Stranger (48 page)

Yet gently, he put a hand on London’s waist and began to guide her away. Stunned by the strange turn of events, she let him steer her from the booth.

“All right?” he asked her in English. A concerned, warm smile gilded his features. “That apoplectic huckster didn’t hurt you, did he?”

London shook her head, still somewhat dazed by what had just happened, but more so by the attractiveness of the man walking at her side. She felt the warmth of his hand at her back and knew it was improper, but she couldn’t move
away or even regret the impertinence. “His insults weren’t very creative.”

He chuckled at this and the sound curled like fragrant smoke low in her belly. “I’ll go back and show him how it’s done.”

“Oh, no,” she answered at once. “I think you educated him enough for one day.”

Even as he smiled at her, he sent hard warning glances at whomever stared at her. “So what had his fez in a pinch?”

She held up and unfolded her hand, which still held the shard of pottery. “We were disputing this, but, gracious, I forgot I still had it. Maybe I should give it back.”

He plucked the piece of pottery from her hand. As he did this, the tips of his fingers brushed her bare palm. A hot current sparked to life where he touched. She could not prevent the shiver of awareness that ran through her body. She met his gaze, and sank into their cool aquatic depths as he stared back. This felt stronger than attraction. Something that resounded through the innermost recesses of herself, in deep, liquid notes, like a melody or song one might sing to bring the world into being. And it seemed he felt it, too, in the slight breath he drew in, the straightening of his posture. Breaking away from his gaze, London snatched her glove from Sally, who trailed behind them with a look of severe disapproval. London tugged on the glove.

He cleared his throat, then gave her back the pottery. “Keep it. Consider it his tribute.”

She put it into her reticule, though it felt strange to take something she did not pay for.

“Thank you for coming to my aid,” she said as they continued to walk. “I admit that getting into arguments with vendors in Monastiraki wasn’t at the top of my list of Greek adventures.”

“The best part about adventures is that you can’t plan them.”

She laughed. “Spoken like a true adventurer.”

“Done my share,” he grinned. “Ambushing bandits by the Khaznah temple in the cliffs of Petra. Climbing volcanoes in the steam-shrouded interior of Iceland.”

“Sounds wonderful,” admitted London with a candor that surprised herself. She felt, oddly, that she could trust this English stranger with her most prized secrets. “Even what happened back there at that booth was marvelous, in its way. I don’t
want
to get into a fight, but it’s such a delight to finally be out here, in the world, truly experiencing things.”

“Including hot, dusty, crowded Athens.”

“Especially
hot, dusty, crowded Athens.”

“My, my,” he murmured, looking down at her with approval. “A swashbuckling lady. Such a rare treasure.”

Wryly, she asked, “Treasure, or aberration?”

He stopped walking and gazed at her with an intensity that caught in her chest. “Treasure. Most definitely.”

Again, he left her stunned. She was nearly certain that any man would find a woman’s desire for experience and adventure to be at best ridiculous, at worst, offensive. Yet here was this stranger who not only didn’t dismiss her feelings, but actually approved and, yes, admired them. What a city of wonders was this Athens! Although, London suspected, it was not the city so much as the man standing in front of her that proved wondrous.

“So tell me, fellow adventurer,” she said, finding her voice, “from whence do you come? What exotic port of call?” She smiled. “Dover? Plymouth? Southampton?”

A glint of wariness cooled his eyes. “I don’t see why it matters.”

Strange, the abrupt change in him. “I thought that’s what one did when meeting a fellow countryman abroad,” she said. “Find out where they come from. If you know the same people.” When he continued to look at her guardedly, she demonstrated, “’Oh, you’re from Manchester? Do you know Jane?’”

The chill in his blue eyes thawed, and he smiled. “Of course, Jane! Makes the worst meat pies. Dresses like a Anglican bishop.”

“So you
do
know her!”

They shared a laugh, two English strangers in the chaos of an Athenian market, and London felt within her a swell of happiness rising like a spring tide. As if in silent agreement, they continued to stroll together in a companionable silence. With a long-limbed, loose stride, he walked beside her. He hooked his thumbs into the pockets of his simple, well-cut waistcoat, the picture of a healthy young man completely comfortable with himself. And why shouldn’t he be? No man had been so favored by Nature’s hand. She realized that he hadn’t told her where he was from, but she wouldn’t press the issue, enjoying the glamour of the unknown.

