Immortal Warriors 02 - Secrets of the Highwayman

by Sara Mackenzie

It was as if a little voice in her head was whispering, I told you so.

  And there was the sense of something inside her, stirring, opening up, and she didn’t like it. She tried to tell herself she didn’t know what that “something” was, but she did. On some other level, she did know what lay inside her, had always known that her so-called imagination was genuine, and the knowledge terrified her.

  There’s going to be a storm and—

  “No!” she cut off the thought before it could properly form and forced her attention back to the diary.

  There were pages and pages of Miss Pengorren rambling on about her neighbors and the wanderings of their sheep, and a series of disputes about a fence that kept falling down. She meticulously noted the quotes she’d received from the various fencing contractors and then, abruptly, in the middle of it all, another strange entry.

  He came again last night. He stood over my bed, and he seemed to glow, like the moon at its brightest. I closed my eyes. I wasn’t myself, a giddy excitement gripped me, as if I was a young girl. My heart was pounding. When he left I felt so weary. Too much excitement. Even so, I cannot help myself. I know it is wrong, but I long for him to come to me again.

  Miss Pengorren was an old lady. What was happening to her? Who was “he” and what did he want? Melanie’s eyes slid over the following page and found another, more terse entry, which told her that Miss Pengorren didn’t understand her predicament any more than Melanie.

  He came again. God help me. He must be a devil. I begged him to go, to leave me in peace, but he laughed. He torments me. What does he want?

  Something creaked in the room. Melanie looked up, but there was nothing to see, only the shadows in the corners, and although she held her breath and listened hard, there was nothing further to hear beyond the silence.

  She flicked once more through the pages.

  I long for him, although I fear him. I know who he is and the awful thing is…I don’t care…I want him back…

  “That’s enough.”

  Her own voice was loud and startling. She didn’t even know who she was speaking to. Herself? Whatever was inside her, stirring? Or Miss Pengorren’s midnight visitor?

  Abruptly she stood up and shoved the diary into its spot on the shelf. She felt as taut as a violin string and didn’t want to continue with this tonight. She couldn’t. She was tired, and her hands were shaking. She turned around quickly, to blow out the candles, and that was when she saw him.

  It.

  Not Nathaniel. This wasn’t tall, handsome Nathaniel. This was something smaller, shrunken, and even though it was in the corner, she knew it wasn’t a shadow. The shape of it looked more or less human, but hunched over on itself, almost as if it lacked the strength to stand upright. She couldn’t see the face; it, too, was bent over between gaunt, bony shoulders, and the skin of its skull gleamed through the sparse clumps of white hair.

  Old. Ancient. But it wasn’t just the age of the creature that made her heart hammer like thunder in her ears. It was the awful sense of malevolence that drifted from it. A dark, dreadful evil. Melanie had never experienced true evil before, she didn’t realize it had a smell, a taste, a heavy and oppressive ambience. She felt dizzy and sick. With one hand covering her mouth, she clutched at the back of the chair with the other, holding herself up on jelly legs.

  The chair creaked, and the thing turned slightly toward her. It was wearing a robe, the cloth dark and coarse, with sleeves that dangled down over its hands, and boots of cloth tied to its feet. A monk, maybe, or…or…But her shocked brain wouldn’t give her answers. There was nothing in her world that looked like this.

  Melanie began to ease away from the desk toward the door, her eyes fixed on the crouched figure. It didn’t move again, but she knew it was aware of her. She knew that in a moment it would begin to approach her and that skull would begin to lift, and she would see…

  Melanie lost it completely.

  With a choking cry, she turned and ran.

  A sound behind her, and she knew it was dragging itself across the floor in her wake. She flung herself at the door, fumbling with the doorknob. Time seemed to slow so that it took ages to open, and when it did, she burst out onto the landing.

  A wedge of candlelight spilled from the room behind her, but the stairs were dark. Melanie didn’t see the fold in the carpet runner. Not until her toe caught it and she tumbled forward, just like Felicity Raven.

