Lady Wicked (2 page)

“No, no she isn’t. She’s precious. She is the
first woman of our kind we’ve come across; the first of any asides
from ourselves. How can that be?” Jeremy wondered. For several
months he had observed Amelia quietly. At first he thought it was
her startling beauty that attracted him, but he’d soon realised
there was a scent of otherness about her that called to the very
center of his being. He had hardly dared believe what she was: an
immortal, a quirk of fate that had given him and James forever
life… and apparently this beauty too.

When Jeremy and James had been reborn, amidst
the carnage of an ancient battle, they had thought immortal life
would be a wonderful thing. The chance to see the world and
everything in it, but in truth, never ending life wasn’t what they
thought. Instead they had watched helplessly as their sibling’s
along with their families eventually died out. Friends needed to be
left behind. They grew close to no one. Eventually everyone would
wonder how they stayed so perfect. Lovers questioned their never
aging looks with jealously and wonder, then succumbed to age while
their statue-perfect lovers lived on. It was a harsh ‘gift’ they
had received.

Despite the never-ending unknowing, they
adapted well throughout the years, reinventing themselves time and
again until their original names and selves were distant
memories.

There were some things that proved more
interesting in others, whatever the year. James relished in romping
through women over the centuries, enjoying the delights of fashions
and society. Current morals and immoral behaviours had intrigued
him, until recently. Now he found he was tiring of the constant
games, the attempts to get society to loosen their stays, or at
least get them into trouble.

Jeremy had always been a more introspective
sort, the type to fall deeply and irreversibly in love, but he had
learned to shield his heart from the pain of loving and losing the
few women who had gained his attention over the years. Long ago he
had declared he could never love a mortal woman again.

Spying Amelia had been a jolt from the
Gods.

When he and James had settled in London, only
a few years before, they had been determined to maximise their time
in a city that they had avoided for some five score years until
everyone they had known previously were long gone. Walking in Hyde
Park one day, he had seen her, the merest glimpse as she rode by in
a simple carriage, her gloved hand laid on the open side, a parasol
shielding her from the sun. It was like something in him awoke.

Jeremy had tried to follow the carriage but
it was too quick, and so he had gone in search of James instead,
telling him in almost awe of the woman whom he thought might be one
of them. They had gone in search of her together, but it hadn’t
been until much letter that they had seen her again, and later
still that they had their suspicions confirmed.

After centuries of roaming the earth,
thinking they were the only two afflicted with this curse, they had
found another, and she had been presented in the most breathtaking
form.

Amelia wasn’t just any woman. She took
Jeremy’s breath away with her glossy near-black curls, porcelain
skin punctuated with a Cupid’s bow mouth and startling blue eyes
that contained hidden depths. And her voice, like spun silk, called
to his soul.

Some investigation had turned up that she was
an orphaned heiress, a manufactured story no doubt, to appease
society’s appetite for rumour and breeding. It also helped him
realise that she must know exactly what she was; that she was
skilled in creating a new identity for himself. Unlike he and
James, however, she was alone and for that, his heart ached for
her.

The Masquerade had been James’ idea during
their second year in London, an amusing diversion from the minutae
of life, and a way for him to chase supposedly chaste young women
far away from their fathers’ shotguns. Of course, James couldn’t
help push it a little further to see how far their guests would go
when presented with an atmosphere of absolute discretion, where
identities were concealed and anything could, and would, happen.
Over the past few years, their vast house had borne witness to
adultery, the loss of maidenhood to rakes who didn’t deserve it,
the crossing of social and sexual boundaries, and all manner of
illicit trysts. It was all part of their current reinvention as
rich, rakish brothers. Plus it amused the hell out of James.

Yet it had all ceased to matter the moment
Amelia had arrived in London. Now all Jeremy could do was think
about her. Night and day she invaded his mind, yet he’d never been
able to summon the courage to approach her. It wouldn’t be seemly
to openly introduce him to an apparently young, unaccompanied,
woman, and they didn’t travel in the same circles. He could have
pressed the point but that would have called attention to both of
them.

