Lord of Shadows (25 page)

He put a hand out in an awkward attempt at comfort, but she whirled away from him.

“Don’t ever touch me,” she warned in a cold, ringing voice. “I’m not some untried virgin dazzled by your Hercules looks. And no doubt, if Lady Sabrina knew the truth, she’d be as horrified by you as I am.” She drew herself up, tall and athletic and radiating violence.

“She does know the truth.”

“Does she?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I don’t care how you do it, but find me Brendan Douglas.”

“And St. John?”

“He arrived in Dublin last spring.”

“That’s it? I knew that much already. What of his movements before last spring? What of the brand on his arm?”

“I’ve seen no brand and I can’t exactly ask him to strip for me. As for his movements, bring me news of Douglas and we’ll talk.”

As much to keep his hands from around her neck as
anything else, he plunged them into the icy water of his washbasin. Splashed himself awake. Cooled his growing temper.

“Do you want Scathach’s help or not?” she demanded.

When he turned back, she’d gone.

Both hands braced against the edge of the nightstand, he stared into the speckled, cracked mirror. Looked for some vestige of the man he’d once been in the stern angle of his jaw, the cruel set of his mouth, the empty hell-black of his eyes.

Dragging back his sleeve, he glared at the brand on his forearm. The crescent pierced by a broken arrow. Máelodor’s signature. His mark of ownership. As binding as any slave collar.

His mind made up, he turned the mirror inward. Rolled his sleeve back down.

Helena Roseingrave was right. Sabrina didn’t know anything about him.

Nothing at all.

Sabrina left the Ogilvie townhouse on St. Stephens Green with the same stunned exhaustion experienced by battle-sick soldiers. A sort of heavy torpor and a feeling as if her very brain had shaken loose from its moorings. The incessant questions. The hidden pitfalls. The constant search for imperfections. In her dress. Her speech. Her manners.

“That went well,” Aunt Delia chirped as they were shepherded into a closed carriage for the few short blocks to home. She huffed into her seat, wrapping a pink striped shawl over her shoulders. Fiddling with the string of pearls choking her double chin. “The Misses Ogilvie are always so pleasant. Though they have to be, don’t they? Miss Ogilvie
with that horrible flat nose that makes her look like a toad. Miss Henrietta with that sallow skin and those dark circles. Their mother’s at her wit’s end, trying to secure proper marriages for them.”

“I thought their mother was your especial friend.”

“She is, darling. Letty Ogilvie and I were at school together. Had our come-out the same year. But really, she could have done so much better for herself.”

“And you told me you wanted me to take my cue from the Ogilvie girls.”

“Well, of course. They may have little in the looks department, but they’re well regarded. And it wouldn’t do your countenance any harm if you were seen in their company. You’d shine like a diamond between two coals, darling.”

What on earth did her aunt say about people she didn’t like? Sabrina shuddered to think.

Her shoulders quivering in silent laughter, Jane took a sudden unwavering interest in the doings of a man selling hot spiced gingerbread.

At least this trip to Dublin had achieved one thing: Jane no longer carried a haunted air, nor did she jump at shadows. Sabrina would cling to that positive. With white knuckles.

Arriving back at Upper Mount Street, Sabrina shed her pelisse and bonnet onto the waiting footman, frantic to escape Aunt Delia’s barbed comments and incessant pettiness.

The man gave a subtle clearing of his throat. “Excuse me, Lady Sabrina, but there’s a gentleman to see you. He’s waiting in the upstairs parlor.”

Daigh. Had to be. A wild fizz spread up from her belly until she buzzed with stupid excitement. Made more stupid by his embarrassing rebuff.

“Thank you. I’ll see him right away.”

Lifting her skirts, she took the stairs slowly, gathering herself together. She’d be dignified. Distant. Show him she didn’t care.

At the closed door, she drew up. Smoothed her skirts. Checked her hair. And grasping the knob firmly, opened the door.

To an empty room. An open window. And a card upon a table.

Had to run. Back when I can.

B.

