Devil at Midnight (11 page)

“Is the minstrel here?” Christian asked.

The man in the apron waved to the farthest corner without speaking.

Now that Grace was a spirit, she saw very well in the dark. Regardless of this change, only shadows seemed to fill the place the man had indicated, as thick and inky as a movie trick. Grace and Christian weren’t more than two strides away when—seemingly out of nowhere—a woman leaned forward into the firelight. Her profile was a cameo of white jade, every line and slope delicate. Such loveliness should have enchanted, but tension gripped Grace’s shoulders, as if this female presented a personal threat to her.

In his brief account of their meeting, Christian hadn’t mentioned how beautiful the minstrel was.

Her head turned toward Grace and Christian as if her neck were formed of gears and not vertebrae, an oddly robotic motion. Perhaps
she
was having trouble seeing. Her dark eyes squinted while one small crease furrowed her otherwise flawless brow. “I asked that you come alone, Christian.”

Grace’s intake of breath was sharp. This woman saw her? This woman knew she was with Christian? Grace tried to back away, but her arms and legs wouldn’t cooperate. Some dark power was streaming out from the minstrel, and whatever it was, it wasn’t a friend to Grace. For the first time since she’d died she felt like a spirit, her atoms dissolved and spread in a powerless smoke. Panic clutched her nonexistent midsection. She was going to blow away. She was going to be nothing.

Help
! she thought, without much hope of answer.

Christian stepped in front of her. “I
am
alone,” he said smoothly.

A second later, he truly was.

 

 

G
race’s disappearance caused a far more serious jump in his pulse than the minstrel coming into view. That trick Christian had seen before; Grace abruptly ceasing to be was new. He told himself she was
somewhere
, perhaps even somewhere nearby. No doubt she had finally figured out how to make herself more invisible—and with damned good timing, as it turned out. If this minstrel was some sort of seer, Grace had best stay away from her.

In spite of this reassurance, sweat broke out beneath his arms. Christian fought not to call after or look for her.

One threat at a time was his motto.

The minstrel was under no such restriction. She snapped her gaze from one side of him to the other, then frowned at him. “I thought I saw someone there with you.”

Christian shrugged. “The light is tricky at this hour.”

The woman pursed her lips, slowly easing back in her chair. This time the shadows did not hide her. They seemed, in truth, to be at her beck and call.

“Sit,” she said, gesturing to the stool he had used before. Her tone was part command, part silky feminine invitation. Christian knew which he was more comfortable with.

“Wine?” she offered, once he was settled.

Christian shook his head. “Might I know your name? Since you know mine.”

“Nim Wei,” she said. “But if you wish to call me ‘mistress,’ that is also acceptable.”

Christian inclined his head and called her neither.

This she seemed to find amusing. A flicker of a smile twitched her mouth.

“Our itinerary,” she said, sliding a map that had been hand drawn on heavy parchment across the table. It was very detailed: mountains and rivers and city names all marked in. Nim Wei tapped the edge closest to herself with a pale, shapely fingernail. Christian couldn’t help noting that her fingers were almost white enough to glow. “We should cross into Savoyard territory here, at the St. Bernard Pass. The Valle D’Aosta gives us access through the Alps to Turin, from whence we can reach the old Roman road, the Via Aemilia. That will take us to Bologna. Florence, where I have business, is an easy march from there.”

Christian studied the route she had traced. There would be good hunting for much of it, which would spare them carrying heavy loads of provisions—or having to “appropriate” them as they went. When they were on campaign, they often faced this necessity, but Christian did not relish it.

“Yes,” Nim Wei said, following his thoughts. “And what food you cannot catch, I will pay for. I am not absolutely opposed to stealing, but I consider it shortsighted to leave a trail of angry peasants in my wake.”

Christian looked up at her, the golden sparks in her eyes momentarily transfixing him. With an effort, he shook himself. “It would be more direct to go along the coast.”

