Secrets of the Highwayman (5 page)

Melanie chanced a glance behind her. He
was still following, his tall dark figure just a few paces back. She knew she should be frightened, but the tingling running through her wasn’t just fear. The Raven was obviously a man of action, with a great deal of brawn and very little brain. A hero in battle, but a danger to himself and others in peacetime. Which was probably why he came to such a tragic end.

But
that
wasn’t making her tingle. It was the way he’d been watching her; as if he wanted to pounce but was holding himself back. As if he was in control of the situation, no matter what she thought. With his smooth charm and knowing eyes, with his easy grace and his long, lean body, he was exactly the type of man who frightened her the most. Because she knew she was vulnerable to him. How could she trust him? How could she trust herself? Work together! She’d found it difficult to be in the same room with him.

Even if it means making him a better man?

She was tempted…what was it about the female need to turn a bad boy around? But Nathaniel Raven was well beyond her experience, and she’d be a fool to believe otherwise.

Melanie looked up. There it was, silhouetted against the moon.

St. Anne’s Hill.

The place where this nightmare began. Now it seemed as good a place as any if she wanted to find her way back home.

Once outside the grounds of Ravenswood, Melanie started to run, and once she’d started running, she couldn’t seem to stop. The ground was hard and frosty beneath her feet as she crossed the fields, and it annoyed her when Nathaniel Raven didn’t seem to have any trouble keeping up. She felt like a madwoman, everything spinning out of control, when being
in
control was what she desperately craved.

Why me? Why is this happening to me? Why did the queen of the between-worlds choose me?

“Will you stop running!” Nathaniel Raven sounded as if he was losing control, too. “I am not going to hurt you, Miss Jones. Whatever you may think of me, I am a gentleman.”

“You mean the sort of gentleman who robs people at gunpoint and wears a mask?”

As if on cue the moonlight dimmed, and Melanie looked up to see large clouds gliding in. Snow clouds. Soon it would be too cold to stroll in the gardens, and the guests would retreat to the house. Felicity, the merry widow, and pretty Sophie, who was so upset that her
mother was marrying Major Pengorren, and Nathaniel, who would soon be shot dead and wanted her to help him become a better man…

There was a sound at her back, one she remembered all too well. With a whimper she turned and saw it bounding along behind her, ears flopping, tongue flapping from the big jaws. The black hound.

“Teth!” Nathaniel Raven was calling it to heel, but the hound ignored him. It ran right up to her and then did a circle around her.

Melanie tried to avoid bumping into it by side-stepping, and ended up slipping on the steep slope. She fell to her knees, and the hound promptly pounced on her, his hairy face pushed up against hers, his tongue wet and hot and rough as it laved her skin.

“Is he real, too?” Melanie said breathlessly, trying to push the hound away.

Teth’s tail was wagging furiously.

“I don’t know what he is. He comes from the between-worlds. Some sort of demon, probably,” he added darkly, as Teth made another lunge for Melanie. She shrieked, shielding her face from the slobbering tongue.

“Heel!” Nathaniel grabbed the hound around the body, struggling to drag him away from Melanie. She collapsed on the hillside and watched him trying to subdue the overexcited animal. His fine clothes were rumpled and muddied, his neckcloth was array, and his hair was coming loose from the ribbon at his nape.

Suddenly, Nathaniel Raven looked very vulnerable.

Eventually, he wrestled Teth into submission and sank down on the ground beside her with a groan. After
a moment, the ridiculousness of the situation seemed to strike him, his mouth quirked up, and he rolled his eyes. “Sorry. Teth has a mind of his own.”

“It’s not funny.”

“He likes you,” Nathaniel said, puzzled, as if the reason for this escaped him. Teth stirred again, and he fixed him with a steely eye. “Behave. Sit.” The hound decided to obey him and sat quietly, panting. Satisfied, Nathaniel climbed to his feet and reached out his hand to Melanie. It was done in such a confident, companionable manner that Melanie found she had given her own hand without even thinking about it. He helped her back onto her feet with the same easy grace with which he did everything.

“Is it true? What you said?” Melanie asked, looking up at him, her breath a white mist in the cold darkness. “About changing history?”

“Yes.”

“You mean you can actually go back and rearrange it to suit yourself?”

