Beyond Compare

by Candace Camp

  The house was hushed when they entered, the twins and most of the servants long since asleep. Kyria knew, however, that in her room Joan would be waiting up for her as she always did. Tonight, for once, Kyria intended to take full advantage of her presence. Joan was welcome to sleep late the next morning, but there was no way Kyria could go to bed tonight until she had washed away all her dirt.

  Together she and Rafe walked up the stairs to the second floor and along the hall toward their respective rooms. There was something very intimate about their situation, Kyria thought. The lights in the hallways were turned low, and with Reed gone and the twins upstairs in the nursery, Kyria and Rafe were the only ones on this floor. Kyria could not help but think about the fact that Rafe would be sleeping in his bed only a few doors down from her. She remembered how it had felt to be in his embrace, his arms hard as iron around her. She remembered his kiss, hot and hungry, and his hands on her skin, making her tremble with desire. She tried not to look at Rafe, afraid her thoughts would show on her face.

  As they reached her room, the door opened and her maid popped out. “I thought I heard you, my lady,” she said, bobbing a curtsy. “I have a bath all ready for you. I was just waiting to bring up a kettle of hot water to warm it for you.”

  “Joan, you are a lifesaver,” Kyria said, smiling. “There is nothing I want more.”

  The maid nodded and hurried away down the stairs to the kitchen to get a steaming kettle. Rafe paused at Kyria’s door and bowed over her hand. He could not keep from smiling at the comical aspect she presented, part Kyria and part the old drunken hag she had played tonight—her bright red hair, luxuriant and beautiful as ever, straggling down from its pins, and below it, her refined features, smeared with dirt and drawn with lines at her forehead, eyes, and mouth, the bright green eyes shining out of the mask with all their vivid beauty.

  “You are a woman in a million, my lady,” he said softly.

  Kyria grinned, showing the full glory of her painted teeth. “Ow, give us a kiss, luv.”

  He chuckled. “Be careful; I might just take you up on it.”

  Kyria cocked an eyebrow. “I think I’m safe.”

  She turned and went into her bedroom, and he stood for a moment, looking down at the floor. In truth, despite her present disguise, the image his mind conjured of her taking a bath was a powerful one, and it stirred his loins. He could well imagine her long, lithe white body sinking down into an elegant slipper tub, the water rising up to cover the glory of her breasts.

  Rafe turned away abruptly and headed down the hall toward his room. It was far better, he knew, not to think about such things. The problem, of course, was that he could not seem to gain control over his runaway imagination—which was greatly aided by the memory of how Kyria had felt in his arms and the taste of her in his mouth. Though much had happened since then, it had been only a few short days since they had kissed in the private room of the inn, and his senses remembered every instant of it—the silken softness of her skin beneath his fingers, the faint scent of lavender that clung to her hair, the sweet sounds of surrender that had issued from her lips.

  He let out a low growl of frustration and closed the door to his room harder than was absolutely necessary. The more he got to know Kyria, the more he wanted her—and the more he knew that he could not take her lightly. She was enough to make a man almost forget the hard lessons he had learned, to make him wonder if his heart and soul were not really as dead as he had believed.

  He prowled about his bedroom for a few minutes, idly moving things about on his dresser, then going to the window and staring out blindly, finally coming back and throwing himself down in the chair beside the bed. Rafe tried to think about the events of this evening or the identity of the man who had come to the tavern—indeed, anything except the image of Kyria relaxing in her bath—but he found that little else could stick in his mind.

  Grimacing, he rose and began stripping off his rough clothes and throwing them on the floor. It looked as if it was going to be a very long night. He could only hope that a nice cold wash-up at the basin would help.

  In her room, Kyria found that getting rid of all traces of her “drunken hag” was a good deal more time-consuming than donning the persona had been, especially when it came to returning her teeth to their usual state of sparkling whiteness. Finally, scrubbed clean, she pulled on a nightgown and crawled into bed, but once there, she found sleep hard to come by.

