Wicked

by Shannon Drake

  “Shelby, every night, someone is coming closer. The castle is riddled with doors and stairways. My father was convinced there was a tunnel, I feel the same. Yes, the expanse around the wall is monstrous. But there will be some sign that the area is disturbed.” He grinned, rubbing his bearded chin, which was starting to give him quite a fit. “Haven’t you ever heard the story about the little squirrel in winter, Shelby?”

  “Didn’t hear many stories growing up in a family of ten, Lord Stirling. My folks were working in one way or another most of the time,” Shelby said. He sighed. “You are going to tell me the story, though, eh?”

  “Indeed, Shelby. When winter is coming, does a little squirrel try to take twenty acorns into his hole? No, he takes the acorns one by one. Tonight, we’ll take it from both ends. You’ll start by the gate and go each night, bit by bit, until the entire property has been circled. I’ll get rid of this wretched beard, we’ll get Corwin, and the two of you will start as soon as the moon is up. I’ll be taking it from the other end. First, however, to your apartments. If I remain as Arboc for another minute, I will be a monster indeed, clawing my own skin from my face!”

  Shelby stared at Brian for a minute, then shook his head.

  “What is it?” Brian asked.

  “You’ve spent months looking in the crypts,” he said at last.

  “Actually,” Brian said, “I’ve spent months in the office area, the old torture chamber. I’ve not been into the crypts at all yet.”

  Shelby groaned softly. “You must do it at night?”

  “If we’re to catch a thief and a killer, that’s when he works, Shelby.”

  Shelby nodded. “Aye, then. We’ll start as you wish.”

  CAMILLE WOKE WITH A START, and looked at Alex. He continued to sleep. She wondered what had awakened her. And then she knew.

  The stonework of the ancient castle always made the noise sound distant and muted, but still it came, a grating—sometimes sharp, sometimes like a groaning sound.

  She glanced at Alex again, but he seemed to be sleeping like a lamb. She touched his forehead and found that it wasn’t hot. His pulse was strong.

  She realized that the door had cracked open, and someone was looking in. Before she could move, the door closed. A feeling of ice trickling within her veins seized her, then she rose. She walked to the door, cracked it open again and looked into the hallway.

  Evelyn Prior was in the hall, now retreating from Alex’s door, heading for the stairway. She was in her nightdress and robe, which were both white, and it almost seemed that she was floating along the floor. She carried no lamp. But, of course, Evelyn wouldn’t need one. She knew her way in the dark.

  Camille longed to follow her. She looked back at Alex; he was still sleeping, yet she was afraid to leave him. And why? Because he was so afraid. And his fear was…contagious.

  None of his fears could possibly be true. Still, Camille couldn’t shake the dread that if Alex was left alone, in his weakened state, someone would slip in and finish what the cobra had started.

  She went to the chair by Alex and sat back down. And as she did so, she found herself longing for the night before, longing for a touch of the man, for a night in which she could forget everything except being held, tempted, teased and taken…in the darkness—where reality had no hold over desires.

  Brian Stirling was probably below. In the crypts. Searching madly, as he always was, seeking answers in what had become his obsessed quest. If Evelyn came upon him…That was insane. Evelyn had been here with him, forever. If she offered any danger to Brian Stirling, it would have come long ago. And Ajax was surely with his master.

  Something inside her cried out suddenly, Where had Brian been all day? And more importantly, why hadn’t he come to see her, find her, coerce her back across the hall with him…?

  OPENING THE RUSTED GATES produced a sound like a banshee’s wail. He might have tried to draw them open bit by bit, but decided instead that one rough and shrieking tug would be best. He damned himself for again putting off the idea of bringing workmen in.

