He’d tried to take the gun away from her, but she wasn’t having any of that. She thought that all she had to do was aim and pull the trigger, and the bullet would find its mark. She’d never shot a gun and hoped she never would, but as she sweetly pointed out, their villain didn’t know that.
He knew from the clothes that she’d strewn over a couple of chairs that she was sleeping only in her chemise. Before it put ideas in his head, he wrapped himself in the blanket he’d taken from the room he had once shared with Dalziel and lay down beside her. Subduing the picture that came to his mind of Kate in nothing but a chemise, he turned on his side away from her and gave his thoughts a puzzle to solve: who had a motive to want Kate dead? As his focus shifted, bits of the puzzle began to rearrange themselves. Slowly, meticulously, he fitted them into their proper slots. Will, the convent, Kate and her mother, the parish records, the killer who left notes on his victims—notes that the police discounted.
The murderer wouldn’t like that. He’d want everyone to know that the deaths were connected. Otherwise, if he got to Kate, her murder would arouse a storm of outrage, and his misdirection would have failed.
At this point, he began to wonder whether he’d been on the wrong track all along, that some sick mind really had a grudge against psychiaters and their patients. What steadied him was his granny’s prophecy and her assurance that the future could be changed. He held fast to that thought as his breathing slowed and his lids grew heavy.
She was trapped in a nightmare, and there was no way out. He was after her, the man who wanted to kill her.
Gavin!
The scream echoed inside her mind and faded away.
Gavin!
A sob this time. She was all alone on the moors.
Alone except for the demon who was gaining on her.
She was climbing a steep incline that overlooked a hamlet, but in this ice-cold mist, she could see almost nothing. She was running blindly with no idea of where she was or where she was going. She couldn’t stop shivering, and the hairs on the back of her neck quivered in terror.
When the mist began to evaporate, her steps slowed, and she peered through the filmy gauze trying to find cover from her pursuer. On her left was an ancient ruined chapel and burial grounds, and white marble angels stood sentinel by the graves. On her right, horses with black plumes snorted and impatiently pawed the ground with their hooves.
Not funeral horses, she decided as she drew nearer to them, but destriers with a scarlet cross emblazoned on their livery.
As in the way of dreams, the stone angels were stepping down from their pedestals. White cloaks billowed out in the breeze. The emblem on their dark tunics was turning a fiery bloodred. She recognized the symbol. They were warrior knights of the ancient order of the Knights Templar who had settled in Deeside centuries before.
The Knights Templar, her father had told her, were protectors of the weak and helpless. She had nothing to fear from them. Easy to say, but her father was not here. The knights were converging on her, and fear had rooted her to the spot.
She braced herself for she knew not what as they approached. Ice-cold breath drifted over her skin, lingered a moment, then was gone. She let out a long, uneven breath and turned on her heel to watch them. They had formed a line, like a solid wall, between her and the demon who was after her.
Ghosts couldn’t make solid walls. Even as she watched, they were disintegrating, but they had given her time to find a place to hide.
Where was Gavin? He wouldn’t leave her alone to face the demon. He said that he would save her. Where was his voice? The sense of his presence? Why did she feel so bereft?
Like a flash of light from a dying star, the knowledge that Gavin wouldn’t leave her unless something catastrophic had overtaken him burst through her mind. The voice was silent because Gavin was dead. A great void opened before her. That murdering devil had gotten to Gavin and silenced him forever.
In the space of a single heartbeat, despair converted to a white-hot fury. It filled her mouth, her nostrils, her head. She no longer thought of escape. She wanted him to find her. Slowly, she turned to face her enemy. As he emerged from the mist, she let out a shriek like an enraged Fury and flung herself at him. Teeth snapping, fingers like claws, she went for his face.
He was stronger than she, and he dragged her to the ground, but still she fought him. She heaved and bucked to throw him off. She bit his shoulder and took a savage pleasure when he let out a cry. He was shaking her. Her head was bobbing; her teeth were chattering.
Then she heard Gavin’s voice and she stilled. Torn between hope and disbelief, she blinked up at him. “Gavin?” she whispered hoarsely.
“I’m here, Kate. Don’t struggle. I don’t want to hurt you. You were dreaming. That’s all it was, a dream.” When she continued to stare without saying a word, he gave her another shake. “Do you hear me, Kate? It’s Gavin, and I’m right here beside you.”
“You’re not dead?” she quavered.
“Do I seem like a ghost to you?”
His lighthearted quip did not act on her the way he thought it would. “You bastard,” she hissed. “You deserted me when you promised you never would.”
“Will you calm down?” He spoke sternly, as if she were a fractious child having a temper tantrum. “It was only a dream.”
The effects of the dream still held her in their icy grip. Since she couldn’t move, she opened her mouth to yell at him, but what came out was a tearless sob, then another, then a spate of dry, choking sobs she couldn’t control. He slipped beneath the covers and gathered her into his arms, wanting only to comfort her.
“You’re cold,” he said. “Here, let me warm you.”
That she allowed him to warm her with his body was an indication of how disturbed she was.
“He’s still out there,” she whispered against his throat.
He tipped her chin up. “I know. I swear I won’t let him touch you. I’ll keep you safe.”
Her voice rose a notch. “Is that supposed to comfort me? He wants you dead, too! And in my dream, he succeeds. First you, then me.”
“It was only a dream.”
“Easy for you to say. You weren’t there.”
He pulled back so that he could see her face. Her unbound hair tumbled over the pillows in a profusion of tangles. Dark circles rimmed her eyes, giving them the appearance of crushed violets. His hands trembled when he cupped her face. It came to him that his life would never be the same again. There was life before Kate and life after she had streaked into his carefree, devil-may-care existence. He’d always had an eye for a pretty face. This difficult woman had changed him irrevocably.
