The Etsey Series 1: The Seventh Veil (52 page)

But somehow along the line, it had changed. His kisses had been too tender, too deep. He had probed inside her in more ways than one. She rested her hand against the mantel to keep it from shaking. He had been so
kind
. No one had ever been so tender to her, not in bed or out of it. She had felt, in his arms, as if she were his whole world, and as she had looked into his eyes, she had wanted desperately to be it. In the night, in the darkness, it had felt right. But here in the light?

She cleared her throat and reached for her wooden spoon. “Please don’t speak of it. Please, it was only—”

She felt her heart ache when he touched her shoulder. Unable to stop herself, she turned slowly to face him.

He looked miserable but resigned, and he spoke evenly, squaring his shoulders as he delivered what was clearly a practiced speech. “I realize I am about to make a hash of myself, but I have to say something, Emily. I know I am not much. You know now about the truth of my birth. I have nothing to my name—not even anything saved, I am ashamed to admit. And you heard about my cowardice with my grandfather.” He looked at Emily, his heart in his eyes. “I am not much. And at this point, I realize we may none of us come out of this alive. I realize there are others, many others, all of them far more gallant and handsome and competent than myself, who would serve you better. But—” He blushed, the red coming in patches up the sides of his face. “I am in love with you. I know you can’t possibly love me, and that you have no use for me. But I am afraid I am yours all the same.”

For a minute, Emily could only stare at him. She stared at him, at Stephen Perry, his red hair slightly on end, his neat city clothes rumpled, his hands shaking, his heart in his eyes.

His heart, which was all for her.

She laughed. Then she cried. Then she dropped her spoon and embraced him.

She was kissing him before he even had his arms around her, kissing him as her tears streamed down her face, her stew bubbling behind her, the room tidy and clean around her, her home destroyed across the moor, the dome of magic pressing down on them as certain death licked and curled against it. She kissed him, and she didn’t care about any of the rest of it, because he wrapped his arms around her and he kissed her back.

“Emily,” he whispered against her mouth. “Oh, Emily.”

She kissed him again and again. She led him to the couch and straddled him, sliding his hands up the sides of her dress, encouraging his nervous fingers to dip inside the front of her gown, and she touched his face and kissed him and then rose up on her knees so he could take her in his mouth. She threw her head back and let the love and peace surround her, oblivious to the world, pretending for one sweet moment that the darkness would never come.

* * *

Madeline and Charles did not return to the tower until the lack of light forced them there.

She put Charles through every exercise she could remember and made up a few more on the spot, constantly adjusting for the strange instincts and leaps around traditional Craft that Charles brought to their casts. At the end of the day, she was not certain who had learned more. She returned to the study stronger in more than just mind. It disturbed her that she was so untutored; it made her angry with the Morgan for failing to teach her. At times she had wanted to stop, she was so shocked at what she did not know, but Charles was so…
Charles
about it. She couldn’t bring herself to draw the lessons to a close. To be honest, she hadn’t wanted them to end either, and she was eager for the dawn so they could begin them again.

But thoughts of the future plagued her as they all sat huddled in the evening around the hearth, praising Emily’s cooking and sipping at tea and wine. Madeline had tested her protective spell while she was working with Charles, and in fact he had helped her to strengthen it. But even if Timothy’s secret supplies were endless, they could not wait here forever. The elements were trapped within the space she had made with them too, and they would try to work their way out and let things in. She had begun Charles’s lessons on the hope that somehow something would occur to her as they worked, some offensive she could take, but there was none.

She had felt too, while they were working, the edges of the answer to a riddle that had plagued her for some time now, and it was not a truth that comforted. Since she had broken with her guides, she had been waiting for the witch’s Council to destroy her, but they had not come. She hadn’t let herself wonder why, because she feared the outcome too much. But today she had felt the edges of the reason, and she was fairly sure now that the Council had been deliberately kept away. The lake demon had blocked their ability to find out what she had done. She was almost sure of it. It should not have that kind of power, but it did. Why it would do such a thing, even if it could, she could not guess. But it convinced her more than ever that the demon was playing a deep game, and she feared no matter how powerful or clever she was, it would beat her. She was destined, no matter what she did, to be its pawn.