  The crypts, untouched for so many years, were surprisingly clear of dust. But then again, nothing had moved, nothing had been disturbed here. There were tombs set in a line down the length of the main aisle, and crypts within the wall. They’d been designed in a cross fashion, so a secondary hall sliced across the first about three-quarters of the way down. The oldest grave dated from 1310, and was that of one of his ancestors, born Count Morwyth Stirling, later to become the first Earl of Carlyle. In the late 1700s, one of his industrious great-great-great-aunts had set about a renovation of the crypts, so the stones were clearly etched where brass and copper had not been used for memorials, and there were no open crypts with ancestors aligned merely upon shelves, as did remain in some old family vaults. Here and there, there were spiderwebs, and crumbled stone. And as he walked along, he heard the squeal of a rat.

  He turned back at a moaning sound, then nearly laughed aloud at himself. Ajax was on the other side of the gate, moaning softly, as if warning Brian that he shouldn’t go in.

  “They’re all just family, boy,” he told the dog softly. Frowning, Brian left the crypts and returned to the office area, quietly walking to the foot of the stairs. He held very still, waiting.

  “Someone is there, eh, boy?” he asked softly, and Ajax began to bark. Brian headed quickly up the stairs, but whoever had been there was gone. Was it Camille, making another trek into the night?

  He hurried up to the second floor. All was silent; he hadn’t been quick enough. Yet once there, he felt his heart thudding. He walked to the door behind which Alex Mittleman lay recovering.

  Camille was in the chair by his bed, eyes closed, her head resting on her hands on the chair arm. He longed to go to her. Was she only pretending? Had she tiptoed down the stairs to see what he was doing?

  “Watch over them, Ajax,” he told the dog.

  Then he turned and went back down to his task.

  CAMILLE WAS STARTLED to hear many voices in the breakfast room when she approached it at last, late and feeling the aches and pains of sleeping in a chair that not even a long, hot bath had been able to ease. She was apparently the last in the household to arrive.

  Brian Stirling was seated with his newspapers, as always. Evelyn Prior was across from him. Tristan and Ralph were in attendance, courteously complimenting Evelyn on her scones. Ralph, though he had been considered a family member in all the years he had lived with Tristan and Camille, looked a little awed to have been invited into such a grand place as the breakfast solarium. Even Alex, looking ashen and weak, had managed to bring himself into the room. And they also had another visitor—Lord Wimbly.

  His plate was piled high with thick bacon and fluffy eggs, and though it appeared he had been talking all the while, he was also enjoying his breakfast.

  “Good timing, I do say,” he said to Brian as Camille came in. “Mrs. Prior, you are an excellent cook!”

  “Thank you, Lord Wimbly,” she said demurely, rising as she noted Camille coming in. “Coffee, dear? Or tea?”

  “Coffee, please,” she said.

  Brian looked up sharply from his paper. He didn’t look pleased as he assessed her. He rose, though, and pulled out a chair for her.

  “Good morning, Camille.”

  “My dear, dear child!” Lord Wimbly said.

  “Camille!” Tristan looked at her with tremendous reproach. “You’re to be married!”

  “I—” She glanced at Brian.

  “Now, quite rightly, Lord Stirling has asked for my blessing. But you didn’t say a word to me about the announcement at the gala!” Tristan reproached her.

  “Ah…well, Alex was near death!” she said.

  Alex smiled weakly.

  “But such a thing is still…monumental!” Tristan said proudly.

  And it’s all a lie! she wanted to shout.

  “When will the wedding take place?” Lord Wimbly asked. “A grand affair, I imagine. Take
s time, planning,” he said pragmatically.

  Evelyn handed Camille a cup of coffee. “Indeed, it will take planning and discussion, since Lord Stirling is an Anglican and the bride-to-be is Roman Catholic.”

  “We’re not Catholic,” Tristan said, frowning. “We belong to the Anglican Church.”

  “Oh?” Evelyn said, looking pointedly at Camille.

  She was definitely on the spot. “We have always attended the Anglican Church officially,” she said, “but I’m afraid that I’ve always been fond of the Roman Catholic ritual, so…I follow many of their practices.” God, she decided, was really going to have to forgive her.

  “Well, we are living in a world where tolerance is demanded. Still, you will be marrying the Earl of Carlyle,” Evelyn said.

  “Kings have married Catholics,” Ralph put in.

