Immortal Warriors 02 - Secrets of the Highwayman

by Sara Mackenzie

  Earlier, when she’d brushed her hair and looked in the mirror, she’d realized the strange aura had left her, too. The two obviously went together, because it was definitely gone; she was plain Melanie Jones once more. She admitted she was secretly disappointed about that—her goddess persona had some advantages—but it was a relief not to be ravaged by uncontrollable sexual appetites. Yes, she’d enjoyed sating them with Nathaniel, but the last time things had begun to get frighteningly, dangerously out of control.

  “Eddie said he’d be over in a while,” Nathaniel said quietly from his chair.

  “You’ve seen him, then?” She pulled another piece off her toast, but couldn’t eat it. She placed it with the other bits she couldn’t eat, on the edge of the plate.

  “He brought in some food. He said he’d arrange for feed for Neptune, too, from a local stable. Good man, that.”

  Melanie smirked. “Worthy of your patronage?”

  “Very worthy.” He stretched lazily, and Melanie found her gaze fastened on him. Maybe her sexual appetites weren’t quite as depleted as she’d thought.

  Making love with Nathaniel would rate among the best times of her life. When she was as old as Miss Pengorren, she’d be dreaming of her ghostly lover.

  “Miss Pengorren was afraid, wasn’t she? That’s why she left Ravenswood.”

  “Whatever she saw over the last few months of her life, it made her want to replace Pengorren’s portrait with mine, and it made her believe that I had been unfairly treated.”

  “So we assume she was seeing Pengorren and that he was threatening her…how? If he was like you were when I first saw you, a ghost, then she might be frightened, but she’d know he couldn’t harm her. Why would she abandon her home? I wish she’d left a note.”

  “It would have been helpful, yes,” Nathaniel said dryly.

  Melanie pulled back the covers and examined the burn on her leg. The injury was healing remarkably fast. There was barely any sign of it left, apart from the fact that her skin was a little reddened and there was a blister in the center.

  Nathaniel had wanted to take her to a “physician,” but Melanie had refused. What would she say when they asked her how it had happened? Besides, it was nothing some painkillers couldn’t ease. She’d had worse sunburn.

  “So Miss Pengorren abandoned Ravenswood,” she said thoughtfully. “Or did she hope Pengorren would follow her to London? Maybe she was performing her own exorcism.”

  “More marmite?” Nathaniel asked, but he was looking at her legs.

  Melanie shook her head slowly. “I didn’t think you liked marmite?”

  “It grows on one.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Are you going to get dressed?”

  Melanie glanced up at him from under her lashes. The way he smiled back at her gave her that warm all-over tingle. “Soon,” she said, and did her own stretch, slow and thorough. “I don’t feel like getting dressed just yet.”

  “You’re doing that on purpose,” he said in a mock growl.

  Melanie laughed, and then grew serious. “It’s gone, isn’t it? Whatever I had yesterday has gone away?”

  Nathaniel came and sat beside her on the bed and took her hand, entwining her fingers with his. She looked down at their hands, and they looked so right together it was uncanny.

  “It has faded, Melanie,” he said, “but it’s still there. I can feel it when I touch you and when I look into your eyes. It’s even there when I’m in the same room as you.”

  “Perhaps you just fancy me rotten,” she joked, but her smile went awry. “That thing…that thing last night, it told me I was blood of its blood, flesh of its flesh. How can I be? How can I have anything to do with something like that?”

  “I don’t know, my darling,” he said, “but we will find out.”

  He bent toward her, and a loose strand of his hair fell forward and tickled her cheek. Then he began to kiss her, slowly, until she was drugged with need. He pulled off her pajamas and when she was naked, he pressed her back onto the bed and worked his way from her throat to her breasts until she was squirming. Only then did he move on, tongue warm and wet as he laved it against her stomach, and down. She clutched at his hair, holding him, as he settled himself between her thighs.

  Sometime later, after the lights behind her eyes had burst and flashed like fireworks at night, he began to work his way back up again. By the time he’d reached her mouth, Melanie was on fire and more than ready for him to lay his long and graceful body upon hers.

