The Spare (21 page)

"Have you seen him?"

Edith adjusted the covers when Olivia was back in bed. "That I have."

"Well?"

"I could feel in my bones he repents his wicked ways and wishes he could put things right."

"Really, Edith." Before the present earl's father had decamped, leaving the castle empty and Far Caister without the considerable monies derived from the family's employment and custom, the last six or seven earls of Tiern-Cope enjoyed good relations with the locals, and perhaps a more benign Black Earl. It was a fact of faith and legend that the fourth earl preferred a bloody melee with the Scots over attending to his wife and children or to his duties as lord over his people. No one ever spoke of the Black Earl with anything but fearsome awe.

"What time will you be needing me in the morning?"

"I'm to Far Caister early to see Mama. I'll be up before you, I expect."

Edith curtseyed. "I'm happy to come whenever you call." At the door, she hesitated. "The Black Earl won't hurt you. He'd never do that. My word on it."

"Thank you, Edith." Olivia hid her smile. She wouldn't offend Edith's dignity for all the world. Besides, the assurance felt strangely comforting. She was not, herself, even half as superstitious as most people who grew up in the shadow of Pennhyll Castle. But, considering the history of the earls Tiern-Cope, and the fact that she was in a room of the original castle—for all she knew perhaps the very room where the Black Earl had met his death—she could not shake off the dread of something not of this world.

"Good night, my Lady."

"I'm not 'my Lady.' "

"You are to me."

"Good night, Edith." She blinked, and Edith was gone as quickly and as quietly as she'd appeared.

Five minutes later, she did fall asleep and leave behind the unfamiliar shadows of the present.

Olivia stood in a room easily fifty paces across. In her sleep, she smiled because she felt as if she'd been lost for years and had only now come home. Tourmaline silk shot with narrow lines of cream covered the walls. On the floor an exquisite rug of Chinese design. Bronze curtains hung floor to ceiling, tied back with tasseled ropes of silk. Twin pier mirrors hung on opposite walls, framed with gilt so bright it must be newly laid on. On the mantel candlesticks in the shape of dragons poised to breathe fire and smoke. The furniture shone with the gold of walnut and ash and fittings glittered whenever the shifting afternoon light hit them. The Tiern-Cope crest was carved in the marble above the mantel. A maid polishing the table looked up from her work. "My Lady."

"Edith?" But Olivia saw her mistake in the next instant. Not Edith, though the resemblance was haunting.

The servant curtseyed and swept up her rags. From a connected room, a man called to someone. Olivia turned her head in that direction, and when she looked back, the girl was gone. Memories whirled in the back of her head. Not frightening this time. The owner of that voice made her smile. He protected her, and he loved her. When she was with him, the world felt right. As long as she was with him, she was safe.

He entered the room, crossing at an angle to her so that she saw just his shoulders and a glimpse of flat stomach. Not a stitch of clothing covered him. Not one. She could see the backs of his thighs and his bare behind. Round and strong and firm. Dark hair cut short gave his profile greater sternness. She knew beyond certainty she had every right to be here, with him perfectly naked. Her heart swelled with joy, a feeling so intense she wanted to cry out to the world.

He stopped at the window and stood there, one arm resting atop the sash, staring at the hills rising toward Scotland. His arm came forward on the sash, and he shifted so that he faced her. "Well," he said in a soft voice that made her breath catch. His voice was velvet, liquid velvet, and she was drowning in it, filled all the way to her soul. That voice, a woman could love. "Good afternoon."

Bluer eyes she'd never seen. Nor more piercing ones. She drowned in eyes of an incredible, piercing blue. The light shimmered as a cloud crossed the sun. But this man, this man with eyes like frost on a window, whose eyes made battle-hardened men quail and who seemed so foreign to tenderness, made her complete. Memories simmered beneath the surface of her thoughts. Any moment she would remember something important, and the world would come right. But the harder she tried, the more stubbornly recollection eluded her. She did not want to remember unpleasant things, things that frightened her. She much preferred remembering she loved the man in front of her. No one could long forget that kind of emotion.

