and Sarah alone.
So much for the space of a dining table to keep them apart. She pasted a bland smile upon her stiff features and wished she could crawl under the rug.
“She tripped,” Sebastian said. “I caught her as she fell, and she started screaming.”
“You needn’t explain to me, darling.” Sarah waved an airy hand, hoping she looked suitably unconcerned and completely untroubled. “Stones and glass houses and all that nonsense.”
Anger flared in his face, and he took a menacing step forward. “Enough with the playacting, Sarah. I’ve had more than my share of amateur theatrics this afternoon.”
She locked her knees and tried to steady the wild plunging of her heart. “Are you equating my professional abilities to Lady Melissa’s painfully obvious attempt at being compromised?”
“I’m telling you to drop the wharf-rat manners. You and I both know it’s as much pretense as anything Lady Melissa contrived.”
“You could do far worse than Duncallan’s cousin.”
He grimaced his horror. “Plots like hers are as old as Eden. I’ve been dodging them since I came down from Oxford.”
Last night flashed before her eyes with gut-churning clarity. Would that have been his excuse if they’d been caught? Would he have stood by with that same haughty lack of sympathy as she was led in disgrace from the room? Would he have cast her off as a conniving fortune-hunting female?
Forget hiding under the rug. If only the floor would swallow her whole.
“Be relieved it was Katherine and I who discovered you rather than Lady Melissa’s mother. You’d be halfway to the altar by now.”
He plowed a hand through his hair, his signet ring flashing in the sunlight. “I’d be relieved if you stopped eyeing me as if I meant to ravish you on the library carpet.”
“I’m not worried about any such thing. It’s two in the afternoon, there’s an entire household just beyond the door, and . . .”
“We’re both back to being proper models of decorum. Is that what you’re saying?” He gave a snort of disgust. “You’re safe, Miss Haye . . . if you wish to be.”
Proper. Safe. Why did neither word make her feel any better? She turned away from his unnerving golden-eyed stare to wander about the wood-paneled room, trailing her hand over tabletops cluttered with artifacts and knickknacks and piles of books in every language under the sun. “Is the gentleman any better? Have you discovered who attacked him?”
“He’s still unconscious. Whoever stabbed him used a silver blade. It’s . . . complicated his recovery.”
“Is being stabbed with silver worse than being stabbed with anything else?”
“It is if you’re Imnada. Its touch is poison. And Fey magic reacts on them in odd ways, so Katherine’s been wary of drawing on her healing powers. It’s wait and see for now.”
She scanned the rows of leather-bound
volumes, studying the oil portraits of ancient Farradays whose comely, golden-eyed faces proclaimed their Fey bloodlines to anyone with the knowledge to read the signs. “He was trying to tell you something last night. He said it over and over. Naxos katarth theorta, the door, they’re here,” she muttered to herself, the words niggling at her like a sore tooth. “What do you suppose it means?”
“Sarah, about last night . . .”
Sebastian had come up behind her, standing close enough that when she turned she felt his words as a warm breath upon her cheek, noted the drawn look about his eyes and the lines carved on either side of his mouth. An unwelcome flutter began in her chest. To combat it, she stepped back, a hand closing on the book beneath her fingers. “You were carried away. I lost my head. I blame it on the late hour and the chaos of the situation and . . . and there was moonlight. You know what they say about the full moon.”
“Is that all it was?”
“Of course. If I had a pound for every man who pressed his attentions, I’d be able to buy myself a house as big as this and a title to match. Only last week Lord Randall vowed to join the priesthood if I didn’t run away with him to the West Indies.”
By the time she finished speaking, the same foolish part of her that had answered his kiss last night was urging her to shut up and kiss him again. To hell with the proprieties and the prince.
She barely heard the approaching voices over the roaring in her ears and the knocking of her knees.
“Mi amore! There you are! The carriage awaits, my sweet.”
