Shadow's Curse (23 page)

Callista continued to bundle stockings, three pairs of gloves, and a petticoat into a ball, looked around for somewhere to stuff them, and finally shoved them under a pillow. “If I stayed on, what would David do? He’s not exactly suited to the life of a packman.”

Nancy blushed but didn’t back down. “No, but Sam is.”

Callista swallowed. She really didn’t want to have this conversation. Nancy had always been kind to her. It was hard to dash her hopes, but dash them she must.

Nancy didn’t give her the opportunity before laying out her case. “I know Sam’s a bit moody and scruffy as a bear, but he’s a hard worker, he’s respected, he’s got a little money saved, and he has plans.”

“I know, but—”

“He wants to set up a school in London. Teach boxing like Gentleman Jackson or give lessons in pistol play. All the wealthy nobs would come to him.”

“A fine idea, if only—”

“You’d be a respectable married lady with a home and a housekeeper and a cook and maybe even a footman to carry your packages. How does that sound?”

“It sounds lovely, Nancy, except for one very big hitch. I don’t love Sam.”

“No,” Nancy answered tartly, “you love David St. Leger. Is that right?”

“I’m running away with him, aren’t I?”

Nancy merely offered her a sterner stare. “Or are you running
from
your brother? Big difference.”

Out of clothing to fold or refold, Callista sank down on the narrow bunk. “What do you want me to say, Nancy? I can’t make my heart obey common sense. It doesn’t work that way and you of all people should know as much.”

She sucked in a breath. Had she really just said that out loud?

If Nancy’s needle-sharp gaze was an indication, the answer would be yes. Callista had an overwhelming wish for a hole to open up beneath her feet before the other woman tore her into itty-bitty pieces.

Instead Nancy nodded as if she knew Callista would say this and was prepared for it. “I wasn’t going to say anything, not until I talked to you, but I think you need to see this before you make a huge mistake.” She handed Callista a piece of heavy paper folded and refolded again. “I saw it on a signboard in the last village.”

Callista unfolded the broadsheet to find herself staring at a crude penciled likeness of David. She scanned the paragraph beneath with a sinking stomach. “It’s not true,” she said firmly.

“Which? The murder, the kidnapping, or the embezzlement?”

“These are lies spread by Branston. He’s hoping someone will turn us in for the reward offered.”

“Why does he want you back so badly? I thought he hated you.”

“He did . . . he does.”

“That money’s enough to keep our troupe in funds for a year.”

Callista crushed the notice in her hand. “Then what are you waiting for?”

Nancy shrugged. “I wanted to talk to you first. See if I could get you to come to your senses and realize St. Leger’s not the man for you. But he’s dazzled you stupid. Just remember”—she waved a hand over her stomach—“this is what life looks like after he’s deserted you for greener pastures.” She wrenched open the door.

“Wait!”

Nancy turned back.

“Give me time to think about what you’ve said before you make a decision about turning him in. Just pretend you don’t know anything and haven’t seen the notice. Can you do that?”

“I’ll give you a day, but then I’m going to Sam to tell him what I know,” Nancy said before departing with a hard slam of the wagon door.

Callista dropped her head in her hands, as drained as if she’d fought a battle. Just when she thought she’d slipped his grasp and was finally free of him, Branston managed once again to cast his sinister shadow. It had always been this way. She’d escaped three times and never reached farther than a few streets from home before he pulled her back into his seedy and scheming world. David’s arrival had changed that. His arrival had changed so many things.

And now he was in danger because of her.

Should she show him the notice? Should she hide it while she decided whether or not to accept Nancy’s offer? Should she tear it into bits, in the hope that it was the only one of its kind?

A knock brought her head up. “I’ll be out in a minute, Nancy.”

But it wasn’t Nancy who opened the door.

It was David.

“Nancy said you needed to speak to me.” He looked as sheepishly ill at ease as any man could.

She sighed. “You might want to see this.”

*  *  *

“The Fealla Mhòr is starting all over again. The war between Imnada and Other. And this time, if the lot of you have your way, you’ll finish what you started. There won’t be anyone left or anywhere to run.” He didn’t even try to keep the bitterness from his voice as he gripped the broadsheet. “Mac and Gray were fools to ever think they could create a new peace between us.”

