A Matter of Circumstance and Celludrones (4 page)

The transformation from lady to hell-hound witch was complete. Her
garments hung from her body in shreds, her ice-blonde hair stripped from its
pins to hang in disarray to well below her waist. Blood, dark and thick, oozed
from a deep gash at the side of her head.

“But you’ve quite spoiled my mood,” she said, sighing. “You should not
have set your dogs on me.”

Lily
, he cried out, only no words reached his lips. His vocal
chords were paralysed.

Lily didn’t move or make a sound. For all he knew, the bitch had her
under a spell as well.

“You really should not have,” Lady Ostrich went on. “Now I have to
prove to you how very serious—” she gave him one last glance before turning her
full attention on Lily “—my intentions are.”

The palm aimed at him dropped away and, with it, the restraining
force. Greyston plunged to the ground.

“There are so many ways to do this,” she said in a sing-song voice.

Greyston came to his feet into a ready lunge, but froze when he saw
the woman’s hands clasped around Lily’s throat.

“But there’s something incredibly tantalising about getting one’s
hands dirty.” She glanced over her shoulder, showing Greyston a hard smile.
“Don’t you think?”

Snap.

“Lily.” Greyston lunged then, falling over her crumpled form, trying
to shield her with his body, trying to protect her. As he gathered her into his
arms, her head dangled at an unnatural angle.

Too late.
No. By God, no!

“I pray my lesson serves you well, Lord Adair. Beware the powers you
seek to play with, for such…”

He blanked out the menacing words, shutting himself off from the
outside world as he held Lily close. He searched inside his head, found the
memory he wanted and clung to it, weaving his senses through the clutter until
he was right there, gazing down on Lady Lily as she busied herself pouring tea.

A hand landed on his shoulder. It was the witch, hissing a stream of
words at him as she gripped hard, tugging. Greyston delved deeper into his
mind, concentrating on a single moment in time, inhaling the lingering scent of
rose water and wondering, for the first time, what hid beneath Lily’s polite
smile.

Chapter Three

L
ily
kept her smile in place as she tipped the spout of the teapot over a cup.
Awareness of this man tingled at the base of her spine, but that couldn’t be
helped. She’d applied an extra layer of white powder to her cheeks and throat
before coming downstairs in anticipation of warm flushes. Lord Adair was quite
simply, to quote Evie, dashing.

In looks, anyway. His manner left much to be desired. Which was just
as well. Any distraction tempted by that chiselled jaw, or those warm brown
eyes, was quickly upstaged by the memory of his abruptness last night. Not to
mention his less than exemplary behaviour this afternoon.

She glanced up at him. “One lump or two?”

A sensation of déjà vu overcame her.

“Two,” he rasped.

She startled, spilling a trail of hot tea over the two cups and
saucers laid out. Her strained smile faltered.

“We don’t have time— We need to talk. I need you to—” His hand went to
his neck cloth, tugging until the starched linen hung in two loose ties down the
front of his shirt. “Lily, I don’t know—”

“Lord Adair!” She placed the pot carefully on the trolley and stood.

The feeling of déjà vu settled around her like a dense cloud. In that
mist, Lord Adair was setting down his cup and saucer, strolling to the mantelpiece,
pointing out the miniature of her mother and about to blast her with
inappropriate questions and probing insults.
Not
tugging his neck cloth
loose and taking liberties with her name.

A sour, curdling feeling churned her belly.

Something felt very wrong, even before Lord Adair shoved the tea
trolley aside and swept her up against him. One arm hitched around her waist,
trapping both her arms as well. A hand clamped her mouth. Her feet were off the
ground and the rest of her was pressed to lean muscle and far more male than
she’d ever encountered.

Lily screamed uselessly into the large palm slapped over her mouth as
Lord Adair carried her from the drawing room. By the time she remembered to
wriggle and kick, they were halfway down the hall. Not that her efforts or
anything else broke his stride until he reached the front door. He put his back
to the door with some awkward movements that stretched her spine.

He can’t turn the doorknob without hands.

