Shadow's Curse (16 page)

He rubbed his face. Shook off the oppression with a shrug of his shoulders and a crack of his neck. What he needed was a damn drink. A nice big whisky or a pint or two . . . or ten. Surely one of these men possessed enough alcohol to wash away a lifetime of sorrows, though he doubted any would offer him as much as a sip and risk Oakham’s anger.

It would be water or cider, if he was lucky.

“Are you waiting for your valet to bring you dinner, St. Leger? Better eat. Breakfast will be bread and cheese. We won’t have time to stir up the fire so that you can dine on sausages and tea.”

Nancy Oakham had joined him under the trees, her chin thrust in a challenge, her expression a mixture of bravado and suspicion. She held out a plate of stew, the smell enticing. He accepted it with a nod, but she didn’t withdraw. Instead, she followed the track of his gaze, her lips pressed tight.

“I still can’t believe Cally’s here. She’s the last person I ever thought to see again. And in company with a fancy man like yourself.” She gave a bark of laughter.

“Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

“She must be extremely desperate to turn up asking Sam for help after the way things were left between them.”

“You’ve met Branston Hawthorne. What do you think?”

“The man was a slug and a bully.” She cast him a dubious glance. “But can you tell me you’re any better?”

“No, but I can say I’m definitely no worse.”

“Hawthorne should have accepted Sam’s suit. He’d have made a good husband for Cally,” she said pointedly.

“Perhaps he wanted more for his sister than a traveling player, no matter how good a man he was.”

She gave a lift of her brows and a quick sniff in response. “Then why are
you
running?”

“Anyone ever tell you it’s not polite to pry into other people’s business?”

“As long as you’re traveling with us, you and Cally
are
my business.”

“Let’s just say that if Branston Hawthorne wants his sister back, he’ll have to go through me.” A corner of his mouth twisted in a humorless smile, almost wishing Hawthorne would appear to give him an outlet for the frustration boiling just under his skin.

“Tough words for a London gent”—Nancy folded her arms over her chest—“if that’s what you really are.”

Every muscle wound to spring, fire chewing up through his belly. “What else would I be?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” she answered coolly.

He forced himself to relax, even give a nonchalant shrug and a quick practiced grin. “No mystery. I’m just a pretty boy fancy man, Miss Oakham.”

“You’re more than that. Nobody bests Sam who isn’t a notch above.” As if hearing his name, her brother eyed them grimly from his seat by the fire.

“I told you,” he said. “I was a soldier.”

She continued to eye him suspiciously. “Mm-hm. That’s what you said. But I’ve known soldiers before and I think there’s more to you than mere training at drills and guns. I saw it in your eyes when you were
fighting. And the way you moved. It was different somehow. Better.”

“I was a very
good
soldier.”

“Just remember, St. Leger. I’ve got my eye on you. Cally’s had her share of trouble. I don’t want to see her hurt. And I’m not nearly as easy to best in a fight as Sam. You’ll never know what hit you. You got that?”

“A threat, Miss Oakham?”

“Plain speaking. I protect my own and while Cally travels with me, she’s family.”

“I’m traveling with you.”

Her lip twitched with reluctant amusement. “You look plenty able to protect yourself.”

“I’m feeling hungrier already.” He scooped up a forkful of stew, but Nancy refused to take the hint and leave. Instead, she seemed determined to remain, her stance unyielding, expression dogged.

So be it. Two could play at question and answer. He’d see how she liked being interrogated. “Who was your fancy man, Nancy? Was he a soldier too?”

She stiffened, but he noticed her hand drop to the apron spread across her growing stomach. “I don’t need your pity, St. Leger. I’m not a softheaded maiden and I knew even as he was whispering sweetness in my ear that he’d leave sooner or later.”

“Why is that?”

She glanced to the fire, where Callista sat chatting with Sally Sweet, and back to David, suspicion once more shrouding her face. “Because no gentleman is going to marry a peddler’s daughter, no matter how much he says—or doesn’t say—he loves her. Is he?”

Victor Corey pulled on his gloves and accepted a walking stick from his valet; selected more for the heavy knob of its handle than for the elegance of its design. One good swing could crush a man’s skull like a ripe melon.

His coach stood waiting. A footman to open the door; another to carry his bags. A third waiting to place a hamper of food upon the seat beside him for the long trip. Hell, if he snapped his fingers, he could have a damned footman wipe his arse . . . or kiss it. All it took was coin, and he’d plenty of that. Enough to make this journey north both pleasant and fast.

He sat back against the cushions, tapping his fingers against the knob of his cane, impatient at the congested streets that held his progress to a minimum. Once clear of the city, they could fly, but now there was little he could do but dwell on the failures that had led to this unwanted journey. It should have been easy. St. Leger’s height and looks should have drawn every eye. The man had a rugged soldier’s build, and a face
women wept over. He was everything Corey had ever dreamed of being—handsome, charming, sophisticated.

And it was all a lie.

Beneath that polished façade lay a savage beast. A predator that would rip your throat out or leave you bleeding entrails like snakes.

Corey knew all about monsters that dressed in silks and sported with princes.

He was one.

Perhaps he and the shifter were more alike than he thought.

He’d fix that easily enough.

He’d show the world what monsters were made of. A knife blade to the eye would destroy that golden beauty easily enough. A few broken teeth. Smashed fingers. A shattered knee. As long as he didn’t kill the shapechanger, the blood would flow as readily from a grotesque as it would from a prince.

He could almost thank the shifter for making it so easy. For, once the Imnada was his, Callista Hawthorne would see what happened to those who disobeyed him. She would watch him cut her lover down to size and she would not attempt to flee again. Not if she didn’t want those same knives to carve his initials into her even as he placed his ring on her finger.

