by Liz Carlyle
He turned to look at her incredulously.
She threw up a hand as if to forestall him. “Do not even think of changing the subject by accusing me of anything to do with Rance’s arse,” she said. “I have not seen it. I do not wish to see it. Though I do have it on quite good authority that it is magnificent.”
“Have you indeed?” he growled.
“Indeed,” she said. “A young lieutenant’s wife once explained it to me in great detail over a bit too much champagne. She had somehow got—one hates to speculate how—a rather good peek at it.”
Ruthveyn could only stare. All rational thought had flown from his mind—a circumstance further compounded by the fact that his sheets had slipped down to reveal one of Grace’s rosy nipples, which was hardening in the chill of the room.
Grace let her hand fall back against the pillow. “But I have actually seen that mark somewhere,” she said more to herself than to him. “I just cannot put a time or place to it. Do you mean to tell me what it really is? And why you have it?”
Ruthveyn lay quietly beside her for a moment, wondering what he ought to say. But the truth was, none of it was precisely a secret. If one dug through the ancient texts long enough—as several of the Society’s researchers were in the process of doing—one would eventually find parts of it. And put together, the whole of it was so incredible, no one would believe it anyway.
He sighed into the stillness of the room. “It is called the mark of the Guardian,” he finally said. “It’s just an old symbol that’s been around in the north for centuries—like a Celtic cross. In some of the noble houses of Scotland—the older ones—it’s passed down sometimes in families. A strange tradition. That’s all.”
“Ah,” she said quietly. “So Luc has one, too?”
He hesitated. “No,” he finally said.
“I see.” She crooked her head to look up at him. “So why do they call it the mark of the Guardian?”
He managed to laugh. “It’s all to do with an old legend,” he answered. “And it has a little to do with the St. James Society, and how we came together.”
Grace smiled. “Is this going to sound a bit like the Hellfire Club?” she mused. “Rich, dissolute gentlemen playing with secret rites and ceremonies? Perhaps even debauching virgins?—oh, wait—that was tonight.”
Incredulous, Ruthveyn turned to see Grace barely restraining her laughter. For a man so somber, it was a bit much. Abruptly, he rolled half atop her just as she burst into peals of laughter.
“Witch!” he said, just before he kissed her. “Be quiet!”
But the playfulness swiftly ratcheted up to something far more serious. Ruthveyn dragged himself fully over her, flattening her round, high breasts against the width of his chest and thrusting his tongue deep. Slowly and sinuously, he plumbed the sweet recesses of her mouth, until she was sighing beneath him. Until his cock began to twitch demandingly, and his brain began to toy with the notion of having her again.
But that would not be wise. Slowly, he drew away, gazing down at Grace’s soft, exquisite face and wondering what the future held for them. The irony of it struck him hard. Had he not just decided that knowing their future was his greatest fear?
He had assumed instead they would not have one. But already they were like playful lovers together. Already they behaved together as if…well, as if there was a together. It came to them naturally. Spontaneously. Like the passion that had sprung to life so quickly between them.
Beneath him she sighed affectedly and began to twine one strand of hair around her finger. “I suppose you mean never to tell me?”
His mind blanked. “About what?”
“About the Guardians,” she said on another sigh.
“It’s just an old legend,” he said again. “No one believes it anymore.”
Grace watched him as he shoved up his pillow and shifted higher in bed. She scooted up, too, and laid her head on his shoulder. “Just tell me,” she said. “I shall keep it a secret.”
“As you wish,” he answered, “though I can’t think why you’d want to hear it.” He hesitated, but when she said nothing, he dropped his voice and carried on. “So, the story has to do with old rumors about a people who were descended from the ancient Celtic priests—”
“You mean the Druids?”
“Actually, there were three kinds of Celtic priests,” he answered softly. “The Druids, yes. They were the philosophers. But also the Bards, who were the poets, and the Vateis—as they are sometimes called—who were the prophets. Or so they say.”