Nim Wei shuddered delicately. “Too sunny, even this time of year.” She leaned forward, her slender white fingers sliding over the backs of his scarred brown hands. “You should know this about me, Christian: I abhor the sun. I shall rely on you to convince the others to travel only after dark.”

Her voice was sweet and smoky, her eyes like polished jet sparkling with stars. Christian’s chest went tight as he stared into them. “Only after dark?”

“How else can I preserve my beautiful pallor? A woman must take her advantages where she finds them.”

If she prized her feminine advantage, why had she been journeying dressed as a male minstrel? The question slid from his mind as soon as it formed. Nim Wei was stroking his hands with her fingertips, up and down, up and down, until the skin between his knuckles hummed. Christian cleared his uncomfortably thickened throat.

“How many servants do you travel with?” he croaked.

Nim Wei released his hands before he could edge them back. “None. You and your men shall provide any assistance I require.”

This was hardly proper. Even if she was eccentric, a group of rough-mannered soldiers could not serve all a woman’s needs. Christian opened his mouth to say so only to find he could not. He rubbed the spot between and just above his eyebrows, where something felt like it was pressing.

“Strong, too,” the minstrel murmured, apropos of he knew not what. “I cannot express how that pleases me.”

“Even traveling light, this route will take longer than a fortnight,” Christian warned in an uncustomarily nervous rush.

Nim Wei smiled at him with closed lips. Her fingers were on the underside of his wrists now, playing as light as catkins where his veins fed into his palms. He tried not to react, but when his heart started thumping harder, her smile deepened.

“Yes,” she said. “I believe that is long enough.”

 

 

C
hristian’s whole arm shook as he pushed the door to his room open. He should have reported straight to his father, but a stronger compulsion had pulled him here. That compulsion did not bear fruit. His chamber was empty. Naught but shadows and moonlight fell upon the simple shapes of his furniture.

Though he continued to stand in the doorway, there seemed no point in going in.

“Grace?” he said, soft but loud enough to hear. “Grace, if you are here, show yourself.”

The silence echoed with his heartbeats. They came faster than they should have, faster than they had for his parley with Mistress Wei. Christian had almost forgotten Grace while they spoke, as if whole worlds could be lost in the swimming depths of the minstrel’s eyes.

He shuddered at that thought. “
Grace
,” he said more harshly.

A footfall scuffed to a halt in the passageway behind him, closer than Christian ought to have let it get.

“Christian?” Michael laid a hard, warm hand on his upper arm.

Turning, Christian tried not to be disappointed that his friend was not Grace. “I was praying.”

Michael’s brow wrinkled. “For grace?”

“You are always saying God’s gifts are for everyone. I was feeling in extra need of virtue.” Christian hitched one shoulder, disliking his awareness that he was lying. “I expect it was a waste of time.”

Michael’s fingers squeezed his bicep and then let go. “Your meeting with our new client troubled you.”

This topic he could discuss. Christian let his back rest against the wall beside the door to his room. “Something is not right about her. She claims she ‘abhors’ the sun. She wants to travel only at night.”

“Some women do not like to freckles.”

“I am unconvinced that her reason is vanity.”

“Then what?”

“I do not know. Maybe I am nervous because she is too seductive.”

“You?” Michael laughed until he saw that Christian was serious. “Your father will not refuse the commission. No matter how strange this woman is, her offer is too rich.”

“I know.” Sighing, Christian glanced into his empty chamber, still void of any sign of his ghost.

“Charles spoke to me again tonight.”

This jerked Christian’s attention back. “Tell me he did not do it when others were about.”

“No,” Michael said, crinkling his brow to match Christian’s. “Charles is rash, but he has too much wit for that. He did admit to talking to William. He said William agreed with him.”

“William is too loyal to
disa
gree. Perdition take him.” Christian slapped his palms in frustration against the wall behind him. “I told Charles to let it drop.”

“You cannot blame him. This business with the dog made everyone realize how harsh your father has become.”

“It would not serve.” Christian’s voice was as low as it was impassioned. The lantern at the end of the passage flickered in a draft. “My father’s harshness is exactly what our clients want.
They
would not follow me if I broke away on my own, and I will not risk your lives for no better end than to have you starve.”

