Dark Embrace

by Eve Silver

  Deciding that she was destined to lose any further argument, she turned and led the way to the front door. It seemed that Killian Thayne would be accompanying her to her room. Modesty, propriety, her good name...she might have presented any of those as reasons he must not come inside. But, in truth, what was the point? The other lodgers in the house on Coptic Street would have no care if she brought a man to her room. She knew for certain that one of the girls did exactly that on a regular basis and slipped Mrs. Cowden an extra shilling each week so that she would turn a blind eye.

  Pausing at the door, she looked back at him over her shoulder. Killian. He bid her call him Killian, as she had a thousand times in her dreams.

  “You are safe with me, Sarah.”

  No, she did not think so.

  But she knew he meant to reassure her that he was not the one who had chased her through the alleys, and that was the truth.

  “You have no hat.”

  His eyes narrowed at her observation. “Does the lack offend?”

  Sarah made a soft, chuffing laugh. “Taking offense at some nicety of fashion is a luxury for which I have no use.” She pressed her lips together. “It was only an observation.”

  “Because your pursuer wore a hat.”

  “Yes. You seek to reassure me, but such reassurance is unnecessary. We already established that you were not my pursuer.”

  Killian caught her wrist as she reached for the doorknob. “I am not he. Had I chosen to hunt you, Sarah, you would not have known I was there.” He paused, his lips curving into a dark smile. “And I would have caught you.”

  Had I chosen to hunt you. A chill crawled up her spine, one that had nothing to do with the wind or the cold. She looked beyond him to the street once more, then away.

  “Is it your intent to make me fear you?”

  “Fear me?” He looked appalled. “Quite the opposite, though I have clearly made a hash of it.” His laugh was low and devoid of humor. “Once, I had skill at this. I knew the rules of the game.” The way he looked at her made her breath catch.

  She was left with no doubt that the game he referred to was flirtation. A thrill ran through her, equal parts attraction and wariness.

  Seeking to alleviate the tension of the moment, she said, “I shall be lucky if Mrs. Cowden kept a plate for me this evening, but if she did, I will be glad to share my meal with you.”

  An indecipherable emotion danced across Killian’s features. “Your offer is most kind, but I have...already dined.”

  The slight hesitation did not go unnoticed, and she wondered what his words masked. He offered nothing further and after a moment, she turned back to unlock the door.

  She led him inside. The hallway was dark, musty, the paint yellowed and flaking, the floor a tiled geometric pattern of gray and black. Sarah thought that once, many years ago, the pattern might have been white and black, but layers of wear and use and grime had altered the shade. Mrs. Cowden occasionally swiped a mop over the tile with halfhearted interest, but that only served to shift the dirt from left to right and back again. The hallway was so cramped that they could not stand side by side, and Sarah went in first with Killian close behind.

  She felt glad that she was not alone.

  No, more than that, glad that he was here. It was a dangerous and inappropriate gladness that bubbled inside her like the effervescent spring water her father had insisted was good for the health.

  Turning back, she was confronted by Killian’s cloak-draped form, so broad and tall. He unnerved her. Drew her. Appealed to her on some level she could not explain. His presence made her feel safe. How long since she had felt that way?

  Hoping that her expression betrayed none of her inappropriate thoughts, she reached around him to draw the door closed, an action that brought them far closer together than they ought to be. He was warm, the heat coming from him beckoning to her.

  “How are you so warm?” she asked. “It’s bitingly cold outside, and you’ve been in the wind just the same as I.”

  “My meal warmed me,” he said after a pause.

  An odd reply.

  Stepping back, she undid the fastening of her cloak but did not draw the garment off. Though the wind was absent, the hallway was barely warmer than it was outdoors, and she was loath to forfeit whatever heat her cloak offered.

  Directly ahead lay the rickety staircase with the faulty third stair, the one with the poorly nailed board that would pop up and bang the unwary person sharply on the ankle if they were not careful. There was room enough for one person to go up or down, but not enough for two to pass unless they turned to face each other.

  There was no light coming from the dining room, and none showed under the crack of the door that led to Mrs. Cowden’s chambers. Sarah was glad of that, for it meant there was none about to beg explanation for Killian’s inexplicable presence here.

  “I will be but a moment,” Sarah said and strode beyond the stairs to the small kitchen at the back of the house. No candles were lit, but the hearth held a faltering flame, and Sarah moved close to warm her hands. Closing her eyes, she let the heat sink through her.

  He made no sound, but she knew he had followed. Stepping to the side, she glanced at him over her shoulder. The glow of the dying embers danced over his features, painting him gold and bronze and more beautiful than any man had a right to be.

  “Here,” she said, beckoning him closer. “There’s room enough for both of us. The night is so cold. You must be frozen clear through.”

  “No.” He made a small smile, looking more handsome still because of it. “I am not cold. I do not notice such things. Neither the cold of winter nor the heat of summer.”

  “You are an adaptable fellow.”

  “That is one way to describe it.” He glanced about the tiny kitchen, his gaze lingering on the covered plate set on one side of the small table. “You must be hungry.”

  She shook her head. She wasn’t. The fright of earlier in the evening had left her insides shaking still. “I’ll take the plate up with me and eat a bit later.”

