Dangerous As Sin

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Dangerous As Sin Page 12

by Alix Rickloff


  “Well?”

  Right on cue. “Well what?” Cam shifted in his chair. Curled his fingers around the whiskey he’d poured and then ignored.

  Susan folded her arms across her chest. Settled on the corner of a chair. “The girl. Who is she? And none of this song and story of an anvil wedding. I’ve known you for too long to be listening to that kind of blather.”

  He toyed with the idea of revealing everything to her. Discarded it immediately. There’d be questions. Pointed looks. He wasn’t up to her inquisition. Best to stick with the ridiculous story of an impetuous marriage.

  “It’s as I told you, Susan. Morgan and I wed a few weeks ago.”

  Her squint grew more pronounced, her foot tapping impatiently. “She’s not some tart you’ve brought home, I hope. I won’t have it, Master Cameron. Not under my roof. What would your aunt and uncle say?”

  A muscle in Cam’s jaw jumped. “They won’t say anything because they won’t know. The last thing I need is Uncle Josh and Aunt Sylvie bearing down on me. Keep it quiet for now, Susan.”

  Her mouth folded into a deep frown, her shrewd gaze suspicious. “A new bride and you don’t want to be showing her off to the family?”

  He thought of Morgan as she looked tonight. A slit skirt for riding, breeks beneath. A narrow-waisted jacket that highlighted her slender hips, the unusual breadth to her shoulders. Tried not to remember how she’d looked the night of the attack. Her burnished gold gaze awash with desire, the supple arching column of her back. The hot, wet center of her sliding against him. Wanting more. Wanting him.

  He swallowed hard on the sudden craving to have her that way again.

  Morgan. Double-sided as the claymore. And either facet of her personality enough to cause her ruin among the society sausage grinder where any newcomer was fresh meat. He should know. He’d been chewed up and spit out already.

  “Does she look like the kind you show off?” He tossed back his whiskey, let the familiar heat ease its way through his system.

  She shrugged. “I’m not the one running helter-skelter back into marriage. But if you loved her enough to marry her, seems to me you should love her enough to not be ashamed of her.”

  Was that a dig at his family? They’d professed to love him. Until it grew too uncomfortable. Then they’d scattered like rabbits. Left him to find his own way through the growing rumors, the recurring nightmares. His war following him even into the drawing rooms of London. A titillation. A morbid curiosity. The burden of his crimes almost killing him. Literally.

  “The situation’s…complicated. Let’s leave it for now. Just do as I say. Keep it to yourself. Morgan and I aren’t here. You haven’t seen us.”

  She rose. “As you say, Master Cameron. I’ll not say another word, though I know a havey-cavey business when I see it.”

  Cam gripped the arms of his chair. Hard. “She’s my bride, Susan. Believe me.”

  “As you say, Colonel,” she repeated, muttering low in her throat as she left him. “And that’s why you’re down here and she’s up there and both miserable as two people can be.”

  Morgan punched the lumps from her pillow. Lay back to stare up into the bed curtains, willing herself to fall asleep.

  Only stubborn pride kept Cam unbending. Foolish arrogance that would see them both killed if they weren’t careful. In battle, Cam might be a match for Doran. In some ways even, she’d admit, he was superior. But Doran wielded Neuvarvaan. And with it, the black spell of the Morkoth. It would take more than skill with blade and pistol. It would take magic. Something she held in spades whether Cam liked it or not.

  She returned to her bed. Lay listening to the city sounds. Muffled through the heavy shutters across her window and lessened by the hour, but still present. A low grumbling roar like the breath of a living creature. She imagined the giant red dragon of England curled tail-tight beneath the ground, the soul of the Duinedon. Would it come alive at the booted tramp of Undying? Would it feel the panic such an army would create among the mortal world? And would it arise, taking shape as vengeance meted out on the Other by the Duinedon? Magic against mortal? Until all that was Fey was wiped clean from the earth?

  She threw herself to the far side of the bed, wishing her mind hadn’t reached that grim conclusion.

  The house settled itself. Susan’s footsteps going past her door on her way to the attics followed soon after by the slow uneven tread of Cam, making his way to his own rooms.

