Must Have Been The Moonlight (31 page)

“I’ve never had carnal thoughts about a servant before.”

“You aren’t supposed to come here until this lodge is finished,” she chastised him. “You promised.”

He smoothed a stray lock of her hair. “I have to talk to you.”

“Lady Ravenspur.” A young girl came up behind Michael. “Where do you want the blue paint?”

“In the room above this one.”

“How many people do you have working on this project?” Michael asked, looking around.

“Twelve, not including myself.”

“From my staff?”

“Good Lord, no,” Brianna laughed. “They’re from the village. She’s Mr. Freeman’s granddaughter. Freeman is your stablemaster.”

“You just walked into the village and hired twelve people to come out here to work?”

“And a carpenter.” Brianna was especially proud of the carpenter. She turned and ran her palm over the new banis
ter. “I want you to hire him. I noticed the greenhouse is in need of cabinets.”

“This estate already has a carpenter.”

“With a deplorable manner no staff member should possess. How could your family have allowed this place to die such an ignoble death?”

“Brianna…” He shook his head. “It’s only an old house.”

“Filled with your history. You should see the artifacts I’ve found. They belong in a museum. How could you not be proud of your heritage?”

“I didn’t realize that you had something like this in mind. How did you get anyone from the village to come up here?”

Standing on the stair above his, her eyes were level with his mouth. “I asked.”

The shadow on his jaw darkened his eyes. “You never sleep, Michael.”

“Is that an invitation?”

“I wasn’t under the impression that you cared for such civil formalities.”

“Maybe, I’ve changed.”

“Your Grace,” a footman said from the open doorway. “The carriage is waiting outside. We’re set to leave.”

Brianna met her husband’s gaze. “Who else is with you?”

“I’m taking Caroline to Aylesbury for a hospital benefit. Her benefit. She’s staying the night with friends.” He seemed so casual about it all. Brianna dropped her arms. “I brought you these.” He handed her some letters. She hadn’t seen them in his hands until now, and took the moment to study them rather than look in his face.

His finger tilted her chin, and he bent slightly to look into her face. “I just found out about the benefit last night. I’m unable to ride a horse, Brianna. Since we’re headed in the same direction, I see no reason why I can’t drop her off. This isn’t a conspiracy to exclude you.”

Contentiously, Brianna flipped through the letters. When she saw Mr. Smith’s missive, she decided it was just as well that Michael was leaving. “Thank you for bringing me
these.” She dropped the letters into her apron pocket. “Why did you come down here? To say good-bye?”

He pulled her against him, his hands on her waist, hot through the thin cloth of her dress. Then he was moving his mouth over her throat, and she could feel his hunger surge through her body. “Who’s Mr. Smith?” he asked.

“My jeweler,” she said without hesitation, knowing that he was bound to ask and grateful that he hadn’t opened the letter. “He’s the one who designed your ring. His shop is on Bond Street.”

Nothing was a lie. He could look into her eyes and see only the truth of her words. But he didn’t look into her eyes. She almost wished he would so she could see what he was thinking. Except his mouth was doing shivery things to her throat, and her head melted back against her shoulders. She would have slipped her arms around his neck just to feel him hard against her, if not for the other people in the house.

“It looks like snow,” Brianna said, glancing behind him at the pewter-lined sky and willing the topic to change. “Just promise that you won’t get trapped in a blizzard with her.”

He raised his gaze from her mouth to her eyes, then stepped away. “Stay out of trouble, Brianna.”

Why would he say that?

A skein of alarm snapped her straight out of her idyllic haze, but his long purposeful strides had already taken him out the door. The wind whipped his dark woolen cloak around his legs, giving her a scant glimpse of his boots as he paused to look back at her just before he climbed into the carriage. She remained in the doorway of the lodge watching her husband ride off with his former true love.

B
rianna clutched her wrap against a frigid gust of wind that stirred up snow and blinded her as she raced across the street. It was only mid-afternoon, and she’d planned to be back by nightfall, but the weather could vastly change her plans. Snow had begun to fall. Quickening her pace, she walked past a group of men huddled around a fire they’d set in a drum, their mood anything but harmonious.

Shoving open a heavy oaken door, Brianna stepped into the common room of the traveler’s way-station. The inn sat a block from the London-bound train depot. Weeks ago she’d passed this depot on her way to Aldbury Park, but the stop had only encountered a patron or two. Now the place was packed. The acrid odor of smoke lingered thick in the air, pressing against her senses with the sound of laughter and clinking glasses of ale. A barmaid disappeared into an adjoining room.

Brianna walked beneath the large wooden stairway into a dining room where the smell of roasting meat had pervaded into the walls. Bent over a trencher, Mr. Smith sat at a corner table in the back. She knew he was intending to catch the six o’clock train to London, and her time was sorely depleted as
it was. Brianna pushed through the crowd, and he looked up as she approached.

“Your Grace…” Choking, he stood abruptly. “I thought the weather would keep you away. I ordered dinner.”

Brianna looked at the behemoth of a man who had also come to his feet at her approach. “This is Mr. Finley,” Smith said, introducing him before wiping his mouth with a napkin. “He and I have on occasion worked together. One could say that he is a friend of your brother’s.”

