Authors: Zoe Archer

Tags: #Romance, #General, #Paranormal, #Fiction

Devils Kiss (31 page)

BOOK: Devils Kiss

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Her smile was rueful, and she dipped her head in acknowledgment. “Despite your silence, you stayed friends.” Satisfied with the cleanliness of the wound, she reached for a broad leaf. A grassy, herbaceous scent rose up, slightly astringent, as she dabbed a green paste over the injury. Saint John’s wort, she had said as she had gathered the plants and ground them into a salve.

It was a double sensation: the stinging of the wound, and the gentle press of her fingers. Yet that was how it played out between them, in the intermingling of pain and pleasure. He enjoyed the edge. Everything else seemed too soft now, too pale and enfeebled.

“I met John and Edmund at university, and Leo much later, in London. If there were founding members of the Hellraisers, they would be Bram and me.”

“Prestigious.” She wrapped more strips of muslin over the wound, her movements deft and practiced.

He scoffed. “A dubious distinction. Yet it’s who we are.” H quickly corrected, “
Were
. Now ...”

She tucked in the ends of the muslin to secure the dressing. Satisfied, she looked up and held his gaze with her own. In the darkness, nothing possessed the depth of her eyes, black and as rich as velvet. “Now you must learn yourself all over again.”

He found that he could not hold her gaze, and his own moved restlessly over the moon-glazed field, touching briefly on the mercury gleam of the stream, the slivers of grass ruffling in the cold breeze—anything to distract him from the truth he now faced. None of it worked.

In a kind of daze, he spoke. “I keep seeing them, the burning ruins of my life. Whole edifices charred and collapsing in the wake of my entanglement with Mr. Holliday.” Shaking his head, he amended, “No, that’s not entirely true. There had been foundations, but the structures themselves were built of nothing more than diversion and dissipation. Hardly the sturdy materials in which one could take shelter. If I now stand upon a scorched wasteland, I have only to blame the architect: myself.”

Ahead lay shadows and yet more uncertainty. He had only two forces guiding him: the black chains binding him to the
geminus
, and Zora.

Bram had been his closest friend. Yet, for all their shared experiences, for all the long nights they had spent with cigars and brandy in hand, speaking of everything and nothing, not once had Whit confided in Bram as he now did in Zora.

He was a gambler. He kept everything close, revealed nothing of himself, by either design or habit. Yet, when he was with this woman, words came from him as if from a cask finally tapped. The wine within had turned acrid and bitter, and it needed out.

Instinct guided him. If there was anyone who walked this blighted earth to whom he could reveal himself, who could see his weaknesses and doubts without using them against him, that person was she.

“I’ve spent my life doing exactly as I pleased. Hardly a word of contradiction spoken against me.”

“Until you met me,” she said.

He discovered he was smiling. He looked down at the wound beneath his ribs, the bandages pale against his skin. “Broken he may be,” he murmured, his smile fading, “but I envy Bram. He went to war, proved himself.”

“You aren’t going to fail,” said Zora, heated. “
We
aren’t.” Hers was a spirit that could not be crushed or extinguished. Stronger than fire.

Yet she needed to understand that nothing was certain, especially where he was concerned. “Shall I tell you stories? The kind told around a campfire? Stories where the handsome prince defeats the wicked beast.”

“I have seen those plays, as true as the pasteboard dragon.”

“Gambler I may be, but I don’t lie. At the end of this, there is no happy ending.” His words were brutal, yet he knew that their brutality did not target her. He had to remind himself that as heroes in tales went he would never be what was required. Heroes did not have monstrous hungers clawing them from the inside out. They had noble hearts, pure intentions. He possessed neither.

The flames marking his skin twisted their way down to just above his wrist. An inexorable devouring. How long did he have left before they covered him entirely?

She studied the hand-shaped burn on his shoulder. Softly, she traced its perimeter. The pain of it branched out like thick vines of heat, filling him with fire-laced pleasure.

“Every tale changes with each telling.” She blew lightly over his singed flesh, cooling him. “You can’t foresee how this will end.”

She dabbed more of the slick and aromatic herbal paste upon his shoulder, then applied it upon his injured hand. She took more fabric and wound it around his shoulder, covering the burn and the paste, and wrapped his hand, as well. Each brush of her fingers jolted through him.

