Lady Midnight (51 page)

It was absurd. A ridiculous denouncement of the dark quagmire his life had become in the last year or more. Or perhaps it had always been like this. And always would be.

Christina's lips pursed in that hard, disapproving spinster's moue she was so good at. "And now you laugh. You must have' grown up in a barn somewhere, Sir Julian, raised by pigs and horses, since your manners are so atrocious. Far worse than mine ever were, and I had to have a governess to make me fit for polite Society."

"And I now have you, Lady Christina. I vow you are far more a trial than any governess could hope to be." A trial she might be—but the girl was his key to luring Katerina to his side. For that, he could endure any scolding. And then be rid of her. Any way he could.

One of Christina's golden-brown brows arched, and for an instant Julian saw the great beauty this awkward colt would one day be. Her face was a perfect oval, with soaring cheekbones and full, inviting pink lips, not to mention those luminous green eyes. But there was intelligence etched deep in her every glance, a knowingness far beyond her years, and assurance that
she
knew what was best for the world. A bossiness his sister, Charlotte, would envy. One day, she would lead some poor besotted man on a merry dance to hell. Julian would pay his last farthing to see a spectacle like that.

But he couldn't, because by the time she married he would have been long since transported for kidnapping. And it would serve him right, too. He had a vision of himself chained to the deck of a Botany Bay-bound ship, Christina on shore, laughing at him as her slender figure receded farther and farther away.

That would not happen, though. Soon, his Katerina would come to him, and he would have everything he had ever dreamed of. Ever worked for.

"
I
did not choose to come here with you, as you may or may not recall, Sir Julian," she said tartly. "So if I am a trial to you, you have only yourself to blame. The least you can do is answer me when I talk to you."

Julian ran his hands through his wet hair, pushing the strands back from his face. "Do you always chatter on so much?"

"Chatter? I wasn't aware I was doing so. But no, I don't
talk
a great deal. I don't have time for it, with my work and studies."

Thunder crashed again outside the window, one clap piling on top of another until all the world seemed to collapse in a great cacophony around them. "What are your studies, Lady Christina? Needlework? The harp?"

She gave a most unladylike snort. "Needlework! I study botany. Plants. The natural world."

Julian had to suppress a snort of his own. He should have guessed—a budding bluestocking. That would explain the weeds she had been gathering.

Her eyes narrowed, fixing on him like the tip of a sword. "You need not scoff. Perhaps if
you
had an interest outside of yourself, an area of study that could be of benefit to the world, you wouldn't have to go around kidnapping people. You would be able to see when someone doesn't love you."

A flash of temper moved through Julian, as hot and quick as the lightning outside. This ridiculous child was right. Katerina did not love him—she never had, and all the force of his passion could not make her. The dreams he had built so elaborately around her in Venice, the life he planned for the two of them, even his great joy at finding her alive, none of it mattered. It had been just that—a dream, constructed only of his own desires. And everyone could see it, even this girl. Everyone except him, and that was more infuriating than anything he had ever known.

They laughed at him for his folly, surely. Even worse, they pitied him, as Christina did now. Her face softened as she watched him, her lips turning down at the corners.

But it did not matter. He was set on his course now—they all were. Fate had brought them here, and he could not fight against it. He could only fulfill it. Even to the last drop of blood—his, or this girl's. Or his Beatrice's.

"I am sorry," Christina said quietly. "I don't know what happened between you and Mrs. Brown in Italy, but she is marrying my brother now. They love each other very much. I can see why you would care so much for her. She is like no one else I have ever met. Yet surely you can see—"

"What do you know about it?" Julian burst out. He crossed the cramped space of their shelter in only a few long strides and grabbed her arm, pulling her to her feet. Her eyes widened, but she still maintained her perfect dignity, her disapproving-governess expression. Somehow, her very stillness inflamed his temper even more, and he dragged her close to him, drawing her up, flesh to flesh, until only the toes of her boots were still on the dirt floor. She stiffened and tried to twist away, but he held her fast.

"What can you know about love, about passion?" he growled. "You are just a foolish child!"

"Foolish I may be, but I am
not
a child," she answered. She gave up her writhing struggles and leaned against him, her long, callused hands pressed to his shoulders. And he felt the truth of her statement in her body. She was
not
a child, but a woman, a woman with ripe, soft breasts and a slim waist, supple under his hands. "It is true that I have not met a man I could love, but I
do
know what love is."

"Oh, do you now, Brunhilde?" Julian murmured. He held Christina against him, clinging to her warm body as if it were the only lifeline in a drowning world. "Perhaps you could enlighten us ignorant mortals."

"It isn't selfish, or cruel," she insisted. "It doesn't obsess. It wants only the happiness of the loved one—even if that means another person. That is true love."

"I love Katerina," he said. He must. He had dreamed of her for so long. The memory of her was all that kept him alive in that cold, white convent hospital. She was all he had ever wanted, and the loss of her grieved and infuriated him. Made him want to hurt her, as he had been hurt; to make her hear him, as he had never been heard. No matter what it took, life or death.

So he had snatched away something she cared about, a girl she obviously looked on as a sister or daughter; he had thought it would make her listen to him at last. Instead, he had destroyed the last tiny corner of his soul that was pure. He was lost forever.

Christina stared up at him steadily, and reached out to touch his cheek with the gentlest, softest caress. Her fingers were rough from digging in the dirt, not manicured and smooth like those of all his mistresses, but it felt like an angel's wings touched his skin.

"Do you love her, Julian? Truly love her?" she whispered. "Then take me back to Thorn Hill now, and leave Yorkshire forever. Let her marry my brother in peace. She doesn't belong to you—she never did."

