by Moira Rogers
The hound held out his hand. “Emmett Bascomb. The Guild sent me.”
Hunter damn near bit through his own tongue to keep a curse in check. Instead he clasped the older man’s hand, fighting the urge to turn it into a challenge. “I’m Hunter.”
Emmett’s faded blue eyes sparked with appraisal, and he heaved a sigh. “I don’t believe we’ve ever met.”
“No, I don’t reckon we have.” For all he knew, the man kept track of every bloodhound alive. He looked old enough to have been there when most of them were made. “I thought the Guild knew about me.”
Instead of answering, Emmett turned his gaze toward the dusty, empty street. “I came to ask after Ada’s girl too, and see how y’all are making it without Nate.”
Keeping the man at the door was rude, but inviting him in was dangerous, especially with Nate feeling brave enough to venture out of the basement. “By Ada’s girl, you mean Satira?”
“Right, that was the name.” He turned his hat over in his hands. “This manor’s Guild property. I don’t need your permission to come inside, but I’d prefer it.”
A blatant challenge. Hunter’s hand tightened on the doorframe in spite of himself, muscles tensing until he could visualize the grain of the wood beneath his fingertips. He’d end up with splinters and another repair job, but at least it would be better than hitting Emmett.
Probably. Taking a deep breath, he stepped aside. “Satira’s with Wilder. I’m doing my best to look after the town and the manor while they see to their work.”
“I see.” He walked in out of the afternoon sunlight and looked around the foyer. “What about Archer?”
“Also with them. We’ve had some trouble with the local law.”
He shook his head. “Damn shame, when they don’t recognize the importance of cooperation.”
“Afraid it was more serious.” Hunter shut the door and gestured toward the sitting room. If he could get the man sitting down, he could warn Ophelia to keep Nate out of sight. “I need to let our housekeeper know we’ll have a guest for…the night? Longer?”
“Longer, I believe.” Emmett dropped to a chair and eyed Hunter. “When is Harding due back?”
“I expect a message from them tonight, if they can find a telegraph station.” Hunter tilted his head to the right. “Let me speak to the housekeeper first, and then I’ll tell you everything.”
Emmett hung his hat on his knee and sat back. “All right, then.”
Hunter pivoted and headed for the small office Ophelia had taken over, only to stop when he reached the dining room. A labyrinth of corners and impromptu additions to the manor had done odd things to the way sound carried, but he could have sworn Ophelia’s voice was coming from the kitchen.
And that she wasn’t alone.
He pushed through the dining room and increased his pace as a low male voice responded to something she said. An unfamiliar voice, and he damn near tore the door off its hinges. “Ophelia?”
“Hunter.” She stood by the sink, a dishtowel in her hands and lines of tension bracketing her mouth. “Have you received Mr. Bascomb?”
The words barely penetrated, but the arrogant, self-assured posture of the intruder did. He was young—maybe as young as Hunter himself—but cocky power oozed from him. That invisible hand closed tight on the back of Hunter’s neck, a screamed warning he didn’t need.
The room narrowed to Ophelia and the strange bloodhound standing far, far too close. “Get away from her. Now.”
The newcomer held up both hands in supplication. “Relax, friend. We’re talking, that’s all.”
Reason and sense slipped through his fingers. “Back. Off.”
Ophelia laid her hand on Hunter’s chest. “Tobias was introducing himself and offering condolences for our loss.”
Hunter curled a hand around Ophelia’s hip and pulled her to his chest before meeting the other hound’s gaze over her head. “By sneaking in through the back door?”
Tobias’s cocky grin faded somewhat. “It was closer to the stables. I meant no impropriety.”
“Ophelia?”
She shook her head and kissed his cheek. “I assume Mr. Bascomb is in the parlor. Show this gentleman the way, please?”
Hunter dragged the scent of her into his lungs. Roses and tea, along with a hint of something else. A hint of him lingering on her skin, undoubtedly the product of the affectionate touches she allowed him. He wanted to take her to bed again, to mark her so profoundly no bloodhound would dare smile at her.
