Perilous Pleasures (24 page)

“And after that, will you come back?”

The look he gave her was bleak as December frost. “Would it matter?”

And then he left.

S
he didn't see her husband again until the midday meal, and even then, it was as if she dined only with his shadow. In her mother's presence, he spoke to her with agonizing formality, addressing her only when necessary. His coldness tore into her, all the more unbearable because she couldn't find a similar coldness within herself with which to counter it.

It must be his terrible spell that still made her love him—though love had turned out to be exactly as she had feared it would be—fickle, brief, and agonizing. She wished she had a heart as untouched as her mother's, one that would have let her merely laugh a tinkling laugh when Adam had showered her with affection and feel nothing but contempt for him later, when he changed his tune.

But she didn't. She'd let herself believe he really loved her and had dared to imagine a bright future with him. Now she hated herself for the disappointment that overwhelmed her as she realized he hadn't really loved her at all.

Her mother, determinedly ignoring the undercurrents swirling around her, chattered on merrily, though Adam made no reply to anything she said to him. As soon as the last remove had been sampled, he excused himself with the explanation that he must prepare for his journey and left them alone.

At his exit, her mother shrugged one rounded shoulder. “These marriages of the
ton
are as bad as I had heard. I thank
le bon Dieu
I need not live in such a way. Such coldness. Such lack of
joie de vivre.
But you were always a strange girl, Zoe, so perhaps such a way of life pleases you. If so, who am I to judge? But me, I am ready to return home as soon as I have the means to do so. Did you speak to your husband about the small token he might afford me, the trifle that might help me out of my current difficulties?”

“I had no opportunity to raise the matter with my husband,” Zoe replied. “We had other more pressing concerns to discuss.” Like the end of their regard for each other and the return of Adam's teacher from the grave.

“But your husband spoke of going on a journey. You must apply to him for funds before he leaves. Where is he going?”

“To the Dark Lord's Island. He just learned that the Dark Lord isn't dead.”

“Not dead.” Isabelle's face grew ashen beneath its coat of white lead and rouge. “But if the Dark Lord finds out you're married, he'll be furious.”

“But wasn't it
your
doing, Mama, that I married? Wasn't it your stratagem that made Lord Ramsay think his teacher had commanded him to marry me?”

“What are you talking about? I'm not such a fool as to meddle with the Laird of Iskeny. When he sent Lord Ramsay to fetch you, I gave you to him, much as it pained me, but with the kind of man he is, what choice did I have? You can imagine my surprise when MacMinn told me he had seen you wed. He did it all on his own, and a very foolish thing it was to do, though it worked out so well.”

“But if you didn't send him, why did he do it?”

Her mother shrugged. “He is very fond of you. And he has no love for the Dark Lord. Indeed, he hates him with a passion. If I had listened to MacMinn when we were still in France I wouldn't have turned to the Dark Lord for help when the Committee was after us. And then where would we be? In the grave without our heads. Pah!”

“Are you saying that the Dark Lord was the mysterious gentleman who saved our lives all those years ago?”

“Of course.”

“But you said your rescuer was an admirer.”

“So I did. And it was true.”

“But the Dark Lord must be chaste!” Zoe exclaimed.

“Your husband doesn't know everything.” Her mother shrugged. “The Dark Lord was a man as other men.”

“So the Dark Lord had a
tendre
for you, and rescued us because he loved you?”

Her mother seemed to shrink into her chair. “Perhaps
tendre
is not the word for what the Dark Lord felt for me. It wasn't a matter of love. He wasn't capable of loving anyone but himself.”

“Then why didn't you tell me the truth?”

Her mother shrugged uneasily. “The truth wasn't something you could easily explain to a child.”

“I'm no longer a child. So you can tell me now. Why
did
the Dark Lord save you?”

Her mother sighed. “You are a married woman, so I suppose it's all right to tell you.” She took another deep breath and then began to speak in a tone Zoe remembered from the rare occasions in her childhood when her mother had told her children's stories.

“When I was a young girl—a little peasant girl who tended the master's pigs—I was engaged to be married. But word of my beauty came to the lord of the estate on which we lived and he chose to exercise the
droit du seigneur
and take my maidenhead before I married. It was not the usual thing to do, by then, but he was a foreigner who cared little what the neighbors thought of him. And he was the lord of the estate, so who could stand up to him? So that was how it went, but after he had ravished me, this foreign lord, he wouldn't let me return to my fiancé. Instead, he insisted that I give up my marriage and become his mistress.”

Isabelle paused in her story, her fingers suddenly clenching. “He was a cold and terrible man,
ma petite
. To be forced to be intimate with such a man—” The look of disgust in her mother's eyes was real, its authenticity all the more wrenching in contrast to the artifice with which she usually arranged her features.

