I laughed. We could have called out to them, but for the moment we simply followed them up the road, enjoying the view.
“You were saying?” Justine asked.
“Was I?” I murmured, thinking of nothing more than what I would like to be doing with Michael right now.
“That we were meant to believe the queen is mad?”
“Oh, yes,” I said, getting my mind back on the matter at hand. “I think we’ve walked into the middle of a coup.”
“Truly? Then why not go after MacLeod instead of Marrakesh? If she is executed, he is still king.”
“But for how long? In case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t think the man does anything. She’s the one everyone fears. She’s the one who metes out the punishment. He seems to be little more than a figurehead. If you want to take a throne, you take down the power behind the throne first.”
Justine shook her head. “It may be true, but I think you vastly underestimate MacLeod. He was given his kingdom by the High King himself. I doubt that such an honor would be bestowed to a man who was not worthy.”
I shrugged. “He may well have been. But how many centuries ago was that? Perhaps he truly is a force to be reckoned with. How would anyone know? It seems that Marrakesh has been running the city here for quite some time. Either way, I don’t think that it necessarily matters what the truth is, but what the murderer believes.”
“So we take her away. Either the murderer will go after MacLeod’s throne, or he will come after her. In either case, we draw him out into the open.”
“And if she truly is crazy and running about killing people, if we can get her out of town and isolated, we’ll know that, too.”
Justine nodded. “Oui, it is a good plan.”
I was about to call out to Michael and Devlin when I saw something that stopped me cold.
They were walking down the street, talking earnestly to each other, much as Justine and I had been, when they passed a prostitute lounging against the pole of one of the gaslights. From a distance her features were indiscernible, but she did have an incredibly impressive bosom that filled the bodice of what passed as a gown to overflowing. And Michael looked. Devlin walked past her without blinking an eye, but Michael, my Michael, turned and looked.
I stopped and stared. He kept walking without a word to her, but that appreciative glance made me feel like someone had just punched me in the stomach.
It took Justine several steps to realize that I wasn’t beside her anymore. She turned and came back to me. She’d seen it, too, and for some reason that made it sting even worse.
“He looked,” I said, my voice sounding hollow even to me.
“Of course he did, chérie. He is a man.”
I shook my head. “Devlin didn’t look.”
She snorted. “Devlin caught my scent the moment they turned onto South Bridge.” She shrugged. “It is the new perfume I bought in Paris.”
“It’s lovely,” I murmured, because it seemed like the thing to say.
Justine touched my cheek and turned my face, making me look at her. “Chérie, it means nothing. They are vampires, true, but they are still just men. A man will look at a whore with her breasts hanging out of the front of her gown. Of course he will look, but it is just a glance. Why do you anger yourself over such a trifle? You know that Michael loves you with all his heart.”
“I know,” I whispered. “It’s just that I’ve never seen him look at another woman like that before. I’m not mad, I just … I need to walk.”
If I stayed with Justine we would catch up to Devlin and Michael in a few minutes, and I didn’t particularly want to see Michael just now. My pride was wounded, and if I didn’t get some perspective I would say something spiteful to him that I would probably regret later.
I turned and started down Hunter Square behind the Tron Kirk.
“Cin! Wait!” Justine called.
I raised a hand and waved her off. “I’ll meet you back at the house. I’m fine.”
But I wasn’t fine. Oh, I didn’t worry over some prostitute that he glanced at on the street, not really. I’d be the worst sort of hypocrite if that had upset me, for hadn’t I looked at Drake with similar appreciation recently? What bothered me was that I’d seen Michael gaze at me that way, thousands of times, but I’d never seen that look directed at another woman.
I thought of the night Fiona and I had talked of her husband’s travels in India. Was this what she’d meant by karma? Was this my punishment for enjoying Drake’s flirtatious banter a little too much? Already it had caused a rift between Michael and me, and now this.
I picked up my pace, cutting down Bank Street, past the rather impressive new Bank of Scotland. When I got to the park that lay in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle I picked up my skirts and ran. The park wasn’t nearly big enough. I could run for miles without tiring, and right now it felt as if I could run for days. When I got to the far side of the park I stopped and leaned against the iron fence, staring at the traffic moving along Princes Street. It was just a glance. I knew it didn’t mean anything, but in light of the argument we’d had earlier, I felt as though my world was beginning to unravel.
Chapter 13
I was nearly back at the townhouse when I heard movement behind me. I turned and found Drake standing in the shadows, watching me.
“Trouble in paradise, my dear?” he asked as he walked to me slowly.
I looked up into his green eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you do,” he said softly, leaning toward me until his lips were nearly touching mine. I repressed the urge to back up and stood my ground. We would have this out now, Drake and I.
He inhaled. “You smell of discontent. The boy’s made you angry.”
“It’s nothing,” I said shortly. “Just a bad night.”
My body tensed as his fingers came up and caressed my cheek, slowly trailing down to my jawline, my neck.
“Would you care to repay him for hurting you? You can let all that anger loose with me. I promise you a night that you’ll never forget.”
