Leslie Lafoy (22 page)

Since she didn’t seem to think that any explanation was necessary, he was finally forced to ask, “What are you doing?”

“Divining.”

“You’ve lost your mind.”

“I have not,” she quietly countered, her focus still very much fixed on the candle. “It actually works. I’m about to prove it to you.”

“I thought they burned all the witches in America.”

“Only in the North. We Southerners have an entirely different attitude about them.”

“Which would be?”

“Everyone has at least one on retainer,” she said as the candle ever so slightly swayed beneath her hand. “You never know when you’ll need a spell or two cast.”

It was almost as though the wick were bending. He leaned closer to see it, asking, “What kind of spells?”

She moved her hand in the direction the candle seemed to want to go and as the thick end of the taper began to make a tenuous circle, she replied, “Love spells are the most common, of course. Desperation being the powerful force that it is. Vengeance and retribution are also popular.” The speed of the candle’s circling increased and she smiled. “This is the way the witches help you find lost things. See?”

“See what?”

“How the end is circling,” she declared, moving her hand ever so slightly so that the speed increased and the circumference decreased.

“Yes. So?”

“That’s where the treasure is,” she declared, wrapping her free hand around the candle, her gaze fixed now on the map.

“Where?”

“Right here on the map,” she maintained, putting the candle aside. She placed her fingertip on the spot over which the candle had done its dance. “This spot. This is where the treasure is.”

If not for the obvious earnestness of her conviction, he would have laughed. Reining in his smile, he leaned forward to see just exactly where in the city the trove could be found. “Belle, darling,” he drawled, hoping she didn’t take offense at his lack of faith, “that’s a cemetery.”

“Well, if you wanted to bury a treasure in London, tossing it in with someone’s dearly departed certainly would be the easiest way to do it,” she countered, clearly undaunted. “There would be no hole to dig, the dropping it in wouldn’t attract undue attention, and there are fairly good odds that no one’s going to think about digging it up any time soon.”

They were all good points, he had to admit. “Lies to Cross, Park and Hyde,” he offered, looking at the surrounding streets and not seeing a single one that matched the clues Belle had been given.

“All of them are surnames. One leads to the next.”

All right, he silently conceded, that was plausible. “Lion’s Paw and Gentle Bride?” he prompted.

“I don’t know about here in London, but at home we put all sorts of statuary on the tombs, and when people hire the stone carver for the inscription, they tend to wax rather poetic over those inside.”

“We do the same.” Barrett considered the map and the strange way that she’d come to focus on that portion of it. “I don’t know, Belle. It’s a very long shot.”

“It makes sense, though. Far more than do streets or pubs.”

“Granted.” It was the manner in which she’d come to the conclusion that he couldn’t believe. It was simply too illogical, too unscientific, to be sound. To pin any real hope on it, much less make it the foundation of a physical search, was more than he could willingly do. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but neither did he want to waste time and effort. “Do you have any idea of how many cemeteries there are in London?”

She tapped the map with her finger. “It’s this one.”

The weakness of his smile must have betrayed his skepticism.

“How do you think I found Mignon in a city as big as London?” she asked.

“Asked about?” he ventured. “She wasn’t the sort of woman who passed without being noticed by everyone.”

“Oh, you doubter,” she laughingly challenged, picking up the candle. “Watch this.”

“What are you—”

“Just hush and wait,” she admonished, holding the candle over the map just as she had the other time.

Barrett sat back on his heels and crossed his arms over his chest, having no idea what she was looking for this time, but willing to be patient and kind in the debunking of her obviously heartfelt beliefs. Again the wick bent and then eventually circled over a spot on the map.

“This,” she said, placing her finger on it, “is where your friend Carden lives.”

He leaned forward. And blinked, stunned. “Damn.”

“Am I right?”

“Yes. How the hell—”

“Would you like for me to find something else?”

“My parents’ house,” he suggested, not quite willing to accept it as possible, but—surprisingly—hoping she could convince him.

