Midnight Temptation

by Nancy Gideon

  She looked back at him, her glare wet and furious. “Don’t scorn my sorrow, you unfeeling—”

  His hand covered her mouth, halting the words. “I understand sorrow. I know the feeling well. But you needn’t grieve for Nicole. Not yet. That’s what I’ve come to tell you.” And while Arabella stared at him, bewildered, he added, “She is very much Gino’s daughter.”

  Arabella’s breath gusted against his fingertips in a desperate rush of hope. “She’s alive.”

  “Alive and in love, but very confused.”

  “She’s alive!”

  In her exuberance, Arabella flung her arms about him, heedless of the way he gasped and stiffened at the sudden contact, and she hugged hard, the outpouring of her relief dampening his shoulder. He never made a move until it was to pry her away. His words came gruffly. “All is not well, signora. She is in danger. She’s been misled into trusting those she should not. She needs to be here with family, where she can be protected.”

  The word danger brought Arabella back into a cool control. “Do you know where she is? Can you bring her here?”

  “Yes . . . and no.”

  “Why not? Who is threatening her?”

  “Shhh!” His thumb slid along the part of her lips. “I cannot tell you everything, either.”

  She gave him a cautious scrutiny. “If this is some trick, Gerardo—”

  “The danger is very real. You must not tarry. I have written two addresses. Send Gino’s man and he will find her at one of them. Bring her here by the light of day and then be watchful. I must go. I can’t let daylight catch me this far from home.”

  “Stay,” Arabella suggested suddenly. He stared at her through eyes as blue as tranquil ponds. “Leave her, Gerardo. She doesn’t care for you.”

  “Do you, cara? Do you care for me?”

  “Yes,” came her guileless reply. Then she leaned forward and gently kissed his warm cheek. His eyes sank shut and stayed closed even after she moved away. Finally, he exhaled in a sighing whisper and seemed to return quickly to his old mocking self.

  “Ah, no, Bella. Bianca and I, we deserve each other. I was not a good man in life, some three hundred years ago. I was vain and foolish, proud and greedy. I brought about my own fall, and the fall of those I loved, and I have not changed in all those years. Eternity has taught me nothing except that I cannot be other than I am. But I thank you for the thought. It is enough.” And he stood, his movements a fluid flow. Arabella came up onto her knees.

  “Gerardo?”

  “Si?”

  “Take care.”

  He sketched a theatrical bow. “And you, mía ragázza.”

  “Are you sure you can’t wait until Louis returns? He would want to see you.”

  A wry smile touched his lips. “I think not. Not in his wife’s bedroom. Buòna nòtte. Il piacére è státo mío.”

  “No,” she disagreed. “The pleasure was mine. Gerardo, if you were not a good man, why did you do this?”

  His gaze lowered as he said, “For Gino. Because I loved him.”

  And then his eyes slowly lifted and she saw another answer in them.

  For you.

  Chapter Fifteen

  DARK EYES FLICKERED open and Nicole was forced to make a soul-wrenching decision. What was she going to tell him? The truth? That she’d sent his brother to make a deal with a demon? That she, herself, was the same kind of monster? He wouldn’t believe her.

  And if he did, she would lose him.

  If he thought Frederic was in danger, he would rush to his aid without hesitation or prudence. And he would die.

  Or, she could say nothing and spirit him out of the city to safety. She could continue the pretense as long as possible, and hopefully, by the time it grew necessary to tell him as much of the truth as he could comprehend, he’d be so much in love with her he would never leave.

  Or she could take him down, drink him dry and have him forever without fear.

  “Nicole?”

  “How do you feel, Marchand?” She bent close and blotted a dampened cloth across his brow.

  “As if all that exists above my shoulders is a big block of stone that someone is determined to split in two with an even bigger hammer.” His gaze sharpened and drifted about, gathering focus. “Someone must have been waiting here inside. I was taken by surprise and—” He broke off and hauled himself up into a sitting position. The effort brought on a dramatic pallor and left him weaving.

