by Alexa Egan
At least that particular beautiful woman.
Whether Bianca Parrino fit into the same category remained to be seen.
Gray and David might think he chased shadows, but he couldn’t shake the sense of impending doom. A trap slowly closing around them all. And while the Gather elders may have cast the four of them out, Mac couldn’t sit idle when one of his race was attacked and their existence threatened. To turn his back on the clans was to give in to the despair that crouched waiting for any break in the stone he’d wrapped round his heart.
He fumbled with his krythos, turning over choices and consequences as he turned over the far-seeing disk. Dare he go against the terms of his sentence and use it to sound a warning? Or would doing so only bring down the Ossine’s swift and deadly wrath? The shamans’ authority had grown until their brutal enforcers were almost as feared among the clans as the Fey-bloods, and few dared challenge them. But surely this was important enough . . .
“Sir?” Mac wheeled around to face Mrs. Parrino’s mouse of a maidservant. She flushed scarlet, her hands wrung in her apron. “My mistress says she’s not at home to visitors.”
As if taunting him, a man’s voice carried down the stairs from the drawing room above. “. . . watched you for weeks . . . the man’s dead . . . grieve forever . . .”
So Bianca Parrino wasn’t turning all visitors away. Just him. Annoyance turned to stubbornness. He was a soldier. He’d lay siege to her bloody doorstep if he had to, but he wasn’t leaving here without finding out what Adam had told her.
“. . . don’t struggle . . . have everything you could want . . .”
The sound of shattering glass brought Mac’s head up. A high-pitched cry had him brushing past the maid to take the stairs in the space of a heartbeat.
He threw open the drawing room door to find a gentleman clutching a bloody handkerchief to his nose. Broken glass glittered across the carpet like diamonds, flowers scattered and floating in a spreading puddle beside an overturned side table.
The man dropped his handkerchief long enough to demand, “Who the devil are you?” before he clamped it back onto his swollen nose.
Mac stepped closer, his gaze moving slowly between Mrs. Parrino and her attacker. “Is there a problem here?”
“Not at all, Captain,” Mrs. Parrino answered smoothly. “Lord Braemer just realized he was late for an appointment elsewhere, didn’t you, my lord?”
The man’s bluster subsided as he summed up his well-armed adversary. “Yes, so there’s no need to take things amiss. Just a little misunderstanding between Mrs. Parrino and myself.” He made a few more dabs at his nose before stuffing his handkerchief in a pocket. “I’d discounted certain nasty rumors circulating, but perhaps my faith was misplaced.”
“And what rumors would those be?” she asked with barely a flicker of an eyelid.
“They say once the bloom was off, the gardener became the weed. Pulled viciously out of the ground and left upon the sidewalk to be swept up with the other trash.” His smug gaze raked Mac up and down. “Now I see why. A new farmer is plowing the field.”
Despite her chalky pallor, she faced the man down, blue eyes crackling. “You’re mixing your metaphors, my lord. I believe it’s best if you leave.”
When the man looked as if he might argue, Mac settled a hand menacingly upon the hilt of his dress sword.
Lord Braemer plucked his hat and cane from a nearby chair. “Of course. We’ll consider the matter closed and my offer retracted.” Offering Mrs. Parrino a jerky bow, he hurried for the door beneath Mac’s glower. “But a mere soldier? You sell yourself short, m’dear. If you planned on jumping into another’s bed so soon, better by far to have chosen mine.”
Tipping his hat as if he’d just concluded the most amicable of morning calls, Lord Braemer passed the apron-wringing maid on his way out. The door below shut with an audible click.
“Miss? Are you all right? His Lordship didn’t hurt you, did he?” the maid asked.
Bianca Parrino turned a look of tongue-in-cheek amusement in Mac’s direction. “No, Molly. This gentleman rescued me in the nick of time.” Her gaze narrowed in dawning recognition. “You’re the man from the cemetery.”
“Captain Mac Flannery.” He sketched her a terse bow.