Callista bristled. “You make us sound like inhuman monsters.”

He flung the notice on the bunk beside her. “I’m simply returning the compliment.”

“This is Branston and Victor Corey. It has nothing to do with Fey-bloods and shapechangers.”

“Doesn’t it? Then why aren’t you even mentioned? They’re not searching for a man and a woman traveling together. They’re searching for me, the savage killer and seducer of innocent maidens.”

Scarlet crept up her neck and across her cheeks, but
her gaze remained steady, as if she were daring him to refer to last night. He wanted to, knew he should, but for the first time, all his practiced polish failed him. This was not a high-priced whore to be bought off with an expensive bauble nor a wayward wife in search of a few hours’ pleasure outside of the marriage bed. He’d stepped beyond boundaries he’d marked out long ago and straight into a mess of his own making.

Callista was courageous and commonsensical, vulnerable and vibrant. She was the complete antithesis of his usual bedmate. Perhaps that’s why he had absolutely no idea what to say to her or where they went from here. For all his simmering rage, he could almost thank Corey for the diversion.

“Nancy has given me a day to decide.”

“Good. That gives us twenty-four hours to make arrangements.” A horrible thought occurred to him. “Unless you’ve chosen to accept Sam’s suit.”

“I don’t love Sam Oakham.”

“Marriages are rarely about love. The Imnada have their mates chosen for them by the Ossine, who match man and wife based on bloodlines and clan requirements.”

“How callous.”

“No more so than the aristocracy who base their marriages on property and political connections.”

“Both sound heartless and horrid.”

“What would sway
you
to wed?”

“My parents wedded because they loved one another more than they feared what people would say. They defied family and friends in their desire to be together, and you couldn’t help but feel the electricity between them. That’s the kind of marriage I’m looking for.”

“That’s a rare treasure few ever find.”

“Captain Flannery and his wife found it.”

“They did, but it will be a short-lived joy. The curse will destroy Mac like it’s destroying me. Bianca will be a widow—again. But this time she’ll have lost her soul mate.”

“She’ll have their child, though. A living tribute to that love.”

“Will it be enough? When her bed is empty and she cries herself to sleep thinking of the barren years ahead, will she still believe that loving Mac was the right choice, or will she rue the day she laid eyes on him?”

Golden sparks surfaced in Callista’s eyes. “My father died when I was ten. My mother gave up everything for the promise of an eternity with the man she adored and instead was left with a headstrong daughter, a stepson who despised her, and barely money to keep a roof over our heads. But she told me once she never regretted her decision to risk everything for love.”

She rose to her feet, trapped between the bunk and his body with only inches to spare. “She said it had all been worth it for the memory of perfection.”

He inhaled a shuddering breath, his chest tight against the ache in his heart. He caressed her cheek where a loose curl brushed against his skin, and then the slender column of her throat.

She closed her eyes, a tear leaking from beneath her lashes to slide into the corner of her full pink lips. “I finally understand what she meant.”

Somehow, without talking about it, both of them had known exactly what to say.

*  *  *

The crowded fairground teemed with activity: a cacophony of shouts, screams, bells, bands, growls, curses, drums, pistol shots, and fiddles running one into the other until there was naught but a constant, deafening roar.

Callista had hastily converted the wagon into a replica of Oriental bazaar meets Romany Gypsy fortune-teller—from under a cushion she pulled a rotten apple core wrapped in a dirty handkerchief—meets boys’ public school dormitory. And while it was not exactly the overbearing cloying elegance of the house in Soho, its single candle and close-set chairs made for cozy intimacies, as if half of North Riding were not just beyond the door.

The fashionable young woman sitting across from Callista held a lace handkerchief to her nose, but no amount of expensive perfume could eradicate the odors of manure, sheep, fried food, smoke, privies, alcohol, and sweat blanketing the still air like a fog. Only time and familiarity could do that, and a mere twenty-four hours into the fair, Callista barely noticed the stench. Just as she barely noticed the uncomfortable endless hours traveling, the awkwardness of sharing close quarters with a half dozen strangers, or the press of seething humanity at every stop along the road north. The last week and a half living among Oakham’s Follies and it was as if she’d never left.

