by Egan, Alexa
Mac straightened but refused the seat, conscious of the sword hanging at his side and the pistol he carried in his coat pocket. Would it come to that? Would he have the strength and the resolve to kill this man in cold blood? There would be no way he could escape the house unremarked. He would be caught, tried, and executed. The Imnada’s secret safe, but at the cost of his life.
“No need to resort to violence,” Deane said as if he sensed Mac’s dilemma. “I’m no threat to you,” he paused, “or to the Imnada.”
A sing of steel, and the point of Mac’s sword rested at the base of Deane’s throat, piercing the folds of the earl’s cravat. The slightest push and the man would choke on Mac’s blade, his talking days over. “Do you want to die, Fey-blood?” he snarled.
Deane’s eyes never wavered, his body tense but unmoving.
“At ease, Captain,” came a barked command from the door.
Mac swung around, guts knotted, mouth dry, brain awhirl with confusion. “Gray!”
* * *
“I arrived in London the day before yesterday,” Gray explained. “I never saw David. We must have passed each other on the road.”
“What the hell are you doing here? With him?” Mac demanded. “Damn it, Gray. What’s going on?”
Mac had sunk into a chair only after Lord Deane had eased himself beyond the reach of his sword and Gray had extracted the weapon from his white-knuckled grip.
“I came at the request of Lord Deane,” Gray answered. “My visit overlapping yours is merely a happy coincidence.”
“Happy for me, at any rate,” quipped Deane, rubbing his neck.
“But why? He . . . he’s . . .”
Gray propped himself on the edge of the desk, one booted leg swinging. “Yes, he is. He’s also one of a handful of men and women who know of the Imnada’s existence and are devoted to opening a new dialogue between Fey-blood and shapechanger.” As Gray continued to explain, Mac’s suspicions of ambush intensified. He’d been so convinced of David’s involvement in the rebel plot that he’d never given a thought to de Coursy’s complicity.
“Do you know what you’ve done?” he demanded when Gray had finished. “You’ve betrayed the clans. You’ve condemned the Imnada to death.”
Gray’s steel-blue eyes narrowed. “No, I’ve offered us hope for the first time in a thousand years. It’s our only chance. We can’t just wall ourselves away behind the Palings and pretend the outside world won’t invade sooner or later, because it will. Our safeguards weaken. The powers that went into their weaving fail as we do. It’s only a matter of when. Better to choose our own ground than wait for the enemy to choose it for us.”
“Then you agree they’re the enemy.”
“Some. Perhaps most. But not all. And definitely not Sebastian.”
Deane acknowledged the compliment with a gracious nod, though he remained safely on the other side of the desk, beyond Mac’s reach.
“How long have you been in league with them?” Mac asked.
“I was approached upon my return from France and shortly after Grandfa—after the Gather acted on our malady.”
Mac snorted his disgust. Malady? David was right. Gray couldn’t even speak the word “curse,” as if saying it out loud increased its power.
“There were mitigating circumstances that brought all of us together in common cause,” Gray said. “Circumstances, I’m happy to say, that are no longer a concern, thanks to one of our number. But it showed us how much we’ve lost by hiding behind the Palings’ wards and how much we have to gain if we join forces. The purges happened more than a thousand years ago, Mac. The reasons are barely remembered except as legend.”
“He remembers them.” Mac pointed to Deane. “He related them in detail to Bianca. Arthur betrayed and struck down by his treacherous Imnada war leader. The Fey-bloods rising up in rage to avenge their fallen king. A moving faery tale.”
“Which is just what they believe us to be,” Gray answered. “The Other think we’re extinct—killed off during the Fealla Mhòr. Our return now will be a new beginning, a new chance to live in peace.”
“Or a new opportunity for them to renew their hatred.” Mac’s brain was as rattled and unsteady as a jug-bit drunkard’s, words pelting him from all sides, only half of it making sense. But he clung to the few clear thoughts in his head. Focused on those. “Was Adam part of this conspiracy?”