Christophe blew into the room like a bracing dose of sanity. As always, his hair was artfully tousled and every inch of his wardrobe set off his sculpted body to perfection, but there was a tension to his features and a lack of sparkle to his dark eyes. He looked as if he were recovering from too much wine and too little sleep. She could definitely sympathize.
“Lord Duncallan says these old earthen ruins are spectacular,” he continued. “But I come from Italy. It will take more than few crumbling stones and weathered ditches to impress me.”
He laughed, though Sarah could not bring herself to join in. Not with Sebastian staring at her like a drowning man, hands clenched, body almost rigid with checked emotion.
Christophe curved an arm protectively around her shoulder. She smelled the woodsy cinnamon and cloves scent of his cologne in the woolen folds of his jacket. “Are you well, my love? Is something amiss?” He focused on Sebastian, his voice low, almost a hiss. “Is His Lordship bothering you?”
She offered him a gentle smile. “Don’t be absurd. I was merely recounting the story of Lord Randall and his less than honorable offer of a West Indian love nest.”
Christophe’s eyes lost their menace, though his arm tightened. “A ridiculous little man with no more wit or intelligence than a dull child. He should know when he’s not wanted. Don’t you agree, Lord Deane?”
Without waiting for an answer, Christophe guided Sarah out of the library and toward the waiting carriages. The prince’s secretary, Signore Ventrella, was there to assist them aboard, wincing as he latched the door handle, his hand heavily bandaged.
“Have you hurt yourself, sir?” she asked.
He drew the sleeve of his coat down over his hand. “A slight accident shaving, Miss Haye.”
“Lord Deane seems smitten with you, my love,” the prince addressed Sarah.
She turned to answer. “Jealous, Your Highness?” When she turned to glance once more out the window, Signore Ventrella was gone.
Christophe laughed. “Hardly, but I see I’ll have to hold you close or someone might steal you away.” He leaned over to rest a hand briefly on her knee. “I defend what is mine, mia Sarah. His Lordship would do well to remember that.”
“I’m not yours yet,” Sarah answered sternly.
His hand moved from her lap to her cheek, his black eyes like pitch in a face women wept over. “But soon, mi amore. Very soon.”
* * *
Wind stirred the drapes at the window and curled along the dusty floor while somewhere a shutter banged and creaked, though it wasn’t enough to rouse their wounded guest. A brazier had been lit in the tower room, but the thick stone walls seemed to leach what little warmth it gave off. The February cold frosted Sebastian’s breath and chilled him to the bone, though it did little to cool Lucan’s raging fever. Sweat sheened his chest and damped his hair as he tossed and turned beneath the pile of woolen blankets.
“Naxos . . . naxos katarth theorta . . .” he mumbled, pain and a hefty dose of laudanum slurring his words, “. . . must warn . . . too late to stop . . .”
Sebastian still didn’t quite believe Duncallan’s startling revelation that this was Lucan . . . the Lucan . . . the thousand-year-old spark from which a genocidal conflagration was born. A man who’d betrayed his friend and his king and watched as Arthur was murdered, bringing to an end the last golden age of Fey-born supremacy. A man who was supposed to have been executed for his crimes a very, very long time ago.
Emotion told Sebastian he should revile such a treacherous monster and ancient enemy of his people. Reason argued that it wasn’t every day one was confronted with a man who’d last walked the earth when magic reigned and the walls between Fey and mortal had not yet been erected.
A damn waste if he’d survived centuries of imprisonment only to die of stab wounds on the road from London.
“. . . the door . . . followed her . . .” Lucan moaned.
A loud thunk in the corridor slammed Sebastian to attention. James had gone with his guests to tour the ruins and Katherine had just left after checking Lucan’s bandages. Was this Lucan’s attacker back for another try? Sebastian reached into his pocket for the double-barreled flintlock secreted there and took up position, eyes riveted to the lifting latch, the spear of widening light on the floor as the door cracked open.