  She rose, padding across the floor, lifting the latch to peer out into the gloom. A crack of light slid down the hall as he opened his chamber door, gilding his blond hair, throwing hard-edged shadows across the planes of his face.

  Morgan held still, her newfound dedication hanging by the merest fingertip. A part of her wanted to confront him. Force him to accept her apology. And another part—the soft, sentimental part—wanted to chase the shadows from his eyes. Brush the strands of gold from his forehead. Let him escape with her back into a past where they were both happy.

  She did neither.

  He paused in the doorway, his hand on the knob, his head bowed. “Sleep well, Morgan. Oidhche mhath, m’eudail.”

  Those words delivered so softly caused the blood to pound in her ears.

  Slamming the door, she pressed her back against it, her hands shaking, the thread of his endearment ribboning her heart. Had it been a slip of the tongue? A cruel sarcasm meant to wound?

  Or had he too felt that strange reluctance to part? As if their very lives depended upon this enforced solidarity.

  She crossed her arms protectively over her chest, hating the low, crushing ache beneath her breastbone. She’d done with grieving. Had buried those few short weeks with Cam, hoping never to feel this misery again. And yet a few honeyed words battered straight through every good intention.

  She dropped her arms to her sides. Straightened. No. She refused to be sucked back in. It would take more than a few vulnerable moments to make her go against her better instincts. Scathach was right. Cam was complete poison.

  Chapter 14

  Morgan came awake to the clank of a coal scuttle. A man bent at the hearth, coaxing a fire to life, his dark hair silvered with gray, his limbs large and gnarled as he worked the bellows.

  He stood, wiping his hands on a rag, brushing soot from his sleeve. “You’ll excuse me being here, mum. Not proper, but Susan was busy in the kitchen, and the master told me it would be all right.” His broad face cracked into a smile, welcome after the housekeeper’s suspicious glowers last night. “I tried not to wake ye, but…” He shrugged his apology. “I’ve left ye a basin and ewer of hot water on the table there. And there’s tea on the tray. If ye need anything else, just holler. The name’s Amos.”

  Morgan stretched and sat up, daylight making everything look brighter. Scathach had been right. She could indulge her desire for Cam, but never at the expense of what was truly important. A life among the Amhas-draoi. A life she’d wanted for as long as she could remember. Cam might not be poison, but he wasn’t her white knight either. And she did her own rescuing, thank you very much.

  “Susan and I are a bit shorthanded,” Amos continued. “We never expected company. Couldn’t have been more flummoxed to see ye and that’s a fact. Never expected to have the colonel bring home another wife.”

  Wife. The word sent a shiver of panic up her spine. Or was that excitement? Both feelings so tightly wrapped she couldn’t tease them apart. “He loved her that much?”

  Amos choked. “Love? If ye can love a wasp, knowing one wrong move will get ye stung.”

  Morgan hugged her knees to her. “Then the stories were true? He did discard her for a string of mistresses?”

  Amos’s eyebrows shot so high they disappeared into his hairline. “Where’d ye hear such palaver? The colonel’s no saint—I served him for all his years in the army. Could tell ye stories that’d curl your hair. But if anyone did the discardin’, it were her. Not him.”

  “But—”

 
He grabbed up his broom and pail. “No more I’ll say on that. It’s not seemly to be talking of her with ye. She’s gone. You’re here. And the colonel’s due a bit of peace if ye ask me. He’s earned it times ten.” He tipped his head. Banged toward the door.

  “What happened to him during those years away, Amos?”

  Her words drew him up. His hand clamped around the pail’s handle, an uncomfortable flush creeping up his neck.

  “He barely speaks of it, but it’s enough,” she went on. “You were there.”

  He turned back, old sorrows dulling his gaze. “The colonel, he knew how to shoot. How to stalk. Things he’d learned back at home in the mountains around Strathconon. First at his father’s side and then his uncle’s. Those men in charge. They saw that, and they twisted it. They took a man already on the edge and pushed him over.”

  “I’ve seen glimpses of what he must have been like. But was it so bad?”