  “I’ll bet you do this to all the girls,” she said, but as she looked into his eyes she knew this was different, this was special.

  “I’ve never had anyone like you,” he murmured, kissing her.

  “What will happen—”

  He placed a finger against her lips. “I’ve been sleeping in the between-worlds for almost two hundred years,” he said. “I may be there for another two hundred. I don’t want to think about that. I want to think about you, how you feel and look and taste, the sound of your voice when we join together. I want to remember you, Melanie, when I’m gone.”

  “Nathaniel…”

  But what could she say? Don’t go? Don’t fail? Take me with you? Her words wouldn’t help either of them.

  “You’re right,” she whispered, as he began to kiss her again. “We have to enjoy this moment.”

  They stayed in bed for another hour, and then they heard Eddie calling from downstairs. Nathaniel left Melanie to get dressed and went to head him off.

  Eddie followed Nathaniel into the library, shooting quick, uneasy glances around him. “Melanie not here?”

  “She’ll be here soon.”

  Nathaniel smiled to himself. Eddie was expecting Melanie to pounce on him, and he appeared relieved to hear he’d be safe for a little while longer. “I brought my book,” he said, trying to be nonchalant, but Nathaniel could see how nervous he was about letting him read it.

  The “book” was actually a thick bundle of papers bound together with something narrow and stretchy. Eddie held the bundle out like a father offering his baby, and Nathaniel took it from him, carefully, and read the title.

  “Ravenswood Reclaimed.”

  “Reclaimed from The Raven’s Curse,” Eddie explained in a self-important tone. “I wanted to redress the wrong done to the Raven, you see.”

  “I see,” Nathaniel said quietly, looking at the other man with new eyes, “and I appreciate it. Please, Edward, won’t you be seated?” He gestured to the chair opposite his own. The Raven’s Curse was lying on the seat where Melanie had left it. Curiously, as if it might bite him, Eddie picked it up. He examined the cover with a frown, as if he’d never seen it before.

  “Oh!” he said. “That’s where I’ve heard the name.”

  Nathaniel had his head bent over the pages, already reading. “Name?”

  “Trewartha. Melanie asked me if I knew a Mr. Trewartha who ran an antique business. I thought I knew the name, only I’d never heard it in connection with antiques. Now I know why. H. Trewartha is the author of this book.” He held it up. “The Raven’s Curse.”

  “Trewartha,” Nathaniel repeated, stunned. “Antiques?”

  Eddie nodded. “That’s right. Melanie said she’d asked him to come and do a catalogue of Ravenswood’s contents, for the auction. I hope she realizes she’ll be listening to his theories about the Raven while he’s going through the cupboards.”

  Melanie had asked Mr. Trewartha to come to Ravenswood to list the contents of the house? The same man who wrote that bloody book, claiming Nathaniel was insane?

  The thought of anyone touching his things, going through the trunks of family belongings, reducing everything to lists, infuriated him, but he’d steeled himself to the reality of it. But for the author of that book to be doing it…It was too much! Nathaniel felt sick with anger and resentment. This was his house.

  Eddie was watching him warily. “Are you all right, mate? You don’t look too good.”

 
“I don’t like that book,” Nathaniel said with quiet menace.

  “No, but he wrote it with quite a bit of authority. I don’t know the details, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Trewartha was related to Pengorren, too.”

  “Everyone else seems to be.” Nathaniel tried to swallow his anger.

  Eddie laughed. “Couldn’t seem to help himself. And the women didn’t put up much of a fight.”

  “Act in haste, repent at leisure,” Nathaniel said piously, sounding like his father.

  “Do you mind me asking? You said your ancestor was born on the wrong side of the blanket…I am descended from Pengorren and Dorrie. Can you tell me something about yourself? I’m curious. I didn’t realize there were any Ravens left.”

  Nathaniel removed the next page from the bundle on his lap. “A liaison between my fa…Nathaniel senior’s brother, Oscar, and a woman of the town,” he said, silently apologizing to his uncle Oscar, a respectable man who died wifeless and childless.

