A Temptation of Angels (12 page)

“If he’d wanted to kill us tonight,” Darius said, “he could have done it two hours ago.”

Helen heard the question implicit in his statement. It was the same one she’d been asking herself since Raum had fled the warehouse.

Why hadn’t he killed her when he’d had the chance?

She was halfway up the stairs when Griffin caught up to her.

“I’m sorry if I was harsh in the library.” His voice was low as they reached the top of the stairs. “When I saw you on the floor of the factory, I thought something had happened to you.”

She heard how hard the words were for him to say, though she didn’t know why that would be true. When she glanced over at him, she saw the same stray piece of hair falling into his eyes, a pained expression on his face that reminded her of a worried little boy.

“I understand,” she said. “I was as shocked as you and Darius. I’m still shocked, actually.”

They made their way through the darkened halls, and Helen marveled that they could seem familiar after so short a time.
She tried to recall what it felt like to traverse the hallways of her own home, but the memory was just out of reach.

“Did he…” Griffin paused as they came to her chamber door. “Did he hurt you?”

He faced her, turned away from the lamplight along the wall. His eyes shone green and gold in the darkness.

She shook her head. “I fell scrambling for the key. I didn’t know what it was at first. I only heard the sound and saw something drop from his hand.”

He seemed relieved, but when he spoke, it wasn’t relief she heard in his voice but determination. “Tomorrow we’ll spend the day working with the sickle. I hope you won’t have to use it, but I don’t like the idea of you being helpless if Raum comes after us.”

For a moment, she bristled inwardly, but the protectiveness in his eyes soothed her ire. Besides, after seeing the brothers fight the wraiths in the street, she had to admit that she was not well equipped to face the threats that now seemed probable.

“All right.” She smiled into his eyes. Something unnameable but dangerously close to affection stirred between them. Finally, she looked away, placing a hand on the doorknob to her room. “Good night, Griffin.”

“Helen?” His voice stopped her as she was turning to close the door.

“Yes?”

“Why didn’t he kill you?” Griffin’s face was a mask of puzzlement. “Raum, I mean? Why didn’t he kill you tonight when he had the chance?”

She wanted to hand him a reasonable answer, and she pondered the most obvious of the ones she could supply.

We were childhood friends.

He remembers me as I remember him.

The memory took him by surprise.

But none of it seemed to account for Raum’s abrupt flight from the factory just as she was at her most vulnerable.

All she could do was meet Griffin’s eyes and tell the truth. “I don’t know.”

It was a relief to be in the privacy of her chamber where she did not have to field the many questions that seemed to have no answers. It was as if she were standing on the deck of a ship in a roiling sea. Every time she thought she got her balance, something else came along and knocked her down again. She couldn’t explain most of it to herself, let alone the brothers.

Her bed had been freshly made, a basin of hot water left on
the washstand. She surveyed the room with some suspicion, wondering again how things were attended in the Channing house. She had yet to see anyone other than Griffin and Darius.

She gave in to the mystery, washing her face and changing quickly, remaining in her chemise as she had the night before. The clock over the firebox chimed twice as she got into bed.

Her eyes burned with tiredness, but her mind would not stop turning over everything that had happened. She reached for the key on the bedside table. It had a dull sheen in the light of the fire, and she held it up, turning it over and inspecting it as if it held the answer to Raum’s actions at the factory. She imagined it left in the charred rubble of the home in which she now slept. The home of the young men who had become her friends. The thought pained her, and she slipped the key back onto the table. She could not reconcile the loss she had suffered with the man who had let her go in the factory. There was anger, of course. Fury, really, that he had allowed—no, commanded—such horrific acts.

Yet there was something else, too. She wanted to call it gratitude for sparing her life, whatever the reason. But deep down, she knew it something far more complex.

T
hey were finishing breakfast in the library when a knock sounded at the front door.

Both brothers jumped to their feet, toast almost sliding to the floor as they set their plates hurriedly on the tea table.

