Charming the Devil (12 page)

L
es Chausettes were gathered in the parlor when Faye made her way down the stairs. It was yet some hours before dawn, but she could hear their voices rising and falling in a soothing cadence. Darla, quiet but firm. Francine, perceptive but wary. Beatrice and Heddy and Ivy. All different. All powerful. They would be sitting in a rough circle, Shaleena on the elegant divan beside the well-dressed hat stand, Madeline near the door. Lord Gallo present but mostly silent, tending the teapot on the sideboard.

“And what of you, Rosemond?” he asked now. “Were you able to discern anything in the ashes?”

“A bit,” she said, “but I shall need more time to consider the—”

Her words stopped abruptly as Faye entered the room.

“Faerie Faye,” Madeline breathed, and stood, expression troubled, gilded fire crackling behind her
as she set her teacup aside. “I thought you would sleep for some hours yet.”

Faye glanced about the room at the sisters of her heart. Ella had returned to Lavender House, leaving her family behind in the small hours of the morning.

“Are you well?” she asked now, and Faye nodded, unsurprised that they had all gathered here at such short notice. It was their way.

“Physically at least,” she said, and smiled, hoping to emulate others. Others who were not so damaged, who were not such cowards. She drew a careful breath. This was her time. Her time to protect, to
do.
She would not let her coven sisters solve her problems and in so doing risk themselves. It was, after all, entirely possible that whoever had attacked her had done so because he knew of her powers.

“Come back, witch.”

The words were singed into her soul. She would find the culprit and, if she deemed him a danger to the others, she would rid the world of him. No matter his identity.

Madeline glided across the room to take her hands in her own. “And have you any idea who might have attacked you?” she asked, brows lowered.

Fear stalked her. Uncertainty haunted her. “No,” she said, and felt the first niggle of a headache strike her brow. “Indeed, I think…” She swallowed her terror, straightened her spine. “I believe an apology is in order.”

“An apology?”

“It is because of your kindness that I am…” She paused and skimmed her gaze from one face to the next, lighting on each for just a moment and feeling the impact of their presence in her life. “…that I am alive. It is because of your tolerance that I am a Chausette,” she said, and felt a strange twist of pride at the word. “Because of that…because of your faith in me, I will become more than I am.” She forced a smile. It felt watery, but she drew strength from it. “Surely I can withstand far worse than a fright.” She let her attention drift to Ella, for of them all, she had endured the most. “For each of you has.”

Tears shone in Ella’s eyes, but there was something besides sadness in her expression. It might have been pride. But seeing it was too difficult, for it might well be misplaced. Faye shifted her gaze to the others, knowing that each was stronger than she.

“What are you saying?” Maddy asked.

“Perhaps Shaleena was right,” she said, and carefully avoided looking at the redheaded member of their coven, though she was, for once, fully clothed. “Perhaps I was mistaken.”

“So you think you were dreaming?” Ella asked.

“Yes,” she said, and finally turned toward Shaleena, but the other was atypically silent. Indeed, she looked nothing but weary, her eyes red-rimmed, her brow troubled.

“What of the bruise on your cheek, then?” Madeline asked.

Faye refrained from touching the tender spot, refrained from remembering the all-encompassing fear. “I was…After some thought I believe you were right, Madeline. I think I did fall asleep. And when I awoke I was disoriented. I thought the angel was an interloper. ’Tis a silly thing to place an angel in the library. A foolish—”

“The Scotsman was in the garden.” Shaleena’s voice fell into the room like droplets of undiluted hemlock.

Every eye in the room turned to her, but she was not gloating. Indeed, a scowl marred her smooth, alabaster features.

“The Scotsman?” Faye whispered.

“Our
garden?” Ella asked, and rose to her feet, ever graceful.

“When did this occur?” Lord Gallo asked. His tone was level, but there was the suggestion of tension in his tone.

“Near to midnight perhaps,” Shaleena said.

“And?” Madeline’s tone was curt, waiting for more information. At some unknown time she had become the heart of the coven. None could say quite when.

“He said he had come…” Shaleena paused, still thoughtful. “He inquired about the girl’s health.”

“Faerie’s?” Ella asked.

“Why?” Faye’s voice was breathy to her own ears.