  Eddie considered that for a moment. “I didn’t realize. And I can understand why you’re so annoyed about Trewartha’s book. Family pride and all that. I’m a bit surprised you wanted him here at all.”

  “I didn’t know he was coming,” Nathaniel said dryly.

  Eddie was finally silenced, and Nathaniel returned to his reading. Only to stop abruptly after a couple of sentences. He reread it, and then looked up at Eddie, his hazel eyes narrowed.

  “What the hell is this?” he demanded. “There is no record of Pengorren’s birth, or any details of where he originally came from. His army records are incorrect, possibly downright lies, and lead nowhere. Historically, Pengorren never existed.”

  “It’s true.” Eddie leaned forward with enthusiasm. “It’s as if he stepped off a blank page. If you read on a bit, you’ll see I speculate about whether or not his name really was Pengorren. When I checked the army records at Kew, I found a note written by a woman—a gentlewoman fallen on hard times—who said a stranger had paid her for the use of her deceased brother’s name and address, and she’d heard afterward that he’d risen to be a major in the army. The brother’s name was Hew Pengorren.”

  Nathaniel flicked over some more pages, reading here and there as he went. “Mass murderer?” He cocked an eyebrow. “Serial killer? Good God!”

  “I’m writing a real-life historical murder mystery. I offer my own theory of what happened, and it’s up to the readers to agree or not. This sort of stuff is very popular at the moment. What do you think?”

  “I think you’re probably right,” he said quietly.

  Eddie grinned. “I’ve done plenty of research, but I have to make assumptions when the records aren’t there. Every criminologist makes assumptions, every murder investigator has to take a jump of faith.”

  “And you expect your book to be taken just as seriously as The Raven’s Curse?”

  “Why not? I think it’s just as credible. At least I don’t believe Nathaniel was insane, just gullible.”

  At that moment Melanie appeared in the doorway.

  Nathaniel had expected to be angry with her, but all such thoughts flew out of his head because she’d dressed in clothing that made his eyes widen and his heart begin to race. She might as well have been wearing nothing—a garment that hung on her hips and barely reached to midthigh, and a tight shirt with no sleeves that clung to her breasts and showed her midriff. But it wasn’t only her clothing that made his breath quicken. Her glow was coming back.

  Eddie stared down at his shoes.

  “Who was gullible?” she asked, looking from one to the other.

  “Nathaniel Raven,” Nathaniel said, when Eddie didn’t answer. “Eddie forgot to tell us that he is writing the history of Ravenswood as a murder mystery in which Major Pengorren is the villain. You tell her your theory, Edward.”

  “Yes, please, I’m very interested.” Melanie seemed to glide across the room toward them. Her eyes glittered like pale blue fire.

  “I’m going for a different angle,” Eddie told her, his enthusiasm tempered by the fact he was staring at the floor. “From what I’ve discovered, Pengorren was a bit of a mystery man from the start, but he and Raven quickly became friends, despite the difference in rank. I asked myself a couple of questions: What if Raven boasted about his home and his family? What if he made them sound so attractive that he caught Major Pengorren’s interest? What if Pengorren was looking for somewhere to hide out, to make a new life for himself? Well, naturally, he’d look covetously at Ravenswood, wouldn’t he?”

  “But Eddie,” Melanie began, awkwardly, glancing at Nathaniel.

  “No, no, hear me out,” Eddie insisted. “Pengorren saved Nathaniel’s life, so naturally he is invited to Ravenswood to be thanked in person. He’s a hero, why wouldn’t he be? But as soon as he arrives things start to happen. First, Mr. Raven senior is killed in a riding accident, then Pengorren takes over the arrangements, making himself indispensable to the widow and family. They all seem to be completely under his spell. Even Nathaniel, the son, who doesn’t seem to realize he’s been targeted. Next, Pengorren marries the widow, and remember this is only a few weeks after her husband has been buried. Unheard of, a terrible scandal, but not one person stays away from the wedding. No one complains. And then his wife dies in mysterious circumstances, and the next thing he’s marrying the daughter, Sophie, who’s already pregnant with his child.

