Shadowbound (The Dark Arts Book 1) (22 page)

"Not hungry?" she asked, watching him carefully.

"Not used to rich food."

The tired circles under his eyes were slowly vanishing, but the hollow slash beneath his cheekbones indicated his straitened circumstances for the past few months. At least he'd managed to eat more than previously. That had to be a good sign. "Well, why don't we go find out what Morgana might have wanted with Lord Rathbourne’s grimoire? That should be a pleasant diversion."

"You never met the man, did you?" Lucien actually smiled, though it held a touch of bitterness. "I'm not surprised to find he had some connection to Morgana. I just wish this connection didn't involve me."

"Do you have any idea what it might be?"

A fragile sense of tension ran through him, his shoulders hunched slightly, as he stepped out into the street. "No. No idea."

It bothered him more than he'd admit, she suspected. Ianthe glanced sidelong at him from beneath her lashes. "Well, let us go and find out. Lay at least one ghost to rest."

"Let's."

Perhaps it was her distraction with him, or perhaps too little sleep, stretched over too many nights, but Ianthe was halfway across the street before an ebony lacquered carriage caught her eye. The breath went out of her when she saw the gold sigil on the door, and she jerked to a sudden stop as it disbursed its occupants. A man stepped out, tall and lean and dressed in impeccable tweed, then reached up to hand down a thin young woman in pale pastel blue. Ianthe barely saw the woman. All she saw was the man—barely touched with age, curse him, his stride long, his dark wavy hair neatly pomaded, and that stern mouth still a hyphen, as if nothing about the world pleased him... and never would.

Lucien walked into her, catching her by the upper arms. "What are you doing?"

Some distant part of her mind kept working, even when her body was frozen in shock and fear. She'd heard that he'd taken a second wife. Poor woman.

"N-nothing." Ianthe turned away, blindly heading in the opposite direction. Anywhere. She didn't care. Just not here.

Lucien's footsteps hounded her. "Someone you know?"

No. Not really. Not ever, in fact.
"Did you not recognize the crest on the carriage?"

His brows drew together. "
Ad servium veritatum
?"

"To serve the truth," she translated. "It's the crest for the Vigilance Against Sorcery Committee."

Recognition dawned in those amber eyes. "Your father."

"In the flesh. I'm sorry. It took me by surprise. I wasn't expecting to see him."

Lucien caught her hand, his eyes searching. "Ianthe—"

"It's all right. I don't think he saw me." The words spilled out, fast and hard.

"Ianthe, your heart is pounding. My heart is pounding. I feel like it's going to thump its way right out of my chest."

The bond. They stared at each other.

Lucien gently turned her toward a small park. "Come and sit down. You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Well, it's a fairly accurate summation." Only one man haunted her like this. She'd thought she'd escaped that vengeful specter, but just one glimpse of her father had sent her fleeing into memories. Ianthe felt like a young girl again. It had taken all of her courage to confront him years ago, and weeks of preparation. Afterward, her sense of elation had been vivid. She'd felt powerful for the first time in all of their encounters, but walking into him so unexpectedly revealed the truth.

Grant Martin would always hold the power between them.

Somehow.

Lucien guided her to a seat beside a small fountain. Ianthe dragged her cape jacket tighter around her. Of all the people to run into today. Here. Now. With Lucien by her side. She didn't want him to see her like this.

"We should be on our way," Ianthe said, noting the curious look he sent her. "We need to find Lord Rathbourne's grimoire and work out what Horroway meant."

A hand on her shoulder stopped her. Lucien looked stern. "I think we have time to catch our breath." Dragging off his coat, he settled it over her shoulders and knelt in front of her. The warmth of his body heat was instantly reassuring. "Tell me about your father."

"You should already know him."

"I think every sorcerer in the Order knows your father. The man is what I imagine a demon made flesh would be like."

As head of the Anti-Sorcery Committee, Sir Grant Martin had made it his duty to drive them from the city. If not for their loyalty to the Queen, and the fact that Drake had singlehandedly saved the Queen from a demon attack in his youth, her father might have made headway into seeing them cast out of the staunchly religious country. Occultism, however, was at a fever pitch. The Queen herself had once had her fortune predicted by a diviner.

