Stranger (7 page)

Gemma, democratic, disliked them on sight.

An attendant approached them, gesturing toward an empty table. They began to pepper the man with questions, which the attendant stammered to answer.

She turned back to Catullus, and now he looked downright dangerous. He tore his gaze from the men and forced himself to look out the window, as if the view fascinated him. “Get up slowly,” he said between gritted teeth. “Don’t draw attention to yourself. Make for the other exit and head straight to our compartment.”

Gemma’s heart kicked. “It’s them, isn’t it? The Heirs.”

“Yes, now
go.
While the attendant has their attention. And don’t look at them.”

She rose up from her seat as casually as she could, all the while aware of the men behind her. Catullus followed suit, and set a handful of coins on the table. Gemma almost smiled. They were trying to evade the deadly Heirs of Albion, and he was
still
leaving tips. A true gentleman.

She and Catullus had just reached the door at the other
end of the car when a man’s voice hissed loudly, “It’s Graves and that woman!”

Neither Gemma nor Catullus wasted any time. He threw open the door, pulled her through to the next car, then slammed the door. Through the glass, she saw the men running toward them.

“Blast,” Catullus growled. “Can’t lock the door. Run.”

Gemma went as fast as she could, plunging down the aisle of the second-class car as confused passengers watched from their seats. She heard Catullus close at her heels.

Through another carriage, and another. At her back came the sounds of the adjoining doors opening and slamming shut, men’s footsteps hurrying toward her and Catullus. She glanced quickly at some of the passengers watching the spectacle. Couldn’t someone help?

She reached another door. Two cars down was their compartment. Once they reached it, she wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but reach it they must. At the least, Astrid and Lesperance could lend a hand. Four against two offered better odds.

Gemma pulled open another door and started up the aisle, but turned when she did not hear Catullus behind her. He stood on an empty seat beside the door, bending to keep from knocking against the luggage rack overhead. She saw at once what he meant to do. His position kept him hidden from the advancing Heirs.

The men entered the carriage, and Catullus leapt. He slammed a fist into the jaw of the stout man, who stumbled back and into the path of his companion. The two Heirs tangled for a moment, lurching.

“What the devil?” cried a middle-aged passenger, observing. “No brawling on the train!”

“My apologies,” Catullus said, sprinting toward Gemma. He took her hand, and they both ran together.

Within a moment, they arrived at their private compartment. Astrid and Lesperance, huddled close, hands
interlaced and speaking in low, intimate tones, broke apart at the entrance of Gemma and Catullus.

Lesperance looked at both their faces and rose to standing. “Heirs,” he said immediately.

Astrid swore, also seeing the truth. She too leapt to her feet.

“Must’ve gotten on the train at Shrewsbury.” Catullus grabbed his baggage as well as Gemma’s battered little carpetbag. “Have to get off now.”

No one argued. With movements so swift as to be almost instantaneous, all the bags were collected and the compartment vacated.

“That way.” Catullus indicated they move toward the front of the train.

As everyone hurried away, Gemma dared to venture, “The train’s
moving,
you know.”

“Counting on it.” Catullus kept throwing glances over his shoulder, to see if they were being followed. And, damn it, they were. The Heirs had recovered their footing, though one of them already sported a swelling jaw, and cut through the narrow, rocking passages of the first-class compartments.

Gemma didn’t know how long English trains were, and was afraid to find out. Once she and the Blades reached the engine, she had no idea what they planned on doing. Maybe throw the Heirs into the furnace?

She collided with Lesperance’s solid back as he stopped short. Gemma braced her hands against him to right herself.

“Accident,” she muttered when Astrid glared at her.

“What’s the matter, Astrid?” Catullus asked behind Gemma. “Why’d you stop?”

Astrid rattled the solid door in front of her. It didn’t even have a window. “Locked.”

They all glanced back to reverse their course, but just then the Heirs appeared at the other end of the carriage. No way back, couldn’t go forward. Trapped.

“Get to the side,” Catullus growled. “I’ll kick it open.”

But Gemma’s restraining hand held him back. “Not necessary.” She quickly edged forward until she stood in front of the locked door.

And opened it.

Both Catullus and Lesperance chuckled in appreciation, and then they all hastily entered the carriage ahead. Catullus slammed the door shut behind them right before the Heirs caught up.

The two Heirs pounded on the locked door, shouting threats so crude, even Gemma blanched. And then one of the Heirs began to throw himself against the door. It rattled hard, threatening to open.

Gemma looked around. She and the Blades were in what appeared to be a mail coach, with heavy canvas bags filled with letters lined up on the floor and on racks. No windows, no external doors. Two hinged hatches were set into the ceiling, allowing thin slivers of sunlight to filter into the tightly crammed coach.

