Demon's Curse (Imnada Brotherhood) (29 page)

The result of this outrage and ostracism ended in an advantage to Mac. No line of carriages blocked the gate. No stream of calling-card-toting visitors or patronage-seeking toadies trolled the terrace steps or wandered among the boxwoods. And Mac was alone in the three-acre anteroom as he awaited the return of the liveried footman.

He paced the room’s perimeter one more time. Twenty-eight . . . twenty-nine . . . thirty steps to the west wall. Turn. One . . . two . . . three . . .

“His Lordship will see you now.” The footman’s insolent gaze raked Mac with passive contempt.

“I didn’t ask to see the earl,” he replied, matching the servant’s frigid tones. “I need to speak with Mrs. Parrino.”

The man’s expression hardened. “This way, Captain.”

Arguing would only get him thrown out on the street. Best to face Deane once and for all and determine the damage for himself. Tucking his hat under
his arm, Mac followed the footman through a series of awe-inspiring public rooms into a smaller yet no less impressive suite of sitting rooms, and then to a corridor ending at a pair of double doors. A quiet rap and a murmured voice from within, and Mac was shown inside.

“Captain Flannery, my lord,” the servant announced to a man bent over the desk, his dark hair only slightly silvered with gray, his granite face set in concentration.

“Thank you, William,” the earl answered without looking up from his writing. “That will be all.”

No sound but the scratching of pen on paper, the tick of a clock in the corner, and the snap of a fire within the enormous marbled hearth, but Mac’s head buzzed, his skin crawling with a prickling electrical charge that set his teeth on edge. David was right: the Earl of Deane was Fey-blood, his power tangible.

“I’ve come to see Bianca Parrino,” Mac announced.

Deane held up a hand as he continued writing.

Mac ground his jaw, fists clenched. “Is she here or not?”

“One moment and all will be answered, I assure you,” Deane responded.

Empty of patience, Mac shoved forward, slamming his hands on the desk, startling the earl from his correspondence. “My moments are precious and I’ve few to spend awaiting your pleasure, so either tell me she’s here or send me on my way to look elsewhere.”

Rather than answering Mac’s temper with his own, Lord Deane sat back in his chair, his fiery golden gaze nearly blinding. “So you’re Captain Flannery. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Mac curled his fingers around the edges of the
desk, the temptation to heave it up and over the arrogant earl almost overwhelming. “Where is she?” he demanded.

“Bianca’s safe, Captain. You have my word.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“No, but—”

Mac leaned forward to within inches of the earl’s face, exhaustion, dread, and frustration pushing him as close to the brink as he’d ever been. “Get her. Now.”

Rather than showing fear, Lord Deane quirked his mouth into a smile as he rang the bell behind him. “You’ve just lost me a hundred guineas, you know. My wife’s a hopeless romantic. She wagered there was a man behind Mrs. Parrino’s arrival.” A different footman arrived. “Edward, find Mrs. Parrino and bring her here. She has a visitor.” The man bowed and departed, and Deane turned his attention to Mac once more. “While we wait, you and I have important matters to discuss.” He motioned toward a chair. “Don’t you think?”

Mac straightened but refused the seat, conscious of the sword hanging at his side and the pistol he carried in his coat pocket. Would it come to that? Would he have the strength and the resolve to kill this man in cold blood? There would be no way he could escape the house unremarked. He would be caught, tried, and executed. The Imnada’s secret safe, but at the cost of his life.

“No need to resort to violence,” Deane said as if he sensed Mac’s dilemma. “I’m no threat to you,” he paused, “or to the Imnada.”

A sing of steel, and the point of Mac’s sword rested at the base of Deane’s throat, piercing the folds of the earl’s cravat. The slightest push and the man would
choke on Mac’s blade, his talking days over. “Do you want to die, Fey-blood?” he snarled.

Deane’s eyes never wavered, his body tense but unmoving.

“At ease, Captain,” came a barked command from the door.

Mac swung around, guts knotted, mouth dry, brain awhirl with confusion. “Gray!”

*   *   *

“I arrived in London the day before yesterday,” Gray explained. “I never saw David. We must have passed each other on the road.”

“What the hell are you doing here? With him?” Mac demanded. “Damn it, Gray. What’s going on?”

Mac had sunk into a chair only after Lord Deane had eased himself beyond the reach of his sword and Gray had extracted the weapon from his white-knuckled grip.

