Stranger (8 page)

“And you?” asked Astrid.

“Gemma and I will find shelter in that dell.”

Astrid raised a brow.

“I can help, too,” Gemma objected.

But Catullus shook his head. “Scouting is too dangerous for a civilian, and I don’t want to leave you on your own and unprotected.”

He wondered to himself how much of this was truth, and how much was an excuse to be alone with her again—something he both craved and dreaded. He decided he didn’t want to investigate his motivations.

Thank God no one pressed him on this. With promises to convene at the dell within an hour, the party broke into two. The late autumn day had only a few more hours of daylight, so time was vital.

“Is all of England like this?” Gemma asked as they tramped speedily through a soggy field. She refused to allow Catullus to carry her little bag, so she slung it over a shoulder and marched onward with a lively stride. Likely the result of having such wonderfully long legs.

Stop it.
Get her safely to Southampton and then move forward. Stay alert.

But, damn it, he liked talking to her, even as he kept his eyes in constant motion, assessing for threats. “You don’t fancy our English pastoral?”

“Oh, it’s fine, I suppose,” she said airily.

“Just
fine?”

“Well,” she said, “if you have to press.” She gazed around as she walked. “It’s pretty enough. But there’s no drama. It’s very … tame.”

Oddly, her words stung, as if she was criticizing
him
and not the sodding landscape. “There’s nothing wrong with being cultivated.”

“But not everything should be contained and tidy. Without a little mess and wilderness, things would be so dull.”

“There is wilderness in England. The Lake Country. The moors. The Cornish coast.” Why did he sound like a priggish geography professor? “All quite wild, I can assure you.”

She sent a playful smile over her shoulder. “I’ve got no doubt that beneath England’s civilized exterior, there’s a good deal of wildness.”

His footsteps faltered briefly before he regained his pace.
This,
he discovered, was where he got into trouble with women. When it was a matter of letting the body do as it demanded, he followed instinct and need. But this interaction, this banter and play, reading subtle cues, artful compliments and deft, intriguing evasions, here his admittedly gifted brain left him at an utter loss.

So, like an ass, all he could say to Gemma’s teasing was, “Ah.”

It had been much simpler kissing her. He liked that. He liked it very much. Very,
very
much.

They reached the dell, a little wooded niche whose steep sides and rock-strewn bed kept it safe from cultivation. Autumn had already stripped the branches of their leaves, but tree trunks offered ample camouflage. Catullus found a large fallen chestnut tree and guided Gemma to sit in its shelter.

“Just a moment,” he said before she sat, and produced a square of tartan flannel to lay upon the ground. “To keep you from getting dirt upon your clothing.”

She murmured her thanks before settling down. For himself,
he couldn’t sit quietly, not when the Heirs could be near. So he paced. And thought. When he reached Southampton, he’d go straight to his workshop and begin raiding his arsenal and supplies. What might he need for a massive battle against the Heirs? Ammunition, his demolition kit for urban combat, the wireless telegraph device he’d been developing. Blades out in the field would need to communicate with each other, and the devices could be incredibly helpful for transmitting information between distances. He’d also have to consider— “I’m getting dizzy.”

He froze at Gemma’s words. “Is it the jump from the train? You might have hit your head rather hard—”

“From watching you pace.”

Heat crept into his face. “Sorry.”

She brushed aside his embarrassed apology. “Don’t fret. I like watching you think. I just wish you’d do it in a more stationary way.”

She liked to watch him
think
? “It’s difficult for me to remain static when I’m ruminating.” Even now, he struggled to keep from tapping his foot, restless both from the need to think as well as being the subject of her frank interest.

“You must have worn a trench in the floor of your office.”

“Very nearly.” He felt himself almost vibrating with tension.

With a low laugh, she waved a hand at him. “You look like you’re about to spontaneously combust. Please, keep pacing.”

He started to move, then forcibly stopped himself.

“But—”

“I’ll try to avert my gaze.” Her eyes glinted with wry amusement before she drew up her legs and rested her head upon her knees. “But it won’t be easy.”