Her fingers snagged his wrists. “Don’t you understand anything?” she stuttered, still shaken from a dream that was more real to her than reality. “I thought that he had murdered you.”
He understood more than she did. Dreams and visions were the stuff of seers. His hold tightened on her. He had a healthy respect for death, but it wouldn’t come to that. He would draw the bastard out and gladly put a bullet in his black heart, no quarter asked or given.
Could it be that easy? He was only a mortal man, after all. He was also a seer of Grampian, but that did not make him invincible. If he were out of the way, how could Kate escape the designs of a cold-blooded killer? She was small-made; her bones were fragile. But she was not helpless, he thought fiercely. She had met this killer on the moors above Ballater, and she had carried the day. She could do it again.
Kate knew that he was in the grip of some powerful emotion, but so was she. She wanted to feel the steady beat of his heart beneath her palm. She wanted to hear the sound of his breathing as he sucked air in and out of his lungs. She wanted to forget the terror of her nightmare and escape to the land of the living. She was wound up so tightly she thought her brain might explode from the pressure.
His fingers shredded her chemise. She tried to unbutton his shirt, failed, and simply tore off the buttons from throat to waist. His body excited her, his moans, his heat. She felt heady with the solid feel of him. He was no dream lover. This was Gavin. Fate had sent him to her, so he said, but she would gladly battle with Fate to keep him safe.
His mind was telling him to slow down and not make this another debacle like the first time they’d made love, but how could he resist her desperate need? And how could he resist his response to her? He felt as though he’d been waiting for her half his life. She was here, now, vibrant and strong and demanding. Time was finite. He wasn’t going to waste a minute of it.
She smiled when his lips opened over hers. Through nibbling kisses, she murmured, “I have a lot to learn about passion. Will you teach me, Gavin?”
His lips had moved to her throat. “You’re not a novice, Kate. I am. You know more about love—”
She stopped his words with a searing kiss. She didn’t want to talk about love, or make undying promises. Words were misleading. All her life, she had survived by living a lie. She had tried to change to please those she loved and who loved her. And she’d been miserable. This was glorious. A great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Insanity did not run in her family. Matron would never have the power to hurt her again. At last, here, in Gavin’s arms, she could be herself.
Shuddering with sensation, she wound her arms and legs around him. He found her, ready and wet for him. Arms braced to keep his weight from crushing her, he slowly eased into her. She was so tight, he was afraid to move. Kate had other ideas. She arched beneath him, sheathing him deep inside her. Her little cries of arousal drove him over the edge.
“Kate,” he said, but it was too late. She was already racing for the crest. Locked together, they went tumbling over the edge.
Kate came awake by degrees. She could hear Gavin’s voice next door and assumed that he was talking to his brother in Whitehall. She stretched languidly and turned on her side. A small smile played around her lips. For a lady who thought that her work at the clinic had taught her all that she needed to know about the sexes, she had discovered that she was woefully ignorant.
She knew about sickness and how to bring down a fever by administering a cold bath. She knew about knife wounds and concussions and how to treat them. She knew that she was a competent nurse, more than competent. She’d delivered babies and nursed them until their mothers were ready to take them home. She’d distributed birth control devices, not to the men, who couldn’t be trusted to use them, but to their wives who had too many children already. She’d heard jokes about what went on under the covers between a man and a woman, and she’d taken it all in stride. If she had only known the pleasure to be had in a man’s arms, she might not have ended up an old maid.
Yes she would.
There was more to her aversion to marriage than ignorance and fear. The taint of insanity ran in her blood, or so she’d thought. She couldn’t bring innocent children into the world with that threat hanging over them.
Things were different now. She could marry. She could have children. She could . . . Her thoughts stopped, then started over.
She was married, wasn’t she? Sort of. Now why did that thought make her heart beat just a little faster? Her mind drifted to the night just past. How many times had she and Gavin made love after that first sprint to the finishing post? Just thinking about it made her toes curl.
Gavin Hepburn was more than a competent lover. He knew how to play her to prolong their pleasure. He was fascinated by her body, every curve and depression, every pulse point. And she was just as fascinated by his. Bold, lusty, virile. Every woman should be so lucky.
Of course, she thought a little wistfully, he’d had more practice under the covers than she’d had taking care of patients at the clinic, but she was a quick study—
“Bloody hell!”
She bolted upright. Gavin’s voice. Gavin in a temper? Another voice answering his. She pushed back the covers, realized she wasn’t wearing a stitch, and dragged the covers up to her chin. A quick look around showed that her garments were laid out where she’d left them the night before. Creeping like a cat, she edged her way to a chair. Petticoats first, then she slipped on her frock, and after doing up only enough buttons to make herself respectable, she marched into the next room.
Two startled gentlemen looked up at her entrance, Gavin and Dalziel. They were going through a newspaper that lay on the table between them.
“The
Edinburgh Review
,” Gavin said viciously, as though that explained everything.
Dalziel elaborated. “The
Edinburgh Review
takes two days to reach Aberdeen. As soon as I read the lead article, I came right over.”
Kate was alarmed by their expressions. “But what does it say?” she asked, her wobbly voice betraying how alarmed she was.
When Gavin stalked to the window and looked out, Dalziel cleared his throat and began. “The lead article is by a contributor, an anonymous contributor, who sent a letter to the editor. All the facts, the editor writes, have been verified by their special correspondent before they published.” He paused to marshal his thoughts.