by Zoë Archer
Coin to pay for her journey she had none. A bitter irony, considering the number of coins she had procured for Leo.
Coins. Leo had asked her to obtain them for him. Could it be that he needed them to utilize his magic to prophesize? She remembered that he’d demanded a coin from her father before making the mining investment. If that was true ... She had helped him. Abetted his use of evil power. And like a spaniel eager to please, she had done it.
Nausea roiled through her. He had used her. Deceived her. She had done it to make him happy, never knowing to what wickedness she contributed.
It wasn’t all for Leo’s benefit, whispered a voice deep within her. You liked playing tricks on those disdainful, pompous women. You enjoyed it.
She shoved that traitorous thought from her mind. It did her no favors, not now. Easier, simpler, to think of Leo as the villain and herself the wronged innocent.
What she needed was to reach Richmond, and Lord Whitney. Leo might be in pursuit of her. She could not dally.
Holding her aching side, Anne turned toward what she hoped was west and ran. Yet she was a lady, little used to running, and her slippers were meant for soft carpets or gleaming parquet floors, not rough pavement and cobblestones. She might as well have foolscap strapped to her feet for all the protection her slippers gave her. So her progress crept along, as she kept slowing to catch her breath and to ease off her throbbing feet.
London seemed infinite, the night equally huge. Every dark shape made her jump. Each rustle of wind through the elm leaves caused her heart to pound. She was sick, and weary, and terrified, and she despaired of ever arriving at Richmond.
Prayers were sent up to whatever deity might be listening, that she could reach Lord Whitney, and soon.
Anne stumbled down the road, until she found herself at the edge of a large grassy plain, a pitiless, colorless moon overhead illuminating paths, trees. A trio of buildings formed fanciful shapes against the sky, including a tower that soared high above the grass, a series of curiously roofed structures stacked one atop the other. Moonlight gleamed off its green-and-white-tiled roof. She realized at once where she was: the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. The tower was the Pagoda, built recently, and distantly she espied the domed roof and minarets of the Mosque. The Alhambra and its extravagant latticed railing and cupola made up the third structure.
It was all so deliberately, obstinately whimsical—buildings designed to be novelties, things meant for the enjoyment of London’s pleasure seekers, whose lives never touched the kind of horror that Anne now faced.
She hated those buildings, their playful indifference. A bitter desire clutched her; she wanted to burn them down, laugh at their ashes.
Instead, she staggered toward them. Though her heart urged her to keep running, her body demanded rest, and she needed out of the cold. She tottered inside the Alhambra, shadows dulled its brightly painted arches and columns. Only when she sank down onto the ground, her legs unable to bear her weight any further, did she at last give in to tears.
Chapter 14
He heard her footsteps racing down the hallway and the front door open. She ran from him. Leo tried to stand, to force his legs to follow, but dizziness overwhelmed him. He felt the twin pain of being thrown not just against the bookcase, but the hurt of the geminus as it was flung against the desk. The creature lay on the floor, unmoving.
He could not believe the power that had come from her, sudden and unknown. She threw me and the geminus across the room. His surprise knew no limits.
Blackness swam in his vision. He tried to push it aside, as he pushed all obstacles out of his path. In this, though, his body overruled his will, and he slumped to the floor.
“Sir? Sir?” Munslow gently shook him. Leo opened his eyes to see a pair of polished but well-worn buckled shoes. “Shall I fetch a physician, sir?”
Leo sat up, groaning. Munslow stood close by, gazing down at him with a worried frown, whilst more servants gathered in the doorway of the study, peering in like curious birds.
Turning his throbbing head to look at his desk, Leo saw that the geminus was gone. He tried to focus on the clock on the mantel, but his head spun.
“My wife,” he rasped.
The head footman shot an anxious glance over his shoulder, toward the other servants. A girl Leo recognized as Anne’s maid shook her head.
“Gone, sir.”
“How long?” Leo forced himself to standing, his whole body aflame, his head aching.
