Night of the Highland Dragon (9 page)

By the time they'd finished their meal, it was full dark. Judith had barely noticed sunset fading to twilight, or twilight fading to night. When she stepped outside again, at William's side, she reached, alarmed, for her pocket watch.

“Don't worry,” William said. “We've still an hour until the train leaves. Night comes on fast here at this time of year, doesn't it?”

“Aye,” said Judith, “and it's darker in the cities. That is, there are more lights, but the sky's darker. It's a bit unsettling after so long in the mountains, I suppose.”

She wanted to believe that unfamiliarity and surprise had been the foundation for her dismay. She knew better. Talking with William, she hadn't been paying attention to the time, and she'd lingered, laughing at his stories, talking poetry (he'd read Kipling's latest volume, which she badly wanted), and surreptitiously glancing at his broad chest or watching the sure way his hands moved. Walking beside him now, she felt the magnetic pull of her own desire and stuck her hands in her coat pockets so that she couldn't do anything foolish like take his arm.

The city
was
dark, and the artificial light, at least for her, only made the streets and the crowds more confusing. With a week or two, she might have learned to be at ease. Just then, she wished she could change form and fly out, leaving the whole dank stone maze of it behind her. Judith squared her shoulders and walked along. Lunch didn't mean she could trust William, and even trust wouldn't mean she'd let him know how uneasy she was.

He stopped at a street sign and pulled a map out of his pocket. “I think,” he said, “that we've taken a wrong turn.”

“Ah,” said Judith. Evidently he wasn't familiar with Aberdeen either. She found that comforting, petty as the reaction might make her, and bent more cheerfully to trace streets with her finger. “Aye, we should've gone right there.”

“But it looks as though there's an intersection this way,” William said, pointing.

The whole thing was confusing. Navigation was considerably easier from the air. “Might as well try it,” Judith said and straightened up to start walking again.

At first, the new route was fine. Then their second turn took them into a narrower street, one rife with even more smells than was usual for a city. The turn after
that
put them in an alley.

“Ah,” William said, frowning.

Then, from the soot-stained sides of the alley, shadows emerged and became men. Judith counted five: big fellows, all of them, and at least two openly carrying long knives. She let her breath out through her teeth and stepped back.

“It's all right,” William said, putting a hand on her arm. Oh, good—he was going to try to be protective. This day was going
wonderfully.
He turned to the men. “Very sorry to disturb you. We'll just be on our way.”

Protective and diplomatic. Even better.

“Don't move,” growled one of the larger men. “Don't run. Don't scream. You'd better not scream. Nobody'd hear you. Nobody'd come anyway.”

Even from a distance, he reeked of drink. His eyes were glassy, and he grinned when he spoke in a way that Judith didn't like at all. Neither did she like the way the others were looking at him, taking their cues from his behavior. On their own, sober, any of them might have been reasonable. Right now, she could feel the avalanche building.

The men would probably catch up quickly if she and William tried to run. The alley was dark, and the leader was probably right. She'd never known most people in cities to intervene, and the local constabulary didn't take much interest in a neighborhood like this one. She wasn't armed. She didn't know if William had brought whatever weapon he'd been reaching for out at Finlay's, or how skilled he was with it if he had. And she was wearing skirts.

She sighed, held still, and decided to try a little diplomacy of her own. “I'm sure we can settle this peaceably. Just leave us enough money for tickets home, aye? We'll hand over the rest.”

The leader shook his head. “Won't need money when we're done with you. Won't need to go home either,” he said. Judith didn't recognize what cue he gave, and he didn't speak, but she heard footsteps behind her.

Fine, then.
Fine
.

She whirled, caught the man's outstretched hand as he tried to grab her arm—they
always
tried for the bicep if you were a woman, devil only knew why—and used his body as a pivot for her own. Her elbow smashed into his jaw with all her weight behind it. His head snapped sideways with a cracking sound: his jaw, not his neck, for he yelled in agony and staggered back, clutching the side of his face.

There was no time to see William's reaction.

“Are we finished—” she started to ask.

Then the leader roared and rushed forward, and the rest followed his lead. It
was
an answer, just not the one Judith had wanted. “I did my best,” she muttered, not sure if she was speaking to William or the robbers or her own conscience. Then she gave herself over to the moment.