He shoved his clothing back on but could not find the wherewithal to redo the lacings and buttons. As he stood, his waistcoat and coat gaped. His open shirt revealed his chest, his stomach. A man undone. He had nothing to hide behind, not his wealth, not his title, and certainly not his deeds.

“You deserve better.”

“I think we deserve each other.” She smiled up at him.

His laugh felt hard in his throat. “So we are both being punished.”

She shot to her feet, and her lush mouth was tight with anger. “You set too low a value on yourself.
This
is the time we prove ourselves.
This
is when we show who we are. You say your life is in ruins? Then rebuild it. However you want. Stone by stone. Brick by brick.” She laid her palm across his jaw, and her touch was steady and sure. “You’re strong enough.”

All he could do was stare at her in wonder. He had bared himself to her in many ways, trusted her as he’d never trusted another. He had gambled the most valuable stake he had ever pledged. Not money or possessions, but the core of himself.

In games of chance, someone won, and someone lost. One player had everything, and the other walked away with nothing.

Not this time. He had taken his biggest risk, and both he and Zora were all the richer for it.

Lights from the assembly hall spilled out onto the walkways. Inside, townsfolk danced to the music made by fiddle and viol. Local gentry, landowners, prosperous shopkeepers, the parson. The town was small, yet sizeable enough to support its own elite. In London, such folk would hardly get past the front door of the humblest aristocratic gathering. But the world did not revolve around London—shocking as the idea might seem.

Whit and Zora rode past the assembly hall, watching the patterns made by the dancers. Circles and lines. Back and forth. The music was merry. The people were not. All of them wore tight, distant expressions. They clasped each others’ hands overlong, or barely touched. Their eyes spoke of mistrust, caution, fear. None of them wanted to be there, sweating beneath their powder and finery, chandeliers dripping wax upon their self-dressed hair. A girl wearing yellow watered silk cried in the corner, yet no one noticed, no one cared. Those men who did not dance paced up and down the length of the hall eyeing one another mistrustfully.

“A wonder any of them bothered to come,” murmured Zora.

“They seem ... compelled.” Pushed by invisible hands, tugged on by unseen strings, like toys or marionettes.

Much like himself, following the
geminus
. The creature’s presence in this town filmed the cobbled roads, gathered in the oily puddles, and clung to the mistrustful faces of the townsfolk. In a town where the greatest unrest came from squabbles over who sat in which pew on Sunday, a deep, cancerous anger now ate at its soul.

They had no direction but the dark binds around Whit’s heart. He did act as their bearing compass, leading them down roads, through towns and villages, following what he could of
geminus
’s course. Which wasn’t a course at all. The damned thing didn’t travel as humans did, upon roads, linearly moving from here to there. It appeared and disappeared at will, alighting like some damned predatory bird.

Wherever they rode, evidence of the creature blighted the landscape. Broken windows, raised voices, angry throngs massing in streets and squares regardless of the hour, or, as it was here, an assembly on the verge of collapsing into diseased chaos.

Whit had investigated each town, but he knew with a growing instinct that the
geminus
remained always ahead of them. It
had
been in this town, that much was certain.

“The
geminus
is gone,” he clipped as they rode away from the assembly hall.

She had her own impressive vocabulary of curse words, most of them in the Gypsy tongue, and she used them now. He knew the words were low and vulgar, and yet, in spite of, or perhaps
because of
that, his blood heated. No one would ever confuse her with one of the pastel silk–wearing girls who haunted the corners of assembly halls.

“It leaves this ... coating ... in the air,” he said when she had run through her litany of Gypsy oaths. “Like ash after a fire.”

“We need to see what
will
burn, not what
has
burned.” She glanced at the darkened windows around them and had to wonder, just as he did, if more shadowed shapes lurked just on the other side of the shutters.

He guided his horse close to hers, then pushed up the cuff of his coat and shirt, revealing his hand. Her gaze widened. The flame markings covered his hand, trailing up his fingers, and curving around to snake across his palm. The marks obscured the lines on his palm, making them impossible to read. Only hours before, his hand had been bare of everything but his rings.

“The thing that continues to burn is
me
.”

The rest of the night’s journey proved fruitless.

He surveyed the latest village, where a group of men were too busy accusing one another of offenses both real and imaginary to notice Whit and Zora slowly riding past. On a nearby hill, a farm outbuilding burned. The predawn sky glowed red.