“Not exactly,” he said dryly. “The theory is that if I discover how to stop Pengorren, the queen of the between-worlds will allow me to return to the past, save my family and myself, and we can all live happily ever after.” He sounded faintly amused, but she couldn’t see what he was really feeling because he was looking away from her, and she couldn’t read the expression in his eyes.

“Are you telling me the truth?”

That made him look. “Yes, I am.” His hazel eyes were full of frank honesty, his dark lashes as long as any girl’s. “I have this one chance, Melanie, to do what’s
right.” He no longer sounded like an actor in a bad play. He sounded like a desperate man on a quest who genuinely needed her help.

“It’s more than most people get.”

“I know this must seem very strange to you—”

She gave a choking half laugh at the understatement. He squeezed her fingers in sympathy, and she realized he was still holding her hand.

“Help me,” he said, looking straight at her, nothing in his face but honest need. “Please.”

Melanie felt something inside her shift and open up. Something warm and tender, and completely outside her control. She knew then that she was going to say yes. No matter how insane and irrational and frightening it was, she was going to agree.

“I’ll help you.”

Nathaniel gave her a slow, satisfied smile and, lifting her hand to his mouth, kissed it. Just like in her dream, Melanie felt his touch right down to the tips of her toes. Embarrassed at her own reaction, she shook off his grip and resumed her climb to the top of St. Anne’s Hill. He fell into step beside her, Teth trotting behind them. Melanie hid a smile at the picture they must make.

Just an ordinary family outing.

The standing stone loomed up in front of her.

The thought of going back through it, of those dark, damp tunnels of the between-worlds and the scuttling things that lived down there…Maybe she whimpered again, because he reached out and brushed her cheek lightly with the backs of his fingers.

“It won’t be as bad this time. You’ll go straight through the stone and arrive back in your own century.”

“No between-worlds?” she asked quietly, feeling the urge to cling to him and resisting.

“No between-worlds.” He gave her his confident smile. But Melanie wasn’t so easily persuaded, and she had serious doubts about Nathaniel Raven’s ability to tell the truth.

“But why not? I don’t understand.”

His smile didn’t waver. “Because I have arranged it so.”

There was something he wasn’t telling her. Melanie tried to read his face, but this time it was expressionless. She turned to the stone, tall and dark and ominous, and took a step forward. Her shoe was loose, and she stopped and bent down to tie the lace, doing the other one at the same time, just to put off the awful moment when she’d have to make that leap into God-knew-what.

When she straightened, Nathaniel was watching her. He was standing with his hands in his pockets, looking as if he were a scientist observing some curious alien life-form.

“That’s not very flattering,” Melanie said.

“What’s not very flattering?”

“The way you’re staring.”

He grinned. “I was trying to decide what your clothing signifies.” He took a hand from his pocket and brushed the
I fought a bull and won
with one long finger. The words just happened to lie on the part of the sweatshirt that covered the upper curve of her breast, and Melanie felt his touch like an electric jolt.

“You’re not wearing a corset,” he said, loud enough to make Teth bark. He looked so surprised she almost laughed.

“No, corsets aren’t in anymore.”

“In?”

“Fashionable. We burned our corsets years ago. Us modern women prefer our comfort.”

“Then what
do
you wear?” There was a sudden gleam in his eye that made her very nervous.

“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

“I’m a connoisseur of women’s undergarments,” he offered, but he was flirting. At a time like this.

“Not mine, you’re not,” Melanie said, and turned her attention, and his, back to the stone. “Should I say something?” She waved her hand at the hole through the middle.

“There’s no need. Just crawl through.”

But still she hesitated. There was a shudder inside her, and probably a scream or two, but she refused to let them out. He knew, though.

“Don’t worry,” he said, in that deep and persuasive voice that made her begin to tingle all over. “I promise I won’t let anything happen to you. You have my word, Melanie. The word of a Raven.”

The word of a Raven?

“I want to believe you,” she murmured. “I really do.”

But you’re such a liar.

Melanie took a deep breath and plunged her arm through the hole. As that awful dizzy blackness flapped at the edges of her mind, something occurred to her. She turned her head and tried to find him.

“How will we work together if you’re here and I’m there?” What she really wanted to ask was:
Will I ever see you again?

“Trust me.”

