Must Have Been The Moonlight (32 page)

“A spider? Like this?” The big Irishman slapped a bulky forearm on the table. Thick fingers nimbly rolled up a heavy woolen sleeve to display a black widow, engraved in his muscled forearm. “I have more if you want to see.” His teeth were white. “No one notices tattoos here.”

“I’m relieved that you’re a man without fear.” Michael leaned both elbows on the table. “Because the people who brought this to London make your street toughs look like model citizens. They took out a whole group of British soldiers, women, and children in the caravan with which my wife was traveling. They have no qualms about slaughtering men like animals.”

“Fin,” Smith whispered, nudging the other man with his elbow. “Listen to what he’s sayin’. Think about what happened last week.” He looked at Michael. “There were two
murders on the docks,” the jeweler explained. “Not that killings are a strange occurrence on the docks, but these were different.”

“The two men were slit from aft to stern with a knife like none of us ever seen,” Finley said carefully.

“The victims weren’t from around here,” Smith said.

Her eyes on Michael’s profile, Brianna felt her stomach churn. Did he think the deaths relevant? Smith’s eyes shifted nervously to hers. “Do you want that I should approach the dealer and sell the amulet?”

“I don’t care what you do with it. Throw it into the Thames.”

Michael pulled her from the chair. “As of now, my wife is no longer in charge of this little investigation. In fact,” he gathered up the passenger list and the amulet and shoved both into his pocket, “I’ll speak with you shortly. But at the moment, I need to get her home.”

“How dare you treat me in this way!” Brianna tried to pull away.

“Provoke me now, wife, and I’ll bloody welcome the fight.”

Michael escorted her from the dining room as if she were a recalcitrant child. She could feel the hard muscles of his arm beneath her fingertips. His body thrummed with fury. “Do you understand the chance you took coming here?” he demanded, his voice harsh in her ear.

The common room had grown rowdy and smoky. Pulling Brianna into the protective custody of his presence, he pressed his way toward the door. A barmaid called to him and asked if he wanted ale to warm him, but he brushed off the woman with a lighthearted promise of another time. People shifted as he passed and, as many had started to recognize him, a slow sense of reverence began to ripple over the crowd. These people knew Michael because they worked and lived in the surrounding boroughs.

Never more than at that moment was Brianna aware of his
station, the importance of his image, and her lack of judgment in coming here. Lowering her head, letting the hood of her cloak swallow her, she felt a heavy weight descending upon her shoulders. On top of everything else, she’d disgraced Michael. She had hurt him, the way she always managed to hurt everyone she cared about.

The door opened, blowing in a man on a gust of snow. The Ravenspur carriage sat across the street, the drivers and footmen bundled in heavy woolen cloaks, hats, and gloves. Six fine blacks stomped and snorted restlessly. Someone had secured Brianna’s mare from the livery.

“Will this carriage make it back to Aldbury Park?” Michael called over the wind to the driver.

“I wouldn’t chance it until the snow dies down. But it does look like the worst is passing.”

“The London train leaves in an hour. You’ll be taking my wife back to Aldbury without me.”

Brianna clutched the edges of her cloak, unaware as Michael took her arm and brought her back inside. He managed to let a room from the owner of the establishment. “It ain’t much, but it’s a bloomin’ sight more than most people downstairs have,” the tavern maid said, grinning up at Michael with mute interest as she set down the water pitcher on a narrow dresser. “Will ye be wantin’ something else, guv’nor?”

Michael looked over her pert blond head at Brianna, who stood by the window, glaring at him. “Whatever is being served for dinner will be fine.”

The door shut behind her, and Michael whirled a chair, tipping it against the latch.

“That girl liked you. Why don’t you just go with her?”

“Don’t tempt me.” He walked to the window, next to Brianna, and edged aside the curtain to look outside. “For all the tender affection we share, I have no doubt the company will be warmer.”

“You’re insufferable, Michael.”

“And you are the very soul of a gentle and loving wife, who holds no qualm in lying to her husband.”

“You knew what I was when you married me.”

“Which is why you are not accompanying me to London, sweet.”

He eased out of his coat and laid it on the table. Then, fighting for control, he dropped the amulet atop the sleeve before turning to face his wife. He held the passenger manifest in his hand. Unbelievably she had secured the list.

At first she just returned his stare. Then he saw the sparkling brilliance of her eyes beneath her hood before she turned away from him. She knew damn well, what the amulet meant. He wanted to shake her, press her skull between his hands and force sense into her brain. “You should not have been going through this alone.”

“You’ll need to telegraph Christopher,” she instructed him.

“I know what I have to do. Your brother didn’t send his wife back without arranging some security at his estate.” He couldn’t believe that she would dictate to him his bloody responsibility.

“You opened my mail. Why didn’t you just confront me?”

“I tried, and listened to you babble about Smith being your jeweler. Even if you were going to meet him in a secret assignation to pick up another ring, I didn’t believe that you would be foolish enough to ride here alone. But I should have known you better than that.” He dropped the list on the table. “Do you really believe Finley is an acquaintance of your brother?”

“My brother didn’t always lead such a sterling life. There are things in his past that he’ll never tell anyone, not even Alex. Trust me, if Finley wanted to get rich, he could have just taken the amulet. It’s probably worth more than he could get for me or you, at least until the summer revenues start refilling the family coffers.”

Her knowledge of Aldbury finances surprised him. But he wasn’t in the mood to be impressed with his young wife.

Hell, he was cold, and set about lighting the stove. The coals caught and began to heat.

“You’re going back with Finley and Smith, aren’t you?” She’d sat down on the bed and burrowed into her cloak. “You want to know more about that warehouse.”

“I have four men accompanying you back to Aldbury Park.”

“And the amulet?”

“Belongs in the hands of the authorities.”

