Tempting the Wolf (11 page)

Still, her legs felt unsteady as she crept from her bed. The floor felt cool against the pads of her feet, and the wall, when she touched it, felt rough and real, solid and hard against her fevered fingertips.

Outside, the moon looked down from its tattered bed of clouds, and her garden reached toward it, worshiping its somber countenance.

The garden. It called to her, pulled at her.

The stairs were all but silent beneath her bare feet. The arched door opened silently. Night air washed soft and kind against her cheeks. She drew in a deep, reverent breath.

All was well. She was grown. She was safe. She steadied her hands against her thighs, warm beneath the fragile fabric of her night rail.

Vines laced the arbor under which she passed and leaned lovingly toward her. She brushed a thumb across a fat bud. Feelings shivered through her. Scents of nightshade and wintergreen quickened her senses.

She was safe. None would come here. She was the countess. Wealthy, regal.

The roses bobbed at her passing. The maidenhair waved a gentle frond. Peace settled tentatively into her trembling soul. There was no place like the garden. No place so right, where she could touch life, where she could bury her hands in the soil and feel the very essence of the earth stir her soul. Here she was accepted. Here she was herself—not a make-believe countess in a small girl’s trembling body, but a woman, strong and whole. Here she was—

“Beautiful.”

She jerked around. A shadow lay across her stony path. They had come! They had found her. She stumbled backward.

” ‘Tis a splendid bit of garden ye’ve got here.”

He didn’t approach. Didn’t strike. Her breathing slowed. Her mind settled. ‘Twas the Irishman with the golden hair and magical hands that stood before her. ‘Twas just the Irishman.

The world went absolutely silent.

“I did na mean to startle ye, lass.”

“Sir,” she said, and found that her fingers were curled into her night rail. She eased them open. “You are on my private property in the very heart of the night.” Her voice sounded steady to her own ears—a marvelous testimony to years of training… or abject terror.

Think, child. What the devil is the matter with you? Do you long so for the hangman’s noose I’ve snatched you from?

“Aye,” he said and took a step forward. She crowded back, though she told herself not to. He stopped, studying her. “I was concerned for yer well being.”

Courage! She drew it around her like a mantle, pulling her shoulders back, standing straighter against the virgin’s bower that trilled over the wall behind her.

“I am ever so grateful,” she said, “but as you can see, sir, I am perfectly unharmed.”

He remained exactly as he was, his face etched by moonlight, his hair gilded against his beautiful throat. It was not until that moment that she realized he wore a tunic of sorts. Open at the neck, with sleeves folded up above his elbows, it was tucked into what looked to be a broad-belted Celtic tartan. For one wild moment she wished it were light so that she might better see the corded strength of him in his native garb, but the weakness passed, almost making her laugh at her own foolishness. Almost. But he was watching her, examining her, close and silent.

She shifted nervously. “So there is little reason for you to stand about like a poor imitation of some ancient statuary,” she said. Fear was giving way beneath the nudge of anger and something else, something rich and primitive and strangely hopeful.

His teeth gleamed like ivory when he smiled. “But I’m fair familiar with ancient statues, and chivalry demands that I stay a bit longer, lass. Ye should na be unchaperoned while dressed aught in the midst of the night.”

“If you can remember,” she began, her tone honed to a fine point. “I am on my own property, behind a wrought-iron fence with my servants within shouting distance. Surely only the most depraved would dare bother me here.”

She could see the etched beauty of his dimples dance in his moon-shadowed face. His chuckle trembled through the night, as seductive as quiet in the midst of chaos. “Mayhap ye are right. But ‘tis impossible to guess what depraved souls might venture forth to catch a glimpse of ye in yer midnight beauty.”

“On the contrary,” she said, watching him, “I believe I can venture a fair guess.”

His laugh was virile and full of life, making her ache with a longing she would not put a name to.

He sobered slowly. The garden went quiet.

“I’ve na come to hurt ye, lass,” he murmured finally.

And strangely enough, she believed that. “Why have you come exactly?”

“That be a fine question.”

“Perhaps you could try to think of an answer on your way home.”

“And leave ye without a champion in the dark of the night?”

Without a champion
. The phrase seemed strangely out of place amidst England’s cool-headed gentry, like a leftover memory from the days of knights and chatelaines—old fashioned and tarnished, yet somehow hopelessly alluring. “Tell me, sir, what has brought you here from your homeland?”

“I believe she was called the
Merry Maiden
.”

She gave him a slanted smile and strolled toward the garden’s exit, but he stood between her and the gate and lifted a hand toward the iron chairs nestled beneath a constellation of moon-flowers. She glanced toward the house, but he did not press, did not step closer, and finally she acquiesced and settled cautiously into a chair. The metal felt cool and smooth against her thighs. She pressed her gown against them.

“As you well know, sir,” she said, “I was not inquiring about the ship’s name. I was wondering about your purpose for coming here.”

He sat upon the second chair, facing her at an oblique angle. “Why are ye na wed, lass?”

She did not need the darkness to hide her surprise. For she was, once again, the master of her emotions, as cool as the paving stones beneath her bare feet.

“It is, I’m certain, ever so kind of you to concern yourself with my well-being,” she said. “But I assure you, my reasons for remaining independent are my own.”

“Thus I should shut me mouth and keep meself to meself?” he asked.

“In so many words,” she said. “Yes.”

He laughed. She watched the moonlight play across his golden features, watched it dip humor into his lean cheeks and flash across his feral grin. ” ‘Tis fine advice, lass,” he said and leaned forward so that his elbows rested on his knees, “and yet I find I canna.”

He was closer now. Within reach. She scooted her feet back a wary few inches.

