Unleash the Curse: An Imnada Brotherhood Novella (7 page)

She welcomed him with bold invitation, her gold-shot gray eyes greedy for all he might give. He knelt above her, pausing for a drawn-out excruciating moment to enjoy the flushed cheeks and smile on her parted lips, before he sheathed himself inside her, gasping as she closed around him, bliss already licking at his limbs as it moved like liquid fire inward toward their joining.

It had been so long. Six months . . . an eternity. She locked her legs around him, arching into his thrusts, meeting him, matching him, taking him deeper and faster, her head thrown back, her neck taut, her hands skimming beneath his coat and his shirt to the hard plane of his chest.

Every frenzied stroke wound him tighter as they found their rhythm, a hard and furious plunge of bodies as if they sought to outrun the sobering reality awaiting them. He ignored the battering of doubts, shoved aside the uncertainties assailing him. She would be his. He would hold to that one thought. He would let nothing shake him from his one conviction.

She bucked beneath him, every muscle in her body going taut as she arched off the bed like a bow, her skirts rucked and ruined, her hair a wild tangle falling from its pins. Her eyes were black with desire, her mouth a scarlet bruise from his kisses. And before she could scream her release, he covered her mouth with his own, kissing away her gasping cries, her body racked with tremors.

Her release sent him spinning over the edge, his mind fracturing, his body alive with an inferno’s rage. Magic seemed to thicken the air, dance along their skin, sparkle with each shuddering breath they took, each trembling aftershock. He cradled her against his side, her head upon his shoulder. Her hand remained resting upon his bare chest beneath his shirt. “Your heart is racing,” she murmured.

“Funny. I thought it had stopped.”

She leaned up and kissed his cheek.

He opened his mouth, words boiling up his throat, and then her lips found his mouth for another kiss that left him reeling, and just like that, his arms were empty. She rolled onto her feet, shaking out her skirts with a forlorn sigh. Repinning her hair with deft feminine expertise.

“They’ll be wondering about our absence soon. I can’t return to the others looking as if I’ve been tossed in a hay barn. I’ll sneak away to my chambers. If anyone asks, you can tell them you saw me on my way up and I make my apologies but I have a headache. Katherine will understand.”

“I . . .”

She turned from the mirror and the look he’d seen on her face only a moment ago was gone. Vanished beneath a frozen calmness like the still waters of an icy lake. “Did you think we could stay up here all night?” She smiled, and he wondered if she was more disturbed than she let on. Then the expression was gone and he was left to guess whether in his unthinking rush to claim her, he’d only pushed her farther away.

She leaned to eye her face in the mirror, a hand to her throat. “This was a moment out of time. Somewhere out there is a woman with blood as blue as yours who will make you the wife I never could.”

“There are ways.”

She straightened, her spine straight, her posture rigid. “I once told you I would be no man’s whore. That’s still true. I won’t be kept as a sop to your libido or a shameful secret on the side.”

“What makes you think that’s what I had in mind?”

Her gaze shimmered as she reached for the door latch. “Because whatever else you may be, Sebastian Commin, you’re no fool.”

*   *   *

Faces wove in and out of her consciousness, some as clear as if they stood beside her . . . a fine-boned blonde, her eyes green as new leaves . . . a sultry, black-eyed brunette . . . an older woman, her mouth bracketed with years. Others were mere gray shapeless forms with no recognizable features. There were eight of them. All of them reached for her. All of them called to her. All of them wore Christophe’s bracelet.

Sarah gasped as she came awake, heart racing, dread shivering up her spine. The nightmare clung heavy and vivid. The taste of blood in her mouth where she’d bitten back a scream. The scents of pine and damp moss and grave earth filling her nose. The feel of rough stone at her back as she crouched in the lee of a high crumbling wall running north onto the moors. And the sight of eight figures standing beneath a starless sky within a raised earthen circle, faces contorted with terror then agony as an enormous shadow overtook them one by one, leaving naught but smears of oily gelatinous muck behind.