She succeeded, crushing his doubts before she could lay the candle down. “Do you have to have some sort of gift?” he asked, picking up the candle and carefully examining it. “Or can anyone do this?”

“Some people are better at it than others,” she replied with a shrug, her grin wide. “But if it’s attempted with an open mind, I think anyone could make it work.”

If he could actually make it work, it would be a gold mine. He’d never be able to tell his clients how he came up with the solutions so quickly, but that wasn’t something they needed to know anyway. “I want to try,” he announced, taking the wick as he’d seen her do.

“Hold it just tight enough to keep it from falling,” she instructed, taking his hand in hers and slightly adjusting the angle of his wrist. “Clear your mind of everything except what it is that you’re looking for and then move the candle slowly over the map. When it starts to angle in a particular direction, go that way and let it find the spot. It will begin to circle when it does. The closer you get to the right place, the faster and tighter the circling becomes.”

It took a few moments for the directions to filter through the heady sensations of her touch, her warmth, the caress of her voice. Only as she moved away from his side did her actual words reach the conscious part of his brain. He considered them for a moment and then blinked as another realization struck home.

Now? She’d chosen
now
to lie back and snuggle down invitingly into the pillows? Jesus Christ. He kept himself from looking back at her, kept his attention focused on the candle hanging from between his thumb and finger. He’d give the attempt a couple of minutes—just so that he didn’t look desperate, just to give her time to become truly comfortable—then ask her for help. Odds were she’d tell him to abandon the effort for the time being and join her in the pillows. Nature would control the course from there.

Expelling a long, hard breath, Barrett stared at the candle and considered his choices. He had no idea what Neville Martinez looked like apart from a wheeled chair and a likely lap robe. Emil Caribe was probably a slight man with a tendency to look over his shoulder and cower. But the characteristics weren’t specific enough to separate either one of them from a good number of other men in London. The Choteau brothers were a mystery aside from a vague sort of French look. And try as he might, he couldn’t imagine Henri Dandaneau and Jacques de Granvieux as anything other than bodies laid out in coffins. No, finding any of their suspects through divining was going to fall to Belle.

He needed to look for someone he knew and could picture clearly in his mind’s eye. Unfortunately, he knew where everyone was and thus might unconsciously influence the candle’s choice, or those whose whereabouts he didn’t know precisely—like O’Brien—were moving around at this wee hour of the night and could be anywhere. There was no immediate way to verify the accuracy of any homing the candle might do.

All in all, he decided, searching was going to be a waste. But the time spent thinking about it had been just long enough.

“It’s not working,” he announced, trying to sound a bit dejected about the failure. When she didn’t reply, he called softly, “Belle?” and looked over his shoulder.

Oh, for the love of God. She was asleep. Dead to the world, beautifully, serenely sound asleep. He dropped the candle on the table and sat back on his heels, frustrated and disappointed. She was exhausted, his conscience offered in her defense. It had been an exceedingly long, labor-intensive day. Just three hours short of a full twenty-four. Scrubbing his hand over his jaw, he accepted that, truth be told, he was bone weary, too, and that the second he closed his eyes, he was going to be just as oblivious as she was.

Ruefully resigned to the circumstances, he used the table to steady himself as he gained his feet. Snuffing the candles one by one, he made his way around the room, ending at her bed. Placing her knife and the extra candle on the nightstand, he pulled the embroidered cover off and carried it back to the center of the room.

And stopped. The firelight cast an inviting glow over the rainbow of pillows, over the satin- and lace-clad woman sleeping in their midst. A gentleman would resist the temptation, see her covered, and then retreat to his bed. A rogue would gather her up in his arms, take her with him, and make sure the movement awakened both her and her passions.

The first course was a lonely one; the second low. Barrett stepped into the pile of pillows, choosing a middling way that he knew would satisfy neither the gentleman nor the rake. Gently lying down beside her, he arranged the cover over them both and then wiggled his shoulders into the pillows beneath him.