“I came at the request of Lord Deane,” Gray answered. “My visit overlapping yours is merely a happy coincidence.”

“Happy for me, at any rate,” quipped Deane, rubbing his neck.

“But why? He . . . he’s . . .”

Gray propped himself on the edge of the desk, one booted leg swinging. “Yes, he is. He’s also one of a handful of men and women who know of the Imnada’s existence and are devoted to opening a new dialogue between Fey-blood and shapechanger.” As Gray continued to explain, Mac’s suspicions of ambush intensified. He’d been so convinced of David’s involvement in the rebel plot that he’d never given a thought to de Coursy’s complicity.

“Do you know what you’ve done?” he demanded when Gray had finished. “You’ve betrayed the clans. You’ve condemned the Imnada to death.”

Gray’s steel-blue eyes narrowed. “No, I’ve offered us hope for the first time in a thousand years. It’s our only chance. We can’t just wall ourselves away behind the Palings and pretend the outside world won’t invade sooner or later, because it will. Our safeguards weaken. The powers that went into their weaving fail as we do. It’s only a matter of when. Better to choose our own ground than wait for the enemy to choose it for us.”

“Then you agree they’re the enemy.”

“Some. Perhaps most. But not all. And definitely not Sebastian.”

Deane acknowledged the compliment with a gracious nod, though he remained safely on the other side of the desk, beyond Mac’s reach.

“How long have you been in league with them?” Mac asked.

“I was approached upon my return from France and shortly after Grandfa—after the Gather acted on our malady.”

Mac snorted his disgust. Malady? David was right. Gray couldn’t even speak the word “curse,” as if saying it out loud increased its power.

“There were mitigating circumstances that brought all of us together in common cause,” Gray said. “Circumstances, I’m happy to say, that are no longer a concern, thanks to one of our number. But it showed us how much we’ve lost by hiding behind the Palings’ wards and how much we have to gain if we join forces. The purges happened more than a thousand years
ago, Mac. The reasons are barely remembered except as legend.”

“
He
remembers them.” Mac pointed to Deane. “He related them in detail to Bianca. Arthur betrayed and struck down by his treacherous Imnada war leader. The Fey-bloods rising up in rage to avenge their fallen king. A moving faery tale.”

“Which is just what they believe us to be,” Gray answered. “The Other think we’re extinct—killed off during the Fealla Mhòr. Our return now will be a new beginning, a new chance to live in peace.”

“Or a new opportunity for them to renew their hatred.” Mac’s brain was as rattled and unsteady as a jug-bit drunkard’s, words pelting him from all sides, only half of it making sense. But he clung to the few clear thoughts in his head. Focused on those. “Was Adam part of this conspiracy?”

“He’d made his presence known to Sebastian, but there had been no actual contact.”

So Mac had been right. The gift of a book had been the signal for a meeting. A meeting that never took place. “Because Adam was murdered by a Fey-blood. Did you know this at the funeral? Was that why you tried to fend off my questions? Because you knew Adam had been killed by one of your associates?”

Gray’s lips pressed together, his eyes dangerous. “You don’t know that for a fact.”

“Yes. I do. That’s what David was on his way to tell you. I was attacked and almost killed by one as well. Only Bianca Parrino kept me from ending up in a box alongside Adam in St. James’s cemetery.” His gaze snapped to Lord Deane. “Ring any bells, my lord?”

Gray and Deane exchanged impenetrable looks, though Mac sensed the unease his tale had sparked. They hadn’t known, and it worried them.

“The Fey-blood killed Adam. Now she’s after me,” Mac continued. “Still trust your so-called friends?”

“I acted for the good of our race, Mac. You have to believe that.”

“Did you?” Mac snarled. “Or did you do it to get back at your grandfather for abandoning you?”

Gray’s hand tightened around the knob of his cane, his eyes drilling into Mac’s skull with a lethal glare.

“And if dear old Granddaddy wouldn’t come to your rescue before, don’t expect him to do it when the Ossine’s enforcers catch you. The Duke of Morieux will probably be the one to swing the axe.” Mac turned back to Deane. “I’ve been patient, but no longer. Where’s Bianca?”

“All that righteous anger and now you’re desperate for an out-clan, Mac?” Gray asked, returning Mac’s thrust with a quick strike of his own.

