The Queen of Swords: A Paranormal Tale of Undying Love (7 page)

“But I
want
you to darken my door.”

“Christ, lass,” he ground out
, shaking his head. “Do you have a bloody death wish?”

She gave him a sharp look. “I’m supposed to be asking the questions, remember?”

“So, you’re going to keep me here.” His fingers powered his hair. “No matter what?”

He saw the flash of a grin.
“That’s the plan.”

Shifting his weight, he
pulled up his left knee to ease the strain on his back. He licked his lips, tasting her mouth on his. He liked the familiar flavor of her, liked the kiss. Too much for both their goods. If she meant to keep him spellbound all weekend—and it appeared she did—there didn’t seem to be much he could do about it. And talking seemed a safer way to pass the time than the alternative. As much as he longed to lay with her again, he must keep his feet firmly on the tightrope.

“I should like to tell
you the story of my life then,” he offered, hoping she’d catch the reference. “I would like to do that very much.”

Though h
er face was in darkness, he could see her smile. It let him know she’d understood, even before she said, “That’s the spirit, Louis.”

* * *

She watched from the bed, leaning on a pair of pillows propped against the brass headboard, as he climbed to his feet and slowly walked across the room toward the window. For a long time he stood there, backlit by intermittent flashes of lightning. It was lighter now—was dawn breaking?—and she could see the humble furnishings in her small bedroom. The desk just across where her neglected dissertation waited, the altar where the spell candle flickered, the chair in the corner piled with re-wearable clothes, the bookcase crammed with vampire novels and Scottish romances.

Funny how the man at the window was an amalgamated personification of the two genres she loved best. Was it a bleed-through from her past lives? She licked her lips, but kept quiet, waiting for him to begin. The scene reminded her uncannily of the opening of
Interview with the Vampire
, in which Louis turned on the light to prove to the boy he was as he claimed.

Graham was fair-skinned
too, but not in a ghoulish way. Her eyes brushed his long, copper hair, dyed silver by the night. It looked thick and silky and she yearned to touch it. He still wore the white shirt and dark trousers from the pub, but was now sans jacket, not surprising given how she’d sucked him out of the comfort of his home in the middle of the night. What if he’d already been in bed? Something deliciously wicked twitched in her belly. What did he sleep in? What would she have done if he’d arrived without a stitch? What would
he
have done?

“Do
you want me to turn on a light?”

“N
ay.”

“Do
you fancy a cigarette? They’re not your brand, but—”

He turned to face her, his hair sheening like pencil on paper.
“Aye.” His eyes shone out of the darkness like a wolf’s. “A cigarette would do.”

Sitting up, she
opened the nightstand drawer, flushing as
The Rampant Cock
winked up at her. Ignoring the book, she fished around for the hard-pack of
Marlboro Lights
she kept there for emergencies. She started to hunt for her disposable lighter and then remembered she’d used it for the spell. Climbing off the bed, cigarettes in hand, she crossed to the altar, grabbed the lighter and approached him, again feeling the famished fledgling squirming at her core.

He took a cigarette, but refused the lighter with a wave of his hand. He pressed the filter between his lips
with one hand as he plunged the other into the front right pocket of his trousers. The lighter glinted as he pulled it out.

“How long have
you had that?”

“What?” he asked
, the cigarette dangling from his seductive lips. “Oh, the lighter.” A strange expression came over his face as he studied it—a mixture of nostalgia and regret? “A hundred years. Catharine bought it for me. An engagement present.”

She felt jealousy’s
hot lance, but quickly reminded herself there was no cause. She had been Catharine, after all. She studied the lighter as he lit up. It bore an engraving, but she could not make out the tiny, worn inscription.

“What does it say?”

He smiled at her, eyes twinkling with mischief. “It doesn’t speak so far as I ken.”

“Ha
-ha.” She pulled a face, but liked his sense of humor. “I meant the engraving, smartass.”

Something flashed in her mind. A moment in snapshot. Her giving him the lighter in a red box stamped
Cartier.
Then, she knew. The inscription was in French and read, “I will always love you.”

The next second, he said the words,
sending a chill up her backbone. As the shiver snaked through her, he turned back to the window and looked out at the rain while he smoked. She wanted so badly to go to him, to touch him, to put her arms around him, to feel his arms around her, but she lacked the courage to initiate contact. What if he pushed her away? What if he didn’t? She was equally terrified of both possibilities.

Lighting a cigarette of her own, she
took it to the bed and reclaimed her perch against the pillows and headboard. Her heart panged as her gaze swept over the tarot cards beside her. Was Death the card of her future? Would she end the way Catharine had? Drained of blood and dumped somewhere like a worthless bag of rubbish?

Swallowing, she dragged her eyes away from the cards and let them roam. The cottage had come furnished, so everything in it
but the altar, her magical supplies, and her personal possessions belonged to the university. She straightened her robe and toked her cigarette, suddenly aware of the smallness of the footprint she’d made in this life so far. She taught, but otherwise her existence was insular, singular. His footprint, in contrast, was enormous, making her feel painfully inconsequential.

“Where would
you like me to start?
Ab initio
or
in medias res
?”

His use of the Latin literary terms for “from the beginning” and “in the midst of things” surprised her, though it probably shouldn’t have. Of course, he
’d know Latin. He’d been a Scottish nobleman in the eighteenth century. He’d have recieved a classical education. He also spoke French and probably Gaelic, given his Highland roots.

“
Ab initio.
”

He took a minute
to organize his thoughts. “I can’t remember everything. A lot has faded over time. Like a lithograph exposed to too much light. But I will relay what I can.”