A moment later, his hand fell away from her mouth and she let loose a
shrill scream that wasn’t nearly as loud as the one she’d prepared in her head.
As he hauled her outside, she caught a glimpse of Halver barging through the
doorway at the far side of the hallway.

An unlikely image accosted her wits.

Halver sprawled on the floor, his body broken, his eyes dull and
sunken in his ashen face.

“Get us the hell away from here.”

She didn’t see who Lord Adair had called out to, but she did remember
to start screaming again as he shoved her inside a carriage. The carriage
lurched even before the door slammed shut. Lord Adair piled up beside her on
the velvet bunk. He dragged her sideways onto his lap and slapped that damnable
hand over her screams.

Lily couldn’t see anything beyond the drawn curtains. Suddenly it
dawned on her that Lord Adair was no longer attempting abduction. It was
fait
accompli
.

She went limp against him, overwhelmed by her own
powerlessness and the shock of his audacious behaviour. Pressed to his chest,
she heard his heartbeat race beneath her cheek. She doubted his scramble down
the path had exerted him overmuch, even with her added weight. The man was all
muscle, hard and tense. She felt it in the thighs she sat across. The arms
wrapped around her. The slab of abdomen and chest she was crushed against.
Which meant his heart raced for another reason. Possibly, hopefully, because he
was realising exactly how appalling his actions were. Abduction. In Grosvenor
Square in broad daylight. It seemed impossible.

Her own pulse wasn’t racing; it was quivering, as if her heart had to
pause and peer around the corner before each beat.

The horses slowed to a walk, the carriage gently bumping along to
their gait. They’d turned onto a busy street, the sounds of drivers directing
cattle and pedestrian clatter an arm’s throw away. It may as well have been a
desolate mile for all the help it was to her. What did Lord Adair intend? How
could such a ruffian have been introduced into polite society?

She sucked in a breath of nothing but fleshy palm. She’d never been
this scared…well, not since she’d…died?

The fog peeled from her mind like a winter blanket to reveal a
nightmare. The glint of steel as Lord Adair flung his dagger at her. Ana
leaping over the settee, flattening her to the ground. The woman with the plume
of ostrich feathers; Halver tossed through the air; the large man with
expressionless eyes; the fight tearing up her drawing room; Lord Adair
plastered to the wall; the crack of bone as her neck snapped; the slow descent
into blackness; the last thought she should have ever had.
Instant death
isn’t instant at all.

Except here she was, breathing and feeling and having all kinds of new
thoughts. Both her arms were once again trapped within Lord Adair’s steel
embrace; otherwise she would have pinched herself. Lord knew where that impulse
came from. It wasn’t as if she could wake herself up from death.

“Lily,” came Lord Adair’s gruff burr near her ear, “I’m sorry. There
was no time to explain, nothing I could say that you’d believe. This is the
only way I know to keep you safe. I swear I won’t see you come to any harm. Not
from me or anyone else.”

His words were strangely soothing. Perhaps because as long as he was
talking to her, she couldn’t be dead.

The carriage gained speed, swaying dangerously as the driver took the
horses into a full-out gallop. They’d left the traffic behind for open road.

“I’m going to release you now,” he said. “I trust you won’t do
something silly like try to fling yourself out of the carriage at this speed.”

If she was right, and they’d left the main roads behind, there’d be no
one to hear her scream for help either. Lily had more pressing matters to worry
about anyway.

Lord Adair slid her from his lap and she immediately scooted to the
furthest corner of the seat.

She flicked aside the curtain to peer outside. “Where are you taking
me?”

He didn’t answer.

Cultivated fields stretched out to the right as far as the eye could
see. If she craned her neck, she could just make out the beginnings of a clump
of trees straight ahead. She recognised the densely wooded common. “We’re
approaching Clapham Common.”

She glanced across to find him staring out of his window.

In profile, silky brown hair stroked the hollow below his cheekbone
and his clenched jaw formed a rigid line. His trousers were a dark grey,
matched with a waistcoat worn over a crisp white shirt. Broad shoulders filled
a meticulously tailored jacket that was left unbuttoned. He’d crossed one leg
over the other and rested an elbow on the door ledge.

