Immortal Champion

by Lisa Hendrix

  Keep reading for a special preview of the next novel in Lisa Hendrix’s Immortal Brotherhood series

  IMMORTAL DEFENDER

  Available Fall 2011 from Berkley Sensation!

  ALONE IN JOHN Dee’s library for the night, Torvald fetched the Vox vocis incendium, the book Ari had asked him to search for clues to how Cwen had worked her magic, and set to work. He was deep in the cryptic scratchings of some long-dead mage when he stumbled over a glyph he didn’t know. He lit a stub of candle and carried it to the far corner where Dee kept several grammars of occult symbols, using the light to search the faded titles. He’d just found the volume he wanted when the door creaked open. Before he could think, habits born of eight hundred years of hiding took over; he pinched out the candle and stepped deeper into the shadows, his knife out and ready.

  “Master Dee?”

  He recognized the low voice as that of his earlier supper companion, even before its owner slipped into the room, candle held high to light her way.

  “Is anyone here?” whispered Mistress Delamere, and Torvald heard the murmur of her name in his head the way she’d said it at supper: Jo-SIGH-un. Without waiting for an answer, she padded across to the opposite shelves on bare feet.

  He eased his knife back into its sheath, ready to step forward and announce his presence. But something held him back, and he found himself lingering in the shadows, watching from the corner as she scanned the shelves and picked out a thin volume bound in green leather and carried it to Dee’s desk.

  As she pulled the chair out, her sleeping gown pulled taut. With the lamplight behind her, her breasts came into relief against the thin linen. Sudden desire punched Torvald in the gut, and he sucked in his breath, a harsh sound in the silence.

  “Oh!” Josian jumped, sending her book spinning across the desk into the folio Dee had left lying there. It slid over the edge, the contents spilling over the floor as she backed away. Her eyes were wide with alarm. “Who’s there?”

  “Only I, mistress.” Torvald hid his extinguished candle on the shelf next to the grammar and stepped out where she could see him.

  “Master Rollison.” Her shoulders sagged with relief. “I didn’t know … Why did you not say something?”

  How could he answer when he wasn’t certain of the reason himself? “I didn’t mean to frighten you. Forgive me.”

  “That makes twice in one evening you have needed my forgiveness. Perhaps you should travel with your own confessor. And perhaps I can borrow him to intercede with Master Dee for jumbling his desk.” She bent to retrieve one of the sheets that had fallen from the folio.

  “How odd. This is William.” She squinted at the other pieces on the floor. “They are all of Will.”

  Torvald helped her gather the unstretched canvases and lay them out on the desk side by side: six of them, all twins of each other, all clearly painted by a single hand.

  Josian traced one fingertip over the mark stamped into the corner of the leather folio. “This is Devereux’s. Why would he have so many portraits of Will? And why would he bring them to Dee?”

  “Dee intends to travel soon. Perhaps young Master Shakeshaft seeks a foreign bride, and these are meant to show prospects what he looks like.”

  “I hope not. It would not please the English one he already has.”

  “I suppose not.” Torvald started stacking the portraits to stow them away. “Do you know him well?”

  “Well enough. He is a cousin of some degree, through his mother, to my father.”

  They slid everything back into the folio and Torvald arranged it on the desk exactly as it had been. “There. No harm done.”

  “Good.” Her smile faded as an awkward silence stretched between them. She cleared her throat. “I, um, couldn’t sleep, so I thought I might read a little. I thought no one would be awake.”

  Torvald picked up the green book she’d chosen and read the title. “This is a book for deciphering dreams.”

  “Aye. I have been having odd ones of late. Ever since my husband died. Another one woke me tonight.”

  “And you want to make sense of them. Perhaps I can help.” Widow, not wife. Trying to ignore the surge of pleasure that news brought, he settled the book across his palm and opened it. “Of what do you dream, mistress?”

  Before she could answer, a faint wooden thunk echoed outside. They both froze, and a moment later, there came a scraping sound.

  “Someone’s outside,” she said.

  Torvald put a finger to his lips to shush her, then quickly pinched out both her candle and the lamp. Laying aside the book of dreams, he moved to the window and lifted the edge of the drapery. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he spied two men hurrying across the moonlit yard. They disappeared into the shadows beside the storehouse.

  “Are they robbers?” Josian had hurried to the other side of the broad window, where she also peered out.

  “Shh.” A faint glow rose over the yard, then vanished; rose again, then vanished. A board squeaked overhead, then another in a different place, and another, moving toward the stairs. Outside, the men came out of the shadows and started toward the library window.

  He dropped the drapery. “Someone upstairs was signaling, and now they’re headed down to meet those two. Here.” He grabbed her arm and started toward the end wall. “Come.”

  She dragged at him, trying to pull away. “If I am found with you, like this …”

  Someone started down the stairs at the far end of the hall.

  “I am more worried about your safety than your name, mistress. Trust me, and I can protect both.”

  There was a heartbeat’s resistance, and then, “I do trust you.”

  There was just enough moonlight seeping past the draperies for him to find the right shelf. He reached for the lever, missed it, and had to grope around.

  “A priest hole,” she breathed, understanding

  “Dee showed me, years ago. If I can remember … Here.”

  There was a click, not even as loud as the footfalls now coming down the hall, and the narrow bookshelf silently swung open.