  She thought about Rafe lying in his bed only a few doors down the hallway. No one would see her if she slipped down to his room. Even in the dark, Kyria blushed at her wayward thoughts. She could not remember any other man who had affected her this way. She thought of the kisses they had shared the other evening, and her blood heated, her loins going warm and soft. She pressed her legs together, for it seemed to help ease the growing ache there, as she remembered Rafe’s hands on her body, his fingers caressing her breast and teasing the nipple to life.

  Restlessly, Kyria turned over and tried to move her thoughts in another direction. She thought of the box downstairs in the safe, and she wanted to go down there to make sure that it was all right. It was foolish and unnecessary, she reminded herself, but she could not deny the urge to get it out and look it over again. It was very strange, she knew, that she so often wanted to check on the reliquary. It wasn’t just a desire to make sure it was safe, or even a desire to look at its beauty again. She simply felt unaccountably drawn to it, almost compelled to look at it.

  She was exasperated with herself. Why was she suddenly so subject to her urges and desires? She had lived her whole life in control of herself, and now she seemed at the mercy of this whim or that, unsure of what was happening and why, no longer even sure of what she wanted. It disturbed her, this loss of command—and yet, she had to admit, there was something exciting about it, as well. There was a certain thrill in knowing that when she awoke the next morning, she would not know exactly what was going to happen that day, or even how she was going to feel.

  Kyria smiled to herself and rolled over, looking up at the heavy, green-velvet tester above her bed. Life had not been dull since Rafe McIntyre had ridden into it. And she was quite certain that she did not want to go back to the way it had been before him.

  She closed her eyes and, smiling, at last slipped into sleep.

  * * *

  Shadows danced on the walls, grotesque and unnerving. The waiting was so hard. A shiver ran through her, though she was not certain whether it was from the coolness of the thick stone walls or from the thought of what faced her.

  It was the duty of all who served the Mother. Her blessed favor would be laid upon her like a mantle after this night. And the whispers of blood and pain would not matter.

  She stiffened, listening. There was a growing murmur, as faint as the rustling of leaves. Now she was more certain, the sound swelling into the familiar sounds of chanting and the shuffle of feet, the tinkling of bells and the beat of tambors. They were coming. He was coming.

  She rose, taking an involuntary step backward until she felt the hard, cold stone at her back. Her breath caught in her throat.

  The time was upon her….

  CHAPTER 12

  Kyria’s eyes flew open. She lay still for a moment, unsure of where she was or what was happening. Her heart pounded in her chest, and there was a sheen of moisture on her face.

  She turned her head. Light was seeping in around the edges of the draperies. It must be morning. And she was here at Broughton House. She wet her lips and wiped a hand across her face, brushing away the stray hairs.

  What had awakened her? She had been dreaming, she thought. Gradually, wisps of the dream drifted into her mind. It had been so odd, so different from most of her dreams. She had dreamed this same thing or something very like it before—more than once—and she found it disturbing.

  She could not help but wonder if the dream was somehow connected to the reliquary. She had not had this dream before the box came into their hou
se, and twice she had had this dream right after she had been looking at the box. Last night, she remembered, although she had not gone down to look at the reliquary, it had been very much on her mind. On the other hand, the box had not actually appeared in the dream, nor had Habib or Kousoulous or anyone else connected to the box. Indeed, there had been no one even in the dreams except herself—and the unrecognizable backs of a few men.

  She sat up slowly. Her eyelids were heavy, and she would have liked to have lain down and gone back to sleep, but she knew that she would not be able to now. With a sigh, she got up and washed her face and rang for Joan. She might as well get dressed and start the day.

  The twins were downstairs in the breakfast room when she entered it, alive with curiosity about what had happened to her and Rafe the night before. Kyria glanced at Denby and saw that he was already looking a trifle tired. She hoped that he would last until the head groom arrived to take Con and Alex home. Perhaps she ought to put a second footman on them, as well, so that they could work in shifts.