Griffin looked at Helen. “Stay here.”

He did not wait for her response before following his brother out of the room, his hand on the sickle hanging at his side.

Helen waited in the silence of the library as she was told, though she did creep to the doorway, craning her ears for sounds from the entry.

She jumped back a moment later when she caught sight of Darius and Griffin making their way back down the hall.

“Don’t try to pretend you weren’t looking.” Griffin entered the room first, four large brown packages wrapped with string piled high in his arms. “I saw you.”

“I stayed in the room just as you ordered,” she insisted.

“Your interpretation of instruction is frighteningly loose.” Darius sat down, picking up his plate and continuing his breakfast.

She ignored the barb as Griffin set the packages on the small sofa where she had been eating.

“These are for you,” he said.

She leaned down, inspecting her name, written in large scrolling script across the top.

“My clothing?” She tried not to sound excited. It was difficult to be the only girl around so much manliness.

“It looks that way.” Griffin grinned, seeing through the charade of her nonchalance. “Why don’t you change, and we can start training in the ballroom?”

She looked for him in the library some time later, the fabric of her strange new skirt brushing against her leg. After finding the library empty, she searched the remaining rooms on the ground floor until the only one left was the kitchen. She came upon him there, crouched at the back door and muttering something unintelligible to someone she couldn’t see.

Approaching cautiously, she spoke softly so as not to startle him.

“Griffin?”

“Huh? What?” He turned, clearly startled despite her best efforts. “Oh, Helen! That was fast.”

He shut the door quickly behind him.

She waved toward it. “Who is that you’re speaking to?”

He feigned surprise. “That? No one. There’s no one there.”

She tilted her head, trying to place his strange demeanor. “But you were talking to someone.”

He shook his head, leaning against the door as if that would prevent her from opening it.

She crossed to it in two long strides, reaching for the knob. “Don’t be ridiculous. I heard you speaking to someone.”

She tugged on the knob, trying to open it, but he wouldn’t move.

“Griffin! Why are you acting so strange?” She continued without waiting for an answer. “I realize we don’t know one another well, but surely you know me well enough to know that I’m not leaving until that door is opened and I see for myself who is on the other side.”

He stared into her eyes for a second before stepping aside with a sigh. “Very well. Have a look at my small companion, then.”

She held his gaze a moment longer, wondering at his choice of words, before pulling open the door.

No one was there. She was standing on the same small porch she had used to escape the house and follow Darius and Griffin that first night, but it was completely empty.

At least, that is what she thought before she heard the unmistakable meow at her feet.

She dropped her gaze, noting the black-and-white kitten lapping cream from a fine floral dish. Then, she understood.

She looked up at Griffin, leaning against the door frame, his face reddening slightly under her gaze.

He waved her off before she could speak. “It’s nothing to make a fuss over. The poor thing was bedraggled when it first came to the door. Anyone in my position would offer it some cream.”

A smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “You feed the cat? That’s who you were talking to?”

“Well, technically, there is more than one of them. It didn’t seem right to turn away Mouser’s friends.” He bent to pick up the kitten, now done with the saucer of milk. “Isn’t that right, Mouser?”

“Mouser?” Helen said, trying to suppress her smile.

He held the ball of fluff against his body as if he had done it a thousand times before. “He needed a name.” A note of defensiveness crept into his voice. “And he brought me a mouse the first night he appeared on the step, as if he wanted to trade it for some food.”

“It’s a fine name.” Reaching carefully toward the kitten, she let it sniff her hand before touching it gently. “And for the record, I quite like people who take in strays.” She met Griffin’s eyes with a smile, and something powerful and warm rose in her as she stroked the animal’s silky fur, her hand brushing Griffin’s as he did the same.

“I suppose we should work in the ballroom before nightfall,” he said, reluctantly putting the cat back on the ground. “You’ll need good light to train with the sickle.”