“He’d made his presence known to Sebastian, but there had been no actual contact.”
So Mac had been right. The gift of a book had been the signal for a meeting. A meeting that never took place. “Because Adam was murdered by a Fey-blood. Did you know this at the funeral? Was that why you tried to fend off my questions? Because you knew Adam had been killed by one of your associates?”
Gray’s lips pressed together, his eyes dangerous. “You don’t know that for a fact.”
“Yes. I do. That’s what David was on his way to tell you. I was attacked and almost killed by one as well. Only Bianca Parrino kept me from ending up in a box alongside Adam in St. James’s cemetery.” His gaze snapped to Lord Deane. “Ring any bells, my lord?”
Gray and Deane exchanged impenetrable looks, though Mac sensed the unease his tale had sparked. They hadn’t known, and it worried them.
“The Fey-blood killed Adam. Now she’s after me,” Mac continued. “Still trust your so-called friends?”
“I acted for the good of our race, Mac. You have to believe that.”
“Did you?” Mac snarled. “Or did you do it to get back at your grandfather for abandoning you?”
Gray’s hand tightened around the knob of his cane, his eyes drilling into Mac’s skull with a lethal glare.
“And if dear old Granddaddy wouldn’t come to your rescue before, don’t expect him to do it when the Ossine’s enforcers catch you. The Duke of Morieux will probably be the one to swing the axe.” Mac turned back to Deane. “I’ve been patient, but no longer. Where’s Bianca?”
“All that righteous anger and now you’re desperate for an out-clan, Mac?” Gray asked, returning Mac’s thrust with a quick strike of his own.
“Back off,” Mac snarled. “While you’ve been playing traitor, I’ve been trying to break the fucking curse so we can all go home. Without Bianca’s help, it will take me weeks to riddle out the last of Adam’s notes—time I don’t have if this Fey-blood shows up again. Time none of us has.”
“Is that all you want with her?” Gray asked, one regal brow arched in infuriating superiority.
“That’s all. Period. End of story.”
Deane looked up, eyes widening, a pained expression chasing its way across his features. “Come in, Bianca. Thank you for joining us. We were just . . . uh . . . speaking about you.”
* * *
There it was in black and white. Well, maybe not black and white but definitely stated emphatically for all to hear. Mac needed her—not as a woman but as a gardener. Talk about humbling. She’d been desired by dukes and courted by princes, and here a lowly army captain dismissed her as nothing more than a convenient tool like a trowel or a sharp pair of secateurs. Useful because she could tell a Fraxinus from a Taxus.
And, like the silliest of schoolgirls, she’d fallen for his pretty words and been lured by sweet promises.
Again.
One would think she’d have learned by now. One would think her heart would know better.
One would think she’d be immune to the pain.
One would be very, very wrong.
Yet, none of that touched her face or marred her pose of carefree ambivalence as she alighted upon the edge of a sofa, settling her skirts around her. To look at her, none would ever know her heart lay scattered around her in pieces. Thank heavens Sebastian and Major de Coursy had slipped unobtrusively away. This was one time when she did not relish an audience.
“What I told Gray. What you heard. I didn’t mean it.” Mac’s excuses bounced off her like spent arrows.
A living death. A part of their s
oul cut away.
Marianne’s words haunted Bianca. When desires cooled, how long before resentment overcame respect and desire turned to bitterness? How long before Mac saw her as the source of his pain, the root of all his problems? How long before the insults became blows? “You don’t need to explain.”
“I may not need to, but I damn well want to.” Mac started pacing the room as she clutched the sofa arm with a sinking heart, wishing the floor would swallow her whole. “You and I, Bianca. We were never supposed to happen.”
“An impossibility like young Jamie Wallace?” she asked flippantly, the muscles in her face faltering under feigned composure, her shoulders inching closer to her neck.
“Something like that,” he answered with a cynical twist of his lips. “The Imnada have lived apart for so long, it’s difficult to imagine another way. To trust where trust is synonymous with betrayal.”