She laughed, but something like grief weighed heavy on her heart. She began her crawl through the middle of the stone, the pounding in her head too loud for any last good-byes. Anyway, she told herself miserably, it was for the best. How would she have explained Nathaniel to her friends and relatives? And he would have been bad for her, very very bad…But as she fell sickeningly through to the other side, she felt someone’s hands fasten on to her ankles.

Startled, frightened, she tried to kick him off—she knew who it was. But he held on to her. And then it was too late, and she was tumbling down into darkness, into nothing. Waiting for the jolt that never happened.

A moment later she opened her eyes and found the sky bright with morning sun.

Far overhead a jet droned.

Melanie laughed, because it was the most wonderful sight she had ever seen.

And then a face blotted out the jet.

“See, I promised you I wouldn’t let anything happen to you,” said Nathaniel Raven.

Her upside-down position made her dizzy, or
maybe it was Nathaniel Raven who made her feel that way.

“Are you feeling faint?” he asked, and there was that smile lurking in his eyes, on his lips, as if life was just one big joke to him. “You look rather pale, Melanie.”

“
Word of a Raven?
Crap! You lied to me,” she said, and her voice sounded as if she’d been shouting for hours, husky and throaty and very sexy. “You used me to get through the stone.”

“It was the only way I could come through to your time as a mortal. You said you would help me, Melanie—”

“But not like that! You should have told me what you were going to do.”

“I didn’t tell you because, well, to be frank, Melanie, you wouldn’t have been very happy with me, would you, if you knew I was coming back with you?”

“Of course not!”

He smiled as if he’d made his point. She was still lying on her back on the ground, so he squatted on his haunches at her side. The muscles in his thighs bunched beneath the tight trousers, and Melanie couldn’t say for sure whether or not he was wearing any underwear but…Her gaze lifted abruptly to his.

“Go on, say what you have to say. Clear the air. I promise not to interrupt.” He was speaking in an infuriatingly patient voice.

“You’re dead. You died in 1814. You can’t be here. It’s impossible. It’s not logical.”

“I’ve already explained that. I
was
dead, but now the queen of the between-worlds has given me a second chance. To change history, to change my past. To save myself and my family.”

“But why
you
? Out of all the men in all of history, why should
you
get a second chance?”

He thought for a moment. “Why not?”

Melanie groaned in frustration.

He reached out and hauled her unceremoniously to her feet. “I accept that this must be a terrible shock to you. Are you sure you’re not going to faint?”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? No, I’m not going to faint! Definitely not.” But her head was spinning, and her stomach was heaving, and she took one breath, and then another, and closed her eyes.

His fingertip was against her skin, following the curve of her cheekbone, then veering toward the corner of her mouth. “You said you’d help me,” he said, and he was so close she could feel the warmth of his breath on her skin. Dead men didn’t breathe. Dead men didn’t smell of clean
laundry and leather boot polish, and something else that was warm and male and spicy. Still she kept her eyes shut, as though by doing so she was removing herself from an impossible situation.

“Melanie,” he whispered, “I need you,” and his lips brushed lightly against hers.

Electric. Every nerve ending in her body sat up. She knew she should tell him to stop, but just now she didn’t have the energy—or perhaps she was waiting to see exactly how far he would go to get his own way.

His mouth came down again, this time more forcefully, and he cupped the back of her head with the palm of his hand. Holding her in position for his warm, confident, and very experienced kisses. It was just like the dream except that this time she wasn’t going to wake up.

“Help me,” he whispered, lifting his head a fraction, and then he went in for the coup de grâce. Lips, mouth, tongue, even teeth, nipping gently at her swollen lower lip.

Oh, God.
Melanie knew she had never been kissed like this before. She’d never lost herself in any kiss so totally, so completely, to the point where her inner voice was silenced. Well, almost. It was still there, a tiny murmur, reminding her that he was manipulating her and that she mustn’t trust him, but it was so hard to push him away when she was enjoying herself so much. He’d made every inch of her come alive. He was a sensual gourmet, and she was the feast…

I can’t. I don’t want to.

But even as her libido was protesting, Melanie gave
him a hard shove in the chest. He stumbled back. She glared at him, her skin flushed from something more than anger. There was an expression in his eyes…He looked confused, as if for a moment he’d been as lost in the kiss as she. But then he blinked, and he was smiling that smile again, that nothing-ever-bothers-me smile, and she dismissed any doubts she might have had.