“Back off,” Mac snarled. “While you’ve been playing traitor, I’ve been trying to break the fucking curse so we can all go home. Without Bianca’s help, it will take me weeks to riddle out the last of Adam’s notes—time I don’t have if this Fey-blood shows up again. Time none of us has.”

“Is that all you want with her?” Gray asked, one regal brow arched in infuriating superiority.

“That’s all. Period. End of story.”

Deane looked up, eyes widening, a pained expression chasing its way across his features. “Come in, Bianca. Thank you for joining us. We were just . . . uh . . . speaking about you.”

*   *   *

There it was in black and white. Well, maybe not black and white but definitely stated emphatically for all to hear. Mac needed her—not as a woman but as a gardener. Talk about humbling. She’d been desired by dukes and courted by princes, and here a lowly army captain dismissed her as nothing more than a convenient tool like a trowel or a sharp pair of secateurs. Useful because she could tell a
Fraxinus
from a
Taxus
.

And, like the silliest of schoolgirls, she’d fallen for his pretty words and been lured by sweet promises.

Again.

One would think she’d have learned by now. One would think her heart would know better.

One would think she’d be immune to the pain.

One would be very, very wrong.

Yet, none of that touched her face or marred her pose of carefree ambivalence as she alighted upon the edge of a sofa, settling her skirts around her. To look at her, none would ever know her heart lay scattered around her in pieces. Thank heavens Sebastian and Major de Coursy had slipped unobtrusively away. This was one time when she did not relish an audience.

“What I told Gray. What you heard. I didn’t mean it.” Mac’s excuses bounced off her like spent arrows.

A living death. A part of their soul cut away.

Marianne’s words haunted Bianca. When desires cooled, how long before resentment overcame respect and desire turned to bitterness? How long before Mac saw her as the source of his pain, the root of all his
problems? How long before the insults became blows? “You don’t need to explain.”

“I may not need to, but I damn well want to.” Mac started pacing the room as she clutched the sofa arm with a sinking heart, wishing the floor would swallow her whole. “You and I, Bianca. We were never supposed to happen.”

“An impossibility like young Jamie Wallace?” she asked flippantly, the muscles in her face faltering under feigned composure, her shoulders inching closer to her neck.

“Something like that,” he answered with a cynical twist of his lips. “The Imnada have lived apart for so long, it’s difficult to imagine another way. To trust where trust is synonymous with betrayal.”

“Jory did it.”

“He did, and was outlawed for his pains.”

Was this his way of saying good-bye? The fantasy of the snug farm, the warm bed beneath the eaves, the laughter and voices of children floating through the house—she had conjured them and for a few brief happy hours had imagined them within her grasp. But, like props and sets, they had been an illusion. The curtain had closed, the fantasy no more than paste and paint.

Mac rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, his gaze sharp, his face rigid with strain. “For the past eighteen months, I’ve lived with one dream—to find a way home. It’s hard to simply let go. But—”

“Then don’t, Mac.” Fear caught at her heart. She didn’t want to hear any more stammered explanations. She didn’t want to know she was a useful appendage. “Go home to Concullum. See your sister. Repair relations
with your father. Take up the life you lost. I’ll do the same. It will be as if we never laid eyes on one another.”

“It’s that easy for you dismiss the last weeks?” His stare seemed to scythe right through her. “To pretend nothing happened between us?”

“I didn’t say it would be easy. Those days in the country were fabulous, and I’ll never forget them—or you. But we have to face some cold facts.”

“This is madness. You’re actually going to sit there and pretend this was some sort of foolish lark? Damn it, I know you better than that, Bianca.”

On went the armor. “Do you? You forget who you’re speaking to. I can play any part I choose.”

His anger by now was palpable: she recognized the signs—a flash in his eyes, a tensing of the muscles in his jaw. “You might be able to fool the gullible prancing sods who flutter around you with their poems and their presents, but you aren’t fooling me,” he shot back. “That was no act, though I’d lay any odds you’re performing now.”

“You have your clan, Mac, as I have London. This is where I belong.” Layer upon hardened layer, stone wrapped in steel wrapped in a gemstone brilliance. She smiled around the lump clogging her throat, cutting off her breath. “I didn’t realize how much I would miss the bustle and pace of the city until I was trapped in Surrey with naught but the cows for company. Besides, I prefer being on my own with none to tie me down to the drudgery of domestication.”