Lady Midnight (50 page)

But Amelia still slept, her pink-and-white chamber softly illuminated by the glow of one candle in a night-light. She had kicked away the bedclothes, though, and held her poor doll by a long strand of silk hair. Kate tucked the blankets around her again, and gently kissed her down-soft brow. Amelia murmured and turned her head on her pillow, slumbering on.

As Kate straightened from the bed, she glimpsed the portrait of Caroline Lindley that now hung over Amelia's fireplace. Caroline's blue eyes were as clear and lovely as ever, yet Kate almost fancied, on this haunted night, that she wore a concerned air.

"You are always watching over her, aren't you?" Kate whispered.

Christina,
a voice said in her mind, softly but insistently.
Where is Christina?

Kate frowned. Yes—she
should
check on Christina before she went back to bed. Christina liked to think, to act, as if she were strong, untouchable, and unafraid of anything. Especially something as prosaic as a rainstorm. Yet Kate knew very well that the facade of solitary indifference was just that—a facade. Christina saw things most young girls missed, and she was affected by them far more deeply than she wanted to admit. Things like hypocrisy and truth and anger—and the insanity that could hide behind a beautiful face.

No. It wouldn't hurt to look in on her now.

Kate softly closed Amelia's door behind her and padded down the corridor to Christina's room. She raised her hand to knock, but the thick wood gave way under her light touch, easing open to reveal an empty space. A candle burned at the writing desk; its surface was still littered with open books, sketches of plants, and sheets of paper covered with Christina's neat handwriting. The bed was turned down, a nightdress laid out in snowy folds on the counterpane.

Christina herself was nowhere to be seen. Kate moved slowly into the center of the room, and time seemed to slow to a horrible crawl. The hair at the back of her neck prickled, and she reached up to touch it. Her own fingers were icy cold.

"Don't be silly," she told herself. "Christina could be in the library, fetching another book. That's all. You have simply been reading far too much poetry lately."

And this night would be enough to give anyone the chills, to make him imagine he saw haunts where there was only moonlight and shadows. Somehow, though, Kate knew that was not the case.

She sped around the room, searching for any sort of clue as to where Christina might have gone. Obviously, she had not been to bed, and her cloak was missing. Would the girl really have been foolish enough to go out in such weather, perhaps to seek out some botanical specimen? Christina was a sensible girl, yet where her plants were concerned anything was possible.

Kate paused by the window and bent down to pick up a green satin hair ribbon that had fallen to the floor. As she stood up, a fork of lightning split the sky and she gleaned a flash of movement at the edge of the garden. It was too large to be a shadow, too far away for one of the garden's manicured trees. She snatched the candle from the desk and held it up, casting some illumination through the thick, wavy glass.

Another spark of lightning gave her a glimpse of a pale dress, a banner of long hair in the wind—and a black figure bearing the girl away. The wind—or was it a true scream?—rose outside.

"Christina!" Kate cried. It had to be Christina and Julian. He was a demon indeed, an evil creature that no storm could touch, and he would haunt her forever. Now, somehow, he had spirited Christina away from her home into the storm. For what? Revenge? Hatred? To entice Kate to follow him?

If it was
that,
then his despicable action worked. For Kate would follow him into the mouth of hell itself to get the girl back. But she would not do it alone. She had not the strength to stop Julian and his pistol.

Kate slammed the candle back down on the desk and ran from the room, pausing only to find her own cloak and boots before dashing to Michael's chamber.

He had obviously slept as fitfully as she this night. The bedclothes were tossed to the floor, and he sprawled across the mattress in only his trousers. His bare chest rose and fell with the slow rhythms of slumber, and his hair fell over his brow in tousled, sun-kissed commas. For the moment, his dreams were quiet ones, and in sleep he looked young and carefree and serene.

I am sorry, Michael, amore,
Kate thought remorsefully. Sorry she had to pull him from his peaceful unconsciousness, sorry she had brought this trouble to his house.