“Curiosity,” he answered her unspoken question. “I wanted to know if women still taste the same in your time.”

“Well now you know that they do, don’t do it again.”

“What, never?” he asked, in mock innocence. “Don’t men kiss women in your time? Maybe that’s unfashionable, too.”

Melanie’d had enough. She stepped around him and proceeded down the hill.

The house was visible across the fields, but it was very different from the Ravenswood of the Yuletide Ball of 1813. Now neglect reigned supreme.

“What happened?” Nathaniel Raven was right behind her. “I saw Ravenswood when I was a ghost, but I couldn’t make myself heard or understood. I couldn’t ask anyone for help,” he added, with a meaningful sideways glance at her. “The place looks as if no one’s lived in it for years.”

“Miss Pengorren was old; she let things go.”

“Even so…”

“It’s been a long time since you lived here,” Melanie reminded him, hurrying along. “You can’t expect it to be the same as—”

“This is my fault,” he cut her off.

“How can it be your fault? You’re dead.”
God, did she really say that?

“Exactly.”

“What you did in the past couldn’t possibly have any bearing on the here and now.” She sounded like her old self again, in charge, in control. It was a tremendous relief to be back in her own time again, even if she was still in Cornwall and not at home in London.

“Of course what we do in the past has a bearing on the here and now,” he was saying. “Don’t be naïve, Melanie.”

The wall with the gate in it was getting closer. Maybe she could shut him out and phone for help? And tell them what…?
Save me, I’m being stalked by the infamous Raven?

“My death changed history.”

“Now who’s being naïve?” she said irritably. “In a minor way, perhaps, yes, but you must have known what would happen if you became a highwayman? It’s not a respectable profession, is it? You were breaking the law, and you were bound to be punished eventually.”

“Whose law?” His voice was getting fainter, but she was too busy arguing to take much notice.

“Whose law? Good old English law. The stuff I had to pass countless exams on. What other law”—she glanced back—“do you mean?”

Nathaniel Raven was gone. Melanie stumbled, coming to an abrupt halt with her hand against the rough wood of the gate. A splinter dug deep into her palm and she yelped and pulled away.

“Where are you?”

There was no answer. She looked carefully all around her. The fields were empty, a chill morning breeze stirring the grass, and away to her right she could hear the sea pounding against the cliffs. Other than that, nothing. He really had vanished.

Maybe he had never
been
in the first place.

Was it all a dream after all? But she’d touched him, spoken to him, experienced the full force of his charm. He had kissed her, for God’s sake! Could she really have dreamed all that?

Not possible.

“Nathaniel, where are you?” Only this time she whispered the words, as if she was afraid of the answer.

Still nothing.

With shaking hands, she unlatched the gate. A voice hailed her as she closed it behind her, but it wasn’t Nathaniel’s voice. Eddie was coming toward her through the overgrown gardens, wearing a jacket that made him look like a refugee from an eighties disco party. He cupped his hands and blew into them, rubbing them together energetically.

“Chilly morning. Have you been out already? You’re a keen one.”

He looked younger in the morning light, in his thirties rather than his forties, his hair hardly grey at all, and his brown eyes were smiling and friendly.

“I went for a run,” she said, knowing she was beaming back at him and unable to help it. He was just so
normal
that Melanie wanted to throw her arms about him.

“What, up there?” Eddie jerked his head toward St.
Anne’s Hill. “They say there are piskies inside that hill.”

“Piskies?”

“It’s the Cornish way of saying pixies. You know, faeries. According to folklore they come out at night and dance and get up to mischief, steal your children and put their own little miserable creatures in the cradles instead. That’s what people used to say in the old days, anyway.”

Melanie knew there were worse things than faeries in St. Anne’s Hill. For a moment she was tempted to tell Eddie everything, as she had last night, but some inner sense of caution and self-preservation stopped her—he’d think she was a nut. Anyway, she wanted to think it over somewhere quiet.

“You don’t believe in faeries, do you, Eddie?”

“I fluctuate.” Eddie dug his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched as he walked along beside her. “I keep an open mind. Lot of superstition still around down here. What about you?”

Melanie shrugged. It was the best she could do.

“You haven’t seen him again then?” Eddie said. “The Raven?”

Melanie eyed him uneasily, but he didn’t wait for an answer.

