Anyone else would have thought him merely a trick of the imagination, a phantom summoned up by an unhappy mind, but to Alexis the images were as real as the cold ground beneath her. And they gave her a world of hope.
When the door to her dark room rattled and squeaked open, she was ready and did not flinch. She already knew who her visitor would be.
He strode through the shadows, a single candle in his hand. His face was the face the girl had seen so often in her dreams, a garish mask with a long pointed nose, and of course the jagged scar along one cheek. Alexis had seen a mask like this before, worn by the wandering street players in Europe. But the man who wore it now was deadly serious, she knew.
Around him in the darkness Alexis began to see faint tendrils of movement, the cold twisting shapes of people.
Gray people.
People who had died.
As they coiled around his chest, their fingers jabbing at his eyes and clutching at his throat, Alexis knew that these were people this man had killed; like angry shadows, they circled, waiting for him in death.
She shrank back, horrified. As she did, cold laughter filled the empty room.
“So you begin to show some fear? It is good, silly girl.” His voice hardened. “Where is India Delamere?”
Alexis’s hands tightened on her doll. “I don’t know. She’s been gone.”
“So she has.” He laughed softly. “But your answers are unnecessary. It is you we need,
you
who will summon your solicitous guardian and his adventurous lady. Then everything we want will be ours.”
“Don’t do it!” Alexis’s eyes were wide as she watched the gray shapes twist and coil about the man in the mask. “They’re waiting for you right now. If you change, if you speak to them nicely, they might go away.” She knew it was not true, but her pure spirit rebelled against the sight of such evil. Somehow she had to try to change his dark fate.
Her captor threw back his head and laughed. “Be
nice?”
he sneered. “Bide my time, do my work, and don’t ask questions?” He bent before her, in the candlelight his mask a horrible, misshapen gargoyle. “But I won’t wait, my dear, not any longer. The game is nearly ours. All that we require now is the diamond, and your beautiful friend will soon bring that to us. Thanks to
you.”
Alexis shrank back, out of reach of the drifting gray shapes. With every angry word her captor spoke, their numbers grew. But she knew there was no way this man would believe her.
Not until it was too late.
She could only stare at him in fright, the doll clutched to her trembling body, while he slammed the door behind him and strode laughing back into the darkness.
~ ~ ~
It was after midnight when the Duke of Wellington gathered up his greatcoat and prepared to leave. He studied the tense faces before him and nodded. “We are close now. We will find the girl and through her the rest of this barbarous cabal. Meanwhile, my men are at your command, Thornwood.” He turned, brisk as he had been among the firing cannons at Waterloo, and motioned to his secretary. “My satchel, Stevens.”
And with that he was gone.
~ ~ ~
Gradually the city stilled. The carriages thinned out, the footsteps ceased, and the night grew as quiet as it ever could in the restless giant that was London.
Devlyn sat in his study, watching the last red sparks flicker and die in the grate. He could not sleep. He could not plan. All that he could think of was Alexis’s face, white and terrified somewhere in the night.
And that vision was going to drive him mad. He ran his hands through his hair, tensing when he heard a noise at the door.
It was India, her face showing the same strains that his did. “I couldn’t sleep.”
Thornwood gestured to the chair beside the fire. “Nor could I. Come and join me. Sherry?”
After a moment India nodded. But when he brought the drink, she made no move to take it, only looked at him, her eyes haunted. “Dev, do you think that they will—”
“Don’t.
It doesn’t do any good to imagine the worst. I know, because I’ve done nothing else for the last hour.” His hands gripped the mantel, each joint outlined in white and his eyes burned as he looked down into the fire. “India, I know I have no right to ask this. In fact, I know I’m a cur even to think of it, but—” He looked up, a world of torment in his face. “Do you think we could — that is, could you possibly—”
Her eyes were liquid in the dying firelight. “Say it, Dev. Tell me what you want from me.” She couldn’t make it easy for him, not now, not after all the shadows between them. This time he had to be clear, entirely without question.
“Could you stay with me? Just for tonight, India? As my wife and as my love? As the one fine and stable thing in this bloody world that has any chance of keeping me sane until tomorrow? Otherwise, I…” He couldn’t finish.