"Come here into the warmth," he said easily. He reached for her, taking her hand and pulling her toward him. "I've been waiting for you." He stroked her hair, shifting a bit to let the light fall on her. "For a very long time."

She, too, reached for him, following a line in the air along the length of the forming scar that marred his chest. A corona flared around him until she moved past the point where the sunlight hit her eyes. She stared at his chest, at the gashed and ill-healed flesh, and he, seeing her attention, took her hand and brought her fingers to his mouth. She felt the warmth of his breath, the pressure of his lips, soft and warm. "I wish you had never been wounded," she said. "Even though it brought you home to me."

He took one of her curls between two fingers and lifted it to his lips. "Dearest." He breathed in, a long, slow intake of air. At the moment of exhalation, he released her hair. He was very large, Olivia thought. But he never made her feel insubstantial or weak. His mouth curved without haste. She wasn't even certain at first that he meant to smile but, slight as it was, her stomach dropped straight to the floor. She would do anything, anything at all, to continue being the recipient of a smile like that. He glanced over his shoulder. "McNaught. There you are."

A short, round man came in carrying a silk dressing gown over the crook of an arm. "My Lord," he said, holding out the silver robe.

He drew on the dressing gown with an uneven shrug of his broad shoulders that protected his wounded side. "Were you looking for me, my own dear heart?" He spoke easily, but something lurked beneath the surface, a dark sort of purr, like a cat, inscrutably satisfied. "That will be all, McNaught."

The valet nodded and withdrew.

Her head ached a little, a sense of fullness, and she felt memory tugging at her, clamoring to be known. But she didn't want to know. She belonged here. Nowhere else. She pushed away every thought except him.

His mouth curved ever so slightly. She could have touched his chest if she'd not been paralyzed by his fiendish beauty and that slow, rare smile. He'd not fastened his dressing gown. Part of his wound showed, violent pink, an angry weal where something had pierced his skin. She lifted a hand in a warding, as if she could heal him with the gesture. A man might die from a wound like that. Her open palm touched his chest just below his heart. With no fabric between her hand and his chest she felt the smoothness of his torso, the hardness of muscle, the beat of his heart beneath warm skin. "You were wrong," she said. "You do so have a heart."

"It belongs to you."

With deliberate care he covered her hand with one of his and glanced at the bed. His smile sent a shiver from her head to her toes. Sebastian. The name flashed into her head, touching the world in which Lord Tiern-Cope was going to marry someone else. Something pulled at her, but she couldn't leave him. His hand over hers flattened her palm on his chest. He put his mouth near her ear. "You're a beautiful woman. Must I tell you that constantly? Ah well, I don't mind if I must."

"I'm dreaming," she said.

"Let me make your dream more pleasant still."

"Oh, do, please," she said.

"Happy to oblige you, madam." He bent close. Her hand was on his naked chest, and it felt wonderful. She felt more than a little dizzy. He touched the outside of her thigh. "Are your legs bare?"

She laughed in reply. He threw his arms around her, sweeping her up to carry her to a chair. When he sat, she ended up straddling him, her palms on the back of the chair. "Oh, my."

His hands slid beneath her skirts, finding her garters and moving past while he kissed her throat. She felt him pressing her down, but she resisted. "Must you torment me?" He growled deep in his throat. One hand left her waist to delve again beneath her skirts. "My little witch. Are you going to refuse me again?"

"Refuse you? Perish the thought. I can never tell you no."

She felt his fingers brush her inner thigh. His hips shifted, and then in one swift movement, he was inside her. Both his hands held her waist, guiding her, filling her. He reached up and unfastened the front of her gown. Her breath caught when one of his hands slid around to her most intimate part. He moved with her, his mouth finding her breast and then, without warning, she felt as if every nerve in her body concentrated just there, around him. "Yes," he said, right before his mouth closed on the skin of her neck.

She threw back her head and felt his lips slide down. She let the convulsion of pleasure take her, concentrated infinity in her body. When she could think again, she raised her head from his chest and looked into eyes of chilling blue. He remained inside her, and she felt suddenly uncertain of herself and of him. Memories rose up, crowding out the satisfaction, fear lurked at the edges. She did not want to know. "Hold me," she said.

