Charming the Devil

by Lois Greiman

  “Perhaps I am wrong,” he said.

  “Where?”

  He looked uncomfortable now. “Lass, I may be entirely—”

  “Where do you think they are? In the woods ahead?”

  He scowled. “Why do you wish to know?”

  Her heart felt tight. She could barely breathe past the pain in her throat, but she forced herself to speak, to remember her persona, too long forgotten. “I am but curious. Perhaps you could find them.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “They’re vermin.” She felt sick again and hoped to God she wouldn’t vomit. “Surely it would be best if we informed the landowner.”

  “So he can kill them?”

  She swallowed painfully. “Yes.”

  “There’s no need,” he said, and though his tone was hard, his eyes were something else. Something inexplicable. “They’ll perish in a few days’ time. We’ve done our part to ensure that.”

  She felt the pain in her gut like an open wound, and though she knew she was foolish, she spoke again. “Find them.”

  He rose to his feet. “’Tis time to be home,” he said.

  She shook her head, feeling desperate, feeling lost, and his scowl deepened.

  “I cannot leave you alone, wounded in the woods while I rid the world of a few harmless fox pups,” he said, and looked down at her as though seeing her with new eyes. “Even I am not so barbaric.”

  Chapter 7

  “God help me!” Rogan growled, and hunched his shoulders against the rain. It was darker than Hades and just as damned cold. Although, biblically, the underworld was thought to be hot. Indeed, the ancient Greeks and Christians seemed to be in agreement on that point. But what the hell did they know about hell, he wondered, and almost laughed at his own irony.

  But laughing aloud in the rain and the dark would make him seem even madder than he apparently was.

  Beneath him, Colt trotted on, impervious to the conditions. Colt should have been the goddamn soldier. He should have been the one with medals and commendations and pensions.

  Unlike his owner, Bain thought, and just that easily, old memories jostled in, searing his mind. But he shoved them aside. Fatigue always made him melancholy. And he was fatigued. God only knew why he wasn’t in bed. It was well past time to sleep, but he was back in the woods where he had ridden with Mrs. Nettles just hours before. The woods where they had spoken. The woods where she had wept.

  And there lay the crux of the problem.

  Her tears.

  He ground his teeth against the memory, for he knew far better than to be moved by a woman’s emotions. They could cry on command. Charlotte Winden had cried when she’d told him of her husband’s hideous abuses. She had also cried when he’d died by Rogan’s bullet. In retrospect, Rogan realized she’d been a veritable virtuoso. Indeed, by all indications, she was a master still, able to dupe any number of people into believing she was something she was not with a few careful tears. Unlike himself, who was nothing but what he appeared to be. Indeed, for as long as he could recall, he had not shed a single tear. Was that something he should celebrate or something he should mourn? These English seemed ungodly comfortable with their emotions, crying over anything from lost buttons to lost lives.

  But what of the ethereal wee Faye? She didn’t seem the sort to wail over every small disappointment. And yet she had cried. Why? Because she was overcome with pain? With sadness? Or was it to gain her own ends? And if that was the case, what might those ends have been? To find the kits so they could be destroyed?

  Hunching a little deeper into his coat, he glared into the darkness and saw her face. Small, oval in shape, golden skin haloed by golden hair, eyes so big they swallowed her face. But it was the emotion in those eyes that had stopped his heart dead in his chest. Because there was misery in those eyes. Empathy. Fear, forgiveness, laughter, tragedy. Hope and…

  Dammit! He was being an idiot. Because chances were good that he was entirely wrong. What did he know of women? Nothing. Less than nothing. History had proven that. Perhaps she was simply playing him for a fool. Perhaps she merely wanted to seem empathetic and fearful and tragic and…

  But if that was the case, why would she suggest she intended to see the kits destroyed?

  That question had been preying on his mind for the past four hours. Longer, since she had been absolutely silent on their return to London, letting his mind rove, making him wonder what she was thinking. She’d looked sad. So much more than sad, in fact.