  Amos nodded. “Aye, it was. By the time we’d reached France, murder and savagery were all the colonel knew. He ate, drank, and dreamed them.” His words grew harsh, his face hard with pity. “Did they think once he’d come home, he’d forget? He’d just go back to the man he’d been? They were fooling themselves. They’ve created a killer. Now they’ve got to live with it.” He swallowed. “But, then, so does he.”

  Cam flipped open the morning paper Amos had brought. What he’d hoped to find he couldn’t say. Stories of unexplained magic. Legions of young-old men springing up like mushrooms across London. But nothing of the sort caught his eye. Just the usual scandal and speculation from the upper strata. Lord Tabberner caught in a revealing position with Mrs. Nowell. A banking scandal ruining two members of parliament and an undersecretary in the Foreign Office. The elopement of a young heiress to Gretna Green with her footman.

  The notices of murder and mayhem from the lower classes were no more helpful. Bodies discovered washed ashore near Southwark Bridge. A doctor with his head crushed as he returned from a call near Holborn. A break-in and robbery at a gentleman’s home in Cheyne Walk, his housekeeper murdered in the attack.

  Pushing the paper aside, he spread the map of the city out on the dining room table. Placed his cup and saucer on one curling corner. The butter dish on the other.

  He’d been awake since before dawn, but lay abed listening to the city, a garbled, dissonant roar of warring sounds.

  He hated it. Just like every other morning when he’d lain in his room, waiting for the house to wake around him.

  The ancient rhythms of the mountains. The purr of the fathomless gray loch, and the lyric sigh of the ever-present wind. The scream of the wildcat as it hunted and the mountain hare as it died. That was the music of his world. Not the incessant, ugly chorus of millions living cheek by jowl.

  This was his uncle’s world. This had been Charlotte’s world.

  And now it hid a madman.

  What drew Doran here? No standing stones. No barrow mounds. But he came with intent. Cam was sure of it.

  He scanned the map with no clue to what he searched for. Then reaching the bottom right corner, began again. A name. A street. Anything that jumped out at him as a possibility, he wrote down to be checked later. He’d hired Rastus. But that didn’t mean he’d leave the search to the wily, old corporal.

  “You’re up early.” Morgan stood in the doorway, a hand on the knob, uncertainty in her eyes.

  He should never have spoken those words last night. Never let her see how much he wanted her. But the look she’d given him had offered hope that mayhap she wanted him too. It had taken all his self-discipline not to go to her. Bury himself inside her and end the unceasing torment of those few unfulfilled moments.

  Taking a deep, steadying breath, he motioned her in. Prayed she didn’t notice the hunger in his gaze. “I don’t sleep well. Thought I may as well be doing something.”

  She took up position at the opposite end of the table. Stood, looking down at the map, her body rigid.

  She wore a gown today. A simple sweep of celadon green that clung to every curve. Emphasized her high round breasts, her mile long legs.

  Which was worse? The leave-nothing-to-the-imagination breeks or the hidden curves and tempting flesh of the morning dress? His whole body throbbed. He straightened, plowing his hands through his hair. He had no answer. Both left him hard as a rock.

  “How’s your leg?” she asked.

  His gaze narrowed. “Better. Why?” he snapped, his nerves frayed by the memories this bloody house brought back.

  Sparks fired her own eyes. “Just trying to make conversation. I apologize for asking.”

  He clenched his jaw. Took firm hold of his seesawing emotions. Morgan didn’t understand. She couldn’t. “No, I’m sorry. Can we begin again? Pretend I didn’t just bite your head off?”

  A faint smile curved her lips. “We can try.”

  Thank God she wasn’t sulky. Probably helped to be raised with a household of brothers.

  She paused. Heaved a deep breath. “What have you found so far?”

  And just like that, they were back on solid footing.

  “Absolutely nothing.” Cam jerked a chin toward the sideboard. “There’s coffee. I had Susan make it for you. And I think the eggs are still warm.”

  She shot him a look of gratitude as she poured herself a cup. Fixed a heaping plate, bringing it back to her seat at the table.

