Earl of Darkness

by Alix Rickloff

  “Do you mean this letter, my lord?” Garrick pulled free a heavy sheet of foolscap from his coat. Folded and refolded. Stained. Smeared. But still recognizable. The letter he’d sent by express rider to the Amhas-draoi. To the only address he’d had. Duke Street. Dublin. To a woman Jack once claimed had a developed sense of the ironic.

  Was she laughing now? Or had Jack’s death meant more to her than one more victim to Máelodor’s ambitions? He didn’t know. He’d yet to see Miss Roseingrave. His missive to her had yielded only these three stone-faced gentleman.

  “We read it. And we understand your concern. Your late father’s diary could be a powerful weapon in the wrong hands. Had we known of it at the time of our last . . . visit to your home here—”

  “Let’s not coat the memory in sugar,” Aidan answered, his throat aching against the words he wished to say. “Had you known, you’d have grabbed it when you murdered my father.”

  “A regrettable oversight on our part.” Garrick waved away the past with a breezy flip of his hand. “But let’s talk of the present. We’ve come seeking more information because well, frankly, we find it hard to believe what you’ve written.”

  Aidan’s hands upon the chair arms tightened. His spine stiffening. “How so?”

  “You state Máelodor is at the heart of this new threat. That he works to re-create the Nine’s network of Other. That he commands a soldier of Domnu. And that he plots to bring about a resurrection of Arthur.” So calm. So even. So bloody cold. “But you see, that’s impossible.”

  “You’d be amazed at what’s possible.” Aidan’s voice matched and bettered the arrogance offered him.

  The gentleman’s brows raised as if he seemed to see Aidan for the first time. As if he caught the whiff of naked Unseelie power still seeping from the pores of Aidan’s skin. A souvenir of survival. A memento of all he’d gained and lost that May night.

  While Garrick struggled with this new and more formidable Lord Kilronan, his companion stepped into the silence. He wore the midnight visage of the Celt. Shock of black hair. Dark arched brows. A slash of snide mouth.

  “Máelodor is dead.”

  Aidan jerked upright. Choked on a muttered “damn” before easing himself back into his seat. “When?”

  “The man was tracked down in Paris and executed. Three years ago.”

  Aidan shook his head, drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair as he sought to make sense of it all. “You’re mistaken.”

  Garrick found his voice. Reasserting his authority, he gestured to the third gentleman. “St. John was one of the force sent to execute him. He can guarantee it.”

  The man stepped to the fore. Blond. Lithe. And too damned young. What was he? Twenty-one? Twenty-two? Gods, Aidan felt old. “It’s true, my lord.” St. John’s accent held a subtle hint of some foreign tongue. “Máelodor died in a Paris lodging house. His body burned.”

  Garrick leaned nonchalantly against the mantel as if he were the host and Aidan the unwelcome visitor. Looked down on Aidan from beneath hooded lids. “It’s admirable to seek good in a brother who brings nothing but shame to a family already steeped in tragedy.”

  Aidan set his jaw. Rose to stiff attention. Unwilling to play the delusional, coddled invalid another moment. “My brother is not part of this hellish plot. Ask Ahern. Ask Miss O’Connell. Both of them can confirm what I set down in that letter.”

  “We spoke to Mr. Ahern, and I’m sorry to say received very little intelligible among the gibberish. Miss O’Connell could only relate to us assumptions based on her translation of the diary. A diary we find no longer in your possession.”

  “A diary I nearly died to protect.” Anger licked at him. A bit of what he’d almost become in the heat blistering his body. The rage torching that hollow place he still carried.

  He lifted his gaze back to the man. Saw Garrick’s flicker of recognition, then retreat, though he clamored to bolster his superior stance.

  “A diary that, had you handed it over when the chance was offered, would even now be secure. Your wounds, as well as your cousin’s death, were no more than your own fault.”

  “My cousin’s death!” he sputtered. “Do you want to know about my cousin’s death? I sent men to search for his body. They came back with nothing. Not one bone to bury.”

  “Unfortunate, I’m sure.”

  The man was a massive, self-important prick. Locking his knees against a sudden case of dizziness, Aidan pointed toward the door. “Out. This conversation is over. Get off my land, and get the hell out of my sight!”