Munslow could only offer a shrug.
Leo pushed past him and the gathered servants as he staggered from the study. He barely heard Munslow’s calls to him, the nervous offers of bringing in a physician. As he lurched up the stairs, he shouted, “Have my horse saddled and ready to ride.”
“Sir?”
“Do it.” Leo gained the top of the stairs. His head still pounded, but the floor became steadier, and he ran into the bedchamber.
He would not allow himself to look at the bed, to think about the life shared between him and Anne that now lay in ruins. He had an aim, a purpose; he would not falter.
Her clothespress. He strode to it and threw open the doors. Gowns of every color and fabric lay in neat arrangement. They carried the sweet fragrance of her body, the echo of her shape. Plunging his hand between the gowns, his fingers brushed against smooth cotton, the pleats of ribbons.
The room around him vanished. He found himself in a darkened pavilion, though the night could not fully disguise the brightly painted arches and columns. And there, on the ground, curled into a ball—Anne.
The vision dissolved. Once more, he stood in his own bedchamber, and Anne was gone.
If ever he had been glad of his Devil-begotten power, nothing compared to his appreciation for it now. For without it, he would never know where to find his wife, and this was his lone aim. Without her ...
No. He refused to think of it. Instead, he ran back downstairs to the study. There, he loaded his brace of pistols, then slipped them into shoulder-belt holsters and slung the whole of it across his chest. His primed hunting musket hung across his back. Into the top of his boot, he sheathed a knife. Damn that he could not carry a sword. Any means of attack or defense, he would use—he would never use them against Anne, but London after dark was not safe, now worse than ever. The riot at the theater remained lodged in his brain like a thorn.
He started to stride from the room, but froze in his tracks when he saw the geminus. Not the geminus, he realized, but his own reflection in a glass. The man who stared back at him bore no resemblance to the wealthy businessman he had fashioned for himself. His hair undone, his expression wild and fierce, heavily armed, he looked every inch the brute the aristocrats claimed him to be. Good. Now was not the time for aping the manners of the gentry. Now was for survival, for reclaiming what he had foolishly lost.
He left the study. His saddled bay gelding waited for him outside his house. Leo snatched the reins from the groom and, without a word, kicked the horse into a gallop.
Tearing through the streets of Bloomsbury, bent low over the horse’s neck, he saw nothing but the roads ahead. Each beat of his mount’s hooves was the pound of his heart. Fear and anger and need clawed at him. Nothing in his mind made sense, only the single directive: Find her, find her.
It took too long, but eventually the vast shadowed expanse of Kew Gardens rose up before him. He’d come here before on a rare daylight expedition with the other Hellraisers, yet they had not tarried, for artificial ruins and ornamental follies held no interest for men such as they. Far better were the pleasure gardens of Vauxhall and Ranelagh. Now Leo sent up a fervent prayer of thanks that he had come to Kew, for he knew precisely where to find his fleeing wife.
He galloped up to the Alhambra and flung himself down from the saddle. With long strides, he sped into the building, terror thick in his throat, shortening his breath. He found Anne still curled on the ground, eyes closed. Another spike of fear stabbed him. Was she hurt? Worse?
His boots echoed sharply beneath the vaulted ceiling as he took a step toward Anne.
She came instantly awake. And when she saw him, saw his face and the weapons he carried, she sat up and scrambled backward on her hands.
He thought he understood pain of every variety. Physical, he had felt many times in his life, in brawls and fights. Whit’s rapier in his shoulder. The body-jarring agony of being slammed into a bookcase. And burying his father had reduced him to spending weeks at the bottom of a decanter, as he fought to think of life without the massive presence of Adam Bailey.
Yet none of those moments of pain could ever match what he felt as Anne now looked at him with fear and despair. The misery of betrayal shone in her eyes like poison in a fresh mountain lake. And the poison burned him from the inside out.
“Anne—” He took a step toward her.
