One With the Shadows (2 page)

He examined the crowd for a moment as though looking for someone before he turned his attention to her. “What have we here?” he asked as he flicked his glance over her. He didn’t bat one of his long, dark eyelashes at her appearance.

“She’s the evening’s entertainment. Most amusing,” someone said.

That’s all you aspire to be,
Kate reminded herself as she controlled her frown.
You entertain them right out of their gold. Large batches of it.

“She’s telling my future, Urbano,” the baronessa simpered.

“I doubt that,” the man drawled. How dare he? And really, his whole manner was arrogant. The creature was used to being so attractive to women he didn’t even have to be civil. Apparently his name was Gian Urbano. The marquesa had pronounced Gian like John, but with a lilt. He was going to spoil her game tonight if she wasn’t careful.

Kate lifted her chin. “Don’t disparage what you can’t know, signore.”

“Oh, I know all right.” He smirked as his gaze passed over her lenses. It was as though he knew her ruse. He examined her scar quite openly. He probably expected that was fake as well. His brows drew together. She flushed. “No,” she wanted to say, “that is quite genuine.” Then he cocked his head. “Would you care to read my cards?”

Kate wanted more than anything to refuse. But to refuse a challenge would be to lose the interest she’d created with her last reading. She inclined her head. “At your command,” she said, putting all the sarcasm she could muster into it. She did not want him closer. Was it that energy about him that made her almost shiver in response?

The baronessa vacated her chair and Urbano eased into it, his knees nearly touching hers. Kate swallowed. Too close. Bloody hell. He was trying to put her off balance when all depended on remaining calm. She didn’t like men, she reminded herself. Actually she didn’t particularly like anyone. The life of a charlatan was necessarily a lonely one. But this someone in front of her thought everyone was in love with him, and he’d probably been right so far. He also thought a woman like her, scarred as she was, was depressed and nervous in his presence, knowing he could never find her attractive. Well, she was going to teach him a lesson, right here and now.

“Shuffle the cards,” she said, holding them out. She resolved to ignore her body and his. He smelled like cinnamon and something else. It was seductive. He interwove the corners of the cards and arced them from hand to hand. The man had spent his share of time in card rooms. Several young men tried to push forward and were roundly repulsed by the elbows of ladies in the front.

Urbano handed the deck back to her. This close, his eyes were hard. She fanned the deck on the table. Hard, but covering something. One of the men greeting him had said he looked haggard. True, upon close examination, but it wasn’t the smudge of shadow under his eyes. No, it was an expression that the hardness tried to cover—a disgust, a horror. Or maybe pain. That did not square with his arrogant manner and his languid certainty. Underneath the façade he was not sure of himself at all. She had made her living for more than seventeen years reading people, and this was one of the most complex, most disturbing impressions she had ever gotten of a man. Who was he, beneath that arrogant and beautiful exterior?

Nonsense. All she wanted to know was the answer she always needed from a mark: what story did he want to hear from a reading? But that was a problem. If she judged only by his surface, she would tell a story of triumph and adulation—something superficial. But those eyes contradicted everything. He would despise such a tale. And she wanted to make him eat his disdain. She pressed her lips together as his knees touched hers and jerked away. She was actually getting wet between her legs.
Get hold of yourself,
she admonished.

“The first card is your past.” He picked a card. The devil. A gasp went round the room from the women. Not bad for her purposes. The men murmured, “better ask the women,” or “evil is as evil does,” or “no, Urbano the devil? Surely you jest.”

The straight reading would do. “Ravage,” she whispered, for effect. “A choice forced upon you, debauchery, abasement, illicit lovers, slavery … even impotence.” The crowd tittered to cover their shock.
That
would teach him to challenge her. “It could also indicate a tendency to those elements in your present and your future.”

He looked as though he had been struck.

“Not able to rise to the occasion, Urbano?” one of the young men taunted into the din.

Anger roared into his eyes. She watched him master it. His mask of nonchalance came down. “So, I am evil. Not something you would have had to go far to learn.” A small smile played about his lips. She thought it was forced. He didn’t address the impotence. “Ask anyone.”