  “And a few of them have lost their heads,” Evelyn said sweetly.

  “Only Charles I lost his head!” Tristan protested.

  “Ah, but a great deal of royalty has gone to the scaffold!” Evelyn argued.

  “This is nonsense! We are living in a great age, beneath one of the finest constitutional monarchies ever to exist,” Lord Wimbly said. “Honestly, at this meeting tonight, however grave, Brian, we must really celebrate your engagement to our dear Camille!”

  “Meeting tonight?” she asked.

  “Yes.” Brian’s eyes remained hard. She realized that he had heard the reports of her activities yesterday and was both angry and suspicious. But where had he been all day?

  “Actually, we’re having a dinner,” Brian said. “Thankfully, Alex will be well enough to attend. Sir John will be there, Lord Wimbly, a French envoy, a Monsieur Lacroisse, a few of the gentlemen on the board of trustees. Naturally Aubrey will be invited, as well as Sir Hunter. After the events of the gala, it seems that we needed to regroup, as it were.”

  She stared back at him. Regroup, indeed!

  “Eggs, dear?” Evelyn asked.

  “No, thank you, I’m afraid I’m not very hungry this morning.”

  “Well, it will be a very busy place today, lots to do, caterers coming in!” Evelyn said. She looked flushed and pleased, and added hesitantly, “Like the old days.”

  “Yes, well, I’d best be off!” Lord Wimbly said. He, too, sounded pleased. “Much to do before I return. Brian, I must say I’m delighted. I was deeply disturbed when I had my man drive me out this morning. Your solution for a quiet dinner to establish some sound conversation regarding the future is brilliant, simply brilliant.”

  “I’m glad you approve, Lord Wimbly,” Brian said, rising.

  “Until this evening,” Lord Wimbly told them all, and took his exit.

  “I believe I’d best retire for more rest, if I’m to appear my brightest and best this evening,” Alex said.

  “I’ll sit with you, of course,” Camille said.

  “No,” Brian said sharply. “Tristan and Ralph are into a chess tournament of a kind. They intend to keep Alex company and see to anything he might want or need. I’d like to have a word with you myself, my dear.”

  She nodded pleasantly, though her heart was pounding.

  “So much to do!” Evelyn murmured. “Oh, dear, there are so many eggs left. Ah, well, they are supposedly quite good for Ajax’s coat! Ajax, you come along with me.”

  Ajax, who had been sleeping at Brian’s feet, arose. Don’t go with her! Camille longed to cry out. But she held silent. The great wolfhound was up, wagging his tail, apparently understanding completely that he was being offered a breakfast treat.

  “Camille, if you will be so kind, my dear?” Brian said.

  She forced a smile and preceded him out of the solarium, and down the hall. At the entrance to his suite, he opened the door, once again allowing her to move ahead of him. But the second she was in the room, he closed the door and leaned against it. His eyes were ice beneath the mask.

  “Where in God’s name were you yesterday?” he demanded.

  “Where were you?”

  “I had business. Where were you?”

  “I had business.”

  “Confession?”

  “I do have a great deal to confess,” she murmured.

  “Think of me as your confessor, then. Where were you?”

  “I went into the museum,” she told him.

  “What?”

  She took a deep breath and repeated, “I went into the museum.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “It’s where I work!”

  “It’s where a cobra was loose the night before. Whatever made you go in? You knew, obviously, that it was a dangerous thing to do because you lied to Corwin. And he, being the trusting fellow he is, sat outside a church for hours waiting for you.”

  “I did go into the church,” she murmured.

  “Why did you go to the museum?”

  “To find the cobra—the golden cobra. The object that seems to be of the greatest interest to everyone!”

  “You will not go into the museum anymore,” he said angrily.

  “I will go where I choose!” she told him. “I am not your prisoner. You can’t hold Tristan here any longer, either!” she claimed, but her voice was faltering. He was the Earl of Carlyle. He could make many things happen.

  “Are you so eager to go, then? You despise it here so much?” he demanded.

