His hand, pressed against her ribs, no longer chilly but scorching. She felt the heat all the way through layers of black wool, corset and shift. Neither wine nor wound made the blood surge through her body like this or made her so exquisitely aware of each breath this man took, each subtle slide of his coat against her skirts or the way the lamplight carved out the deep hollows beneath his cheekbones and made his long fall of hair shimmer in the gloom.
His fingers tightened before sliding to spread across her back and urge her closer. A glass fell to the floor. Hers or his, she didn’t know, nor did she care. Propriety be damned. For five years, she had lived a half life, numb to all but the darkest emotions. Now, in the arms of a man no longer considered one, she came alive. A gift of Mercy or Fate, she had no intention of squandering it.
Corded muscle tightened under her touch as she slid a hand from his elbow to his shoulder. “We’ve shared conversation and now wine,” she said softly. “And you’ve played both rescuer and nurse to me, yet still I don’t know your name.”
A smear of wine darkened his lower lip like blood on an Alba rose petal.
“Colin” he replied in equally subdued tones. “Colin Whitley.”
She startled, and his hand fell away.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded. “Are you dizzy? Do you need to lie down again?”
Lenore grasped his sleeve, refusing to allow the distance between them. Colin had been Nathaniel’s middle name. She didn’t believe in trickery of mediums or claims of reincarnation, but this was uncanny. “No, I am well.” She reached for his hand and returned it to her waist. “Thanks to you.” A lock of snowy hair caressed the back of her hand. “I am in your debt, Colin Whitley. Many times over.”
Once more his fingers splayed along her ribs before sliding to her back, urging her closer. He was taller than Nathaniel had been, sinuous as an adder and seemed to coil around her as well as loom over her. “There is no debt, Lenore,” he whispered.
One hand stroked a path up her arm, leaving hot trails on her skin through the black wool of her sleeve. It lingered at the slope of her shoulder before gliding over the stiff crape edging her frock’s high collar.
She arched her neck, inviting him to climb higher and stroke the skin bared to his touch. They were pressed together from shoulder to hip, confirming for Lenore that these beings of stark light and shadow still experienced the same sensual pleasures as other men.
The hand on her back ascended her spine to bury itself gently in her hair. The one at her shoulder accepted her invitation to curve around her throat before settling under her jaw. The Guardian’s black gaze with its white-sun pupils, held her captive. He lowered his head, breaking the spell. Lenore moaned softly as the tip of his nose glided down the bridge of hers.
“Come in to the garden, Maud,” he recited in a voice guaranteed to lead Eve out of Eden. “For the black bat, night, has flown.”
Her legs buckled at the suggestive verses, and she leaned hard against him.
“Come in to the garden, Maud. I am here at the gate alone.” Cool lips, damp with wine, tickled a path along her jaw.
Her arms twined around his narrow waist so that her hands clutched the fabric covering his back and shoulder blades.
“And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad.”
She tilted her head back, the ache behind her eyes nothing compared to the stunning pleasure of his mouth tracing a path over the arch of her throat to the hollow under her chin.
“And the musk of the rose is blown.”
His tongue slid into her mouth in a kiss deep, and hot, and possessive. A groan vibrated low in his throat when Lenore returned his caress by stroking her tongue along his.
It was glorious, this passion that awakened her after years of a deathless sleep. She would love Nathaniel Gordon all her life, but Colin Whitley in her arms eased the pain of her loss and made her remember joy.
He tasted of pomegranates and smelled of cinnamon. His lips were firm, coaxing, teaching her how to kiss him back. Lenore learned quickly, instinctively understanding how the tip of her tongue sliding along the underside of his upper lip might make his knees buckle as hers did or make the hand in her hair fall lower to clutch her buttocks with kneading fingers.
If he rucked her skirts at this moment, she’d urge him on with her legs around his waist. His kiss, his touch, everything about him drew her, and she went willingly. He could take her on the dusty, unforgiving floor in the frigid parlor, and she’d cry out his name. The carnal images accompanying those thoughts made her squirm in his arms, and her hips bucked hard against the erection pressed into her skirts and crushed crinoline.