His presence beside her was tangible, a continuous pulse of uncivilized living energy, as though being escorted by a large and untamed mountain cat that vacillated between eating her and dragging her off to its lair.

In November, get lost in the
Canadian wilderness with REBEL …

On the Canadian frontier in 1875, nature is a harsh
mistress. But the supernatural can really do you in …

Nathan Lesperance is used to being different. He’s the first Native attorney in Vancouver, and welcome neither with white society nor his sometime tribe. Not to mention the powerful wildness he’s always felt inside him, too dangerous to set free. Then he met Astrid Bramfield and saw his like within her piercing eyes. Now, unless she helps him through the harsh terrain and the harsher unknowns of his true abilities, it could very well get him killed …

Astrid has traveled this path before. Once she was a Blade of the Rose protecting the world’s magic from unscrupulous men, with her husband by her side. But she’s loved and lost, and as a world-class frontierswoman, she knows all about survival. Nathan’s searing gaze and long, lean muscles mean nothing but trouble. Yet something has ignited a forgotten flame inside her: a burning need for adventure, for life—and perhaps even for love …

He had looked into her. Not merely seen her hunger for living, but felt it, too. She saw that at once. He recognized it in her. Two creatures, meeting by chance, staring at one another warily. And with reluctant longing.

Yet it wasn’t only that immediate connection she had felt when meeting Lesperance. There was magic surrounding him.

Astrid wondered if Lesperance even knew how magic hovered over him, how it surrounded him like a lover, leaving patterns of nearly visible energy in his wake. She didn’t think he was conscious of it. Nothing in his manner suggested anything of the sort. Nathan Lesperance, incredibly, was utterly unaware that he was a magical being. Not metaphorical magic, but
true
magic.

She knew, however. Astrid had spent more than ten years surrounded by magic of almost every form. Some of it benevolent, like the Healing Mists of Ho Hsien-Ku, some of it dark, such as the Javanese serpent king Naga Pahoda, though most magic was neither good nor evil. It simply

was.
And Astrid recognized it, particularly when sharing a very small space, as the Mounties’ office had been.

If Nathan Lesperance’s fierce attractiveness and unwanted understanding did not drive Astrid from the trading post, back to the shelter of her solitary homestead, then the magic enveloping him certainly would. She wanted nothing more to do with magic. It had cost her love once before, and she would not allow it to hurt her again.

But something had changed. She’d felt it, not so long ago. Magic existed like a shining web over the world, binding it together with filaments of energy. Being near magic for many years made her especially sensitive to it. When she returned from Africa, that sensitivity had grown even more acute. She tried to block it out, especially when she left England, but it never truly went away.

Only a few weeks earlier, Astrid had been out tending to her horse when a deep, rending sensation tore through her, sending her to her knees. She’d knelt in the dirt, choking, shaking, until she’d gained her strength again and tottered inside. Eventually, the pain subsided, but not the sense of looming catastrophe. Something had shaken and split the magical web. A force greater than anyone had ever known. And to release it meant doom.

What was it? The Blades had to know, how to avert the disaster. They would fight against it, as they always did. But without her.

A memory flitted through her mind. Months earlier, she’d had a dream and it had stayed with her vividly. She dreamt of her Compass, of the Blades, and heard someone calling her, calling her home. Astrid had dismissed the dream as a vestige of homesickness, which reared up now and again, especially after she’d been alone for so long.

The jingle of her horse’s bridle snapped her attention back to the present. She cursed herself for drifting. A moment’s distraction could easily lead to death out here. Stumbling between a bear sow and her cub. Crossing paths
with vicious whiskey runners. A thousand ways to die. So when her awareness suddenly prickled once again, Astrid did not dismiss it.

A rustle, and movement behind her. Astrid swung her horse around, taking up her rifle, to confront who or whatever was there.

She blinked, hardly believing what she saw. A man walked through tall grasses lining the pass trail. He walked with steady but dazed steps, hardly aware of his surroundings. He was completely naked.