  “By then young Nathaniel is dead. He’d taken to holding up coaches and running wild. Pengorren seemed inclined to ignore him for a while, but then Nathaniel started to irritate him, and Pengorren lost his temper. And he had a temper.”

  “I can believe Pengorren was a psychopath,” Melanie said decidedly.

  “Yes, exactly! Psychopaths haven’t just appeared in modern times; they have always been with us. Pengorren has all the traits.”

  Eddie was wound up, and in his enthusiasm for his pet subject he forgot to avoid Melanie. His eyes clashed with hers, and for a moment he didn’t seem to know where he was. He shook his head like a bear waking from hibernation and cleared his throat, fixing his gaze on Nathaniel.

  “Remember, Pengorren was a monster. He must have decided that Nathaniel wasn’t worth the effort anymore. Anyway, by then he had what he wanted. He’d taken everything that belonged to Nathaniel, and now it only remained for him to get rid of the heir. So he had him shot.”

  You don’t know the half of it, Melanie thought, feeling for Nathaniel.

  “The Raven’s Curse asserts Nathaniel was shot by Sir Arthur Tregilly’s coachman,” Nathaniel said without much passion. “Don’t you agree with Trewartha?”

  “Well, I know that’s what Trewartha says,” Eddie agreed, looking smug, “but I’ve managed to find some of the contemporaneous statements made by the witnesses at the scene. They were in the archives at Truro, mixed in with some other file, almost as if someone didn’t want them to be found,” he added darkly. “Didn’t stop me, though. I’ve read the statement from Tregilly’s coachman, and he denies he ever shot the Raven. He says he fired his gun when they were first held up, but only into the air. He knew it was Nathaniel, everyone did, and they didn’t want to shoot him dead and face Pengorren afterward. He goes on to say that when the Raven fell, he was facing the coach, and the shot came out of the woods at his back. He died at the scene, and he couldn’t speak at all, so there was no way he could have delivered any last-minute curses. It’s all rot.”

  Nathaniel sat very still. “So you believe it was Pengorren alone who killed Nathaniel?”

  “Definitely.

  Melanie moved closer to his chair and rested a hand on the back of it, trying to offer what comfort she could by her presence without doing what she really wanted to do—curl up on his knee and give him a hug.

  “It works, doesn’t it? You can see what I’m getting at.” Eddie was almost bouncing up and down he was so excited to be finally discussing his theory. “I think someone set him up. I think that when the robbery took place someone else kn
ew what was about to happen and had already taken up position in the woods. I’ve read a couple of Sir Arthur Tregilly’s diaries, and he claimed he knew the truth. Unfortunately, he pegged out before he could do more than hint at it.”

  He was serious, and he’d done his research. Melanie had to admire him for it. “So you believe it was a planned execution?” Her fingers crept over the back of the chair and touched Nathaniel’s hair.

  “Yes. Pengorren had a pretty good life afterward, didn’t he? Did well for himself for a nobody from nowhere.”

  Abruptly Nathaniel got to his feet and tossed the manuscript onto his chair. His eyes met Melanie’s and, despite the tension of the moment and the pallor of Nathaniel’s face, she felt the attraction between them like yesterday’s storm. Building. Images of naked flesh flashed through her mind, and she bit her lip. His gaze zeroed in on her mouth, and his eyes went dark.

  He must have realized the inappropriateness of it, too, because he shook his head. But he managed a reassuring half smile before he turned to Eddie. His voice was measured and calm, although Melanie could hear the depth of emotion behind it. Nathaniel Raven was speaking from the heart.

  “I think the Raven was confused. He’d been to war, he’d been wounded, then his father had died in an accident and his mother was planning to marry someone she hardly knew. He wasn’t thinking clearly; he’d never had to be the man of the house before. Of course he acted impulsively. Of course he should have waited Pengorren out, played him at his own game. But remember, Nathaniel was an impulsive character, not used to waiting for the right moment or thinking too deeply. He went with his instincts.”

  Eddie pursed his lips. “Yeah, I can see what you mean. The Raven is a hero around here, or an antihero, anyway. I could write him as a tragic hero, a straight character who didn’t work out the sort of creep Pengorren was until it was too late. Yes, I like it.”