“I couldn't bear it. Even though I had discovered I was carrying his child, I flung his offer in his face and told him I still wished to marry the young man I loved. At that, my master flew into a rage. He told me he had only been fooling with me and had not meant his offer. Then he spread such lies about me in the village that my intended would no longer have me.

“After that, I lived in fear. What would become of me, shamed as I was, with a fatherless child? That was when MacMinn spirited me off to Paris one night and made sure I had a safe place to live until the child was born. He'd been my master's coachman, but he'd had enough of his highhanded ways.”

“But what does all this have to do with the Dark Lord and our rescue?”

“The lord who took my maidenhead was the Laird of Iskeny. He had left Scotland and settled in France after hearing of the wealth that had been earned by other powerful magicians who had dazzled the court, like Cagliostro and the Count of Saint-Germain. He hoped to join their number. That was why he began to call himself the Dark Lord.”

“But if you parted from this man with such bad feelings between you, why did you turn to him when you needed to be rescued from the Terror?”

“I had no choice. After they chopped off the head of the marquis who had been my protector, the Dark Lord was the only man I knew who had power enough to save me. Even the monsters who filled the tumbrels respected him, fearing he would use his black arts against them if they crossed him. So when I learned that the Committee had put me on their list to have my head cut off, I decided it was better to be alive, even indebted to a man who I hated, than to die on the guillotine. I returned to his village and threw myself on his mercy.”

“But if he'd been so angry at you when you fled from him years before, why did he bother to help you?”

“Is it not obvious, Zoe? Use your head! He helped me because I told him you were his daughter. That's why he saved us, though first he made me sign all those papers to make his bargain with me.”

The Dark Lord was her father?
He and not the courageous and resourceful duke?

Shock resonated through her, as strong as if someone she'd loved had died.

But, still. Adam revered the Dark Lord. He'd devoted his life to him. How could he have been as cruel as her mother claimed? Perhaps this story of her mother's was no truer than her earlier claim that Zoe's father was a duke, though the very ugliness of the tale argued against that. Why would her mother have made up a story that portrayed her in a role so different from that of the sophisticated La Belle Isabelle she had worked so hard to create?

Her story might be true, and if it were, it would explain why her mother had kept Zoe's origin so secret. But whatever the whole truth might be, if the Dark Lord was her father, it would explain, too, his insistence that she be kept a virgin. What father wouldn't wish to protect his daughter in that way, whatever his feelings for her mother?

And even if Iskeny's laird had been cruel to her mother in her youth, people changed. Perhaps he'd mellowed with age or come to regret his sins as he lay on his sickbed contemplating his end. Maybe that was why he had commanded Adam to bring his daughter to him on his deathbed, because he yearned to see her before he died.

She must tell Adam! She raced toward his chamber. But when she reached it, it was empty. Nor was he in the hall. If only he hadn't already left for Iskeny. But to her great relief, she found him in the courtyard lashing a small traveling box to the gig. A groom was almost done harnessing to it his fastest horse.

She ran toward him, heedless that her long skirts were dragging in the mud. But by the time she had reached him, he'd already climbed into the gig's seat and picked up his whip.

She shouted, “Adam. Stop!”

Something flickered over his face, and for only a moment she caught a glimpse of the man who had loved her. Then just as quickly, she saw it go, replaced by the impassive mask.

“I can't.” His tone was harsh.

“You must! There's something I have to tell you. Something important.”

“There isn't time. And besides, we're past the point where words could change anything. Whatever it is, it must keep until I return.” He flicked the whip over the horses' heads and set them cantering on their way.

She fought back tears as the gig disappeared over the brow of the hill. He'd spoken the truth, indeed. No words could change her feelings for him—even when he'd made it crystal clear he could feel nothing for her but disdain.

Why did she still keep on loving him, when he'd been able to stop loving her so easily? It must be that damnable spell. Why else would she still love this man who'd just left her without a single backward glance?

She turned back to the house and began trudging toward it. The future stretched out, bleak. How would she survive it? She'd lost so much, and now, after her mother's revelation, she couldn't even turn for comfort to her imaginary conversations with her father, the duke. For he'd never been her father. The Dark Lord was.

But then it struck her. If the Dark Lord lived,
he
could undo the spell. It had only been because they thought him dead that they'd believed she was trapped by it forever. The Dark Lord could free her from this burdensome love. She need no longer feel helpless when pain jolted through her at the memory of how cold Adam had been as he'd driven off without a word of kindness.

The spell could be lifted. It must be lifted! And the Dark Lord—the father she'd yearned to meet her whole life long—was the very man to do it.