She would take him as her husband.

She would open death for him.

She would summon him an army from the grave.

Or she would watch St. Leger hacked apart bit by bit, his screams the last to die.

The traffic moved more quickly, houses and shops
giving way to trees and fields. His coachman set the horses to and the world was a rattling blur of green and brown.

He had salted the roads with men and news of the shifter’s supposed crimes. But, to be certain of his success, he’d decided to travel north himself.

He would be there ahead of them. His quarry would see the walls of Dunsgathaic rising up before them. They would believe they were safe.

And that’s when he would spring his trap.

He rubbed a finger over the knob of his cane. One good swing to crush a man’s skull—or a wolf’s.

Nothing and no one would stand in the way of his destiny.

*  *  *

Callista sat beneath the shade of a spreading ash tree, finishing her lunch of cheese and bread and a few shriveled apples washed down with a bitter frothy beer passed freely among the company.

“Where’s St. Leger?” Sam barked, wiping his hands on a cloth as he came from the wagons. “He’s needed to help Big Knox mend that back wheel on the Perkinses’ wagon. I’ll not carry deadweight. He does his share or he leaves.”

Sam hadn’t stopped goading David since their arrival, offering him naught but barbed words and grueling work. David merely smiled and did as he was told, but Callista sensed the rein he barely maintained on his temper. Should he lose it, there would be more than a few blows exchanged. It would take only a trigger to unleash the shapechanger’s lethal ferocity. Sam would be dead before he hit the ground.

“Maybe Pretty Boy got lost on his way to take a piss.” Perkins guffawed at his own joke.

“Sam wishes,” Big Knox cracked with a gap-toothed grin. “At least we know one place he ain’t. Cally’s right here with us. Otherwise, I’d say he was taking a few minutes to dip the wick.”

“I don’t think our little runaway would know what to do with a wick if it jumped up and bit her,” Sally said with a wicked smile, fanning herself from a blanket under a nearby tree. “Look at her, just talking about it has her pale as a wheel of cheese.”

“Maybe they had a lovers’ quarrel,” Lettice sighed, a hand over her heart as she turned doe eyes up at her husband. “And Mr. St. Leger’s gone off to drown his sorrows.”

“Wherever he is, it’s none of our business,” Nancy said, abruptly ending the conversation, though she directed a long, thoughtful stare in Callista’s direction. “St. Leger works hard and doesn’t complain . . . unlike some I could name.” Thankfully, her gaze widened to scour the men and Callista no longer felt like a bug under glass. “He’ll turn up.”

“Like a bad penny,” Perkins added.

Sam growled and stalked off toward the wagons, though not before raking Callista with a greedy stare that made her shiver. It was not the first time he’d looked on her like a starving man eyeing a three-course meal. Obviously five years had done little to ease Sam’s desire for a wife. She pinched the bridge of her nose against a sudden headache.

“Did St. Leger tell you where he was going, Cally?” Nancy asked, maneuvering her bulk as she sought to stand.

“No,” Callista answered with a sigh.

She’d seen him disappear, but one look at the expression on his face and she hadn’t dared ask where he was going.

Nancy mumbled something under her breath and gave an exasperated shake of her head before heaving herself to her feet.

“I’ll find him.” Sally Sweet stretched and rose from her blanket like Venus rising from the sea. “He might be . . . hungry.” Her eyes rested for a brief, challenging moment on Callista. “As far as I can tell, he hasn’t been
eating
very well lately.”

Callista smoothed a hand over her skirt to keep it from slapping the tart’s face.

David might not be hers in truth, but she wasn’t about to let a hussy like Sally get her claws into him. Not without a fight.

It wasn’t that she was jealous. That was absurd. Jealousy implied a relationship, and there was nothing between David and her but friendship and a deal brokered out of desperation. Once she reached Skye, their arrangement would be completed. David would depart. She would move on. No more rambling conversations or teasing laughter. Never again would she look across a fire and meet his eyes in a look of shared amusement or feel his steady presence beside her across the endless miles.

“Enough, Sally,” Nan snapped. “Take the bucket there and fetch some water for the washing-up.” To Callista she said, “If you’re finished eating, go find your fancy man and tell him we can’t leave till he sees to that wheel.”

Glad for an excuse to escape, Callista got to her feet
and followed the path into the trees that David had taken an hour earlier.

The track wound up from the road, a difficult rocky climb, and by the time she reached the summit, she had to stop to catch her breath. She stared out over the landscape of hills, stretching unbroken to the north and west. A flock of crows rose into the air from a thick stand of trees, and Callista shivered, her thoughts darkening.

Death
, the crow had warned.

“I see my death in your eyes,” David had explained.

As a necromancer, a daughter born of Arawn’s seed, she stood within both worlds. Was it any wonder David would see shades of that truth in her gaze? Or that she might imagine a harbinger of the Lord of Annwn would offer answers to her impossible questions? There was nothing sinister about it and she jumped at shadows for nothing. Yet she was suddenly frantic to find David. She abandoned her study of the far distant hills and her own churning thoughts to continue across the ridge of the hill.

The track wound down into a hollow, the warmth of the open fields giving way to a cool dampness within the shade of the thick stand of oak. By now a stitch cramped her side, and her breathing came raspy from a throat gone tight and dry. Where could he be? Had Corey found him? Had he finally had enough of Oakham and decided to abandon her? Questions swirled as she hurried down the path. Perhaps she should retrace her steps in a different direction. Just one more corner, and she would call out, praying he answered.

Her strides lengthened until she was running, the
undergrowth reaching for her as the path narrowed. It swung past an old tumbled sycamore, crossed a dried streambed, and then . . .

Thank the gods.

She dragged to a stop, knees quivering. He was here. He was safe. She was being completely ridiculous.