Cool air seeped around a slender hatch at the bottom of the steps. I pressed the spring lock, ducked my head, and wriggled through the narrow opening.
Night.
I breathed in deep. The air was fragrant from all the blooms of May, and I could taste salt and moisture from the sea. In the distance, I heard the surf crashing against the rocks. A waning half-moon rode on smoky gray clouds, casting a silver light on the world.
Our shadow dogs, Phobos and Tromos, trotted up silently and greeted me, blacker than night itself, the pair of them. Georgie was right—they were more wolves than dogs. And they loved to run as much as I did. I gave them a soft whistle, no more than a night wren’s call, and we were off. Racing across the park. They led the way as if the three of us were a pack, running on the hunt.
I stopped at the edge of Stranje House’s property and crouched. “Distewi,” I warned Phobos and Tromos in a hushed voice. They sat on their haunches beside me, panting, as I searched for signs of intruders and listened for anything that didn’t seem right. High above us, a hawk’s high-pitched skree meant a mouse or mole was about to meet its doom. Natterjack toads burbled and drummed unworried in the underbrush. Cicadas buzzed undisturbed. Those reassuring sounds meant no intruders were in these woods or fields. Yet.
“Trigo,” I commanded. Stay. The two of them sat, a matched pair of dark sentinels, waiting, watching, as I leapt up and dashed across the Ravencross lawns.
I circled his manor house, keeping a watchful eye on the shrubbery and trees, searching for any hints of light. There was none on the first floor. But on the second floor I spotted the telltale flicker of a candle. That could mean only one thing. That was his bedroom. The candle had given his location away, and if I could figure that out, so could a murderer. Precisely the reason I had to come. Ravencross was too vulnerable.
I made quick work of scaling the wall, finding ready toeholds and fingerholds between the stones. I’d learned to climb even before I’d come to Stranje House. I had to learn the day I’d fled from my uncle by way of an attic window and a three-story wall, but I’d continued learning under Madame Cho’s tutelage. I was becoming so adept at scaling walls that should my current profession fail me, and if I’d had the disposition for it, I might’ve made a capable thief.
The casement creaked only slightly as I pushed open the window and slipped over the sill into his room. The candle fluttered with the influx of air, but still no one stirred.
All my stealth was for naught, I could’ve come in whistling a tune. Neither of them heard me. MacDougal’s rhythmic snores were so loud I’d heard them long before I opened the window, and as Miss Stranje said, the doctor had dosed Ravencross with laudanum to ease his pain. I saw the bottle sitting on his bedside table.
I tiptoed along the edge of the wall, wanting to have a closer look at Gabriel just to satisfy myself that he was indeed breathing and still alive.
Sheeting covered him only to the waist, leaving his chest bare except for the bandages wrapping the left side, bandages ripe with bloodstains. Taking in the bloodstains and his nakedness, I drew in a sharp breath. For modesty’s sake, I should’ve looked away. But I didn’t. Apart from the bandages, Gabriel had a magnificent chest, smooth and muscled. More important, he was alive. Alive. Why should I look away from so gratifying a sight?
His eyes were closed, and he looked so peaceful. Beautiful in sleep, his face was at rest, and not nearly as tense as it usually was. I resisted the urge to smooth my hand over his cheek. The one with the scar.
“What are you doing here, Tess?” He spoke without opening his eyes.
“I…” I didn’t finish answering. He had to be dreaming, talking in his sleep. He couldn’t possibly know I was here. He’d had laudanum. I hadn’t touched him, and I’d been quiet as a church mouse. Quieter. A winging bird makes more noise.
I stepped back silently.
His eyes flashed open. “I will only ask once more. What are you doing here?”
“Guarding you.” I was so startled, I could scarcely speak in a whisper, the words squeaked out of me. I glanced sideways at MacDougal, who shifted in his chair and snorted as if something had disturbed his slumber.
“Don’t be absurd,” he growled.
And for an instant, I felt absurd, but then I remembered the man I’d slain that morning and his bloodthirsty companions. I inched closer. “Someone wants to kill you, my lord. Someone very dangerous.”