Chapter 19

I
t had been a grueling three days' ride. Adam's body cried out for rest, but he pressed on. He had tapped back into the iron self-control he'd abandoned while living in the fool's paradise of his marriage and rejoiced once again in his ability to withstand cold and hunger and go for days without sleep. Only by subduing his body in this way could he drown out that other hunger: his longing for Zoe's body and the warmth and forgiveness he'd thought he'd found in her arms.

He turned his thoughts back to the road. A few more miles would take him to the harbor village of Stanraer. There he should be able to find a fisherman to ferry him across the miles of water that separated the Dark Lord's domain from the shore. In only a few more hours he'd be reunited with his teacher, who awaited his arrival so eagerly, unaware of how unfit Adam had made himself to receive the powers he once craved.

He awaited the swell of bitterness he should feel when remembering how he'd forfeited his chance to attain those powers, but he couldn't find it. Something within him had changed. His yearning for the superhuman powers the Dark Lord had offered him had been replaced by something else—something shameful—an equally strong yearning that he'd never met the man.

Upon that wish followed others even more shameful: the wish that he'd never written to Isabelle and that the Dark Lord had truly been dead so that he could have lived on at Strathrimmon with his wife, deluded but content, his life filled with the simple but intoxicating joys that he'd tasted over the past months. It was an ignoble yearning, as ignoble as the longing for his wife's arms that washed over him any time he let his mental guard down.

When he reached the village, he found it more difficult than he'd expected to find a fisherman willing to take him to the island. As soon as he pronounced its name, a wary look came over the faces of men who had been cordial a moment before, and he saw more than one spit to avert the evil eye. But eventually he found a boatman whose need for the silver he offered was stronger than his dread of the mysterious Laird of Iskeny.

An hour later, after an unremarkable passage across the water and a long hike up a steep hill, he found himself at last at his long-sought destination, the Dark Lord's keep, Torr Druidh. Dwarfed by the stark granite tower that reared up against the cloudy sky, Adam drank in the heavy silence that was broken only by a curlew's lonely call, feeling as if he were dreaming. He'd imagined this moment so often during the past nine years, but now that it had arrived, how different it had turned out to be.

Two large, muscular men, armed in the ancient fashion, admitted him to the keep. Their accents proclaimed them Frenchmen. Their deference suggested they knew the reason for his visit. Greeting him with reverence, they ushered him into a small chamber whose stone walls and high ceiling gave it the feeling of a chapel. A window barely bigger than a slit let in only enough light to reveal the altar standing in the farthest corner of the room. On it stood a goblet glowing with a dull bronze sheen. An old man knelt before it.
His teacher
.

On hearing Adam enter, the Dark Lord rose slowly to his feet. He was wearing a long robe bedizened with the dragon emblem. He was thinner than Adam remembered, and his form was bent in a way that betrayed his advancing years. When he became aware of Adam's entry he lifted up his arms in blessing. His long purple sleeves fell back, revealing the serpents that twisted around his withered arms. Seeing them, Adam felt his own serpents wake from their long slumber. A pulse of energy surged through his body, bringing with it the treacherous memory of Zoe's long, slender fingers tracing their path up his arm. Desire jolted through him.

There would be no need to explain anything now. With his great power, the Dark Lord must have just seen into his heart and learned how totally Adam had unfit himself to receive the inheritance the Dark Lord had intended for him. He must know, too, how shamefully Adam yearned for the woman with whom he had squandered the energy he should have saved up for the Final Teaching. But if the old man saw into the depths of Adam's spirit, he gave no sign of it.

As the Dark Lord hobbled toward him, a faint scent of putrefaction rose from his body and when he embraced Adam, his hold was weak. The old man could not, in truth, have much time left on earth.

The Dark Lord released him. “Thanks be to the Powers, you've come! I'd despaired of ever seeing you again. Why did you delay, my son, when I summoned you in the ancient manner? Had you forgotten the feather code?”

“I forgot nothing. I hastened to come as soon as I received your summons. But events intervened—” He didn't look forward to explaining the nature of those events, but the faster he did so, the better. At least, when he was done, the old man's wrinkled face would no longer be filled with the joy and expectation that reproached him now.

But the Dark Lord gave him no chance to explain. “Tell me your story later. You're here. That's all that matters. The time was growing short, and I feared you'd gone astray. If you had, all might have been lost. But you've come, at last, though tell me, where is the virgin? You received the instructions that I sent you about her, didn't you?”

“I did.” Adam kept his voice low. “But I haven't brought her.”

“You didn't bring her?” The welcoming tone had fled. “Didn't I write that you must bring her? There can be no Teaching without her.”

“Then there will be no Teaching.”

“What, can you say that with such calm? You have changed much since I knew you, Adam Selkirk. You used to want the Teaching more than you wanted life itself.”

“As you say, much has changed.”

“Well, one thing hasn't changed,” the Dark Lord said harshly. “I need the virgin.”

