He, or what remained of his mind, was seriously considering the floor when Sophia pulled back.
For a second Cathal thought that he’d offended her, or that she’d remembered her virtue, but no. She only stepped back a little, enough to put her hands on his shoulders and, by coincidence, to give him a look at her face, all reddened lips and cheeks, dark eyes dazed with sensation. Her wimple was crooked, half off, and dark curls straggled out and wound down around her face and her neck.
“Yes?” Cathal murmured.
“I should… I want to touch you,” she said, and her hands were sliding down over his chest, twin flames through his shirt. Her tongue crept out of her mouth and circled her lips. “You’re very hard,” she said, and then laughed and blushed, not too innocent for the innuendo. “Not… I didn’t mean like that.”
“Like that,” he said and shifted forward to brush himself against her again, teasing them both. “Too. But not as constant as the other, no.”
“It cannot be comfortable,” she said and then glanced down at herself, her breasts heaving. “But then, desire never is.” Guessing well, despite his clothing, she traced her fingers over his nipples, and smiled at his indrawn breath. “Similar, then.”
“Aye. Come here.”
She stepped forward, though only a little this time, unwilling to lift her hands from his chest. Cathal couldn’t say he objected. Her fingers were brushing lower now, down and then back up again, and his body felt every inch of their journey. Less graceful than he would have liked to be, he plucked the pins from her hair and brushed the wimple onto the floor.
Then he stopped. Lust, strong as it was, stepped aside for a different and far less pleasant sensation.
The white cloth was spotted with crimson.
Sophia had gone still when he had. Now, frowning, she followed his gaze to the bloodstained cloth. “Oh,” she said faintly, and stepping back, she put a hand up to the back of her head. “I didn’t realize… It hurt when I hit the floor, but I didn’t know.”
“And now?”
“A little.” She flushed. “I hadn’t noticed, which I think bodes well. I think a serious injury would hurt more.”
“Likely,” said Cathal, whose experience with mortals and head wounds was cursedly scarce. Men went into battle with him, were injured when he couldn’t prevent it, and whether they lived or died afterward was the realm of God and physicians. He wished he’d paid more attention.
He could hear footsteps on the stairs. His first thought was anger, that the men should be so late, but then he realized that far less time had passed than he’d thought, common enough when both battle and lust clouded his mind.
She probed gingerly through her hair, then winced. “There’s a great lump back here, yes, and I think it’s bleeding, but…it doesn’t feel as though I broke my skull. Although I’m not at all certain how that would feel.” Drawing back her hand, she inspected the reddened fingertips. “But I’m awake, and I’m sensible.” Here she stopped and bit her lip, then went on without saying whatever had come to her mind. “So I believe that to be a good sign too.”
“Better than otherwise.”
Footsteps reached the landing door, and Cathal swung around to meet the new arrivals. Munro and Edan, two of the most experienced of the remaining men, were there, blades in hand, and a square young man named Roger. All slowed as they came within sight of the doorway and presumably saw both people within whole and in no visible distress.
“Sir?” Munro asked, flushed from the long run up the narrow stairway, “Lady? There was screaming, and—”
He fell silent, mouth opening. Clearly he’d caught sight of the demon’s corpse, lying in a corner of the room where Cathal had flung both it and its severed head in the seconds after its death. Nobody could have mistaken it for human, even for a second.
The men crossed themselves. Edan swore.
“Aye,” said Cathal. “The wizard who cursed Fergus has other tricks up his sleeves, it seems.”
In truth, it was almost better to have them staring at the demon. He hadn’t been able to get either himself or Sophia into any truly compromising state of undress, and alarm had greatly diminished his own excitement to a state easily hidden by clothing. Nonetheless, they were a man and a woman alone in a room, and clearly both disheveled.
“What is it?” Roger asked. “How did it get here? Are there more?”
They were all speaking in Gaelic, and Cathal only noticed it when Sophia stepped back, taking herself out of a conversation too quick and too worried to follow in a foreign tongue. He switched to French, trusting the men to follow his lead.
“’Tis a demon, as I understand such things. Likely if he could send more, he would have, but I’ll post guards throughout the castle tonight, and I’ll take other measures as well.” There were wards. His knowledge of them was academic, another memory of childhood training for which he’d cared little at the time, damned young idiot that he’d been. He thought he could make them stronger. “We’ll have Father Lachlann bless weapons. How did it get here?” he asked, turning to Sophia.
“There was a”—she waved her hands in the air, making a circle of varying size—“space that grew larger. It came from that. I smelled rot before then, and sweetness.” Sophia’s eyes held Cathal’s for a breath longer. There was something she wasn’t saying, that she didn’t want to speak of in front of the guards.
“A bad sign. But as you see”—he gestured to the demon’s corpse—“they die like anything else. Munro, gather the men. I’ll talk to them soon, let them know the plan. Then two of you can come back here and get rid of the body.”
Whatever skills Cathal lacked in running a castle, he’d been commanding men long enough to know how to put dismissal into a tone of voice. The three guards left, Roger crossing himself again before he turned.
