Bride by Midnight (10 page)

“I’ve told you all you need to know about me,” he answered curtly.

“You’ve told me practically nothing,” she said, and while she sounded a bit peeved, she was far from angry. He looked down at her. Lyssa was short, her steps were not long enough to suit him, and she was slightly built. Fragile, even. A print scarf had been wrapped around her shoulders, but other than that the outfit she wore might almost have been chosen for its lack of color. Unlike the friend who had been in her father’s shop earlier in the day, unlike the other young women he saw walking on this evening, she did not dress to call attention to herself.

But when she looked up at him and narrowed her eyes, he saw power there. Power and beauty. Not just in her glare, but in her entire body. At first glance she might be a perfectly ordinary woman, but if one were to look long and hard enough...

“You know more about me than I know about you,” he said. “You go first.”

She nodded once. He wasn’t off the hook, he knew, but he had managed to wrangle a reprieve.

“I have always lived in Arthes. My father is a shopkeeper, as you know. My mother died when I was very young. I don’t remember her at all. When I was ten, my father married Sinmora. She’s been a good stepmother, I must say. Better than some I have met. My friend Aria has the most hideous stepmother... but you don’t care about that, I suppose.” She glanced up at him, and she smiled. “I suspect I look like my mother, because I look nothing at all like my father. Except for the hair. It’s the same color, or was before his began to turn gray and fall out. He has no painting of my mother, not even a sketch, though he said she had blond hair and blue eyes, and I don’t, so I can’t be sure I look like her. You know about the witch I met when I was fifteen, and how she said... well, you know what she said.”

She was talking so fast there was barely a chance for Blade to interrupt. But he did. “And you believed this witch.”

Lyssa became unnaturally quiet. Her lips thinned a bit, as she considered her answer, and then she almost pouted. He could not help but note that she had soft lips, full and lush and perfectly colored. He’d been inside her, but he had not kissed her. As he looked at her mouth he was reminded that he had not kissed a woman for a very long time.

“Not at first,” she finally answered. “But she was very scary and convincing, and when I had so much trouble getting a groom to the altar, and...”

Something about the way she paused, the way she held her breath, prodded him to say, “And?”

“It’s not important,” she said reluctantly, in a tone that made it very clear that what she had
not
said was much more important than what she’d shared.

“Humor me.”

She stopped. There was little activity in this part of the city at this time of the day, so no one was watching, not that he could see. She faced him, tilted her chin up bravely and said, “Dreams. I had... dreams.”

“A dream is the reason you married a complete stranger and lifted your skirt in an—”

Lyssa lifted a hand to silence him. “We will not discuss that. It’s done and forgotten.” She looked away and blushed deeply. Their quick tryst in the alleyway had not been forgotten at all. Not by her and certainly not by him. “And to answer your question, it was not a dream. It was
dreams
. Many of them. All of them frightening and dark and... and in them I was always alone, and I knew that to be alone was wrong. Who wants to be alone? No one.”

She would be alone when he was dead. Not only alone, but the widow of an assassin. Would she be punished for his crimes? Would the emperor blame his wife? After all the time he’d spent getting to this place, he shouldn’t care.

But he did.

He couldn’t
. She was a means to an end and nothing more. She would get him into the palace so he could finish what had begun four years ago.

Only four years? It seemed longer. It seemed as if his entire life had been spent avenging Runa. He’d barely survived the sword that had stopped him as he’d rushed toward her body. They’d left him for dead; he’d believed he
was
dead for a while. After he’d healed, it had taken more than a year to find out what had really happened, to identify those responsible and to reach this point where the last guilty man—the one who had wielded the sword that had killed his little sister—was right before him, just out of reach.

He could not afford to care what happened to Lyssa after he was gone.

***

Blade refused to tell her anything else about himself. He said he was on his own and didn’t mind at all, repeated that he had once been a sailor and a boat builder... and that was it. There had to be more. He was an infuriating man in so many ways.