“Don’t come near me.” She flung up her hands, and a gust of cold air buffeted him.
They both stared at her hands as she lowered them. She, with wide-eyed shock, and him warily.
“That is ... new,” he said, cautious.
She continued to gaze at her upturned hands. “The Roman woman. She gave me this somehow.”
“Tonight.”
“Weeks ago. I never understood, never truly knew. Until this night.” Her tortured gaze rose to meet his. “So many impossibilities I learned tonight. Things I did not want to believe.”
A beam of moonlight silvered her face, the tracks of dried tears on her cheeks, and his heart wrenched. Seamless, this pain, stretching from her to him in an unbroken band.
“I’ve come to learn this world is far more treacherous than I ever understood.” His mouth twisted. “And this world has ever been my enemy.”
“Is that why you did it? Why you made that bargain? Because you see everyone as an enemy?” Her eyes were gleaming and fierce.
Leo clenched his jaw. “He offered me what I wanted most. Power.”
“He being the Devil.” A rasping laugh broke from her. “I cannot believe I am saying these things. And that they are true.”
“What would you do?” Leo threw back. “When presented with everything you ever desired?” He stepped closer, hot anger and fear pulsing through him. “None of us are pure and virtuous. If someone appears before you and offers you your heart’s deepest want, you take it. Just as the Hellraisers did. Just as I did.”
She pushed herself up to standing, and it was all he could do to keep himself from helping her to her feet. “But the cost, Leo. A businessman knows you cannot get something for nothing. You taught me that.”
Heat spread along his back. He felt a burn also climb up his calf. “We didn’t consider the cost.”
“Your soul.”
“And more.” He continued to close the distance between them. As he neared, he saw the dirty hem of her gown, and the tips of her tattered slippers. She had run far from him, fragile as a moth wing. Yet she still stood before him, her chin tilted up, shoulders back. The delicate girl he wed had transformed into this storm-tossed but defiant woman. If he could claim even a dram of her strength as his doing, he might congratulate himself. He was in no humor for congratulations. Not when seeing the betrayal in her eyes left him bleeding and raw.
“You.” His gaze pinned her in place. “It cost me you.”
She swallowed hard. “Everything between us is lies. From the beginning, nothing but deception.”
“Both of us were strangers to each other. But yes,” he acknowledged, “I played you false. Not with another woman, but with my secrets.”
“And made me part of them,” she fired back. “The coins.”
Shame burned him, bitter and acidic. “Yes.”
“You knew how much I wanted to please you, and you used that. Used me.”
Only barely did he keep his head from dropping in remorse. “I did. Whatever advantage I could seize, I did so gladly.”
“I was your advantage. Your aristo wife.” Her words were knives, cutting him to pieces as he stood. It surprised him that his blood did not splash upon the gaudily painted columns, bright red against the blue.
“So you were. But not anymore.”
She stared at him. The anger tightening her face warred with the sorrow in her eyes, the profound agony of betrayal. “What am I now? An inconvenience. An obstacle on your determined path.”
He drew still closer, until a distance of a few feet separated them. “You are my wife.” Within his chest, his heart hammered, forging words he must speak. He drew a breath. “I love you.”
Briefly, far too briefly, wonderment blazed in her gaze, but she banked it, and turned away. Her voice was a wintry rasp. “Damn you.”
“I am damned,” he said. “But not from the loss of my soul.”
She gave him her profile. “There’s no profit in plying me with honeyed words, Leo. You have magic. You have wealth and power. Everything you want is yours.”
“I don’t have you.”
“An acquisition.”
“My wife. The woman I love.”
Her hands flew up to cover her ears. “Stop it! I knew you were ruthless, but I never suspected you to be cruel.”
He stepped around her until they faced each other. Gently, he pulled her hands down, and he felt the wild rush of her pulse beneath his fingers, the fact of her body was both a poem and torture—this living woman, this mortal creature who made him love and made him fearful, who made him strong and made him vulnerable.