“Jory did it.”
“He did, and was outlawed for his pains.”
Was this his way of saying good-bye? The fantasy of the snug farm, the warm bed beneath the eaves, the laughter and voices of children floating through the house—she had conjured them and for a few brief happy hours had imagined them within her grasp. But, like props and sets, they had been an illusion. The curtain had closed, the fantasy no more than paste and paint.
Mac rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, his gaze sharp, his face rigid with strain. “For the past eighteen months, I’ve lived with one dream—to find a way home. It’s hard to simply let go. But—”
“Then don’t, Mac.” Fear caught at her heart. She didn’t want to hear any more stammered explanations. She didn’t want to know she was a useful appendage. “Go home to Concullum. See your sister. Repair relations with your father. Take up the life you lost. I’ll do the same. It will be as if we never laid eyes on one another.”
“It’s that easy for you dismiss the last weeks?” His stare seemed to scythe right through her. “To pretend nothing happened between us?”
“I didn’t say it would be easy. Those days in the country were fabulous, and I’ll never forget them—or you. But we have to face some cold facts.”
“This is madness. You’re actually going to sit there and pretend this was some sort of foolish lark? Damn it, I know you better than that, Bianca.”
On went the armor. “Do you? You forget who you’re speaking to. I can play any part I choose.”
His anger by now was palpable: she recognized the signs—a flash in his eyes, a tensing of the muscles in his jaw. “You might be able to fool the gullible prancing sods who flutter around you with their poems and their presents, but you aren’t fooling me,” he shot back. “That was no act, though I’d lay any odds you’re performing now.”
“You have your clan, Mac, as I have London. This is where I belong.” Layer upon hardened layer, stone wrapped in steel wrapped in a gemstone brilliance. She smiled around the lump clogging her throat, cutting off her breath. “I didn’t realize how much I would miss the bustle and pace of the city until I was trapped in Surrey with naught but the cows for company. Besides, I prefer being on my own with none to tie me down to the drudgery of domestication.”
She thought she saw him wince, but it was an expression so quickly replaced by harsh purpose, she couldn’t be sure.
In his agitation, he picked up and put down a porcelain urn from a sideboard, a Wedgwood jug, a brass candelabra. “You can just chuck it all away without a second thought?”
“Who said it was decided in haste? I’ve had time to think it over. It’s the best thing to do. The only thing to do. You know it as well as I.”
She braced herself for effusive arguments, denials, perhaps even a declaration of some sort. It wouldn’t be the first time she had cut off a man’s presumptions with one swift blow. Just the first time she’d done it while her own heart felt like lead in her chest and her head throbbed with the effort. But no declarations followed. Instead, Mac put down the pewter bowl he’d been holding and answered with a simple “If that’s how you wish it to be.”
“It’s the way it must be.” She gripped the arm of the sofa, wishing it were his throat. She had not wanted a scene, but she might have expected a little protest. A dollop of dismay to make her feel less horrible. The man groveled. She held herself aloof. That’s how it was supposed to happen—how these situations had always spun out in the past. Anything different seemed odd and awkward, like ill-fitting clothes. “Besides, I learned the hard way that wishes count for little in this world.”
He did not reply, his silence damning, the way he could not look her in the eyes all the evidence she needed to know she’d chosen right when she chose to cut things off cleanly. Best the cauterizing slice than the slow, seeping wound.
His gaze was dark and unreadable, his face as empty as her own. “I’m happy we cleared matters between us.”
Was that what they’d done?
Then why did Bianca’s thoughts tumble in her head and she retained the distinct urge to slam the nearest heavy object over his thick head?
She smiled though her cheeks ached and her eyes burned. “Clear as crystal.”