  The boys were disappointed in her recounting of the events of the night before; Kyria felt sure that they thought her lacking in spirit for not having chased the villain to ground. However, they soon recovered and were full of other plans to catch the man. Rafe joined them about then and was regaled with all the twins’ new ideas, most of which featured themselves in hot pursuit of the thief.

  “Somehow I don’t think the duchess would be too pleased if we let you two run all over London checking out dens of thieves,” Rafe commented.

  “You’ll be with us,” Alex said. “Kyria, too, if she wants,” he added magnanimously.

  “Why, thank you for allowing me to participate,” Kyria told him. “However, I don’t think we will be together, as you will be home here with Denby. Mr. McIntyre is right—Mother would be most displeased if I allowed the two of you to run about doing whatever you pleased when you disobeyed her and sneaked off to London with us.”

  “She’s already displeased,” Con reasoned. “She’ll punish us, anyway. So it seems to me that we might at least get to do something fun first.”

  Kyria could not suppress a smile. “You are a complete hand—both of you. All right, you can come along with us this afternoon when we go to find the dealer. How is that?”

  “Wizard!” Alex exclaimed, jumping up from his chair and grinning at his brother in a way that told Kyria the boys had gotten more out of her than they had expected.

  “What are we going to do with Mr. Habib?” Con asked, settling down to business at once.

  “You are going to do absolutely nothing,” Kyria told him sternly. “We are not going there to stir up a fuss.”

  “Well, perhaps only a little one,” Rafe stuck in.

  “What do you mean?” Kyria glanced at him. “I thought we were going to observe Mr. Habib and follow him if he went anywhere.”

  “Yes, but I’ve been thinking. We can scarcely just sit there in the carriage for hours on end, waiting for Habib to decide to leave his room. What if he doesn’t? Or what if he has already left?”

  “Well, we shall ascertain whether he is there,” Kyria said, then added with a frown, “I suppose it would look a trifle peculiar for a carriage to remain at the inn for ages.”

  Con nodded. “If you are in the courtyard, the ostlers will come out and want to do something with your horses.”

  “Better to stay out of the courtyard,” Alex said. “But then, what if Mr. Habib comes out and gets in a carriage and drives away from the inn? You won’t know it’s him.”

  “That’s true,” Kyria agreed. “Well, I suppose one of us will just have to stay inside the inn somewhere to watch him and then…” She sighed. “It will be a great waste of time and effort, won’t it? Clearly we should have thought it through better.”

  “I did,” Rafe said with a grin. “That is what I was about to say. I was thinking about it last night when I couldn’t sleep.” He thought it prudent not to mention the reason for his sleeplessness. “And it occurred to me that it would be much better if there was someone hanging about the inn who would not seem out of place—especially if we slipped a few coins to the ostlers so that he could simply blend in among them.”

  “But who…” Kyria stopped as understanding dawned on her. “Tom Quick!”

  Rafe nodded. “Exactly.”

  Tom Quick worked for Olivia, helping her in her investigations. He was a lively and engaging young man, sixteen or seventeen years old—no one, including himself, was sure of his age. He had been raised on the streets, with a few brief stops in orphanages, and his last name came not from his father, whom he had never known, but was given to him by his companions because of the speed of both his hands and mind. His career as a pickpocket had ended one day when he had tried to rob Reed Moreland. Reed had quickly realized the lad’s intelligence and potential, so instead of handing him over to one of the “peelers,” he had taken the boy in and seen to it that he was fed, clothed and educated.

  As a result, Tom was devoted to Reed, and when Reed had asked him to work in his sister’s office, as much to watch over her and make sure nothing happened to her as to actually help her, Tom had readily agreed. He had spent the past couple of years in Olivia’s employ and had grown as devoted to her as he was to her brother. On their most recent job, Tom had gone with Olivia to the St. Leger estate, masquerading as Olivia’s servant to help her expose the medium who had been bilking Stephen St. Leger’s mother out of money. It was on that occasion that Rafe had met both Olivia and Tom Quick.

