by Gaelen Foley
“He’s never touched her. Have you?”
Murmurs followed from the darkness. “What? What’s this?”
“Is this true?”
“Have you lied to us about the nature of your relationship with this girl?”
“No!” Drake forced out. “Please, she is no threat to anybody here—”
“He is in love with her,” the same, shrewd voice declared, the one tinged with an Italian accent.
But Emily was staring, wide-eyed, at Drake. Her entire being hung upon what answer he might give.
“Yes,” another voice remarked. “I do believe our cardinal is right.”
“It’s obvious. Admit it, man.”
He lifted his head in blazing defiance, though his voice remained stern and composed. “It is as you say.”
Time stood still for Emily, hearing those words.
She wasn’t sure herself if he was playing some sort of chess game with them; but if not, it must have been the strangest way that any girl had ever found out the man she loved, loved her.
“We were close—since childhood,” he admitted. “But obviously, the match was not approved, by either of our families. I abided by that. I would not dishonor her.”
“So you lied to us when she arrived.”
“Yes. I did not want any of the men making free with her. I did not know she would follow me! She has no inkling of the danger—she knows nothing. She only came because she loves me.”
Well, at least he knows that, Emily thought, her mouth gone dry as she spied on them. She was horrified that she had got Drake in trouble with these terrifying men.
Indeed, everything in her began to send a warning that she must flee immediately. If she moved right away, she could slip down to the dungeon and escape through the chink in the rock she had seen.
But she could not possibly leave Drake standing there alone to face the consequences for her actions. If she fled and was found to be missing, God only knew what they might to do him.
“So.” Falkirk’s voice reached her. “You lied when she arrived in order to protect her, but what proof do we have that you are telling the truth now?”
“Sir, I am telling you the truth.”
“Oh, really?” a sharper voice taunted, another foreign accent. “Perhaps she is an agent of the enemy?”
“Emily Harper? Don’t be absurd!” he retorted.
“She was shrewd enough to track you here. That is quite an uncommon skill for a mere girl.”
“Her father schooled her in the woodsman’s ways from an early age. Please! Listen to me! I’m sorry she intruded, but whatever her punishment, take it out on me, not on her. She has no part in any of this. Just let her leave this place—”
“Well, she can’t leave now, as you know full well,” Falkirk interrupted coldly. “It’s her own doing, and the time has come for you to make a choice.”
Drake went perfectly still.
“You are either with us or against us. The time has come to prove it. If you are really one of us, you must surrender her to our will.”
Emily quaked; Drake looked equally horrified.
“What do you mean, ‘surrender her’?” he uttered, his hand curling dangerously around the hilt of his sword at his side.
They were silent.
He took a step forward. “What do you want with her?” he roared. “She is an innocent!”
“As it happens, we have need of an innocent, Lord Westwood,” Falkirk answered, coolly in control. “For the night of the eclipse.”
“No,” Drake whispered. “Not her.”
“Yes. It’s what we all must do. Dearest blood.”
“Don’t worry, she will be given sedatives to keep her peaceful. Trust me, she won’t feel a thing. We are not barbarians, after all.”
“James, for the love of God.”
“What God, Drake?”
He fell silent.
“You would not refuse this sacrifice for the cause? She’s perfect. Brave, selfless, beautiful. And a virgin, to boot, as you said you’ve never touched her, and it’s obvious you are the only man in the world to her. Her blood will intoxicate the one we serve. What better start to our new beginning than the blood of a virgin for our lord at the ritual of the eclipse? With this gift, our future endeavors cannot fail.”
Drake said nothing, did not move. She was very sure he wanted to explode, however. For her part, Emily felt ill, staring into the chamber, her very blood curdling in her veins.
“Will you give her to us? Yes or no. The time has come to make your choice,” someone informed him.
“I had a son once, Drake,” Falkirk spoke up suddenly. “It’s only a sacrifice if it hurts, you see.”
Drake stood motionless, his face stoic, like he was made of iron, and when he spoke, his three, low-toned, simple words filled Emily with horror.
“So be it.”
The ice began in the pit of her stomach and spread to every inch of her skin; she began shaking as the various men met his answer with murmurs of approval.
“Then you are one of us,” they congratulated him.
“We’ll see if he stands firm when the time comes.”
“For now, he’s made the right choice. Well done, Drake. It’s not easy.”
“You won’t regret it. Once a member takes this step, there is no turning back.”
“Excellent, Drake,” Falkirk said at last. “I knew we could count on you.”
“She will be safe until then?” he demanded.
“Absolutely. No more menial labor. She will be treated like a jewel. Send the guards after the girl,” Falkirk instructed someone out of view. “Tell them I want her moved to the finest chamber we have available. That way, our brother here will not be tempted to despoil the dark father’s prize.”
“Don’t tell her what you plan. Don’t terrify her,” Drake half ordered, half begged them.
“No, of course not. She’d only try to escape,” Falkirk replied, his tone shockingly casual. “Post a guard outside her door to prevent it.”
“Yes, sir,” someone answered.
“I will guard her,” Drake spoke up.