Cathal waited for their footsteps to fade before turning to Sophia. She stood farther away from him now, arms wrapped around her stomach. In the light of greater concerns and the eyes of others, their earlier madness had cooled for her too, perhaps. He still hungered to look at her, but it was a fainter urge now, and he could displace it, as he knew he must.
“I think,” she said, “that I’m the reason it could get here.”
“Ah,” Cathal said and wished he could argue the point. But the demon had appeared in her laboratory, and… “The connection again?”
Sophia nodded, hair brushing against her cheek. “I doubt it could appear where I’m not. And I’m not certain what to do about that. If I leave, I’ll be abandoning your friend, but if I stay, I will perhaps put you all in great danger.”
There was no confusion on Cathal’s part, whatever there might be for Sophia. “Then we will put a guard on your chambers and on this room. If need be, I’ll stand the watch myself.” He glanced down at his waist, at the silver-chased and sapphire-set hilt of his sword. “I had this from my mother’s kin. It’s not the only weapon of its kind, nor the only one in the castle. And,” he added, glimpsing the pouch at his belt and remembering the letter within for the first time in an hour or two, “I have news.”
Only after Sophia looked up from the letter with a face of embarrassed regret did Cathal remember that she likely couldn’t read Gaelic. Only after he’d skimmed over the first few paragraphs did he realize that he hadn’t thought twice before giving her his family correspondence. That was a notion he was sure he’d turn over in his mind later, on an early morning or a sleepless night. For the moment, he repeated Moiread’s information without embellishment.
Listening, Sophia stood very still, her hands twined in her skirt. At the news of Valerius’s crimes, she swallowed, a quick movement of her slim, bruised throat, and again at Moiread’s conclusions.
“And so we can guess where he obtained the demon’s services,” she said. “I’ve told you before that I know little about such creatures, great or small,
but fratricide seems a sure way to attract darkness, if you seek it.” Her voice was quick as usual when discussing theory, but quieter, smaller. “This may help. I can’t be certain. I wish I could promise more.”
“These things die like anything else,” Cathal repeated. “And you held it off long enough this time.”
“Barely. And… Oh!” Unlikely joy dawned on her face. “It worked. My experiment, that is. It has certain limitations, but it’s entirely promising. The demon couldn’t break my skin, and that alone was a great protection. I’m sure it saved my life… Well, that and you arriving when you did, and having the right sort of weapon. I did stab the demon, but it didn’t seem to take.”
“Steel often doesn’t, I hear,” said Cathal. “I’ll find out more as I can. As for the potion, I’m glad of it. While this lasts, you should make more. Drink them every time one wears off.” He reached out and took her chin in his hand, turning her face up to his. “You’ll have anything of mine that you need.”
Then he left. He had tasks at hand and limits on his self-control—limits that were, it seemed, growing shorter by the day.
Twenty-two
Practically speaking, the demon’s attack was almost a blessing when Sophia thought about it. For the cost of a few bruises, a knot on the back of her head, and a short stretch of literally mortal terror, she’d tested her potion and found it successful. She’d encountered a new form of life, even if it was horrible and evil. To top it off, as she was cleaning up her laboratory and periodically glancing at the demon’s corpse, she’d realized that there lay a potential new source of both materials and a connection to Valerius.
Sophia hadn’t worked with demons before, naturally. She didn’t know of anyone who had, and what little she did know warned against it—but against calling them up, not analyzing their bodies after they’d met their well-deserved fate. Very gingerly, she pried off two of the demon’s claws, wrapped them in linen, and tucked the package into a corner of her box of supplies. The blood would probably burn through any container, she thought, and while either its heart or eye would likely have the greatest power, the risk of mischief from that direction was too great.
The claws would be enough to go on. She’d test half of one for elements and planetary correspondences; that would give her at least a hint to whether the rest could be at all useful. Then too, she wanted to consider the protective elixir further—with time and other processes, it was possible that the effect could last longer, or that it could guard against, say, being strangled—and there was the other potion for Fergus, which had fortunately not been upset during the fight.
Sophia had many roads to go down, many discoveries she could make, much work that she could do—and she rejoiced in it. She always would have, when the projects were new, but for the first time in her life, she felt that she would lose herself in it as a need, and not just as an inevitable result of progress and curiosity.
She didn’t—couldn’t—regret the moments she’d spent in Cathal’s arms. She knew she’d flung herself at him as she’d told Alice she wouldn’t, though out of neither recklessness nor despair, and that nothing had changed since that conversation with Alice. The reward had been worth the act.
For most of her life, Sophia had thought she understood desire tolerably well for an unmarried woman. Men were part of the world. A few of them were well made. She’d noticed, imagined more than noticing from time to time, and responded accordingly—but she was unmarried, and had never before had the time or the opportunity to be truly tempted into misbehavior. Despite her reading, she’d never really been able to imagine much beyond kissing, if that. It had never occurred to her that she would feel faint and dizzy, that her sex and her breasts would ache, and that she would not only find all of those phenomena pleasant but actually crave the chance to feel them again.