"Why does your father hate you so much? Has he always held such an opinion?"

Ianthe looked away. Hate. The truth was an arrow straight to the heart; she didn't even know why it bothered her. Whenever she thought of Grant Martin, all she felt was anger and disappointment. So why did something within her desperately long for his approval still? "We all have that first time where our sorcery expresses itself for whatever reason. Mine was... it was shadow constructs. My mother had died when I was four, and my father believed that sparing the rod spoils the child. He used to lock me away in the attic for days on end, with only a tray shoved through the door for company, whenever I made some sort of transgression against his never-ending rules.

"I was lonely and afraid of the dark, but my governess used to leave me with a candle to stay the darkness. And one night, I made the shadows dance. They became my friends. The only ones I had for such a long time."

Lucien's head lowered toward hers, his hand resting on her shoulder. This gentleness of his confused her. "And he found out?"

"I was running in the gardens one day when I was twelve. I tripped and ruined my pretty skirts, right in front of one of his guests. Father was furious, and he started to drag me toward the attic. I couldn't bear it anymore; I just... I just couldn't go back to that attic. Not alone. And so I lashed out. My shadows became constructs with weight and form. They caught his arms and pushed him away from me." Ianthe picked at the hem of her skirt, seeing it all over again. "You should have seen his face. I thought he was going to kill me. The next day, he packed me off to my aunt's in the country and set about destroying every sorcerer in the country."

In the distance, a clock tower chimed four o'clock in the afternoon. Ianthe looked at it. The day was wasted, and they were only just making headway. A burst of thought came upon her: Louisa was out there somewhere, all alone, without a single shadow to comfort her. Ianthe sobered. "Come. We've much to do and little daylight left in which to do it."

She pushed herself to her feet, offering his coat back to him, but Lucien didn't move to accept it. He stared down at it, as though he'd never seen it before.

"What are you thinking?" she asked, tilting her head toward him. "You have this look about your face..."

"I was thinking that I thought my childhood was terrible."

It struck her right to the heart. He had no idea. Not truly. But she pushed aside the memories as maudlin. She was well free of Grant Martin. Well free of those memories. "Don't you pity me. I rarely think of him," she admitted, laying his coat over his arm and heading for their own carriage, parked behind the Cotswold Mews. "He cannot hurt me anymore. I made certain of that."

"Did you?" Lucien was watching her face far too closely as he fell into step beside her. The stark white of his shirtsleeves gleamed in the afternoon sunlight, and his gray waistcoat clung to the hard musculature of his chest. "Or are you just telling yourself such a thing?"

Ianthe flushed. "Do you pretend to read my mind now?"

"Not your mind, no. Your emotions, however, are painted across your face. Your father troubles you."

"Your father troubles you," she shot back.

They shared a long, steady look.

"Which one?" Lucien asked, with a faint, mocking lift to his brow.

"Both of them, I believe. Tell me about Lord Rathbourne, for I know your grievances with Drake. Did he beat you? Lock you away? Force you to give up all the lessons you loved, and instead turn to meaningless hours of prayer?"

Lucien cut her a cold look. "No. He didn't care enough to bother."

Then he turned and strode away from her, across the grassy lawn of the park. Ianthe stared after him. That was it? After all she'd revealed? "Wait!" she called, grabbing a handful of her skirts and scurrying after him. "You cannot simply leave it at that." Catching his sleeve, Ianthe added, "Please."

Lucien looked bleakly across the park. She didn't think he was going to answer her; every inch of his body was a stiff line. Then his lashes lowered, covering those amber eyes. "Do you know the one time that Lord Rathbourne gave a damn about me?"

Ianthe shook her head.

"It was right before he forced me to summon the demon. After years of neglect—or no, not even that, but indifference—he finally began to pay attention to me. He invited me into his workshop to show me the mysteries he was studying: time, space, planes of existence behind my knowledge. Then he offered me a gift, Ianthe. A collar. I didn't recognize it for what it was. I'd never seen a Sclavus Collar, for such things are forbidden. He told me it would increase my powers, so that I could act as a wellspring for him. He needed the additional strength of my power, for he had a difficult undertaking to pursue."