“And now?” she asked Catullus.

“Now,” he answered, looking up, “we make our departure.”

“Sod this,” snarled Draycott. He drew his pistol and shot the lock off the door.

“Careful!” Forton threw up his arms to shield himself from flying wood and metal.

But Draycott didn’t spare Forton a glance as he threw open the door. He stepped into the coach with his pistol ready.

He and Forton found themselves in a mail coach crowded with sacks of letters and wrapped parcels. And no Blades.

“Where are they?” Forton bleated.

“How the bloody hell should I know?” Draycott scowled
at the empty coach. When he reported back, Edgeworth would be furious. Two of the most important Blades had been in their grasp, and slipped away. Again.

And
where
the devil had they gone to? They had disappeared, and Draycott almost believed that the Blades had broken their own fool directive to never use magic. With an oath, Draycott shoved his way past Forton out of the coach, never seeing the unlocked hatch above him.

“Tuck in your arms and legs,” Catullus shouted to her. “And let yourself roll.”

Gemma, balanced on the junction between the mail coach and the next carriage, eyed the speeding ground with a combination of terror and excitement. The bags had already been thrown off, and both Astrid and Lesperance had leapt off soon after. If they’d survived, she had no way of knowing.

Her choice was either to go back into the mail coach and risk the Heirs, or throw herself off of a racing train.

At her hesitation, Catullus took her hand and gave it an encouraging squeeze. “I’ll be right beside you,” he shouted. “Trust me.” And he actually winked at her before tucking his spectacles into an inside coat pocket.

She actually
did
trust him, and having him beside her
did
give her confidence. So, with a nod and a smile, she crouched, readying herself.

Her movements made him smile, admiring. Then he, too, prepared himself to leap.

“On my count,” he yelled. “One … two … three …
jump!”

Gemma threw herself into the air.

The only thought careening through Catullus’s head as he flew through the air was,
God, please let her be safe.
Jumping off speeding trains wasn’t something he did daily, but he had enough experience with it to feel confident about landing without being hurt. Gemma, however, was new to his world. She could be hurt. Or worse.

He hit the ground, pulling his arms in close to take the impact. Rolling, he tumbled down a low hill. He smothered a curse as he bounced over a rock, but then, mercifully, the hill ended and he came to rest in a ditch. He heard the distant sound of the train speeding away, but no Heirs in pursuit.

The Blades and Gemma had gotten away. For now, they were safe. Or maybe not.

His eyes opened to find himself staring up at a curious sheep. It stared at him with black, ovine eyes before trotting off with a bleat. Catullus took a mere moment to be sure that all his limbs were still functioning before sitting up. He looked around quickly; then his heart pitched.

Gemma lay on the ground, a few feet away. And she wasn’t moving.

He scrambled over to her, a litany of swearing tumbling from his lips. She lay on her back, one arm flung overhead, the other resting on her stomach. Tiny cuts and scrapes dotted her face and hands, and her hair had come down into a mass of copper waves.

He knew better than to try to move her right away, but he had to restrain himself from gathering her up in his arms.

“Gemma?”

No answer.

He said her name again, then bent low to her mouth, where, saints be praised, he felt the stirring of her breath. Gently taking up her wrist, he felt for her pulse, and it came steadily against his fingertips.

Catullus brushed strands of her satiny hair from her face.

“Gemma?”

Then, she moaned softly, and her eyes flittered open. He thought he might shout with joy to have those sapphire eyes on him again.

“Catullus,” she whispered. “The Heirs?”

“Gone, for the moment.”

She blinked, coming back into herself, then tried to push herself upright.

“Careful. Don’t move. Are you hurt anywhere?”

She shook her head slightly, but the motion made her gaze unfocused. “Dizzy.”

“Rolling down a hill tends to do that to a person.” He felt anything but droll, however. “I’m checking you for injuries. Let me know if anything pains you.”

His hands moved over her, impersonal—or he tried to be. He tested her arms, her hands, and gained his first true understanding of her slim, strong body. When he progressed to her feet and legs, he struggled to remain objective. This was simply a matter of field doctoring, the same as he’d done hundreds of times in his life for himself and other Blades.

Except it wasn’t. Gemma Murphy was not a Blade, and his
body somehow knew the difference. He tested her slender ankles with gentle attention, trying like hell to dampen his reaction to her. “Does this hurt?”

“No.”

Her legs needed to be checked for breaks or sprains. Over the skirt, or under it? He had to be thorough. “I’m sorry, but—” His hands slid under her skirt to touch her calves.

Some mystic in India once taught Catullus special breathing techniques to help gather his thoughts, calm his mind and body when the world grew too present. Catullus drew upon every drop of that training to help him now.