“To authorities who presumed you were guilty of that which you’d been charged in Cairo. Where were they in defense of you against Omar?” Her voice became passionate. “Where were your precious authorities when I watched you get shot down in broad daylight? When you were alone fighting for your life? You already suspect someone followed us back from Cairo. The amulet is evil. And it’s mine to destroy.”

“Tell me, Brianna,” he knelt on one knee, so close beside her he could smell the roses in her hair, “that is, if you are capable of honesty in this matter. Do you really believe getting rid of the amulet will make this problem go away?”

“I don’t know.” She dropped her head into her hands. “If you had known about the amulet that afternoon, would it have made a difference?”

Michael sat next to her, his thigh touching hers. He was bothered that he possessed no memory of the actual event. He remembered nothing until he’d awakened to find his grandmother sitting next to the bed. Maybe had he known about the amulet, he would have seen the threat before he’d allowed the danger to come so close. “It doesn’t matter.” He stared down at his hands. “Your feelings and mine at this point are irrelevant.”

“What
are
your feelings, Michael?”

He looked at his wife, surrounded by shadows, and felt as if someone had hit him in the gut. Then as if drawn by a will stronger than his own, he pulled her into his lap. “I’m not accustomed to others managing my affairs and problems,

Brianna.” He tipped her chin, forcing her to look up at him. What had begun that morning in Cairo when he’d let her oversleep had now opened a gaping chasm in his feelings. He hadn’t understood himself around her then any more than he understood his actions now. Tonight had proven his vulnerability, and had scared him.

She hadn’t seen the atrocities done to Pritchards and the others on that caravan. Nor had anyone ever found the women and children who had disappeared, or the hundreds more who vanished forever in the desert.

He tried to think sanely, while the different factions of his heart warred inside him. He was angry that she’d come out here by herself. That she undertook an investigation that was too bloody dangerous and out of her realm of experience, risking her life.

“It was never my intent to lie to you, Michael.”

“Yet, you had so little respect for my name that you decided to appear here alone regardless of the physical danger to you. Regardless of social impropriety? What consequence is a lie on top of that, Brianna?”

“Oh!” She wriggled in his lap, to get free, but he held her tight. “Do not take the moral high ground with me, Ravenspur! Mr. Don’t-Bother-Me-With-Rules, who waggled a gun at a sheikh and incited an international incident. For your information, since I’ve been at Aldbury I’ve been poked and prodded by a dozen modistes, endured etiquette lessons, frogs in my shoes, frogs in my bath, rude servants, all in the name of Aldbury honor. Were I a man, you would welcome my aid as a course of loyalty and friendship.”

Her voice was filled with hurt, and he was truly sorry about the frogs, but there was little he could do about any of that. “Except you are not a man. You’re my wife. I’m not willing to see you die, certainly not in defense of me.” Tipping her chin, he forced her to look at him. “And furthermore, if you ever engage in the manner of folly you have today, I’ll lock you in your room to rusticate until your hair grows gray.”

“You can’t lock me in my room. That’s…illegal!”

“Not if I’m in there with you.”

Brianna weighed the warning in his eyes, not because she feared acting on her passions, but because she knew instinctively that he would do exactly as he promised. “You are such a bastard, Michael.”

“You knew what I was when you climbed over your balcony and decided to pay me a visit in the middle of the night. Though I may be guilty of influencing the outcome that day, you, sweet, were guilty of executing the sin. I’d say that we both made our proverbial bed.”

They stared at each other, suspended in time, the wind whipping against the window. His fingers at her nape held her.

He was aware of her nails digging into his coat. Then slowly, haltingly, Michael lowered his lips to hers.

He kissed her. Each thrust of his tongue, seeking hers, deepened his foray inside the hot shelter of her mouth.

He felt her bottom pressed against him, tasted the texture of her mouth, felt the pattern of her fingers clinging to his arms, and inhaled the scent of her presence. She was his air to breathe, and as he kissed her, he sought fervently for what he wanted to find inside her, finally pulling from her sweet lips the soft sound of his name.

Without breaking the kiss, Michael reached up to dim the lamp, returning his hand to cup the fullness of her breast, bounty in his palm. She turned her head, but he followed, capturing her lips, and offering no apology for his behavior, brought her down on the mattress.

They were fully clothed, though he’d deftly managed to unlace her bodice and the corset beneath. Her cloak fell away and she suddenly came up for breath, pressing both hands against his chest as if suffocating. Her startled eyes were wide. “There are those,” she gasped, still entangled within his arms, “who take their newfound power too much to heart. I would not let your station rule your lust.”

“Ah, my fey wife speaks.” His mouth burned a knowing path to her throat. “A moment ago I was sure that your
tongue was incapable of such mundane work as framing words.” He observed her, unmistakable heat in his eyes. “We can survive the next few hours in some manner of conjugal harmony or you can resent me and freeze. It’s up to you.”

“Why are you behaving like this?”

Holding himself up on his elbow, he stilled her fight with his arm. Tension charged the air between them. He sensed the battle inside her, no less fierce than the one he waged with himself and, watching her turn her face away, he recognized a helplessness he’d not felt before.

Yet, he was glad she was distraught, for she had shown so little fear and emotion earlier, she’d become a danger to herself. “You fight for everyone else, Brianna. With no thought to yourself.”

Her dark hair fanned the mattress. “You don’t understand—”

“I do understand. More than anyone in this world, I understand. You have to trust me to finish this. Do you trust me?”

His hands moved to caress her. She grabbed his fingers.

“Then you still defiantly hope to carry the day. You seek…what, Brianna?

She tried to turn her face away from his probing gaze and Michael felt a slow burning fury—or frustration to reach her. He had her pulled flush against him. He could feel the wild pounding of her heart.