In a heartbeat, India touched him. In aching silence her hands were on his shoulders, her body warm against his.
He wanted no time for thinking or regrets. No time for anything but her skin, soft as a rose petal. To touch her left him hard with desperation.
Her hands were trembling.
Lord, his were too.
He closed his eyes, letting the first brush of her skin warm him as brandy never could. Maybe if he tried very hard, he could block out the thought of Alexis, shivering and afraid somewhere in the night.
No, he could never forget that. His low, hoarse cry was like a wound.
India caught him then, fierce in her generosity. She would
not
lose him again, not after so long. During the dark months since Waterloo she had learned her own lessons of survival.
“
Hold me, Dev
. Make me remember. Make the days slide away until it’s spring again and there are rose petals beneath us on the ground.”
His eyes burned over her face. “You believe in me, don’t you? You always have,” he said wonderingly. “Even when I didn’t believe in myself.”
“It’s another Delamere trait,” India said softly. Her hands slid across his chest and began opening his shirt.
And Devlyn Carlisle was utterly lost.
They were both too urgent for sense. Her hands yanked at his shirt. She inched to the floor and pulled him down against her. His body was already hot and hard, red-tinged in the firelight. Frowning, Thorne caught her face and stared into her eyes as if he could see all the way to forever. “India? Is this what you truly want?”
She nodded. “Please, Dev,” she whispered. Her eyes did not leave his face as she found his hardness and took him in the span of her hand.
He shuddered and moved back, kissing an urgent path over her breasts and down to her creamy stomach. He was on fire for her, reckless with desire too long controlled. Breathing her name, he slid his fingers into her heat and stroked her until she shuddered in turn. “Tell me what you want, my heart.”
“I — oh, Dev—”
Pleasure, moving in a blind crest.
Heat and need and endless, aching homecoming. Her eyes were pools of welcome and he fell blindly. Gladly.
“Only you. N
ow.”
He paused above her, his hard, aroused body like forged copper in the glowing light. Only when India was hot and hungry, her body stretched taut with desire, did he part her legs deeply.
He wanted her.
He could no longer wait to have her.
But he was going to be damned sure that she needed
him,
too.
Silver eyes burning, Thorne teased the sleek petals so familiar from a thousand nights of fantasies. She caught him tight, rippling velvet in her desire. Her body arched and she drove blindly against him, her fists angry. “Now, Dev. Now, or I’ll—”
Thorne closed his eyes. With a groan he held her still as he buried himself deep inside her. Like silk she spread, holding him, savoring him, wrapping him in unspeakable pleasure. Dimly he felt her long legs rise to grip his back.
“Closer, India,” he ordered hoarsely. “Don’t spare me. Don’t spare
us.
Not tonight, Princess. I need you wild and unquenchable tonight.”
Her nails gripped his shoulders as she rocked beneath his shuddering thrusts, lost in a shimmering haze of need.
As wild as even he could wish.
It was no gentle, poignant claiming. They knew each other too well for that. Tonight each touch was wild and rough, each kiss full of blindness and need. There were no soft words or muted whispers, only the urgent slide of skin on naked skin.
But there before the dying fire, they blocked out the night. Between them they made their own dawn, where war and loneliness and the thought of a young girl’s frightened face disappeared for at least a few minutes.
Dev’s fingers locked in India’s hair. He watched her back arch and heard a ragged cry of pleasure spill from her lips. His eyes were ablaze with triumph when she shuddered and arched beneath him a second time, her fingers twined with his.
A single tear glistened on the curve of her shoulder. It might have been hers or it might have been his — perhaps it was both of theirs.
But when India’s eyes opened, they were accusing. “Damn your honor, Dev. I don’t want duty or restraint, I want you with me. I want to feel your hot seed drive up inside me and know that there’s no room for thoughts of any other woman but me. If you can’t give me that, I’ll just have to find another man who—”
He cut her off with a curse, his fingers locking around her thighs and holding her still, willing captive to the dark fury her words had unleashed.
“No
other man. Not now or ever.”