A knock at the front door dashed Lenore’s fantasies. Colin broke their kiss with a gasp. His chest rose and fell like the bellows in a forge, and silvery color dusted his cheekbones. He pressed his forehead to hers.
“I would give all of eternity for one more hour with you,” he said. A second knock. He kissed her forehead. “But today, it’s not to be.”
Still dazed by what transpired only seconds before, Lenore let him help her with her cloak. Her senses slowly returned to normal, along with an unwelcome surge of embarrassment.
Colin grasped her chin. “Don’t,” he ordered in a stern voice. “You’ll not let those society rules you so abhor sully what’s between us, Lenore.”
She nodded and tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear with a trembling hand. “What do you want me to do?”
He kissed her briefly, as if unable to help himself, and pointed to a spot by the hearth. “Lie down and pretend to sleep. I’ll tell them you were already unconscious when I found you and never awakened while I tended to you. They’ll invent some tale to explain how you ended up here.”
“You mean they’ll lie. Not very clerical-like.”
Colin smirked. “All in the service of guarding an innocent’s virtue. They’ll assure themselves Heaven will grant forgiveness for so noble a cause.”
Lenore covered her mouth to stifle her laughter and lay down by the hearth. She watched through slitted eyes as he scooped up the fallen wine glass and decanter and once more disappeared into the corridor.
Low murmurs punctuated by horrified gasps echoed through the empty house. Lenore closed her eyes as footsteps drew closer and crossed the parlor to where she lay.
A woman’s soft hand pressed against her cheek before parting her hair to check the gash on her scalp. “He did a fine job of cleaning the wound, but the poor dear is feverish. Look at her cheeks, Robert. Rosy as a Christmas stocking. We need to return her home as soon as possible.”
The rector nearly stuttered in his outrage. “Vile body snatchers. Digging up children and attacking innocent women who come to grieve their parents. Highgate should have crawled with police once someone heard this girl scream. We can’t just leave this solely to one man, no matter how exceptional he is. His role is to protect the dead; now he must also protect the living? Something more must be done!”
His wife was far more practical. “For now my dear, that something is to get this young lady home to her family.” She lightly patted Lenore’s cheek, encouraging her to wake up.
Lenore played the role of confused victim, fuzzy with her memory and relieved to see the rector and his wife. She let them help her stand and leaned a little on the rector’s arm as he escorted her out of the abandoned house; it was the old rectory according to Mrs. Morris. A slender shadow, no more substantial than smoke, lingered at the edge of a stand of overgrown shrubbery and raised a hand in farewell.
She rode home between her escorts, assuring Mrs. Morris that she was on the mend and expected a full recovery within the week. The woman’s constant pressing of her cold hand on her cheek tested Lenore’s patience, but she only smiled and thanked her for her help. These were kind, well-meaning people, and she was grateful for their care. She only wished the Guardian had not solicited their aid quite so soon.
To her credit, Jane Kenward didn’t fly into hysterics when the Morrise
s explained events at the cemetery. She questioned Lenore as to how she felt, summoned a physician and packed her daughter off to bed to wait. The rector and his wife stayed for tea, served by a rattled Mrs. Harp who took every spare moment to poke her head into Lenore’s room and inquire after her health.
The doctor examined her scalp, pronounced the wound well-cleaned and prescribed steps for preventing infection. He also left a bottle of dark liquid by her bedside. “For your fever,” he said. “Two drops in a cup of tepid tea, once in the morning and once before bed time.”
Suspicious of whatever snake oil lurked in the smoked glass bottle, Lenore smiled her thanks and promised herself she’d dump the contents down the privy the first chance she had.
By the time the house quieted for the night, she was both exhausted and restless. Her head ached, and her body hummed with need. She closed her eyes and touched her lips, still tingling from the memory of the Guardian’s kiss and the pale caress that had ignited the fire burning inside her.
She closed her eyes, praying for sleep. Nathaniel’s face rose before her mind’s eye, Colin’s superimposed over it. Their features melded in a strange patchwork amalgamation, two beings attempting to merge as one.
Lenore opened her eyes. Moonlight spilled through the room, unblocked by the drapes neither she nor Constance remembered to close. The silvery light illuminated her bedside table and the books she’d left there. Her heart tripped a beat at the sight of her book of verse—Nathaniel’s gift to her.
