Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series) (53 page)

“Who is this friend?” Pamela asked, her tone no longer calm.

“Oh, that’s for me to know. Let us just call him an interested party. I did find it fascinating that he seemed to believe that my nephew and your husband may have had a great deal to do with the demise of those four men.”

“That is ludicrous,” she said, tone sharp in spite of herself, for she could not allow this man to touch Casey or Jamie because of this.

“Oh, I don’t think so. You might be partially blinded by my nephew’s charms, but I think you well know how ruthless he is. How could you not know when you are exactly so yourself?”

“Is there something in particular that you want from this conversation? Because if not, I should like you to leave.”

“Oh, as tempted as I am by that idea, I have no desire to find myself another pint upon your bloody hands. As much as I should like,” his finger caressed the line of her neck, “to part those lovely white thighs and partake of what’s between them, I think—in the interests of breathing—I will pass on your charms.”

“I would rather die than allow you to touch me,” she said quite calmly, all things considered.

“I would be careful about making such sweeping statements. One never knows when one might need to go back on them.” His voice was as insidious as a scaled, oily creature creeping upon her skin.

“It’s a puzzle to me, you know.”

She gritted her teeth as she felt his breath upon her neck. She would not move until she understood just what he wanted.

“It’s a puzzle how a whore like you can look so untouched, so beyond the reach of most men and yet apparently—as my friend tells me—not beyond so many at all.”

She stood, unable to bear his looming presence any longer. She faced him, eyes blazing with anger, her entire body deadly cold.

“I think you had best get to the point.”

“The point, my lovely, is the same as it has always been. I want what is rightfully mine: this house, the companies, all the assets that my nephew left to you.”

“I don’t know how many times you require to hear the word ‘no’, but I am saying it again. Jamie trusted this to me, and when he returns I plan to turn it back to him as he left it, if not better.”

“Jamie is dead, dear girl. He isn’t coming back to rescue you. I will get what is mine one way or the other. I can take it without an ugly and protracted fight or it can be as bloody as you like. It’s up to you.”

“You aren’t getting any compromise from me, so sharpen your sword,” she said.

“Have it your way, Pamela, but don’t say you weren’t warned. Coups can be extremely ugly.”

She sat for several long moments after he left. The scent of his aftershave was stuck in her throat and she still felt as though she was going to be sick.

His words had conjured up the image of that night on the train when four men had indeed used her in every way they had time and imagination enough to do. She had long ago left the shame of it behind. Or so she thought, for somehow Philip had managed to pull it up in front of her again, to make her skin crawl and shudder with the memory. The shame was still there, sunk under the skin like delicate pools of paint in shades of bruising. Dip in the brush of another’s words, red and harsh, and they spread once again through her body in ripples of blood and bone memory.

In the aftermath, each of those men had died, but she had never asked Casey nor Jamie about it. She had not wanted to know. She was certain, though, that between the two of them they knew how each man died. There were only two other people who knew the truth of that night. One was her brother-in-law, who still suffered his own scars, and the other was a man she had hoped never to encounter again.

It appeared that the Reverend Lucien Broughton had returned from the pits of hell to which she had wished him.

Now she wasn’t just angry, she was deathly afraid.

Chapter Thirty-nine
The Spinning Orb

Each web began with a single strand
, a bridge by which all others would be built and sustained. His original strand had grown over time, fed carefully on his own sense of injustice, and out from there had come the structural threads, the foundation on which revenge could be built, one sticky strand at a time.

Each stage took patience, but he understood that waiting and planning and taking the time to utilize each step of that plan was the only guarantee to capturing the prey you truly wanted. Years had gone into the framing of his web, the finding and training of the right people through which he could begin undermining the House of Kirkpatrick. The radius threads then were laid, the small holdings at the outer reaches of His Lordship’s empire into which he had placed people, the little flies that were his own, and through them he would feel every vibration, come to see every weakness, every crack through which an able spider might creep. And then there was the careful, slow spiral of the auxiliary thread, the hidden pathway that allowed him to build the silken trap in parallel while keeping himself safe but close enough to observe who came along the more dangerous path.