“So brave, him charging up here,” Molly gushed, her worshipping eyes fixed on Mac. “Just like a knight on a white horse.”
Mrs. Parrino sagged onto a sofa, looking hopelessly at her torn gown. “Wasn’t it? I don’t know how I’ve survived so long without someone to protect me.”
“Shall I lay out a change of clothes, mum?”
An almost imperceptible tremble shook the woman’s fingers as she touched the torn fabric of her morning dress. “If you would, Molly. My muslin was no match for His Lordship’s overwrought passions.”
The maid dropped another adoring glance on Mac before scuttling out the door.
“She’s gone,” Mac said. “You can drop the pretense.”
“Excuse me?”
He heard the annoyance glazing her voice, but he was too angry to care. She’d been manhandled by a damned lecher, and here she sat acting as if she’d not a care in the world. He might not be able to read thoughts outright—once common among the Imnada, that power surfaced rarely these days—but he definitely sensed the lie in her casual manner.
“Your flippant attitude as if being mauled was just another lark. Look at you: you’re shaking.”
Her blue eyes met his, their irises wide and dark as a stormy sea. “What would you have me do, Captain? Fall into hysterics? It’s not the first time a man has assumed I’d welcome his attentions. It won’t be the last. A hazard of my profession.”
Damn, but she was lovely. All tumbled golden hair and creamy satin skin. No wonder that ass Braemer had made a fool of himself over her. What male with a pulse wouldn’t? “Don’t you have a companion living with you? A large, loud dragon of a woman to keep these louts at bay?”
“I prefer to live alone.”
“Then at least employ a footman. Some big, hulking brute. That wee chit of a maid couldn’t scare a pigeon.”
“I’m perfectly capable of handling men who annoy me, Captain,” she said pointedly.
Mac’s gaze fell upon the bruise marring the pale flesh of her upper arm. “Oh, really? Is that mark what you call handling men?”
She threw herself to her feet. “No”—she stalked to the door—“it’s what I call none of your business.”
* * *
Alone in her bedchamber, Bianca clenched the torn fabric of her ruined gown as she grimaced at her reflection in the mirror. Hair a wild tangle down her back. A slight puffiness of her lips where Lord Braemer had slammed a sloppy wet kiss on them.
He’d offered her a fine house with a full complement of liveried servants. A carriage of her own. Jewels. Wealth. All a woman like her could want. His assumption about her character rankled. As if avarice and self-interest were unheard of among his vaunted class.
He’d been floored when she turned him down.
Had refused to take no for an answer.
How far would he have gone in persuading her?
How insistent would he have grown?
A wash of queasy panic splashed over clammy skin. Marriage had taught her the answer all too well. Men were bullies. They took what they wanted. Feasted on weakness. Gorged on fear.
Lord Braemer played the enamored lover as well as any actor, but she knew it for the role it was. After all, she’d seen it performed far more convincingly by Lawrence.
He, too, had been an attentive suitor until they were married. Then sweet-talking had become suspicion and consideration grew into controlling. She’d excused it as a new husband’s adjustments to a wife. But time only increased his brutishness as it did his drinking and his whoring until she’d been glad of his long hours at the taverns and the low women he rogered, for it kept him away from home—away from her. Until the end, that is. Until he made no distinction between his
wife and the cheap slags he frequented, and life became a held breath, his death her only means of escape.
She slammed a hand on the table, snapping herself free of the nauseating memories. Heaved a deep cleansing breath. Rolled her neck. Stretched her shoulders. And began the repair to her wardrobe.
Buttons. Ribbons. Combs. Pins. The correct drape of a fresh gown. The artfully arranged curl just so against her forehead. The deliberate process worked to restore her inner equilibrium. A woman’s armor. A woman’s mask. Amazing how much darkness you could hide behind a pretty face.
Finally, she slid open the top drawer of the cabinet beside her bed as if to reassure herself. Her pistol remained in its place, the dull gleam of its barrel winking at her as she touched the crosshatching of the handle, warm beneath her hand.
She’d be at no man’s mercy again.