  But why? For the fox? She’d said herself that they were vermin, and even if her words were not to be believed, the fact that she was willing to ride to the hounds certainly must mean—

  Colt halted. Bain glanced about. There was nothing to see. It was as dark as a tomb. But he knew a few things about hunting. And if the truth be told, he knew more still about being hunted.

  Cursing himself, he tugged the collar up on his coat. Feeling icy rainwater runnel down his back, he left Colt in a protected copse and tramped into the woods afoot.

  It was just past dawn when Bain creaked the door shut behind him. He was wet. His chest ached where furrows had been plowed through his skin, and he was, very probably, as daft as a peahen. But at least no one had yet discovered his lunacy. For that he could be thankful, he thought, and kicking off his boots in the small hardwood entry, padded stocking foot into the kitchen. A pot of steaming tea would go a long way to warming him, but first—

  “Bain!”

  He glanced over his shoulder at the sound of his name, only to find Connelly standing in the kitchen doorway, face perplexed as they stared at each other.

  “Where the devil have you—” he began, then opened his sky blue eyes wide and let his jaw drop. Mischievous joy shone on his face. “Are you only now returning home?”

  Damn, Bain thought and wished to God he’d never met an Irishman. Remaining mute, he removed the cover from the teapot with his left hand. Why did they insist on making these kettles so ridiculously small.

  “You are!” Connelly crowed, and took two celebratory strides into the kitchen. “You’ve not been home for hours. And you know what that suggests.”

  Bain couldn’t think of a reason to respond.

  “It means you owe me a great debt of gratitude, my hulking Highland friend. It means that because of me, you were finally able to—”

  Bain turned toward him with malevolent slowness, stopping Connelly’s words in his throat and raising his eyebrows well toward his hairline.

  “I was about to inquire about our charming Mrs. Nettles, but I…” Connelly winced, studying the scarlet scratches that ran downward from Bain’s clavicle. Damn fox. “I see now that she’s a feisty one. Feistier even than the maid I met at Haymarket. Remember her? The plump lass with the big…” He motioned toward his chest, then stopped, gaze dropping to the flour bag Bain carried in his right hand. The bag that was moving. The bag that now housed three undersized balls of fury. “What the devil is that?”

  Dammit to hell. “Nothing to concern yourself with,” Bain rumbled.

  Connelly raised his brows even higher, already happier than Bain ever wished him to be. “Since when has ‘nothing to concern yourself with’ been carried about in a bag? A flour bag. A flour bag that smells like wet hounds or…No. Not hounds. Wet…” He paused, narrowed his eyes, and sniffed in a show of great, deliberate thought. Bain almost scoffed out loud at the idea. “Last I saw you, were you not about to embark on a foxhunt?”

  God help him. Bain pressed past Connelly on the way to the pantry. There was no hope now. “Where’s the damned tea?” he rumbled.

  “I’m not certain.”

  Bain’s mood, never good when cold, wet, and scratched to ribbons by fox pups, was deteriorating rapidly. “Why the devil not?”

  “A fair question,” Connelly said, and tilted his head. Damned bastard. “But an even better one might be…why are you wet if you spent the night in the fair widow’s—”

  “Don’t be daft,”
Bain said, and, rummaging about in the sparsely furnished cupboard, luckily came up with a tin of tea. Unluckily, he was now reminded that he’d dumped the flour into a wooden keg that overflowed onto the upper shelf.

  “Perhaps she had a mind to bathe while fully clothed. An odd concept, true enough. But I must say, she seemed a unique sort, and not one I would have thought likely to be thrilled by the idea of sacrificing a fox for a bit of frivolous…” Connelly began, but his words stopped abruptly, then he laughed, throwing his head back like a damned lunatic as he flopped into the chair behind him, cravat undone, hair messed after a night of certain debauchery. “Don’t tell me.”

  Bain was going to have to find a lid for the flour keg. And, of course, he was, very probably, also going to have to beat the stuffing out of Connelly. But just the thought of it made him hungry.