She felt the cold of the shadow like a dagger through her chest and rubbed a palm over her skin, half expecting to feel the roughened flesh of an ugly scar. Nothing but the soft linen of her nightgown beneath her fingers, lace bunched at her throat. Still, it would be hard to close her eyes while the sinister images lingered.

She rose from bed, whispering the household spell that flickered the candles in her room to life. Paced as she fought a childish urge to seek out a comforting embrace against the bogeyman. Sebastian was the last person she should run to for anything. Being together in the same house had been dangerous. Being together in the same room had been a complete disaster. And yet, he was the one she longed for. The only person who could erase the shade of her nightmare.

She sank into an armchair with a huff of frustration that turned into a hiss of pain as something hard dug against her ribs. The
Debrett’s Peerage
and Baronetage
she’d been reading earlier had wedged itself between the cushions. She drew it free with a wry smile. If anything could lull her to sleep while dousing any ideas of a future with Sebastian, this book was it.

She opened to a page at random. Viscount Falmouth. Married to the daughter of Henry Bankes of Kingston-House. Another page. Another viscount. This time it was Lord Torrington who married the daughter of Phillip Langmead, Esq. She couldn’t seem to stop the turn of her thoughts. She found herself seeking the entries out one by one . . . daughter of General Graeme, sister of Lord de Clifford, daughter of the Earl of Leitrim, daughter of Sir Hugh Dalyrimple. The names went on and on, as did the titles. Not one of them less than a gentlewoman with a sterling reputation to match her superior pedigree. Certainly, no actresses from the crowded tenements of Thames Street and Billiter Lane. No fishmongers’ daughters bearing the wharf stench of brine, blood, and tar.

There was a reason for that absence.

Even if hard work and determination had won her a new life far away from the mean streets of her birth, Society would scorn such a lopsided union. Women like her had their position within the accepted order, and countess was not among them.

Sebastian might believe he could ignore his peers’ derision, but could she bring that disgrace down upon him? If she truly cared for him, could she allow him to ruin his future for her?

She’d contemplated marriage to Prince Christophe knowing these same social obstacles lay before him. Why then did she shrink away from marrying Seb?

She stared out the window onto the snow-frosted park, barely registering the bright moonlight glittering across the high rugged hills to the west or the flicker of a torch moving between the black arms of the trees below. Instead, she pictured Sebastian’s hard chiseled jaw as he argued with her, the curve of his full lips when he teased her to laughter, the wicked desire in his eyes as he sheathed himself between her legs. These things made her want him.

But it was the way she saw herself when she was with him that truly touched her—clever, talented, determined, courageous. As if he drew the best from her. As if he made her feel like the great lady she would never be, no matter how many diamonds or silks she wore.

And there was her answer.

She did not love Christophe.

She loved Sebastian.

The pain in her chest she’d felt upon waking had dulled to a hard tangled knot and a sick uneasy feeling in her stomach as she considered another option; she could accept Sebastian’s protection and become his mistress. A situation that, until now, she’d scorned as beneath her contempt, but twice now, she’d let her runaway emotions get the better of her. So could she really continue to maintain that argument?

She pressed a hand to her midriff, but the ache and the questions remained.

At what point did she give up the pretense of self-righteous virtue? Where did she draw the line between her moral fortitude and her desperate heart? Or had point and line already been crossed and all that remained was acceptance?

She thought of the years of hard work as she’d struggled to outrun her upbringing and already knew her answer, making the pain in her chest expand a hundredfold.

*   *   *

The second time Sarah woke, the dream was more vivid, the dread tightening her shoulders more painful, and the panic burrowing frozen into her center enough to double her over.

“Naxos,” she whispered.

The word curdled her stomach while a wild thought singed her brain. “The door,” Lucan had muttered, but another term for door was gate. Could he have been referring to the Gateway? She’d seen more than one reference in her research to the Imnada’s tales of a mythical passage between worlds. The shapechangers were said to have come through this portal to earth, their souls traveling back to the ancestral homeland at their deaths. Perhaps she needed to adjust her focus and start there.

And what better time to start than now.