And as she sat there sipping wine, she could feel the edges of that block cracking. The spell the demon had used to keep the Council away was starting to come down. They were still ignorant, but they would not stay that way for long. Soon they would know, and they would come for her. She would not be able to stop them, and then she would be dead.

Madeline felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked up and saw Jonathan leaning over her, and when she caught his gaze, he inclined his head to the door.

“Will you come away for a while?” he asked.

She hesitated, wanting to say no, even though deeper down she wanted desperately to throw herself into his arms and sob helplessly. He did not push her further, only waited, and it was this, in the end, that made her nod and excuse herself. He did not take her hand, but he touched her back lightly as she walked ahead of him on the stairs. He indicated she should go into the bedroom, and she went.

She stopped as soon as she saw the room, and it took every ounce of reserve not to turn into his arms and kiss him.

The tub had been pulled out of the bathroom and into the center of the room. The plumbing there was useless now, so he must have hauled the water—the heated water, she amended, noticing the steam—all the way from the kitchen. She smelled the lavender and rosemary even before she saw it floating, and her heart went very soft.

“I can leave you to it,” he said, “or if you would like company, I would be happy to stay.”

“Stay.” She turned to him and touched his arm. “Please. And…thank you.”

He took her hand, kissed it, then went to the window.

Madeline shed her dress quickly, eager to step into the waiting water. She left the dirty black mass in the middle of the floor and stepped over the side of the metal tub, sighing audibly when her aching feet and legs went into the heat. She all but melted into the bath, letting her head fall back against the rim of the tub, her eyes drifting closed in pleasure.

“Not too hot?” he asked, still at the window. But she thought he may have turned around.

“I have not had a bath whose water was warmer than tepid in almost ten years,” she said, her words slurring as she let the water make her soft and easy. She sighed again. “You could scald me, and I would still stay in this tub.”

“A bold witch, shunning her Craft.”

“I departed from the Craft in so many ways today that I scarcely remember what it looks like.” She let her head roll to the side and made a face at the black rumple on the floor. “I only wish I could leave that thing behind as well, but there is nothing else to wear.”

“I am in a position to grant that wish,” he said, and she heard him cross behind her as he headed for his trunk.

“I will not wear your knickers,” she said, but with very little heat. The water made her feel so deliciously heavy.
What could it have given me to go without this so many years?

“They are not my knickers,” he said, stepping in front of the tub. “They are, in fact, yours.” He was holding her shift. “You left it, that first night.” He spoke casually, and he kept his eyes carefully on hers, but Madeline was suddenly aware that she was naked in this water, and that the man, the only flesh and blood man she had ever been naked with before, was standing before her. Holding her underwear.

He lowered it, then folded it over his arm. “I’ll put it on the bed,” he said. But he lingered, not moving. She sensed he was waiting for her to look away, that this would be his cue to move out of sight again.

Madeline did not look away.

He did not move his eyes from her face.

“There is soap,” he said eventually. “Beside you on the floor.”

Madeline still did not turn away, but she felt the decision in the air.
I have left so much else behind today. Let me leave this behind too
. “Would you fetch it for me?” she asked.

His eyes slid down, only for a fraction of a second. Then he nodded and took the shift to the bed.

Madeline ducked beneath the water, letting it close over her, shutting out sound and light and air for one last moment. Then she rose again, blinking the water away. Jonathan was waiting there, the soap in his hand. She looked up at him, but she did not reach for the soap. In fact, she sat on her hands and kept waiting.

He reached down and pressed lightly between her shoulders, urging her to rise. She did, and she shut her eyes as he took her wet hair in his hands and began to lather it with the soap.