Inviting Amelia to the ball had been James’
idea.

On the first ball she had attended, while
they were both under assumed names and masks, they had danced
together, strolled together and neither had mentioned the other’s
state of immortality. By the end of the evening, after Amelia had
slipped away, her lips tingling with kisses, Jeremy had realised
with near horror, that she did not recognise him as he could
recognise her. Even worse, he wasn’t sure she knew what he was. He
wondered how she had existed so long without falling into a
desperate state of confusion.

The second ball had seen James taken a sudden
interest in Amelia, one that made Jeremy force himself to manage
the temper building within him. To make matters worse, James had
subsequently succeeded where he hadn’t. Somehow he had garnered an
invitation to a party, then tea amongst friends, and other affairs
where he would constantly bump into Amelia. James never failed to
include him with an invite, but he was hesitant to push Amelia into
confessing who she was. Jeremy hadn’t wanted to frighten her even
though his mind urged him to take her, his body simultaneously
urging him to claim hers.

Adoring her from afar, imagining their life
together was not enough anymore. Tonight he aimed to make Amelia
his. There would be no more abiding by society’s rules. They simply
didn’t matter on his estate this night. No, he intended to bind
Amelia to him, and take her for a wife. With their immortality, and
the love already cresting his heart, he finally saw a future. One
that had everything he yearned for.

Looking out of the window, his second whiskey
in hand, he saw a young woman being helped from the carriage. With
her long cloak and simple gold mask tied over her ebony mane, there
was no mistaking her. Amelia had arrived.

“James.” Jeremy turned from the window just
as the air blew through the open door opposite. He looked to James
seat, finding it vacant. Damn his competitive brother!

Striding from the room, he grabbed his silver
half mask, fixing it in place. Banging the door shut, he turned the
key. While most rooms where available for his guests to use at
their pleasure, and their fornication if they chose, some rooms
were off limits, and he held the master key to them all. Not far
away was his bedroom where he planned to take Amelia in his arms,
undress her and finally join them as one.

Pausing at the banister, he looked down to
the throng of people milling below in the foyer. Liveried servants
were collecting cloaks and serving Champagne, but it was the guests
who were the most intriguing. Among the rainbow of colours – jewel
brights in satins, velvets and lace – there were masks of every
variety from the impish Harlequin to elaborate feathered numbers.
Amid them all stood his heart’s desire. Amelia. And damn his
brother is she wasn’t curling her arm under his James’ who was
smiling down at her under his angel half-mask.

He had waited a lifetime for her, and he
wasn’t about to lose her to his own brother. For the first time in
centuries, Jeremy found himself in competition with James and he
didn’t like it one bit.

Chapter Three

James tucked Amelia’s arm through his own,
smiling down at her. He didn’t need to look up to know his older
brother was staring at them, his face no doubt etched with
undisguised anger. So Jeremy had been beaten to the punch? That’s
what happened when one spent more time pacing and brooding and less
time doing. The latter was James’ forte. Pursuit had always
intrigued him, though he had a shallow tendency to cast aside the
pretty fish he reeled in. Not this time, not once he’d realised
Amelia could be the one to capture his heart, not just satisfy his
needs.

“Have we met, my lady?” James asked as suited
his guise of a stranger, wondering if she saw through his mask as
easily as he saw through hers. The glittering jewels and delicate
mask were no camouflage for her true self, though her assumed
moniker amused him no end. It sounded deliciously sinful, just as
it should for the Masquerade.

“I couldn’t say,” Amelia smiled in response.
“Isn’t that the point?”

“I heard you announced as Lady Wicked. What a
very… fiendish name.”

Amelia giggled, a girlish, sweet sound that
contrasted with her impious persona. “That is what I chose to call
myself this evening. And you, sir?”

“I am incognito. I have no name.”