She’d not find sleep again. Not now while her mind reeled with nightmare visions of amorphous shadow monsters and her heart ached for the bitter loss of a dream. If she went now, she’d have hours to herself with none to ask questions or wonder at her sudden scholarship. None to question the tears swimming in her eyes or the waxen pallor of her face. Mind made up, she dressed quickly, bundling her hair up in a loose bun, donning a heavy velvet dressing gown against the drafty halls of Sharrow House.

A few sconces still flickered as she made her way downstairs. A musty breeze lifted the hairs at the back of her neck, whispered gibberish in her ears. Ignoring it, she hurried across the hall and pushed open the door to the library. Four walls of shelves stretched up to be lost amid the shadows hugging the ceiling. Thousands of books. A needle in a haystack.

She pulled the first volume from the first shelf. Settled into a chair by the light of her candle. And opened to the first page.

*   *   *

Sebastian turned the key in the lock, securing the door to the tower behind him. Lucan’s fever had broken, his wounds knit closed, but he’d yet to wake. Suspicions and questions banged against Sebastian’s brain, twitching already taut muscles, shortening an already frayed temper. Keeping him awake when the rest of the house dreamt the night away. Sarah believed Christophe was involved; a theory he’d have discounted out of hand if not for her mention of a conversation about Sir Dromon Pryor. That he could not dismiss so easily. Not knowing the deadly truth about the Cornish baronet.

First thing in the morning, he’d seek the prince out and question him personally. The man’s slippery demeanor grated on Sebastian and the way the conceited bastard stared at Sarah as if he owned her made him want to knock his teeth down his throat, but he’d gladly swallow his distaste to keep Sarah from attempting any more late-night snooping.

He lifted his candle high as he made his way through the house toward his bedchamber. Sleep would come, but it would bring no relief. It never did. Dreams of Sarah would haunt him until he woke frustrated and impatient with the scent of her in his nose and the taste of her on his tongue. Cock hard. Temper short.

A shadow peeled away from the far end of the corridor outside his room. A barefoot figure in a silken robe, hair cascading loose down her back, hand upon the latch. For one wild hopeful moment, he thought his dreams had come real and Sarah stood outside his door, but the moment passed, the woman turned, and he recognized Lady Melissa. She disappeared into his room, her steps silent, her purpose clear.

Exhaustion and bitterness had him toying with the idea of surrendering to her machinations and ending his misery. After all, if love was not to guide his decision in matrimony, did it matter who he wed? Lady Melissa would gain her husband. His mother would gain her countess. His family duty would be done. He could finally lay aside his wild unreasonable fantasy of a life with Sarah for the calm, respectable boring future mapped out by centuries of Commins before him.

He got as far as placing a hand upon the bedchamber latch before recoiling at the notion. There was such a thing as taking family responsibility too far. He might not have the freedom to marry the woman he loved, but he would at least marry a woman he could respect. He’d spend tonight on the couch in Duncallan’s study. Uncomfortable, but better a few hours of minor discomfort than a lifetime leg-shackled to Lady Melissa Bracken.

Retracing his steps, he made it through the gallery and past an empty night nursery before he realized his error. She need only be found tomorrow morning in his room for the ensuing scandal to send him to the altar. He either needed to remove her, or . . . he paused outside the last door before the stairs, a wicked smile tipping his lips . . . he needed a credible alibi of his own.

Sarah had called him a fool and perhaps he was. But once they were back among the chaos of London, she would go her way. He would go his. This might be his last opportunity to hold her in his arms, damn the future and family expectations.

He lifted the latch to her room. A fire burned low in the grate and the drapes had been pulled against the cold. A figure upon the bed stood up, a lazy smile lighting his saturnine features as he took aim with Seb’s stolen flintlock. “Did you lose your way, my lord?”

Sebastian’s stomach tightened, his hands curling to fists. “Where’s Miss Haye?”

“That was my question for you. I found this in my room tonight.” Prince Christophe held out his hand to reveal the ornate jeweled bracelet Sebastian had last seen clamped around Sarah’s wrist as she played a hand of whist. “Lord Deane, you’ve come between me and my betrothed once too often. I think it’s time I make that work to my advantage.”