  “It’s all right,” Nicole soothed, bracing him with the wrap of her arms about his middle. “Whoever was here was frightened off by my return.”

  He was disoriented enough to accept her word, and for that she was grateful. While he was unconscious, she’d taken the bodies to an alley off a far-removed street. No connection would ever be made to this flat. Unless someone believed the babbling of the one who escaped her. And no one would, she was sure. Marchand need never know. He let his head sink down upon her shoulder and draped his arm over the other. “My brave Nicole. Are you never cautious?”

  “Not when those I love are concerned.” And she closed her eyes, holding him tight, absorbing the essence of his strength and vulnerability. How could she face an uncertain future without him? Yet she knew she had to do what was right. She had to tell him. She had to trust him.

  He straightened with a weary sigh. “Come. Let’s gather our things and go. There’s nothing here for either of us anymore.”

  If she said nothing, they’d be at her parents’ home by dawn.

  “Marchand . . . about Frederic.”

  “No, Nicole. Say nothing, please. I must let go and now is the time. Frederic must make his own decisions about his life. I regret the way I acted at the café. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you. I was taken by surprise and I behaved badly, but that’s over with. I have my own life to get on to. That life is with you.”

  “Marchand—”

  He cut her words off with a kiss, a deep, descriptive kiss that promised everything she could ever dream of in terms of passion. It weakened her moral resistance and had her selfishly guarding her own tomorrows.

  “I love you, Nicole,” he murmured as he pulled away. “Now, what was it you were about to say?”

  What could she say as he gazed down into her eyes, as his hand stroked tenderly through her hair? He was so handsome, so human in his failings, so honorable in his intentions.

  “Oh, March, I—”

  The broken clatter of footfalls on the outside steps interrupted. Musette burst through the door. She was gulping for breath through horrible, dry sobs. Her face was etched in stark lines of terror.

  “Musette, what’s wrong?” Marchand cried as he went to catch her in midswoon. Her fingers snagged his shirtfront, dragging him down close to her.

  “They’re murderers and they have F-Frederic!”

  “What are you talking about? Who? Who has Frederic?”

  “That vile couple, the ones Nicole sent us to.”

  And Marchand looked up, his dark eyes pinning Nicole’s. “What is she talking about?”

  Courage failed before the accusation in his eyes. Nicole stammered, “I didn’t mean for him to go, Marchand. He wasn’t supposed to go.”

  “Where? Go where?”

  “To Bianca and Gerard.”

  Fright settled dark and inexplicable within him. “Why? Why would Frederic go there?”

  “To obtain funding for some scheme of theirs. Bianca expressed an interest in causes. I tried to help but I couldn’t get enough money together and then they hurt you, Marchand. I wanted to get you both free. I thought if De Sivry was given enough money, he’d let Frederic go, but Frederic—”

  “Didn’t want to leave,” Marchand concluded bitterly. “So you have been involved in this deception all along.” He said that
with a cold finality, and Nicole saw the hope of her tomorrows extinguished like a snuffed flame.

  “Marchand, it was for you, for us.”

  But he wouldn’t listen. He turned his attention back to Musette, who had recovered her wind sufficiently to speak. The terror in her expression alarmed Marchand, as did the fact that she would leave Frederic to come to him. It must have been something terrible to drive her to take flight.

  “Musette, can you tell me what happened?”

  The gentle strength in his voice gave her the confidence to tell all. Still weeping, she related what she’d seen; the oddness of the two killers, the brazenness of their crime, the two women slaughtered and left in macabre poses as if sitting to a feast. Frederic’s awful cries.

  “I ran, Marchand. I was so afraid. I was too much a coward to go to him. After what I saw . . . after what they did . . . I just couldn’t.”

  “It’s all right, Musette,” he soothed as his gaze grew troubled. “You say De Sivry and Gaston were with him.”

  Her head nodded jerkily.

