AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Hysterical teary laughter staved off the pain. “You saved me first.”
His gaze flickered. His hand moved in hers. And a question rose from bloody lips. “Stay?”
Anything. She’d offer anything to keep him with her. “Yes, Aidan. I’ll stay. I promise.”
He closed his eyes. His body stilled. But his heart kept beating.
July 1815
The three men stood in various poses of uncomfortable impatience around the drawing room. All bore themselves with military precision. Confident stances. Prideful, level gazes. Arrogant swaggers, even at rest.
Aidan smoldered against their presence even as he knew he must suffer through it if he was to do anything to clear Brendan’s name with the Amhas-draoi.
He sat upright in a chair. A victory against gravity. Against the stream of visitors who’d shaken their heads and counted his hours. Hours stretching to days then weeks as he fought the surrender of a body whose only remaining sense had been pain. The memory of that battle remained in the reflection staring back at him every morning from his mirror.
Scarecrows bore more elegance than he. Gaunt body. Deep grooves cut into the sides of his mouth. An emptiness in his eyes. Silver threading his thick auburn hair. His impression borne up by three sets of cynical gazes.
“About”—he glanced at his pocket watch—“two months late, aren’t you?”
The eldest of the Amhas-draoi—a man who’d introduced himself with the one-word sobriquet Garrick—barely flickered an eyelid. “We’ve had much to concern us of late, Lord Kilronan. We came as events allowed.”
“You make it sound as if I invited you to a bloody summer fete. Did you read my letter?” He held his temper by the merest of threads.
“Do you mean this letter, my lord?” Garrick pulled free a heavy sheet of foolscap from his coat. Folded and refolded. Stained. Smeared. But still recognizable. The letter he’d sent by express rider to the Amhas-draoi. To the only address he’d had. Duke Street. Dublin. To a woman Jack once claimed had a developed sense of the ironic.
Was she laughing now? Or had Jack’s death meant more to her than one more victim to Máelodor’s ambitions? He didn’t know. He’d yet to see Miss Roseingrave. His missive to her had yielded only these three stone-faced gentleman.
“We read it. And we understand your concern. Your late father’s diary could be a powerful weapon in the wrong hands. Had we known of it at the time of our last . . . visit to your home here—”
“Let’s not coat the memory in sugar,” Aidan answered, his throat aching against the words he wished to say. “Had you known, you’d have grabbed it when you murdered my father.”
“A regrettable oversight on our part.” Garrick waved away the past with a breezy flip of his hand. “But let’s talk of the present. We’ve come seeking more information because well, frankly, we find it hard to believe what you’ve written.”
Aidan’s hands upon the chair arms tightened. His spine stiffening. “How so?”
“You state Máelodor is at the heart of this new threat. That he works to re-create the Nine’s network of Other. That he commands a soldier of Domnu. And that he plots to bring about a resurrection of Arthur.” So calm. So even. So bloody cold. “But you see, that’s impossible.”
“You’d be amazed at what’s possible.” Aidan’s voice matched and bettered the arrogance offered him.
The gentleman’s brows raised as if he seemed to see Aidan for the first time. As if he caught the whiff of naked Unseelie power still seeping from the pores of Aidan’s skin. A souvenir of survival. A memento of all he’d gained and lost that May night.
While Garrick struggled with this new and more formidable Lord Kilronan, his companion stepped into the silence. He wore the midnight visage of the Celt. Shock of black hair. Dark arched brows. A slash of snide mouth.
“Máelodor is dead.”
Aidan jerked upright. Choked on a muttered “damn” before easing himself back into his seat. “When?”
“The man was tracked down in Paris and executed. Three years ago.”
Aidan shook his head, drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair as he sought to make sense of it all. “You’re mistaken.”
Garrick found his voice. Reasserting his authority, he gestured to the third gentleman. “St. John was one of the force sent to execute him. He can guarantee it.”
The man stepped to the fore. Blond. Lithe. And too damned young. What was he? Twenty-one? Twenty-two? Gods, Aidan felt old. “It’s true, my lord.” St. John’s accent held a subtle hint of some foreign tongue. “Máelodor died in a Paris lodging house. His body burned.”
Garrick leaned nonchalantly against the mantel as if he were the host and Aidan the unwelcome visitor. Looked down on Aidan from beneath hooded lids. “It’s admirable to seek good in a brother who brings nothing but shame to a family already steeped in tragedy.”
Aidan set his jaw. Rose to stiff attention. Unwilling to play the delusional, coddled invalid another moment. “My brother is not part of this hellish plot. Ask Ahern. Ask Miss O’Connell. Both of them can confirm what I set down in that letter.”