  Into space.

  Fourteen

  “Melanie?”

  Hands, smoothing her hair, the brush of gentle fingers against her cheek. Melanie felt the sofa beneath her and realized she was back in the very same room she had just run from, except that this time Nathaniel Raven was kneeling on the floor beside her.

  She tried to order her thoughts. She’d been lying on the stairs when he found her. She’d managed to catch the banister as she fell, swinging herself around and saving herself from a headlong dive. He’d carried her in here despite her protests.

  “You’re shaking,” he said, as if such a thing was incredible to him.

  Did he think she was made of concrete? Melanie wanted to take offense, to start an argument, to launch into a fight. There was a slow, angry burn inside her, and she wanted to let it out. Because it wasn’t fair that this should be happening to her, now, after all these years. After all the hard work she had done to make herself safe. To make herself normal.

  “Melanie?”

  “Of course I’m shaking. I tripped on the carpet and nearly fell!”

  “What were you doing running down the stairs in the dark?”

  “There was something in the room.” She forced the words out, her voice huskier than usual. But she didn’t get up.

  “What sort of something? Where?” His hazel eyes were very serious as they looked into hers, but there was a wariness about him, too. As if he knew secrets he had no intention of sharing with her.

  So that was how it was going to be.

  Melanie caught herself before she said too much. “I-I don’t know. A rat?”

  He didn’t believe her. “Where?” he asked again.

  “Over there, in the corner,” she said, waving her hand. She was starting to pull herself together; the light-headed feeling was wearing off, although she was still very tired. It wasn’t as if seeing things was new to her, after all. It was just a long time since she’d had to deal with it. But she was an adult now, not a hysterical girl. She would cope.

  “What was it doing?” He was peering into the shadows as if he expected it to wave back.

  “Playing the fiddle,” she muttered, “what do you think? It was just there, sort of bent over, wearing a robe. I thought you’d gone for good,” she added, and despite her effort to be indifferent, she sounded accusatory.

  “I haven’t found what I came for yet.” He was watching her closely, trying to read her, too.

  “Remind me, what was that again?”

  “The truth. I want the truth.”

  “Don’t we all.”

  “The truth about Pengorren,” he retorted.

  She took a determined breath and sat up. The room was spinning. Melanie didn’t remember feeling like this when it happened before. She closed her eyes but it only made things worse, so she forced them open. The candles were beginning to burn down to waxy stumps and the lamp was flickering, almost out of oil. It must be nearly dawn—the sky outside the mullioned windows wasn’t quite as dark.

  His hand closed on her arm, and she could tell he was being careful not to exert his strength. “You could have broken your neck,” he said grimly. “Just like my mother.”

  Melanie shuddered. She remembered lying in the darkness, her heart pounding from her almost-fall, and she’d heard it behind her. Breathing. Shuffling closer. A dark, nightmare shape. And then she felt it touch her hand, a brief burning sensation, just as Nathaniel came in the front door.

  The next instant it was gone.

  She glanced down at her hand. There was a plum-c
olored mark on it, as though she’d brushed against something hot. Not enough to blister the skin or cause serious damage. It hardly even hurt.

  When Melanie looked up, Nathaniel was still watching her with unnerving intensity. “Shall I call a physician, Melanie? I imagine you have such men in this strange time.”

  She shook her head, then nodded instead. His mouth quirked up reluctantly. “Yes, we do have physicians, and no, I don’t need one,” she clarified.

  “Do you have the headache?” he asked, his voice dropping an octave.

  She shivered again, but this time it wasn’t from fear. The thought of his hands on her skin, his breath warm in her ear as he murmured her name. At no time in her life had she ever felt this tempted to throw caution to the winds and give in to her primal instincts. She wanted him, even if it was only for one night. One hour.

  Melanie wished, with a sudden aching longing, that she didn’t have to worry about tomorrow.

  “No, I…I’m tired.” From somewhere she found the strength to say it. “I need to go to bed. Alone,” she added, as he opened his mouth.