Fighting, for her, had always been a diminished form of hunting. She didn't transform, she couldn't fly, but she operated almost entirely on instinct. A century of experience and training didn't alter that—it just made the instincts more effective. On a bone-deep level, she knew when to duck and when to kick. She could anticipate the thrust of a knife and step nimbly to the side, then throw a punch that knocked her assailant back into the stone wall behind him.

Even as she fought, she heard a gunshot and another scream. When she could spare a glance, she saw William, back to the wall and gun in his hand, and one of the men writhing on the ground. A pool of blood spread from the man's side.

Human blood had its own smell: sweeter than an animal's and richer at the same time. Judith knew it very well, as well as she knew the sound of gunfire, the smell of powder, and the feel of flesh giving way before her fist or her foot. She broke a man's wrist, took the knife he'd been wielding away from him, and slashed his fellow across the chest with it. That was familiar too. He made gasping noises and fell.

She stepped forward and caught one of his companions. The man struggled. He wasn't screaming anymore. Judith locked one of his arms behind him, yanked him toward her, brought the knife around—

No, this is not then. This is now. This is not there. You don't have to do this.

—and reversed the blow, slamming the knife's hilt into the man's temple hard enough that he slumped to the ground.

Nobody was moving. Not enough to be a threat, anyhow. She registered the thrashings of the men on the ground: feeble and disorganized, neither foe nor—she reminded herself—prey. Her ears caught moaning but no footsteps. She let her vision expand.

It had all happened very quickly. Such things always did. William was still standing and alive. Three men, including the leader, were lying on the ground. Another crouched against the wall, clutching his bloody leg. The last had pressed himself into a corner and was staring at them, petrified.

“You have five more bullets, don't you?” she asked, loud enough for the remaining robber to hear.

“Four,” said William, more calmly than she would have expected and with a completely expressionless face. He pointed to the man with the bleeding leg. It looked like a wound to the kneecap, nasty.

“Ah. I didn't hear the shot.” That happened sometimes. God knew they'd all been making enough noise. She looked coldly over the man in the corner. She did everything coldly right then. That was how it went. “I think we can go now, don't you?”

“Yes. Quite so.”

This time William did offer her his arm, and she took it: all part of the act. He could probably feel that her fingers were shaking. He would doubtlessly misinterpret that. The knowledge made Judith cringe inside, but it was a useful error. She would let him make it. She'd exposed too much of herself already that evening.

Carefully, they made their way back toward the main streets and didn't speak until they were some distance from the alley. “We could tell the police,” said William reluctantly.

Judith shook her head. “No point to it. Their own people will find them. Or their enemies.” She shrugged. If you ran with wolves, you got bitten in the end. She hadn't noticed whether the leader had still been moving when they'd left, and she couldn't say she cared very much one way or another.

Men died. Nobody could avoid that. They died when you tried to keep it from happening, and they died when you took the chance. The important thing was not to make it a certainty. Not anymore. She drew her free hand across her mouth, wiping already-dry lips with cold leather.

She knew that William was watching her. Before he could ask if she was all right, or how she'd learned to fight like that, she went on belatedly. “Besides, the police would ask questions.”

“And you're not fond of those.”

“Are you?”

He sighed and shook his head. “Let's find the road.”

They went carefully this time, and slowly despite the later hour, retracing their steps back past the shortcut, down the street where they'd taken a wrong turn, and farther back in the other direction. All around, buildings and people cast strange shadows in the glare of lights: candles, gas lamps, maybe even some of the electric torches Colin had been talking about. There was no moon in the city, no stars.

Soon enough, Judith thought again, she'd have to get used to all this once more. And there would be more
all
this
to get used to. It was the way of the world.

Now the light, the noise, and the smells struck her even more powerfully. Her blood was up after the fight, surging through her veins like the tide. She could feel the energy still singing in her muscles, quickening her pace, and every nerve was tense, ready for more action. William's arm was an anchor in a world of chaos, but his closeness was far from calming.

She kept looking at him. Not looking to make sure he was still with her—for a mercy, she was sure he could keep up with her at least on this ground—but just
looking
, noticing the brisk way he moved through the crowds or the way his red-gold hair blew back in the wind. Desire crept through her body like a hot stream.

