Cates, Kimberly (24 page)

A chill trickled through Adam's veins, and his gaze probed Isabelle's feline features, searching for some hint of deception, some shadow of enough evil to slip glass into a bit of cake, to wait, silent as a cat with its prey, until Juliet took a bite....

"That fate will sound like a tea with the Queen Mother if you ever do anything to endanger Juliet. If I discover you were at fault for this night's work, I vow you'll wish you'd never been born."

"You must think of some more creative threat, my sweet."

"Damn you to hell! Tell me the truth or I'll—" He grabbed at that slender wrist, the lace at her cuff falling back. His fingers felt a ridge of flesh beneath them. Dark eyes flashed down, and he glimpsed the white scar slashed into her wrist. He raised his eyes to Isabelle's.

"Yes. I did it," she said coolly. "A lifetime ago. Tragedy reigned then. Odd, is it not? How desperately we can wish we were never born? Yet to take one's own life... in the end, that was the one thing I hadn't the courage to do."

He felt a sharp jab of something akin to compassion, wondering what had driven her to such a desperate act. But he crushed the emotion. He couldn't afford the slightest weakness with Juliet in peril. "If I find out that you have done anything to endanger Juliet, I swear by my father's grave there will be no place dark enough for you to hide."

"My heavens, what a rather enthusiastic threat. I'd not have guessed you capable of such... passion—outside of the bedchamber." Those wide, jewel-hard eyes flicked up to his, and he felt as if the courtesan could peel away the layers of a man's soul. Doubtless, it was an ability that had served her well.

A smile tugged at her rouge-reddened lips, her brows arching with incredulity. "You're in love with her, aren't you?"

Adam recoiled as if she'd just rammed a lance full-tilt through his chest. "Don't be absurd!"

"Mon Dieu,
who would have believed that our dowdy little mother abbess could tame the Prince of Sin to her hand?"

"Blast it to hell, enough!" Adam warned. "I'd have to be mad to fall in love with a woman like Juliet!"

"Considering the tales I've heard of you—charging into battle with twenty trained assassins, leaping from cliffs into the sea below—I would say that your sanity has always been in question."

Adam glared at her, loathing everything about her—her painted face, her cynical gaze, the smile that mocked him from her lips. Love Juliet? Was it possible he'd been such a fool? God, how Gavin would laugh—Sabrehawk, losing his heart to a slip of a girl with a warrior's spirit and a quest even more hopeless than the one Gavin had launched in Scotland years ago.

"I'll be damned before I love her!" Adam ground out.

Isabelle swept to her feet with an airy laugh and glided toward the open door. "You were damned before you loved her. For a thousand years troubadours have fashioned songs of how love is the great redeemer and the most ruthless destroyer." She paused in the portal, her gaze meeting his for a long moment. "Have a care, Sabrehawk," she warned. "You may at last have met the woman with the power to destroy you."

Adam walked away, his chest feeling torn wide, black horror pulsing through him for the second time that night. Was the blasted witch right? Was he in love with Juliet?

He closed his eyes, remembering the unfamiliar hunger that she'd unleashed in him. The bursting sweetness of her mouth when he'd crushed it beneath his kiss, the primal need that tormented him to mate with her, to guard her, to fight with her and laugh with her. Not for merely a string of nights, but for all eternity.

But she was pure and good, with a spirit that burned with the luminosity of angels—the embodiment of every dream he could never have.

Adam reeled, stunned by the realization that he'd spent a lifetime trying to avoid this calamity, flinging himself across a hundred different battlefields, some part of him knowing how agonizing it would be if he ever had to face the one legacy he could hate his father for.

A bastard had nothing to offer an angel—not even an honorable name.

Chapter 13

Juliet huddled beneath her coverlets, her knees drawn up to her stomach, her arms clutched tight about her pillow, but nothing could ease the knot of despair lodged beneath her ribs. It shouldn't have hurt so much—hearing the women's scorn for Angel's Fall, hearing the truth about how they had used Juliet for the naive little fool that she was.

The laughingstock, the country church-mouse who thought she could heal the world's wounds by creating a tiny haven of peace and gentleness in the midst of the ravening streets of London.