Shaleena shook her head as if to dispel some unwanted thoughts. “He had heard there was trouble.” She turned her eyes to Faye, her own still solemn, unlaced with their usual caustic gaiety. “Or so he said.”

“Is there reason to believe he was lying?” Maddy asked.

Shaleena turned her attention to Madeline. “He is a man.”

But she had always seemed to appreciate men. Or at least appreciate using them.

“Did you question him further?” Lord Gallo asked.

Shaleena turned toward him and blinked as if drawing herself from a trance. “No,” she said simply.

“That’s unlike you,” Madeline said. It was an understatement of astronomical proportions. Generally, if someone appeared uninvited on Lavender property, Shaleena made the Spanish Inquisitors appear congenial by comparison.

“There was…another distraction.”

Maddy exchanged a glance with her husband. “In our garden?” she asked.

Shaleena shrugged. Perhaps the motion was meant to seem dismissive. It did not. “I sensed something.”

“Is this something still alive?” Ella asked.

Silence reigned for a moment, then, “It turned out I was wrong. It was no one of import.”

“You were
what
?” Ella asked.

Shaleena raised her chin, jaw tensing. “I have admitted before that I was wrong.”

If that was true, it was not in Faye’s recollection.

“So you investigated the other noise?” Madeline asked.

“Yes.”

“And you found nothing?”

“That is what I said.” Shaleena’s tone was becoming terse, crisp with anger.

“No. It is not. You said—” Ella began, but Lord Gallo interrupted.

“And what of the Scotsman?” he asked.

“He left.”

“You let him get away?” Ella asked, and the last of Shaleena’s unexpected patience erupted in a black explosion of rage.

“Why are you here?” Jerking from the elegant divan, she faced Ella across the room. “Do you not have a husband awaiting your return? A child! Some would die for—” She paused, unspoken words trembling on her lips.

Stunned silence dropped into the room, but Lord Gallo rose smoothly in the echoing quiet. “Let us all relax a bit,” he said. “There is no need for agitation. Faerie Faye is safe. We are all safe.” He glanced at the others, letting his gaze linger on his wife for a moment as if to make certain he was correct. And for the first time Faye fully realized the truth: He was neither coolly aloof nor quietly scheming. He was passionate. For her…his wife.
Indeed, he would die for her. Would give his life without a second’s hesitation. Strangely, it made her want to cry, but she stifled the emotion, clasping her hands carefully together.

“I am perfectly well,” she agreed. “And given my tumultuous past…” She tried to smile at the understatement. “I think it likely that my mind simply fabricated—”

“There were scratches on his chest,” Shaleena said.

Faye’s heart lurched in the abrupt silence.

“What?” she whispered.

Shaleena turned toward her. But again the glee was notably absent. Though Faye could sense no other emotion on her. “Did you not fight him?” she asked. “The man in the library, did you not try to escape his grasp?”

“In…in my dreams,” Faye said, but the battle was already lost. Her greatest fear was coming to life yet again. The one man she thought she could trust. The one man she
needed
to believe in had betrayed her.

“You are making a serious accusation, Shaleena,” Lord Gallo warned.

“You truly believe the Scotsman—” Ella began, but Faye stopped them with a raised hand. The room had gone breathless.

“I did not mean to bring him to this door. To cause you trouble.”

“We have no proof that he
will
cause trouble,” Madeline said. “No reason to assume he is anything
other than what he proclaims himself to be.”

“And what is that exactly?” Gallo asked.

Madeline shrugged. “A soldier, decorated yes, but a simple man of—”

“He is not simple,” Faye said, and knew she was right. He was more than he appeared. Much more. And he was interested in her. Why? It was not unheard of for powerful men to sense the gifts that her kind embodied. It was also not unheard of for them to wish to usurp those gifts. It had happened before, just months ago within her own coven, in fact. Had caused the death of a gifted young woman, had driven Ella from Lavender House.

Faye would not let that happen again.

“I will not allow him to harm you,” she said, and though she felt weakness like a cancer inside her, she also felt the strength, growing like a windblown fire.

“Let us not do anything hasty,” Lord Gallo said.

“Not hasty,” Faye agreed, “but final.”

“What are you saying?” Madeline asked. She was scowling. Faye knew that without looking.

“You have protected me long enough,” she said.

“Shaleena could well be mistaken,” Ella said. “About the scratches. About everything. After all, it was, I presume, dark in the garden last—”

“There were scratches!” Shaleena snarled. “On his chest.”