There were obvious prey, and then there had been some surprises. Jamie’s own will had given him the most desirable prey, had placed her near the center of the web like a beautiful, fragile butterfly whose sheltering calyx had been shorn away, leaving her open to the winds of fate. He knew not to underestimate her though. Other men had and lived—or rather not lived—to regret such folly. He enjoyed this contest, for under the tutelage of his own arch-enemy she had become a far more interesting opponent than he had previously found her. Still, she was only the foretaste of that for which he truly hungered.

Philip had not been a surprise, though his venomous spite was certainly a bonus. He had groomed Philip for a long time, making the insinuating threads both inviting and tight, so that the man was entirely his with which to toy, to maneuver, and yet the fool had no notion of himself as anything other than the predator. There was time enough to disabuse him of that notion, and for now his ego blinded him most effectively to the true design which he wished no one to see except Lord James Kirkpatrick himself—and him only when the entire arrangement had played out and he would be able to understand what had been done to him and those he loved.

The real surprise on that sticky pathway, the treasure, had come along unexpectedly, and he had barely felt the vibrations of it at first. But when he had… oh, when he had… it had been like finding an exquisitely jeweled dragonfly trapped by its own iridescent beauty within those winding silks. A dragonfly that didn’t understand its own power and therefore was malleable by one who did.

Some time back, James Kirkpatrick had destroyed all his careful planning, had in one stroke wiped out his work, forced him to destroy his own creation, to crawl backward eating his own web as spiders were forced to do occasionally in order to rebuild. But a smart spider knows that during daylight one hides at the edge of the web or retreats into a secret nest, one foot delicately poised on a signal line invisible to all other eyes, so that no movement, however slight, goes unnoticed. He had kept his original bridge, and that was all a good spider needed to rebuild the entire structure.

And so he did just that—rebuilt his web slowly, walking it by the secret pathways, checking and re-checking his lines, keeping in his peripheral vision any bright flashes that would warn of the enemy. There had been none such in a very long time, for the enemy was lost, prey to stranger forces than he himself had foreseen. Meanwhile, there were all sorts of interesting vibrations to keep a spinner entertained through the long days and weeks and months of waiting. Time to let the lines out so that they might wind back into places both old and new, fasten themselves and begin to do their damage. He was aware too, through those filaments, of which were the dangerous ones that landed in his web, for their vibrations were different—like those of a wasp, something a spider had to be far more wary of tangling with. The British agent who had seemingly fooled everyone but himself, the woman’s husband, the more volatile factions within the Redhand Defenders and the fat Jesuit. Wasps of varying degrees of threat.

For now, he held the most interesting pawn hostage to himself—that beautiful bejeweled dragonfly that he had brought into the web through careful coaxing and golden promises. A dragonfly guided along the threads with such careful, delicate handling that the dragonfly never even guessed at his true purpose. For such a creature could end the game, bring it all down prematurely, the way an early hard frost could kill a spider. But that, of course, was not how this game was played. One waited for one’s true opponent to return to the web. One allowed him time to struggle against the ties that would bind him inextricably in a weft from which he would never be able to free himself. That was going to be his greatest pleasure. For his patience was greater than that of the spider, that could after all succumb to seasons and time or simply fall to a predator greater than itself. Only he understood all the intricacies of this web. Only he knew every drag line, every net, and every sticky silken prison to which his prey could be consigned.

For only he understood the elements of this game fully. Only he knew the motivations, the injustices, the great wrongs that underlay it and why it must be played out to its very end. Fate had decreed it so long ago, and Lucien Broughton was a great believer in Fate.