He looked every inch the well-groomed gentleman who’d been admitted to
Lady Cheshire’s Mummy ball.

Every inch the heart-stopping Lord Dashing.

Her gaze settled on the ruined neck cloth and loose ties hanging down
his front. A blush heated her throat as she recalled the unfamiliar hardness of
lean muscle and his particular scent of pine forest and ash and something
altogether male. She’d danced her share of waltzes, but this took intimacy to
an entirely new extreme.

He brought his attention from outside to meet her brazen stare with a
quirked brow. “At least you haven’t leapt to your death yet.”

The heat drained from her skin. Lily lowered her eyes, clasping her
fingers in her lap to hide the trembling.

I’m not dead.

She couldn’t be. Not when life still felt so real. The only other
explanation lay with the troublesome spells she’d suffered from since her
mother’s death.

Neither Lily nor her aunt, nor Dr. Ragon for that matter, had
suspected her recurring spells to be anything other than flashes from an
overactive, traumatised imagination. Usually the place was familiar, often
she’d recognise faces, but Lily herself had always only ever been an observer,
disconnected and unaffected.

This time she remembered every vivid detail with the intensity of
someone who’d lived through the action, the emotion. She knew what it felt like
to have her neck snapped, to draw that last ragged breath, to slip away into
the beyond.

She lifted her gaze to him. “What do you want with me, Lord Adair?”

The ghost of that exact question, asked as she’d served him tea in her
drawing room, answered.
I knew Lady d’Bulier.
Lily held her breath.

Lord Adair grimaced. “I knew your mother, Lady d’Bulier.”

She let that breath out on a trembling sigh. “You mentioned something
about keeping me safe. From what?”

In response, he half-rose and rapped hard up against the roof with his
fist. A moment later, the carriage drew to a halt in a clearing alongside the
road.

Lily’s hand quickly went to the door handle on her side. She
hesitated. There was no urge to run for her life. She was more afraid of her
memories, of what might or might not be real, than of Lord Adair.

When Lord Adair alighted and offered her a hand, she shifted along the
seat and allowed him to help her out. Neither of them wore gloves. Skin touched
skin as she stepped from the carriage.

One more intimate social transgression; she was beginning to lose
count.

She slid her hand from his as soon as her feet touched the ground. Her
slippers were no protection from the mulch of fallen leaves and damp soil as
she walked beneath a cluster of trees.

She spun about, determined to get some answers, but her gaze stalled
on the large man in the driver’s box. “He’s the celludrone,” she gasped. “He’s
the one who fought that woman.”

She’d only caught snatches of him before Lord Adair had pushed her out
of sight behind the settee. The aftermath, however, was burned into her skull.
This man, and Ana, torn apart at their seams, nothing left but mechanical
pieces strewn across her drawing room. Dear Lord, had these spells she suffered
from evolved into some type of visionary premonition? Had she witnessed her
imminent death?

“You remember that?” Lord Adair marched up to her, blocking her view
of the celludrone. “Lily, this is important. Tell me what you remember.”

“The lady, the one in burgundy and the plume of ostrich feathers.”
Lily backed away until she hit a tree and gratefully leaned against the thick
trunk. “She killed Halver, then your driver was there, he attacked her…Ana
tried to help but the woman tore them both apart. You—” She looked up into his
eyes. He wasn’t snorting his disbelief or consigning her to Bedlam. The scowl
on his face was intense and serious. “She had you pinned to the wall. Somehow
she could…
what
is she?”

Lord Adair shrugged, shaking his head slowly.

Lily took a deep breath. “She snapped my— I mean, she’s going to kill
me if she finds me, isn’t she?”

“I won’t let that happen, Lily.” He came closer. “I don’t know how
you’re aware of all this and I’m too grateful to care. I had no idea how to
convey the danger you’re in, how to gain your trust.”

“But how did you— Oh! You suffer spells too.” There was no other
explanation. “You had the same vision as I did.”

“Vision?” His gaze sharpened.

She nodded. “I thought I was losing my mind. Is this why you were
following me? Why you came to see me today? Did you have a premonition about
what would…um, about what was about to happen?”