She glanced down at the bells lined up on the table and then back to the sweet, innocent dewy-eyed face across from her. But it was the young woman’s husband
who spoke, a man of means by the cut of his coat and the cut of his vowels, but as pink-cheeked and naive as his wife. Dupes waiting to be fleeced.

“It sounds like madness, but she believes it, and that’s all that counts, Miss . . .” He groped for a last name Callista didn’t offer.

The woman leaned across the table, her fingers trembling. “He haunts me. He comes to me in the night. I hear him crying, but no matter how I search I can’t find him.” Dark circles smudged the flesh beneath her eyes. Her cheeks were sunken, the skin sallow.

A child. Callista should have known as soon as Sam beckoned them into the caravan. A young couple hand in hand. Grief etched in their faces and weighing heavy on their frames.

“Annwn is well guarded, but sometimes a spirit will find a way back into this world,” Callista explained. “Most are harmless or, like your son, have lost their way and don’t realize they’ve slipped back into life.”

“Most?” The woman’s voice dropped to a whisper.

The flicker of the candle cast a leaping shadow upon the walls as Callista leaned forward. “There are darker things in the underworld than spirits of the dead, Mrs. Stockton. Why do you think Arawn keeps such a close watch?”

The woman’s big blue eyes widened to saucers. “I . . . I thought heaven was a nice place, a beautiful paradise. That’s what the vicar says. Why would dark things live there?”

“Death is a single realm made up of countless paths leading to infinite places, both beautiful and terrible.”

Mrs. Stockton nodded as if Callista had imparted
a wisdom for the age. Her husband’s expression, however, was one of indignation rather than belief. “I don’t need a theology lesson. All I want is an end to these episodes. My wife won’t sleep. She barely eats. I worry for her mind if you can’t relieve her suffering.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Can you let him know I love him, Miss? Can you tell him his mama will always love him?” Mrs. Stockton pleaded, her voice high and trembling.

“The man outside said it cost two shillings. Do I pay you?” Mr. Stockton pulled out a change purse.

Callista felt her insides tighten. She hated handling the money. It made her feel no better than the charlatans hawking love philters or magic elixirs to eradicate the French disease.

Is this what her life would be should she choose to accept Nancy’s ultimatum and join the troupe? An endless stream of bereft parents and heartbroken lovers hoping for a final communion with their loved ones? Giggling, blushing maidens wanting to know if the spirits could tell them who they would wed and swaggering, ruddy-faced farmers’ sons looking for next season’s Derby winner? All accomplished to the tuneless background cacophony of a fair’s mad delights?

She shuddered to think. Yet if she refused, Nancy would turn David over to Corey’s men.

An impossible choice.

David had spoken of a noose tightening about his neck. Was this what it felt like? This inability to catch her breath, a hard knot lodged in her throat, and a pounding headache?

When the man held out his coins, she swallowed
back her distaste and took them, dropping them into her apron pocket.

“Let’s begin.”

*  *  *

“For the third and final time, where’s Callista?” David demanded. Oakham’s pugnacious attitude was wearing at the best of times. After a morning spent haggling over two mounts even a knacker would shun and another interminable hour attempting to maneuver through the crush of humanity blocking the roads, David found it damned irritating.

Oakham scoured him with a belligerent glare. “Working.”

“I need to speak with her.”

“You’ll have to wait. While you’ve been gadding about town, she’s been earning the bread you eat and the bed you sleep on. I’d be grateful if I were you.”

That was the last fucking straw. David’s fist clenched, his stance braced for battle, and only a hand upon his forearm kept him from laying Oakham flat on his back in the dust. Nancy playing peacemaker again. She dragged David away before he could satisfy his urge to send Oakham into next week.

“She’s with someone. Is it important?”

Of course it was bloody important. And the reason stood looking at him like he was some sort of butterfly-crushing, puppy-drowning fiend. Corey had accomplished what he’d set out to do—flush his quarry out of hiding. Once they left the troupe, it would be a race to Addershiels, one step ahead of every blighter in hopes of a fifty-pound reward. With the two knock-kneed nags he’d purchased, his odds were as long as
Rosemary Lane to a ragshop that they’d make it there unscathed.