Infuriating and interesting. Though he had managed to scrounge up a nice suit of clothes, and had bathed and shaved and pulled his long hair back, he still looked more primitive than civilized. It was the eyes, she decided; ice blue and sharp and... ruthless. It was as if a storm lived in those eyes, as if they had seen more than any man should see and had been changed by it. And yet she was not afraid. She hadn’t been afraid last night, either, not once he’d rescued her. She should be, she supposed, but instead she felt oddly comforted by his presence.

Again, she had the fleeting thought that he was much like the sword from her dream, her Blade. She should be afraid he would cut her, but she was not.

She’d always had good instincts about people. At least, she had good instincts about people she didn’t intend to marry. Even her father said so. Her problem had always been trusting herself to listen to those instincts. After judging so poorly for so many years where a husband was concerned, how could she possibly rely on her own instincts?

Still, she was certain that Blade, for all his secrets, would never hurt her. She believed that to the depths of her soul. Then again she had also trusted groom number four...

“When will we tell your father that we’re married?” he asked as they approached her home. The sun had set, and while a bit of light remained in the sky, it would soon be dark.

“Soon,” she said.

“Tonight?”

“Perhaps not
that
soon. We can court a while, then have another wedding. Something appropriate and... not so rushed.”

They stopped in front of the door. He took her shoulders in his big hands and stepped close. Very close. “I suspected you might have something like that in mind. I have made suitable living arrangements. We are married. Why not now?”

“It’s just... my father needs time.... I have to come up with a way to explain.... And I don’t know you nearly as well as I should. I don’t even know how old you are. I have not yet inspected your living quarters and... and...” She sputtered to a halt. Good heavens, she had lost her mind. Her husband was standing too close to her, and she could barely breathe. Her heart was beating too hard and too fast, and she couldn’t help but wonder what kind of living arrangements he’d made. He had bathed and shaved and dressed very nicely, but he was still the same man who’d made her his wife quickly and completely, just last night. The same man who had been inside her, who had made her feel things she had never expected to feel.

And when he ignored all her perfectly reasonable explanations about why they should wait and leaned in to press his hot mouth to the side of her neck, her knees went weak.

His mouth rested near her ear, and she felt his touch everywhere. From the top of her head to the toes that curled in her boots. The heat of his breath made her shiver. His closeness made her heart pound, and she was so tempted to grab him and pull him closer.

“Tell him we have fallen instantly and completely in love,” Blade whispered, his voice deep and dark and smooth. He kissed her neck again in that same sensitive place, and she could not help but think of the way he had felt inside her last night. How he had filled her. How she had moved against him. Her knees trembled and threatened to give way. “Tell him you cannot live without me.” With that he kissed her directly on the mouth, and for an instant she thought those words were absolutely right. She truly could not live without him. Without
this
.

He held her tight, slipped the tip of his tongue between her lips, and something in her came apart. She knotted her hands in his shirt. If he had not been holding her, she would have dropped to the ground. Her mind spun and her body shook. She wanted more. She wanted to see him naked, run her hands over his skin and press her naked body to his. She wanted him inside her again. She wanted to finish what had not yet been finished.

Her fears of being alone forever were gone, thanks to him. Maybe that was why she felt this way. He had saved her from her curse, and she was grateful. Floating, tingly, excited... and grateful.

Who was she kidding? Gratitude didn’t make her heart beat this way, didn’t awaken her senses and make her crave more. So much more. Did she really care how old he was? If he had family? And so what if his room was small and as unkempt as he’d been last night?

“Stay right here,” she said when Blade abruptly ended the kiss. She turned and opened the door to her home. Her father and stepmother were sitting at the dining table, talking. Maybe about the new baby, maybe about Bad Luck Lyssa and how they were going to be stuck with her for the rest of their lives. It no longer mattered. She beamed at them both.

“I’m married!”