  “Where are your rooms?” he asked.

  “Rooms?” she echoed. “Only one, I’m afraid. But it suits well enough. I’m on the second floor.”

  She took the plate and led the way from the warm kitchen back into the cold hallway, up the stairs to the landing on the first floor, then up another flight to the second.

  “How many rooms up here?” Killian asked, his voice hushed, the sound incredibly appealing.

  “Three. And three on the floor below.” She unlocked the door of her chamber and pushed it open. “I have the smallest of these. It was the frugal choice.” Why had she said that?

  “Ever practical,” he said, sounding as though the words pained him. But his expression gave her no insight into his thoughts.

  “Spinster sisters share the room next to mine. They snore.”

  “Yes. I hear that,” he said with another small smile.

  Sarah smiled back, the tension knotting her shoulders unlocking. “It usually reaches a crescendo just past midnight and then they quiet down.” Setting the plate on the little tulip table in the corner near the door, she then took up a Lucifer match, struck it to the sandpaper and lit the stub of tallow candle that sat in a small porcelain dish with gold edging, one of the few possessions she had salvaged from the shattered remnants of her old life.

  The flame flickered and wavered, barely denting the darkness. She turned to face Killian, who filled the doorway like a shadow.

  What to do now? Invite him inside? There seemed no help for it, but she felt so odd to be in this situation, to have him here in this dim and crowded room. He had been here before, but only in her mind, her dreams, her fantasies.

  The reality of him was overwhelming, as were the events of the evening, being chased, fleeing, arriving home to find him here.

  “Come in,” she said, suddenly weary.

  He did as she bid, stepping inside and pulling the door shut behind him.
r />   12

  He controlled himself with effort. The monster inside him quivered and roared, anxious to be out, to hunt. Not to feed, but to find and destroy the one who stalked her, frightened her.

  Sarah.

  She was not mistaken in her assessment that she was hunted.

  She only did not realize precisely what it was that hunted her. But he knew. He sensed it out there, like to like.

  He wanted to kill it, to rip open its throat.

  Not only because such was the instinct of his kind, though there was that.

  No, he wanted it gone because it posed a threat to her. No one harms her. No one.

  She is mine.

  13

  Killian filled the space, sucked the air from the room even as he energized it. His eyes locked on Sarah’s, glittering in the candlelight, and her heart beat so hard she thought it might fly apart. She dropped her gaze and toyed with the remnants of the match; she could not look at him, did not dare to look at him, for so many twined and tangled reasons.

  “You are cold,” Killian observed, stepping closer, and before she could protest he had his cloak off his own shoulders and over hers, still warm from the heat of his body, smelling faintly of citrus and man.

  His action highlighted one of the many reasons she admired him so. Because he would do something like that for her. Because he offered similar quiet kindnesses to many. She had seen it time and again on the ward with patients, and even with staff. Though his tone was usually cool and analytical, his treatment choices unaffected by emotion, his overtures at camaraderie with his contemporaries limited at best, there were small things he did that showed the warmth beneath his icy façade.

  There had been the episode with Mrs. Carmichael when he had gifted her with the coats for her sons. And she had seen him slip coins in another night nurse’s apron while she slept, a shilling or two, enough to buy shrimps and tea and butter. He had sat the night through beside a mother whose daughter would never awaken, holding her hand as her child slipped away. And Sarah suspected it was Killian who had arranged for Mr. Scully’s sister to travel to Edinburgh to stay with his dead wide’s sister so neither would be alone.

  Killian was an outwardly cold man with a flame inside him that he hid behind darkened spectacles and a mask of polite reserve.

  She wondered if he was lonely or simply alone.

  She stared up at him, feeling foolish and overwhelmed and so grateful for this small kindness. Tears pricked her eyes as she huddled in his cloak and that made her angry. She had no place in her life for self-pity, and after crying for three days straight when she found out her father was dead, she had thought herself moved past such a childish waste of time.

  “Tell me why you came here tonight,” she said, pushing aside her maudlin thoughts and pitching her voice low so as not to carry through the thin walls.

  “Let us sit, Sarah.” Reasonable. Calm.

  His words made her anxious. Sit where? On the low bed? Uneasy, she cast a glance exactly there, and for a moment, she could not understand what it was she saw on her pillow.

  Then she did understand and fear curdled in her belly.

  On her pillow was a small comfit box of sweetmeats tied with a bow and beside it, a length of lavender ribbon.

  She gasped and stumbled back, the very familiarity of those things making them all the more sinister.

  Someone had been here. In her room. Someone had left these unwelcome gifts. Someone who knew things about her. An icy chill slithered through her, distress clenching around her heart.

  “What is it?” Killian asked sharply, drawing near. “You’ve gone white as the belly of a dead fish.”

  Sarah’s gaze jerked to his, and despite the unease that gnawed at her she could not help the startled chuff of laughter evoked by his words.

  “An appealing image.” Dead fish. She shuddered, thinking of her father, his body never fished from the Thames. Never found.

  The shudders would not stop, though she willed them to.