He took his time, lifting and coating each lock, swirling each between his fingers as he made the bubbles foam. It was neutral-smelling soap—his own, she suspected, likely army issue—but it lathered well, and soon frothy bubbles were falling around her like fairy snow, drifting along the top of the water, fighting with the oil from the plants to see who would break whom away. He set the soap aside, began to massage her head, her neck, her shoulders, and Madeline shut her eyes, let her shoulders fall forward, surrendering to his hands.

“I had fantasies of this when I was young.” His hands drew slow and long against her scalp, tugging gently but firmly so that her skin broke out in gooseflesh. “I would go to the moor, wait for you to come and shout at me, and then I would go home and lie in my bed, clutching desperately at myself as I imagined giving you a bath and washing your hair. I would think of it sliding beneath my fingers, wet and full of soap. I thought of it all the time, even sometimes when I looked at you—that and many other things, with and without soap. I always thought, ‘If she had any idea what I was thinking of doing to her right now as she shouts at me, she would either strike me across the face or pass out on the spot.’ I always wanted to find out which it would be, but I was too afraid.”

“I would have hit you.” She kept her eyes closed and continued to move with his hands. “Then I would have kissed you.”

He said nothing more, just continued to run his fingers through the soap, and she continued to let him. “Duck down to rinse.”

His hands eased her down, which made her heart pound, but it pounded even harder when he continued the massage beneath the water, working out the soap. Then he nudged gently at her neck to draw her up again. He continued to work his fingers into her hair, and she could feel that some of the soap was still there, dripping down over her ears.

He said nothing this time, and Madeline wished he would. The water was beginning to cool, and her heart was growing heavy.

“You had a good day with Charles, I gather,” he said at last.

She nodded, intending to tell him some of what she had discovered, of how exciting and confusing it had been. But when she opened her mouth, she found she said instead, “They are coming, Jonathan. I can feel them. The Council. They will come very soon.”

His hands stopped. They tightened, then loosened again.

“We will face them,” he said, but his voice was not easy or soft any longer.

“They are stronger than I am,” she whispered. “Much, much stronger, even with what I have learned from working with Charles. I will not be able to stop them.”

“Rinse again,” he said, whispering back.

He pushed her under the water, loosening her hair once more, but he did not keep her down long. When she was above the surface again, he curled his hands over her head, no longer stroking her. He simply held her.

“I will not let them take you,” he whispered. “I don’t care who they are or how strong they are. I will find a way to be stronger.” He kissed her wet, still-soapy hair, and she felt his medallion glow and swell behind her, felt its magic push against her, a power strong enough to keep him alive through torture and war, through heartbreak and distance and sorrow.

“I will not let them take you,” he said again. “This time it will be my turn to save you.” He pulled away. “One more rinse.”

But this time when she went below, she pulled away from his hands. She scrubbed at her scalp herself, forcing out the last of the lather with her fingers, then rose quickly, sitting up but keeping her head tilted back. She opened her eyes and blinked through the water as it fell away. When he bent toward her, she grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him the rest of the way, opening her mouth to take him in deep as he met her tongue with his own.

His hand braced against her neck, but the other slid over her shoulder, claiming her breast, giving it the same slow, sultry treatment he had given her hair. Madeline turned her head to the side and took him in deeper, their tongues dueling as she arched her body into his hand, urging it lower. He went down on his knees behind her and let his hand slide down her stomach, over her thigh, then between. He was lazy as his fingers made their way to her sex, but once there, he parted her and eased himself inside with almost one movement. Madeline moaned into his mouth and spread her legs full against the sides of the tub, then threw them over, opening herself as wide as the metal sides would allow. He shuddered, made a rough sound low in his throat, and entered her deeper, fuller, and faster.

When he stopped and pulled her out of the water, clutching her as he carried her to the bed, she went soft for him, nipping hot and wet against the side of his neck, laving the skin there so that when he came to the bed, he all but tossed her to the mattress in his desperation to shed himself of his clothes and slide inside her. But when he stood above her, staring down at her naked, open body as he fought with the buttons of his shirt, she smiled wickedly, then whispered a word, shimmering with power as she moved his clothes effortlessly from his body to join her dress in the middle of the floor.