She looked away, her gaze going to the hearth, the coals glowing softly in her eyes. For minute upon minute, she was silent.
He waited for her to speak. Waited for ... what?
“Julia-lass,” he began quietly, then stopped, uncertain what he wanted to say. Unsure what needed saying. He ached to hold her again, yet she’d made it more than clear that even the Wizard was beneath her contempt. His instincts told him to pull her into his arms and kiss her anyway. She would melt for him as she always did, whether she wished to or not.
But he didn’t want to feel her resistance this time. Even knowing what she thought of him, he wanted nothing more than to pull her against him one last time and bury himself in her sweet, warm scent.
He’d known her but a few days, yet already she’d sunk into his skin, into his blood, as no woman had before her.
His chest cramped and he surged to his feet. He was being a fool to let a wee slip of a lass turn his life upside down. The sooner he was free of her, the better.
“Good-bye, Julia Brodie. Good journey to ye.”
He turned toward the door and had taken only two strides when her soft voice sounded behind him.
“Talon.”
He stopped and slowly turned back to her, steeling himself against the fierce pull she had on him. She watched him. He stared at her, wanting to turn away, yet unable to break the hold of her velvet gaze. And when she reached out to him, he was helpless to ignore her. He took her hand, the brush of her flesh against his fingers like a soft whisper against his heart.
Lifting his hand to her mouth, she placed a kiss in the center of his palm. His heart contracted. Warm need rushed through his veins. A need to kiss her. To hold her.
Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “I’m going to miss you.” The truth shimmered in her eyes. Turning her face, she pressed her cheek into his open palm as if seeking a comfort only he could give.
“Julia.” When she looked up at him, he cupped her face with his hands. Something thick and warm passed between them.
Sinking onto the bed beside her, he pulled her into his arms, crushing her soft breasts to his chest as his mouth covered hers, as his tongue swept inside. Home. The word reverberated through his head, singing in his blood. This was where he belonged, with this lass in his arms. The only place he wanted to be.
He tasted her sweetness, sliding his tongue across hers as his hands pressed her closer. With a desperation born of knowing their time together was almost over, he wanted to feel her against him. Skin to skin. Flesh to flesh. His hands shook to know the feel of her satin skin. He’d touched her, but not enough. Never enough.
Tearing his mouth from her sweet lips, he tasted her cheek and her eyes, grazing his lips across her eyebrow, her forehead, her temple. He longed to taste every inch of her, to suckle and lick and tease.
With a growl, he swept her into his arms and deposited her in the middle of the bed.
“Talon.” She tensed, but he grabbed her around the waist, holding her to the bed while he situated himself on his stomach beside her and kissed the lobe of her ear. Her shiver shook them both. As his mouth moved lower, teasing the tender skin of her neck, the tension flowed out of her and a low moan rose from her throat, making him smile with fierce satisfaction.
His hand slid to cup the side of her neck as he looked down into her passion-drugged face. Jesu, but he wanted to make her his.
“Let me love you, Julia. This one time. This last time.” His hand slid down her shoulder, his thumb grazing the side of her breast. “Let me show you what it can be. What it’s supposed to be.”
Her gaze pierced his. “Are you going to steal from them?”
He felt the question like a douse of cold water. “Dinna ask me that,” he begged.
A look of disappointment tightened her features.
Talon sighed. “The Wizard never fails, Julia. Ye ken that.”
She sat up, forcing him to do the same.
“Screw the Wizard, Talon. You don’t have to do this.”
“Screw?” He shook his head. “I must complete my task. I’ve been paid good silver to fetch the chalice. It belongs to my client. I dinna ken how it came to be here, but it must be returned to its rightful owners.”
Her mouth compressed. “How do you know who it belongs to? What if the guy who hired you was lying? What if he simply wanted you to steal it?”
Her questioning annoyed him. “It doesna matter. The Wizard made a commitment. The chalice must be delivered and so it shall be.”
“I won’t condone this. You can’t steal from them.”
He gripped her shoulders. “If ye tell them why I’m here, they may kill me.”
“Rourke wouldn’t ...”
His fingers contracted. “Are ye so innocent? Thieves are executed. Or their hand’s cut off.” He shook her. “You cannot tell them.”
She stared at him with a deep, bitter disappointment that made him feel ill.
He released her and rose. “I hope ye get home.” Then he turned and walked to the door.
“Talon ...” Her voice sounded of regret. But not of compromise. “You can be a better man than this.”
She had her own ideas of right and wrong and they had no place in his world.
“Good-bye, Julia.”
He was the Wizard. And if he was not, he was nothing.
Julia lay on the bed, watching the firelight dance across the exposed rafters crisscrossing the ceiling. Chilled and miserable, she’d put another log on the fire, but still couldn’t sleep.
She swallowed back the lump of tears in her throat, refusing to cry. As she’d believed when she’d first met him, Talon wasn’t one of the good guys. He stole. He killed. He was a mercenary through and through, doing whatever he was hired to do.
How pathetic was she that the thought of never seeing him again was crushing her heart?