“Perhaps if you but tried harder,” she suggested.

“In truth, I have tried. But to no avail. Indeed.” He narrowed his eyes as if puzzled. “I’ve na had this trouble afore in the whole of me life.”

“This trouble of accosting women in their homes?”

“Accosting.” He made a face.” ‘Tis a poor choice of words, me thinks.”

“Me doesn’t.”

That grin again, unfettered and alive. Something unfurled gently in her stomach.

“It may surprise ye to hear this, but some maids find me passing fair.”

“Do they?”

“Aye.”

“Then why are you not
passing
your time with them?”

“I have been,” he said. “For some good while.”

“You, sir, are rather vain for a man who needs to skulk about in the dark in an attempt to speak to women.”

He laughed. “Mayhap I be vain,” he said and leaned back slightly. The moonlight shadowed his eyes and shone on the width of his chest, covered as it was in soft, simple garb. He did not look elegant now, but earthy and touchable and solid. “But mayhap there be reason for some pride. ‘Tis impossible for ye to judge if ye dunna come to know me better.”

“In my experience men have little need of reason for their vanity.”

“And what has yer experience been exactly?”

She raised a careful brow, knowing how she would look—regal and cool against the backdrop of her adoring garden. “Are you asking who I’ve taken to my bed?”

“Nay,” he said. The night went quiet but for the sound of singing frogs. “I but ask who has wounded ye.”

She sat very still, remembering to breathe. “I fear I must insist that you leave now, Sir O’Banyon.”

“Was it yer husband?” He was watching her closely, like a hawk in flight, like a wolf, intent on its kill.

“I fear I am growing rather chilled. Indeed—”

“Then ‘tis me own duty to see ye warmed,” he said and suddenly he was crouched before her.

She tried to shy away, tried to draw back, but there was no room. He reached forward. His hands touched her bare ankle.

Life sizzled through her. Her head dropped back at the sharp slash of feelings.

“God’s balls!” he rasped and jerked away. “What the devil was that?”

She stifled her breathing, straining back in her chair. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

He stared at her from one knee. “This,” he said and reached forward again.

But in that instant her senses burst free. She scrambled to her feet. The metal chair clattered to the stone pathway, but she was already skittering away.

“
Cesses, Irandais
!” she hissed. Her breathing was out of control again and her diction had lost its polish. She knew it and yet there seemed nothing she could do.

Fayette was back at the helm, eyes wide in her gaunt face. “Be gone before it’s too late for ya,” she warned and lifting her gown, galloped for the house.

” ‘Twould na be a good day to challenge me, lass,” O’Banyon growled. His steed flipped her heavy tail but did not bare her teeth when he stepped into the saddle.

The cobblestones clicked beneath the mare’s giant hooves. A gentleman on a chestnut stallion passed to their right. Luci flashed him a coy look from the corner of her eye, but the other mount gave her one nervous glance and hurried past, long legs lifting high.

“Aye, ye and me,” O’Banyon said, “we are all but irresistible these days.”

Luci shook her head in constrained frustration, and O’Banyon chuckled, but the weight of his thoughts soon dampened his humor, for there was much he did not understand.

What had happened on the previous night? He had but touched the white lady’s ankle, had but caressed the merest inch of her skin when lightning had struck him.

Oh aye, women were magical. That he had learned many long years hence. But they usually didn’t make his heart stop dead in his chest, like the strike of summer lightning.

And whilst it was true that it had been some time since he had enjoyed a fair lassie’s favors— say a few hundred years—that hardly explained the ripping feelings that had burned through him at the merest touch of her skin.

She was comely. He would grant her that. And the fact that she wanted naught to do with him may have only sharpened his interest. But there were too many inexplicable events. Too many uncertainties. What was it about her that drew him with such agonizing force, such unearthly vigor?

A shiver shook him, though the day was warm.

But nay. He was being foolish. He was not in the dark ages when the druids danced naked beneath waxing moons and wailed to forbidden gods.

‘Twas a new age. A refined age, with marvelously clever carriages and grand balls and golden orbs that chased the darkness back like the morning sun.

But not here. He glanced about. The grand estates and lofty storefronts had given way to rumpled hovels and squalid poverty.

Would the poor never change then? Would they forever live in shadow and hunger?

On the corner of two muddy streets, a narrow cottage leaned in drunken disarray toward the alley.

He remembered the place. He had passed there but a few nights before—the night the girl had been accosted by thugs. The night he had seen the vision in white. The only night his passions had pushed him past control in several months.

He turned his mind aside. Where had he been exactly? The details were somewhat blurred, for it had been dark and he had been… bestirred.

But there… The wee lass called Sibylla had emerged from that alley. Of that he was certain.

Skirting a puddle, he turned Luci into a pockmarked opening too narrow for a carriage. The houses here were naught but hovels. An old man leaned against a crumbling wall and rolled uncaring eyes upward at O’Banyon’s approach.

“Good morningtide,” he called.

The old man was silent.

“I be wondering if ye could give me assist.”

Still nothing. Time or hard drink had robbed the old man of animation.

O’Banyon reached into the pocket of his silver-shot waistcoat and drew forth a gold florin.

The old man’s eyes widened.

Long ago, when O’Banyon had plied a claymore like another might a lute, he’d saved his hard-won gold and hidden it carefully away for any eventuality.

But none could not have foreseen this future. Nor the need to take it from its hole so many long years later.

“Some nights ago there was a wee lass come hither into this alley,” he said.

The old man’s gaze never left the coin.

“Might ye remember her?”

“There are many lassies,” said the gaffer, his tone raspy, as if unused for too long a time. “Some live. Others die.”