Soon, he promised himself, and released her. “You’ll take care of everything?”
“I will.” She favored Tobias with a brief smile. “Supper is at six, so the three of you will have ample time to talk, even tour the town if you wish.”
The bloodhound inclined his head, his manner reticent now, almost formal. “Thank you, ma’am.”
Hunter eased Ophelia to the side and turned, standing between her and Tobias. “This way,” he said, waving an arm. “Through the dining room, left at the end of the hall and right to the front of the manor.”
The man left the kitchen, and Ophelia tugged at the front of Hunter’s shirt with a sigh. “Are you going to growl at every man who looks at me? Because men look at me, you know.”
Hunter jabbed his finger toward the door. “That was not a man.”
“No,” she agreed. “He’s a hound, one who had no way of knowing I was spoken for.”
“Stop being so reasonable,” he muttered, covering her hand with his own. “I’m not feeling rational. I’m feeling cornered.”
She tugged his head down, as if for a kiss, then whispered in his ear, almost inaudibly. “Do they suspect the truth about Nate?”
“Don’t know.” And Lord knew how they’d keep the man a secret from two bloodhounds with the keen senses to go with the training Hunter didn’t possess. Tension knotted his gut until he had to struggle to breathe evenly. “Guess I’d best go find out.”
“I’ll take the back stairs into the basement and warn him.”
Hunter gave himself a few seconds to settle his nerves, then retraced his steps to the front parlor, where Emmett and Tobias stood by the fireplace. They looked up at his entrance, and Emmett shook his head wearily. “How’s Miss Ophelia these days?”
His shoulders would be knotted for weeks. “Enjoying her new position as manager of the estate.”
“Then I hope our arrival hasn’t caused her any trouble.”
“Of course not.” Hunter crossed his arms over his chest. “Dinner will be prepared by six. Until then, I can answer any questions you have about the current situation.”
“There’s really only one question, isn’t there?” Emmett murmured as he faced Hunter and squared his shoulders. “Nathaniel Powell.”
Hunter fought to keep his expression blank. “That’s not a question.”
The older man’s eyes hardened to flint. “I’m not playing games with you, boy. Tearing the place apart would be rude, and so would asking around town, spreading a bunch of goddamn rumors.”
Hunter bit back his first response and considered the words like the threat they were. He used the mind that grew clearer every day, and thought about what little he’d learned about the Guild. “It wouldn’t just be rude. It would cause the Guild a fair sight of embarrassment.”
“Not near as much as a compromised inventor,” Tobias corrected. “One working for vampires?”
“Nathaniel Powell was never compromised by vampires.” Hunter raised one eyebrow with a smile he couldn’t feel. “Neither was I, though I had far more opportunity to be.”
Emmett held up a hand to silence Tobias’s retort. “Is he here, Hunter?”
He could lie, but Emmett was watching him like he could read a lie as easily as Archer could. So Hunter met the man’s gaze squarely. “Nate Powell kept me alive. What would I be if I betrayed a debt like that?”
It seemed, oddly, to please the older hound. “You’d be a damn Judas, that’s what. Incidentally, if
he were here…I only want to talk to him. Do you understand?”
At least he’d done something right. “Did you know Nate well?”
The corner of Emmett’s mouth quirked up. “I could tell you some stories that’d curl your hair. Nate? He was sitting in the corner with a book for most of ’em.”
Hunter glanced from Emmett to Tobias and back. “If you could give Nate one message, what would it be?”
“I’d tell him…” The man’s gaze went vague, but only for a moment. “I’d tell him that all of old Ephraim’s dreams have come true.”
Hunter nodded and took a step back. “Why don’t I show you two to the guest rooms and answer any questions you have? Maybe that message can get to Nate, one way or another.” And if Nate wanted to, he’d show himself.
“We’d be much obliged.” Emmett retrieved his hat from the sofa. “Plenty of time to talk after dinner, yes?”