In the silence that followed, s
he heard him suck on his cigarette and saw the cloud he exhaled wreath his hair. The connection between them felt like a fraying rope bridge spanning a chasm. She longed to cross it but feared it might break, plunging her into the abyss below.

At last, he went on, his voice low, his words tinted with the
sepia of another time. “I was born on Christmas Eve in the year seventeen hundred and eighty four. ’Twas a Friday, at the stroke of midnight, and by all reports, my head crowned just as the clock began to strike the hour. I had a caul, which was sold to one Angus MacGregor, a victim of the clearings who was bound for Nova Scotia on the tide.”

How odd.
She too had been born with a caul, a rare and harmless membrane around the head and face of a newborn. Was it significant they’d both been born with one?

He
pulled on his cigarette and, while exhaling, glanced at her from over his shoulder. “Do you ken about the clearings?”

She nodded.
Her fascination with Scotland extended to its history. The clearings or clearances were a terrible time when the chiefs of the Highland clans evicted their tenant farmers, most their own kinsmen, so they could rent the land for sheep grazing.

“I still remember the smoke when they burned the cottages so those driven out couldn’t return
,” he said, returning his gaze to the window. “And seeing those poor, turned-out families in the glens with everything they owned strapped to their stooped backs.” His voice took on a faraway quality as he added, “It’s strange what I remember. And what I’ve forgotten.”

She could not imagine living so long a life. Nor could she imagine living her
s, brief in comparison, without him in it. Even though they’d only just met, it was as if he’d always been part of her, but dormant or hibernating.

“My mother ought to have kept it
.” His voice was still pensive and distant. “Or, at the very least, let me keep it.”

She knew he meant the caul, but didn’t understand
why anyone should want to keep such a thing. “Why?”

He
turned and met her eyes, his expression drawn and grim. “Because, in another of God’s cruel ironies, she drowned. Along with my father. Orphaning me at the age of sixteen.”

He
turned back to the window, folded his arms, and smoked in pregnant silence for what seemed an eternity. She didn’t press him to continue. Clearly, the memory of his parents gave him pain. Would she grieve for hers two hundred years hence? Would she miss them at all? Somehow, she doubted it.

“Why should your mother have let you keep it? The caul, I mean.”

“Because a caul is also said to be a talisman against the dark arts.”

His words, soft and strained with emotion, made her think.
If his “curse,” as he called it, was a product of dark magick, it might be possible to break it.

“They say those born with a caul possess preternatural abilities, though I was unaware of any special powers. I could not even see the
spirit said to reside in my own castle.”

She could see spirits. Was her caul the reason? Was it also the source of her other abilities?
“Who haunts your castle?”

“
My Granda, supposedly. The caretaker claims to have seen him, though I never have.”

She smiled at his use of
Granda,
the Scots term for grandfather. “Did you know him in life?”

“Aye. We were very close for a time.”

“Will you tell me about him?”

“If I start, I shall never stop.”

He went quiet again and she could feel the emotion radiating off of him in waves. Did he know her true purpose in summoning him? Could he read her mind? He started toward her, quickening her pulse, but only put out his cigarette in the ashtray on the nightstand. He then stood there a long moment gazing down at her, looking very much as he had in her vision. She bit her lip as the same longing she’d felt then pulsed through her again.

She swallowed again.
“Will you sit by me?”

“Believe me, lass,” he said with chilling gravity. “When
you’ve heard the rest, you’ll wish me as far away as possible.”             

She
pulled her gaze away from his and lowered it to her hands, which were twisting in her lap. What might he say to make her wish him far away?

“Have
you...killed people?”

“
Only two.” He took a breath, still hovering over her like a buzzard. “Outside of war.”

Her heart jolted when his arm shot out, but he only reached for her cigarettes. As he lit one, she wondered about the war he’d mentioned. There had been many during his lifetime. In which had he fought? She
wanted to know, but at this moment was far more interested in the murders he’d committed off the battlefield.

“
Who’d you kill and why?”

The question made him visibly tense.
“The first was”—he stopped to heave a sigh—“well, let’s just say I’ll always regret it and leave it at that, eh?”

She blinked at him, unsure if she should let it go. Deciding she would for now, she asked,
“What about the second?”

“That was deliberate
.” His voice took on a hard edge. “And believe me, that blackheart got what he deserved.”

Taking a pull on his
cigarette, he drew the smoke deeply into his lungs before blowing it out through his nose. His eyes brushed over her, leaving tingles in their wake. She wanted him so badly, she could hardly think straight. Being under her control, he couldn’t refuse her if she commanded him to take her. Still, she’d rather wait and let things develop organically.

Turning abruptly, he
walked back to the window. Her gaze roamed over his backside. His hands were clasped over his well-shaped seat, flattered by the cut of his trousers. His shirt fit well too, accentuating his broad shoulders and trim waist. Longing’s fire brought her blood to a boil as she imagined him for a moment without those finely tailored garments.

“Shall I go on?”

She licked her lips and pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “By all means.”

He got quiet as if ordering his thoughts. Several moments later, he began in a low voice.
“I came into this life at Druimdeurfait, on the Black Isle, which is neither black nor an island, but that’s neither here nor there. As I said, my birth took place in the wee hours of a Friday, a time thought to be unlucky.” He tilted back his head to look at the ceiling. “I’ve often wondered if my caul was meant to cancel out my bad luck, but”—he ran a hand across his scalp as if searching for the missing membrane—“as it was sold, I shall never know.”