Adam felt a fist tightening around his heart but said nothing.

“Look at me!” the old man demanded. “Can't you see the ravages of the disease that has assailed me since last we met?” He pointed to his face where Adam saw now what he hadn't noticed before, the gumma that swelled from the Dark Lord's forehead and the telltale flattening of his nose.

“You're a trained physician, you know what this means.”

Adam drew back in shock. It didn't take a trained physician to recognize the malady that was consuming his master. It was the pox.

“Don't give me that pitying look,” the Dark Lord protested. “This is but a part of the great Mystery, the Old Ones' Ancient Plan—that I, who have mastered all the earthly arts of healing, must cure myself of this, the disease men fear the most. Only then will I become the greatest of the healer lords that ever lived.”

The old man stopped, overcome by a fit of hollow coughing. “And I
shall
heal it. I've studied the ancient writings and my way is clear. This loathsome rotting that you see is temporary. I shall be cured completely, restored to youth and health, but for that I need the virgin. Damn you, Adam, I trusted you to bring her to me. Where is she?”

“I don't know.” The Dark Lord's tone had made his blood run cold.

“How can you not know? I received intelligence that you took her from the harlot's care.”

“I did.”

“Then where is she? I must have her. Perhaps you don't understand the urgency of my need.” The Dark Lord pulled up one sleeve and pointed to the suppurating coin-sized sores that covered his flesh.

“You told me the Dark Lord must be chaste.” The words burst out of Adam before he could suppress them. “That it was essential to assuming the Dark Lord's powers.”

“Only the student must be chaste. I already am the Dark Lord.”

The old man picked up a glass wand from a table hidden in the shadows and drew it quickly through a fold of his woolen robe. When he flicked his wrist, a shower of bright sparks flew out of it with a hissing sound. “I survived the Final Teaching, my son. I met death and conquered it. All is permitted to the man who has stood at the point where life and death meet. Indeed”—he gestured with the wand—“to such a man, all that is forbidden to ordinary men is not only permitted, it is required. It is the energy found in the forbidden that fuels the Dark Lord's power. That is the gist of Final Teaching, my heir. But before I can transmit it to you, in deeds, not words, I must restore my powers. And for that I need the virgin. Only her life force can heal the putrefaction you see within me. Tell me where she is so I can have her brought to me!”

The Dark Lord fixed him with a compelling gaze, forcing Adam's eyes to turn upward. With a start, Adam recognized what he was doing—invoking the healing spell. Except this time there was nothing healing about it. His onetime teacher was trying to get him into his power using the enchantment.

Drawing on all his strength, Adam broke eye contact. He wouldn't let himself be ensorcelled into following the Dark Lord's order, for in these past moments he'd seen something monstrous: The final stage of the disease consuming his master's body was madness. The Dark Lord was insane—and Zoe was in mortal danger.

For he knew the cure of which the old man spoke. It wasn't ancient wisdom, but a perverse folk belief, one that held that sexual congress with a virgin could heal the diseases contracted by promiscuous men.
That
was what the Dark Lord had intended for Zoe. And if not for MacMinn's meddling, that would have been the fate to which Adam, his faithful disciple, would have delivered her.

Thank God she was safe at Strathrimmon, where the Dark Lord couldn't get at her, and that he hadn't told the old man of his marriage.

But he must tread carefully. If the Dark Lord believed his survival depended on ravishing Zoe, what might be his response if he learned how he'd been cheated? Adam must give no sign that the Dark Lord's attempt to impose his will on him had failed. He must behave exactly the way the old man expected him to until he made his escape, and he must give him no hint as to where he might find Zoe.

He chose his words carefully. “It shall be as you command. She is nearby. I shall fetch her.”

“Good!” The Dark Lord's response was almost a groan. “Only after you bring her to me, will you be fit to receive the Final Teaching and become as I am, like a god.”

Adam forced himself to nod, wondering how he could have ever thought that the Dark Lord could see into another's heart. Was it only his malady that had dimmed the old man's powers and turned him into a madman, or had he always been that way?

Whatever the answer, as a heavy silence filled the narrow stone room, the last fragments of Adam's youthful dream shattered into a million pieces and melted away like the sparks given off by the wizard's shining wand.

But there was no time now for regret. He must act in a way that would convince the old man he was doing his will. Only that way could he escape and return home to protect Zoe from the Dark Lord and his minions.

And he
would
protect her, to his last breath. Back when he'd thought himself incapable of loving her, he'd vowed to keep her safe. Now when he loved her more than life itself, he would do so as long as life lingered in his body. It mattered not whether she loved him back. Indeed, perhaps it was better that she didn't, now that he knew the full nature of the catastrophe he'd almost brought down on her.

He no longer deserved her love. All he asked for now was her survival.