The big Irishman grinned. His front tooth was chipped. “You might even say we’re sparring partners when he’s in town.”

“Christopher boxes with you?”

“I’ve tried to add character to his pretty mug, but he refuses to cooperate.”

Brianna sat across from Mr. Smith. “I think my brother must have led a secret life.”

“It’s because of him that Mr. Finley decided to help,” Smith explained. “I didn’t know if you’d get my delivery in time today.”

“What have you found out?”

Finley withdrew something from his pocket. Setting it on the table, he unwrapped the cotton cloth. Light flashed off the sapphire stone as he slid the amulet in front of her. “To say that this is very valuable and illegal for ye to have is an understatement, colleen.”

She refused to touch the amulet. “How do you know this?”

Finley and Smith exchanged glances. “We went to an expert. Mind ye, we didn’t tell her who our client was, and she didn’t suspect.”

Brianna didn’t need a high degree of intelligence to consider their source. There was only one famed lady Egyptologist currently living in London. Lady Alexandra had been distraught upon hearing of the attack on Michael, and it had taken all of Brianna’s persuasive skills to keep her sister-in-law out of this muddle.

“If Lady Alexandra suspected for one moment who gave this to you, I would know. Why did she trust you?”

“It’s a long story, that goes back to your brother,” Smith replied. “Suffice to say, she knows I’m a jeweler, and would accept that I might have come across this. She also said that if I believed in curses, I would not wish to hold onto this. Frankly, I believe I’m in more danger of being mugged, which is why Finley is with me.”

Brianna’s studied the amulet. “What did she say?”

“This is a mate to others.” He pointed to a strange symbol below the sapphire. “It’s worn as a pledge to an eternal brotherhood.”

“You mean a sort of secret society?”

“Thousands of years ago the pharaohs in Egypt would put those individuals who they believed disagreed with them into a tomb filled with these bugs.” Smith cleared his throat and looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Scarabs, she called them. You can only guess that the victims would never be seen again. Eventually, the families of the victims gathered and became a secret brotherhood of blood. In retaliation, they would attack caravans that belonged to the pharaoh. It looks as if you’ve been invited into the brotherhood.”

“That’s utterly…absurd!” Brianna stared at them both as if they’d been conjoined at the head. “What do the other symbols mean?”

“The sapphire represents the Seeing Eye of Re. Nothing escapes Re.” Smith looked at Finley for confirmation. “This Re chap seems to be one of those all-powerful gods that know everything. According to her ladyship, this amulet was unearthed two years ago. She thought it was in Cairo.”

“What is the curse?” she asked quietly.

“It promises dire consequences if I don’t return this to its owner.” He slid the amulet back to her side of the table. “Which is you.”

Finley shrugged. “The Irish are a superstitious lot, colleen.”
His dark eyes bore self-effacing humor. “Ye know how we take our curses.”

“You’re not Irish,” she accused Smith, itching to give back the amulet. Someone could see the huge sapphire. How would she be safe then?

“Lady Alexandra mentioned the name of an antiquities dealer just arrived from Cairo. Appears they’d worked together in Egypt. He contacted her to tell her he was in town. A Mr. Charles Cross.”

“Charles Cross?” Her voice was a whisper. Brianna had forgotten that he’d said he was returning to London.

“He’s letting the widow Solomon’s old estate near Green Park in London.” He chuckled. “People stay away from the house.”

“Why?”

Smith tore off a chunk of bread with his teeth. “They say the widow was as beautiful as a golden angel,” he said over the bite. “Killed herself by jumpin’ off the roof ten years ago. People claim the house is haunted.”

Brianna had had her fill of superstition. “When did you say that Mr. Cross arrived in London?”

“Less than two weeks ago. Maybe if the amulet is as valuable as her ladyship says, he’ll offer to purchase it for a substantial sum.”

“But it’s illegal. Mr. Cross would never do that.”

“It’s a popular trade, your Grace. The market is huge among the upper class. Cross will most likely make a fortune.”

Brianna’s temples had begun to throb. “Do you have the other item I requested?”

Finley withdrew a packet from inside his coat, hanging on the back of his chair. It was the
Northern Star
passenger list, and it had cost her a bundle to attain. Brianna ran her finger down the three columns of names, two hundred passengers until she reached the Cs. Charles’s name wasn’t listed. She pursed her lips. The hood she wore covered her profile as she bent nearer to the candle on the table. Mr. Cross had told
her he was leaving Cairo even before he knew that she and Michael had wed.

“What about my husband’s shooter?”

“I can assure you that whoever attempted to kill your husband isn’t from here. Something like that would have been bragged about in every stew in London. Nor has your stolen ring shown up anywhere. Your Grace, there were no other ships that arrived in England from Cairo between the time your ship arrived and the day your husband was shot.”

Again her gaze dropped to the passenger list. “Someone followed us back from Cairo, didn’t they?” Her voice was flat, raw against her throat as she stared outside. “Someone who arrived on the
Northern Star
.”