Walking, it was all right. Walking, she had a way to work off the tension and other things she had to attend to. Even the streets of Aberdeen were no real challenge that way, aside from overloading her senses, but the journey to the station kept her busy enough. It was too loud for either of them to talk, which helped too. Without words, she could keep from acknowledging anything between them, particularly what had happened the last time they'd walked together for any length of time.

They reached the train with little time to spare, but ready cash was a great persuader, and the conductor politely hustled them into a compartment just before the engine started. That was when the real trouble started.

On an evening in the middle of the week, the train was not particularly crowded. Deferent to the presumed wishes of a presumed wealthy couple, the conductor gave them a compartment to themselves. Judith couldn't fault the man. She could only sit across from William, her heart racing faster than any healthy woman's would have just from sitting still, her ankles crossed in a proper pose that made her only more aware of the fullness and warmth gathering in her sex.

He crossed his legs as well—unthinking posture or an attempt to conceal his own arousal?

Judith turned away and looked out the window, watching the streets become fields and the fields grew farther apart. She thought about retrieving the novel from her bag, but she realized that William would suspect she was avoiding him if she did and also that she couldn't concentrate. She felt each bump and sway of the train too keenly, and the friction only built the pressure between her legs.

“You fight very skillfully,” William said after a while. His voice was faintly rough.

Judith wished she hadn't noticed. “Two brothers,” she said, not looking at him. “You learn to handle yourself.”

“Do you?”

“Aye,” she said and snapped her head around just long enough to glare at him. She was not discussing her training, she was not telling him the truth or anything close to it, and she wasn't letting her gaze linger on him, particularly not on his legs. Men wore much looser trousers these days than they had when she'd been young, but the way he was sitting, she could still see the outline of his thighs and notice the firm muscle there.

She cleared her throat. “You're a fair shot yourself.”

“My uncle taught me,” he said, which was probably as much a lie as anything she'd said, unless his “uncle” had also taught him not to bat an eye at either men who tried to kill him or women who…fought very skillfully.

“Compliments exchanged, then,” she said. “Chivalry satisfied?”

“Oh, that wasn't chivalry,” said William. Judith had to look back and found him smiling slowly. “But I could continue the compliments if you want.”

Judith felt his gaze like a glancing caress on her breasts before, being a gentleman, he snapped his eyes up to meet hers.

That was worse. Those blue eyes were small oceans of lust, so deep and dark that the mere sight left Judith breathless.

Maybe she could have held out against her own desire, even at that moment. Seeing his, she knew herself overmatched and surrendered.

“Oh, what the
devil
,” she snarled and crossed the compartment.

Even on a jolting train, Judith moved with the speed and grace of a striking snake, just as she'd fought in the alley earlier. One minute she sat across from William, all coiled tension; then she was bending over him, her slim hands pinning his shoulders back against the seat of the train, her lips hot and fierce against his.

Another man might have been more wary. The woman had followed William to the city, her family had at least one secret, and he was far from certain that she was innocent where any of the recent deaths were concerned. Added to that, she'd just fought like a damned Amazon, leaving three men with broken bones and perhaps killing at least one.
Brothers
did not teach a woman those techniques, nor did they give her either the speed or the almost offhand strength she'd displayed in those few minutes.

Nor had William missed the expression on her face at the very end, the way she'd just barely pulled the knife back. Her lips had been drawn back from her teeth and her green eyes had fairly glowed.
Tyger, tyger,
William had thought, his own blood singing with the aftermath of a successful fight.

Another man would have tried to keep her at a distance—a man who hadn't held all the lean strength of her in his arms, a man who hadn't spent the last few hours watching her face change with anger and humor, and wondering what it would look like in passion, a man who hadn't heard her talk of duty and pleasure.
A
man
with
more
common
sense
, Clarke would have said.

But if Clarke had worked in the field, it had been before William had ever joined D Branch. He was a long way from the reckless schoolboy glee that could surface on the other side of fear. Judith hadn't been the only one to fight and maybe kill, and if William had read exhilaration in her face, it had probably been there in his as well.