  Killian closed his hands around her upper arms and kept them there as she trembled. She wished he would draw her closer, not just clasp her arms, but clasp her body tight against his own.

  She pulled away from him, wrapping her arms around her middle and holding tight. “You left me the pasty. That day in the linen closet.”

  “I did.” He frowned. “You had not eaten.”

  “And the orange? The ham sandwich? You left me those as well?”

  Still, he frowned. “The sandwich, yes.” The word was slow and drawn out, as though he took his time trying to read the underlying thoughts beneath her words. “The orange, no.”

  “Then who?” she asked.

  “That is the question, is it not?”

  “And those?” She flung a hand toward the bed. “Did you bring those? Why not just hand them to me? Why leave them on my pillow?” Her words came faster now, strung together in a furious whisper. “And why slink into my chamber and leave them on my bed then sneak back outside to await my arrival?”

  “Sneak…” he looked to the bed, then back to her. “Sarah, this is the first time I have been in this room.” He crossed to the bed and lifted the small box and the length of ribbon. She flinched away. He opened the confit box to reveal caramels and marchpane.

  Someone had chosen the contents with care. Someone who knew her ways and her preferences.

  “You didn’t bring them?” she asked, her voice tight.

  “I did not. But someone did…” He looked at her expectantly as though she ought to know the identity of that someone.

  And she did. “It was him.” The man who stalked her, who clung to the shadows, who refused to reveal his face. He had chased her through the alleys tonight, but first he had come here. “He was in my room,” she whispered. “He touched my things. He must have left me the orange as well. He’s been watching me here, at the hospital…everywhere.”

  Killian’s expression darkened. He held the confit box in one hand, the ribbon in the other.

  “Sweetmeats. Ribbon. Impersonal at first glance, but first glance is a lie,” he said. “These items have specific meaning to you.”

  “Yes.” Sarah felt ill, confused…afraid. “Someone knows far too much about me. Someone knows things that are private, things from my life before my father died. My father used to bring me ribbons and that very same selection of sweetmeats before he became…ill.”

  Killian’s gaze flicked to the items he held, then back to her face. “The man who stalks you, how long has he been about it?”

  Sarah frowned, thinking back. “The first time I saw him was a few weeks after my father died.”

  Killian set the box and ribbon on the bed. “That was the first time you saw him. But before that…”

  “I sensed him. I knew he was there. I thought it was grief that played tricks on my perception. I felt someone watching me, following me, always in the shadows.”

  “The first time…When was it?”

  Again, she thought back, trying to piece together the puzzle. “I don’t know. I think the first sense I had of someone lurking was…” She had cried for three days and not left the house. But on the fourth day she had forced herself out in the evening, forced herself to walk along the river, and she had looked over her shoulder more than once, plagued by an eerie feeling that she was being followed. “You think he has been following me all along? Even before I sensed his presence?”

  “You said your father was ill. What malady afflicted him?” Killian asked.

  There was something in his tone, an urgency she couldn’t understand. Her chin kicked up a notch. “He became addicted to opium.”

  Everything about Killian stilled: his movements, his expression. He looked to be made of stone. “How do you know it was opium?”

  “He took no food. He said everything made him sick to his stomach. Everything tasted rotten and foul. His complexion took on a terrible grayish cast. He spiraled into malaise.”

  “How long was he
like that?”

  “I don’t know. It felt like an instant even as it felt like forever. Months and months. By the end, he clung to the shadows and eschewed the light. Sunlight made him cry out in pain. Lamplight made him wince.”

  “What else?” Killian asked, his attention focused and intense. Frightening.

  “He was too ill himself to see patients. He spent his days abed in a darkened room, and his nights prowling the streets, or perhaps in opium dens.”

  “Did he hurt you?” Killian asked.

  “No… No!” Sarah shivered. “But one night, I thought he might,” she admitted after a long pause, relieved to finally tell someone. “He was ill in his bed, muttering and cursing and pleading, though I know not for what. He was drenched in sweat. I went to change his nightshirt and as I leaned over him, he caught my wrist, his grip far stronger than I would have expected from one so ill. He stared at me. I was—” She broke off, remembering. Her father had looked at her through eyes that were not his own.

  “You were…” Killian prodded.

  “Afraid,” Sarah whispered, hating the admission, hating that the harsh memory was one of her last of her father. “I was afraid of him. My gentle, kind father was not there. Someone else looked back at me through his eyes.” She exhaled in a huff. “You think me melodramatic.”

  Killian stepped closer. “I think you brave. Resourceful. A woman carving her way in an unkind world.”

  The way he looked at her made her pulse race and her mouth go dry. She made a nervous laugh and looked at the ground. “My father…the look on his face was one I had never seen. He looked like he would do me harm, like he wanted to do me harm. He cried out as though in pain and thrust me from him. He snarled at me and said that I was never to come into his chamber again. Not while he was in it. ‘Get out. Get out now,’ he shouted though he was never one to raise his voice. I ran and moments later watched from my window as he went out into the night with his nightshirt flapping and his feet bare.”

  Killian took another step toward her, but Sarah shook her head and stumbled back. If he touched her now, she would break, shatter, and she would never be able to knit the jagged pieces back together.