Everything somehow connected to the amulet. But why had she been singled out?

Her mind whirled, her thoughts caught by currents of apprehension. She was one of two who had ever survived a caravan massacre. But Alex had not received a similar amulet. If someone had wanted her dead, Michael’s shooter could have completed the task himself. That someone wanted Michael dead.

“Your Grace,” Finley said, “perhaps it’s time that you talk to your husband. Seein’ as how you’ll be carrying that amulet, we’ll have to see ye safely to your home anyway.”

“He won’t understand….” She was suddenly afraid for not having told him what she was doing. Her gaze went out the window over Finley’s shoulder. A cold draft seeped through the panes. Snow had piled on the casement. What if she couldn’t get home tonight? How on earth would she explain that to him? Michael had told her to behave today.

Why had he said that anyway?

Almost as if the words had been a warning—

Brianna’s head lifted. Turning in the chair, she twisted around to let her gaze wander the dining room, touching each face as a sudden surge of alarm filled her.

He’d read Smith’s letter.

He’d known where she was going today.

Her heart skipped a beat, then thundered. She froze. Michael leaned casually against the back hearth, his boots crossed at the ankles, a galling study in British self-control. His heavy cloak seemed to give his shoulders unneeded width, and in his hand was an empty glass of what had likely been ale. He’d been watching her a long time, and Brianna now met the cold steel of his gaze.

Neither moved.

Being smart with an instinct for survival, she would gladly have fled were she confident of reaching the door before he could catch her. Then again, there was the welfare of her two companions to consider. A log fell with a shower of sparks in the hearth.

Michael pushed away from the wall, the dark woolen coat blending with his hair in the dull light. There was something about the predatory cadence of his walk that matched the look in his eyes.

“Should we stay or leave, yer Ladyship?” Finley calmly asked, clearly accustomed to facing men with murder in their eyes.

“It doesn’t matter.”

For suddenly Michael was at the table.

“Brianna…” Snow had melted in his dark hair and left it damp. He smelled like rain and smoke from the common room, and the combination was strangely reassuring.

He remained standing as she made the introductions, his tall form blocking the rest of the room from her vision. “They are doing work for me,” she said, suddenly tongue-tied for an explanation that justified why she was in the company of someone who looked like he could be a crime boss from London. “I hired Mr. Smith while in London.”

“This would be yours, your Grace.” Smith handed Michael the
Northern Star
passenger manifest. “You may want to look at that.”

Michael dropped into the seat beside Brianna and his knee touched hers beneath the table. Watching him remove his gloves, she reminded herself that there were more
important matters at stake than mounting a case to defend herself. Or that his very presence now seemed to relegate her to the irrelevant. But at the moment she couldn’t think of one.

Michael unfolded the papers. Brianna felt a growing heat building around him. She saw the vague hint of surprise crease his dark brows, and watched as he lifted his gaze. Finley’s silence made no secret of the illegal means by which the original was acquired and copied.

His gaze again pinned Finley’s. “And you said you were from where?”

“I didn’t.” Finley’s mouth eased into a battle grin. “But I’m sure ye won’t be having any acquaintance with the London borough from which I hail. I’m here because of her tie to Mister Donally.”

“I asked Finley to join us,” Smith hastened in an effort to cut through the tension. “Her Grace came to me about a piece of jewelry.”

Then Michael’s gaze fell on the amulet half hidden beneath her folded hands. His expression no longer frozen, Michael took the piece and held it to the candlelight. A breeze fluttered the flame.

His head turned, and she suddenly found herself in his gaze. Ever since Michael had left Cairo, he’d disappeared into the civil veneer of his new station, but the man who looked at her now was the man she’d seen that night at the watchtower oasis. Dangerous.

Unrelenting.

Furious.

“Where, Brianna?”

“I received it the day you were shot. Before I met you at the plaza. Someone had latched it to the carriage door.”

“Do you know what it is?” Smith asked.

“Why didn’t you say anything about this?” Michael asked her.

She wanted to tell him that he’d been in no condition to chase demons. He still wasn’t. But the argument seemed
illogical now, with him sitting beside her. In truth, she’d been protecting him because she’d been the one who was terrified.

“It belongs to an ancient blood cult in Egypt,” he told Smith without taking his eyes from her. “This is no reproduction,” Michael finished in a soft-spoken tone. “You’re in a lot of trouble,
amîri
.”

She glared up at him. “You opened my mail. Violated my privacy. I can’t
believe
you did that,” she whispered.

“Isn’t that rather hypocritical of you?” he returned in a harsh rasp. “Where were your bloody Joan of Arc principles this afternoon? You lied to me.” His tone held disbelief and something else, far worse.

“I didn’t lie.” She toyed fitfully with her velvet riding skirt. “Mr. Smith did design your wedding ring.”

Both Finley and Smith were listening with apt interest. Smith’s gaze was apologetic. “Maybe he has a point, your Grace.”

Michael shifted his gaze to Finley, who sat with his big hands around a tankard of ale, amusement in his eyes. “Do you know anything about a scarab tattoo?” Michael asked. “It looks like a spider to anyone who doesn’t know what it is.”