It must stop. It had to stop. He submerged himself in the dark, sharp greed coiled around his heart, followed it. Sentient to nothing else, yet feeling the edges of danger on every side, and the tendrils of flame that grew over his body, claiming him.

Something pulled at his awareness: a buried memory rising up like a ghoul.

He looked about him, turning in the saddle. The sun had cleared the eastern horizon, revealing that the land had grown rockier, sharply undulating. The bent humps of limestone hills rose up, with the road being little more than an attempt to scratch a path between mountains, and dawn light could not penetrate the shadowy dales.

“I know this place. There.” He pointed to a peak half a mile away. “It marks the southernmost boundary of Whitney holdings.”

“Derbyshire.” She gazed at the rolling hills, dotted with gorse and ash.

A thrush burst from the hawthorn scrub in a tiny explosion of wing beats. The bird darted away, until it disappeared into a stand of alders atop a hill.

Whit’s heart beat as fast as the bird’s wings. Chill sweat filmed his back. “My family’s estate.” The
geminus
had been here. What did it want? What would it take from him on his ancestral lands?

He urged his tired horse into a trot. They reached the crest of the peak, affording them a view of the hills, faded to paleness with the advance of autumn. Crofts huddled in the vales, and sheep formed white specks as they grazed. In the still of early morning, their bleats carried all the way to Whit and Zora.

After the chaos they had encountered over the past few days, everything seemed remarkably peaceful. But Whit wasn’t comforted. He felt the echo of the creature’s presence like burning ice.

“Whitston Hall is that pile of stone by the lake.”

She stood up in her stirrups to get a better look, then sat back down on the saddle. “Maybe someone there has seen the
geminus
.”

“There’s only the steward in residence, and a skeleton staff. No one else. I’m seldom here.”

“Is it here now, the
geminus
?”

He reached through the dark haze, searching. “I can’t feel its presence,” he said after a moment. “Not anywhere. But I do know that it has been here. And the Devil only knows what destruction it has wreaked.”

Chapter 14

They could not urge their weary horses to go any faster than a walk. Whit had no idea what they would find once they reached Whitston, and apprehension gnawed at him in relentless, slow bites.

Unanticipated memories sifted into his mind the closer they came to Whitston. Playing knights with his brother, Michael, on the heather-laced hills. Laying Michael to rest in the funerary chapel after the fever took him. Returning to the chapel to entomb his mother, and then his father. His sister, Sarah, weeping into an embroidered handkerchief. Walking back from the chapel, hat in hand, as his father’s man of business explained that the title belonged to him, and all the privileges and responsibilities that came with being an earl.

He had accepted the privileges, but not much of the responsibility. He’d seen Sarah married, and well, with a substantial dowry. She’d born four children, three of them still living. The last he had heard, she was increasing again. So her marriage turned out as well as anyone could hope—though he supposed he was the last person she would confide in. In one of her more recent letters, she upbraided him for his wild living, his life at the gaming tables.

Was their family’s home now a ruin? The agonizing, slow pace of the horses would not allow him to know, not soon enough.

Wearily, Whit and Zora’s horses plodded up the winding lane leading to the Hall. He tried to distract himself by studying the lands. The pastures and hills looked well cared for, and the farmers he passed raised their hats in respectful greeting. The laborers stared at him with wary awe—several of them did not know who he was, until informed by others—yet they had robust health, full cheeks rather than gaunt. Some comfort there, knowing his tenants prospered, even in the shade of his benign neglect. He had Mr. Reynolds, his steward, to thank for their prosperity. His correspondence about the estate came regularly, and when Whit bothered to read it, what he found bespoke careful stewardship.

The farmers stared more guardedly at Zora. As always, a Gypsy attracted mistrust. Yet more than a few of the laborers looked at her with something else besides suspicion: admiration. She sat in the saddle, straight and proud, dark, windblown hair coming loose from its braid, unconcerned by the attention she attracted. There was no denying her exotic beauty.

One young, hale man leaned upon his scythe and gazed at her with open desire. He tried to catch her eye, and puffed out his chest to draw her attention.

Thick, pungent rage poured through Whit.

Mine.

He wanted to leap off his horse and beat the man. He would not even use the scythe, but wanted the pleasure of the swain’s blood on his hands rather than a blade.

Mine.

If he could, he would forbid the sun from shining upon her, so that he and he alone could have the pleasure of seeing her.