“And how do you know that?” Ella challenged.
“
Why
do you notice the Scotsman when there’s another who would give all for your—”

“Elegance,” Gallo warned quietly.

But Shaleena’s eyes had already narrowed. “What have you done?” she hissed.

“You have steeped us in your bitter guilt long enough,” Ella said.

“What have you done?” shrieked Shaleena and jerked her hand upward. A sphere of fire shot from the hearth and into her palm. She heaved it at Ella, but it was devoured in an instant, engulfed in a burst of flame that roared past Shaleena to consume the hat stand in a fountain of gold.

The redhead turned to stare, eyes wide and sparking as she raised her fist again, but Faye could tolerate no more.

“Enough!” she rasped, and in that instant the teapot hurtled through the air, emptying its contents on the crackling chapeaus.

The fire fizzled out. Not a murmur of noise interrupted the sudden silence as every breath was held, every eye turned to her.

“Enough,” Faye whispered, and, turning, left the room.

H
e was dead.

Rogan stood amid the swirling mists, looking down at the scene below him. Down at himself and the man who lay sprawled at his feet. Gregor Winden. Dead. Shot through the heart, though pistols were not Rogan’s weapon of choice. The muzzle smoked as he dropped it beside his thigh.

He felt no remorse. There was little reason to pretend otherwise. Winden had hurt Charlotte. Charlotte the beautiful. Charlotte the kindly. The bastard had bruised her, and therefore deserved to die. It was as simple as that, and he was a simple man. When he set his mind, he carried through. It was what he had been taught.

But sometimes things were not as they seemed.

Memories roiled in, painful, disorienting. The images below him stirred and shifted. A comely woman looked down at him. But something was askew, off kilter, for there was glee in her bonny
eyes, malice in the twist of her lips as she turned toward Winden’s tiny child.

Rogan awoke with a start. He sat upright, muscles aching with tension. The dreams had found him as they so often did before battle. Nights of insomnia oft brought hours of deep unconsciousness; but he dare not sleep so soundly, for he could not count on his strange premonitions to warn him of trouble. More than a few good Tommies had been found in their bedrolls with their throats slit. It had happened to a score of his comrades. Indeed, he should make certain his men were safe before…

But one glance at the embers glowing in the grate reminded him there was no army massed against him. No need for the keening worry that nagged at his soul. Indeed, no need for him to sleep in naught but his plaid. But the blankets had seemed stifling. Confining. He needed his right hand free in case the attack came…

He drew a heavy breath. Reality eased in a few sparse inches. He was not in some corpse-strewn Dutch province. He was in London, had arrived here to do his uncle’s bidding. But once again he had failed, he thought, and turned miserably toward the window.

It was in that instant that he saw her. She stood not ten feet from his bed, golden hair loose about her pale shoulders, falling like a gilded waterfall across her ivory-clad breasts.

And suddenly three years slipped away and
once again he was in the throes of love so intense he could barely breathe.

“I trusted you,” she whispered, and though her face was barely visible in the moon-stained darkness, her hands looked demure and pale, clasped as they were against the soft sweep of her graceful gown.

But he would not be duped by her innocence. Not again.

“Mild as Mullen!” he rasped, rage spewing through him. “What have you done with the child?” Jerking back his plaid, he lurched to his feet.

It was then that the apparition gasped.

Reality settled uncertainly into place. He peered through the shadows.

“Who are you?” he rumbled, half-afraid to hear the answer, to know the truth.

“Why did you do it?” she asked, and in that instant he recognized the lyrical music of her voice.

Ripping a shred from the paper on his bedstead, he gave it a quick twist and thrust it in the embers in the hearth.

Light flared as he straightened, then sparked across ethereal, pixie features.

“What the devil,” he rumbled and froze. What was she doing there? In the flesh. In his room. But no. He shook his head. She was just one more in a long line of apparitions. Still, there was something about her eyes that showed a depth and substance that no artist could—

But suddenly she reached out and struck the twist of paper from his hand. It tumbled to the floor, where she snuffed it out beneath her slipper.

“…thinking?” she gasped.

He raised his gaze from the charred paper to her face.

She was scowling as if she were the one surprised by this odd turn of events. As if
he
were the intruder. “Are you trying to set yourself—” She began and motioned to his body before turning her face abruptly away.