“And I’m guessing the people in your legend were not the philosophers or poets, but the prophets?” Grace murmured. “They had the gift of second sight?”
“Something like that,” Adrian answered. “The Celtic priests came to England after Gaul was overrun by the Romans, then fled farther north as the legions invaded here. Eventually, the race was Christianized and absorbed, but it was believed the Gift still carried in the blood of some for centuries, especially in the north.”
“Well, much of what you say is more truth than legend,” Grace commented.
“Yes, some,” Adrian hedged. “In any case, the legend says that the Gift began to die out, and by the Middle Ages, the Vateis—the prophets—were all but unknown. Those who were born were often persecuted. In Spain, they were caught up in the Inquisition. In other places, they were burnt, like Joan of Arc. Later, in America, some were drowned as witches. Women with the Gift were always especially vulnerable.”
“Ever the same story, n’est-ce pas?” Grace mused. “Women with great abilities are soon made small—one way or another. But go on, do.”
Adrian slipped down a little lower in the bed and hitched her closer. “So the legend goes on to say that despite the persecution and the rarity of the Gift, eventually a Scottish noblewoman conceived a special child through some rare confluence of blood,” he went on. “A sibylla, the child was called, a great prophetess descended from those Celtic priests driven northward. She was not, however, the lady’s husband’s child, but that of her lover, an emissary of the French king.”
“Oh, dear,” said Grace. “We know where this is going.”
“Indeed,” Adrian murmured. “When her adultery was discovered, her husband killed the Frenchman. Eventually, however, the child was born hale, and in time became known simply as the Gift, or Sibylla, for she possessed powers of divination such as no one had seen before or since. But her mother, sadly, faded slowly away and eventually died of a broken heart.”
“Oh, dear,” Grace repeated. “The child was orphaned?”
Adrian nodded. “The mother’s brother, a powerful Jesuit priest, took the child, and at the behest of the Church, undertook to escort the Gift to France, to be presented to the Archbishop of Paris. He took with him a cadre of his kinsmen—knights, monks, and noblemen—and he called them simply the Guardians, and supposedly he marked them one and all, so that they might remember their solemn duty and be known to one another ever after.
“But in France, all did not go well. The child was snatched away by a madman. A friar, who believed her the devil incarnate. Or perhaps he meant to use her for nefarious purposes. In any case, the Guardians followed him across the Seine onto the Île Saint-Louis. Trapped, he first made as if to return the child, then attempted to set himself afire, still clutching the child.”
“Oh!” Grace jumped. “Was she killed?”
“No.” Adrian shook his head, his black hair scrubbing the pillow. “Her uncle managed to snatch her from the flames, and in great haste the Guardians rode for the bridge—the Pont Marie—the only way back to Paris. But just as the riders started across it, a bolt of lightning shattered the sky. Amidst the thunder, the bridge collapsed into turbulent water, sending most of the Guardians to their deaths. The collapse was said by some to be a sign of God’s wrath.”
“A bridge collapse?” said Grace sharply. “You are quite sure?”
“Yes, but amidst it all, the uncle escaped with the
child and hastened back to Scotland. Now wary of the world, he supposedly hid the girl away in the Highlands, where she lived a somewhat normal life. Eventually, she took a husband, and bore twelve children, all of whom carried the Gift strong in their blood. Guardians were appointed to the small children, and to the women.”
“And to the men?”
“Once grown, a man was expected to guard himself—his honor, his powers—and often, if born at a particular time, to guard anyone who shared them.”
“A double burden, then?”
His gaze focused somewhere in the depths of the room, he smiled faintly. “Perhaps.”
“And so you…you are given these marks at birth?”
“No, as young men,” he said. “But the history of the thing—it is lost now. Save for the old legend I just told you, no one really remembers much.”
“Are you and Rance related?”
“Most likely.” He lifted one shoulder. “He had the mark. I had the mark.”
“How did you see his?”