“No more dangerous than you, I think.” He closed his eyes again as if drowsy. “I already have a nursemaid. Go home.”
Lady Daneska was far more dangerous than I. Pressing my lips together, I glared down at him with all the severity I could muster. “Oh, yes, and a marvelous watchdog he is.”
MacDougal underscored my words with a gurgling snore loud enough to rattle the paintings on the walls. I bent close to Ravencross’s ear. “If I can climb through your window with such ease, so can an assassin. I will stay and guard you until MacDougal has caught up on his beauty sleep.”
He motioned for me to lean closer but rewarded me with a rather snappish tone. “You needn’t have worried. Do you think me a fool? MacDougal might need his rest. I, on the other hand, have been forced to lie in this confounded bed ever since our morning’s escapades. More to the point, I heard you coming long before you crept through my window.” With his good hand, Gabriel slid a gun out from under the covers. He gestured for me to back away. “Luckily, I guessed it might be you. Now, if you will be so kind as to shut the window on your way out.”
I didn’t back away. I found it quite pleasurable looking at him up close in the candlelight. The amber glow turned his skin a delicious creamy bronze. I had the absurd urge to kiss his forehead, and the scar on his cheek, and most especially his divine mouth. Which, at that very moment, was puckering up with irritation.
Instead of kisses, I bestowed upon him several words that I plucked solely for the purpose of vexing him. “You’re going to make me climb down? How very ungentlemanly of you. Climbing down is much harder than climbing up. I might fall. Aren’t you worried I’ll fall?”
He exhaled, heavy and hard with exasperation. “Woman, you worry me in a hundred ways. Falling isn’t one of them. Given all the other things I’ve seen you do, I’m certain you’ll manage.” He said all this while studying my lips with an intensity that made blood crash through my veins like a flash flood. Then he closed his eyes and bit down on his bottom lip.
“You’re in pain.” I leaned across him, checking the bandage for new evidence of blood.
“For pity’s sake, Tess. Get out of here before your reputation is completely in tatters.”
I drew back. “I don’t give a fig about my reputation.”
“Well, maybe I care about it.” He grabbed the front of my dress and pulled me close, close enough that I could taste his scent and feel the heat rolling off him. Surely, he had a fever.
“You don’t look right,” I said sternly. “Your color is too high. Shall I call for the doctor?”
“No.” He grimaced. “I want you to…” He didn’t finish. His voice faltered, but his grip on me tightened. His pupils widened, so hungry and dark I feared they might swallow me up and trap me there forever.
Words passed over my lips, more of a breath than a whisper. “You’re not well, my lord.”
“I want you to leave.” He let go and sagged back against the pillow. “I can’t rest with you here. Get out.”
I stepped back, hurt that he would send me away so callously. “Must you always lie?” I said it to myself, so softly he couldn’t possibly have heard. MacDougal’s snores grew noisier and more rhythmic.
He couldn’t cast me out that easily. I neared him once more, stooping next to Gabriel’s ear. “I will settle into that corner, in the shadows. You won’t even know I am here.”
“Have your wits gone begging, Tess? Don’t you understand? Even if I were half dead, drugged to the gills, deaf, dumb, and blind, I would know you were here. How can you expe
ct me to rest when you arouse such madness in me?”
Madness.
I nearly laughed. “I know all about madness, my lord. You have my sympathy. However, in view of the fact that I refuse to leave you untended and unguarded, you will simply have to cope, as I must.” Having said my piece, I left him and eased into the dark corner across from his bed. Smiling. Because there had been a declaration of some kind in his words.
A declaration made all the sweeter by the fact that he had not wanted to make it.
We had no future, this lone hungry wolf and I. I could not bear the idea of destroying his life by entangling his with mine. Madness, indeed. What did he know of madness? I would spare him the suffering of my father and grandfather. I would shield him from the very real madness that would someday overtake me.
But for now, for this one night, I might watch over him, stand guard in his den and pretend that things might be different. I would never be the doting wife who wiped his brow and smoothed back the wild curls from his fevered brow. But tonight, tonight, I could do this one thing, I could watch over him while he was wounded. I could wait in the shadows with my blade at the ready. And even if Daneska herself came, I would cut her heart out to protect him.