His fingers kept moving down, down, and I grabbed his wrist and squeezed. “You must stop this, Drake,” I snapped. “I know you have a history with Michael and you only say these things to even a score with him. I dislike being used in such a manner.”
Drake shook his head. “Is that what you think? I will admit that it pleases me to see him mad with jealousy, but, Cin, you are a woman worth risking any consort’s displeasure over,” he said, and a strange sort of tenderness crept over his features. It was a look I’d never seen in Drake’s eyes before and I almost believed that he meant what he said. “All that crimson hair and pale skin—you’re like fire and ice, my dear. I’ll wager every man you meet wonders what it would be like to have you.”
I laid my hand on his chest, and said softly, “I’m sorry, Drake. No one but Michael will ever have me.”
His expression grew cold and that fleeting bit of tenderness was suddenly gone, as if he’d firmly slammed the door on such a vulnerable emotion. “You’re so young,” Drake laughed in that bitter, humorless way of his. “Justine warned me to stay away from you. She said that Michael was the only lover you’d ever had and that you weren’t up to playing my games. You don’t know what you’re missing, my dear.”
I shoved him away from me. It made me angry that Justine would say something like that to him. Justine and I were best friends, but sometimes she acted as if I was unable to care for myself without her guidance.
How long would it be before she stopped seeing me as a newly turned fledgling she had to cosset and protect?
“Let me explain something to you, Drake,” I said harshly. “You may be a handsome devil, but you hold no interest for me. I feel nothing for you, and you feel nothing for me other than the possibility of getting one over on Michael for whatever happened between the two of you in the past. Michael is my heart and my soul, and if you think I would jeopardize that just to sample y
our charms, then you’re as crazy as the queen.”
He looked down at me and smiled, giving me such a condescending expression that I wanted to smite him with a ball of fire right there on the sidewalk.
I shook my head sadly. “You stand there with that look on your face, mocking me for my youth and inexperience. Has it really been so long since you were in love?” I asked. “It doesn’t matter. If you cannot understand my reasoning, then let me put it in terms a jaded womanizer such as yourself will comprehend.” I grabbed the lapels of his frock coat, pulling him down so that I could whisper in his ear. “Unless you can give me ten orgasms in an hour, as he can, then you have nothing whatsoever to offer me.”
I turned him loose and strode across the street. I was angry. Angry at Michael for sleeping with that trollop all those years ago and putting me in this position in the first place, and at myself for perhaps allowing things with Drake to go too far, but mostly I was angry at Drake for his callous disregard of the impact his games were causing in my life.
I took the steps to the townhouse two at a time, and then slammed the door behind me. Khalid came out of one of the drawing rooms, a disapproving scowl on his face, and opened his mouth to say something.
“Where is he?” I snapped.
“The king?” Khalid asked.
“Yes, the king. Where is he?”
“In his study,” Khalid replied, his disapproving look turning to one of bewilderment. It probably wasn’t often that he saw an angry woman storming through the royal residence. Something had occurred to me, though, as I was crossing the street after leaving Drake with his mouth open on the sidewalk. MacLeod was being less than forthcoming with us, and tonight I was in just a foul enough mood to force some answers from him.
Chapter 14
I threw open the doors to MacLeod’s study. He was sitting at his desk, polishing a rather lovely basket-hilted claymore, which he promptly dropped as I slammed the doors behind me. He rose to his feet and we stared at each other across the desk.
“Where do they live?” I asked.
“Who?”
“Your court. I talked to Jacques Aubert tonight. He said there are fifty vampires in your court who are now at Castle Darkness. There aren’t enough bedchambers in this house to accommodate them all. When they’re in town, where do they live?”
He looked at me with a puzzled expression, like he couldn’t grasp the significance. Maybe he hadn’t yet, but he would. “They live in the other townhouses.”
“What,” I said slowly, “other townhouses?”
“I own the two townhouses on either side of this one. They’ve been converted to house the court.”
“And you didn’t think that it was important to tell us this, oh, say, while we were searching this house?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t think it was relevant.”
I closed my eyes and took a steadying breath. I had to, or I was going to explode. “You didn’t think it was relevant that the person who is working magic against your queen is quite possibly doing it from a room directly on the other side of the wall from your bedchamber? That didn’t seem relevant to you? Are you stupid? Or are you trying to get her killed?”
His eyes narrowed and I could feel the anger rising in him. It probably hadn’t been wise to push him like that, but I was about at the end of my tether tonight and I was tired of trying to convince everyone that MacLeod was innocent when he was making himself look guilty at every turn.
He braced his fists on the desk and leaned across it. “You will not speak to me like that, madam. I am king here, not you.”
I braced my hands on the opposite side of the desk and leaned toward him. “Then why don’t you get off your ass and start acting like it!”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Someone is trying for your throne, MacLeod, and they’re using Marrakesh to get it. From what I’ve seen she’s the monarch here, not you. She’s the one everyone is afraid of.”
“I have more important matters to concern myself with than the policing of a handful of vampires in this city. I am King of the Western Lands, duly appointed by the High King himself. Do you think that the whole of western Europe just runs itself?”