Lucien blew out a breath. "It was stupid to believe him, but... I never thought his intentions toward me were malicious. I never had cause to doubt him, and I was proud that he'd asked me. I wanted to please him. He'd always preferred my cousin Robert to me. This was the one thing that Robert couldn't give him, for he has the magical ability of a turnip."

Picking up a small rock, he toyed with it, still looking down. "Do you know the worst thing about what happened a year ago?"

Ianthe couldn't contain her sudden surge of pity. She slid a gloved hand over his, stroking his knuckle with her thumb. She didn't like seeing him like this. "What?"

"It made sense," he said, looking up and meeting her eyes. "Why Rathbourne never cared for me. In a way, it was almost a relief to discover the truth. He wasn't my father. No wonder he barely tolerated me."

"But what was so bad about that—?" And then she realized.

Lucien's smile was thin-lipped. "Precisely. I trade one father who doesn't care for me, for another who I'd never even met. And now
this
father of mine needs my help. Can you wonder why I don't fully trust the offer?"

For the first time, she didn't have the words to defend Drake.

CHAPTER 13

I 
T TOOK precisely five minutes to break into Rathbourne Manor on the outskirts of Kensington.

Lucien strode into Lord Rathbourne's study, raking the room with a hard gaze as he set the candle he carried on the mantel. Little had changed. Over the mantel hung Lord Rathbourne himself, sneering down at the room, forever caught in his favorite expression. The artist had done a brilliant rendition, all the way down to the thin moustache that flagged Lord Rathbourne's lip and the pinpoint glare of his pupils.

Lucien turned his back on at least one of his ghosts. Rathbourne held no sway over him anymore.

White sheets draped the furnishings, heavy with dust. Until his case was heard later this summer, the courts would hold the property in trust. How Robert would hate that. It gave him some grim amusement, until he realized that this grim mausoleum and the old, ancestral estate were the only things he truly owned in this world, if the courts ruled him sane.

What kind of future was that?

To allay the answer, Lucien paced to the window and flung the heavy velvet draperies back. Within seconds, he was overwhelmed by a miniature dust storm. "Damnation." He coughed, turning away and waving his hand in front of his face to clear the air.

"What did you expect?"

Ianthe stepped inside the study, lifting her pale, oval face to survey the heavy bookshelves. Her creamy skin held no watercolors right now. Her emotions were muted, bearing only a faint, radiant shimmer of amusement. A beautiful woman of ivory tones and faint rosy blushes, wearing a red gown. His gaze slowed as it traced the pale curve of her shoulders. It was difficult to think of her as he once had—as the enemy.

Something hard and tight within him softened as he looked at her.

This was not the mad villainess he'd spent the past year picturing in his revenge-fueled fantasies. She was warm flesh and blood, with her own demons, her own secrets. He wasn't certain he particularly liked this slow-building camaraderie between them, or perhaps he didn't fully trust it, but a part of him was intrigued to discover more about her.

Kindred spirits, in some ways. She alone understood what it felt like to be betrayed by your flesh and blood, or the man you thought was such.

"Here," she said, stepping forward and brushing dust off his coat. "Dust looks like it's going to be the greatest danger here."

He'd been cautious as they entered, however. Lord Rathbourne liked his privacy and had once employed a host of wards and hidden tripwires to all manners of magical mayhem. Nothing of them seemed to remain. They'd faded into dust and air, along with their master. "Hopefully."

"Where would he hide the grimoire?"

"Not here." Lucien crossed to the bookshelf, tugging on some ancient play of Euripides. With a groan, the fireplace began to move.

"Hidden staircases?"

"It gets better. Lord Rathbourne was the sort of sorcerer who liked the darker practices. Anything that gave him power."

"Please tell me we're not going to find bodies down there."

"No. A skull or two, perhaps."

The grinding in the walls slowed. Lucien lifted the candle and waved it into the darkened tunnel.

"Suitably gothic." His proud, invulnerable Miss Martin looked like she was going to faint.

"Are you all right?" Lucien asked her.

Miss Martin let out a slow breath, her eyes darting around. "I'm fine. I'm just not... fond of small dark spaces."