* * *
She’d dismissed him. Offered him her hand to kiss as regally as if he were a petitioner before the court. With monumental effort, he’d answered her indifference with his own, though in truth he’d wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled. Knock her over the head. Drag her kicking and screaming from Deane House and . . . and what? Take her to his meager rooms and ravish her? Send her back to Line Farm, where he could keep her safe? Tie her in a chair and force her to listen to his pleas until she believed him?
The answer would be all of the above. Unfortunately, none of those options, tempting as they were, would inspire her trust or gain her forgiveness. She’d been viciously abused by a man who’d twisted her love for him into a weapon. Who’d used his strength to batter her into submission while wielding his words with surgical precision. Mac would not be accused of doing the same. Not even if it meant walking away and not looking back. He’d told her once that all she had to do was say the word and he’d relent.
He’d hold to that promise no matter the consequences.
Unheeding of his pace as he retraced his steps to the entry hall, he rounded a corner smack into a woman coming the other way. Steadying her with an arm beneath her elbow, he looked down upon a diminutive beauty with gold-flecked gray eyes, a mouth made for smiling, and Fey-blood magic singing in her veins. It lifted the hair at his neck and vibrated like a struck tuning fork along his bones.
“We should install footmen with whistles to handle the traffic,” she joked as she returned his speculative gaze with one of her own. “Though recently the crowds have been rather thin, so perhaps not.”
“I’m sorry, my lady. I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Your thoughts must have been taken up with Bianca. She does have that effect on people, Captain Flannery.”
“You know me?”
Her smile widened to one of impish mischief. “I do now. But where are you going? You’ve only just arrived. After battling your way past our phalanx of footmen, I expected you to stay for as long as the siege lasted. Lay in supplies. Bring on your sappers.”
“I’ve done enough damage for one day, my lady. My only option now is a graceful and orderly retreat.”
“My, the warlike metaphors are flying this morning, aren’t they?” She laughed. “Well, if you won’t soldier on, perhaps you can leave it to me to scout the terrain.”
He grimaced.
“Too much?” She shrugged. “Perhaps you’re right. Don’t worry, Captain. I’ll talk to her. She’s a tough nut. Always has been, but I’ll see what I can do on your behalf.”
“You’re kind, my lady, but it’s probably for the best.” He bowed and continued on down the corridor, his feet as heavy as his heart.
“The best for whom, Captain Flannery?” Lady Deane called after. “Bianca or yourself?”
19
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br /> “Sweeting, is that you lurking about out in the corridor?” Sarah called as Bianca passed the door to one of Deane House’s six spacious public salons. “Come in and have something to eat, my dear. I’ve cake and those little yellow biscuits you love so much, and there’s tea warm in the pot.”
Drat! Just what she hadn’t wanted after a long afternoon spent meeting with Dr. Hove at Kew Gardens. The renowned botanist and plant hunter had been very sympathetic but not at all helpful, and Bianca wanted only to change out of her grubby clothes and settle into a hot bath. Besides, tea and cake with Sarah was like stepping into the confessional: she’d wheedle and pry until Bianca gave in just to stop the onslaught of questions. And at this point she didn’t know what answers she could give that wouldn’t make her sound a few pages short of a full script.
“The cake is plum—your favorite,” Sarah cajoled.
Snagged fair and square, Bianca surrendered to the temptation of plum cake and tea, entering the salon like Daniel into the lion’s den. Hardly designed for companionable tête-à-têtes, the cavernous space echoed, the gilded, elegant furniture was unwelcoming, and even the allegorical figures cavorting on the painted ceiling seemed to wink down upon all visitors with smug superiority.
She shivered as she took a seat, though a fire blazed in the hearths standing at either end of the room. Perhaps it was the dog-with-a-bone stare Sarah turned on her, an expression that always boded ill. It meant Bianca was in for a lecture or an interrogation—or both.
“I thought you said builders working on the chimneys kept you from going home to Holles Street upon your return to the city.”
“I might have stretched the truth a tiny bit.”
Sarah eyed her as she poured the tea. “So it would seem. So now that your handsome captain has chased you down to declare his undying devotion, what are you waiting for?”