I cocked my head to one side. “How did you get to be King of the Western Lands, anyway?”
He looked surprised, as if no one had ever asked him that before. “I was there when the High King was fighting all comers for his right to rule.”
“So you acquitted yourself well in battle with him?” I asked.
“No, actually Drake and I were the only ones who declined to take up arms against him. He gave us our kingdoms because we had the wisdom not to fight a battle we could not win. He said that he needed kings who possessed the wisdom to keep a level head and would not get so caught up in the thrill of battle that they didn’t know when they were headed for disaster.”
He seemed proud of that fact, but his story only added to my growing frustration. “So you got your throne by not fighting, and you keep it by letting your queen fight for you?”
It was perhaps the wrong thing to say.
In one blink of an eye he was no longer standing on the other side of the desk. I’d never seen a vampire move that fast. My eyes couldn’t even track him. When I turned to see where he had gone, the tip of the claymore that had been on his desk pressed into my cheek. I took a steadying breath and held very still.
“Let me explain something to you, little girl,” he ground out, his voice low and vibrating with barely restrained anger. “I am probably the oldest vampire you will ever meet. I was leading men into battle when Rome was still an empire. I have spilled enough blood to fill the Trevi Fountain. I can assure you that I do not fear death or battle. There are reasons that Marrakesh is my enforcer, reasons that you cannot begin to understand, and I don’t feel the need to justify them to you.”
I moved a step to the left. When the blade didn’t follow, I took another step and turned. Standing there with that sword in his hand, he looked like the king that he should be.
“Well, maybe you should explain it to me,” I said softly, “because right now I’m just about the only one who doesn’t think you’re guilty of something here, and the more you keep from us the more guilty you look.”
He lowered the sword to his side, the tip of it tapping against his boot to mark his irritation. “I am not keeping anything from you, Miss Craven. The houses are locked and the only keys to them are in my safe. Only Marrakesh and I have the combination.”
“And there are no hidden passages in either of these houses?”
He smiled. “Yes, there are passages to be used as escape routes in case of fire, but they are all locked and bolted from the inside.”
“And it’s impossible that someone might have broken in by way of a window?”
“All the ground-floor windows are sealed, and as of this evening all windowpanes are intact.”
I sighed. He wasn’t purposely trying to undermine our efforts; he really didn’t understand what he was up against.
“MacLeod, a good witch or wizard doesn’t need your keys to open those houses. There isn’t a lock made that I can’t break with magic, and you’d never know if I had done so or not.”
He looked embarrassed. “I had no idea,” he said finally.
“That’s the problem. You have no idea what you’re dealing with here. You need to be straight with me and, by the gods, you need to help us instead of hindering us, and let us do our jobs before it’s too late.”
“She’s right.”
I turned to see Marrakesh standing in the doorway. I wondered just exactly how much of our exchange she’d overheard. Given the sensitivity of a vampire’s hearing and the volume at which we’d been shouting at each other, I was betting she’d heard most of it.
She stepped back and pushed the door wide. “Come, Miss Craven,” she said and gestured to the hallway. “I believe it’s time you and I had a talk.”
Chapter 15
I fol
lowed Marrakesh silently up the stairs to her chamber, feeling a bit like a schoolgirl being called to the headmistress’s office. Except no headmistress ever looked like Marrakesh. Her long golden hair was unbound and the white dress she wore clung to her curves, its train flowing behind her on a whisper. The sleeves were long and belled and partially obscured the white gloves on her hands. All she needed was a conical hat with a scarf floating from it, and she would look like everyone’s idea of a medieval princess.
Her bedchamber was warm, a roaring fire in the hearth providing plenty of heat and light. Hashim was bent over the table between the two Roman couches. He jerked upright when he heard us enter the room, as if he’d been caught doing something he ought not be doing. I glanced behind him to see what he’d been so busy with, and found an ornate silver tea service on the table. He saw me looking at it and scowled. The big Arab hadn’t liked me catching him delivering tea to the queen. With the shortage of servants in the house someone had to do it, and I assumed that he thought that such a task was beneath him. I smiled at him in what I hoped was a friendly, encouraging manner but he just scowled harder, if that was possible. Truly, the man did not like me. I wondered, not for the first time, if it was just me or if he had an aversion to all women.
Hashim bowed to Marrakesh. “I will be just outside if you need me, my queen.”
She inclined her head to him. “Thank you, Hashim.”
Marrakesh sat on one of the couches and motioned for me to sit next to her. The big double doors closed with a solid thump, a little more forcefully than necessary, as I took a seat. Marrakesh winced.
“You’ll have to forgive him,” she said. “He worries.”
I smiled at her tightly.
“Go ahead and say it,” she said. “You certainly held nothing back with MacLeod a few minutes ago.”
I chuckled. “I was merely thinking that he worries unnecessarily. If I wished you harm, I would have let you burn this morning.”
Her eyebrows raised and she stared at me a moment. Then she laughed. “Touché, Miss Craven. Chocolate?” she asked, pouring the rich, dark liquid into a dainty Sevres cup.
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