Teresa Medeiros (42 page)

In a rocking chair across from the man he’d once known as Arthur Finch sat Arian, her dark head inclined toward a scrap of embroidery. She worried her bottom lip between her pearly teeth, all of her concentration centered on drawing a delicate needle through the thick linen. A modest white cap perched atop her frizzled curls, covering all but the most rebellious of them.

Tristan’s first sight of her—vibrant, alive, and keeping what appeared to be a most agreeable company with his sworn enemy—struck a massive blow to his heart.

As they watched, Arthur lifted his head and spoke. Arian rose, smiling her sweetest smile.

“I’ll kill her,” Tristan said evenly. “They won’t have to hang her. I’ll strangle her with my bare hands.”

He started up. Copperfield caught his coattails. “Would you hold on just a minute? Watch!”

Tristan dropped back to one knee, stroking his jaw, and watched Arian glide to the hearth. She wrapped a towel around her hand and unhooked the heavy kettle. Steam flushed her face just as his loving had once done, making his gut knot with a longing doomed to go unrequited for all eternity.

Arthur laid the book aside and favored her with a paternal smile. Tristan growled beneath his breath.

The unrelenting sweetness of Arian’s smile should have warned him. Arthur held out his mug. Arian upended the kettle and cheerfully dumped a golden river of hot apple cider over his head.

Tristan grinned.

Arthur jumped to his feet, his face purpling with rage. Arian backed away from him, clapping her hands to her cheeks with an expression of dismay that could have softened even the flintiest heart. Her lips flew and Tristan could well imagine her mocking apologies.

Arthur flung his chair away and stalked her with a mute snarl. He cornered her against the hearth and drew back his fist.

Tristan didn’t realize he was halfway across the yard until Copperfield’s weight slammed him into the dew-dampened grass.

Cop’s breath burned hot with desperation against the back of his neck. “He didn’t hit her. Do you understand? He wanted to, but he didn’t do it.”

They both held their breath as a door slammed a short distance away and Arthur’s shoes clattered on the stoop. He passed within a few feet of them, muttering a steady stream of curses, the black book still clutched in his hand.

When he’d disappeared down a narrow path, Tristan rose and gave Cop a shove. “Follow him,” he whispered. “Don’t let him out of your sight and make sure you stay out of his.”

Rubber tomahawk in hand, Cop obeyed, darting through the shadowy trees with the fleet grace of his Cherokee ancestors.

Tristan’s heart contracted as he turned back to discover Arian standing at the window only a few feet away, her fist pressed to her mouth. Her gaze searched the murky sky as if any scrap of starlight might cheer her. Her silent sigh fogged the glass, then she was gone, leaving the parlor in a sprawl of overturned chairs and spilled popcorn.

Arian’s tread was weary as she climbed the stairs to her bedchamber. She’d been banished to Linnet’s sparse bedstead after her first night in his care. He preferred to have his secret attic with its perfumed candles and satin sheets readily available if he chose to return from the village with one of his whey-faced chits in tow.

She rested her candle on the table and sank down on the stool in front of the mirror. Her own spitefulness had exhausted her. She plucked off her cap and ran a brush through her hair. The warped glass threw back her reflection in foggy waves. Was it her imagination or was her image growing more blurred around the edges? Even the mirror seemed to know her time was running out. The sliver of moon that had kept her hopes alive throughout the week had finally waned to darkness.

Even making her father’s life a private hell was losing its charm. The wolfsbane she’d slipped into his broth last night had failed to provoke even a tiny thrill of excitement. Perhaps she was becoming as wicked and jaded as he.

The brush tangled in a stubborn curl. Arian blinked back tears, terrified of losing her reflection in their mist. She laid the brush aside, too heartsick to lift it for another stroke. Preying on her weakness, Tristan moved through her mind like a shadow.

She closed her eyes, her longing so miserably keen she could almost smell the wintry scent of his cologne
drifting through the open window, almost feel his warm fingers brushing her nape. A familiar weight settled between her breasts.

Her eyes flew open. The emerald amulet nestled against the stark bodice of her dress, glittering with brilliance even in this dim light. She lifted her astonished eyes to meet Tristan’s gaze in the mirror.