  Garrick merely offered a thin chilly smile. “If your brother contacts you, send word immediately.” His gaze traveled over Aidan with a despairing lift of his shoulders. “You’ve been fortunate once, Lord Kilronan. You may not fare so well a second time.”

  Fortunate? Did they call having his insides stirred with a sword fortunate? He called it a bloody damned pain in the thrice-cursed ass. Had he an ounce of strength he’d have kicked the man to the courtyard and tossed his compatriots after.

  Garrick propped a white calling card upon a long rosewood table. Bowed his way out, his flunkies trailing.

  Aidan grabbed up a heavy bookend. Drew it back to throw, chest heaving. Anger narrowing his gaze to a pinpoint. “Here’s what you can bloody do with your damned card,” he seethed before dropping his arm to his side. Slapping his hair out of his eyes. Falling back into his seat to fish for a cheroot. Lighting it with shaking hands.

  They hunted Brendan. How long could his brother hide? They were relentless. Dogged. A pack of damned scent hounds hot on a trail.

  Killed, the man had claimed. The body burned.

  The blond man’s voice rose to haunt him.

  Would that be Brendan’s fate? Could one misstep or one betrayal send him into the same trap that had been laid for their father? Aidan found himself trained on an inner vision where his brother fought for his life. For his honor. For his innocence.

  He ground out the cheroot untasted. If the Amhas-draoi could hunt the lost Kilronan heir, so could he. Brendan would not fight alone.

  Cat watched from a window as the men swung their horses around in the cobbled courtyard, cantered back through Belfoyle’s arched tower. She remained long minutes after, content to rest here unnoticed. Unobserved. Alone.

  She’d had few chances for such solitude during Aidan’s recovery. Too much of her energy had been spent nursing him through the worst of his injuries. Watching him progress from fevered delirium where every second he lived they claimed as a gift. Through infinitesimal improvements as wounds closed. Fresh scars overlaying the old. A slash of puckered red severing the silver Unseelie brand. An angry welt across his ribs. A fainter mark drawing the eye to his upper arm. His shoulders. And a new flinty hardness chilling the warmth of his gaze.

  He’d spoken no more of his desire for her to stay. And she’d not brought it up again. That time felt more like a dream every day. One she’d conjured to carry her through the horrors. Even the memory of his touch, his kisses, the feel of him thrusting deep within her took on the misty glow of unreality.

  She unfolded the missive and read it again just to be sure she’d not imagined it. But no, the words remained unchanging. A heavy black scrawl. The slanted loops of letters. The information lifting a hidden burden from her shoulders.

  Geordie lived.

  He was in Dublin. Well. And wishing her home.

  A choice lay before her. Could she truly find happiness as Aidan’s mistress, knowing he left her bed for another’s arms? That any children she bore would carry their father’s blood but not his name? That she must continue always in the corners of his life?

  She bit her lip. Traced once more the words upon a window—“I love you.”

  But this glass held no coating of dust. Her pledge disappeared as if it had never been.

  Sweat stung his eyes. Slicked his bare back. Dampened his hands where they gripped the rock face. The harness chafed his legs, straining muscles st
ill weak from months of inertia.

  Squinting into the overcast, he measured the distance to the top. Another fifty yards. May as well be five hundred. He’d never make it. He closed his eyes, but the burn of the wide cloud-flattened sky remained upon the backs of his lids. The distant roll of an ebb tide and the squawks of flustered puffins echoed in his ears.

  Opening his eyes, he steeled his body for the next move. Adjusted his grip. Picked out the next handhold. Judged the distance. Climbed.

  Tendons screamed. Bones grated against one another in movements difficult when healthy. Damn near impossible when not. But he’d needed this challenge. A focus for the gnawing rage. A way to assuage the Unseelie fury to a manageable whisper. Already he felt the attack easing. Sloughing off him with the drenching sweat.

  Inches, then feet, passed beneath him as he picked his way up the cliffs. Time sliding away as the sun passed overhead. As the tide turned and rose again.

