Shadow's Curse (43 page)

The enforcer laid the brand to Gray’s back, singeing away the skin to the muscles and tendons below. The charred stench of roasting flesh filled his nose. The screams ripped from his body tore up his throat and bounced off the stone circle of the Deepings Hall, echoing back to him in waves of anguish. His knees buckled as he arched away from the pain, every nerve aflame, every drop of blood in his veins on fire, his very soul being cleaved from his body.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he escaped to the darkest corner of his mind as a hunted creature burrows away from even the hope of light, but the desolate keening sounds of his disgrace followed him even there as his clan mark was burned away in a stripping of everything he was or would ever hope to be. He retched until his ribs cracked and piss leaked into his boots.

But not one tear fell.

They never saw him weep.

She never saw him weep.

LONDON, AUGUST 1817

The bells were ringing nine in the morning when Major Gray de Coursy stepped from the hackney at Tower Hill. Despite the hour, fog cloaked the streets in a thick, choking darkness. It swirled in the alleys and gathered in the parks, bringing with it the stench of dead fish, river mud, and chimney soot. Lanterns threw dim greasy pools of light over the cobbles while footsteps and voices echoed eerily in the green-gray miasma. A link boy offered Gray his services but was waved away. His keen vision cut the gloom like a knife, and he wanted no witnesses to his final destination.

He passed through a narrow, dingy lane, coming out near the disused water stairs south of the Tower and St. Katherine’s, stopping finally in front of a door set deep into a stone wall—part of an ancient chapterhouse, though the wall and yard beyond were all that remained. He knocked once, then twice more.

A key turned. A bolt slid clear and the door swung
open on the hunched figure of a man. “She awaits you, my lord.”

“It’s simply Major de Coursy, Breg. Lord Halvossa was my father’s title and would have been my brother’s after. Never mine.”

“Yes, my lord . . . er . . . Major, sir. As you say.” The porter bowed him in, throwing the bolt behind him. “I offered her breakfast but she refused.”

“You did as you should.” Gray approached a low columned outbuilding, Breg following. At the entrance, the old man paused, shuffling foot to foot.

“Out with it,” Gray said sternly.

The porter licked his lips and gave a quick breath as if steeling himself. “It’s an enforcer, my lord. Prowling the streets near Cheapside last night.”

“How could you tell it was an Ossine?”

Breg huffed. “I may be rogue and cast from my holding, but I can still sense a member of the five clans right enough. And I know a shaman when I cast my peepers on one. They’re different, ain’t they?”

“What was he doing?”

“Asking questions, my lord. I was afraid to get too close. Didn’t want him catching wind of me following. No clan member would sob to hear old Breg had ended as food for the grubs with a stake through his heart, that’s for sure.”

Gray’s mouth curved in a faint smile. “This clan member would. If you see him again, send word. But don’t go sniffing around on your own. I can’t afford to lose you.”

“They’re growing bolder, ain’t they, my lord . . . Major, sir? I heard tell of a rogue clansman near Clapham disappeared and turned up dead. Another one up north off Islington Road by the Quaker workhouse. It’s not safe to be unmarked no more.”

Gray’s hand tightened around the head of his cane. “Things will change. They must, or the clans are doomed.”

“Hope you’re right, Major. I surely do.”

Gray left Breg and entered the outbuilding, placing aside his worry over the man’s revelations, to be mulled over later. This morning’s meeting was too important for distractions.

A woman rose from her chair to meet him, the lamplight gilding her golden hair and flushing her rose and cream skin. “It’s been a long time, Gray.”

Lady Delia Swann’s serene beauty hid many secrets, as Gray well knew; her Fey-blood magic, her alliance with his rebels, and her sexual activities with a prince of the realm, two generals, and an archbishop. She assumed she knew all his secrets as well, but there were some things he did not speak aloud. Some fears he refused to name.

“I’ve been busy.” He bowed over the hand she held out, ignoring the glitter of conquest in her eyes.