“You again.” The little man glared, but his heart wasn’t in it. Perhaps persistence had begun to wear him down. “Haven’t I told you to clear off? His Lordship’s not home. Mrs. Norris is out, and I’ll not—”

“Tell Miss Fletcher her brother is here.” He shrugged himself deeper into the doorway and out of the misty drizzle.

The man must have thought Daigh was planning on storming the castle. He threw himself into the breech, his height in no way detracting from his bulk or his strength. “Brother? Thought you said your name was MacLir.”

“Half sister.”

“Mm-hm,” the man grunted, clearly unconvinced but allowing him to step out of the weather and into the entry hall. “Wait here. I’ll see if she’s home to”—he raked him with another fearsome glare—“half brothers.”

Daigh would be quick and clear. Ask Sabrina about Brendan. Pass on the information to Roseingrave. Stop St. John before he could carry out his threats. Get Scathach to send him back to the grave.

He would not put forward explanations or apologies for last night. He would not imagine Sabrina as she’d been, glassy-eyed with desire, her flesh like silk, her curves perfect in his hands. Nor dwell on the hazy mirage of an impossible past where he’d enjoyed all that and more.

Didn’t matter. Didn’t happen.

There’d be no regrets to worry over in the grave.

Sabrina read the note over though she knew the few words by heart. Examined for the hundredth time the front and back as if somehow an invisible message might be hidden there.

Obviously Brendan and Aidan had taken the same course in letter-writing. Be brief and ambiguous as possible. But why now? Why after seven years with no word?

“My lady?”

Mr. Dixon stood at the drawing room door, looking grouchy and flustered. “There’s a gentleman below.”

Brendan had returned. She shoved the note into her apron pocket.

“Says he’s Miss Fletcher’s half brother.”

Daigh.

She flushed crimson. What on earth could he want?

“But she’s out with Mrs. Norris. Should I be sending him on his way?”

“No. Yes. No,” Sabrina stammered. “That is to say, I’ll see him.”

Mr. Dixon’s lips thinned to a disapproving line, but he nodded.

Sabrina had moments to compose herself and then he was there. His giant’s frame filling the door. His dark head
ducking beneath the lintel. His face pale and sullen in the gray afternoon twilight.

Her excitement hadn’t subsided. Instead it had increased tenfold alongside her mortification, and she rose to greet him, hoping she didn’t look as discombobulated as she felt.

“I didn’t expect to see you again.” She forced herself to meet his gaze, though her cheeks burned. “Or did you catch sight of St. John skulking at the corner?”

Her attempt at blasé fell flat. His hands curled to fists and, if possible, his features darkened.

Her throat constricted, nerves making her insides squirm. How did she ever think she could get through this encounter without feeling a fool? She’d begged him—and wasn’t that humiliating enough?—but no, it got worse. He turned her down. What normal male turned down easy sex? None according to what little she knew of the male species. Which said what about her charms? It was a good thing she was destined for a life devoted to the
bandraoi
. If she couldn’t attract a man by throwing herself at him, how was she ever supposed to attract one with nothing but small talk and coy smiles? Perhaps she was safer from Aidan and Aunt Delia than she thought.

“Please, sit down.” She gestured to a chair.

Daigh glanced at it but made no move to accept.

Her annoyance erupted into full-fledged anger. And she blurted the first thought that popped into her head. “You’re safe from any unwanted overtures. I promise not to push my odious presence on you again.”

“Your odious . . .” He gave a bark of grim laughter. “Is that what you think?”

“What else am I supposed to think?”

“That I’m not a lust-crazed scoundrel who’d ruin your future for my own pleasure?”

He sank into a chair across from her, and she noted the tired lines dragging at his features, a strain pulling at his body and his emotions. He drew close to breaking.

He rubbed at his left forearm as if scrubbing away a stain. “Sabrina, I don’t know how or why, but you’re the woman I see when I close my eyes. I know your scent. I recall the sparkle of your smile, the way your body feels as it moves beneath me. And the way mine feels when I take you. Flashes of an impossible life with you fill my head. I can’t stop them. I don’t want to. But it’s just that—impossible. I won’t let you throw yourself away on me. Not when your future still lies before you.”

