Shadow's Curse (6 page)

“Is the housekeeper our only watchdog?” he asked.

She moved behind him to cut the ropes at his wrists. “I heard Mr. Corey telling my brother he’d left two men to guard the house. They don’t trust that I won’t attempt to escape again.”

“Again?” Freed of the ropes and the silver chains threaded through them, he slowly rolled his shoulders, rubbed at the deep black welts encircling his wrists.

“Three attempts. Three failures.”

“Four times the charm?”

“Let’s hope so. Are you sure you’re fit to travel? You don’t look well.”

“The silver weakens me. I’ll recover—sooner or later.”

“Hopefully sooner rather than later. We don’t have all night.”

“Haven’t left the attic, and you’re already nagging me? Here we go.”

With a deep gulping inhale and a few expletives, he shoved himself to his feet, dragging the blanket with him. Callista stood poised, waiting for him to topple over or faint dead away.

“Mother of All, even my hair fucking hurts,” he grumbled while casting her a swift measured glance as if gauging her reaction. When she said nothing, he gave a good-natured snort and a shrug. “You really aren’t like any woman I’ve ever met.”

“Another compliment?”

“Most definitely.” He tugged at the coat wrapped around his hips. “Did you bring me clothes?”

“I thought you’d . . . that is, that you might just . . .”

“You thought I’d shift?” He grinned. “I like how your mind works, sweet Callista.”

She opened her mouth to protest. Snapped it shut with an audible click.

He agreed to her scheme. He was helping her escape. He could call her anything he bally well wanted.

*  *  *

The shirtsleeves stretched only as far as David’s forearms and the boots pinched his feet, but the breeches
fit, and the three-caped greatcoat Miss Hawthorne had purloined from her brother’s closet was voluminous enough to hide any style faux pas as well as the death-on-a-stick pallor he was currently sporting. “What do you think?”

Callista threw a darting glance over her shoulder before turning around, though personally he thought it was a bit late for modesty on her part. There wasn’t an inch of his body she hadn’t already seen. “Oh dear.” A tiny smile curved the very edges of her mouth, her eyes crinkling with unvoiced laughter.

He ran a preening hand down his shirtfront.“That bad?”

“Absolutely horrid.” She sobered. “Are you certain you can’t just . . . you know . . . change? It might make our escape easier.”

“The word is
shift
, and no, I can’t.” He inhaled his first comfortable breath since she’d cut his bonds. Not a deep breath yet—his lungs still ached too much for that—but since breathing at all was a minor miracle, he’d not complain. “Three days of silver poisoning my body, you’re lucky I’m upright.” When her brows began to draw together in a frown, he grinned. “No worries, Fey-blood. I’m not completely without resources.”

Clearly unamused, Callista pursed her lips and gripped the handle of her satchel as if she might swing it at his head.

This only caused him to grin wider. He’d always been perverse that way.

“Can we leave now?” For the first time, David sensed the rising panic in her voice. It was obvious that the potential dangers Callista Hawthorne faced
by escaping with him paled in comparison to the definite dangers she faced if she remained here.

“We made a bargain,” he said, placing his hands on her shoulders, forcing her to look up at him. “Trust me.”

Drawn to her eyes, he found himself focused on the strange shimmering intensity he saw there, an almost hypnotic sweep of storm clouds flickering across her gaze. The longer he looked, the more dizziness set the room around him swaying. But instead of narrowing, his vision expanded until it felt as if he might walk directly into her mind. Images flashed in front of him: a woman kneeling, her hair falling to shield her face, a man’s broad form rising behind her, a dagger clenched in his bloody fist.

David dragged a horrified breath from his lungs, bowels cramping in terror.

“Trust you? I’ve heard that line before,” Callista said quietly. “Forgive me if I remain skeptical.”