“Ah, I don’t think so. You will see to your usual duties. We cannot take the chance that you might waver.”
“I will not waver,” he replied, but Emily was already racing silently out of the corridor, fleeing back the way she had come, terror stamped across her face.
Her heart pounded. The darkness of this place seemed to slide against her cheeks like wraiths in a graveyard and she could barely think. Must get out of here now. Leave my knife, bag, everything in the room. Just go.
She took the stone stairs two at a time though her legs were shaking beneath her; she felt so weak she feared she might collapse. But somehow she kept moving, rushing back up to the main floor of the castle, her pulse roaring in her ears.
She cast a panicked glance this way and that in the central corridor. She set her sights on the set of stairs that led down to the dungeon.
She would climb through the break in the wall where the cat had escaped. From there, she’d go out to the forest and run for her life. In that moment, she could not even think of Drake. She was too much in shock at what those evil men had planned for her.
How she wished she’d listened to him. She never should have followed him.
Choking back terror, she started across the wide central hallway on the main floor of the castle, where she had gone around replacing candles. But she hadn’t gone far when a voice rang out behind her.
“Miss Harper!”
Too late. She froze at the sound of Falkirk’s voice, her heart in her throat. What am I going to do?
“A word with you, please, my dear.”
Immobilized by fear, too shocked to cry, too scared to run, she could not even turn around.
Her pulse slammed as a couple of seconds ticked past. The exit she had planned to leave by was too far. She would never get there in time. Indeed, past the panic swimming through her mind, she s
omehow saw that her only advantage in this moment was that they didn’t know she had overheard their plan.
If she could compose herself to keep up that ruse, she could probably look for a chance to slip away later. They had said, after all, that she would be safe until the night of the eclipse, whenever that was—if they were to be believed. That faint hope helped to calm her down enough to turn around, doing her best to hide her terror.
“Yes, my lord?” she forced out in a voice that was barely a whisper.
Falkirk strode toward her at the head of a quartet of guards, Drake behind them, to the side, his fiery stare fixed on her.
“My dear,” said the Promethean leader, “it has come to our attention that we have been remiss in the hospitality we have shown you, or rather, the lack of it.”
“Pardon, sir?” she countered meekly, frightened anew as the guards he’d brought moved into position around her, all four corners.
Drake watched them like a hawk . . .
“We were not quite, er, clear at first on your importance to our dear Lord Westwood,” Falkirk continued. “We beg your pardon. I’m afraid it’s all been a bit of a misunderstanding. You must let us make it up to you for this inconvenience. There is another chamber that we’d like to offer to you, one that I think you’ll find far more agreeable.”
“That’s not necessary, I don’t wish to impose—”
“No imposition, dear child. So modest. Charming creature,” he remarked fondly to Drake. Then Falkirk looked at her again with his dissecting, gray-eyed stare. “Come, let us show you to your new accommodations—and no more of this servant’s work for one who is rightfully our honored guest. This way.” He swept a gallant gesture toward the marble staircase.
The guards waited for her to move.
Emily looked at Drake for instructions, but his face was a blank. Seeing that, she was alarmed. It appeared the whole episode had thrust him back toward the lost state in which he had arrived at his estate weeks ago, when Lord Rotherstone had first brought him home.
She saw she would have to be strong and managed a stiff nod. “As you wish.”
Falkirk smiled politely, turned, and led the way toward, then up the marble staircase.
She kept her gaze down, sure that her fear would be visible in her eyes. But as she followed him, she wondered if she had not overheard their true plans, what she might have made of this deception!
At the top of the grand staircase, they turned in the opposite direction from the way to Drake’s room. Unlike the simple, older style where he had been quartered, the wing they entered must have been for the castle owners’ personal use and that of honored guests, for it carried on the dizzying rococo theme from below.
Reminding herself continually that her doom was not quite imminent, Emily walked with her shoulders squared, her chin up. Still, she thought, any young woman would have thought it unnerving to be escorted to her chamber by half a dozen grown men—and that, without even being aware of their sinister intentions.
“Here we are,” James said politely, opening a white bedchamber door.
Her new cage. Emily paused, glancing into the room.
Spring sunshine beamed through the windows, lighting up an airy, feminine space with white-and-gilt walls, a dainty floral carpet, and pink velvet curtains.
She glanced around nervously at the oil paintings in gold frames, the ornate claw-and-ball-footed furniture in fine woods with white marble tops. By the wall, draped in pink velvet to match the curtains, was a canopy bed fit for a princess.
“You will want something suitable to wear, as well, no doubt,” Falkirk informed her. “If the maids can’t find something proper for you in the castle, we’ll send someone into the town.”
“May I have my own things, as well?” she asked anxiously, already realizing it would do her no good to argue.
“I will bring your bag to you,” Drake mumbled from over by the door.
“Let the servants draw Miss Harper a bath at once. Tending the candles is such a sooty job.”
Emily eyed him in fear. James smiled indulgently.
“It’s all right, my dear. We only wish to make you comfortable, you see? Now that we know how much you mean to Drake.”