Julian drew Christina even closer to him until there was nothing between them. Nothing but the uncrossable chasm of the past. He stared down at her, his fierce Valkyrie, his seaweed-haired mermaid. "I can't," he groaned. "She's all I have. We are meant to be together."

Christina nodded sadly, her fingers trailing down his cheek and jaw. "Then you are lost."

"As you are with me." Still in that haze of storm and white-hot temper, Julian covered Christina's mouth with a bruising, wild kiss. Her lips were wide and mobile, chapped from her long hours outdoors, and he could taste the intoxicating rain and innocence. She stood in his arms, stiff and still, her hands pressing against his chest, but he could not let her go. When had he ever been so innocent as her, so certain in beliefs about the world around them? Never—not even in farthest childhood.

She parted her lips on a low moan, and he took the split-second advantage, touching the tip of his tongue to hers. Even there she tasted of the rain, of green, fresh things and a belief in unselfish love.

For a moment, she melted against him, returning the kiss with a sudden sweet fervor. Julian groaned, and slid his hands beneath her cloak, over her strong, supple back, seeking the soft weight of her breast....

He found instead a sharp, stinging pain in his shoulder. His arms fell away from her and he stumbled back a step. She stared at him, wide-eyed, her face white. She looked deeply shocked. In her hand, she clasped the jeweled handle of an antique dagger, scarlet at its very tip.

Scarlet with his blood.

Julian glanced down to see that she had nicked him in the fleshy part of his shoulder, blood only just beginning to seep through his coat. It was hardly a life-threatening wound, but it stung like the very devil, and his arm was quickly growing numb. He leaned back against the wall, pressing his hand hard to the scratch.

"Touche, Brunhilde," he gasped. "Usually when a lady objects to a man's attentions she simply calls him a cad and walks away."

"I hardly had that option," she whispered hoarsely.

"Considering I'm your prisoner. You're fortunate I didn't knee you in a sensitive area instead. I've heard
that
is very painful indeed."

"Fortunate that you stabbed me instead?"

"It's a mere scrape. Bind it up with feverfew and clean linens, and you'll be well in a trice."

Despite her brave words, her brave Valkyriesque wielding of weapons, her voice was faint, her face growing whiter by the second. She swayed and shook as if she were still out in the storm. Julian feared she would be sick, but instead she dropped her dagger and fled into the night, leaving the door open to the blowing wind and rain. He saw that she veered not toward her home, but in the opposite direction into the night.

"Blast," he muttered. His arm ached like hellfire. He should collapse where he stood, waiting for Michael Lindley's retribution to fall onto him—and letting the little heathen run where she would. After all, she had
stabbed
him! This little kidnapping caper was not going as well as he had hoped. Now it was over, ending where it had always been destined to—in blood and pain.

Yes, he should just let the Valkyrie do what she would. She was obviously quite capable of taking care of herself. But he could still taste the sweetness of her on his lips, feel her lithe, delicate strength against his body. It was his fault she was out in the storm now, her face white and confused. He had to make sure she was all right, that she made it safely back to her home.

From being her kidnapper, her tormentor, he now had to be her guardian.
Blast
was right. This was a role he was completely unsuited to.

Julian swiftly removed his coat and shirt, biting back curses at the new wave of painful protests from his shoulder. He ripped up the linen of the shirt into bandages, using them to bind up his shoulder before easing back into his coat. The tight pressure would stop the trickle of blood and hold his arm still until it could be properly seen to.

Before he dashed out into the night after Christina, he took out the sapphire brooch and placed it carefully, on the cushion where she had sat like a Persian queen. It twinkled there in all its sky-blue glory, mocking him for the folly that had brought him here. His own fated folly.

He scooped up the discarded dagger and staggered out into the storm. He had to finish this. To complete the circle of his fate.

* * *

Christina ran blindly through the rain, not knowing where she was going or where she could possibly be. She knew only that she had to run, to get away from the sheepherder's hut—and from Julian Kirkwood.

He had kissed her. Her first real kiss, born not of tenderness and affection but of anger and madness. And she had stabbed him.

She had not consciously decided to commit violence in that moment. All of her emotions were bound up in a swirl of fury and confusion, in the first flickerings of a crazy passion, and the dagger was in her hand before she realized what its heft and strength meant. She had to be away from him, away from the emotions and fears and needs that were ripping her comfortable world to shreds.

Now she
was
away from him, but her emotions still blazed away, hotter and more furious than ever, threatening to consume her. She couldn't outrun them; the rain, cold and driving, couldn't even drown them. Her lungs felt as if they would burst, and she could not cease shaking.

Christina stumbled over a stone and fell, landing hard in the viscous mud. It was chilly and thick, but it was
real.
The earth was something she knew and understood, and she lay there, sobbing out all her heartache in its indifferent welcome.

Slowly, her tears ceased to drum in her ears, and she heard the rain, the thunder, the very faint sound of someone calling her name. And something else. The rush and roar of another familiar friend.

Semerwater.
Rising and roiling against its banks, straining to break free—just as Christina herself was. It was very near, just over the rise of that hill. Calling to her.

She drew herself to her feet, stumbling toward the cursed waves.

* * *

The sheepherder's cottage was deserted.

Kate had truly expected nothing else; it was a wild hope that Julian might have brought Christina here. But her heart sank anyway to find the room deserted, to find no trace of them. She stood just inside the doorway, staring around the desolate, dusty space in silence. For a moment, her ears rang to not have the wind shrieking in them, to not have rain pounding on her head.

Her memory had transformed this place into a bower, a warm haven. It was, after all, the room where she had given herself to Michael, had found love and joy beyond all imagining. Tonight, she had dared to hope she would find answers and solace here.