Shutting the drawer, she descended the stairs to the drawing room once more. Glancing down, she stumbled on the threshold and swallowed a muttered oath.
That dratted captain was still here.
Face set in an expression of regal tranquillity, she entered the drawing room as if she were meeting the enemy on a field of battle.
“I’m surprised you stayed. As my maid told you earlier, I’m not at home to visitors this afternoon.”
“And yet, here I stand talking to you.” There it was, and just as devastating as she knew it would be—that beautiful mouth curving into a slow, delicious smile, softening the harsh lines and angles of his face, shining through his luminous green-gold eyes.
She returned his arrogant appraisal with one equally slow and studied. No decorative toy soldier, Captain Flannery bore a confident swagger with none of the posturing, and despite his spotless regimentals and the streamers of gold braid across his chest, he carried himself with a fighter’s precision. This was a man who’d honed his muscled body and whip-fast reactions on the battlefields of Europe and not, like most of the men she met, in the training studios of upper-crust London. The afternoon light sheened his dark hair and picked out the hard lines around his mouth, the hollow beneath his jaw.
She glanced away, her gaze falling on the battered remains of what had been a bouquet of tall-stemmed white lilies interspersed with enormous purple asters. Lord Braemer’s ham-handed love overtures had left them broken and strewn across the floor, but in Bianca’s absence someone had gathered the blooms up and jammed them, lopsided and top-heavy, into an urn on her mantel.
“It was all I could find,” he offered. “I’m afraid some of the wounds may be fatal.” His voice came slow and deep, the slight breath of a brogue layered beneath his otherwise public school enunciation. “The big one there seems to have lost most of its petals.”
She busied herself with rearrangement of the stems, hoping to hide the unwanted smile worming its way up through her system. It wouldn’t do to offer him encouragement. No doubt most women melted like hot butter in his company. She refused to be one of those women. “I can purchase more at the market. If I’m lucky, they’ll have dahlias and maybe some amaranth, though it’s late in the season for those.”
Her words fell into the silence like stones into a bottomless well. The captain studied her as if she were a particularly interesting specimen. Until then he’d concentrated on her face, those sparkling cat’s eyes drilling a hole into her brain. But now his piercing gaze traveled over every inch, picking her apart in a fashion meant to intimidate and humiliate. “I’d not have taken you for a flower lover.” His skeptical expression clearly revealed his inability to reconcile her diamonds and diaphanous silks with dirty nails and a gardener’s secateurs.
“Appearances can be deceiving, Captain. Actresses know that better than most. My father was a botanist. I assisted him in his scientific work when I was a girl.”
“And now?”
She dipped a shoulder in a shrug. “I attend lectures given by the Horticultural Society of London, visit Kew Gardens and the nurseries in Chelsea, and wander the market stalls at Covent Garden.”
Another silence welled up between them, though this time she forced herself to accept it. She’d already revealed more than she’d intended. It was time to take the offensive. Crossing to the drinks cabinet, she poured her guest a brandy and herself a fortifying sherry. She needed it after the events of this afternoon. He accepted with a nod, his expression giving nothing away. “I’m curious,” she said. “What kind of a name is Mac? It sounds made-up. Fictitious. Like a stage name.”
“I could say the same of you. What kind of name is Bianca? You don’t look or sound Italian.”
“I’m American.”
“That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“The accent. It’s subtle. I couldn’t place it.”
“Much like yours.”
“Oi can spake in a broad Oirish brogue if yer want me ter.” His voice thickened, vowels and consonants rolling round his mouth like honey. She could be carried away on that delicious accent. He cleared his throat, once more clipped and public school proper. “Mac’s short for Cormac. Cormac Cúchulainn.”
She winced in sympathy.
A corner of his mouth twitched. “It could have been worse. I’ve been told my father considered Blath-mach Ercc.”
“The man sounds positively sadistic.”
“How did you guess?” For a moment his eyes grew diamond-hard.
“Not holding a grudge over that atrocious name, are you?”