  “Well, they won’t be easily taken by surprise.” Yet he was thinking of the sleek Gerard coming to him through the parting mists, his clothes not even soiled after killing four would-be assassins. And he wasn’t so sure. “You stay here, Musette. I’ll go after Frederic.”

  “No!” That cry tore from Nicole. When he glanced up, she rushed on to say, “March, you can’t. You don’t know what they are, what they’re capable of. It wasn’t just the money Frederic was interested in. It was their power. It’s too late to save him. You must save yourself. We can still leave the city—”

  He shoved her pleading hands away in disgust. “You’d have me abandon my brother to go with you? I cannot believe how badly I misjudged you. You think I would run away?”

  “Please,” she moaned softly. “I don’t want you to die.”

  “So I should sacrifice Frederic? Is that it?” He set Musette aside so he could stand. Then he went about gathering up his armaments.

  Nicole watched him with a mounting dread. “You haven’t a chance against them,” she mumbled in weak despair. “Marchand, you don’t know what they are. You don’t know what I am. They are demons.”

  He whirled to face her, his expression cold. “What you are, mademoiselle, is untrustworthy. You tell me lies, then expect me to believe this, this fairytale.”

  “You know I’m not lying.”

  Her levelly spoken words didn’t persuade him. “It doesn’t matter if you are or if you aren’t.” He checked the charges for his pistol and buckled his sabre at his waist. He looked competent, dangerous. He looked vulnerably human.

  “Your weapons won’t do any good against them,” she said.

  “Next, I suppose you’ll be telling me they’re some sort of gods.”

  Nicole didn’t blink at his sarcasm. “They are.”

  His smile was searing. “And that makes you a god, too. You forget I know better.”

  “Yes, you do know better,” she answered quietly. He paused, his gaze locked with hers, and she continued. “You know I’m different. Why won’t you listen to me?”

  Though he didn’t reply, she saw her answer flickering through his eyes. Panic. He was desperately afraid that she was telling him the truth. That his brother was in dreadful danger. That there were such things as demons. That she wasn’t what he wanted her to be; a soft, beautiful woman with whom he could spend the rest of his days. But that uncertainty couldn’t hold against a lifetime of learned discipline. His training told him to rely on nothing but logic. It taught him to set an established course of action to obtain his goal and to ignore such distractions as instinct and superstition. He was a man of linear direction and he simply could not accept what she was saying.

  So he turned away, shut her out, and with her, the confusions of what she told him. “I’ll bring him back, Musette,” he promised the softly sobbing woman. And he started for the door.

  “Marchand!” Nicole caught his arm, pulling him back, but even as she did, she knew she’d lost him. His face was set with purpose, his dark eyes hardened to her pleas. And she saw only one chance to save him. “I’ll go with you.”

  “No.” She was so surprised by his objection, she let him push her away. “You go home. You go back to where you belong, away from me and my family. You’ve stirred up nothing but trouble since I took you in. You’ve lied and schemed your way into our lives. You’ve lured me and my brother from the paths we’d chosen, sucking us up into whatever perversions go on in that house in the Place Vendome. Your presence here has seen both Camille and Bebe to their deaths, and I will not lose my brother to whatever darkness moves you. I won’t. Had you thought by getting rid of all of them, you would have me to yourself? Is that what this has all been about?”

  She was so shocked by his assumptions, she couldn’t think of a way to refute them.

  “Be gone by the time I get back.”

  With that, he strode through the doorway and his footsteps pounded down the stairs. And Nicole stood in helpless dismay, knowing he was going to die and that there was no way to prevent it. In desperation, she closed her eyes and concentrated.

  Gerard, help me!

  And faintly, as if from a long distance away, came his reply.

  I’m sorry, cara. I’ve done all I can.

  THE AIR WAS COLD. His breath laid frosty plumes upon it. The heels of his boots made a loud resounding echo as he walked down the cavernous hall. The only interior light was moonlight and it streamed down the marble tiles like a silvery runner. As he turned into the antechamber where all those bestial snarls were frozen for eternity, he didn’t like the image his mind created; the similarity to a tomb. It wouldn’t be his if he could help it.