The Guardian had recited Tennyson while he kissed her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
NATHANIEL FOLLOWED HIS MOST CURRENT nighttime visitor to Highgate past the towering obelisks flanking Egyptian Avenue and on to the Circle of Lebanon. Lenore’s stray mongrel padded silently beside him, ears forward and alert.
This intruder moved like a cat: silent and fleet with hardly a footprint to mark their passing. Nathaniel’s only clues to their presence were a sixth sense of recognition and the sweet scents of tobacco, licorice and honey.
He tracked his quarry to the steps leading to the inner circle of crypts. A figure sat casually on the bottom step, smoking a cheroot. The thin cigar’s burning tip glowed cherry-red in the darkness. A pair of eyes, black as the Chislehurst caves, with white pinpoint pupils, regarded him through a haze of smoke.
Whomever Nathaniel expected to find here, it wasn’t another Guardian, especially not this one. He gave a short bow. “I think you’ve wondered into the wrong bone yard, my lord. Kensal Green is a leisurely stroll south of Highgate.” He cocked his head. “Or are you visiting in hopes of a hunt?”
His brethren drew deeply on the cheroot, inhaling smoke and exhaling revenants that swirled and silently beseeched before fading into oblivion. His voice was raspy and held a thread of amusement. “Kensal Green swarms with gardeners at all hours. Tripping over one isn’t nearly as entertaining as confronting a body snatcher, though I begin to wonder which of the two is more ubiquitous in our cemeteries these days.” He gained his feet in one smooth motion and joined Nathaniel at the top of the steps.
Nathaniel clasped the other’s offered arm. “Good to see you, Gideon.”
Like Nathaniel, Gideon possessed the physical attributes of all Guardians: long, snowy hair and equally white skin, spectral eyes and the ability to protect his body in a hard shell of armor by simply willing its presence. He was the first of the Guardians and the deliverer of the other six from enslavement to a madman who fancied himself a god.
Gideon returned the welcoming clasp. “How are you, Nathaniel?” He offered the cheroot.
Nathaniel declined. “I thought you abandoned that vice.”
Gideon shrugged, and with a graceful sleight of hand, made the cheroot disappear. “Only in the house. I don’t wish to incur my housekeeper’s wrath.”
Nathaniel recalled a tall, elegant woman with hair the color of summer wheat, smiling eyes and soothing hands. Newly rescued by Gideon, and delirious with pain from the gehenna flowing through his resurrected body, he’d thought Rachel Wakefield an angel at first as she bathed his face and crooned soft assurances to him. “How is Mrs. Wakefield?”
“Quite well I suppose. She’s engaged to be married.” Gideon’s voice held a bitter edge, even while his expression remained studiedly bland.
He and Gideon shared a warped and twisted history. They were the alpha and omega in an exclusive club of a select, unfortunate few. They were not, however, close friends, and Nathaniel sensed the other’s reluctance to speak more of the woman who managed his household and aided him in rescuing the other Guardians. “Please offer her my regards and my congratulations,” he said.
Gideon nodded and eyed Nathaniel’s companion who eyed him back from behind her master’s legs. “Who is this?”
Nathaniel sighed. “It seems I’ve been adopted,” he said. No matter how often he turned the young hound over to Mrs. Morris for bathing, feeding, and coddling, the dog always returned to the abandoned rectory. Even Mrs. Morris’s tempting offers of bowls of food hadn’t lured her away, and the rector’s wife finally gave in, leaving the bowl with Nathaniel.
His visitor’s brief smile fled almost as soon as it appeared. “A good protector if trained right, and useful these days. Word’s reached me that resurrectionists attacked a woman here in Highgate yesterday morning.”
The admission surprised Nathaniel. He often employed the Morris couple to deliver messages for him. None had yet been dispatched to Gideon. “Word travels fast,” he said dryly. “I was intending to send you a message to request a meeting.”
Gideon chuckled. “You’ll learn over time that ghosts are the worst sort of gossip-mongers. Not much else to do when you’re trapped on the earthly plane except note the comings and goings of the living.” He sobered. “How is the young lady in question? Or have you heard anything?”