Good God, she had gorgeous legs. He could not see them, but he could feel with a greater sensitivity. The muscles of her calf were sleek and lithe beneath the coarse knit of her stockings, not the calf of a leisured lady who reclined upon a chaise all day, but the kind that attested to an active life full of motion and purpose. And, damn him, if he didn’t find that unbearably arousing.

He wanted so badly to take his hands up farther, over her knee, across her thighs to feel those muscles and the band of bare flesh above her stockings. But he could not. That would be a violation.

He pulled his shaking hands away, and carefully smoothed down her skirts. “Try moving your legs.”

Her skirts rustled as she did this. He set his teeth against the sound.

She said, “They’re fine.”

“What about … your ribs? Are they bruised?”

She made to bring her hands up to feel them, but the movements were fitful as she struggled to regain her strength. “I don’t know.”

“May I?” He was a tongue-tied boy again, simple words stuttering in his mouth.

“Yes, please.”

So he lowered himself beside her, and, at her nod, ran his hands along her sides. Her dress was worn thin, and he felt
beneath the fabric the material of her corset, each individual lace and hook that constrained her body. It was a corset for traveling, lightly boned, so that he knew now, to his deep joy and dismay, that the curves of her waist were entirely hers and not the result of a corsetmaker’s art.

What he wouldn’t give to slide his hands up higher, cup those exquisite, full breasts in his hands. He had large hands, but she would spill from them with their abundance. He wanted to touch her so badly, his own breath sawed through him, louder than a steam engine.

“Does this hurt?” he asked, hoarse. Because it was hurting him.

Beneath his hands, her breathing quickened. “N-no.” She stared at him, eyes wide but unafraid, and her soft, pink lips parted slightly. “It feels … nice.”

He was braced over her now, his body stretched alongside hers, so that he had only to lower his head to touch his lips to hers. Thoughts of the Heirs, the Primal Source all dissolved like vapor beneath the sun of his and her shared awareness. Her gaze flicked down to his mouth, as well, and the dropping of her lashes and flush spreading across her cheeks revealed that not only had she shared his thought, but wanted it, too. What would she taste like? Both the scientist and the man within him needed to find out.

Slowly, slowly he bent lower, suspended in liquid time. His heart slammed within the cage of his chest, and he was tight and hard everywhere. He cradled the juncture of her neck and jaw, feeling the rush of her pulse at that tender convergence. Such delicacy. Combined with remarkable strength.

“You’re a very courageous woman,” he breathed, close enough to count freckles.

She brought her hand up to curve around the back of his head. “I know,” she answered.

He smiled at that, a small smile. And then he stopped smiling, because he kissed her.

Soft, at first. Just the brush of lips. Then more. Her mouth was silken, yielding, yet had its own demands. When he deepened the kiss, she met him with an equal need, opening her lips to take him inside, her tongue touching his without hesitation.

Heat tore through him with the strength of a firestorm. He’d never experienced in his life a kiss this potent, overwhelming him with desire. Catullus, rousing even more, took the kiss further, slipping from the reins of his control. Had he some sense of himself, he might have been shocked at the way he was devouring her. But she devoured him, in turn, and so he had no sense of himself. No sense of anything but his need for her, the taste of her, which, he learned, was the taste of summer fruit warmed in the sun. Sweet and ripe.

And so damned responsive. As they kissed, she moaned softly into his mouth, her fingers gripping tighter on the back of his head. His free hand began its ascent, tracing the curvature of her ribs, and then higher, until it brushed the underside of her breast.

Sweet heaven, yes.

“I see you survived the jump.”

Catullus broke the kiss and looked up with hazy eyes to see Astrid and Lesperance standing some five yards away. Lesperance trained his gaze studiously on a nearby farm outbuilding, as if it was truly fascinating. But Astrid stared at Catullus with her arms crossed over her chest, wearing a distinctly frosty expression.

Catullus felt like a boy caught just before supper with a mouthful of plum cake.

He edged back from Gemma. “Yes, well … Gemma … Miss Murphy had, ah, taken quite a tumble—”

“Or was about to,” Lesperance said,
sotto voce.

Catullus glowered at Lesperance, but had recovered enough to get to his feet. Thank God he had on his overcoat, or else he’d treat Astrid, Lesperance, Gemma, and the sheep
grazing nearby to the sight of his aching erection. The cashmere coat provided a welcome bit of privacy.

He held out a hand to Gemma. “Can you stand?”

She nodded, and slid her hand into his. The feel of her skin against his own ensured that he’d have to wear his coat for a good while longer.

Catullus helped her to standing, and he couldn’t stop himself from noticing her lips, red from kissing, and the riotous mass of her unbound hair cascading over her shoulders. She looked like a woman moments from being ravished.