He glanced down. It wasn’t until that moment that he remembered he was naked.

Reaching out, he yanked his plaid from his bed and dragged it in front of him. He was almost beginning to believe she wasn’t yet another dream, another ragged hallucination. Or if she was she was a potent one, for his fingers were beginning to sting as if burnt.

Wrapping the long woolen about his waist, he placed another log on the grate and waited for light to flare across the room. But it failed to chase away the dream.

She stood perfectly still, watching him.

He glanced at the door, then at his bed, trying to retrace where the world had gone mad.

“Did you hurt your…” She glanced at his hand and froze.

Looking down, he realized he’d not bunched the fabric properly over himself. He also realized
the thought of her affected him rather noticeably. Readjusting his plaid, he hoped his first assessment had been correct, that she was naught but a misty shard of his imagination.

She averted her eyes, slightly flushed, and he scowled.

His dreams were often sad. Sometimes bawdy. But never shy.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, and even to his own ears the tone sounded frightening.

Her eyes flickered closed for a moment, but determination bunched in her jaw. She raised her chin and stepped toward him.

“I’ve come for the truth,” she said.

He was almost tempted to step back, though he’d been taught early and often that retreat was the role of cowards. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Why?” she asked.

He glanced toward the bed again and was half-surprised to find that he wasn’t there, sprawled across the heavy duvet left by the owners. What did that mean? That he was as mad as a sequestered monk?

“Is it because you do not trust yourself?” she asked.

He froze. His chest burned with an odd heat, but her eyes were entrancing, distracting him from that quandary. “I trust myself a good deal, lass,” he said. “It does not mean you should do the same.”

“I should not trust you?”

Others had. It had been a mistake. “How did you arrive here?”

“That hardly matters.” She took another step toward him. He felt her presence like a tangible force. Felt his heart thump in anticipation.

“Why would you do it?” she asked.

He scowled, fighting the confusion, the disorientation. It was still entirely possible that he was dreaming. He’d seen her here before, after all. But usually she wore fewer garments. Beneath his plaid the woolen felt itchy to his growing desire. “I do not know what you mean,” he said.

“Despite everything, I found you rather allur—” She stopped herself. “Force was not—” Her eyes spoke of a sorrow deeper than time. “Power should not attack weakness.”

He was trying to follow her thoughts, but he had not slept well for some time, and insomnia was not a boon to clearheaded thought. “You think me…” What? What exactly. “Powerful?” It was the only attribute he would allow himself to believe.

She scowled a little, like an irritated pixie. “Your size alone should suggest as much.”

“Some are not what they seem.”

“No.” She was within reach now and still her eyes looked tortured. Everything in him ached to touch her, but he would not. He would hold steady. Hold back. “But that does not mean we deserve to be hurt.”

Something twisted in his gut. “What is it you’re trying to say?”

Doubt flickered through her bottomless eyes. “You were at Lord Lindale’s estate some hours before, were you not?” Her voice was as dulcet as a rock dove’s.

“Aye. You know well enough that I was.”

She seemed to be holding her breath as she took one more abbreviated step toward him. “In his library,” she intoned.

It was as if a fist gripped his heart as he gathered her meaning. “That I was not,” he said.

She scowled, gritted her teeth, then, taking the final step that separated them, she reached out and curled her fingers around the amulet that lay against his chest. The coolness of her skin met the heat of the stone in a sudden clash of feeling.

“We…” She seemed to be struggling to speak, to remain as she was, looking up at him, eyes as wide as forever. “We kissed in the garden.” Her voice was nothing more than an entrancing whisper.

He managed a nod, though it was difficult to do even that much.

“But you wished to do more.”

“Aye.” There was little point in denying the truth. Little point in even trying.

“But we were interrupted.”

He could do nothing but stare. She was bewitching, intoxicating.

“You are not a man accustomed to disappointment,” she whispered, and suddenly her mouth twitched as if she could no longer contain the sadness.

He curled his hands to fists, but kept them carefully at his sides, lest he touch her and burst into flames.

“There you are wrong, lass,” he murmured. “Disappointment is oft my companion.”

A flicker of confusion shadowed her face for an instant, but she continued.

“You followed me into the library.”