  “The stunning Mrs. Nettles…” Connelly paused, trying to catch his breath. “Was upset because…” More laughter. Perhaps the time had come to start that stuffing beating thing. “The fox…which…” He’d been reduced to chuckles. “By the by…you were hunting…was killed.”

  Bain didn’t even like Irishmen. Never had.

  “So upset, in fact, that you…” Connelly’s shoulders were bumping up and down with the rhythm of his humor.

  In general, he also didn’t like men.

  “You decided to save the pups.”

  “Why would I do something so daft?” Bain asked, but the little hellions took that precise moment to wriggle wildly, setting the bag alive.

  “Very well then.”

  Bain had never seen Connelly happier. He gritted his teeth against the other’s jocularity.

  “Let me guess again. Might you have…” He made an elegant motion toward the bag. For a damned mercenary, he was as polished as a pedigreed prince. Bain had always resented that about him. “Salmon? In the bag?”

  “Isn’t there some woman’s husband you could be cuckolding?” Bain rumbled, but his words only set the other to guffawing again before he returned to his ludicrous guessing.

  “House cats? Baby dragons?” A kit whimpered, drawing both their attention. “Werewolves?”

  “Go to bed, Irish.”

  “Honest to God, I wish I could,” Connelly said, cheerful as sunrise. “But I’m just so…” He shook his head. “So demmed fascinated. I keep asking myself what kind of magic does the tiny Mrs. Nettles have that would cause a big Scottish lug like you to…” He paused. His jaw dropped again and a look of ethereal joy overcame his foolish features. “Don’t tell me,” he said.

  God help them all.

  “She cried,” Connelly deduced with resounding finality.

  “Find me something to eat or get out of the damned kitchen,” Bain ordered.

  “I’m right, am I not? I can see it now. The pixie-bright little widow, weeping as if her heart were broken. You’re lucky she didn’t ask you to kill anybody.”

  McBain gritted his teeth, but thankfully Connelly was far too dense to realize what he’d said.

  “She didn’t, did she?” Connelly asked.

  “I am not so fortunate,” Bain rumbled, and gave Connelly a baleful glare, but the other only laughed.

  “You can’t kill me. I’m the one who made it possible for you to spend the night…chasing fox pups.” He was grinning like an intoxicated dolt. Bain ignored him as best he could as he attempted to pour tea leaves into the strainer.

  “Here,” said the Irishman finally. “Let me take your young ones since, by the look of things, they’re likely to be the only offspring you’ll ever sire.”

  Bain relinquished the bag, allowing Connelly to undo the top and glance inside.

  “Look at that,” he said. “They’re rather adorable. Considering the sire.”

  “If you weren’t so damned amusing, I’d kick your arse out the door.”

  He laughed. “So, what are you going to do with the deadly little darlings?” he asked, glancing up, and McBain finally smiled.

  “I’m going to give them to you,” he said.

  Chapter 8

  “What did you learn?” Lord Gallo’s voice was as even as slate, perfectly modulated, and decidedly cool.

  “Very little,” Faye said, and refrained from fidgeting like a guilty schoolgirl. The events of the previous day still made her feel raw and uncertain.

  “Do you believe your amulet is taking hold?”

  Faye scowled, remembering Rogan McBain’s disturbing presence, the low rumble of his voice, the mesmerizing cast of his eyes. “I sensed no lies.” Which was true yet oddly confusing. “At least, not from him.”

  Madeline nodded. They were, once again, sitting in the parlor of Lavender House.

  “So your own untruths are still causing you troubles?”

  “Some,” she said cautiously, and remembered that strangely, her headaches seemed to disappear when McBain was near.

  “Then the pain is no longer debilitating?” Maddy asked, and watched her closely. It was a known fact that in the past, the headaches associated with lies had left her all but incapacitated.

  Faye shook her head. “They were not unmanageable.”

  “Even if you speak of Mrs. Nettles’s past?”

  The story, which was entirely different from reality. Entirely more palatable.

  “Even then,” she said. “But I almost wished to tell him—” she paused, realized what she had nearly admitted, and glanced rapidly toward Lord Gallo.

  “Tell him what?” Madeline asked, and Faye forced a shrug.