She had to suppress the urge to protest. She did not want to work with something so sharp and dangerous. Now, as they made their way through the kitchen, she wanted to apologize in advance for the fiasco that would surely be her training with the sickle.

“I’m not very good with anything physical…” she began as they turned down a hallway she had never seen.

He flashed her a grin as they walked. “I find that hard to believe.”

She caught the innuendo in his voice and felt a blush creep to her cheeks. “You know what I mean.”

His laughter was slightly less self-conscious than it had been even the day before. “Yes. But there’s no need to worry. I’ve found the training sickles that Darius and I used when we were younger. They’re made of wood.”

She could not keep the breath from leaving her body in a rush of relief. She thought Griffin might laugh at her again, but instead, he touched her arm. She stopped beside him in the darkness of the hall.

“Helen.” His voice was low, his words, a secret between them. “You don’t have to be afraid while you’re in my company. You know that, don’t you?”

She nodded around the words stuck in her throat.

“Good.” He started walking again. “But even so, it’s best to be prepared for anything.”

They traversed a long hallway. It was richly carpeted, polished bronze sconces gleaming every few feet.

Helen looked up at Griffin as they walked. “May I ask you something strange?”

He looked startled. “Of course.”

She hesitated, slightly embarrassed at the question in her mind. “Is the house… enchanted?”

“Enchanted?”

“Yes. Everything is so perfectly maintained and attended, yet I haven’t seen anyone but you and Darius. I thought perhaps it was… magic or something.”

He chuckled, his gaze tender as he looked down at her. “We have a houseboy—an orphan, actually—who sees to things. He’s quite skittish. We rarely see him ourselves, but I’m glad your needs are being attended with such efficiency.”

She nodded, feeling foolish and naive. A moment later, they rounded a corner into an enormous, nearly empty room. Sunlight streamed in through windows that rose to the ceiling and dust motes hung in the air like a veil as Helen stepped onto the parquet floor.

“It’s lovely.” She turned in a circle, admiring the chandeliers overhead, the gilt-framed art on the walls.

“It hasn’t been in use for some time.” Griffin crossed to a small table against one wall. “I wasn’t even old enough to attend the last ball that was held here.”

Helen nodded, her mind touching on the experiences she always assumed would be hers before the murder of her family and the ruin of her home.

“I’ll bet it was wonderful, though.” She smiled at him as he
came back toward her, holding something in his hands. “When it was all lit up, I mean.”

He nodded. When their eyes met, his loss mirrored her own.

He held something out to her. Helen took it, closing her hand around the smooth wood of the V-shaped training sickle.

“It won’t hurt you while you learn, but it will give you a feel for the advantages and challenges of such a strangely shaped weapon. I assume you’ve taken fencing?”

Helen couldn’t hide her surprise. “How did you know?”

He shrugged. “It was part of the curriculum for most of us. All the usual studies plus Latin, religious history, intelligent defense, fencing.”

“Intelligent defense?” She remembered Father’s lessons on Latin and religious history and the more recent addition of fencing, but she didn’t recall anything approximating intelligent defense.

“It might not have been presented as an actual lesson. Our parents were killed before we could study it outright. But when we were small, the lessons came in the form of games.”

“What kind of games?” But Helen already knew what he would say.

“Games like Find the Way Out and What Would You Do
If…” He tipped his head. “You did play them, didn’t you?”

She nodded, the pieces of the puzzle clicking together in her mind. “I didn’t realize they were more than games until I escaped from the tunnel under my house the night of the fire. I emerged in front of Claridge’s.”

Griffin raised his eyebrows. “I take it you were familiar?”

“My father took me there for tea every week. We often walked the streets afterward. Right by this very house, I’m sure.”

“It must have been difficult to prepare us without actually telling us anything. It cannot have been easy to teach children such things,” he said. “As time passes, you’ll discover a lot of things you didn’t realize you knew.”

She heard her mother’s frantic voice the night of the fire.
You know more than you think, Helen.