She finally had what she’d been looking for from the moment she arrived here—a way home. From what Brenna had said, Hegarty would surely send her, taking the necklace as payment. But even if Hegarty showed up right now, she wouldn’t be able to get back to New York in time for her presentation in the morning. In her time, it was already Wednesday night and Brenna had confirmed that time moved evenly in both centuries.
She wasn’t sure she cared anymore.
After all she’d been through, that presentation no longer seemed very important. Maybe they’d let her give it later. Maybe not. For years, she’d been working toward this promotion to investment banker. Yet the thought of it no longer excited her. If anything, it left her feeling hollow.
She adjusted her hands behind her head and stared at the ceiling as she thought about Talon’s comment that she seemed to like to teach. He’d asked her why she’d changed her mind about becoming a teacher.
Why had she?
It had happened in high school. Right around the time ...
She remembered now and it all made a horrible sense. Up until that awful day when her father learned about her sexual adventures, she’d wanted to be a teacher. But when he threatened to send her away, she’d vowed to both of them to make him proud of her. The only way she’d known to do that was to try to follow in his footsteps.
Fisting her hands, she pulled them around and pressed them against her forehead. God, she hadn’t even realized what she’d done. She’d followed him to Princeton and Harvard, not to major in education, like she’d always dreamed, but in finance, like he had. She’d done it for him, not for herself. And all the years since, she’d busted her butt to succeed. Worked long hours to climb the ranks.
In the hopes that just once, just once, he’d look at her and say, I’m proud you’re my daughter, Julia. I’m glad you were born.
But he was dead now. She would never make him proud, no matter what she did.
Maybe it was time she started living for herself.
She sat up and crossed her legs in front of her, staring at the coals. If she could do anything she wanted, what would she do?<
br />
A small rush of excitement fluttered in her chest. She’d be a teacher, just as she’d told Talon. High school. She’d teach math. And, if the high school was big enough, economics or accounting. She’d always been good with numbers.
A small smile pulled at her mouth at the thought of it. She glanced at the door, wanting to tell Talon. Wanting to share her revelation.
But the well of elation drained out of her.
Talon was gone. Out of her life.
Her heart twisted with regret. And gratitude.
For all his faults, he’d given her more in the past few days than anyone else had in thirty years. Not only had he risked his life to save her, but he’d helped her see herself in a different light. He’d helped her understand the lonely girl, desperate for attention, that she’d been at fourteen. And, perhaps, to forgive her.
He’d seen inside her and then opened her eyes to what she really wanted from life. To teach. And to have someone in her life who cared about her. Because deep down she was beginning to realize she was still that lonely girl.
She pressed her palm against the ache in her chest. If only Talon had come into her real life, and not this strange detour to the past. He had faults, heaven knew he had his faults, but there was goodness inside him, too.
He was so much more than a thief and she knew it. He’d made a promise to procure the chalice and he didn’t go back on his promises. Which was honorable, wasn’t it?
And there was no doubt he was courageous. He’d fought and killed four men to save her when she meant little to him. Most men would have shrugged helplessly and let them have her, but he hadn’t done that. He’d saved her. And held her when she’d desperately needed a comforting touch. He’d wanted to make love to her, and while he might have tried to talk her into it a time or two, he’d never pushed her too far. He’d never hurt her.
Without a doubt, Talon MacClure was far from perfect, but deep down he was a good man.
She wondered if he knew that.
With a sudden, pulsing pain, she knew she would never get the chance to tell him.
He’d told her good-bye.
A cold emptiness swept through her, leaving her feeling like a lonely, hollow shell.
The tears began to roll.
Talon waited for the castle’s inhabitants to find their beds before he slipped from his chamber to retrieve the chalice.
As he stole through the castle now, spiraling deep into the bowels of the fortress, his feet felt like lead, his chest heavy as stone.
He’d seen Julia Brodie for the very last time. She should matter to him no longer. Yet her final words would not cease their incessant echo in his head.
You can be a better man.
But she was wrong. He was who he was and he could not change. He didn’t want to change! He was the Wizard. The Wizard was his life.
Though for a few short days, he’d had something more. Companionship with a bonny, difficult, darling lass. A lass who couldn’t stay in this world, and wouldn’t stay with him even if she could. Even the Wizard wasn’t good enough for her.
She’d told him she wanted him to be Talon. Just Talon. But she didn’t understand what that meant. And she’d turn away from him if she knew the true man, the man who’d grown from that miserable, useless boy. A boy who’d killed his own father.
No, Julia would not want him in any form. She would never be his.
If only he could get her voice out of his head.
At the base of the stairs, he slipped out the door and into the castle courtyard, sliding into the shadows before he was spotted. The night was cool and still, the air stirring lightly around him. The smell of the stables carried to him pleasantly, but the horses he and Julia had ridden here would have to remain at Picktillum. He’d find another way out, an escape without the ring’s help, for he’d not risk the ring choosing a fire for its distraction again. He would not risk Julia’s safety. Not even for his own.
Staying to the shadows, he began the search for the cellar he’d seen in his vision.
On his third try, he found it. The moment he slipped in through the heavy wooden door and saw the stacks of barrels, he knew. The scent of damp earth and dried spices teased his nose as he moved, unerringly, for the low crevice along the back wall. He knelt and reached his hand inside. His fingers brushed against cool metal. Triumph sought to flare within him, but managed only a flicker before winking out.