“All the time we need,” Hunter agreed, feeling as if he’d passed a test no one had warned him he was taking. He could get the bloodhounds settled, but only Nate knew if they were to be trusted.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” Ophelia repeated, rubbing her arms against the cellar’s chill. “They just showed up.”
Nate pinched the bridge of his nose, a gesture she’d seen the tired old man he’d been perform dozens of times. “I suppose I should have expected it, though I’d hoped they’d be too busy to bother with us. They could just want to size up Hunter.”
Not judging from the look in Tobias’s eyes when he’d told her how sorry he was to hear about Nate. “No. When the younger one asked about you, he expected me to flinch.”
“What were their names again?”
She gave him Tobias’s name without hesitation, but the other… “Nate, it’s Bascomb. They sent Emmett.”
“Oh, hell.” Nate slumped onto a stool. “So they’re looking for me. Why else waste Emmett’s experience on this?”
“I don’t know.” If rumors of Nate’s return to youthful vigor had reached the Guild, they would certainly dispatch someone to deal with the potential threat he posed. “Unless he asked to be the one. Because it was you.”
Nate lifted a hand, reaching to adjust the spectacles he no longer wore. When he caught himself, he sighed and smoothed a hand over his disheveled hair instead. “How much do you know about Emmett Bascomb?”
Before she could answer, the door guarding the back staircase from the kitchen pushed open, and Hunter eased through. “They’re in the guest wing.”
Not even enhanced hearing would allow the men to be privy to their words all the way from there. “How did it go?”
Hunter looked to Nate, his eyes narrowed and jaw tight. “They know you’re here. As much as said it, and tried to rattle me into admitting it. But then the older one—Emmett—he seemed pleased that I didn’t.”
“He wouldn’t want to kill me, no matter the circumstances,” Nate murmured.
“Well, he has a message for you. He says all of old Ephraim’s dreams have come true. I gather he was hoping that would coax you into agreeing to talk to him.”
Nate’s bewildered frown slowly melted into tension. “The only dreams Ephraim Phillips had were nightmares. He used to drink too much rye whiskey and tell us all he’d played God and lost his soul.”
Hunter’s gaze flicked to Ophelia. “Who is Ephraim Phillips? I’ve never heard of him.”
She rubbed her arms again, but her goose bumps remained. “Phillips created the bloodhounds—the process, the training, everything. And then one day he vanished. It must have been twenty years ago.”
“Vanished…as in killed? Or ran away?”
“Vanished as in no one knows,” Nate supplied. “Though Ephraim certainly wanted out, and he was resourceful enough to live if he chose to.”
If he chose to. Ophelia had heard stories—rumors, really—about the scientist’s break with the Guild, how his guilt over the creation of the hounds had driven him mad. “Do you think it’s possible Emmett was trying to warn Nate?”
Hunter hesitated before nodding. “I don’t think he intends Nate harm. I don’t know the man, but he said he only wanted to talk, and I believe him. But if you don’t want to see him, Nate, we’ll find a way to get you out—”
“No.” Nate was firm, resolute. “You’re not to put yourself in danger, not for this.” His gaze strayed to Ophelia.
It took her a moment to process the import and meaning of his look. When she did, she poked Nate in the shoulder. “Don’t. I’m not a leash you can use to control him.”
“Of course you are,” Hunter whispered, “and you know it.”
“Is that—” Her voice wavered, almost broke, and she snapped her mouth shut. She was just another cage, not of iron but of something a thousand times more complicated—and effective. “I have to see to dinner.”
She turned and fled past the lift to the back stairs, her throat burning.
Hunter caught her halfway up, his hands locking around her upper arms. “Ophelia, don’t. Don’t run.”
Her heel caught on a riser, and she pitched against him. “Take it back.”
“Why? Does it scare you so much to have power over me?”
He didn’t understand. He couldn’t. “You don’t know how many times I’ve heard it. That I use my feminine wiles as a weapon, a way to manipulate men. Make them do whatever I want.”
His growl filled the narrow staircase. “That’s not what I said, what either of us said. Hell, Satira hasn’t got a feminine wile to her name, but Wilder might as well be under her boot heel.”