She blinked, long black lashes sweeping down over the rose of her skin, and his odd light-headedness receded. Even so, he kept his hands upon her shoulders a moment longer, just to reassure himself he wouldn’t fall over when he let go and undermine all his encouraging words.

They had been this close only once before, during the time she took to cut his bonds. Or should he say, Callista had only allowed herself to get this close to him that one instance. Since then, she’d maintained a civil but definite distance. But now, he felt the warmth—and the tension—of her body where his fingers rested. He noted the soft roundness of her cheeks and the fullness of her coral lips, but there were also deep smudges beneath her eyes and a tightness to her
mouth. Whatever experiences pushed her to seek his help also hardened her expression to wary suspicion and made her seem older than her years. But for that one small half-smile, quickly snuffed, he’d have said she was incapable of anything less than a scowl.

He took her skepticism as a personal challenge. The doubt he saw in her face made him want to prove himself. But it was the dimple at the edge of her lips and the clean linen scent of her hair that drove him to kiss her.

That or he was a whole lot woozier than he thought.

As kisses go, it was less than spectacular. In fact, it was a bloody great failure. Instead of melting against him, eyes fluttering closed in sweet surrender, she went rigid as a tent pole, shock in her gaze, lips pressed tight. The farce ended when she jammed her bag up between them, catching him a blow to the ribs with one brass-reinforced corner.

He stumbled backward with a gasp and a curse. Nearly tripped over a hassock and fell arse over end. Not the reaction his advances usually caused.

“That is not part of our bargain,” she said, fairly quivering with rage.

“So I surmised,” he wheezed as he rubbed his chest. So much for breathing easily. “What do you carry in that damned bag? A pair of anvils?”

She merely tightened her arms around the valise. “If you’re ready, we should go. I want to be far away from here before Branston comes home.”

“Fine, but this long trip to Scotland just became a hell of a lot longer.”

She eyed him with another of those world-weary stares that, for some reason, made his chest bunch with a strange, unexpected ache.

“Agreed,” was all she said before she turned away.

As they crept downstairs, David used his study of the floor plan to keep his mind from the throbbing in his head, the churning of his stomach, and the bone-deep ache of his body. His former army scout’s eye absorbed details such as number of rooms, position of stairways, and points of entry and egress. And, along with the strategic intelligence he gathered, he couldn’t help but notice how the spartan shabbiness of the upstairs chambers gave way to an over-the-top vulgar elegance as they descended to the first floor’s public rooms.

Every window and doorway was draped in heavy dark velvet and gold cord. Ornate chairs upholstered in damask and silk sat beside gilded and veneered tables more appropriate to a ducal household than a down-at-heels town house in Soho. The walls were plastered floor to ceiling with paintings in every period and artistic style as if someone had purchased them en masse from a Petticoat Lane market stall. And hanging above it all like a sickly-sweet fog was the cloying odor of dying flowers.

“What the bloody hell kind of business are you in?” he whispered, trying to breathe without gagging.

She shot him a sidelong glance even as she surprised him by taking his hand in a firm clasp and tugging him toward the door. “We need to hurry. I don’t know how long Mrs. Thursby will stay asleep.”

The entry hall lay wrapped in flickering shadows from a lamp set upon a side table. A clock ticked the turn of the hour. No sign of an irate housekeeper or either of the guards supposedly stationed on the premises, though loud snoring issued from the front parlor. He raised his brows, signaling his question. She shrugged
in response, then pointed once at the front door and once behind her at the passage to the kitchens.

He eased back the bolt and turned the latch, cracking the door an inch while he scanned the street, stretching with every Imnada and human sense for the telltale footstep, the betraying scents of sweat and gin and human flesh, even a revealing stir of the air or unexplained shadow.

Nothing.

Shoving the door wide, he stepped out on the stoop. Lifted his head, eyes swiftly adjusting to the darkness. Body drawn taut against any hint of danger.

Not a whiff of minion anywhere. The way seemed suspiciously clear.