“As have I, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be busy together from time to time.” Her gaze traveled sensuously over him, lifting the hairs at the back of his neck. “By the looks of you, I’d guess you haven’t been to bed yet. Was it that little Nicholls girl? She practically leapt in your arms last night at the Prater’s ball. I wouldn’t think virgins were to your taste, but then you’ve always been full of surprises. And she comes with an ample dowry.”

“I’m old enough to be her father.”

Lady Delia laughed. “Only if you’d sired her at the ripe old age of eleven.”

“I should have said I
feel
old enough to be her father.”

“That I would believe. But if it wasn’t the Nicholls girl, it must have been Lady Bute.” She laid a finger against her full lips, gold-flecked eyes lifted in thought. “Then there’s that opera dancer they say tried to drown herself in the Thames for love of the mysterious Ghost Earl. Hmm . . . so many choices . . .”

“Whoever came up with that damned sobriquet should have their heads boiled in oil.”

She crossed to his side. “You should be flattered. It makes you seem dashing and dangerous and passionately gallant. A hero in a swashbuckling romance.” She cupped his face in her hands. “If they only knew the half of it, am I right?”

He stepped back, out of her reach. “Can we move on with the reason for this meeting?”

She gave a little half shrug. “Of course. Have you made the arrangements we spoke of? If I’m to disappear, I want to be sure all my affairs are in order and that includes the boy.”

His hand tightened around the head of his cane, lips pinched tight. “It’s been done just as you asked.”

“And my personal payment for services rendered?”

Gray took a leather pouch from his coat and tossed it on a nearby table. “You can disappear quite thoroughly with what’s in there. Make a new life on the Continent or the Americas. You’ll be safe. You’ll be free.”

“I like the sound of that. I’ve already booked passage on the packet to Calais. From there, the world is my playground.”

“You leave so soon?”

“You sound disappointed”—she offered him a sly smile, which he did not return—“but now that you’ve done as I asked there’s nothing holding me here.”

“The boy is here.”

“He’s a boy no longer. He’ll miss me for a short while, but life will rectify that quickly enough.” She shrugged, though he knew she cared more than she let on. “I’ve been asked politely by Lord Drummond to vacate my town house in favor of his latest
affaire de coeur
, and the family pile in Devonshire was never a home to me.” She shivered. “Too full of ghosts for my taste. My sister is welcome to it.” The leather pouch disappeared inside her voluminous cloak, and a narrow flat jeweler’s box, designs etched into its surface with an artist’s skill, was laid on the table in its place. “The last missing key of Gylferion, as promised. I believe you have the other three already?”

“I might.” Gray opened the lid to reveal a notched copper disk, dulled green with age and bent at one corner. On one side, the crescent of the Imnada. On the other, two vertical opposing arrows within a diamond. “How did you get hold of it?”

“Best not to ask. You might not like the answer.” She cocked her head, a frown drawing her lips into a pout. “You know, I could take your money and still sell you out to the highest bidder, Gray. The Ossine would be on your doorstep by nightfall. And if they didn’t kill you, the Other would. Your enemies are mounting.”

He closed the box and slid it into his coat pocket.“You could, but you won’t.”

“What makes you so certain? I’d sell my own mother if it gained me a profit.”

This time it was he who reached out and touched her cheek. “You say these things, but I know you better.”

“You always did.” She sighed. “Probably why we never got along.” Her eyes grew troubled. “Be careful, Gray. In my line of work, I hear the whispers. You’re being watched by my kind as well as yours. There are
wagers about who’ll move first to eliminate you. Perhaps you should think of joining me in Calais.”

He rubbed a thumb across his scarred palm, the myriad pale lines crisscrossing the roughened skin like a tangled skein of threads. Each day brought a new cut and a new scar as he worked the magic that kept him whole and the black curse at bay. A magic that had become an addiction. He could not stop. He could not continue. Either choice brought sickness and then death. “If I can’t break the Fey-blood’s curse, neither side will have to worry over me for long. I’ll be dead and the Ghost Earl shall be ghost in truth.”

