Wicked thoughts had skittered through her mind, until she’d seen the practicality. He could hold her snug, but whisper questions in her ear. She could stare at the familiar painting, stay in Jack’s grasp and not be swept away on past terror.
That other man from Whitehall had shaken her by the shoulders as if he could rattle the words loose, told her she’d burn in hell for not speaking.
But he’d not realised she couldn’t, that she hadn’t been faking or coy or stupid. Every time she’d tried, her voice had refused to comply, as though fingers had clenched the place from whence it came and squeezed tight.
No reason could be found for her silence, no doctor’s prodding had revealed its cause, and yet now, years later, she knew its name.
Fear.
Fear for her family and for her friends. Fear of more death.
Tonight, however, fear would be banished.
She recounted nightly rides across the headland, of growing up amongst the wild cliffs, of feeling invincible.
“Did you love Jonathan?” he interrupted as she told of beach fires beneath the stars.
“Yes, and I miss him still. We grew up together, knew each other’s thoughts and ways. Would such familiarity have made a good marriage? I do not know. And at sixteen I was too young to understand…desire.”
She sensed him nod, seemingly satisfied, and continued, describing her horse rearing in fright, of gaining consciousness in the cave with dearest Jonathan dead by her side.
Pain clutched her heart and she faltered. Such a senseless death. He would have been a fine young man – brave and strong.
Arms tightened, a kiss to her hair as Petrok’s night cry carried through the open window, and she resumed.
“I suppose you want to hear of details useful to your investigation.” She picked the lace of her cuff. “As he stood over me, I remember he was shortish – five and a half foot or nearabout. White teeth and pale hair–”
“Pale?” Jack startled. “Are you sure?”
“Certainly. I always thought demons would be dark but he was blond and smelled of frankincense.”
“The scent is as someone else once described but I glimpsed him last spring and he’d blac–”
She twisted in horror. “You saw him? You never said.” Her skin prickled, eyes so wide they stung. That same devil who’d wounded her so, who’d been responsible for her sweetheart’s death. “How?”
“We rescued a friend’s wife whom he’d kidnapped and in the melee aboard his boat,La Chauve-Souriswas shot. He fell in the Thames and we thought him dead, but my superior has harboured suspicions for some time.”
She bit her lip to stop the tremble. She’d been so afraid for her family, her friends and truthfully, she’d been so feverish that she had scarce known her own name, but… “If I’d spoken sooner,” she cried, “I could have stopped–”
Broad hands rose to her cheeks, forced her to meet his fierce gaze. “Tamsyn, we are not talking about some foolish horse thief or handkerchief nabber, but a determined and evil murderer. Your words might have added to our information at the time, but he would have silenced you forever and changed his guise in an instant. Your memories are useful now, Tamsyn. The past is just that.”
She twisted back, leaning into his strength, compelling those memories to mere ripples on the surface without the power to stir below.
“I suppose in years he was…five and twenty or thereabouts, but only dusk and a dim lantern lit that cave so I caught nothing but glimpses. I…I thought I was to die. He held the knife to my throat, teased me with death, yet… You talk of your own temper but ask my father, in those days I often flared like gunpowder.”
“I cannot imagine,” he teased, and she felt…calm in his arms, protected yet free, and she smiled.
“Indeed. But I hated him so. For Jonathan, for bringing death to my precious cove and I spat in his face, called him names and struggled like a fury. I told him to look me in the eye as he stole my life.”
She felt lips press on her neck and suddenly it wasn’t so terrifying. Not with this man.
“You had a tantrum?”
Jack rendered it flippant, as though for show. But this was how he coped with life, the depravation of man. He spun it, mocked it, showed no fear.
She embraced it.
“I did,” she declared with vehemence. “My biggest one ever. I glared and yelled he was a pathetic rat, but he shook his head and told me he wasLa Chauve-Souris.”