“No name, sir?” She feigned surprise.
“Whatever shall I call you?”

“Darling sounds fine.”

There was her coquettish laugh again, the one
that tugged at his heart strings. At first he had sought her out
through interest that another of their kind might exist. It was
curiousity he told himself as he made her acquaintance one summer’s
eve, purely scientific. Throughout their years, he and Jeremy had
never chanced upon another. Decades had been spent ruminating that
perhaps they were the only ones, some strange quirks of fate, or
something in their blood that kept common human afflictions at bay,
not to mention aging and death.

Of course, antagonising his brother was a fun
side effect of his acquaintance with Amelia. His brother chose to
watch her from afar, never meeting, not unless it was under the
auspices of the Masquerade.

James watched as his brother fell in love
with a woman he barely knew. He suspected that Jeremy intended to
make Amelia his tonight, to bind them together forever.

The problem was that the idea made James
inextricably angry. Sure, he was a skirt-chaser and a rogue, and
he’d never thought himself one to settle down, certainly not with
one woman, not even when he was mortal. Maybe it was because his
heart had been walled away from loss for so long that it had
hardened.

Yet, Amelia was unknowingly chiseling away at
his defences and he was thinking of giving himself over to
surrender. It wasn’t just that she was destined to live the long
life that he was, it was that she utterly captivated him from her
sharp wit to her delicate laugh, to the beauty she commanded. He
wanted her. Lifetimes of love, passion, and her companionship was
something he couldn’t selflessly give up, even for his brother.

“You are contemplative. Are you unwell?”
Amelia’s voice startled him out of his reverie, not that she could
see under his mask. He’d thought it funny to have it fashioned as
though an angel, but now he wondered if somehow, subconsciously,
that was how he wanted Amelia to see him: her rescuer.

“I am well, thank you.” He darted a glance
upwards, searching for Jeremy, but his brother had vanished from
his viewpoint at the banister. One quick look to the right
confirmed his suspicion: Jeremy was making his way down the stairs,
intent etched all over his unmasked jaw.

Quickly, James sidestepped the carousing
guests and led Amelia through the ballroom where the orchestra was
strumming a lively waltz, a dance that had only just been
introduced. James had instructed the orchestra to play several
waltzes tonight, the intimate dance fitting in with the bawdy
theme. Until this year, dancing had been a chaste act, with little
touching between the sexes and conducted in large groups so there
would be danger of impropriety. The waltz, however, required the
close contact between man and woman, a single couple whirling in an
intimate pairing as if alone. It was a touch scandalous and
therefore quickly favoured by the young men and women who strained
under perpetual social morals.

Amelia gasped, her gloved hand covering her
bowed mouth, as the dancers swept past. Looking down James as
amused to find her eyes bright, no sign of a blush at all. Perhaps
she was racier than he had given her credit.

“I’ll show you the steps,” James offered,
surprising himself. “Later, perhaps?” He lifted two Champagne
flutes from a passing waiter’s tray and pressed one into her
hand.

“Come and see the terrace. The stars are
abundant here.” He didn’t wait for an answer, instead steering her
towards the open doors leading outside, casting a glance over his
shoulder to see where his brother was. He saw Jeremy enter the
ballroom, just as they stepped outside and away into the shadows of
the house. It seemed mean, traitorous even, to sidestep his
brother, but James was determined.

Amelia crossed the terrace, resting her hands
on the stone balustrade. “How pretty,” she breathed as she looked
out over the carefully cultivated rose gardens then up towards the
dark velvet sky glistening with stars.

“I like it.”

“Aha!” She clung on to his words. “I’m afraid
your identity is revealed, sir.”

“Is it?”

Her next words were cockily assured. “You are
one of the Hamiltons.”

“I shall neither confirm nor deny.”

“How infuriating.” She turned away. “I’m sure
we have spoken before, but I’m unsure. Still, I’ll wager you are
the younger of the brothers.”

“You are quite certain?”