Adrian turned to her with a twisted smile. “Like Anisha, my dear, you just won’t quit,” he remarked. “It was in a brothel of sorts—an opium-induced orgy, writhing with men and women and a few things in between. Yes, I have seen Lazonby in the altogether. May we not discuss it again?”
Grace felt her face flame, but forged on, burning with curiosity now. “And so the mark is burnt or tattooed onto your flesh,” she said, “carved into your pediments, and engraved onto your tea services and your cravat pins. Does no one notice?”
Again, he lifted one shoulder. “The same symbol is etched upon lintels and coats of arms and tapestries all over France and Scotland, and a few places farther afield,” he said. “What does that mean? We do not know. We know only that we were marked as young men and told some version of the story I just told you. We were told to hail any man so marked as a brother and to guard his back as we would our own.”
“And…do you all possess the Gift?”
Again, the faint smile twisted. “My dear, did I not just tell you? The Gift is but a legend.”
She gave a slow, sly grin and stretched like Satin after her nap. “I see we have reached an impasse,” she replied. “Very well, Adrian, keep your secrets if you do not trust me.”
He sat up at once, carrying her with him. “Grace, it’s not that.”
“All right. It’s not that. But if it was, I would respect it.” She set one hand to the muscled wall of his chest and kissed him on the mouth. “Let us talk of something else.”
“Such as?”
She kissed him again, slowly and more intently. “Let us talk,” she murmured, lifting her lips but a fraction, “of us.”
“Of…us?”
“I want to know, Adrian, if you will be my lover,” she whispered against one corner of his mouth. “Until things here are settled for me—with Napier, I mean—and I can go back to Paris. Will you do that? If we are very careful—very discreet—will you do that?”
“Grace, that would be most unwise,” he said. “There are…risks.”
“Which you can mitigate,” she said, kissing him again. “As you did tonight.”
He looked at her warily. “Grace, is this about feeling that you owe me something?”
“I owe you a great deal,” she acknowledged. “But this is about your being a skilled and wonderful lover. You…enchant me somehow with your touch. And, frankly, I rather doubt, once I’m gone from England, I will ever meet anyone like you again. I would like to go with no regrets.”
Ruthveyn listened carefully to the words she spoke, words as honest as a newly stropped blade, and laced with no subtle entreaties or twists of the heartstrings. Grace, he was beginning to understand, was that rarest of women, one whose honestly left him breathless.
He caught her to him then and kissed her fiercely. “No regrets, then,” he whispered. “Not a one.”
Then he turned her on her back, his heart suddenly breaking, and made love to her once again, this time with his mouth and with his hands, and with the whole of his heart. And in the doing of it, he did not once think about that portal to hell, or about coulds or mights or even shoulds.
And when he was finished—when Grace had cried out softly beneath him and drifted back to sleep, still shuddering—he got up from the bed and went into his study to do what he should have done eons ago. He carried his wooden box into his bathroom, dumped the contents down his fancy porcelain privy, reached up, and yanked the chain.
Perhaps he had not yet answered Grace’s question. But he had assuredly answered one of his own.
CHAPTER 11
The Guessing Game
And this is it?” Lord Lazonby refolded the piece of foolscap and tapped its edge impatiently on the club’s breakfast table. “Besides the note under her door, this is the sole evidence Napier has against Grace?”
“It’s not the original, of course.” Ruthveyn reached for the teapot and found it empty. “But I had Claytor copy it down word for word.”
Lazonby gave a low whistle. “I’ll bet that galled old Roughshod Roy no end, having your man come round demanding to see Crown evidence.” He grinned ear to ear. “I wish to the devil I could have seen him.”
“You will stay out of his way,” said Ruthveyn grimly. “It will go far worse for Grace if you do not.”
“Precisely what I told her in your conservatory some days ago,” Lazonby agreed, his expression turning pensive. “What we need, perhaps, is someone more intuitive. Someone like Bessett, who might elicit an emotion from this document.”
“That might work,” Ruthveyn pointed out, “if that were the killer’s original hand.”