She swallowed hard. “Yes, sir.”
For a fleeting instant, as he smiled at her, Emily had a glimpse of the mind games this man had played on her beloved. This smooth, smiling liar.
Taking him out of the dungeon. Pretending to be his friend.
Now he was trying to do it to her. But unlike Drake, she had never been confused about dark and light.
She knew exactly where she stood, and she held her spot firmly for the two of them, bristling with utter, steely resolve. For if there was one thing that could make her throw off any degree of fear, it was her bone-deep need to protect him. Just as he would do for her.
She knew it in her blood.
“Very well, then,” Falkirk concluded, turning away, “make yourself comfortable, Miss Harper. The servants will be along shortly to attend you.”
She thanked him with a ladylike nod.
The guards began filing out of her room, but Drake was the last to reach the door.
She stared imploringly at him as he sent her a piercing look over his shoulder, his expression stormy.
As they locked eyes before James ordered him out of her room, she understood the full truth about why he had not wanted her to come. This was precisely what he had feared.
She was now trapped inside his nightmare.
Chapter 11
As the days passed, the cult’s high-ranking members, known as the Hundred, continued arriving from all over Europe, drawn by James’s summons. From Naples, Paris and Madrid, from Brussels and Glasgow, Vienna and St. Petersburg, their traveling coaches with guards and outriders kept rolling in, all the occult conspirators and oligarchs with a lust for tyranny in their hearts, the castle’s remote mountain setting providing them with the secrecy they required.
Drake could hardly believe he was in the thick of it, but any triumph he might have felt as an agent was overshadowed by his grim, constant worry over Emily.
They hadn’t talked or been alone together since the night he had foolishly stormed out of the room, outraged by her attempt to lure him away from this place with the promise of her body. He wished to God he would have listened to her while he’d had the chance.
Instead he was up to his neck among countless circling sharks, and it was Emily’s blood that chummed the water.
She had been locked away in her fine new bedchamber, kept under guard.
He had not been permitted to see her, lest he do something “rash,” as James had said with a fond, chiding smile. Sick bastard. Drake knew now he had somehow lost sight of the old man’s true evil, lulled into some degree of complacency by his amiable manner and the fact that James had once saved him from the dungeon.
That spell had been sharply broken, however. James’s willingness to do such a thing to innocent Emily had pulled away the veil of what the old man truly was.
A creature without a soul.
Drake maintained his obedient façade. Although it was harder to hide his true feelings, he no longer had any qualms about including James in the massacre he had planned for the night of the eclipse.
His own, ever-hardening ruthlessness didn’t bother him.
The only thing that mattered to him was Emily’s safety and well-being. He would find a way to save her; no other option was possible. But he probably wouldn’t come out of this alive himself, and what his death might do to her, he couldn’t bear to ponder.
Whatever physical torture he had endured in the depths of Waldfort Castle was nothing compared to his inward anguish, frustration, and bewilderment over how she could have devoted herself to such a lost cause as he.
As much as he wanted to love her, it all seemed too late for that. At this point, his primary objective was simply to save her life.
His only comfort was that at least she did not
know the horror they had planned. He could not bear for her to know.
Hopefully, she was up there enjoying her comfortable room and fine food and the pretty gowns they had brought her, no doubt puzzled and probably bored out of her mind; but at least for the moment, he didn’t have to be quite so frantic over her.
James finally gave him permission to speak to her after several days. Drake thanked him, but was wary of the old man’s strange fascination with their relationship.
Emily’s unselfish devotion to him, her blind faith in love, seemed to perplex old Falkirk, but then, Drake had to admit, it rather perplexed him, too.
Eager to see her and to verify for himself that she was all right, he marched into the upper hallway and informed the two guards posted there that James had given him permission to visit her for a quarter hour.
Drake hid his frustration with this absurd time limit, though, in truth, in his rakehell days back in London with the Inferno Club, this would have been enough time for him to ravish a willing lady in secret. He didn’t like to rush, but sometimes the occasion called for it . . .
He reminded himself firmly these were not his intentions toward Emily as the guard knocked on the door and informed her she had a visitor.
She called at once to come in; Drake braced himself, doing his best to assume a calm, reassuring demeanor; he swiftly reviewed the lies he intended to tell her that might help allay her fears about why she had been moved and what was really going on.
Then the guard opened the door.
Drake stepped in—and his eyes widened as he came face-to-face with the refined young miss standing in the middle of the room, with her hands demurely tucked behind her back.
“Emily?” he asked in a quizzical tone, shutting the door behind him.
Egad, if he had passed her on Bond Street looking like this, he might not have even recognized her! His strange, fey, little forest girl was transformed into a delicate young lady, of whom even his mother could not have disapproved. Ribbons tamed her neatly upswept hair. Ivory lace edged the sleeves, hem, and neck of her luxurious silk day gown.
He scanned her in amazement, charmed but rather disoriented. Startled by the whole new facet of sweetness this refined presentation brought out in his dearest childhood friend, he started to grin and say something teasing—but then he noticed the expression in her wide, violet eyes, and his stomach plummeted within him.