So the rumors were true. She had been accosted in Lindale’s house. Anger roared through him, but he held it at bay. Great pain had taught him to do that much. And pain visited him now, for he knew the truth. She believed him to be her attacker. Shame smote him, shame melded with anger and guilt and hurt. The need to defend himself warred with the self-sustaining desire to prove that he did not care. He longed to walk away, to play the disdainful rogue he would never be, but he could not. Her gaze was all-consuming. “Had I known you were destined for the library, I might well have done so.” For it had taken all his willpower to let her leave him. “But I did not.”

“You preceded me there then.” Her tone had gone sharp. It twanged something inside of him, drawing at the truth.

Pain sharpened in his chest, but he had no intention of explaining himself. “I am a mercenary,” he said. “Surely I look more the sort to burn libraries than occupy them.”

Her gaze never wavered, and again that something twanged in his chest.

“I
can
read,” he admitted finally.

She stared at him, pulling at his soul.

“Well into the night if circumstances permit,” he admitted. “But I prefer to sketch.” His uncles had found it disconcerting to find him bent over the nub of a pencil on the eve of a battle, but there was something soothing about the stroke of each solid line. Something hopeful. Something sustaining.

“Sketch?” She looked confused, as if the question was not the one she wished to pose.

He gritted his teeth, but nodded reluctantly toward his bedstead. The drawing lay angled across the smooth wood, the bottom torn away.

She scowled down at it…a picture of a dove perched atop a saddle, and he hoped with all his might that she would not see the resemblance, would not know he had seen her face with each careful stroke. Had remembered the way she held her head, the way her lashes brushed upward just so.

Surely she would not realize his obsession, for no man could capture her essence.

But her eyes fluttered to his. “It looks like…” She paused. He held his breath. “The eyes almost look…human.”

His face felt hot. “’Tis merely something I do to pass the time.”

“Were you thinking of…” She began and stopped herself again, but in that moment she stepped forward and put her fist against his chest. “You were in the library,” she said. “Admit it.”

The world ached, but he was not surprised. There was no reason she should trust him. Indeed, he had told her as much, but the truth was too seductive, too alluring. “I was not,” he admitted, and slowly her fingers opened to spill softly against his skin.

Her face was as gilded as a waxing moon. And even as he knew he should draw away, he wanted most desperately to reach out, to take her in his arms, to propel her to the bed behind her. But he remained, though she trilled her fingers across his chest. Feelings smote him like an axe, driving toward his heart, tearing his flesh asunder.

He let his eyes fall closed against the rocking sensations, gritted his teeth against the agony as she pressed her palm to the inferno of his skin.

“Where did you come by these?” Her musical voice seemed to echo inside his own skull, but for the life of him he could not quite decipher her meaning, for with the touch of her skin, it almost seemed that he could feel a sliver of
her
emotions. Fear, perhaps, yet naught but confidence shone in her eyes.

“The wounds,” she said.

It took every ounce of his strength to pull his gaze from her eyes, to lower it to his own chest. Four furrows had been scratched into his skin, plowing bloody tracks from clavicle to nipple.

He shook his head. The injury was already healing. Almost gone in fact, and he had no in
tention of sharing the shameful truth. Far better, far
safer,
that she believe the worst of him.

“Where?” she asked again, and let her eyes fall closed. Against his naked chest, he felt her intensity burn brighter.

Heat seared him like a torch, but he could not draw away. Neither could he lie.

“The foxes,” he said, though the words were little more than a murmur between gritted teeth.

She opened her eyes with a snap. “What?”

He tried to keep his mouth closed. “They were more spritely than anticipated,” he admitted, and at that precise moment a yip echoed from the bowels of his rented home. It sounded far away and muffled, yet he was quite certain she had heard it. He almost swore, but she was already reaching for the twist of paper on the floor. In a second the wick on the nearby lamp flared, but she was already turning away. For one fractured moment Rogan contemplated grabbing his breeches, making himself decent, but Connelly might have returned, and God knew the Irishman was anything but.

By the time he reached her side she had already opened the door to the alcove beside Connelly’s bedchamber. A fire red tail was just disappearing into an overturned wooden crate spread with a blanket. Then, for just an instant, it was replaced by a pointy nose.

She stared, silent, absorbed.

He scowled, absently rubbing his chest.
Damn fox.

“You found them,” she said.