“Aye, and if Bessett hadn’t just left for the harvest in Yorkshire,” Lazonby muttered. “Even then, it’s a long shot. Which reminds me—where have you been all week, old chap? You’re looking remarkably well rested. I believe London is beginning to agree with you.”
“Let us stick to the topic at hand,” Ruthveyn suggested, snapping his fingers at one of the club’s footmen. Without asking, the servant hastened away for more tea.
“And I haven’t seen you up at seven in the morning since…well, never in my life,” Lazonby went on. “Unless, that is to say, you had not yet gone to bed.”
But Ruthveyn had opened the letter and was rereading it again. “May we worry about Grace instead of my lack of a social life?” he murmured. “It has been recently brought home to me that I have two children under my roof now—and you have taken my suite of rooms upstairs.”
“Actually, the padre took yours,” Lazonby clarified. “By the way, have you seen the prize that chap brought Sutherland? The most amazing illuminated manuscript! He found it in some abbey ruins on the Isle of Man, where the Druid priestesses were last believed to reside. It takes some of Strabo’s writings in Geographica, and expounds—”
Ruthveyn held up one hand. “Since when do you give a damn about ancient texts?” he said. “If he’d brought us the Holy Grail, it wouldn’t excuse your giving up my suite.”
Lazonby grinned. “Actually, I should have thought you’d be thanking me for that by now.”
Ruthveyn exhaled slowly. He did not know whether to thank Lazonby or curse him, for the hell he’d been living in after having made love to Grace was worse than the hell he’d been living in when he’d merely lusted after her. At least he was sleeping again.
But he had not touched her since, nor exchanged anything beyond the most mundane of dinner conversation. Instead, he had drifted through his own home like a wraith, barely inhabiting it, never settling long, watching her surreptitiously every chance he got. He felt eaten up inside with a restlessness and a yearning that went beyond the sexual and into something far more deep and disconcerting.
Lazonby apparently realized he’d pushed too far. “As to Grace’s predicament,” he went on, “what can I do to help?”
Ruthveyn exchanged a poignant glance with his friend. They had few secrets, he and Lazonby, and there were some thin
gs they did not even need to speak aloud.
“Find Pinkie Ringgold for me,” he said grimly. “Belkadi asked him three days ago to run down all the local forgers capable of faking Holding’s hand, but we haven’t heard back, and he’s vanished from Quartermaine’s.”
“Oh, I’ll run him to ground.” Lazonby smiled predatorily. “I’m always at my best with thugs and criminals. What did the original hand look like, anyway?”
“Ordinary schoolboy copperplate.” Ruthveyn’s shoulders fell. “The truth is, Rance, anyone could have written the bloody thing—but there again, Josiah Crane springs most readily to mind. He saw Holding’s penmanship on a daily basis and had an office full of samples.”
“But why would he kill Holding? He didn’t inherit.”
“Not unless,” said Ruthveyn quietly, “he persuades Fenella Crane to marry him. Then he will own the entire company.”
Again, Lazonby whistled. “Good Lord! And if we accept that letter as a forgery, then we accept that there was great premeditation.”
“What do you mean, if?” asked Ruthveyn darkly.
“Jesus, Adrian, I know it’s forged! You needn’t worry about my loyalty—to you or to Grace.” Lazonby tapped his finger pensively on the tabletop. “Any chance Napier will try to arrest her?”
“He doesn’t dare. He knows she is under my protection.” Ruthveyn pinched the top of his nose between his fingers, warding off a headache. “But just in case, I sent St. Giles round to call upon a couple of magistrates we know, to make sure no warrant is issued. And I can go far higher if I must. Also, Belkadi managed to compromise one of Holding’s footmen in an attempt to ferret out any secrets Holding’s staff might be keeping, so—”
“And you thought Belkadi was more trouble than he was worth,” Lazonby cut in.
“He continues to prove resourceful,” Ruthveyn admitted, just as a fresh pot of tea was set down. “And now, old chap, I need you to follow Pinkie’s good example and take yourself off.”