Tension knotted his shoulders, his body. It must be the
geminus
’s influence, this black, possessive fury. He had to keep tight restraint on himself. The effort singed him from the inside out, making him ache even more than days and days in the saddle.

Past the outlying fields, he and Zora rounded a bend and emerged from a copse of birch trees. Zora audibly gasped.

“That
can’t
belong to you,” she said.

“It belongs to the current Earl of Whitney. For now, the earl is me.” And if he produced no male offspring, one of Sarah’s sons would assume the title, the lands, and everything else.

Given Whit’s chances of surviving the near future, it seemed more and more likely that one of his nephews would one day be known as Lord Whitney. At least he could see that no external damage had been done to the Hall.

“You cannot live there alone,” Zora said.

“I hardly live there at all.” He didn’t know how many servants were in residence during his long absences. Half a dozen? A dozen? Mr. Reynolds saw to those details.

Whit searched for the
geminus
’s presence. Nothing. It hadn’t been here. Gratitude flooded him.

“It didn’t reach the Hall,” he said.

Zora exhaled, mirroring his relief.

The original Whitston Hall had earned its name, built three centuries earlier of local pale limestone. As a child, Whit had played in the grass-covered remains just behind the main house. In the aftermath of the Restoration, his great-grandfather had razed the old Hall and built a new one of brick, with an abundance of modern sash windows that testified to the title’s wealth. The structure was perfectly symmetrical, consisting of two identical wings connected by a central hall. A balustrade ran the perimeter of the roof, and a cupola stood at the very top.

“I used to pretend I was a sea captain,” he said, pointing to the dome. “I’d stand at the windows of the cupola and imagine the hills to be waves, and the house was my ship.”

Zora nodded, smiling a little, but did not speak.

As they rode up the circular drive leading to the main entrance, Whit took a shallow pleasure in seeing the look of wonderment on her face. He admitted it to himself: he preened. Whitston
was
his, a physical embodiment of his affluence and prestige. She knew him as a gambler and had seen his home in London. But Whitston stood as a testament to his privilege, generations of his family firmly entrenched as one of England’s most esteemed. Even if the latest scion was a gambler whose soul belonged to the Devil.

The thought brought him back to full alertness. They had been granted a temporary reprieve, but the
geminus
would appear again. He would have to find and destroy it.

Before he and Zora brought their horses to a stop in front of the house, the large double doors opened and a man in a dark brown coat, buff breeches, and gray wig jogged down the wide stairs.

“My lord,” he panted, adjusting his waistcoat. He bowed. “This is an unexpected pleasure.”

“Mr. Reynolds.” Whit swung down from the saddle. Habit had him turning to help Zora dismount, but, yet again, she saw to herself and already stood beside her horse. “This is Miss Grey.”

The steward bowed once more. As Reynolds murmured his welcome, Whit glanced up to the open door and saw several curious faces peeking out. He did not recognize them.

“The post must have mislaid your letter, my lord,” the steward said. “None of the rooms are prepared, but that can be quickly remedied.”

Whit offered his arm to Zora. Her brows rose in surprise. They were both exhausted, hungry. Wounds of various kinds covered his body. Hardly the image of a lord and his lady retiring into the aristocratic comfort of the manor. Yet she tucked her hand into the crook of his arm, and together they ascended the stairs, regal as lions. Reynolds trotted beside them, and a groom appeared to lead off the weary horses. The servants inside scattered, disappearing into the dark recesses of the house.

“I sent no letter,” Whit said. “This visit was ... unplanned.”

“Of course, my lord.” The steward gained the top step a moment before Whit and Zora and held his arm out, gesturing for them to come inside. “I shall inform Mrs. Kinver of your arrival. How many guests shall we anticipate?”

“Only myself and Miss Grey.” They crossed the threshold to stand in the entry hall. Whit’s voice echoed off the vaulted ceiling, and he followed Zora’s gaze up to the windows set up high. Early morning sunlight slanted in from the east, leaving squares of gold upon the paneled walls. Her eyes were wide. He’d no doubt that this was the largest and finest home she had ever been inside. “And just for the day.”

Though Reynolds was a well-paid professional whose job description included largely humoring the whims of his employer, he blinked in astonishment. “The day?”

“Long enough for food, baths, and rest. Then we must resume our journey.” They moved from the entry hall to the staircase hall, where the carved oak stairs rose up two stories. He turned to Zora. “Will that content you?”