She swallowed around the knot choking off her breathing. He dreamt these things. As had she. They were as much a part of her memories now as his. Perhaps that’s why it had been so easy to let her desires overpower her sense. He was no stranger. He’d already been lover, husband, and friend. Impossible, he’d said. And she knew it. But it didn’t make the memories of that life she’d glimpsed any less powerful.

“He hasn’t come right out and said it, but my brother wants to marry me off.”

His body barely flinched before he answered smoothly, “You’ll make someone a very lucky man.” A corner of his mouth tipped in a rueful smile. “But it won’t be me.”

She hardened her heart. “It won’t be anyone. I don’t want to marry. Ever.”

“That would be a shame. You have much love to offer.”

She had no answer and couldn’t speak anyway.

He pulled himself to his feet. “I came to ask one thing,
and then I’ll leave.” He paused, his jaw hardening. “Your brother Brendan—have you heard from him since you arrived in Dublin?”

She caught back a breath. Her hand falling unconsciously over her apron pocket. Did Brendan’s return and Daigh’s arrival fit together somehow? Could her brother be preparing to create his own
Domnuathi
? No, she wouldn’t believe it. He could never initiate such madness and misery.

“If I’m going to stop Máelodor and St. John, I need to find him, Sabrina. Soon.”

“You think he’s part of all this?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care. It’s Máelodor I want. I think Brendan can aid me.”

Seven years and her family still sought to drag her back into its destructive orbit. Suck her into the tragedy and the heartbreak and the agony she thought she’d put behind her when she entered the order.

Would she ever be free of her father’s sins? Her brother’s crimes? The long shadow that still seemed to hover above them all?

“Have you had word from him?” Daigh prodded. “Anything.”

Her hand dug into her pocket. Crushed the note, the edges of the paper biting into her fingers. Brendan was alive. He’d come home. But was he any safer than he’d ever been? The
Amhas-draoi
still hunted him. So now did Máelodor and Gervase St. John if Daigh spoke truth. Would revealing what she knew help or hinder? Not that she knew much more than she ever had. Except that he’d be back. Hopefully bearing explanations.

Daigh’s intensity charged the air. Crackled over her skin.
Sparked against her mind with dread and anger and fear and shame.

Should she? Shouldn’t she? She closed her eyes, sending up a prayer for guidance.

The front door opened and shut.

“Sabrina, darling! We’re home!”

The gods—and Aunt Delia—had spoken.

Lord and Lady Kilronan arrived in the middle of the night. Sabrina had vague recollections of voices and steps in the hall, orders being given, and harried servants to-ing and fro-ing. She’d ignored it all by shoving a pillow over her head and burrowing deeper into her bedclothes.

This morning she could no longer ignore it. She’d been dressed, styled, and prepared for sacrifice by her lady’s maid, who seemed to think His Lordship’s marriage had been oh-so-romantic. A grand passion just like that Romeo and Juliet couple.

She decided to forego informing the poor, deluded woman how that relationship had ended, and rose from her dressing table with the grim smile of the condemned.

Aidan was happy. That was Sabrina’s first startled sense, peeking around the drawing room door. Not beaming and goofy grinning happy, but a quiet satisfaction that eased his usually stern features and softened the intense light in his gold brown eyes.

He stood braced in front of the hearth, hands clasped behind his back, gaze wandering in horror over the cottage flower wallpaper, the dainty, lace-encrusted furniture, the herd of cherubs whose painted eyes all seemed to focus on a nearby sculpture of Zeus in naked splendor, thunderbolt in hand.

Despite his otherwise relaxed exterior, Aidan looked as though he’d like to hurl a few thunderbolts of his own. “What was she thinking, Cat? It’s like a damned Paris brothel in here. And what is that horrid smell like overripe fruit?” He sniffed the air by the mantel where purple and blue flames glimmered in the grate. “I knew I should have arranged things myself.”