As he settled himself, she did as well, curling onto her side and closing the distance between them with a sleepy, heart-tugging murmur. It was the oddest, most unfamiliar kind of satisfaction that stole over him, but he was content and so chose not to examine it all that closely. Instead, he shifted again, sliding his arm under her head and drawing her into the circle of his arms.

A tiny smile tipped up the corners of her mouth as he pulled the pins from her hair and let it tumble down over her shoulders. And when he trailed his fingers through the riot of silken curls, she sighed the sweetest sigh he’d ever heard as she laid her arm over his chest and drew her leg across his.

The feel of her body pressed against his was rousing. And yet deeply soothing, too. He closed his eyes, trying to stave off sleep long enough to fathom the feelings eddying deep inside him. There was a rightness to being with her like this; a perfection that didn’t come from anything he’d done or hoped to do. Lying with her, holding her … An innocent thing that satisfied a hunger he hadn’t known existed.

Isabella. Angel of destruction, angel of divining, angel of sweet trust and peaceful rest.

Chapter Twelve

Belle started, away from the carnage and into light too sudden for her eyes. Her heart racing, her breathing ragged and too quick, she whimpered at the chaos of her thoughts and not knowing where to run.

“I’m here, angel.”

The low rumble instantly silenced the chatter in her mind. Barrett. She was lying curled against Barrett. Wrapped in his arms. She was all right. Death wasn’t coming for her. Not tonight.

“Go back to sleep,” he murmured, feathering a kiss across her forehead.

She slumped against him, every muscle in her body aching as the fear drained away and tears of a myriad of emotions welled in her eyes. Blinking them back, she silently recited the litany of a thousand nights. What had happened, had happened and couldn’t be changed. Where others had been marked to die, she’d been chosen to live. Why wasn’t hers to know. What mattered was that she make the time she’d been given count for something, that she live as fully and as happily as she could.

And there was no doubt that being with Barrett Stanbridge made her happy. The warmth and comfort of being held so securely … She watched the slow rise and fall of his chest and set her own breathing to match the rhythm. And when it had settled into easy tandem, she closed her eyes and slipped her hand between the buttons of his shirt. The heat of his skin, the sprinkling of crisp hair, the steady, strong beat of his heart …

Drifting back into slumber, she smiled softly, thinking that Barrett was a very nice reward for having survived.

*   *   *

Isabella awakened again, this time by weighted degrees and feeling as though she were returning from somewhere far away. She smiled at the linen expanse on which she half sprawled and then eased her head out of the cradle of Barrett’s shoulder to look up at his face.

His smile was lazy, the light in his eyes soft from a slumber every bit as recent as her own. “Good afternoon,” he said quietly, brushing an errant curl off her brow.

Deep inside her a spark quickened. “What time is it?” she asked as her pulse roused and life flowed back into her limbs.

“I can’t see the clock from here,” he replied, his voice a luscious rumble beneath the palm of her hand, “but judging by the light coming in around the curtains, I’d guess it to be around teatime.”

“We’ve slept half the night and all the day?”

“Well, in our defense, there wasn’t much of the night left.”

Just as there wasn’t much of the day remaining. But, oh, the temptation to spend what was left of it right where she was … “I know I should, but I’m not sure that I can make myself move.”

His smile widened and he shifted his shoulders under her as he somewhat breathlessly admitted, “I haven’t felt this leaden in years and years. And the last time was coming out of a five-day drunk. One of the hazards of being Carden’s friend.”

It took great effort and no small amount of will, but she managed to roll off him and onto her back. Languidly stretching sleep-stiffened muscles, she said, “Mine was two years ago and laudanum induced. One of the hazards of jumping off a bridge.”

He rolled onto his side with enviable ease and propped his head in his hand. With a quirked smile, he said, “That rather begs an explanation, don’t you think?”

“The fuse burned too fast,” she supplied, a slow heat filling her core as she looked up at him. “There’s no way to know that it will until you light it and then there isn’t enough time to run.”

His gaze holding hers, he took a tendril of her hair and twined it around his finger. “Now that the war’s over … What do you do to keep yourself from being bored?”