But she'd plunged into dangerous waters—dark and deep and so swift she couldn't keep her head above the waves. Worst of all, she'd lost her courage somewhere in the tiny pantry, with her mouth bleeding and the square of gingerbread crumbling in her hand.

"What if you hadn't been the one to eat it?"
Adam had demanded, his rugged countenance fierce with emotion.
"What if one of the other women had? Or if you'd put it in the beggar's basket and some child had wolfed it down?"

What if someone else had died because of her stubbornness in remaining here? And for what? For some wild dream that she could fashion courtesans into seamstresses and governesses and ladies' maids? That they would eagerly embrace a life of stitching until their fingers bled, banished forever into the back rooms of life where the sunlight could rarely reach?

Was that possible, after the lives they'd known? She had barely tasted such passion, and she was intoxicated with the power of it.

Juliet pressed her fingertips to her lips, remembering with sizzling heat the sensations that had swept through her at Adam Slade's kiss. Had Isabelle ever felt such soul-searing need for her duke? Millicent for her rich merchant? Jenny for the dashing young squire's son who had carried her away?

That wild pulse-pounding splendor was what Juliet was asking her ladies to surrender forever. It had seemed so simple a sacrifice when she was packing up her meager belongings in the vicarage at Northwillow, making her plans for Angel's Fall.

But that had been before Adam Slade had drawn her into his embrace, taught her the secrets of a man's kiss, infused her with the desperate need to know more, learn everything, every mystery of love—not just the chaste love that had seemed enough back in Northwillow. But a love that encompassed bodies as well as souls.

A love Adam Slade didn't want.

He'd never made any secret of his desperation to be rid of her. The women of Angel's Fall had done little to conceal their misgivings about the new life she'd promised them. But she'd been so certain that she was right. That if she merely showed them the way, they'd take pride in their independence.

Yes, she'd known the truth deep down in her soul. It shouldn't have hurt so dreadfully to have it dragged up into the light.

What was she really fighting for? Here, in this godforsaken corner of London? She was getting tired. So tired.

How odd that, in her pain, the one person in the world she wanted to run to was the man who had systematically destroyed her illusions hours before. She needed to know why he had betrayed her.

She threw back the coverlets and climbed out of bed, the floor so chilly her bare feet ached. Quietly she stole to the door of the alcove. She must have dozed sometime during that interminable night. Slade's bed was untouched, blankets tucked haphazardly beneath the pillow. But Adam was nowhere in sight.

She frowned. Lord knew, she shouldn't care that he was gone after the confrontation earlier that night, but Slade had agreed not to wander the house at night, to preserve the ladies' reputations. A heartsick laugh escaped her. Reputations that said ladies seemed not overly concerned about.

Crossing to her clothespress, she took down a long shawl and draped it about her, tucked her feet into slippers and set out in search.

She found him in the garden, silhouetted against the iron bars of the gate. Always before, he'd exuded primal animal energy, restless potency, as if every sinew in his magnificent body possessed the raw power to control any situation, triumph over any foe. But tonight, he stood still, peering through the iron bars like a pagan god imprisoned, yearning for his mistress, that silver-tressed lady sailing upon the moon.

He was stripped down to his shirtsleeves and breeches, his ebony hair tangling like midnight secrets about his broad shoulders. Shoulders that looked as if they carried the weight of every enemy he'd ever battled.

She wanted to be angry with him for his betrayal. Wanted to rage at him. Demand to know why he'd hurt her so badly hours ago. But more than anything, she wanted to close the space between them and bury her face in the solid warmth of his chest.

Was this what Jenny had faced? And Elise and Violet and Isabelle? This horrendous need that forgave a thousand sins and painted a hopelessly flawed man with the colors of fantasy until even when he hurt you, you needed him with a desperation that seared your soul?

Her eyes burned, a prickly lump of pain clotting her throat.

"Adam?" She breathed his name, and he froze for a heartbeat, then turned to face her. She would have been prepared if he'd had his sword in hand, after the lesson he'd given her in the dangers of creeping up on a soldier, especially at night.

But nothing could have prepared her for the expression on Adam Slade's face. It was as if the moonlight's silvery blades had carved away the mask he'd worn for so long, leaving his rugged features raw and oddly new.

His shirt was open to the waist, the sheen of bronze flesh sprinkled with dark hair showing in stark contrast to the white of the fabric. And his hands were empty. It was the first time Juliet had seen him without a weapon within a heartbeat of his grasp.