  “Here’s us.” He pointed to a spot near the park. “The only place we can say with certainty Doran isn’t. Everywhere else is suspect. If he’s smart, he’ll go to ground until he thinks it’s safe.”

  Morgan shook her head as she nibbled on a piece of bacon. “No. The goddess blade hungers for blood. Doran will need to appease it with a sacrifice.”

  Cam dropped heavily into a chair. “The damn sword’s alive?”

  She swallowed her forkful of eggs. “Not alive. But Morkoth magic lies behind its power. Their spells required the spilling of blood. Pain. And blind obedience. Neuvarvaan will require that as well.”

  It just got better and better. The moment he thought he’d wrapped his head around the whole magic aspect, Morgan dropped another bomb in his lap. He felt he played a continual game of catch-up where everyone knew the rules but him. “If this weapon is such a menace, why doesn’t Andraste look for the bloody thing herself? Why send us?” His words came fast and angry.

  Morgan’s lips thinned with annoyance. “She would. It’s only Scathach’s influence that keeps the Fey from crossing the divide. Bringing down the walls between the worlds to search for the sword. This is why the Amhas-draoi have been brought in. It’s our job to see to it those walls remain secure.”

  “Not because Doran’s one of you?”

  Rage flickered at the corners of her gaze. “He’s not one of us. Not anymore.” She paused, taking a swallow of coffee. When she spoke again, she’d regained her composure. “I’m doing my best. You gave me two weeks, Cam.”

  He wished he could settle as easily. He felt jumpy as a cat, edgy and tense. This house. This mission. Morgan. It felt as if the walls closed in on him. “I could give you two months and it would still be impossible to find him in this labyrinth. It’s up to Rastus now, God help us.”

  “Do you trust him?”

  He shot her a wry smile. “Rastus? Not an inch. He’d sell us out if he thought he could get away with it.”

  “So what’s keeping him from doing just that?”

  “Self-preservation and greed. Rastus will find Doran for the money. He’ll stay loyal out of fear.”

  “Fear of Doran?”

  “No, Morgan.” Cam met her gaze. “Fear of me.”

  He waited for the flash of alarm, the sudden distancing. Instead, Morgan rested her head on her elbows, watching him. “Do you do that on purpose?”

  “What?”

  “That look-at-scary-me act.”

  He shoved his chair back. Prowled the room, the need to be away from this house overwhelming. His throat closed, his heart ban
ging wildly against his ribs. “It’s not an act. You said yourself we lied to each other in Edinburgh. You’re right. I lied about Charlotte. And about me. About who I am.”

  Morgan followed his restless pacing with her eyes. “You’re Cameron Sinclair. A colonel in the dragoons. A society blue-blood.”

  He stopped behind her chair, making her twist in her seat to face him. “That’s not everything. That’s not even the most important thing.”

  She lifted her chin, her eyes gleaming yellow gold as suns. Her scent filled his nostrils, a subtle mix of woodbine and meadowsweet that immediately made him think of Scotland and Strathconon. “This is me you’re talking to, Cam. It might frighten some sweet, young thing—”

  “It frightens me, Morgan.”

  He fixed his stare on the wall opposite, remembering long-ago meals. The arguments and screaming matches. The angry weeping and the cold brittle silences. If events had not sprung him from the death spiral of his marriage, would he have simply snapped? Ended it his way?

  He told himself it would never have gone that far. But in the darkest watches of the night, the doubts surfaced. And he couldn’t be sure.

  In the end, Charlotte hadn’t been sure either. Which is probably why she did what she did.

  “Don’t you see?” he urged. “It’s in me now. The brutality’s a part of me. I can’t rid myself of what I know. What I’ve done.”

  “Then embrace it,” she answered softly, bringing a hand up as if she wanted to catch him to her. Stopped before her fingers brushed his cheek.

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that for good or ill, this is who you are now. There’s no going back. But you decide what you do with this knowledge. Not them.”

  “And that’s supposed to make everything better?”

  “Not better,” Morgan conceded. “But you did what you had to, to survive.”

  “Perhaps. But as it turns out, there are far worse things than death.”

 

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