Heir of Danger

by Alix Rickloff

  Scurrying the final steps to her bedchamber, Elisabeth closed her door. Leaned back against the panels, catching her breath. Helena’s declaration pounding in her head with every beat of her heart.

  Ruined.

  Helena was right. That future no longer existed. There would be no marriage. No life in London. No glittering parties or magnificent balls. Gordon would have to be mad to wed her after this. That, or madly in love. He’d never been either one of those things.

  Ruined.

  She waited for the panic to flood through her once more. Nothing.

  Instead, the spark of an idea burst forth. An incredible idea. A ridiculous idea. An idea with disaster written all over it.

  But then again, what choice did a ruined woman have?

  twelve

  “Let me make absolutely certain I understand you.” Brendan tapped a finger against his chin as he paced back and forth across her carpet. He’d been engaged thusly for almost a full half hour.

  “For heaven’s sake, Brendan, you’ve been going round and round forever. It’s not alchemy. I’m not asking you to turn iron into gold. Merely turn a lady of easy virtue into an honest woman.”

  “Iron into gold . . . easier,” he muttered under his breath.

  “What’s that? I didn’t quite hear you.”

  “Do you know what you’re asking? I mean on the face of it, it sounds reasonable enough, but do you have any idea what marrying me would do to you?”

  “Rescue me from a life riddled with humiliation and shame? Lessen the disgrace my disappearance with you has caused me and my family? Allow me to hold my head up in polite society? Make right your unconscionable behavior? Have I left anything out?”

  “Align the planets and hold back the tides? As I said, iron into gold—ow!” He rubbed his left arm.

  “And I’ll give you a knuckler to your bad shoulder if you don’t shape up.”

  “Why must you always resort to violence to win your arguments?”

  “Why must you always joke? It’s not funny, Brendan. Not in the least little bit. Even if I turned up today, Gordon Shaw wouldn’t marry me. He’s a good man, but he’s no saint. He’ll not jeopardize his future for me, and I wouldn’t ask it of him. That leaves you, young Lochinvar.”

  He grimaced. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

  If you’re half the man I think you are, you’ll do the right thing and marry me.”

  “Dash it all, Lissa, I’m not even a quarter of that man. And marrying me . . . it’s . . . well . . . it’s more than likely you’ll end up a widow within a week.”

  “A respectable widow.”

  He came to a sudden halt in the middle of the floor, wearing an odd expression that might have been contemplation or might have been sheer and complete panic. Hard to distinguish.

  Shaking his head, he grumbled, “I’m an ass . . . be worse . . . dead and it won’t matter anyway . . .” His attention snapped back to her, eyes bright as lamps. “You win. Miss Elisabeth Fitzgerald, will you do me the honor?” A twinkle gleamed in his eyes. Laughter in his voice as he added, “Again?”

  “I still can’t believe you managed to keep such a sacred relic hidden for so long.” Helena Roseingrave leaned back in her chair, her stare like a razor as she sipped at her wine.

  Brendan nervously tapped his thigh with one hand, guts in knots. He’d surrendered possession of the stone, but he didn’t have to like it.

  Roseingrave continued to study the Sh’vad Tual, though she made no move to pick it up. Perhaps sensing how close to grabbing up the stone and fleeing for the door he really was.

  “Why did you do it, Douglas?” she asked calmly. “Why start such madness? Greed? Ambition? The Earl of Kilronan already had wealth and influence. Was it pride? Arrogance?”

  A smile twisted the corner of his mouth. “It was power—pure and simple.”

  Her eyes widened, body tightening as she straightened in her chair to place her wineglass upon a table.

  “It began as a noble lost cause,” he continued. “Other and Duinedon coexistence, but it wasn’t long before all those high-minded principles were stripped away, leaving the ugly truth. What could we do? How far could we go? Where would it lead us?”

  “And?” she asked.

  His nerves jumped beneath his skin, the stone’s fire burning before his eyes. The battlefield. The corpses. His brother lying dead upon a mound of bodies.

  “It’s led me here,” he said finally.