*  *  *

The mouse squeezed its way into the narrow crack between street and foundation, glancing back once to make sure it had not been followed. No sign of pursuit. The way was clear. Wriggling through the maze of lathing and plaster, it followed its clever rodent nose past the kitchens, now quiet this late at night, and upward to the ground floor. The study was dark, the dining room empty, but the mouse expected that. It was the perfect time to explore unseen, and the perfect form to do so unnoticed. What was one mouse among a colony of such? A nuisance, but hardly worth more than a stiff whisk with a broom. Better that than a sword in the gut, which might be the reaction should Gray discover the real identity of the rodent creeping along his wainscoting.

Sliding under a broken slat, the mouse moved through the walls with purpose, assessing the town house’s layout should quick escape be necessary, searching rooms as it went. No guests resided in the empty chambers. Only half a handful of servants lay sleeping
in the attics. Of guards, she saw no sign. He was alone and unprotected. Didn’t he understand the danger?

Reaching a small room at the back of the second floor, the mouse paused at the flicker of candlelight coming through a gap in the chair rail. Following the dim glow, it sniffed and pushed its beady-eyed head out through the hole. A bedchamber.
His
bedchamber, by the lived-in, cluttered look to it.

A shocking thought followed close upon this observation. A shocking, unnerving thought that had the mouse shoving its way out through the hole into the room to rise on its hind legs, whiskers twitching. Did that heap of blankets in the bed move? Was someone sleeping? Was it two someones and were they sleeping at all? What if they were in the middle of . . .

So focused was the little creature on determining whether the four-poster in the corner contained one or two people, it never saw the descending glass until the crystal walls surrounded it, held in place by an enormous hand.

A face leaned close, studying the mouse, searching for answers. Older now. Harder. The gentle rounded features and sweet innocence of youth had been stripped bare and scraped raw until it seemed honed like a knife blade, no softness to dull the glittering edge. No tenderness to moderate the harsh austerity. But the same icy blue eyes shone from beneath dark winged brows, the same tiny scar remained at the edge of a strong uncompromising mouth. The same long aristocratic nose flared now with suspicion and doubt.

Scooping up glass and mouse both, the man lifted them to eye level. “Eagles eat mice, you know.”

*  *  *

Meeryn Munro was the last person Gray had expected to visit him—in his bedchamber—in the middle of the night . . . alone. Yet here she was, shed of her mouse’s skin and seated on the edge of his bed in nothing but his borrowed robe. At this point, he would have preferred her covered in fur. It was far less revealing. Far less apt to make his thoughts wander away from what her unexpected arrival meant.

“You’ve changed—grown up.” A trite and pointless comment. Of course she’d changed. It had been almost ten years since he’d seen her last.

“Age happens to the best of us, I’m told,” she answered with a wry smile.

“Yes, but . . .” He waved a hand in her general direction. “The curls are gone”—replaced by soft waves of honey colored hair—“and your figure has matured”—the gawky flat-chested girl of his memories was now a woman of luscious, feminine curves and long elegant limbs—“and you used to have . . . I mean there were the . . . the . . .”

She wrinkled her nose. “Spots. I know, they were positively horrid, but thankfully long gone. Lemon juice and Gower’s Lotion every evening before bed. But surely, I haven’t changed that much.”

“No, not exactly.” His gaze traveled over her from head to foot and back. The ghost of the old Meeryn lingered in the narrow elfin face, pert chin, and full coral lips, but there was a shrewdness in her eyes and a severity to her jaw that had never been present in the laughing playmate of his youth. “And then again—yes.”

“Well, you haven’t. You look just as you always did.”

His smile came laced with bitterness. “That’s the first lie I’ve caught you in tonight.”