He stood behind her, yet did not touch her. Arian’s hands began to tremble. Encroaching madness must surely have conjured such an impossible vision. Tristan with the close-cropped hair of a Nordic prince. Tristan with gaunt hollows beneath his cheeks that spoke of endless days and sleepless nights. Tristan with a sandy beard framing his sensual mouth. Unable to resist the temptation, Arian reached behind her to touch it.

It felt prickly and soft and indisputably real to her disbelieving fingertips.

He caught her hand and brought it to his lips. “Now, love, you’re free to use Warlock to blast me into infinity if you’d like. I can’t say I don’t deserve it.”

Arian sprang to her feet, snatching her hand back. “How nice of you to drop in!”

His mocking shrug was endearingly familiar. “I was in the neighborhood.”

To occupy her shaking hands, she marched over to the window and slammed it. She hugged herself in the lingering pocket of chill air. All the tender reunion scenes she had envisioned in the past month seemed to have gone up in a puff of smoke at Tristan’s abrupt appearance. Instead, she felt feverish and contrary, much as she had after surviving a bout of cholera as a child.

The man had just crossed three centuries. The least she could do was offer him some common courtesy.

Tristan watched in helpless bewilderment as Arian twisted the window curtain into a useless rag, her shoulders even stiffer than her collar. “I’m afraid my father
has stepped out. You may wait for him in the parlor if you like. I’ll fetch you some cider.”

“No, thank you,” he replied, a smile spreading across his face as he realized what was troubling her even before she did. “I’ve seen you pour.” He dared to draw nearer, near enough to inhale the intoxicating scent of woodsmoke and cloves from her hair. “I didn’t come for Arthur, Arian. I came for you.”

She blew her nose on the curtain, her voice suspiciously muffled. “Well, you took your own sweet, bloody time about it, didn’t you!”

Groaning, he slipped his arms around her waist and rubbed his bearded cheek against her smooth one. “Oh, Arian, turn me into a frog or fry me with a thunderbolt, but for God’s sake, please don’t cry. I don’t think I can bear it.”

She melted into the cradle of his arms. “I hope you don’t think I’m going to forgive you just because you hold me this way. You can kiss my ear and rub your face against my throat all you want, but I’m not …” Her voice faded to a breathless sigh. She lifted her head, baring her throat to the prickly caress of his beard.

“Arian?”

“Mmmmm?” she murmured as his lips found hers.

“I love you.”

Tristan drew her into his embrace, kissing her sweetly parted lips before they could utter a protest. He spread his palms against her slender back, caressing her warmth beneath the scratchy homespun. Her hands crept around his neck. He tasted salt in their kiss and knew that one, or maybe both of them, was crying. They might have kissed like that for the next three hundred years if a rock hadn’t crashed through the window in a shower of leaded glass.

Tristan hurled her to the floor, shielding her with his body.

“Come out, devil’s whore! Come out and bring your demon lover!”

Bits of glass tinkled from her hair as Arian lifted her head. “Oh, no! Not Goody Hubbins!”

Tristan dove for the candle, extinguishing it between two fingers before peering around the edge of the curtain. Even from where she huddled, Arian could see the sea of torches bobbing on the lawn below.

“Join us, witch, and face the righteous wrath of God!”

Arian saw Tristan’s face stiffen with raw hatred at Linnet’s sanctimonious shout. She crawled to the window, her knees cushioned by her thick skirts, and tugged at his pants leg. “Let’s go, Tristan. Now! We’ll use Warlock to flee to the future. Back to New York, where we both belong.”

“We can’t,” he said flatly.

“Why not?”

“Because the bastard has Cop. He was supposed to follow Arthur without being detected.”

Arian peeped over the window ledge. “And a fine job he’s doing, I’d say.”

Copperfield hung next to Linnet, caught in the burly embrace of a tanner. The man’s meaty fingers were poised at Cop’s throat, as if he’d like nothing better than to snap his neck like a twig.

Arian rose, gazing up into her husband’s shadowed face. “So you weren’t interested in Arthur, eh? Only in me?”

He shot her a guilty glance from beneath his gilt-dusted lashes. “I had to know when he was coming back to the cottage, didn’t I?”

She tightened her lips. “You have an answer for everything, don’t you? Well, why don’t we give your precious Arthur a taste of the wrath of God?” She stroked the amulet, its familiar contours imbuing her with courage. “I daresay a lightning bolt between the eyes would singe that smirk off his face.”