"Michael!" she said loudly, throwing herself down on the edge of the bed and shaking his shoulder until his eyes blinked open. "Michael, wake up, please! Something has happened."

He reached up with a deep groan, catching her hand in his. "Kate. Why do I get the feeling this is not an amorous visit?"

Kate choked on a hysterical laugh. "Christina is gone."

"Gone?" His half smile vanished, and he sat up to reach for his discarded shirt. "Gone to where?"

"I could not sleep, so I went to look in on Christina and Amelia. Amelia is sleeping soundly, but Christina was not in her room. Her bed was not slept in, and—" Kate broke off, swallowing hard against the rush of cold, nauseating fear as she remembered again the glimpse of Christina being dragged away by Julian Kirkwood.

"Sh," Michael said soothingly. He rubbed at her back in gentle circles, as if she were as young as Amelia. For an instant, Kate longed to curl into his embrace, into the safety and care and love, but she could not. There was not even that instant to waste. "She is probably just in the library, Kate."

Kate shook her head. "No, no! I fear I saw her outside, being carried away by..." Her English deserted her, fear leaving her only with her old Italian, the language of her past.
"Quando sono arrivata era ormai troppo tarai...."

Michael's clasp tightened on her shoulders, holding her steady. "By what, Kate? I fear my Italian is rusty." His voice held a sharp edge, but none of her own hysteria.

She
couldn't
become hysterical! Not now. She took in a breath, and said, "By Julian Kirkwood. They were outside in the rain, and he was taking her away from the house. He is in the village—Amelia and I saw him when we were there yesterday."

Kate half expected questions, doubts, statements that it must have been all a dream, recriminations that she had not told him about Julian's being in the neighborhood. That she was a wild, poetry-poisoned female. She should have known better, from Michael.

"Blast!" he cursed, the one word a low, swift explosion. He reached for his coat, pulling it on over his half-open shirt. Kate silently took up his boots and handed them to him.

"Where could they have gone?" she said. Her earlier panic was vanished, pushed away by necessity and adrenaline, replaced with a cold calm. There would be time for tears and apologies later, when Christina was safely at home.

"I have no idea, but we
will
find them. They could not have gone far in this storm—and not with my heathen sister kicking and screaming, as she is sure to do." Michael gave her a grim smile. Kate watched as he drew a long, inlaid box from the bottom of the wardrobe and opened it to reveal a pair of perfectly polished dueling pistols. He removed one and secured it, along with a bag of shot, inside his coat.

Kate did not say a word.

"Come, my love," he said. "We have to wake the servants, so they can form a search party and ride out after me. You must stay here and alert—"

"No!" Kate cried, remembering the gun Julian was carrying about. He could already have used it on Christina. "I can't wait here. I'm going with you."

He turned to her with a frown. "Kate, it is dangerous out there, and this Kirkwood is a madman."

"I
am
going. I'm the one who brought this lunacy to Thorn Hill—it's my fault Christina is in danger. I can help you find her, Michael. If you make me stay behind, I will just follow on my own."

He gave her a quick, wry smile, and took up her hand in his to press a kiss to her palm. It was swift, fleeting as a raindrop, but it quieted her heart. Truly, she was not alone in this nightmare. She would never be alone again.

If only Christina was not hurt.

"I know better than to argue with Kate the curst," he said. "We will go together. Stay close to me."

She nodded. "We will find her, Michael. Julian is a strange man, one who lives in his own dreamworld, but surely he would not harm a young girl. Surely."

Michael just turned and left the room, their hands entwined, a pistol in his coat. And Kate found she could not even truly reassure herself.

* * *

It was a hellish night.

Michael could not see five feet in front of him for the impenetrable curtain of rain, which drove like tiny needles into his skin. They had managed to ride for a short while, until the uneven ground forced them to leave the horses behind and go forward on foot. Now they walked, the mud and slimy vegetation sucking at their shoes. The wind howled like a living creature around their heads, tearing at their hair and clothes.