He felt both exhilarated and appalled by his behavior. The Heirs could, even now, have reached the next station and be heading back to finish what they’d begun on the train. Meanwhile, Catullus had been caressing and kissing a woman in a ditch—a
ditch!
—as if powerless to stop himself from the pull of desire between them. He’d never done anything like that, not once, in the whole of his existence. Why, after forty-one years, would he do something like that now?

It was her. A woman unlike any other he’d ever met. Gemma Murphy, watching him with her crystalline eyes and flushed, freckled cheeks.

“Are you truly all right?” he asked her lowly. He’d flog himself before hurting or taking advantage of her.

“I really am,” she answered. “And this has been one of the most interesting days of my life,” she breathed for his ears alone. A tiny smile bowed the corners of her mouth.

Her smile held both a woman’s experience and a girl’s freshness, and Catullus, a rational man of sober temperament and restraint, felt against reason a small gleam of happiness.

But reality set in. And his happiness winked out, like a doused lamp.

“The day isn’t half over. And neither is the danger.”

They would have to keep to bridle paths and game trails. The main road was far too trafficked for safety. If the Heirs knew enough to put some of their men on the correct Southampton-bound train, they’d have the roads watched, too. Time, always in short supply, became even more scarce.

So, collecting their strewn baggage, Catullus, Gemma, Lesperance, and Astrid quickly made their way to a narrow, seldom-used path running parallel to the main southern road. Horseback would be faster, but more conspicuous, leaving the party one option—to proceed on foot.

Catullus tried to calculate the number of miles to Southampton, how long they would be vulnerable on the road, on foot. England’s great forests were mostly gone under the plow, or felled to make room for yet more urban development. Wide fields and roads were fine if one didn’t mind traveling completely exposed. He missed the forests of Canada, or the wild barrens of the Gobi Desert. At least there one could journey hidden in the landscape. England’s sedate pastures left him, Astrid, Lesperance, and Gemma far too open to attack.

He wanted to stay vigilant, but his mind kept fogging. It probably wasn’t a good idea to have Gemma walk in front of him. He was mesmerized by the unconscious sway of her hips as she moved, as well as the way she looked about her, taking in the landscape with an alert and eager eye.

He rather wished she would put her hair back up. But she hadn’t, and he became equally enthralled by the gleaming mass as it trailed down her back in brilliant waves.

Catullus made himself study the surrounding land, the familiar world of hedgerows and paddocks, stiles and hay-fields. Underneath all these quotidian sights lay ominous threats. The Heirs could be anywhere, and had many means of spying.

He and the others couldn’t reach Southampton fast enough. He hated having Gemma vulnerable in any way, and could not fail her when it came to her protection. And
he needed to focus all his faculties on the issues at hand. There were so damned many issues: the Heirs and the Primal Source, the inevitable battle that could very well determine the fate of the world. He couldn’t allow his thoughts to be muddled by overwhelming, surprising desire for a female American journalist. Once she was safe at headquarters, he could devote himself fully to the mission.

It did not help that whenever he turned his gaze from Gemma, he found Astrid staring at him with concern. He and Astrid were good friends, and he’d worried about her terribly when she’d retreated into the Canadian wilderness. Now it was her turn to worry about him—though he wasn’t entirely sure what she protected him from. Certainly not Gemma Murphy. Or, did Astrid see something in her that Catullus didn’t?

He couldn’t believe that Astrid was jealous. Not with her heart so fully given to Lesperance. Only two other times had Catullus witnessed such a powerful bond between lovers: Thalia Burgess and her husband, Gabriel Huntley; and Bennett Day and his wife, London Harcourt. Astrid loved Lesperance just as deeply. Further, Catullus and Astrid had always been strictly platonic friends. So she did not resent Gemma for a romantic reason. But why, then?

“How wide a net do you think the Heirs have over this area?” he asked Astrid, to keep his mind on track.

“There’s no way to know,” she answered.

“We could be walking right into them,” said Lesperance.

“Perhaps it would be wise to do some reconnaissance, before moving on.” Catullus wished he had more than a spyglass with him, but he’d had to leave behind his larger pieces of equipment in the haste to return to England. He might be able to fashion something—though the surrounding farmland didn’t leave him much to work with.

Nearby, a shaggy pony at the edge of a field looked up from cropping grass and watched them. It wore a halter. Perhaps he could salvage some of the leather and metal….

Astrid halted, bringing the whole group to a stop. “How do you suggest we attempt that?”

Catullus scanned the surroundings, then spotted a densely wooded dell to the west. “Astrid, you’re one of the Blades’ best scouts.” She did not contradict him. “You can take that pony and reconnoiter. Lesperance, you can … provide aerial assistance.”

Gemma frowned in confusion, but Lesperance understood.