I would keep him alive.
“Irksome female.”
“If you mean to chase me off, you will have to do better than that.”
“Witch,” he muttered and shifted in the bed, trying to find a comfortable position.
It stung, for him to name me a witch, as he knew it would. But only a little. I was used to that one. So I said nothing in retort. He needed his sleep. Timing my movements with MacDougal’s snores, I tiptoed to the window, tightened down the latch, and took up my vigil in the shadows. I sank onto my haunches with my back propped against the wall. I would feel a vibration should anyone try to open the window or tread on the floorboards.
I checked the knife blade. Sharp as a dragon’s tooth.
Twice the doctor came and went, checking on his patient, and not once did he notice me sitting vigil in the dark recesses of my corner. In the early morning hours, MacDougal’s snores finally changed key to the gurgle of a lighter sleep. He would wake soon. I left the shadows and stood next to the bed. Gabriel was wrong. He had slept—well and deep. His arms were spread wide and relaxed, his hands flung recklessly atop the covers, nowhere near the hidden gun.
Farewell.
His innocent black curls tempted me. I had no right to touch him. No right at all. And yet I dared to gently smooth them back from his forehead. They were softer than I had imagined. He slept so peacefully that he didn’t even stir. My fingers drifted feather light down the scar on his cheek, scarcely touching the jagged ridge. His breath caught, broke rhythm. I yanked my hand away and fell back into the shadows.
Foolish girl.
Time to leave.
I slipped out of Lord Ravencross’s bedroom the same way I’d come, scrambling down the wall with ease. My muscles, having crouched all night, were glad of the exercise. The moon was still out, and although the sun would not crest for another two hours, the world was bathed in a smoky gray. It reminded me of yestermorning and the chaos that had nearly taken him from me.
It seemed a hundred years ago.
I dashed home through the dewy grass. My tracks might be mistaken for those of a deer springing joyfully through the glade.
Seven
CAUGHT
It surprised me that Phobos and Tromos were not waiting where I’d left them. But I supposed even wolf-dogs must sleep now and again. I leapt over the low brush between Stranje House and Ravencross’s park, wove through the trees, navigated the maze of wild roses, loped past the kitchen gardens, and wriggled around the archery targets tucked away between a towering hedgerow and the side of Stranje House. Targets we also used for long-range knife-throwing practice. There is a reason Miss Stranje keeps the landscape au naturel. From there it was only a short dash to the small trapdoor.
I stopped short.
My joy vaporized into a gasp.
Miss Stranje leaned against the wall, Phobos and Tromos pacing on either side of her. “Good evening, Tess. Or should I say good morrow? I gather you are feeling better?”
Caught.
I swallowed in answer.
“And how is our patient?” she asked, as if simply making polite conversation, nothing more.
Devil take it! There was nothing I could do except face my punishment. Still panting from running so hard, I bent to catch my breath. “Resting.”
She stood relaxed, at ease, as if we’d simply happened upon one another at a dressmaker’s shop. That’s how I knew to keep my guard up. Miss Stranje was always more dangerous when she was relaxed.
“You do realize these passageways exist so that if Stranje House is ever attacked and overrun by an enemy we might be able to make our escape.” When I did not answer, she took a step closer. “They were not designed so that young ladies might sneak out in the dead of night and climb into a neighboring lord’s bedchamber.”
That set my nerves thumping. “Put like that, it sounds rather sordid.”
“So it does.”
“You know perfectly well why I went. There was nothing unseemly about it. He needed protecting.”
Miss Stranje waited as unmoved as a monolith in the moonlight.
“How did you know I’d gone?” I straightened and crossed my arms, shoring up against the peal she would surely ring over my head.
“Madame Cho went to check on you in the middle of the night. Imagine her dismay to find you missing from your bed.”
To this, I could only dip my head, shamefaced.
Miss Stranje understood my attachment to Madame Cho, an attachment she shared, which gave her all the more reason to scold me. “She came to me in considerable distress.”