He’d found what he’d come for.
But all he could see in his mind’s eye was Julia’s look of disappointment. In him.
You can be a better man.
Bollocks. He was who he was.
Curling his fingers around the base, he pulled the chalice from its hiding place and slipped it into the waist of his pants, careful to cover the golden treasure with his waistcoat. Rising, he turned and made his way back to the door, then slipped back out into the night.
And discovered he was not alone.
Rourke Douglas, Viscount Kinross, stood waiting for him, his arms crossed over his chest. Two of his kinsmen flanked him, one on either side.
Talon pulled his knife.
Kinross’s men pulled knives of their own while Kinross himself just eyed him coldly.
“What were you doing in there, Hertford?”
Too late, Talon realized his mistake. He shouldn’t have turned defensive. He should have claimed he was seeking out a lass or some such rot. His thoughts of Julia had him dangerously off balance.
Now that he’d pulled his knife he had no choice but to fight his way out. To kill or be killed.
Rourke held out his hand. “You’ll return what you’ve stolen.”
Talon’s muscles tensed for the fight. But he hesitated as he’d never done before. Three against one were not the best odds, but he’d managed with worse.
The problem was Julia.
She would never forgive him if he killed Brenna’s husband. Jesu, but she’d never forgive him if he killed any of these men.
Deep inside him, the Wizard scowled. Use the ring to even the odds. Then fight. All that matters is fulfilling the mission. It’s all that’s ever mattered.
Until a few days ago, that had been true. Until Julia Brodie dropped into his life and flipped it end over end.
He stared into Rourke Douglas’s pale eyes and imagined the bitter anguish in Julia’s own if he killed the man. The disappointment he’d already seen in those bonny mismatched eyes had nearly driven him to his knees.
You can be a better man than this.
The Wizard muttered angrily in his head. She doesn’t matter You’ll never see her again. Take the damned chalice and do whatever you must to escape Picktillum. Whatever you must. Sometimes men must die.
But even absent, Julia’s presence hovered, sharp and warm beside him, drawing a fierce need in him to be the man she wanted him to be.
With a hard release of air, he shoved his knife into its sheath. He pulled the chalice out from under his waistcoat and held it out to Kinross.
Kinross took the chalice. “Tie him.”
Talon bit down hard on his pride as he put his hands behind his back and allowed them to truss him up like a pig for slaughter. Everything inside him railed against giving in. Giving up. But he did it for Julia.
“Wake Brenna,” Kinross told one of his men. “And Julia. I’ll await them in the solar.”
Talon’s stomach turned ill. “Leave Julia. She had naught to do with this.”
Kinross met his gaze with eyes as cold as frost. “We shall see.”
Two of the men grabbed his arms and steered him up the stairs and along the passages like a common criminal. Talon’s insides knotted and twisted as he forced himself to submit instead of fight. As his forehead burned with equal measures of anger and shame.
He’d allowed them to take him without a fight. Yet now he was to be forced to stand before Julia, caught and tied, at his lowest since that day twenty years ago when Hegarty first found him.
The disappointment
he’d seen in her eyes would take on the hard disgust he’d lived with for the first fifteen years of his life.
In trying to live up to her expectations, he’d become the very thing the world—himself in particular—reviled.
Talon MacClure.
FOURTEEN
“Julia?”
Julia woke to the sound of a soft, feminine query and pried open her gritty eyelids against the weight of too little sleep. A woman stood in the doorway, her face shadowed, but familiar.
“Brenna?” Julia levered herself onto her elbow. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry to wake you, but I think you’d better come.” Her new friend’s words were troubled. Maybe even wary.
Something had happened.
“Talon.”
“He’s okay, if that’s what you’re thinking. Rourke has him in the solar.”
Has him. The implied against his will was left unsaid. He’d been caught stealing the chalice. That was the only explanation.
As Julia climbed from the bed, Brenna crossed the room to her, holding out what appeared to be a velvet bathrobe. “I thought you might need something to put on. I remember what it’s like to have no clothes but the ones on your back.”
Brenna’s tone lacked the warmth of before, but fell short of actually being cool. As if she’d yet to cast the blame on Julia, too. For now.
Julia pulled on the robe, tied the sash around her waist, and followed Brenna out of the room and down to the solar. Brenna entered first, Julia close behind.
When Julia saw Talon, she stopped, a hard fist tightening around her heart. He was kneeling on the floor, his hands tied behind his back, two of Kinross’s men standing on either side of him, pressing his shoulders down, though Talon didn’t seem to be struggling. He stared straight ahead, not meeting her gaze, his face a hard, inscrutable mask.
Rourke paced in front of the hearth, his jaw tight and hard. On the table sat the chalice.
The friendliness of before had vanished. They knew Talon for what he was now.
A thief.
Julia looked unhappily from Talon to Rourke, and back again, feeling the weight of her secrets, her earlier silence. Rourke must know she was involved, too, otherwise why would he have had her brought here? Was he intending to tie her, too?
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