***

When Blade had kissed his bride, he’d been trying to hurry things along. He did not have weeks to wait for her to decide how she wanted to share their news. He had no time to plan a proper wedding.

But he’d had no idea she would decide to blurt out the simplest version of the truth to her father and be done with it. Fortunately, after the initial shock, Cyrus Tempest had bought their story that they’d known one another for a short while and had fallen in love. There was no need to tell the man that his daughter had gone to a tavern to fetch a husband. Any husband.

The way Cyrus Tempest looked at his daughter when Lyssa wasn’t watching was curious. After they had stepped inside the house to offer a bit more detail about their situation, Lyssa had glanced up at Blade as if she really were... thrilled. In that instant, Tempest had looked relieved, concerned, and more than a bit befuddled. When Lyssa had faced her father once more, his expression was once again settled. Still. Emotionless. Something odd was going on. Then again, perhaps it was simply Lyssa’s bad history with potential grooms that caused her father’s strange mix of emotions.

His wife’s relationship with her father was not his concern. He was one step closer to Volker, and nothing else mattered.

The news shared, Lyssa had packed a small bag and together they’d set out for their new home. Side by side, in soft twilight, they walked to a very nice part of town where the houses were larger and the streets were wider. The way Lyssa looked up and around at the homes here, the joy on her face, made Blade glad he’d made suitable arrangements.

When they reached their destination Blade took his wife’s arm and led her up a narrow but well landscaped walk. Their host was watching for them, and opened the door before they had a chance to knock. Standing in the doorway of one of the nicer homes in Arthes, Blade made introductions.

“Lyssa, dear, this is Hagan Elmar.”

“Oh, I know Mister Elmar very well.” Lyssa offered a quick but proper curtsy. “He’s a good customer of my father’s.”

“Hagan and my mother were once great friends,” Blade explained. “He has kindly allowed me to rent his guest house.”

The years had not been especially kind to Hagan. He was short and round, so round he was about to pop the buttons of his jacket, as he invited them to step inside. He’d lost most of his hair, hanging onto only a few stubborn white tufts, and where once there had been a strong chin there were now many. But his eyes still sparked with intelligence, and his smile was genuine.

“My son lived in the guest house for many years,” Hagan said, “but he’s recently moved east with his wife. I will be more than happy to have someone occupying the place. A house should be lived in.” The older man had the decency not to mention that the suit Blade was wearing had also once belonged to his son.

Curiosity was more than apparent on Lyssa’s face. Here was someone who could likely answer many of her questions about her husband’s past. She would probably try to weasel as much information as possible from Hagan when the opportunity arose. Why she cared, he could not imagine. It wasn’t as if they would be husband and wife for very long. Just long enough for her to get him into the palace.

Hagan had secrets of his own, so it was unlikely he would share Blade’s.

They didn’t stay in the main house for more than a few minutes. Lyssa thanked their host, and then Blade escorted Lyssa out the front door and around the side of the house, where another narrow stone walk led to their new home. Well-tended plants lined the walkway. Some bushes were in bloom, while others were dormant or sported tight, unopened buds. Lyssa took it all in, as if she had never seen a garden before.

The guest house was more than sufficient for their needs. In fact, it was larger than the house Lyssa had lived in with her parents. There was a spacious, well furnished main room, with a fireplace and several comfortable chairs. The kitchen and dining area was separated from the main room by a wall adorned with paintings. The single bedroom was large and luxurious, compared to the rough room Blade had been renting by the night.

It was a nice place and would make a good home for someone some day. He wondered if Hagan would allow Lyssa to remain here after he was dead. But asking, making those arrangements, would give too much away.

If Hagan knew why Blade was here, if he knew all that Blade had learned, would he insist on helping? Blade had not told the old man that he’d identified Runa’s murderer, much less that the killer was a well-respected Minister living here in Arthes. Not many would believe—or care—but Hagan would. Blade was willing to give his own life to avenge Runa, but he would not ask anyone else to make the same sacrifice.