I was sorry to have worried Madame Cho, but I would still have gone. Someone had to keep him safe from Daneska’s murderers. Defiant, I looked up and collided with her hooded-hangman expression.
“Madame worried you had wandered off in a stupor. We live near some rather treacherous cliffs.”
“And yet…” I jutted my chin higher. “You didn’t sound the alarm. Why is that?” I kept my shoulders back, square, as rigid and unyielding as hers.
She took a deep breath, calculating whether to admit the truth. “You know why.” Something akin to pride tempered her expression.
“You guessed where I’d gone.”
“It didn’t require much conjecture on my part.” She exhaled and clicked her tongue as if I was being childish. “It did, however, bring into question my trust in you.”
“For that I am sorry. And for alarming Madame Cho. But I do not regret that I went. Daneska hired assassins—”
“Yes, I know.” She waved away my protest. “Sera and Jane explained it all to me. Nevertheless, you must understand my position. It was not so very long ago that Lady Daneska snuck out at night to rendezvous with the former Lord Ravencross. I should not like to see history repeat itself.”
She might as well have slapped me.
“How can you say that?” I jumped back, throwing my hands wide. “I would never! He would never. How can you even suggest such a thing?” Tromos yipped softly and nuzzled my hand in an effort to calm me.
“Because, my dear, I hadn’t expected it from Lady Daneska either. At least, I hadn’t suspected the extent of her treachery.”
“But I am nothing like her.” I thumped my palm against my chest. “Nothing! Daneska is an evil, vicious, conniving…” I could not find the right expletive. Georgie’s words from the previous morning came back to me. “Vipers are more trustworthy.”
Miss Stranje’s shoulders pinched up. She looked away from me, out across the park to where Ravencross Manor stood, still a dark silhouette at this gloomy hour before dawn. She stared. Silent. Remembering.
I remembered, too.
The night she left us, Daneska told me the truth about Lucien.
It had been cold
the night Daneska left, having snowed the day before. I’d awakened an hour after midnight to find her bed empty and the panel to our secret passage slightly ajar. I’d caught up to her as she was headed out through this same hidden door. She was carrying a satchel, and I knew my best friend was not simply sneaking off for another assignation. But she wouldn’t tell me what she was doing, not until she swore me to secrecy.
Once she’d obtained my promise, she confided that they were fleeing the country because Lucien had aligned himself with France. He was obsessed with Napoleon’s ideologies and had even gone so far as to join the Order of the Iron Crown. I could still hear her laughing at me for not understanding why she, too, intended to side with France. She and Lucien were convinced Napoleon was destined to win the war and that he would one day unite all of Europe. With her chin at a haughty angle, hoisted well above the white fur of her ermine collar, she’d said, “And then Lucien and I will rule at his side.”
I’d begged her to reconsider. When, in desperation, I’d asked if loyalty meant nothing to her, she mocked me. “Loyalty? Do not be so naïve, Tessie. I have no country. No king. My father’s duchy has been laid waste by British armies. I owe my allegiance to no one, not you, not Miss Stranje, and certainly not your fat English prince. I am loyal only to myself.” Even though we were the same age, she’d patted her glove against my cheek as if I were a toddler she pitied. “Not even to Lucien. Like all men, he is merely a means to an end.”
She’d grinned wickedly, as if it pleased her to admit that even Lord Ravencross had no hold over her. “I’m not like him,” she’d said proudly. “I have no interest in democracies and lofty ideals. But I do have a keen interest in being on the winning side.”
She’d laughed then and slipped through the door. “Power, Tessie, that is what matters. Money and power.”
I’d followed her out and stood in my nightgown and bare feet watching her traipse across the snow. Ice crystals blew in soft sparkling swirls as she turned and pressed a lone gloved finger to her lips, reminding me of my promise not to tell until morning. She knew that where she had no use for loyalty, I prized it. Though it ate at me like a green sickness, she knew I would keep my word. With another laugh, she ran away. The sound caught on the wind and turned to breaking glass. I kept standing there, my feet going numb, watching as she faded into the night, leaving dark, coffin-shaped footprints in the snow.
Exile for Dreamers Page 7