  He smiled, still watching her. “You don’t trust me, do you, Melanie?”

  “Because I won’t fall swooning into your arms like every other woman you’ve probably ever known? What do you want me to say?” She made her voice low and throaty, like a B-grade actress in a B-grade melodrama. “Oh Nathaniel, kiss me with your manly lips, caress me with your manly hands.”

  He threw back his head and laughed.

  For a moment Melanie was too surprised to do anything. She’d been taunting him, but instead of taking offense or carrying on the argument, he was enjoying himself. He was enjoying her. And oddly enough, that pleased her.

  “Believe me, you’re not like any other woman,” he said at last, still smiling, watching her in that way that made her distinctly nervous.

  “I need to go to bed,” she said again, plaintatively. “I need to sleep. My body feels like lead. I’ve been up most of the night.”

  His smile changed. “So have I.”

  “Why—”

  But he was straightening up in that graceful way, and instead of helping her to her feet as she expected, he slid his arms under her shoulders and knees and lifted her up against his chest.

  Melanie was astonished. Although she wasn’t a big woman, she was fit and strong, and she didn’t considered herself a lightweight, but he didn’t appear to be staggering or gasping for air. He was walking with her in his arms, carrying her easily. In a moment they were out on the landing, and he was moving with his usual catlike surefootedness toward the bedroom.

  She let her head fall back as she gazed up at his face; he still had that little smile on his mouth. “I can walk,” she said.

  “I’m sure you can.”

  “Put me down.”

  “Be quiet.”

  Melanie opened her mouth, but he looked at her—a stern look—and surprisingly she closed it again. She should be furious with his macho arrogance, but she wasn’t. She was excited, as if he’d tapped into one of her deepest fantasies. For someone who usually flared up at the slightest sign that her authority was being undermined, Melanie was enjoying being mastered. Perhaps it came from reading too many gothic romances when she was young.

  Was this how the heroine in Rebecca felt when Max de Winter took her in his arms? Or the willful Dona, in Frenchman’s Creek, when she encountered the French privateer? Or Mary Yellan, when she came up against Jem Merlyn? Although when it came to Jamaica Inn, Melanie had always preferred the crazed Vicar of Altarnun. To her mind there was something very sexy about him, and the way he wanted Mary as his mate for now and eternity, whereas Jem’s vague promises of life on the road only made Melanie depressed. She was sure the Vicar would have set Mary up in style.

  Melanie blinked. What was she doing, daydreaming at a time like this? She needed her wits about her, every single one.

  Nathaniel had reached her bedroom and a comforting dawnlight was creeping in through the windowpanes. She felt as though the supernatural experience had taken all her energy, and she didn’t even protest when Nathaniel Raven laid her gently down onto the bed. He drew the covers over her, adjusting them to his satisfaction. It was very nice, and as Melanie stared dreamily up at him, she found her eyes drifting shut.

  “Good night, Melanie,” he murmured, and bent close.

  His lips touched her temple, lingering, caressing. She could smell him, the soap and the clean clothes and whatever it was he put in his hair. There was a male scent about him that appealed to her. She told herself it was probably better to pretend she was already asleep, rather than have to acknowledge that zing of sexual attraction when her resistance was so low. She told herself that even if that thing came back again, she could handle it. She’d always handled these episodes before.

  Once, when she was young and her imagination was strong—before she’d learned to block it out—she’d seen an old woman at the end of her bed. Frightening, but insubstantial. She’d also seen a boy in her classroom in old-fashioned clothing, and he’d watched her all through her English lesson. Sometimes her dog—run over in the street years before—would follow her about.

  But Melanie knew she’d never felt anything like this; she’d never seen something so solid and real and intent on doing her harm.

  “Please, stay,” she heard herself speak the words, although she didn’t remember forming them. “Just until I’m asleep.”

  His steps were receding, but now they stopped. She thought she heard him sigh, and then he was coming back. The other side of the bed shifted and when she glanced over he was lying on top of the covers by her side, lying on his back with his head cradled in his arms, staring at the ceiling.