  He’d delayed decision making as long as he dared. Bankers summoned him. Estate managers from his properties in Cambridgshire, Wicklow, and Donegal sent increasingly frantic letters. Fellow investors scolded. Relatives fawned or chastised depending upon their income. But he’d put them all aside as he worked to understand his father’s life. His death. His guilt. To knit whole a man woven from so many disparate and contrasting threads.

  How would his life have been different if the fourth Earl of Kilronan had been truly the man of Aidan’s memories? Would Aidan have remained forever a sauntering, pleasure-seeking rake hopping from scrape to scrape and bed to bed? Gliding through life on a nobleman’s entrée and his own good looks until marriage settled him to a more sober existence?

  Would he have ever known Cat?

  Would he have ever allowed himself to dream of a life with her? To love her?

  These thoughts squeezed a heart beating frantically in his chest. Cat had stayed as she’d promised. And yet there was distance between them. A fear within them both that didn’t allow hope to blossom.

  He understood her reluctance.

  He despised his own.

  The wind kicked up. Whistled through the ropes. Raised gooseflesh on his overheated back.

  He made his next creeping move upward. Gritted his teeth against the pain.

  Ten yards—and no more—lay between him and the cliff edge.

  Almost there.

  His father had been guilty of crimes uncounted. Death unmeasured. An ambition that drove others to share in his bloody and terrifying new world vision. The name Kilronan had become synonymous with ruthless power. Arrogant brutality. Unmatched tragedy.

  Against such sins, how did simply loving someone compare?

  He scrambled the final yards toward the edge, pebbles cascading below. Scree broken and sliding to shatter against the rocks below.

  And that’s when it happened.

  The rope pulled free of its last anchor, the weighted spike dropping to swing uselessly against the cliffs. Jerking him free of his handhold. He scrambled against the outcropping, his feet slipping, his arms burning with stress as he fumbled to keep himself from falling.

  “Hold on.” A shadow blotted out the sun. A hand clutched his wrist. “I’ll not let you fall.”

  Seconds stretched forever as he clambered to regain his footing. Drag himself the last feet over the lip of the cliff to lie gasping upon the turf. Above him, the shadow dissolved into a woman, staring down at him from a pair of spring green brilliant eyes, her mouth turned up in a hesitant smile, her curves barely concealed beneath a light summer gown of dotted muslin.

  She knelt silently beside him as if she’d not spoken those heartrending words only a second before. Words carrying the punch of a sword thrust. Scalding him with a clarity of purpose he’d last felt upon the threshold of death. He knew what he wanted. Cared not the consequences. They would weather whatever the future held together.

  Now if only she’d agree.

  He rolled himself up onto his knees in front of her. Cupped her face. Brushed his lips against hers. Cool. Soft. Restrained. Like kissing a statue.

  “Marry me,” he said.

  That did it. She blinked her shock, eyes shining, mouth rounded in surprise. “But I can’t. I wouldn’t . . . Miss Osborne—”

  “Can’t? Wouldn’t? You’ve battled a soldier of Domnu, fought back against an Unseelie possession, saved my sorry ass. Four times if you count just now. After all that, what’s a few narrow-minded, top-lofty cranks to contend with?” His heart lifted at the amusement in her eyes. The smile playing at the edges of her lips. “Damn it, Catriona O’Connell. I love you. I need you. Marry me. Be my wife. And to hell with Miss Osborne. To hell with them all.”

  Beneath him, her breathing quickened. A shiver ran through her. He once again traced the fine line of her scar, almost invisible against the ghostly pallor of her skin.

  “Say you will, Cat.”

  Still she didn’t answer.

  Desire quickened. The chill of her body against the heat of his skin, the nerve-searing rush of the cliff ascent, the explosion of his certainty all aroused him so that his touch grew bolder, his kisses longer.

  He pushed her back onto the grass to lie spooned in the crook of his arm. “Marry me, a chuisle. Say ‘yes.’ I beg you.”

  His voice shuddered on the plea. He swallowed back another. She would agree, or she would leave.

  Long seconds passed as he held her gaze. He counted them in his head, even as the shallowest breath she drew acted like a spur to his growing excitement. He desired her. Ached to bury himself inside her. Ride the frenzied heat of their joining to orgasm, knowing she would always be his. If she pulled away—if she looked away—it would be over.

