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Snapping the half-cocked pistol’s frizzen in place, Aidan wiped his hands on a cloth. Carried the loaded weapon to the hall, casting his eye about for a convenient hiding place. The chest of drawers tucked under the lower landing looked a perfect spot. Near the front entrance, yet out of the way of nosy housemaids.
Successful, he returned to the library. Lit a cheroot to stave off exhaustion. Stalked the room as he inhaled on an energizing drag before stubbing it out. Tossing it into the fire. Settling himself once again with notes and diary.
He’d sent Cat to bed, but the lavender scent of her lingered. Teased him with ungallant thoughts. Lusty imaginings. He shifted in his seat. Fought to concentrate on the collection of transcripts she’d left and ignore the pair of spring green eyes and the reed-supple body alive with anticipation. What would have happened if he’d ignored his good angel and done what he’d wanted this afternoon? If he’d freed the long-suppressed seducer who, if given a chance, could not only drive the memory of Jeremy away, but obliterate it completely?
The answer was obvious from past experience. A knee to the groin followed by a fist to the jaw. Subtlety and Cat weren’t exactly friends.
He sighed. Blinked her away. Forced his mind to an image of Barbara Osborne’s buxom good looks. What on earth did she make of his sudden disappearance? Did she assume he’d taken off with Cat to continue their liaison in the privacy of the country? Had she taken such rogue’s conduct as reason to shift her attentions to another? No, surely she’d wait to hear his explanation before jumping to conclusions.
But did he really care?
Of course he did.
Didn’t he?
He was giving himself a headache. Trying not to dwell on the problems he’d left behind or the problems he’d brought with him, he picked up the next page in the scattered stack, and found himself chuckling over the recounting of Sabrina’s sudden interest in the healing arts. Not even the dogs had been immune to her mad scramble to bandage anything that came within ten feet of her.
That had been in the summer of her fifteenth year. The last one she’d spent at home. Father had met his death the following November, Sabrina choosing to remain with the bandraoi sisters rather than return to Belfoyle. Her most recent letter had spoken of her apprenticeship to the order’s infirmarian. Apparently her interest in medicine was more than a girlish fad.
The next page had obviously been recopied from another work. A recounting by the master mage Garaile Biteri of his first successful passage between worlds. Descriptions of the cold, the pressing weight of emptiness, the creatures inhabiting the abyss. Cat had even translated his father’s margin-scribbled annotations. References to testing the hypothesis at their next gathering when the family would be conveniently absent.
One entry stung even at a distance of years: “Aidan’s hopeless. I gave him the simplest of spells—Brendan mastered it within hours—and what does my firstborn do? He sets the greenhouse on fire and nearly destroys a small fortune in exotics. When I taxed him with it, he merely shrugged it off as of little consequence. He’s my son, but, by the gods, his lack of interest is infuriating. He may be my heir in body, but it is Brendan who inherited my soul.”
Aidan read and reread that indictment, resentment riding closer to the surface than expected. Dredging up old hurts and old slights forgotten in the chaos of keeping his head above water. He took a deep breath, exhaling slowly in a bid to calm himself.
His father wrote only truth. Brendan had been the special one. The one whose Other gifts had shown the greatest promise. Aidan’s interests had always lain in the land, the green fields, the rocky moorland and crumbling cliffs, the overgrown stands of blackthorn and ash. They were his. Every blade of grass and every animal crouched in hiding from the poacher’s snare. Hell, every poacher when it came to that. So from where did his resentment spring? Perhaps it lay more in his father’s neglect of Aidan’s birthright than of Aidan himself.
He turned to the next entry and another reference to the Nine. He’d seen this more and more as if the amorphous group his father had gathered congealed into something permanent and official enough to need a name. But for what purpose?
His father’s thirst for knowledge and pride in his talents came through loud and clear. A clarion call to all Other to embrace their Fey-born inheritance, to strive to turn even the least gift to its greatest use. But to be used for what? The Other could never risk exposure. They had nothing to gain and everything to lose should the Duinedon world rise up in answer to what they would surely see as witchcraft and devilry. Did he truly expect Arthur’s return to tip the scales in their favor? Usher in a new era of Other dominance?
“Still awake?”
Aidan jerked at the creaky rasp of words inches from his ear. How the hell had Daz snuck up on him?
“I’m light on my feet, lad,” Daz answered in response to Aidan’s unspoken question, shuffling his feet in what appeared to be a jig. “I move with panther stealth.”
If that was Daz’s idea of panther stealth, Aidan had to have been dozing. That or stone deaf.
“My neuralgia is acting up. Can’t sleep. Thought I’d join you, lad.” He dropped into a chair with a glance around the room. His eyes bright, but not wild. His movements holding none of the frenetic tendencies of the madman. He’d even managed to clothe himself in banyan and—both—slippers. “Your young lady gone up to bed, has she?”
“Hours ago.” His young lady. It sounded so possessive. So permanent. So completely the opposite of what he needed. Barbara Osborne would be his young lady. She would. Really. Once he returned to Dublin, it was as good as done. So why did the thought of tying himself to her seem more and more odious, yet opening himself to Cat came natural as breathing? Or should he say, panting.
He grimaced against a renewal of his earlier lecherous aches.
“Sweet lass.” Daz levered his leg onto a padded footstool. Settled deeper into his seat with a satisfied grunt. “She’s had a difficult road.”
Aidan shot him a pointed look. “She’s told you of it?”
Daz returned the glare with a knowing smirk. “Doesn’t take the gift of the seer to see the child’s been hurt. There for anyone with eyes. Even you.” His gaze grew worried. “Maude says you came back from a walk about the grounds looking as if you’d been kicked between the eyes by a mule. More than once.” Shook his head. “Working the mage energy, weren’t you, lad?”
Why did Aidan have the sensation of being caught with his hand in the biscuit jar?
“And if I was?”
“You know you and the magic don’t get along. Never have. Why risk injuring yourself?”
“Because if I don’t I may as well stake myself out for Lazarus and let him have a nice easy go at me,” Aidan answered, sharper than he’d intended, but the reproof stung. Especially after reading his father’s indictment. “I refuse to let my deficiencies win. I need every weapon at my disposal to defend myself. And this damned diary.”