One dark brow arched, and she saw him struggle to summon mockery into his fathomless black eyes. "What are you doing out here?"

"I needed to find you. Talk to you."

"What the devil can you have to say to me? That I'm a bastard—by nature as well as by birth? That you despise me? I've heard it all before, Juliet."

"No. I want to know why, Adam."

"Why I'm a son of a bitch? Years of sacking cities and storming citadels, no doubt. Gets to be a disagreeable habit."

"But if you've spent so much time warring, I'm certain you've seen scores of wounds far worse than mine. Why did my three little cuts upset you so much?"

Whatever direction Slade had expected the confrontation to take, Juliet could see her query caught him by surprise. He raked one massive paw through his dark hair. "I don't know why the devil I was so upset. I should've let you shovel down the whole mess. Would've made my life a hell of a lot easier."

The words wounded, but she would allow him no retreat. "You've seen enough wounds to gauge the severity by the amount of bloodshed. I'm certain that it took you barely a moment to figure out that mine was a minor injury. So, why were you willing to hurt me far more deeply than that bit of glass ever could?"

Adam backed away a step, his shoulders bumping the gate. The iron made a dull metallic clang as it blocked his escape. "Blast it, this is absurd! It's done. No sense hashing it over again," he groused, his craggy cheekbones a shade darker in the moonlight. "You're going to catch your death of cold running around out here in your nightgown. Bloody hell, woman, what is it with you? For a vicar's daughter, you spend the devil of a lot of time prancing about the garden in your unmentionables!"

She didn't respond to his blustering, only looked deep into those dark desperate eyes. "Adam, why did you hurt me?"

"Damnation, Juliet, leave it alone!" He started to reach for her, then stopped, his hands knotting into fists. "You don't know what you're asking."

"A simple question. I trusted you, Adam. You hurt me. But as I look at you now, I think maybe you hurt yourself even more. I deserve to know why."

"Because when I look at you, I... blast it, Juliet, in Scotland, my brother was headed for the gallows. I tried to take his place, but would the noble idiot let me? Hell, no! He had a lady who would live and die for him, a pack of orphans who adored him, and a worthless block-brained half-brother who'd gotten him neck-deep into a hopeless cause he'd never believed in."

A tortured laugh ripped from Adam's chest. "Gavin had everything to live for. I was nothing but a disaster, blundering from one battle into another, one more soldier in the ranks of millions destined for an early grave. I would gladly have gone to the gallows for him. Would have sacrificed anything or anyone in this world or the next to save him."

His voice roughened, softened. "But tonight, when I saw you bleeding, I knew that, agonizing as it might be, I'd have watched Gavin walk to the gallows, if by doing so, I could save you."

Juliet gazed up at him, aching, awed. "Adam... I..."

"Damn it, Juliet, what are you doing here in this hellhole? A lost angel, searching for light where there is nothing but darkness? Why can't you see how hopeless it is? The only thing that can happen here is that you'll be destroyed? Either swiftly, by an enemy, or more slowly, torturously, from inside yourself as you realize the truth?"

"The truth that you and Isabelle were so eager to show me tonight?"

"That truth. And others."

"Do you know what I've learned since you came charging up to Angel's Fall? You came to rescue me, but I believe that you are the one who has been wandering around, lost. Adam, you could stay with us, here, forever. Build something real instead of laying siege to places you don't care about, fighting battles that aren't your own."

Juliet laid one hand upon his chest, ever so gently, felt the throb of his heartbeat beneath the layer of sinew and satiny skin. "I need you, Adam. Here to help me. But it's more than that. I feel..." It took more courage than she could have believed possible to say the words. "I feel as if we were meant to find each other, that we belong together. I have feelings for you that are so—so confusing. I want—"

"Damn it, woman, are you hearing a word I'm saying? I can't stay in this blasted house much longer! Every minute I slide closer to Armageddon. Hell, this past two weeks makes the torture-fete Gavin and I suffered when we were prisoners in Scotland look like an accursed musicale! Do you have any idea what agony it is to sleep in your blasted bedchamber each night, listen to your soft sighs, see the moonlight painting your hair in silver when I can't touch you, take you?"