  A smile spread slowly over features gilded by breaking sun. Her arms lifted to his neck. Her kiss, hot and sweet and eager. Her body welcoming him.

  “Well, when you say it all out like that.” She laughed. “Aye, Aidan Douglas. I must be mad, but I shall marry you,” she answered.

  He closed his eyes, sent up a silent prayer of thanksgiving even as his hand skimmed her side, caressed the exposed curve of her breasts. Seduction a few popped buttons and a raised petticoat away.

  “Out here? Now you’re the one who’s lost his senses,” she squeaked, casting a hesitant glance around her, though the wicked gleam in her eyes gave her away.

  He laughed. Clamped his arms around her. Rolled them both over so she lay upon his chest, her hair falling from its pins. Curtaining them in a black, silken river. “May as well be hanged for an old sheep than a young lamb. And if we’re going to cause a scandal anyway—”

  She dropped a kiss upon his chin. His nose. His forehead. Grinned a sparkling invitation. “As you say,” she purred in that sexy, smoky murmur of hers, guaranteed to shoot him over the moon. “To hell with them all.

  Turn the page for a sneak peek at

  Lady of Shadows

  The next book in Alix Rickloff’s

  thrilling Heirs of Kilronan series

  Off the Southwest Coast of Ireland

  November 1815

  He’d prayed the storm would kill him. One solid lightning strike to splinter his body into so many pieces no amount of mage energy could fit him back together.

  A vain prayer. He’d moved far beyond the reach of any god’s aid.

  The ocean had calmed from the froth of hurricane swells to a slick of black, rolling water. Good for inducing nausea, but not death. Clouds passed eastward, taking their lightning with them, leaving a sky shimmering with frozen stars, full moon hanging low on the horizon. Picturesque, yet his mood longed for a cyclone’s destruction to match the chaotic madness infecting his mind.

  The storm had pushed them off course. He’d heard the sailors mutter and witnessed the captain’s frown as he prowled the quarterdeck. Behind schedule. Battered and in need of repairs. And Cobh harbor another day and a half away if the winds held.

  So if the gods had deserted him, it fell to his own devices to find oblivion.

>   He’d been denied a split second’s painless annihilation. But there were other paths to Annwn. Trackless dark ways that led just as surely to the land of the dead.

  He only needed to discover them.

  Leaning against the rail, he scanned the sea, his answer written upon every wave. But could he go through with it? Would the wards keeping him alive and untouchable unravel within Lir’s cold fathoms, bringing the solace he craved? Or would the attempt result in endless suffering of a different kind within the clawing pull of the ocean tides?

  The stars above rippled gold and silver upon the surface of the sea. Curled and eddied as if a hand drew shapes with light and water. Turned moonlight to a woman’s pale face. The ocean’s foam drifting across her features like a spill of dark hair, she breathed her love across the separating veil. Shone luminous in a world blanketed by shadows.

  Had she been conjured from his tattered memories or was she mere dream? Impossible to distinguish. Names and faces drifted through his consciousness like ghosts. Sometimes as vivid as the existence he found himself trapped within. At others times, only emptiness met his probing efforts to remember. And he was left alone to fight the demonic rage that burned through him like acid. The fury of the damned.

  He expected her to dissolve back into the waves at any second, but she remained. Her eyes gleamed blue as cornflowers. Her smile brightening for a moment the hopelessness pressing against his heart, and he knew he must take the course offered. Now. Here. Before she vanished. Before she was beaten back by the howling viciousness, and he was once again left bereft of memories or even the comfort of memories. At least this way he wouldn’t face the uncertainty of death alone.

  Slinging a leg over the gunwale, he glanced to be sure none watched. But no, the deck remained quiet. He’d not get a better chance.

  With a hard shove to propel him out of the ship’s shadow, he plunged into the water. Arrowed far down below the waves.

  The water jolted him alert. A stomach punch of icy pain, stabbing needles of agony through every nerve. Releasing his breath on a cloud of bubbles, he dropped deeper. Lungs burning and muscles cramping as he fought the instinctual need to breathe. To live.