  “I make my own choices!” she reminded him. “And you cannot order me around. Where were you? Why do you disappear all the time? What insanity are you playing at?”

  “No insanity. Camille, as I told you, this is a dangerous game. I never should have brought you in on it. God knows I had not even suspected the turns it would take. I had not expected…damn you, Camille!” He took one step toward her, gripping her by the shoulders, looking as if he longed to shake her, fingers remaining tense on her instead.

  “Damn you, Camille. Damn you!”

  “Damn you!” she cried back.

  His fingers tensed anew. He shook his head, gritting his teeth. Then an oath left his lips. Suddenly his mouth was upon hers, filled with the passion and fury of his anger, yet eliciting an instant arousal within her that soared at that mere touch. The fever was greater than ever before, perhaps because she had become so familiar with his touch, taste, perhaps because anticipation was knowledge now. Or perhaps because she could not bear the fact that she had not lain beside him the night before.

  Instinct, raw, earthy and sweet, had come to live within her heart. She met his touch, both tender and savage, with a volatile hunger and fury of her own, returning his kiss, falling against him, melting into him, fingers tangling into his hair and trailing with electric energy down his shoulders, tearing at his shirt…. Only one thing caused her to draw away.

  “The mask!” she whispered.

  For a second, he hesitated. Then it was gone.

  In a tangle of fused lips and arms, they shed clothing in a whirl of frantic need, desire overriding anger, breathlessness stealing words, a fire in the blood driving all else. Just a short time ago, she would have mocked such a desperate abandon. But now she needed only to be in his arms, to feel his naked flesh against hers, to know the heat and warmth and power that engulfed him when he touched her. His hands were everywhere, so quickly. Shed clothing was tossed where it lay as he continued to kiss, caress and stroke while inching ever closer to the door separating the rooms of his suite. Finally they were before the great canopied bed and she was falling against it, feeling the weight of him atop her. There, she discovered her own prowess, lips finding his throat, the expanse of his chest, hands savoring the feel of the man beneath her. She inched against him, body flush with body, breasts pressing against him, skin and muscle and searing heat, lips playing over his flesh in a need both desperate and instinctive. The ragged sound of his breath, the fire of his fingers upon her, all drove her. She touched and licked and teased, and felt the explosion of him beneath. Then his hands turned her to his own will as he coerced and seduced anew, creating the steady ris
e of magic and lava that she had come to know, yet coveted more each time. Like magic, he brought her higher, and ever more beneath the urgent spell of hunger and fulfillment.

  When he touched her, when he was within her, when his arms were around her…there was no world beyond.

  There was only the soaring, the ever rampant, thundering rise, and the volatile climax that rocked her, shattering all else.

  In the shadow of his arms, she lay for long, sweet moments, with only the feel of him, the music of their hearts, their breathing coming together. It was a moment to cherish, a sweet moment for dreams.

  His gentle fingers smoothed her hair. His lips just brushed her forehead. And then, his words.

  “You cannot go back to the museum anymore.”

  “I must.”

  “You will not.”

  “You will not tell me what to do.”

  “I am the Earl of Carlyle.”

  “This is not feudal England! I am not your subject! I make my own—”

  “You will not make your own choice, not in this!”

  “Damn you!”

  “Damn you!”

  And then she was in his arms again, with his fierce kisses and her own angry response to them.

  Much later, he sighed softly. “Regrettably, we cannot do this all day.”

  “The argument has not ended!”

  “I pray that’s true,” he said, and rose. “There’s much to do. Much,” he murmured. He left her upon the expanse of the bed and began collecting the clothing he had shed. And she knew, though she could not see him, that he re-donned the mask before anything else.

  “You must meet at the entry in an hour,” he said.

  “But you just said that there’s so much to do!”

  “Indeed, there is. But I announced an engagement last night. It’s now Sunday. And since you felt that desperate need for confession and were let off before a Catholic church, I believe that we must make an appearance at the parish church. We wouldn’t want anyone questioning our intentions. And surely you wouldn’t want to waste the pureness of soul you acquired yesterday! An appearance will be expected!”