  He turned to look at her, and despite his face being shadowy she could tell his expression was uncharacteristically serious.

  “Thank you for staying.”

  He smiled, but there were weary smudges under his eyes and lines near his mouth. His neckcloth was more rumpled than ever, and the stubble on his jaw was darker.

  “I need to get you some proper clothes,” Melanie said dreamily. “And a razor.”

  “There might be some clothes in the attic,” Nathaniel replied, still watching her.

  “Not an Armani suit, I’ll bet,” she murmured, and began to drift away into exhausted sleep. At least she was safe for now, until the creature came back. And it would. She had felt it reaching out to her, probing in her mind, searching for that place inside that she’d kept locked down for so long.

  Just when she needed to be at her most calm and clearheaded, her imagination was breaking free, and her mind was running amok. And it wasn’t just her mind, either.

  She peeped through her lashes. Nathaniel was still there, but his eyes were closed, and his chest was rising and falling steadily. Melanie smiled. She’d known it was only be a matter of time before she and Nathaniel found themselves here.

  In bed.

  Nathaniel watched the light against his closed eyelids turn to gold. He should go back to the room, to see whether it really was empty, but Melanie needed him. Besides, he’d already felt that lingering sense of a presence. Of evil. He’d felt it like a vibration deep in his bones, just as he was able to feel the power exuded by the queen of the between-worlds.

  He knew that Melanie wasn’t imagining whatever it was she’d seen in there, whatever had sent her running for her life. She obviously believed the creature meant her harm. But there was something she wasn’t telling him. There were things he wasn’t telling her. They had been brought together to collaborate, and yet there were barriers between them, holding them apart.

  Work together, the queen’s voice echoed in his head.

  If only it were that simple.

  Nathaniel felt time pressing on him, or rather his lack of it. How could he save himself and his family by discovering the truth about his death, about Pengorren, and at the same time keep Melanie safe, and make her his?

  Keeping he
r safe and making her his depended upon his gaining her trust. She was physically attracted to him, but with Melanie that didn’t seem to be enough. She needed more than that. The good things in life had always come to him easily, too easily, up until his father died and everything began to go wrong.

  Until his father died…

  A chill passed through him. His father fell from his horse in the park, and his neck snapped when he hit the ground. He was out alone, and it was only when the horse returned riderless that they realized what had happened. Everyone thought it was just an accident, and at the time Nathaniel never contemplated it might be otherwise, but now he knew that nothing was as it seemed.

  Maybe Ravenswood held some clue? This morning he would search it from top to bottom, and if anything remained of Pengorren’s guilt, Nathaniel would find it.

  Fifteen

  Melanie was dreaming. She knew it was a dream, and yet she didn’t seem able to stop it or escape it. And the worst thing was it didn’t feel like a dream. Like the creature in the corner, it felt real.

  Once more Ravenswood was aglow, and colored lanterns hung throughout the garden. Melanie was walking among them, but now she wore an ankle-length dress, her fair hair was feathered about her face, and jewelry glittered at her throat. These were sapphires, to match her eyes.

  Up the steps to the front door of the house, and the staircase was in front of her, candelabra burning at intervals, the flames making the faces of the portraits smile. The chatter of the guests and the dancing were beckoning her upward. Melanie allowed herself to be drawn, trailing her hand along the banister rail.

  She felt light, as if her feet weren’t quite touching the ground, and yet she wasn’t dizzy; she was strong in her mind and spirit. Her skin tingled as if she’d had one of those ultraexpensive body scrubs, and her vision was clear and sharp, perfect twenty-twenty. It was like every part of her was running on full power, as if she was completely at one with herself, utterly focused.

  She peeked into the library. It was just the same as it had been, cheery with decorations of green ivy and red holly berries, the people dancing, the candles flaring in the mirrors. Nathaniel was there, dancing with his sister. He looked gorgeous, so handsome and happy, no wonder the women were ogling him.