The scent of lemon still clung to his fingers from the letter Lenore had sent to Mrs. Morris, assuring her of her improving health and thanking her and her husband for their assistance. The rector’s wife had thoughtfully brought the letter to him just this morning so he might read it for himself. Its citrusy smell teased his nostrils when he unfolded the missive and silently read the words written in Lenore’s precise hand. He resisted the temptation to raise the letter to his nose and inhale, halted only by Mrs. Morris’s presence and her gaze on him as he read.
“According to the rector’s wife, she is recovering and in good spirits.”
He wished he could send a letter in return. What would he say?
I no longer sleep, but I still dream. You consume my thoughts, Lenore, and soothe my spirit.
He would write more, so much more. Wax rhapsodic over the feel of her in his arms, the taste of her in his mouth...
Nathaniel shook away the recollections shredding his focus and returned his attention to Gideon who watched him with a raised eyebrow. “Did your gossiping specters tell you what she caught the thieves doing?”
Gideon shrugged. “The usual, though doing so in the middle of the day is out of the ordinary. I assumed Tepes has raised his bounty. First thief with the prize takes the purse.”
“She caught them digging up a child’s grave.”
He’d told Lenore the elements didn’t bother him, though he felt their effect—the wetness of rain, the heat of the sun. And right now, the cold buffeting his skin lowered from frigid English winter to frozen Arctic tundra.
Gideon’s features had thinned to a skull’s mask, and his eyes narrowed to abyssal slits. “When I find the good doctor—and I will find him—I intend to allow him to fully embrace the history behind the name Tepes and nail his hat to his head,” he vowed in flinty tones.
There were no witnesses to the first Guardian’s execution of his creator, not even the other Guardians. Nathaniel suspected that whether swift or slow, Dr. Harvel’s death had been brutal and Gideon without mercy. He would show none to Tepes either.
The two men strode to the Lebanon Circle to stand beneath the an
cient cypress tree. Nathaniel scanned the acres of tombstones, searching for the tell-tale flicker of dim lamplight or the metallic clink of grave-digging tools. Only the occasional wandering spirit roamed the cemetery. “Why does Tepes want dead children?”
The thought made him ill. Nathaniel held little affection for men of science. Admiration, yes. Guild mages and their ilk manipulated the world’s mysteries, scientists its wonders. But the quest for knowledge sometimes bred madness, and the men who lost their humanity were more often those who chased wonder and embraced brutality.
Gideon clasped his hands behind his back and paced. “Rumor has it he’s experimenting with an elixir, something that will turn those shambling dead he likes to puppeteer into something more than corpse automatons.”
A waning moon spilled feeble light onto the patch of dead grass under the Lebanon tree. Nathaniel’s veins throbbed under his skin. “Gehenna,” he said softly. “He’s trying to remake gehenna.”
Gideon nodded. “Whatever concoction he’s brewed right now is probably expensive and difficult to reproduce for experimentation. A smaller body needs a smaller dosage.”
“My God.”
“It was just a matter of time.” Gideon changed directions to wear a different path into the grass. “I destroyed all of Harvel’s notes. Everything down to the grocer’s bills he stashed in an herbal cabinet. If Tepes is making liquid hell, he’s doing so on his own from the ground up.”
Nathaniel’s heart pumped his own gehenna blood through his body at an ever quickening pace. “If he manages to make a Guardian of his own...”
Gideon’s hollow laughter lacked any mirth. “He won’t. Harvel’s mistake was in keeping our minds, and therefore our free will, intact. He paid the price. Tepes won’t take that risk. Whatever he tries to animate will be nothing like us.” Brittle grass crackled under his feet. “As much as I dislike drawing the Mage Guild’s attention to us, we’ll need their help. We’re seven Guardians with acres of graves to watch over at all times. Tepes has significantly raised his bounty if resurrectionists are willing to exhume a body before the rest of London has sat down for dinner. The cemeteries will swarm with the bastards. A handful of second-tier mages working with each Guardian can provide enough oversight to prevent complete chaos.”
Beneath a Waning Moon: A Duo of Gothic Romances Page 18