  Torvald shoved Josian into the hole and slid in after her. The space was meant to hide one man in extremis, not two, and there was barely enough room. He pulled the shelf shut behind them and locked it in place from the inside. He had just enough time to wrap his arms around Josian and wriggle into a comfortable position before the library door opened. Thin beamlets of light spilled through the tiny, hidden screen that provided air.

  God’s toes. Whoever was out there had apparently marched through the house with a lit candle, and even then they hadn’t managed to be quiet about it. With so little cunning, Torvald was surprised the whole household wasn’t after him, even at this hour. Stunned at the unknown man’s clumsiness, he listened as the fellow threw the windows open.

  “So this is Dee’s house.” Heavy boots scuffled on the oaken floors as the men climbed in. “I’ve never been in a witch’s den before.”

  “Dee is more fool than witch,” said John Sommerville. Josian leaned her forehead against Torvald’s chest and shook her head in disgust or disbelief, or more likely both. Curse Sommerville. The fool was going to get his entire family in trouble with the Crown.

  “Does he really talk to angels?” asked the third man.

  “So he says. But even the royal whore begins to doubt him. I think he will burn before the year’s out, and this devil’s library with him. Do you have the list?”

  “Half of it. Thom, here, carried the other half from Durham.”

  “Let’s have both.” Paper rustled, there was a moment’s silence, and then Sommerville made noises of approval. “Well done. With this, Spain will see how much support we have and be far more willing to help us. I will pass it to the next man on the morrow.”

  “Be careful. If it falls into the wrong hands …”

  “It won’t,” Sommerville assured him. “I have an ally at hand, ready to help me if need be, and it will be in Spain within the month.
Now go before someone comes. And give our friend my thanks.”

  There was more scuffling, the click of the window latch, and then silence. But the light still glowed through the screen, and in a little, the scrape of chair across floor told Torvald that Sommerville was studying his list, whatever it was, at Dee’s desk.

  They settled in to wait, gradually relaxing into each other’s arms as Sommerville shuffled papers barely two yards away. The priest hole closed around them, seeming to grow even more cramped as Torvald gradually became aware that the person he was sharing it with was a half-dressed woman. Her scent, her warmth, the press of her unbound breasts against his chest, they all worked on his body in ways he would be happy for in other circumstances, but which were disconcerting just now. He shifted, trying to pull his lower body away from her before his arousal became too apparent.

  Josian lifted her head, her uncanny eyes glittering up at him, ghostlike in the thin light, and then she laid her cheek against his chest, accepting. Understanding. She was a widow, after all, not a maid. She knew how men were. He stopped worrying about it and just held her, surrendering to the forced closeness, enjoying the simple pleasure of a woman in his arms.

  Perhaps he would go to Warwickshire after they finished here with Dee, he thought as they waited for Sommerville to leave. He could pass some time courting her, perhaps bedding her if she was willing. She might be; widows had more freedom in such things than other women. But it wasn’t all about sport. He felt a bond with Josian Delamere he hadn’t felt in a long, long while, and whether anything came of it or not, he wanted to enjoy her company for a time.

  Eventually, Sommerville started yawning, and not long after that, the door squeaked open and shut again, taking the light and leaving them in pitch black. They waited until the stairs and then the floor overhead, creaked with his footsteps, then a little longer until he must surely be abed. Finally, the darkness grew so oppressive, Torvald worked his hand around and found the bar. The bookshelf swung wide with a snick, and they half spilled out into the library, still clinging to each other as they adjusted to the freedom of a little light and a good deal of sweet air.

  “Give him time to go to sleep,” Torvald whispered, his lips against her temple.

  She shook her head. “No. I must leave now.”

  “Why?”

  “I need to be with my family. I fear for them with John’s foolishness. But also because …” She shifted in his arms, lifting to press a kiss to his lips. Not a long kiss, nor a deep one, but a tender one so full of longing and need that it set his blood roaring in his veins. There was the real answer to why, and he was glad for it.

  She slipped out of his arms before he could pull her closer. “Thank you for hiding me.”

  “’Twas my pleasure.”

  She backed away. “I know.”

  He couldn’t see well, but he thought a smile flickered over her lips. “Josian …”

  “My sister Catherine is breeding. She asked me to stay with her until she gives birth. At Castle Bromwich. And then I will visit my parents for a time. At Park Hall.”

  “Castle Bromwich,” he repeated. “Park Hall.”

  She backed into the door and reached behind herself to tug it open. “God’s rest, Master Rollison. Torvald.”

  “Wait. You never told me what dream brought you down to me.”

  “A white horse,” she said from the doorway. “I dream always of a white horse running toward me. I wonder what it means.” And then she was gone, her bare feet nearly soundless as she raced back to her bed.

  A widow, not a wife. And she dreamed of a white horse.

  Thank you, Freyr, keeper of the sun and rain, giver of peace and pleasure. He would have to make a worthy offering for such a gift.

  He went to close up the priest hole, making sure the lever tripped and vanished into its hidden slot, so no one else would find it by accident, and then he collected his cloak from the peg and the raven from his perch in the hall and slipped out into the night.

  “Warwickshire,” he repeated aloud as they rode out the gate. “Castle Bromwich and Park Hall.”

  And then he turned west, in search of a patch of woods deep enough for him and Ari to face the daily torture that was dawn.

  Immortal Brotherhood Novels by Lisa Hendrix

  IMMORTAL WARRIOR

  IMMORTAL OUTLAW

  IMMORTAL CHAMPION