“You think it would come to risking our lives? To your father taking arms against you?”

“Can you doubt it? You know his pride. At the least, we would have to pray we never faced his men on opposing sides of a battlefield.”

Michael’s blue eyes held his. “Perhaps we would fare better than you believe. Perhaps Gregori has trained you to underestimate your strengths. People respect you, Christian. There may be some among your father’s men who would change allegiances to you.”

“I am but twenty,” Christian said. “They are veterans.”

“You have been fighting since you were fifteen.”

“As has my father. Michael, I value your faith in me. Believe me, I do. I think, however, that if you were in my shoes, you would not risk your mean.”

“Maybe not,” Michael said. “But I am not the leader you are.”

Christian looked away. Michael had no idea how much more admirable he was than Christian, how often Christian wished he had Michael’s certainty of mind.

“I must go to my father,” he said aloud. “He will want to know what the minstrel said.”

 

 

G
race lay facedown on a hard surface, her head resting on her hands while an unknown pressure shoved into her back. The shove felt strange, as if it were and were not happening to her body.

“Pull,” someone said.

Hands gripped her bent elbows and tugged upward. Air whooshed involuntarily into her lungs. Sweaty fingers touched her neck.

“Still no pulse.”

“Again.”

Not yet,
another voice said inside her head.

Not yet,
Grace repeated.

She blinked, her mind losing its grip on the perceptions it had just experienced. She was sitting on the edge of Christian’s monklike bed. He was there as well, lying on his back atop the blanket with his fingers woven together on his breastbone. A second earlier—or what had seemed like a second earlier—she’d been standing behind him in the dark tavern. She’d disappeared, and then she’d popped back here. Time must have passed, though. Time she couldn’t account for—or Christian would still be gone.

What the hell is happening?
she thought as Christian’s eyes snapped open.

“Grace,” he said, bolting up to stare at her. “You came back.”

He flung his arms so tightly around her she had to squeak. His hard, lean cheek was squashed against her ear, his strong muscles trembling. His enthusiasm stunned her, his obvious gratitude for her return. Her throat tightened with an emotion strong enough to frighten her.
This
was what it was to be cared for. This was what it meant to matter to someone. Grace wished her reflexes were quick enough to stop him when he gripped her shoulders and held her away from him.

“Why did you leave me?” he demanded, shaking her just a bit.

“I don’t know. I didn’t mean to.”

“You did not hear me calling you?”

Grace shook her head. “Christian,” she said softly. “You’re touching me.”

The realization hit him, too. His face darkened in a rush, the color infusing the dramatic angles of his cheeks and jaw. Within their evening mask of stubble, his hard lips softened and then went tight. They were redder, too, the sharp points of his upper lip causing Grace to touch her tongue to her own.

“Grace,” he groaned, his hold trailing down her arms. The squeeze he gave her fingers—so tight, so suggestive of pent-up longing—pulled a gush of sultry wetness out from her core.

Evidently, she was physical enough that her nose was working. The scent of her own arousal, and never mind the way Christian’s nostrils flared, made her squirm with embarrassment.

Seeing this, Christian laughed shakily. “You are so gorgeous,” he whispered, squeezing her hands again as his gaze raked her up and down. “I swore to myself the instant you became corporeal, I would fall on you like an animal.”

“Have you changed your mind?” Grace asked, because he clearly wasn’t attacking her.

This time, his laugh was silent, his dark eyes dancing with amusement. “To my amazement, I find I am simply grateful to hold your hand.” He drew it to his mouth, pressing a fervent kiss to each fingertip. “Your lovely, warm little human hand.”

As if this were not thrill enough, he finished with his lips soft against her palm. Grace didn’t understand how such a sweet and courtly gesture could have her tingling all over. This was worse than the last time she’d taken form, when he’d kissed her so thoroughly in that stairwell. Her body was learning to need him. The place between her thighs ached with a strength that was close to pain.