He’d a fleeting impression of dark hair and a shapely body as he dragged the intruder against him, pistol pressed to her head.
“Are you insane, Seb? Put that damned gun away.”
Sarah stumbled as he released her, her breathing coming nearly as fast as his. His flintlock disappeared back in his pocket, though his edgy nerves still twitched and his pulse roared in his ears.
“What the hell are you doing up here?” he growled.
“I remembered where I heard that word Naxos,” she answered, straightening her rumpled pelisse. Her cheeks were pink from the cold while her eyes blazed with triumph. “I thought it might be important.”
“Important enough to almost get yourself killed?” He stepped out of the range of her perfume. Far enough away he wouldn’t be tempted to caress her cheek or slide an arm about her waist. “Important enough to be in a room alone with me? We know how that usually turns out.”
“It shouldn’t.”
“No, but it does. Speaking of which, what did you do with your betrothed?”
She winced, looking slightly sheepish. “I told him I had a headache and had to return to the house, but that’s the answer, you see. It was Christophe.”
Sebastian glanced at Lucan who remained frustratingly inert. “Impossible. The prince was in the drawing room with the other guests all night. He couldn’t have attacked anyone.”
“Christophe didn’t attack Lucan. He’s the one who mentioned the word Naxos. A few weeks ago at an ambassadorial dinner. I stumbled on Christophe and his secretary, Signore Ventrella, having a heated conversation. I didn’t catch much, but I did hear Christophe tell Ventrella that Sir Dromon had failed and the Naxos grew impatient.”
Dread shivered up Sebastian’s spine. “What else did he say?”
“Nothing. They saw me. Ventrella bowed and withdrew while Christophe complimented my gown and led me back to the dance floor for another set. I assumed they were speaking of a business dealing and never gave it another thought.”
“Perhaps you misheard them. Or you misunderstood.”
“Or perhaps I actually have a brain in my head and know wha
t I’m talking about.” She pulled a book from her reticule and handed it to him. “Debrett’s Peerage and Baronetage for the year 1811. There’s only one Sir Dromon that I can find. His surname is Pryor and his seat is in Cornwall at a place called Drakelow.”
Sebastian scanned the entry outlining the Pryor baronetage going back three hundred fifty years to the time of King Henry the Seventh. If you went by the text, Pryor was the last of a mediocre family with small aspirations and few connections. No wife. No issue. And no mention of Naxos. But Debrett’s didn’t know the half of it. Nor would Sarah if Sebastian had any say in the matter. It was too dangerous. As was Sir Dromon.
As spiritual leader of the Imnada and head of the Ossine, Sir Dromon Pryor had always wielded considerable authority over the five clans. Since Gray’s banishment, that power had become absolute and his antagonism for de Coursy grown to hatred. Sir Dromon had vowed to bring down the insurrection led by the exiled ducal heir and see every shapechanger involved executed for their treason, as well as to eliminate any Other who knew of the Imnada’s existence.
If the Ossine were involved, events had gone from treacherous to deadly.
“This afternoon I saw Signore Ventrella. He had a bandage wrapped around his hand. Maybe he attacked Lucan. He was in and out of the drawing room last night.”
“Ventrella can’t weigh more than a hundred pounds soaking wet. You think he attacked Lucan and came away with nothing more than a cut on his hand?”
“He might have surprised him. Or he had help. Perhaps whatever these Naxos are, they’re stronger and more powerful than normal humans.”
“Or perhaps the Naxos is simply the name of some exclusive gentleman’s club Sir Dromon sought entry to without success. Whatever it is, it’s not enough to accuse someone of attempted murder,” he reasoned, trying to look disinterested and unimpressed. Anything to turn Sarah from this line of reasoning.
“Why would Lucan be trying to tell us about a gentleman’s club? No, there’s something linking the Naxos to the Imnada. I know it. Maybe we can find a reference among Duncallan’s books. He’s been studying the shapechangers for years.”