“Then take it back, because I’m never going to tell you what to do, and I don’t want to be a way for others to blackmail you into good behavior.”
His grip eased slightly. “And if they threatened my life? You’d shrug and be relieved no one could use me to blackmail you into good behavior?”
Her thumping heart began to settle. “Don’t conflate the two. It isn’t the same. I can make the decision to protect you out of emotion and free will, but you—” She couldn’t say it, so she looked away.
Hunter bent closer, his breath falling against her ear. “But I don’t have a choice, because I have to protect the people I care about. There are worse fates.”
“You didn’t want it,” she reminded him in a whisper. “You didn’t want me. You stood upstairs and told me so yourself.”
“There’s a big wide world of want, Ophelia. I’m a man accustomed to controlling the hows and whens, maybe even the whys. But I care about you, and that’s a fact.”
Questioning his sincerity wasn’t an option while she was staring into his eyes. “I don’t want you to resent me, Hunter.”
The rough pad of his thumb touched her lower lip, and he smiled slowly. “I don’t resent you. I don’t rightly know what we are, or what we’ll be…but the parts that make me anxious will always be the how and the when. Not the who. Not you.”
His words washed over her, and she leaned her forehead against his. “Will you stay with me tonight?”
“I just might,” he allowed. “I’ll have you know, though, that if that ass upstairs keeps flirting with you, I’m going to hit him.”
Ophelia stroked Hunter’s jaw with a soft laugh. “I don’t even see him. Only you.”
“Good.” He leaned in and kissed the corner of her mouth. “Come back downstairs with me. Please. We need you to help us decide what to do.”
She really did need to see to supper, especially now that they’d have guests. “I have duties to attend, and every confidence in you and Nate. It will be fine.”
“If you say so,” he said. Then he eased his mouth to the right and kissed her, a kiss that started sweet and slow and devolved with her first gasp, until he had his fingers buried in her hair and his tongue sweeping past her lips.
Nate had surely heard everything, could hear them still, and yet it was difficult for Ophelia to care. She gripped Hunter’s shoulders, bit his lower lip and sighed shakily. “I’ll se
e you at dinner.”
Hunter smiled as he pulled back, then lifted a hand to smooth down her hair. “I’ll be upstairs soon.”
She climbed the stairs slowly, her mind whirling. One step at a time, that was all they could take. Whatever Emmett and Tobias really wanted, they could deal with it. One step at a time.
Chapter Nine
“More wine, gentlemen?”
Emmett covered his glass with a shake of his head. “No thank you, ma’am. I believe the room’s a bit wobbly as it is.”
Ophelia smiled and set the bottle down on the snowy tablecloth. “That’s not the wine, Emmett. It’s Caroline’s cooking. She’s truly gifted.”
“That she is,” Hunter agreed, his gaze drifting toward the clock on the sideboard. “We keep her plenty busy too, cooking for three bloodhounds.”
“She’s a real catch, then.” Tobias spoke genially, but all trace of flirtation had vanished from his voice and demeanor, much to Ophelia’s relief.
“Levi certainly never had such a capable, charming hostess as you during his tenure here, Miss Ophelia.” Emmett offered the words with an easy smile.
“Thank you, Mr. Bascomb.”
“Emmett, please.”
The door behind Ophelia creaked open, and Nate cleared his throat. “Satira did her best, Emmett, but Ada never did get the chance to teach her household management.”
Emmett froze, the smile slowly slipping from his face. “Fuck me. Nate?”
“The last few years have been kind to me, don’t you think?”
“That depends, I believe, on your definition of the word kind.” Emmett had gone a little green, but he shook his head sharply when Tobias half-rose and let his hand drift toward the weapon at his hip. “No, Toby. No.”
Hunter had rocked to his feet as well, his feral gaze fixed on Tobias. “Draw your gun under this roof and I’ll tear your damn hand off.”
“Hunter.” Ophelia reached for him.
He didn’t back down. “Emmett, are you here to do harm?”