“Not cruelty,” he said. “The truth.”
“There is nothing you can say that I will believe.” She tugged her hands away. “You made certain of that.”
He winced inwardly. “Hear this. Whether you choose to believe it or not. The power given to me by the Devil, the wealth created by it, everything I’ve gained since I made that bargain ...” He steadied himself. “I renounce the lot.”
For a moment, she only stared at him. “Renounce.”
“All of it.” His words grew bolder as he spoke, as conviction strengthened. “It means nothing to me. Only one thing, one person, I want. You.”
Her eyes widened. “You would give it all up ... for me.”
“Yes,” he said immediately.
Yet she shook her head. “How badly I want to believe you.”
“If it means spending the rest of my life destitute, performing penance, I’ll do it.” A corner of his mouth tilted up. “When there’s something I want, I’m a tenacious bastard.”
She did not return his smile. If anything, she looked more agonized, a woman on the rack. “I wish I did not love you.”
Savage primal pleasure coursed through him, even as he burned. She loved him. In all his life, he never expected it, never thought it could be his. Yet to have her love him, her out of all women ... such wealth he could not fathom. And he would seize it, for he was greedy for her.
“But you do,” he said. “Just as I love you.” He needed her mouth, her taste.
She saw his intent as he stepped closer. Want and fear mingled in her eyes. She tried to dart around him, making for the way out, but he moved quickly. His hand shot out to grip hers.
His fingers brushed against her ring. Images suddenly besieged him—creatures of foul shape, with leathery wings, jagged long teeth, curved claws, and yellow eyes. He could smell the rot of their flesh, hear their shrieks of hatred.
“Stay.” He shook his head to clear away the images.
She pulled hard on her hand, trying to free herself. “Is this how it’s to be? Using force to keep me?”
“Hate me if you have to. But don’t go outside.” He drew one of his pistols.
She froze in place. “Why? W
hat’s out there?”
Then the shrieks sounded, not merely in a vision, but here. And now.
Two creatures darted into the building. For a moment, Anne could only stare, for these were the beasts of a fever dream—grotesque fiends that had vaguely human shapes, with monstrous faces and horns. Serrated teeth crowded their mouths, and instead of hands and feet, they had claw-tipped talons. Ash-colored skin, sticky yellow eyes alive with rage.
Demons. She looked upon actual demons.
And they wanted her and Leo dead.
The demons rushed toward them, their claws scraping at the painted floor. Fear tightened her throat. She looked around wildly for something to use as a weapon.
“Behind me.” Leo roughly shoved her back, putting himself between her and the advancing creatures. Fluidly, he drew his pistols, aimed. Fired. The powder exploded in a flash, filling the pavilion with two loud booms.
One of the beasts immediately crumpled to the ground, a hole in the center of its forehead. The other screamed and stumbled, then lurched to its knees. It clawed at the wound on its shoulder, black blood pouring down its arm.
Leo flipped the pistol in his left hand, holding it by its barrel. He rushed forward. His arm swung out as he clubbed the demon with the heavy butt of the gun. The creature toppled back, lashing out with its talons.
Anne winced as the demon’s claws caught Leo across the thigh, but he made no sound of pain, did not hesitate in his movements. He swung the pistol again. It slammed into the beast’s head, and the demon shrieked in outrage. Claws striking out, it tried to fend off Leo’s attack, but Leo was relentless, wielding the pistol like a brutal club. He bared his teeth, savage, as he struck the demon. Again and again.
She had no love for the creature, but she turned away as its thick blood splattered on the ground and Leo’s clothes and face. Its screams came fainter, wetter, subsiding into a gurgle. Then it fell quiet.
Turning back, she saw Leo standing over the body, his face dark with fury. Blood everywhere. He looked wild and fierce, terrifying and unquestionably male. Her heart seized, partly in fear, partly in amazement. She barely recognized the man she had married. And yet this seemed his truest self, standing over his fallen enemy.