The lamp he held aloft on one hand did them less than no good, casting a light over only their own faces. His other hand held tight to Kate's, her fingers as stiff and cold as frozen rose petals in his clasp. He glanced back at her. Her pale face, framed by her sodden hood and beaded with raindrops, stared ahead in fierce determination. Her dark eyes constantly flickered, glancing into the trees and shadows and hillsides around them in a frantic search for any sign of Kirkwood and Christina. Once in a while, she would stop, her posture as tense and alert as a doe, but then she would shake her head and they would move on.

They could not speak—the wind and thunder were too loud. He could only press her hand, trying to send her warmth and courage. And she would squeeze back.

Christina, Christina,
he thought. His foolishly brave, brilliant, awkward sister. Where was she in this wild night? Was she afraid—did she call out for help? How had she fallen into Kirkwood's clutches in the first place?

For a second, he saw not the dark night around them, but a sunny, long-ago day at Darcy Hall. Christina was learning to walk on the green summer grass, her tiny face fixed in lines of a vast determination beyond her years. Her light brown curls, soft and downy, glistened in the light, and she held out her chubby arms to keep her balance. She fell, not once but many times, always popping back up immediately to try again. At last, she stumbled five, ten, fifteen steps in a row, collapsing into Michael's arms with a crow of triumph.

"Tina!" he had cried happily, twirling her around. "You are the most brilliant baby ever."

She rested her little head on his shoulder with a happy sigh. Michael had been fifteen when his surprise sister was born, a young man with no time for infants. But from that moment on, she held his heart in her tiny hand, and he was helplessly in love with her baby self.

He had caught her safely on that day when she was learning to walk. He would keep her safe now.

"Are we near the sheepherder's hut?" Kate shouted.

He glanced back at her. "Not far," he shouted back.

"Perhaps we should stop there for a moment and get our bearings. Maybe they have even been there!"

Michael nodded. Kate's face was drawn and miserable in the rain, and they were having no success in their wanderings. Perhaps once they were warmer and reasonably dry, a flash of inspiration would come to them and they would know where to find his sister.

For they had to find her soon. Before it was too late.

* * *

"Whatever you are trying to do, it won't work." The girl's voice rang out in the cold, damp air, as clear as condemning church bells.

Julian glanced away from the one window in the miserable hut, back to where Christina Lindley sat in the corner. She did not huddle into herself, or weep pitiably as any ordinary, mortal female would. She perched on a pile of moth-eaten cushions she had found somewhere, legs crossed, back straight as a board, and head held high. She looked like a haughty Persian queen, despite the wild hair that hung dripping over her shoulders in seaweedlike clumps and the sodden cloak covering what appeared to be an evening dress of pale green muslin. Green eyes, as clear and piercing as sea glass, stared at him with unwavering coldness.

If she had in truth been a queen, Julian very much feared his head would be rolling into a basket right about now. And he would deserve it.

What was he trying to do? Prove his deep love for Katerina by kidnapping this child? Lure his Beatrice to his side with violence? Now, as he stared across the bare, dusty room at this fierce Valkyrie, he saw how foolish that was, how cruel. It was as if the clear green of Christina Lindley's eyes formed a mirror, held up to his soul to show it in all its twisted blackness.

But he could do nothing but move forward. Fulfill his plans. He and his Katerina were fated to be together, and this wild night was when that fate would be met. Once and for all. He could not care for this girl. She was merely an instrument.

Christina gave a deep, long-suffering sigh and rolled her gaze up to the low ceiling. "You needn't stare so. It's rude. And you didn't answer me."

Rude?
Julian laughed—he couldn't help it, despite the storm-soaked desperation of their circumstances. He had snatched this girl away from her home, dragged her roughly into the cold rain like some hunchbacked, leering villain in fiction. Yet she lectured him about
rudeness.