Where were Corey’s men hiding? And why? He’d have felt better had they leapt from the bushes, guns blazing. This eerie calm rippled fear over his skin and tensed already painful muscles.

He jerked his head toward the street. “There’s a hackney stand at the end of the block. If anything happens, don’t stop and don’t look back. Tell the driver to take you to Cumberland Place. I’ll find you.”

She gave a last frightened shift of her eyes before nodding. For some reason he reached for her hand again, but she avoided him by drawing her hood over her hair and adjusting her grip upon her satchel. He dropped his arm to his side, unsure why her continued rejection disappointed him but dismissing the brush of emotion with practiced ease.

Before he could whisper the order to go, she scurried out into the street and he’d no recourse but to follow.

One street down.

Five hundred miles to go.

Stunned at the ease with which they’d made their escape, Callista sat ramrod straight on the seat of the hackney carriage, her bag perched on her lap, her gaze traveling between the window and the man sprawled in the seat across from her.

No. She needed to stop thinking of him as
the man
. He had a name—David.

David . . .?

Heat crept into her cheeks. Heavens. She didn’t even know his last name . . . or really anything about him at all. She was placing her trust in a man she’d known for a few short days.

A man who, according to every book on the subject, wasn’t supposed to exist. The heat sank into her stomach, quivered between her legs. A man she’d kissed.

All right, if she were to be strictly accurate, he had kissed her and she had startled like a scared deer—or a silly little girl—and nearly ended her escape before it had begun by knocking him unconscious.

But he’d caught her off-guard. Never in a million years would she have imagined he’d lean down, his breath warm against her cheek, and press his lips to hers. She’d been stunned. Not just that he’d taken such a liberty—after four years living within the rough-and-tumble world of traveling players, churlish drovers, and itinerant chapmen, and the last six months avoiding the odious Mr. Corey and his gang of hired thugs, she knew more than she cared to about men’s base urges. No, it wasn’t his kiss that had surprised her. It was the fact that for a split second she’d almost enjoyed it. Her knees had nearly gone weak, her stomach had just about flipped, and her chest had more or less fluttered like she’d bats beneath her ribs.

Either she’d almost enjoyed it, or she was coming down with the flu.

“I don’t know your full name,” she blurted, trying to fill the silence with something beyond her turbulent thoughts.

“No,” he replied, “you don’t.”

She waited a moment. “Is it a secret? Are you a wanted fugitive?”

His lips twitched. “I am now.” He leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. “No secret. I just enjoy hearing you call me David. You say it with a bit of a shameful breathlessness.”

“I do no such thing.”

He smirked, and she made herself look out the window lest she clobber him with her bag—again.

Still, it wasn’t long before she found herself casting swift glances his direction through downcast lashes. There was just something about him that drew
her eye. Something beyond the golden Adonis looks, though these were sadly dimmed after days locked in the attic. His face flashed in and out of shadow as the hackney passed the occasional streetlamp or lit doorway, but the grim angles and deep gorges of illness were abundantly obvious, as was the greenish-gray cast to his damp skin. Each breath was an ominous wheezing rattle, punctuated now and again by a hacking cough. In fact, one could definitely say the man looked and sounded sick as a dog.

Seeking reassurance, she opened herself to the power within her, but there was no twinge along her bones to indicate death loomed near. The man might resemble a walking corpse, but he was very much—and very disturbingly—alive.

She stifled an almost-hysterical bubble of laughter. Now, not only had she called him
the man
, but she’d likened him to a dog. A more than apt simile as it turned out.

She continued to sneak glances at him in between adjusting her cloak or shifting on her seat. Strange, how human he looked. In fact, as humans went, he was a breathtaking, heart-stopping specimen of one. Or would be once he recovered. No doubt women fawned for a single glance from those steel-gray eyes and simpered for the mere touch of his lips upon the backs of their lily-white hands. If they only knew that their knight in armor was a wolf in disguise.