“Lesperance?”

Astrid turned her horse on the trail and urged it closer. Dear God, it
was
Lesperance. She decocked her rifle and slung it back over her shoulder.

He didn’t seem to hear her, so she said again, coming nearer, “Mr. Lesperance?” She could see now, only ten feet away, that cuts, scrapes and bruises covered his body. His very nude, extremely well-formed body. She snapped her eyes to his face before they could trail lower than his navel. “What happened to you?”

His gaze, dark and blank, regarded her with a removed curiosity, as if she was a little bird perched on a windowsill. He stopped walking and stared at her.

Astrid dismounted at once, pulling a blanket from her pack. Within moments, she wrapped it around his waist, took his large hand in hers, and coaxed his fingers to hold the blanket closed. Then she pulled off her coat and draped it over his shoulders. Despite the fact that the coat was quite large on Astrid, it barely covered his shoulders, and the sleeves stuck out like wings. In other circumstances, he would have looked comical. But there was nothing faintly amusing about this situation.

Magic still buzzed around him, though somewhat dimmer than before.

“Where are your clothes? How did you get here? Are you badly hurt?”

None of her questions penetrated the fog enveloping him. She bent closer to examine his wounds. Some of the cuts were deep, as though made by knives, and rope abrasions circled his wrists. Bruises shadowed his knees and knuckles. Blood had dried in the corners of his mouth. Nothing looked serious, but out in the wilderness, even the most minor injury held the potential for disaster. And, without clothing, not even a Native inured to the changeable weather could survive. He was in shock, just beginning to shake.

“Lesperance,” she said, taking hold of his wide shoulders and staring into his eyes intently, “listen to me. I need to see to your wounds. We’re going to have to ride back to my cabin.”

“Astrid …” he murmured with a slow blink, then his nostrils flared like a beast scenting its mate. A hungry look crossed his face. “Astrid.”

It was unexpected, given the circumstances, yet seeing that look of need, hearing him say her name, filled her with a responding desire. “Mrs. Bramfield,” she reminded him. And herself. They were polite strangers.

“Astrid,” he said, more insistent. He reached up to touch her face.

She grabbed his hand, pulling it away from her face. At least she wore gloves, so she didn’t have to touch his bare skin. “Come on.” Astrid gently tugged him toward her horse. Once beside the animal, she swung up into the saddle, put her rifle across her lap, and held a hand out to him. He stared at it with a frown, as though unfamiliar with the phenomenon of hands.

“We have to go
now,
Lesperance,” Astrid said firmly. “Those wounds of yours need attention, and whatever or whoever did this to you is probably still out there.”

He cast a look around, seeming to find a shred of clarity in the hazy morass of his addled brain. Something dark and angry crossed his face. He took a step away, as if he meant
to go after whoever had hurt him. His hands curled into fists. Insanity. He was unarmed, naked, wounded.
“Now,”
Astrid repeated.

Somehow, she got through to him. He took her hand and, with a dexterity that surprised her, given his condition, mounted up behind her.

God, she didn’t want to do this. But there was no other choice. “Put your arms around my waist,” she said through gritted teeth. When he did so, she added, “Hold tightly to me. Not that tight,” she gasped as his grip turned to bands of steel. He loosened his hold slightly. “Good. Do not let go. Do you understand?”

He nodded, then winced as if the movement gave him pain. “Can’t stay up.”

“Lean against me if you have to.” She mentally groaned when he did just that, and she felt him, even through her bulky knitted vest, shirt, and sturdy trousers. Heavy and hard and solid with muscle. Everywhere. His arms, his chest, his thighs, pressed against hers. Astrid closed her eyes for a moment as she felt his warm breath along the nape of her neck.

“All set?” she asked, barely able to form the words around her clenched jaw.

He tried to nod again but the effort made him moan. The plaintive sound, coming from such a strong, potent man, pulled tight on feelings Astrid didn’t want to have.

“Thank … you,” he said faintly.

She didn’t answer him. Instead, she kicked her horse into a gallop, knowing deep in her heart that she was making a terrible mistake.