She inclined her head. “Yes, that is sufficient.”

Her imperious tone nearly made him smile. Gypsy girl she might be, yet no one could deny her confidence and pride.

“My lord,” Reynolds murmured, reddening. “How many ... how many bedchambers shall I have Mrs. Kinver prepare?”

Whit gazed at Zora, and she returned his look. She said nothing, but a flush the color of Baltic amber crept across the high contours of her cheekbones.

He opened his mouth to give his answer, but Zora spoke first.

“One bedchamber,” she said.

Time was needed before the master bedchamber could be of use. It needed airing out, linens on the bed, the rugs beaten. In the meantime, a meal was being prepared. The cook insisted on making a full dinner. Whit couldn’t regret the cook’s dedication. Hasty meals at inns and roadside chophouses had lost their appeal long ago.

While the bedchamber was made ready and the meal prepared, he guided her through the Hall. Most of the rooms were shut up, and holland covers draped over the furnishings like ghosts.

“It’s not looking its best,” he said, opening the doors to the Red Drawing Room. He strode in, with Zora trailing after him, and pulled open the heavy velvet curtains. He lifted the sash of the window so a gust of cold air swept inside. Dust swirled, dancing along the sunlight, and more spun through the air when he tugged off a holland cover to reveal a desk of carved mahogany. One by one, he stripped off the covers, until all the tables, chairs, and cabinets were revealed.

“The color suits you.” He glanced between her and the blood-red damask covering the walls. The hue did not flatter her so much as underscore her vivid beauty. “Passionate.”

In truth, the room had been anything but passionate. The wall coverings were merely dyed fabric. The room had always seemed hollow, filled with unused furniture and bereft of purpose. Zora was a brilliant flame, alive and radiant. And the room came to life when she stepped into it. The curtains moved in the breeze as if the house took its first breath.

She trailed her fingers along the inlaid surface of a side table, but gave it little notice. Her attention was fixed on
him
, not the room. Looking for something within him—but he did not know what she sought.

He watched her circle the room, skirting the edge of the Savonnerie rug as if it were a chasm waiting to swallow her up. Yet she was not afraid. This room, this house, to her they were merely things without meaning.

Even in her silence, she transformed this barren place. He saw Whitston Hall through her eyes, saw its emptiness. His own emptiness.

“What this room needs,” she said, her gaze on him, “is something green and living.”

“Gypsies aren’t farmers.”

A secret smile curved her mouth. “I’ll make something grow here.”

Brutally intense desire flooded him. He wanted to pull her down onto the chaise, throw up her skirts, and sink into her. His body was hot with it, hard and demanding.
Take her, claim her. Now.

The
geminus
’s influence, or his own black hunger—he could not tell the difference, and that was enough to cool his need. Barely.

She saw his hesitation, and walked toward the door. “Show me more.”

He did. The large Saloon, with its gilt-wood mirrors reflecting views of the fountains and the lake. The Tapestry Room, so named for its Mortlake tapestries of impossibly bucolic scenes. The study, and the Yellow Drawing Room. Not wanting to stir up more dust, he did not open the curtains through the rest of the house. Everything felt mired in a continual twilight gloom. Holland covers haunted the chambers and the hallways. He pointed out various features of each room, but the words tasted of ash and felt hollow. She spoke very little but watched him closely.

They ascended the stairs to the Library and Long Gallery. He knew these rooms, this house, yet her presence made everything strange, alien, as though he suddenly could not speak his native tongue. Whitston was well tended, yet through her eyes he saw its neglect. Its history had always stifled him. He’d fled it as soon as he had been able.

In the Long Gallery, he decided to pull back the curtains so that the rows of portraits could be seen. She walked slowly down the gallery, examining each painting of waxen-faced ancestors in their Elizabethan ruffs, their Cavalier wigs, their full-skirted coats, posing in satins with favored spaniels at their feet.

Whit rubbed the back of his neck, prickling with unease. He had the oddest sensation that he and Zora were being watched. But no servants were in the gallery. No one was there but him and Zora. The only other eyes were those in the portraits. He actually caught himself turning around quickly, as if he could catch one of the paintings
looking
at him. Yet all that met him were flat, painted eyes, forever unmoving.

She stopped in front of one painting. He did not need to look to know which one caught her attention.

BOOK: Devils Kiss

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