Lust was its own kind of alchemy, it seemed, and as full of contradictions. In Cathal’s arms, she’d ached and not noticed pain, had all the strength go out of her limbs while she’d felt full of new energy as bright as the noon sun. It was fascinating.
It was not an area of knowledge Sophia could rationally pursue further. She was glad of the time they’d had. Until she died, she would remember the heat of Cathal’s mouth, the intoxicating glide of his thumb across her nipple, the way his manhood had thrust against her. When she was alone at night, or in the depth of age, she knew she would take out the memories and comfort herself with them. Had they not stopped, she would have let him take her on the floor, and she doubted she would have had many regrets after.
They had stopped. She’d started thinking again—and while giving herself to sensation in the moment would have been one thing, there were too many obstacles for Sophia to overlook when her mind was clear.
For instance, the castle and the village might not care overly much about an alchemist in a tower, but people talked about a mistress. She didn’t know what jealousy and spite might arise if she went to Cathal and word got around, but she did know that word would get around.
Also, she planned to leave when her job was done. Travel would be perilous as it was. If she had a child with her, in her belly or out of it, she’d be risking her life and its—not to mention the reception they’d likely receive back home. Her parents tolerated and even encouraged her eccentricities. She wouldn’t ask them to accept her shame.
Another concern: she hadn’t needed to broach the subject with Cathal when they were embracing, only to follow his lead. She didn’t know if she could go to the man and offer herself. There was a certain kind of courage there that she doubted she had.
So, later, when she was far away from Scotland and Cathal, she would remember their time together fondly. For now, she wouldn’t let herself think of it more than she could help. For now, she would turn her mind to purely intellectual paths and be thankful for the work at hand, that she might concentrate on that and keep herself separate.
For the most part, the endeavor went very well for a few days. Sophia rose early, worked long and late, ate when Alice reminded her, and made polite conversation with Cathal when they met. Her throat and her head healed. She slept as well as she could and had no dreams. She began to research, in what little time remained, the right planetary alignments for visions and demons to anticipate when Valerius might make his next attempt. She went around guarded by men with crosses on their swords. One stood outside her laboratory, while another kept watch over her bedchamber. One had given her a silver dagger.
None of them was Cathal.
Sophia understood that, or told herself she did. He was a busy man, and busier now. Often she heard noise from the rooms below her, or saw light beneath the door when she came up and down the stairs. His duties went far beyond her, or Fergus, or the disruption that both of them had brought to the castle, and perhaps he’d had the same sort of second thoughts she had. A foreign mistress, and one who dabbled in magic, probably wouldn’t help his reputation with his men or his tenants. This distance was for the best. She told herself that too.
Then, on a day warm enough for the snow on the trees to melt and splat down to the still-frozen ground, she noticed that she was running short of herbs.
Donnag kept a small house near the edge of the village. It was humble in comparison to the buildings Sophia had known in France, and even more so compared to the castle, but Sophia got the impression that it was spacious for an old woman living by herself in the country. She and Alice both managed to fit around the fire with the midwife, even though Alice’s elbow came dangerously close to Sophia’s stomach when she gestured.
The midwife also made excellent cakes, far better to Sophia’s mind than the ones the castle cook managed, and her ale was none too bad either.
“I don’t brew it myself,” she said, when Alice complimented her. “Black John down by the river does that. It’s come up a bit under him. His father’s wasn’t near so good. Drank too much of it in the process, I’d s
ay.”
When the conversation was leisurely like this, Gaelic was easy enough now for Sophia to understand. She thought Donnag might be going slowly on purpose, being easy on the foreign girl, and she didn’t have too much pride to appreciate that. “That happens back home too,” she said. “Temptation’s a hard thing.”
The old woman grunted affirmation. “Black John’s got a stronger will. From his mother’s side. I brought both his parents into the world, aye, and she knew her own mind from the very first.”
Alice laughed. “My oldest was that way…even in the birthing.”
“From the mother,” Donnag repeated, nodding. “Now, Munro there, his sire and dam are both calm, peaceable sorts—you’ll not have met them much, saving the blizzard—so the Lord only knows what made the boy go in for a soldier.”
Leaning against the wall, eyes alert and priest-blessed sword on his belt, Munro only waved a hand.
“There are these unexpected strains in the blood. Sideways, much of the time. My parents are neither of them scholars. My brothers either. That was down to my uncle, and then to me in my way.” Sophia smiled. “But it must be easier to see the pattern from where you stand.”
“Anyone old enough. Anywhere small enough. I heard stories of cities, of London, but I never fancied going. You can’t see the patterns there.” Donnag crackled laughter. “And here I’ll never anger the lord by bringing him a daughter.”
“They do seem not to mind girls,” Alice said.
“Aye,” said Donnag, “and besides, I’ve not yet been present for one of their births, and it’s likely I’ll be in the ground before the next.”
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