  And he prayed it wasn’t already his brother’s.

  One of the things his military schooling had taught him was how to disassociate fear from his actions. He could make his mind obey regardless of the sense of threat around him. But he had no control over the way the hairs at his nape quivered or the way his breathing increased to a light, fast tempo to match the cautious quickening of his heart. He knew the feel of death and it was thick in these cold, quiet rooms. Even so, he moved boldly through the network of shadows. His voice rang out clear and steady.

  “Frederic?”

  It sounded like the hiss of steam escaping, that soft, whispering reply.

  “Marchand.”

  He stopped. His gaze scanned the dark reaches of the chamber and the opening that led to rooms beyond. And as he watched, he efficiently primed his pistol, then drew his sabre from its sheath.

  “Marchand, mon ami, how good to see you again.”

  Marchand turned toward the source of that wet, sibilant noise, bringing up the bore of his pistol. “Who’s there?”

  “You don’t know my voice?”

  “Camille?”

  Because he was a soldier who employed reason over emotion, Marchand’s astonishment was manifested only in his surprised tone. He was a creature of logic, and logic told him Camille was dead. He held his pistol steady.

  “Come to me, Marchand, and we shall embrace once more as friends.”

  There was a beckoning cadence to the words, and Marchand had to struggle against the pull. He set his feet in a wide stance as if readying to stand firm in his resistance. He honed his aim on the dark shape of a man, lingering in indistinguishable shadow.

  “Come forward into the light, Camille, so that I might greet you properly.”

  His coaxing brought the figure closer. The first thing that struck Marchand was the stench. It was hard not to reel back from the odorous wave of sickly sweet putrefying flesh and stale blood. Marchand locked his knees, refusing to waver.

  “That’s it. Come closer so I can see you, old friend.”

  Scuffed and mud
died boots poked into the pool of moonlight that edged up soiled trousers and torn jacket, over long, sensitive artist’s fingers, now caked with gore instead of oil-base paint. One more step brought him fully into view.

  Marchand’s breath escaped in a rush. “Mon Dieu!” he whispered in distracted horror, but his gun was unfaltering.

  Camille Viotti was little more than a rotting corpse held together by tattered garments, leathery strips of skin and exposed sinew. But his eyes gleamed, alive with hunger.

  “Camille, you’ve looked better.”

  And Marchand fired.

  The bullet ripped through Camille’s filthy jacket and passed through what was left of his upper chest. His body staggered briefly but didn’t fall. Marchand was busy reloading, mentally crossing himself. Just then, a hand clamped down upon his shoulder, fingers pinching so hard his entire arm went numb and his gun fell to the floor. He looked around and gave a small cry.

  His first thought was that his brother was dead. The second was that somehow Frederic’s body was still obscenely alive.

  He acted swiftly before the shock of what he was seeing could settle in. His sword plunged into his brother’s belly and abruptly the pressure on his other arm was gone. Marchand stumbled back and watched as Frederic pressed his palm to the wound, then blankly studied the stain upon it. He looked back up and Marchand could see no response to pain, no recognition, no feeling whatsoever. Just that infernal blaze of need. He backed up a few more steps and assumed a defensive en garde.

  “What are you?” he demanded in a harsh, angry tone of that creature who controlled his brother’s remains.

  And it was Frederic’s voice that answered. “Marchand, we’re hungry. Feed us. You’ve always taken care of us in the past. Feed us now. We need you.”

  Marchand retreated as the two came closer. They moved with an odd, uncoordinated grace, their movements lumbering yet quick, so quick. From the corner of his eye, he detected the presence of others and he risked a glance behind. There, in another doorway, stood Gaston, his head perched at an unnatural angle upon his shoulders. Behind him were the thugs Gerardo Pasquale had killed at the bridge. He couldn’t get past them, so he sought the only other exit and saw it guarded by two beautiful and unholy females. They smiled at him and opened their arms in invitation.