  He stalked the room, feeling her steel gaze always on him. The mental push against his mind as she sought to see beneath the surface of his mind. He pushed back, no unschooled novice open to anyone who sought to read him. He might not be Amhas-draoi, but his powers were no less formidable.

  She laughed. “You’re as strong as they say.”

  “‘They’?”

  “Your brother. Your sister. They didn’t exaggerate your skills.” She sounded almost impressed.

  Pain slid like a knife into his heart. Aidan. Sabrina. It had been easier when half a world lay between them. When return had been impossible. Now? Hope only deepened the agony of his exile.

  “A shame you chose to use such gifts for an evil purpose,” she added.

  “At the time”—he shrugged, refusing to allow her to see his weakness—“it seemed the only purpose.”

  Only after he’d fallen victim to the drink and opium had he realized the similarities between those addictions and his relentless need to master the forbidden magics. That his hunger for knowledge had become a seductive obsession riding dangerously close to madness. And like the drink and the drugs, complete and total abstinence had been his answer.

  Until Ireland.

  Until now.

  Roseingrave drummed her fingers upon the arm of her chair, her expression grave. The fire reflecting in the black of her eyes. “You really think Arthur’s resurrection is possible? That he might return to rule again?”

  Asked quietly but with power enough to force an answer. Did she think to trap him into a confession? Was she looking for an explanation? Motivation?

  “Máelodor’s managed it once already.”

  “The creature Lazarus,” she replied. “He managed to escape Máelodor’s enslavement.”

  Brendan looked deep into the fire, remembering a cottage. A man in a desperate struggle for his soul.

  Brendan’s sister, Sabrina, had risked everything to help the Domnuathi fight free of his dark possession in order to gain a life with him.

  “And in doing so, only hardened Máelodor’s resolve,” Brendan replied. “The man won’t fail a second time. Should Máelodor get as far as opening the tomb—should the bones of the king fall into his hands—Arthur will return a slave-born soldier of Domnu. No woman’s love will be enough to save him.”

  The question hovered at the edges of Brendan’s mind: but could love save him, or would he destroy Elisabeth first?

  No way to know.

  There.

  Brendan felt it again.

  The numbing tingle just below his skin. The seeking brush of a mind against his own. A powerful Other by the focused thread of mage energy. A determined Other, as this was the third such tracing he’d sensed in less than an hour.

  Every nerve bristled, every beat of his heart pushing him closer to a dangerous decision. How easy it would be to cast a cloaking spell and hide within its concealing folds as he obscured his trail before returning to Duke Street.

  Instead, he tipped his hat past a chattering group of giggly young women being shepherded down Dame Street by an eagle-eyed doyenne, stepped off the pavement, threading his way between a coal man’s wagon and a crested carriage driven by a pair of blood bays. Mingled into a crowd of shoppers headed east toward College Green until he reached the corner before the bank, where he swung out of the press of bodies and into the quiet side street.

  Drawing up into a doorway, he concentrated on following the touch upon his mind back to its source.

  He was not a true ma
ge-chaser. The limited ability he possessed had been bought with much sweat and study, but at the least he might discover if he was still being followed.

  The echoes rippled back to him on a sooty, foggy breeze. The mage energy surfacing up into his consciousness as a ribbon of curling, twisting pearl and gray. Clean. Pure. Diamond-brilliant. Nothing muddy or diluted. This mind had been trained by the best.

  Amhas-draoi.

  That changed everything.

  There was no margin for error in a test of wills against one of Scathach’s warriors. And no second chances. It was draw upon his powers or be killed.

  Brendan threw out a cloaking spell as wide as he could. Exhausting, but it might buy him a few crucial minutes. At the same time, he passed a hand over his features, settling the camouflaging fith-fath over him, the itch and prickle of the magic burrowing into his facial muscles. Lengthening his chin. Blunting his nose. Darkening his hair and eyes. His skin now pouched and craggy with middle age.

  His brain hummed with effort as he juggled the separate magics, his muscles taut and jumping. He smiled at the feverish eagerness igniting his blood.