Chapter Forty
Two’s Company

For much of his life Pat Riordan
had been an incurable, if cautious optimist, but of late he was finding his optimism at a low ebb. How he was to keep the Fair Housing Association going and get through law school, not to mention working with his brother in order to pay his bills, he did not know. Seated behind his overflowing desk at the former institution, he looked up towards the dingy ceiling, appealing to whatever power might be up there. But if it were hovering outside in the pissing rain, it could hardly be considered a sane entity. Then again, the Irish weren’t terribly picky about the mental health of their many saints and deities. Take Saint Columban for instance, a man prone to trouble if ever there was one, but deified by the Irish Catholic Church.

He was tired, and it was a bloody filthy afternoon outside, making the thought of the trip home terribly unappealing. He often kipped here though, for the wee home he had shared so briefly with Sylvie was merely an empty shell now, a place to store his clothes and occasionally eat a meal and rest his head. He slept more soundly here, despite the cramped quarters and the inadequate length of the chesterfield.

He looked around the small space where he often grabbed naps between bouts of studying and keeping this mad wee business going. Though he didn’t suppose he could fairly call something that leaked money like a sieve a business. He suspected Jamie funded it partly as a tax deduction. Instinctively, he crossed himself as he always did when he thought about Jamie and his long, inexplicable absence, and offered a wordless prayer for the man’s safe return.

Fifteen minutes later he was well stuck into his studies, even if there were times the law seemed like a mess of snakes wherein a man could not tell head from tail—much less which head belonged with which tail—when the door opened letting in a gust of rain and cold air. He looked up in surprise to find the woman who had piqued him so recently at Casey’s house. Just Kate.

She stood in the doorway, umbrella in hand, clad in a smart raincoat and sensible shoes. She looked in his direction without the slightest trace of a smile. Rather, she looked thoroughly businesslike.

“Can I help ye?” he asked, thinking it wasn’t likely she had come seeking his help for housing and at the same time wondering what it was she did want, and how she had managed to get herself to his own doorstep.

“Kate Murray,” she said briskly. “Perhaps ye’ll remember meeting me at Pamela’s house a few weeks back?”

“I could hardly forget it,” he said tartly, immediately regretting his tone, for a soft wash of pink ran up her neck into her face.

“I’m sorry. That’s hardly a hospitable greeting.” He rose from behind his desk and walked around to where she stood. “Ye’ll come in, please. There’s a chair here, an’ then perhaps ye can tell me how I can help ye?”

He helped her with her raincoat and she sat, waiting for him to sit back down, for she faced herself toward his vacant chair as if she saw its exact placement. She was neat as two pins in a white twinset and charcoal grey skirt. He sat, folding his hands together and placing them on the desk. The woman made him nervous though he couldn’t have said why, and he was also suddenly aware that his face was in need of a shave, and his sweater had seen better days.

“Now then,” he cleared his throat to give himself time to form his next thought and the woman hopped in neatly as a bandbox sprite, cutting off his words before he could even think them.

“I’ve come to work for ye.”

“Pardon me?” he said, for whatever he had been expecting, it had not been this.

“I’ve come to work for ye,” she repeated, as though he were particularly slow, which admittedly he felt in her presence. “Can ye honestly say ye don’t need the help?”

He opened his mouth to protest but realized he really did need the help, though he was mystified about how she thought to provide it.

“I don’t mean to be indelicate,” he began, and wasn’t surprised to be cut off before he could finish his thought.

“I won’t be able to take on the paperwork, but I can deal with people for ye. I’m good with people. I’ll answer the phones, make the tea an’ keep the place tidy.”

Pat wondered how she knew the place was untidy—which it was to an egregious extent.

“Ye don’t need to pay me, if that’s what yer worried about. I don’t need the money. I’d just like to do something useful other than keep house for my brother. I thought perhaps ye could use the help.”

Her tone had become a tad snippy and Pat sighed. He looked toward the ceiling, thinking the universe had an odd sense of humor in how it arranged to answer one’s appeals.