Oh, God, was she teasing him? If he had Bennett’s skill
with repartee, he could think of something clever and urbane, perhaps pay her a compliment with a hint of suggestiveness. Like what? What could he say? He’d
kissed
her passionately not that long ago, and she’d enjoyed it. Words should not be so difficult after a devastating kiss.

“Erm, thank you,” he muttered, and resumed his pacing.

“When did you become a Blade?” she asked. When he hesitated in his answer, she added, “This can be, as we say in journalism, ‘off the record,’ if you’re worried I might write about you.”

“I would appreciate that.” He scanned the afternoon sky for any suspicious avian activity. The Heirs often made use of birds’ sensitivity to magic, binding them with spells and forcing them into service as surveillance. Catullus wondered if Lesperance was having any difficulty on that front. However, considering how well Lesperance had handled himself in Canada, Catullus shouldn’t be overly concerned. That didn’t stop Catullus’s mind from whirling, though.

“So …?”

He snapped out of his thoughts at her prompt. No wonder he could never sustain a relationship with a woman. Always spinning off into the kingdom of his own mind. No woman could tolerate such perceived neglect. His arrangement with Penelope, the wealthy mercer’s widow in Southampton, worked because they expected only bodily gratification from each other. Their usual pattern had him arriving between eleven and eleven thirty in the evening, after most of her staff had gone to sleep. He and Penny barely exchanged pleasantries. Once in her bedroom, they silently took off their clothing and had sex, sometimes in bed, sometimes elsewhere in her room.

He made sure Penny felt pleasure, and she gave it, as well. But the truth was, the whole process bordered on mechanical, stripped of real connection. Half the time they were together, his thoughts drifted to current projects and
inventions. Penny wasn’t offended. She only wanted his cock. Not his mind, not his heart.

What would Gemma want? Would she be bothered by his straying thoughts? She did not appear impatient now, nor did she seem unconcerned, like Penny.

Gemma patiently waited for his response.

“I became a Blade at eighteen,” he answered. “On a mission to protect a Source in the Åland Islands.”

“Seems awfully young!”

“Not for my family. We’ve been providing mechanical assistance to the Blades for generations. It was simply a matter of time before I became an official Blade of the Rose.”

“Generations,” she repeated. She raised her head, frowning in confusion.

He saw the source of her bewilderment. “Great-great-grandmother Portia came to England from a sugar plantation in Jamaica. She came with her owner as a gift to his daughter in London.”

The implication of that statement widened Gemma’s eyes.

“Yes. She was a slave.” He didn’t stop his pacing, though he slowed, out of consideration for Gemma’s balance.

“Oh, Lord, Catullus,” she gulped. “I’m so sorry.”

“Why? You had nothing to do with it.”

“I know, but … it’s awful to think about. Someone in your family actually being considered … property … instead of a human being.”

He shrugged, long inured to this. “Great-great-grandmother Portia wasn’t the only one. A third of my male relatives were slaves in the British Caribbean at one point in their lives.”

“No one would blame you,” she said slowly, “if you hated England.”

“My skin’s pigment does not define me, no more than your freckles define you. Although,” he mused to himself, “I am extremely fond of freckles.”

He wasn’t actually aware that he had spoken this last bit aloud, until Gemma said with a smile, “That’s good news, since I have quite a lot of them.”

He blinked at her response, and then repressed an urge to yell his triumph. He’d done it! He’d said something flirtatious, and received a very encouraging reaction! That should be recorded in one of his journals, like an experiment.

Though his response to Gemma had little to do with science. Perhaps biology. And something beyond the body. Was there a science of the mind, of the heart? There ought to be.

His attempt at flirtation had been purely accidental, so he couldn’t repeat the procedure. Gemma looked up at him with those sparkling eyes, fringed with red-gold lashes, and he didn’t know what to say. The volley ended with him, like a missed tennis ball whiffing past a racquet. He forged onward, taking up his pacing again so that he wouldn’t have to dwell on the fact that he was not, and would never be, a rake.

“But, ah, to return to great-great-grandmother Portia.” He turned in slow circles, his eyes on the horizon for any possible hazards. “She displayed a tremendous talent for mechanical devices of all kind. Fixing clocks, perfecting the springs on carriages, even making adjustments on the fireplaces so they burned more efficiently.”