  Stepping back out of the shelter of the doorway, he followed the side street north. Ambling his slow but deliberate way north and east. No hurry. No rush. Nothing about him drawing attention. Sweat dampened his shirt to his back, his limbs tiring with every step as the magic drained him. He wasn’t up to this. Not such a complicated dance of power. It had been too long and he remained annoyingly weak from the wound to his shoulder. A few more moments and he’d falter for certain. Already the cloaking spell’s shielding destabilized to a hazardous point.

  He rounded a corner and there it was—the answer to his prayers. In the middle of the block. Indistinguishable from the surrounding buildings. Just one more gentleman’s club among a city that boasted a host of such elegant gathering spots for the elite, yet he could well imagine the reaction were that same city ever to discover what sort of elite congregated there.

  Mages skilled in the art of war. Scathach’s brotherhood. The order of Amhas-draoi.

  Instant death if he was caught.

  Escape if he were lucky.

  He sensed the overwhelming confluence of magics as a deep drone vibrating at the base of his skull, saturating the air, rippling through the ground. Buffeting him in the crosscurrent like flotsam tossed upon a wave. A perfect storm of power to mask him. Better than the best cloaking spell. And enough mingled trails to throw off any determined chaser.

  Just as he came abreast of the building, he slid into the adjacent alley, dropping his magics as if shedding a cloak. Instantly the weight lifted from his shoulders, the fog from his mind. From here on, he’d rely on street smarts and cunning learned in the sun-baked markets and winding streets of the Levant, where to hesitate meant the difference between life and death.

  His smile widened to a grin.

  It still did.

  “So you’re going to make an honest woman out of her. You’re a good man, Brendan Douglas. I don’t care what Helena says.”

  Brendan shot a sidelong glance at the long-shanked harper reclining with drink and pipe in front of the fire. “I can only imagine what ulterior motive she’s attached to the idea,” Brendan answered, scowling into his coffee. He’d been backed into a corner by Elisabeth, and while a part of him thrilled to the enticing idea, the bits not hard as a rock recoiled in abject terror.

  Rogan plunked his brandy upon the table with enough force to rattle the accompanying decanter. “Should I be offering congratulations or condolences?”

  Brendan rasped his knuckles over his chin, noting the dirt still crusted beneath his nails. The scrape across his palm where he’d jumped a fence.

  A long soak in a hot tub hadn’t been enough to completely erase hints of his afternoon’s adventure, though at least his muscles no longer felt like wet noodles nor did he smell like a sewer. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for his clothes, which a horrified maid had retrieved with a pinched nose and much grumbling.

  “Hold off on either for the time being. The shine may not be off her ring before she’s pawning it to pay for my funeral. No doubt what she’s banking on.”

  Rogan chuckled, eyes twinkling as if he knew a secret. “I don’t think you need fear that. The two of you circle each other like two wary dogs, but it will only take one of you to unbend for the other to follow.”

  “Harper, mage-chaser, and love doctor extraordinaire? Your talents never cease to amaze me.”

  “I’m not blind. I can see what you both refuse to. She, out of pride. You, out of fear.”

  “Thank you for your expert analysis of the situation. If I’m not dead soon, I may even follow your advice.”

  “Dead? Who’s dead?”

  Elisabeth stood at the door. Her red hair upswept and backlit by candelight, she seemed spun of fire and starshine. Brendan’s breath caught in his chest, unable to peel his eyes from the seductive slide of fabric over her hips as she walked. The tantalizing curve of her breasts only emphasized by the silken shawl she’d draped over her shoulders.

  Both gentlemen stood as she entered.

  “No one,” Brendan said. “Rogan and I were merely chatting.”

  She’d proposed. He’d accepted. Not the traditional order of things, but then, nothing about their relationship had ever been conventional. They’d grown up together, close as siblings. He’d agreed to their original betrothal out of duty not affection. And barely given a thought to the girl he’d deserted when he fled Amhas-draoi retribution. Like Belfoyle and his broken family, she’d merely been one more lost piece of a past he needed to forget if he’d any chance of survival.