Tristan drew her away from the window, his grasp on her shoulders both firm and gentle. “Can you guarantee
you won’t accidentally singe off Cop’s ponytail? Or turn that hulking thing that’s got hold of him into a man-eating crocodile?”

She nodded hopefully, then shook her head, knowing Tristan was right. They could hardly afford to trust Cop’s life to the erratic performance of the amulet.

Tristan’s eyes narrowed as he considered their dilemma. “I want you to go to the window. Tell Arthur you’ll surrender peacefully if he’ll come and escort you down. Alone.”

Unable to bear the thought of losing Tristan so soon after finding him, Arian gripped his coat in her frantic hands. “But if he knows Copperfield is here, he must suspect that you’re here.”

“That suits me just fine,” Tristan replied, sliding his hand beneath his coat. It emerged gripping Sven’s sleek Glock 9-millimeter. The modern weapon looked as out of place as he did in this provincial time.

“What about Warlock? We can’t risk him getting his hands on it again.”

Tristan assessed the sparse room, his gaze brightening when he spotted a loose plank in the floorboard. “Hide it under there. We’ll come back for it as soon as we rescue Copperfield. It shouldn’t take very long. Those self-righteous prigs will probably scatter once we expose Linnet for the miserable fraud he is.”

Arian obeyed, feeling a twinge of loss as she tucked the amulet beneath the board. But Tristan was there to press a fierce kiss of encouragement to her trembling lips.

Drawing in a bracing breath of his cologne, she stepped up to the window.

“Saucy bitch!”

“Demon’s concubine!”

“Satan’s whore!”

She flinched as she recognized Constable Ingersoll’s bellow. Behind Linnet, Charity Burke fell to the ground, her nubile body writhing and twisting in a convincing
travesty of a fit. The curses swelled to screams, then died abruptly as Linnet cut his hand through the air, demanding silence.

“Miss Whitewood,” he called up to the window. “The righteous folk of Gloucester have suffered enough beneath the burden of your malicious attacks. Now we have captured this stranger who confesses to knowing your name. You summoned him from hell, did you not?”

“ ’Tis common knowledge demons love to take the form of Indians,” Goody Hubbins shrieked.

The tanner gave Copperfield a meanspirited squeeze.

“Enough!” Arian cried. “I shall entrust myself into your hands if the good Reverend will come and escort me down.”

Disapproving murmurs rose from the crowd. A crowd of men surged around Linnet. He inclined his head to hear their pleas, then pushed his hat back, baring his high forehead.

His voice rolled like thunder over the enthralled crowd as he closed his eyes and lifted his arms heavenward. “Oh, mighty and merciful God, grant me your power! Bless me with the strength to resist the wiles of this cunning child of Satan.”

Behind her, Tristan growled.

Linnet lowered one hand. A sturdy Bible was slapped into it. “I march into battle against wickedness alone and unarmed except for Your most marvelous and holy Word.” He opened his eyes and met Arian’s gaze, smiling tenderly. “Do protect thy most humble servant from the rampant hag that lies in wait for him.”

He darted for the front door. The mob trailed behind, shouting encouragement. As Linnet’s footsteps pounded up the stairs, Tristan caught Arian around the waist.

“Behind the door,” he commanded.

She obeyed, pressing herself to the wall while Tristan braced his shoulder against the door. Her heart
slammed against her rib cage. She pressed her eyes shut, whispering a fervent prayer of her own.

A firm knock sounded on the door. Linnet’s voice was just loud enough to carry to the expectant ears of the mob. “Open the door, my child. I have come to escort you to your destiny. Put yourself in the Lord’s merciful hands and you will be cleansed.” He shifted to a hissed whisper. “Let me in, you miserable brat or I’ll have them send up that meddling Indian’s ponytail—with his head still attached to it!”

His expression resolute, Tristan stepped back from the door and nodded to her. She reached out and swung it open, using the sturdy oak as a shield. Instead of the quivering female he had expected, Arthur found himself face-to-face with the man he had once tried to murder. A man who had aged only ten years to his twenty, still retaining the full vigor of manhood while his own was already beginning to fade.

He drew in a choked breath and Arian had to bite her skirt to keep from bouncing out from behind the door just to see his face. She contented herself with fixing her eye to the crack between door and frame, although that gave her little more than a restricted view of the enormous Bible clutched in Linnet’s white-knuckled hand.