“I didn’t say you were evil.” She smiled. Let him realize who was in charge here. She shrugged. “But he who draws the devil plays close to the fire and must expect to be singed…”

His brows drew together. His drawl was forced as he said, “Excellent. Go on.”

“This next card is who you are.” He picked a card from near the bottom of the deck. “Strength—another trump. This card speaks of great force of will and personal energy, but always combined with the danger of beastly aggression.” Personal energy? Did the cards know he fairly hummed with vitality? And what about aggression? Wasn’t that the ultimate arrogance? That fit. She nodded to him and he picked again. Best be careful around him.

Kate took a breath as he drew another card. “The hanged man.”

“I always knew you’d end on the gallows, Urbano.”

“It isn’t that,” Kate said, almost against her will. “It is the card of trial, heedless sacrifice and surrender, even imprisonment from which only the offering of death can free you, often leading to rebirth.” Her head began to ache. “A man must atone for his sins…”

She seemed to be growing more confused, not clearer. What would he want to hear? Did she want to tell this man what he wanted to hear? Her success demanded it.

What he wanted to know was that she was a charlatan. Which was true. But she couldn’t admit that. Not and get the money she needed.
Or enough that I can stop displaying my scars, physical and emotional.

Where had that thought come from? She didn’t have any emotional scars. She was hard as nails and proud of it. In fact, she was doing just fine, thank you very much.
I’m smarter than anyone here, including this tulip.
And intelligence was what mattered in the end. Not beauty.

I’ll talk about his fate being predestined. That’s always popular.
But, unaccountably, she didn’t. “You have experienced much violence, caused through your own extraordinary efforts, and these events have taken their toll on you.” Where had that come from? Maybe the violence was why he had such pain behind his eyes. But what violence could this sprig of fashion have known? No doubt some husband had called him out.

She could feel Urbano’s stare. His knee grazed hers under the table again, sending a flood of sensation through her. He drew another card. “The lovers.” She swallowed and managed a smile. “Do you draw nothing but trumps?”

“Apparently not.”

Enough. She was going to skew a reading here. She wouldn’t give him what the lovers traditionally indicated. He didn’t deserve it.

She
meant
to say he would be crossed in love. But what she
did
say was, “Still, love comes. This card tells of attraction, possibly even true love, but with a trial of choice still to be overcome.” Had her skill at weaving stories deserted her? And yet … the cards seemed to be telling their own story.
Nonsense. They don’t tell the stories, I do.

“But he’s impotent, remember?” a young male voice called. “That doesn’t make sense.”

She closed the deck. “Impotent or not, he will find love.” She had a feeling if she continued, something dreadful would be revealed, not about him but about her. Or about him, too. She couldn’t tell. She blinked against the churning in her stomach. What was happening here?

“I want another card,” he said roughly.

The blood drained from her face but she spread the deck again. He picked a card.

“What is it?” a woman in the second row of the circle asked.

He laid it down. “The star,” she practically whispered. The crowd hung on her every word. “There is hope for redemption—perhaps through the intervention of a woman. The fates have not done with you.” Perhaps he would overcome whatever had given him so much pain that he had to paper it over with that smirk and that drawl. That was something she could work with.

“Many words, my little card turner. What do they mean?” His voice was a deep baritone of course, an insanely attractive voice even though it was hoarse just now. “I’d like specifics.”

He was challenging her to make the story that had eluded her thus far. She looked up. The eyes that could not hide the pain and doubt bored into her. Everyone else in the room hung on her words, the men wanting something they could use to jibe him, the women hoping for something that said he would be theirs. But she didn’t have any words, only an ache in her head and a feeling of … dislocation, as though she were looking at herself from far away.
I don’t know the story!
Panic churned inside her.

Yet words came.