  He never could have imagined the frustrating, clinging shadow of his youth would mature into a desirable, alluring woman. Or his own intense reaction to that transformation. It was damned embarrassing was what it was. Lusty urges aside, he needed a wife like he needed a damned hole in the head. Though, at the moment, lust seemed to be winning the battle.

  He hastily turned away from her, plunking himself down at the piano. The instrument very adequately hiding his awkward response to her arrival.

  Rogan stretched, giving a broad fake yawn. “And we’ve chatted ourselves into a stand-off. I’ll bid the two of you good night.” He winked at Elisabeth as he passed her in the doorway. “I’d not waste a moment, pet. It may be all you get.”

  She frowned. “I wish he wouldn’t say things like that. I don’t need him to remind me we’re hanging by a thread.”

  Brendan’s hands found their natural way to the keys. The little run of notes a play for time. “You worry too much.”

  She entered farther into the room, glancing around as if expecting the buffer of others. Taken aback at their solitude if the slight hesitation was any indication. Still, it didn’t stop her. She strode forward as if charging a cannon, eyes determined, hands gripped at her sides. “And you not enough.”

  “One can worry only so long before checking behind every doorway becomes a tiresome habit. I prefer to enjoy the semblance of life left to me. For as long as it’s left to me.”

  “Are you saying I shouldn’t be concerned at the current mess my life has become?” she demanded.

  “Not at all. If I were you I’d be damned worried. After all, marriage to the Douglas family pariah may not quell gossip as much as it will veer it into new and titillating directions.”

  Her expression firmed to stubbornness. Her gaze flickered with something like challenge and she not only stayed but crossed to lean against the piano. He’d give her points for backbone. “A hasty marriage to a confirmed rogue is still a marriage. I may not be wed well, but I’ll be well wed. As I’ve been told more than once, I’m not getting any younger.”

  He couldn’t stop himself. His gaze traveled over her like a caress, sliding down the column of her slender throat to dip into the curve of her ripe round breasts before lazily retracing its slow, delicious course. “That’s your only incentive for marriage to
me? How lowering to my self-esteem.”

  A spark of either anger or desire flickered in the depths of her eyes. Impossible to determine, though the hitch in her breathing gave him a clue. “Somehow I think your self-esteem manages quite well.”

  Lost in the playing and his own salacious thoughts, he didn’t notice her growing discomfort until she snapped, banging her fingers upon the keys in a crash of jarring notes. “Must you play that horrid piece of music? I’m sick to death of it.”

  He arched a brow. “Something against old Amadeus?”

  “It . . . that is . . . of course not,” she blundered. “I just don’t like that particular piece. Play something else.”

  He thought for a moment before dropping into the simple, sweet notes of an old folk song. One that always reminded him of foggy cliffs, the growl of the ocean, and home.

  Coming back to Ireland had unchained demons it had taken him years to shackle.

  People he’d loved.

  People he’d hurt.

  The shades of his past moved freely now through the chambers of his mind.

  When he’d fled Belfoyle, he’d tried armoring himself in cold, mocking contempt; his only weapon against the agony of having his life ripped out from under him. Scorn an easier emotion to swallow than bitter despair. And even that he’d only managed to choke down with copious amounts of alcohol and then opium in all its destructive forms.

  He’d not choose that path again. Yet what release was left to him? How else to drown the voices?

  He looked up from the keys to meet the dark heat of Elisabeth’s eyes, a stray curl of burnished red hair loosed to fall invitingly against her neck. Did she know what she asked of him? Did she understand what he was? Would she be one more name on that bloody list of those he’d hurt? One more face haunting his dreams?

  He stumbled to his feet and away from the piano. No, he wouldn’t let that happen. He might have failed everyone else, but he’d at least keep her safe. If aught else blew up in his face, that was one thing he could do right.

  “What’s wrong?” She touched him, barely a brush of her fingers, but his nerves jumped, his heart pounding in his chest as if he’d been running. “Is it your shoulder?”