  “’Tis simply that he seems so…”

  They waited in silent tandem.

  “Truthful,” she said, and finally allowed her fingers to fiddle for a moment with a fold in her beribboned skirt.

  “You presented him your truth amulet, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you don’t believe that’s the cause of his honesty?”

  “I—”

  “I don’t believe it either,” Shaleena said, and sauntered into the room. It seemed she was ever about these days, rarely leaving the house since Joseph’s arrival. Why was that? She cherished the gardens as much as any witch, and Joseph seemed decent enough, for a man. Broad-shouldered and hard-muscled, he always conducted himself with somber decorum. He spent much of his time in the stable, polishing brass and oiling harness leather. When he spoke, which was rare, there was a subtle hint of an unknown accent. Something smooth and rolling that conjured up images of the dark Carpathian Mountains and the legends they evoked. Intriguing, even to someone of Faye’s skittish nature, so why was Shaleena, an inveterate flirt, so intent on avoiding him?

  “Although they might slow him down a bit,” she added.

  For a moment, Faye almost thought she saw Lord Gallo grit his teeth. Indeed, a flash of annoyance seemed to strike his eyes, and in that instant she found that she almost liked him, almost trusted him. Though in her head she knew it was foolish not to, for he had saved her life just as surely as she had almost ended his. Sometimes fear made her actions a bit unpredictable.

  “The amulets,” Shaleena explained, and raised a carefully groomed eyebrow. “They are, after all, little more than rocks.” Lifting a book from the narrow table near the door, she glanced at the title and dropped it back. “Indeed, I don’t know why the child is allowed here at Lavender House.”

  “I am—” Faye began, but the other cut her off.

  “What? What are you? A foolish girl hiding from shadows? A danger to this coven?”

  “Shaleena,” Madeline warned, voice low, but the other turned toward her contemporary and continued.

  “I warned you not to trust her with this mission. Unless you’ve no qualms about someone dying. But you have always seemed so touchy about death.”

  “I’ve done nothing amiss,” Faye said, and felt her temper flare. Not fear. Not shame. But anger. It was such a rare event. So foreign that she almost didn’t recognize the feel of it. “Indeed—”

  “Nothing amiss?” Shalee
na said and laughed. “Then I must have been misinformed. I thought I heard that you had blackened the eye of the very man you intended to lure.”

  Embarrassment smote her, but she kept her chin high. “I had no wish to lure him. I—”

  “’Tis just as well, then,” Shaleena said, and tossed her hair over one shoulder. Her breasts were ridiculously large. “For there would be little hope. ’Tis best to send a woman to do a woman’s job.”

  “I agree,” Lord Gallo said.

  Faye skittered her gaze hopelessly to his, but his expression was bland once again, his attention directed at Shaleena.

  “That is why I meant to ask you to do some tutoring today.”

  “Tutoring?” Her tone had gone suddenly coy. Her lips curved. “Might I hope you would be my student, Jasper?”

  Faye glanced at Madeline, but if his wife felt threatened, she showed no sign.

  “No,” Gallo said.

  Shaleena smiled and slid her crafty gaze sideways. “I would be happy to help your bride hone her skills if you feel she needs—”

  “The lesson is for Cur,” he said, interrupting smoothly.

  Shaleena turned with a jerk. “You jest.”

  “I believe, if I am not mistaken, that he is arriving even as we speak.”

  Shaleena’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Why the devil do you insist on inviting these odd outsiders into our midst?”

  “‘Outsiders’?”

  “You would be a fool to trust them with our secrets.”

  “I assume you are including Joseph in your distrust?” Madeline asked.

  “He can’t be trusted,” Shaleena hissed, taking Madeline aback with her vehemence.

  “Why do you believe this?”

  For a moment something almost primitive passed through Shaleena’s eyes, but she lifted her head and leveled her gaze, expression cool and condescending once again. “He’s a man, is he not?”

  “I believe so, but I’ve not noticed in the past that you dislike men by gender alone,” she said, and glanced at her long-suffering husband with an arched brow.