  “With Stephen and Olivia off on their honeymoon, I reckon that Tom has little enough to do and would be happy to get a chance to spy on our friend Habib.”

  “I am sure you are right. I’ll send a note around to him immediately,” Kyria said.

  The addition of Tom Quick to their adventure met with the approval of the twins, who recognized in him a kindred spirit.

  “Can we stay with Tom?” Con asked. “We can help him.”

  “No.” Kyria cut off that avenue of discourse immediately. “Absolutely not.”

  “It would hinder Tom, you see,” Rafe offered. “He would have to worry about keeping you safe, and that would interfere with his following Habib.”

  Con grimaced, but shrugged and fell silent, recognizing the truth of his words.

  “If Tom will meet us at the inn,” Rafe went on, “we’ll set him up there to watch for Habib. Kyria and I can go in and talk to Mr. Habib, so that Tom can see who he is. Whether Habib is working with the mysterious man from last night or not, I figure if we question him a little, it might spur him to take some action, and then Tom can follow him. Plus—” he gave a small smile that did not bode well for his quarry “—I’d just like to have a little chat with our friend Habib.”

  “Can we talk to him, too?” Alex asked hopefully.

  Kyria shot him a warning look. “Alex…”

  “Oh, all right,” he agreed. “It was worth a try.”

  “And this morning, while Mr. McIntyre and I are at the archaeologist’s, you have to apply yourself to your studies,” Kyria continued.

  “But our books are at home,” Con stated.

  “I am sure that there are adequate books here for one morning’s lesson,” Kyria said. “I will come upstairs and look through them right after breakfast. Now, I suggest the two of you get set up in the schoolroom before I change my mind.”

  The twins beat a hasty retreat, and Kyria and Rafe were left to eat the remainder of their breakfast in peace.

  When their lingering breakfast was over, Kyria went upstairs to the schoolroom as she had promised and looked over the books the twins had already selected. As she had suspected they would, Con and Alex, faced with the prospect of her setting them a lesson they didn’t want, had looked through what was at hand and had chosen a project that interested them and that would, therefore, keep them busy and out of trouble most of the morning.

  She left them working and went downstairs, where both Rafe and th
e carriage were waiting. She opened the safe and removed the reliquary, putting it back into the same concealing valise that they had carried on the train.

  As Rafe stepped up into the carriage a few minutes later, he caught a flash of something white at the corner of the house. He paused, turning to look. There was nothing there.

  “What is it?” Kyria asked. “What are you doing?”

  Rafe frowned. “Just…I thought I caught a glimpse of something. Never mind.”

  Their first stop was the home of Nelson Ashcombe, the late Lord Walford’s archaeologist. The duke had, as promised, given them a letter for Ashcombe introducing them and asking him to meet with them. It came as something of a shock, therefore, when Kyria handed the missive to a rather slovenly looking maid who then left and returned a few moments later with a refusal.

  “What?” Kyria asked, for a moment thinking that she had misunderstood the maid.

  The girl blinked, then said, more slowly and loudly, “I said as ’ow the master don’t want to see you.”

  “That is what he said?”

  “No. It were more highfalutin and had a lot of words that a proper girl like meself wouldn’t repeat. Mostly it was about ’ow he was busy and couldn’t be bothered by dilly somethin’ or others and society misses.”

  “Dilettantes?” Kyria raised a brow and started to form a scathing retort, but then she closed her lips tightly together. She had been raised not to blame servants for their employer’s faults.

  After a moment, she said calmly, “Pray tell Mr. Ashcombe that I have with me a certain object which I think he will find interesting. An object which he has been seeking for some time.”

  The maid looked uncertain, but turned and disappeared up the stairs again. It wasn’t long before she came back.