He'd certainly felt it afterward. He'd managed to distract himself somewhat on the way back to the train. He'd managed not to think more than once or twice about finding
another
alley, one where he could pin Judith against a wall, shove her skirts up, and bury his sudden and insistent erection between her thighs.

Civilized and horrified as the mind might be at a distance, the body rejoiced in its own survival. William had come to terms with that years ago.

Now he knew that Judith had as well.

And if he did have cause to be wary of her, then at least he was keeping her occupied.

He let her take control for that first startled moment, lips opening to her darting tongue. Then he wrapped his hands around her waist and pulled her down into his lap. She went more than willingly. Her fists clenched on the shoulders of his jacket, her legs parted around his body, and then she was straddling him, a welcome and torturous presence against his swollen sex. Her skirts fell around them both in a cascade of green and white.

It was a very short distance from her waist to her breasts, particularly once William had pulled her close. Just a quick motion of his hands and he was cupping them, feeling where they rose soft above the irritating barrier of whalebone and cloth. Judith hissed against his mouth, and for half a second he wondered if he'd hurt her, but she arched backward, thrusting her breasts into his touch, wordlessly asking for more.

Well, not
asking
, really. The lady wasn't much for asking. He had a brief notion of trying to make her ask—trying to make her beg, in fact—that made him feel like the train had left the tracks. Then she started rocking against him, little motions of her hips that swiftly fell into a complementary rhythm with the swaying of the train. Her lips left his as her head fell back.

The view was astounding. Judith's long, slender neck arching backward above her out-thrust breasts, her eyes half-lidded with desire, and her mouth slightly open, lips swollen and dark. As William watched, she ran the tip of her tongue around those lips, then caught one between her small white teeth, biting back a cry.

William quickly abandoned the idea of trying to make her do anything. He abandoned any ideas that required patience, planning, or any more mental activity than it took to thrust back upward in response, mimicking through too many layers of clothing what he really wanted. That got a moan from Judith—a low, throaty sound that went directly to his cock.

Wanting to hear the noise again, he slid one hand down from her breast, running over the curve of her waist and hip to find the edge of all her skirts and petticoats, and slip underneath them. There was no corset between his skin and hers there, no buttoned-down-the-damned-back dress guarding her body, only the thin silk of her stockings where they stretched taut over her thighs. Stroking upward with his fingertips, he heard another moan and felt the rhythm of her hips speed up, spurring a matching urgency from him. Even in indulgence, he tried for some self-control, but that was rapidly becoming an impossibility.

Further testing him, Judith dropped her hands from his shoulders to his chest, then down toward the waist of his trousers. There she found that she couldn't reach lower without moving away. She made a small, frustrated sound in her throat that made William laugh and ache at the same time. He sympathized. Then he found himself making the same sort of noise when she did move away, his body protesting even as he knew it was only a necessary step on the way toward better things.

The train lurched around a corner. Their car tilted, spilling Judith back against William. The contact wasn't graceful this time, and her head knocked solidly against his chin. He felt the impact and winced, but he was kissing her again before she could apologize, unable to resist when she was practically lying on top of him, lithe and warm and eager. She reached for him a second time, and as she searched blindly for the fastenings of his trousers, her fingers brushed over the rigid length of him until he was almost lost to all sense.

Almost. Not quite. As the first button gave way, William tore his mouth from Judith's and caught her wrist. “Wait,” he managed, half breathing the word. “I've nothing on me.”

She frowned, perplexed. “Nothing?”

“Preventives. French letters—” He hesitated. Surely she knew. She behaved like a woman of the world, and her actions of the last few minutes were more evidence of that. Still, a gentleman's upbringing made him pause and wonder how to go on.

“Oh,” she said as he was still searching for words. An impatient shake of her head sent her hair tumbling around her shoulders. “Don't worry. I can't have children.”

It was so tempting to believe her. She sat in his lap with a hand at his groin, her breasts heaving with every quick breath and her face flushed entrancingly. Every inch of William's body told him to take her word for it.

“No,” he said, both to it and to her, and he pushed her hand away. He had no reason to believe that she was telling the truth—even if she thought so, he'd known more than a few people about whom the doctors had been wrong in that area—and a child would be even worse for him than for another gentleman. Blood connections were always dangerous.

He half expected Judith to try again and steeled himself to refuse, but she left her hand where he'd placed it. