Demon's Curse (Imnada Brotherhood) (18 page)

“I should see to Mac.”

“Don’t bother. He’s sleeping, and if he feels half as bad as he looks, he needs all the rest he can get.”

He seated her at the table before taking his own place, watching as she helped herself to eggs and ham, toast, and a restorative cup of tea. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until she began to eat, interrogation taking second place to her empty stomach. Seeming amused, St. Leger leaned back, now and then sipping from the cup of coffee in front of him. She refused to allow him to discomfit her and even offered him a narrow smile as she plowed through her second helping.

“Mac claimed you were different,” he commented. “I’m beginning to believe he was right. Any woman—hell, any human—who isn’t blubbering into their porridge or clawing the walls to escape is definitely one of a kind.”

“Would either of those activities do me any good, Mr. St. Leger?” she asked over the rim of her cup.

“No, but they might make you feel a damn sight better.” He leaned across the table to snatch a piece of bacon from a platter. “And please don’t call me Mr. St. Leger. That was my father.”

“What should I call you?”

“How about David? It’s easy. Two little syllables.”

She poured herself a second cup of tea. Or was it her third? Doctored it with plenty of sugar and milk. “I assume you’re Imnada too?”

He smiled, giving a low whistle. “The papers didn’t lie. Cool as a cucumber.”

If St. Leger knew half of the whirlwind of thoughts racing through her skull, he’d sing a different song, but Bianca acknowledged his compliment with a gracious nod. Looking the part was half the battle. “So, are you?”

St. Leger straightened. “That depends.”

“On?” she prompted as she studied him for signs of otherworldliness. Nothing jumped out at her unless one counted unearthly good looks as a clue. And yet, while Mac’s saturnine features and forbidding expressions hinted at an ancient battle-ax-wielding paladin, David St. Leger possessed the golden, sun-kissed visage of your average Greek god: square jaw, piercing gray eyes, and a wide-shouldered, athletic build any tailor in London would drool to dress.

“On whether you plan on running to Lord Deane as soon as I let you out of my sight.”

“Mac trusts me.”

“Mac’s not a cynic like I am. Despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, he still believes in outmoded
ideas like loyalty, faith, devotion, and the love of a good woman. I’ve read the papers, Mrs. Parrino. I hear the talk at my club and the chatter in the park. And where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire.”

“I had nothing to do with Adam’s death, and I won’t tell Deane or anyone about Mac or you. How could I without sounding like a bedlamite?”

“Wait a few hours and you’d have all the evidence you’d need,” he mumbled.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Has Mac shown you this little trick?

Her cup poised at her lips, she stiffened as the voice slid like glass across the surface of her mind. “My thoughts are my own, Mr. St. Leger. Not toys for your amusement.”

“Impressive. Not a twitch,” he said, his tone warm with approval before adding, “Your skeletons are safe in their cupboards, Mrs. Parrino. The Imnada can path mind to mind, but we’re not psychics.”

More’s the pity,
he added, his thought brushing against her consciousness with the same lewd invitation she’d experienced a hundred times in a hundred crowded ballrooms.

She gently placed her cup upon the table. “If you’re looking for a replacement to wear this gown, I’m not interested.”

“Spoken for already?”

Her gaze sharpened. “I speak for myself.”

He scooped eggs onto his plate. Poured himself another coffee. “I can see why Mac’s attracted to you. You’re no shrinking wallflower. And you’ve made it this far, which means you’re capable and quick thinking. All good assets. I’ve a feeling you’ll need them before long.”

“I’m certainly glad I’ve won your approval,” she answered sarcastically.

“Unless”—he rubbed at his chin, eyeing her with new suspicion—“perhaps you were meant to get this far. You claim you speak for yourself, but Lord Deane’s already shown a weakness for actresses. In fact, he married one. Perhaps he’s pulling your strings and your arrival here is part of a larger plan.”

She clenched her fork and knife in hands gone bone-white in anger. “Sebastian didn’t send that brute after us. Whatever’s going on, he’s not involved.”

David leaned in, a harsh light entering in his eyes. “How can you be certain? The earl is Other and, as Mac may have told you, the Fey-bloods nearly exterminated us once. What’s to stop them from finishing the job?”

“Seb’s no murderer. He’s a gentleman.”

“Evil can easily cloak itself in wealth and breeding, Mrs. Parrino.” St. Leger’s gray gaze seemed to penetrate her brain. “While the heart of a hero can beat even beneath the skin of a beast.”

*   *   *

“Mr. St. Leger said you wanted to see me.”

Bianca stood in the doorway, dressed in a gown that looked as if it had been intended to entice rather than conceal. A sweeping low neckline of shimmering white seeded with pearls, the translucent skirts threaded with gold thread and more pearls. No one who saw her slender, gilded beauty would recognize the sweat- and dirt-stained woman who had risked her life to save him and fought like a lioness against a murderous Fey-blood. Like the mountain lakes
around Concullum, Bianca held startling depths beneath her placid surface.

She lifted her chin, a small frown puckering her forehead. “Mac?”

He cleared his throat, shifting in bed, glad for the heavy shield of blankets. “We leave for Surrey in an hour.”

Her frown deepened. “But we killed . . . I mean I . . . that is . . .”—she took a slow deep breath—“the Frenchman is dead.”

“He is. But he wasn’t working alone. There’s a woman. I felt her malice and her resolve in my head like a stain. She watched as he . . . as he questioned me. I could almost feel her hand guiding his knife, sense her pleasure at my screams. Whoever she is, she’s responsible for Adam’s death, and if I’m right, she won’t stop just because she failed to kill us. She’ll send others, and they’ll assume you know my whereabouts. They’ll force you”—he closed his eyes against the bile clawing its way up his throat—“they’ll force you to tell them,” he whispered. “I won’t let you suffer because of me, Bianca.”

“I’d be safe with Sarah at Deane House,” she answered just as softly.

“No,” he snarled before taking a deep breath. “No.
You
may be certain of Deane’s innocence, but I can’t take that chance. Not until I completely understand the threat. Not with the lives of so many at stake.”

“But how can I disappear to the wilds of Surrey and not expect anyone to notice? What will people say?”

He handed her a copy of the morning paper lying on the bed beside him. “David brought this up. I didn’t want to show you, but perhaps it’s for the best.”

“ ‘Butcher of Barleymow Court Found Butchered in Back Alley’?” she read.

“Above that.”

“ ‘Mrs. P—, late an actress of Covent Garden theatre, has left London in some haste. Is it to recover her health as some claim, or does she wish to escape the long arm of the law?’ ” Her jaw tightened, the paper trembling in her hands as she read.

“They’ve offered you the perfect excuse to quit the city.”

“Yes, because they assume I’m guilty of Adam’s murder. I have to say, this alliance idea isn’t working out quite as I’d hoped.”

“I agree. But we stay together and we stay safe.”

“Do we?” she asked, her voice hoarse with emotion, a queer light blazing in her eyes. “Then why do I feel as if the real danger is only beginning?”

*   *   *

Bianca rested in a corner of the hired coach conveying them to Bear Green. The interior smelled of a mixture of camphor, soiled straw, and unwashed socks, the windows were coated with a dusty film, and the creaky springs groaned at every bend in the road. But the brazier held coals enough to keep her warm, the weather had cleared to a brilliant cloud-threaded blue sky, and she was alive.

Amazing how skirting death can turn once monumental concerns into petty problems.

She snuck a peek at her traveling companion from beneath lowered lashes. Mac slumped across from her, long legs stretched toward the brazier, face averted, dark hair falling forward over his brow so that only a narrow curve of jaw and cheekbone showed.

As she studied him, she tried to work up a little lingering terror—perhaps a touch of disgust. A hint of repugnance. Nothing. It was as if all her earlier shock had been overwhelmed by larger, more dangerous fears.

The heart of a hero.
David St. Leger’s words from this morning came back to her now as she watched Mac’s fidgety attempts at finding a comfortable spot among the lumpy cushions with a typical sick man’s grumbling. Mummified beneath a mountain of traveling rugs, he couldn’t have looked further from heroic if he tried. At this point, between the mottled bruising, lacerations, and waxen greenish pallor, he resembled a corpse. Yet those work-scarred hands gripping and releasing the edge of his blanket, the tension leaping in his bruised jaw, and the keen-edged determination lingering in his bloodshot eyes all pointed to an unflinching courage, an unshakable resolve.

She couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like to be cared for by such a man. To feel safe and protected within the circle of his arms, knowing nothing could break the bond between them. To experience a love that burned as steadfastly as the devotion to duty in his warrior’s gaze.