He gave a gruff snort that might have been laughter. “Goes a bit deeper.”
“Did you seduce the neighbor’s daughter? Gamble away your inheritance?”
“Those crimes might have been forgiven,” he said, his expression thunderous.
Had the man simply come to glower at her? If that was the case, she’d had quite enough. “This conversation has been wonderfully scintillating, Captain, and I’m grateful for your assistance with His Lordship, but I’ve had an exhausting afternoon and really need to prepare for the theater.”
She started to pass him on her way out the door.
“Wait.” She gazed at his hand gripping her upper arm as if it had sprouted there. “I need to speak with you.”
So here it was. She couldn’t say she was completely surprised. The man dripped sensuality and self-confidence in bucketloads. “Let me guess.” Her voice sharpened to a cutting edge. “You’ve come to tell me how much you adored me as Rosalind or as Cordelia in last spring’s pageant. That I’m the most—insert ‘fabulous,’ ‘talented,’ or ‘ravishing’ here—actress you’ve ever seen. You can’t sleep or eat due to the mad throes of this wild infatuation, and you’ll do anything to make me yours.”
Rather than cringing with embarrassment, the barest twitch of a smile lifted the corner of Captain Flannery’s mouth. The tiniest hint of laughter lit his eyes. “Men say those things?”
“Some. Then there are those, like Lord Braemer, who believe expensive gifts are the way to a woman’s heart. Fans, books, jewelry, flowers. You name it. I’ve had it sent round by some goggle-eyed fanatic with tented breeches and a pea brain. They think I can be bought for their thirty pieces of silver.”
By now his eyes danced with laughter, and she was questioning how she’d managed to fall into a conversation with the man when she’d meant to freeze him with a haughty silence.
“I am not for sale, by the way,” she added, trying to regain her footing and her upper hand. “So what’s your lure, Captain?”
“Pardon?”
“How do you intend to try to sweep me off my feet? Are you here to read me a poem in honor of my eyes, or have you an expensive bauble that would perfectly grace my swan-like throat?”
The humor died as if someone had doused a light, and he was once more grim and implacable. “I came to speak to you about Lieutenant Kinloch.”
All her righteous indignation drained away as if she’d been stuck with a pin. Grief blossomed like a physical pain under her ribs. “Adam’s dead. What more do you need to know?”
“I need to know who killed him and why.”
* * *
She sat upon a stone bench beneath a willow, its long, leafless skeins drifting like a curtain around her. She’d led him here after motioning meaningfully toward the drawing room door, where doubtless her maid crouched listening. He’d capitulated, following the slow sway of her hips, spine straight as a spear, as they made their way to her garden. This late in the season, few flowers bloomed in the tidy beds and the north wind carried hints of colder weather to come, but it was surprisingly tranquil even with the city’s bustle a wall away.
Despite the ghostly pallor of her face and the tension tightening her mouth, she fairly glowed from the top of her perfectly coiffed head to the tips of her silver slippers. He almost waited for the trumpets and the celebratory cannonade. He’d never seen anyone as absolutely, iridescently radiant. So perfectly sleek and controlled. And yet, he’d witnessed for himself the bloodied Lord Braemer. This rose hid some vicious thorns.
“I still can’t accept that he’s gone.”
Mac leaned against the garden wall, arms folded over his chest. Recalling David’s smarmier insinuations, he asked, “Was Adam one of those who wrote odes to your eyes and brought you gifts?”
Her eyes spat blue fire.
“Gossip says the two of you were lovers.”
“Then it must be true.”
He winced but did not back down. “His home was broken into the night following his murder. The constable on duty was knocked over the head and came around to find the place completely ransacked, as if someone had been searching for something.”
“The papers said it was footpads that killed him. A robbery gone wrong,” she answered.
“I served with Adam for five years. Knew him for longer. It would take more than a thug with a knife to get the better of a seasoned soldier. He wasn’t killed over a few coins for gin. The constable said his attacker was a big chap. Reddish hair.”
A pensive line formed between her brows.