His smile spread. "My heart," he said. He wrapped his arms around her.

"Sweetheart," he whispered. "My own. My life." The endearments made her shiver inside, pulling her inexorably nearer him. "My love." He cradled her in his arms.

"I love you," she said.

"I know." He slid his hands under her skirts again and before long, the world shattered like glass.

She awoke with a start, sitting upright in the bed with both hands clutched over her galloping heart. The curtain swelled and billowed with a draft that chilled, and darkness leapt from moonlit comers whenever the fabric lifted with the waft of air. She
had
closed the window. And locked it.

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January 21, 3:11
a.m.

Sebastian woke with his side throbbing like the devil. He'd slept away too many weeks of his life not to find himself perversely glad of his wakefulness. Awake he did not dream of his dying brother or tearful redheads nor hear the inconsolable cry of an orphaned child. Nor did he dream of Olivia Willow compliant in his embrace, of coming into her again and again. Jesus. The woman obsessed him even when he was sleeping. He felt a tightening of his belly when he thought about kissing her. Unwise of him ever to have kissed her, but Lord, they were good together.

The damned building made eerie noises. Groaning squeaks from floorboards settling. Creaks and thunks of centuries-old timbers swelling with the humidity of an unusually cold and wet winter. Through some acoustical whimsy the wind rushing over the battlements and past the windows howled with a sorrowful basso undertone before rising to a shriek. A man in agony. Sebastian had heard enough of that sound to last him a lifetime. To make matters worse, every so often there arose from the kennels such a keening and furor you'd think Satan himself rattled the bars. And perhaps he did.

The house was haunted all right, Sebastian thought as the wind rose to another chilling screech. But not by an earl murdered and dead these four hundred and seventy-five years. No. A far more recent soul haunted Pennhyll. Even the walls breathed Andrew's essence. His brother, who was not at all what he ought to have been. And now, here he lay in Andrew's bed thinking there must be some way to reach into the emptiness and retrieve the brother who should never have died, to make him explain what in God's name he'd done to Olivia, and why.

With a sigh, Sebastian threw back the covers and swung his legs off the bed. His side blazed, retribution for his recent overexertions. Slowly he moved and avoided prostrating pain. A month ago, the effort would have left him sweating on the sheets, afraid to stir without someone there to catch him if he fell. He grabbed his robe and, keeping his left arm below the level of his heart, pulled it onto his shoulders and fastened the belt about his waist. Lamp in hand, he left his room and the bed that had been his brother's and his father's and so on back through the ages even, one supposed, to the bloody dead Black Earl.

His bedroom lay at the end of a series of connecting rooms, each opening into another. Bedchamber, antechamber, withdrawing room, parlor and salon, after which the pattern repeated itself in more or less a mirror image. From the second parlor, however, rather than proceed straight, he left by another door to the right. There, he found what fifty years ago would have been called a closet and been used for the receiving of visitors. Another door led out of the closet to a corridor. Wood just short of inky black surrounded him, ceiling to floor carved with rosettes and vines so real he expected them to wave in the unseen breeze.

Thick walls muffled the keening wind. The hush struck him as unnatural. Once, just off Curaçao, in the moments before battle, he'd felt that sort of silence. A ghastly quiet that lifted the hair on his arms and shrunk his belly and balls to nothing. By habit, his right hand dropped, ready to defend himself. He swore he heard the sound of steel slipping from a scabbard, but of course he hadn't, for he had no weapon, and the carved-wood hall was empty. Feeling foolish, he tightened the sash of his dressing gown.

He went left just to prove he wasn't unnerved. A maze could not have been more confusing than the right and left turnings, stairways appearing from nowhere to lead up or down and sometimes sideways into the depths of the house. Every architect ever to put his stamp on Pennhyll ought to have been sentenced to a lifetime traversing these Byzantine halls. He missed the orderly arrangement of a ship, where everything had its predictable place. He opened the occasional door but found empty salons or chambers filled with sheet-covered furniture. Nothing alive, nothing lived in. Nothing but room after empty room. A man could house an armada here and have space to spare.