A lightning charge sparked over her skin, simmering up from her center in a quicksilver caress to flare between her legs.

What would it be like to go to bed with him? Would her heart thunder? Would her stomach clench with pleasure rather than dread? When had this dangerous attraction outstripped her guarded resentment? When had desire trumped astonishment and alarm?

Probably the very moment she’d lost the surprising
comfort of his solid presence. When she thought she’d never see him alive again. When his death had been a mere pistol shot away.

She refused to dig deeper into that troubling realization, afraid of what she might unearth. Already she felt like flotsam being swept along before a wave: Adam’s murder, then Mac’s entrance on the stage, turning her life upside down and inside out. She dare not wade further into such treacherous waters.

Mac shifted on his seat with a heavy sigh and mumbled, “Shite all. Why David sent us off in this rattletrap of a jarvey, I’ll never know.”

“Are you warm enough?” she asked. “Do you need another blanket? You can have mine.”

He waved her off. “I’m fine.”

“We can change seats if yours is too uncomfortable.”

He shook his head.

“I’ve some whiskey if—”

“Bianca, enough!” Mac exclaimed. “I marched from Portugal to Paris without expiring, I think I can manage twenty miles in a carriage even if it is about to rattle the teeth straight out of my head.”

“It was Mr. St. Leger’s idea. He said it would throw off anyone with a mind to follow us.”

He grunted. “More likely his idea of a bad joke. Did I ever tell you about the time he sent me out after a Spanish guerrilla who’d made his headquarters in a convent? I was nearly emasculated by a gaggle of enraged nuns.” He gave a shuddering groan.

Bianca smothered a smile behind her hand.

“Of course, it’s funny now,” he complained.

“Can you . . . I mean, how . . .” Embarrassment
caused her to stutter as she sought a foothold on the questions swamping her brain. “Do you have a choice? Could you shift now if you wanted to?”

He looked up, and she flinched anew at his gaunt, sunken cheeks, the dark smudges beneath his dull eyes. “It takes strength and concentration. I couldn’t manage either at the moment.”

She turned to watch the passing landscape, though her mind recorded nothing of her surroundings, as she was too busy recalling Sebastian’s tale of Arthur and the Imnada warlord Lucan. He’d paid for his crime, not only with his life but with the lives of all his kind. Adam
had
carried a dangerous secret. His life
had
been shrouded in mystery and fear. Just not in the way she’d imagined.

A chill slithered up her spine as she thought of the Frenchman’s hatred, his twisted, venomous fury. Those moments before she struck would forever be inscribed in her memory. The way the light shone dirty gray, the thick dust hanging in the air, the spittle at the corners of his mouth as he hurled his threats, and the slick, cold feeling of her hands gripping the fire tongs. It was all locked in her head like the scene of a play.

Could Mac and St. Leger be right? Could Sebastian be a magical Fey-blood out to kill the remaining Imnada in a feud dating back a thousand years? Had she been an unwitting dupe in the earl’s ongoing war? The idea didn’t sit well. “Why do the Fey-bloods hate the Imnada? I mean, Arthur and the Round Table and Camelot, that’s a story . . . a legend.”

“As are we,” he replied evenly.

“Do you mean King Arthur was real?”

He pulled the blanket higher up on his shoulders with a muttered oath.

“Mac?”

His pale gaze shone like rubbed pewter. “The Fey-bloods looked on us as monsters, Bianca. We didn’t spring from the seed of Ynys Avalenn as they did. Our origins lay out among the stars, far beyond the Gateway, and thus their powers affected us differently or not at all. This made us a threat. Whether the Fealla Mhòr grew out of this long-standing insecurity or one crushing battlefield betrayal, who can say a hundred generations after? All I know is few Imnada survived the purges. And those that did kept themselves so hidden that none suspected they’d survived—until now.”

Mac turned away to lean back against the lumpy seat cushions, his half-lidded gaze vague as if his thoughts drifted miles away.

They passed through a village, Bianca’s attention drawn to a vicar hurrying down a churchyard path; a group of women chatting in front of a dressmaker’s window; a young girl hanging laundry; sheep being herded by an old man and his dog. None of them with a clue that just beyond their awareness lay another world. One that seemed to hold both the stuff of daydreams and the creatures of nightmares.