“She sounds quite remarkable,” she said, thoughtful.

Despite his relentless scrutiny, nothing loomed in the distance, except his increasing interest in Gemma Murphy. “Never met her, myself, but all accounts described her as a singular woman. Eventually, her mistress freed her, and Portia found work in a household in Southampton. That household was, in fact, the headquarters of the Blades of the Rose. And that’s how the long association began. So it continues to the present day with myself and my sister Octavia.”

“Is Octavia married?”

“Yes, and a mother, but she continues to develop devices for the Blades, when she has time.”

“And you?”

“I’m always developing devices,” he answered abstractedly, preoccupied by a shape on the horizon. He ought to have his shotgun ready, and cursed himself for not thinking of it sooner. But as he bent to retrieve the firearm from its case, her softly stated question caused him to freeze like a startled fox.

“I mean, are you married?”

He bolted upright, weaponry forgotten. “Good God, no!” Catullus swung to her, plainly appalled. “You don’t think that I’d … that I would even consider …”

“Kissing me,” she filled in helpfully. He remained mute, stunned into silence, so she shrugged. “Married men have been known to kiss women who weren’t their wives.”

“I would never do that!”

She contemplated him for several long moments, while Catullus’s heart threatened to burst from his chest and find its own way to Southampton. “No,” she said after some time. “I don’t believe you would. And,
on
the record,” she added, “I don’t kiss married men.”

“Well …” he said, “that
is
a relief.”

The candor of her gaze revealed that she found them both, at that moment, a little ridiculous.

He’d traveled all over the civilized world, and battled his way through the uncivilized one, as well. Polar seas, barren deserts, obscure jungles. Glittering world capitals and villages that could fit inside a rabbit hutch. And yet the exotic country of Gemma Murphy left him lost. It was easier to dwell in action than dwell on the conversation they were now having.

Catullus hefted his shotgun, but saw the shape on the horizon turn into nothing more than a collection of sheep meandering across a pasture. A pity. He’d rather brawl with
the Heirs than fumble his way through another attempt at flirtation with this sharp-eyed, forthright woman.

He whirled around with his shotgun ready as he became aware of a close, noiseless presence. Gemma gave a small yelp when Astrid appeared, like a dryad, from behind a nearby tree. Yet there was no magic in Astrid’s stealth, only a lifetime of experience that had taught her hard lessons. Catullus’s heart ached for the pain she’d had to endure. There wasn’t a Blade or soldier, however, who could match Astrid for strength and skill. Suffering had forged her. Now she was ready for combat.

“The main road is watched,” Astrid said without preamble. She strode toward him and a rising Gemma. “I saw a coach stopped and searched just outside the nearest village. Apparently, the Heirs have convinced the local law that we’re fugitive thieves.”

Catullus feared as much. The authority of the Heirs easily awed village constables and magistrates. “We stay off the arterial roads, then.”

“Getting all the way to Southampton will be a challenge.”

“But we must manage it.”

“I found an inn ten miles from here,” said Lesperance, also emerging silently. Catullus saw Gemma’s observant gaze fix on Lesperance’s necktie, which showed itself to be not completely knotted, as if only just put on, and a few buttons undone on his waistcoat. She did not miss much, this journalist.

“Safe?” Catullus asked.

“Looks like it was built before the train line, and the village it’s in isn’t on the main road.”

The man had done his reconnaissance well. Meanwhile, the sun traced its path closer to the horizon. Nightfall approached. They needed shelter. Catullus had spent countless nights sleeping on the ground, but he’d try like hell to spare Gemma that discomfort. For all her strength and bravado,
this world—the world of Heirs and dangerous magic and pushing oneself to the brink of physical collapse—wasn’t hers but his.

“Good,” Catullus said. “We need to reach there before the sun sets.”

Lesperance’s information proved correct. The village they walked into was barely more than a handful of cottages, the high street unpaved, without even a church or grocer. Catullus saw not gas lamps but candles burning inside the houses that lined the street. Some of the cottages stood dark and moldering, and weeds pushed their way through cracks in walls. The few people out were, to a one, elderly and dressed in the fashions of King George.