“He’s become quite famous, our Raven. The local tourist office has a guide brochure on him, and his grave gets quite a few visitors. Most of them teenage girls with a crush on him.”

“I can’t imagine it.” But she could, that was the trouble.

“There’s a book in the house, in the library—all about the family, if you’re interested.”

“The library?”

“Miss Pengorren used to call it that. It’s the room where she did her paperwork.”

“Oh, the ballroom.”

He gave her a curious look, but thankfully he didn’t take her up on it. His mind was on other matters. “It was strange, how she went to that place in London at the end. She’d always said she’d die at Ravenswood. Everyone expected her to stay.”

“She was ill, Eddie—”

“There’s a nursing home near Truro, private hospital. She had her sights set on a bed there, if worse came to the worst and she had to leave the house. But London…it makes no sense.” He shook his head.

“She wanted to come to London,” Melanie spoke gently. “She rang and asked Mr. Foyle to make the arrangements for her. I was there at the time. I wouldn’t worry about it, really, Eddie. Sometimes when people get sick they get frightened. They change their minds. Maybe she didn’t want to be by herself in such a big house.”

“She wasn’t alone. She had me.”

“I’m sorry, Eddie. She wanted it that way.”

He pulled a face, but he didn’t seem convinced. “Do you need me to be around this morning? To go over the house or anything? It’s just that I planned to go into the village, get a few things from the shop there…post some letters…I shouldn’t be long.”

“I’ll be fine.” They had arrived outside the house, and Melanie climbed the steps to the door. She reached out
her hand to open it, but the contact caused a sharp pain in her palm, where the splinter had lodged.

“Are you all right?”

“It’s nothing. A splinter.”

He looked genuinely concerned. “Do you want me to get it out for you? I have a first-aid kit in my cottage.”

“No, I can manage.” His mention of the cottage reminded her of something she’d meant to ask next time she saw him. “Eddie, is your caretaking job full-time?”

His wry glance told her he knew what was in her mind. “Cushy job, eh? No, it’s not full-time, and it doesn’t pay much. I’m writing a book, you see. This gives me somewhere to live and a bit of money until I make my first million.”

“Oh.” It was difficult to tell whether or not Eddie was serious.

“I’ll see you later then. Give me a hoi if you want anything.” He waved as he turned away.

Alone outside the door, Melanie found herself reluctant to go inside. She was anxious, unsettled, and despite his sudden disappearance, she had the very uneasy feeling that her adventure with the Raven was far from over.

Nathaniel had climbed over a stock gate farther down the garden wall. He’d enjoyed listening to Melanie calling for him and letting her think he could vanish at will. As soon as they were back in her own time, she’d begun to get far too bossy, and he wanted to regain some of the upper hand. He’d every intention of rejoining her inside the grounds, but a man had come up to
her, and they’d begun to talk. So Nathaniel had taken himself off, an intruder in his own home.

Now he wandered disconsolately through the park, kicking at fallen branches and piles of rotting undergrowth. It was a mess, and he was frustrated that everything he had loved and valued had come to this. Surely there was an easier way to change history than persuading Melanie Jones to help him?

“No, there isn’t. It’s the only way.”

The voice came from above him. Nathaniel halted and looked up cautiously. A large eagle sat on the branch of a tree, gazing down at him with strange blue predatory eyes above a curved yellow beak.

“Your Majesty?”

The bird flapped its wings, and there was a flash of red. “You tricked her into letting you through the stone, my Raven. That wasn’t very fair. She’s not a fool, you know. She’ll be wary of you next time you ask for her help.”

“I had no choice. I don’t have enough time for subtleties, as you well know. Besides, I knew I could bring her around later.”

“I hope so, for your sake.”

There was silence; the park had gone quiet. Maybe the queen had that effect on all creatures, great and small.

“Is all of this my fault?” he asked, and she seemed to understand that he meant the extinction of his family name as well as the deterioration of Ravenswood.

“Everything that happens is linked,” the eagle said.

“You said that Melanie will help me understand my
enemy and defeat him,” Nathaniel reminded her. “When we were watching the dancing, Pengorren knew she was there. He sensed her. How could that be, Your Majesty?”

“So many questions!”

“I wouldn’t feel comfortable if I was bringing Melanie into danger.”

The eagle sighed. “Very commendable.”