“You have seen blood, rivers of it, in a desert.” She blinked. The room began to swirl, the colors of the crowd melting together. “Blood you brought forth through extraordinary heroism in a cause you believed was just.” She stood. The table toppled. Surprised, she glanced down to see the cards scattering very slowly to the floor. But the crowd behind them was spinning faster. “It has left you wandering in your soul, impotent. Evil is around you even now, and may still win out.” Her voice did not seem to be her own. “Many trials are ahead. Thievery will be involved. I see a stone, an emerald. Your arrogance has still a chance to be tempered into wisdom by your trials.” She had a sensation of falling, and yet she knew she stood, looking up at him. He too stood, staring in fascinated horror. “There is hope for you to understand true beauty and win love. You can be transformed.” She gazed up into those green eyes and the room receded entirely. She couldn’t even find herself, she had drifted so far away.

The green of his eyes turned into the green of a stone.

It was an emerald, as big as half her fist. It glowed in darkness. A woman’s hand with long nails held it with a pair of silver tongs. The glow of the emerald cast refracted green light on the rough stone walls and floor of a cramped room. He was there: the arrogant, beautiful one. He was naked and chained to the wall. His pale skin stood out against the dark stone of the floor. “You are mine,” the woman said. “The jewel will give you to me.” Fear shone in the man’s eyes. The woman came closer, touched the flesh of his chest with the stone. He arched and groaned. The glow brightened until it lit the cell with a blinding green light. The woman’s laughter echoed crazily back from the rock walls.

And then nothing. The stone cell vanished. Kate took one breath, and collapsed.

Two

Kate struggled up on one elbow, disoriented, afraid. The marquesa hung over her with a vinaigrette in her hand. The acrid smell of ammonia burned her nostrils. She was arrayed on a chaise longue in a tiny anteroom of some kind. Behind the marquesa the tall figure of the arrogant man stood, with a frown so forbidding he looked about to strangle her. What was he doing here? She blinked, remembering. Her brows drew together.

“What … happened in there?”

“You fainted,” he said. His tone was damping.

“I mean before the fainting part,” she snapped. Her eyes opened wide as she stared at him. It all came back. “I had a vision. I saw you.”

He snorted in derision. “A vision? No doubt.”

“You were naked, and a woman had a giant emerald. She touched it to you and I knew it was going to hurt you…”

The man whose name was, she remembered, Gian Urbano, frowned.

“You shouldn’t be upset, my dear,” the marquesa interrupted. “Everyone has visions of Gian naked. The women at least. Well, actually, I’m sure some men do too, now that I think on it. I have them often.” Here the marquesa glanced over to Urbano seductively. The woman thought there was something between them or would like there to be. “It means nothing.”

He stood abruptly and loomed over Kate. He looked like he was about to shake her silly.

She cringed at the expression on his face, then mustered a defiant look.

“Now, Gian, don’t glower at her.” The marquesa fluttered between them and made sweeping motions with her hands at Urbano. “Out, out. Leave her to recover.”

She saw him think about standing his ground. Then he thought better of it and bowed crisply. “I shall wait outside to arrange a more private conversation.” He turned on his heel.

Kate watched her nemesis retreat. Had he carried her into this little room? She seemed to feel his body against hers, a tingling sensation of remaining … lust—there was really no other word for it. When she’d told him about her vision he’d looked exactly like the devil card …

Vision! What the bloody hell was she doing having visions? One couldn’t see the future.

True. She took a breath. She had an active imagination. That was what made her good at her job, that and her knowledge of people. And the room had been hot. And Gian Urbano was attractive. The image of his naked body filled her mind. She’d never seen anything so beautiful, so masculine. Hard planes, articulated muscles, and then there was his … But it was all ruined by what the woman had been doing to him. She shook her head to banish the image. She had imagined him naked and the fainting spell had made it seem real. That was all.

Still it was bad. She was losing her touch. She was always the one who controlled the room, wove the story. She was the talent, Matthew had been the agent who turned her talent into gold. Now that he was gone she had to fend for herself. If she started losing control, she’d never earn enough to buy her way to her small, domestic dream. She didn’t like her life, but there were no alternatives but the brothel with which Matthew had always threatened her, unless she had money. She had always lived her life by choosing the lesser of two evils. And between charlatan and whore, charlatan was easily the winner.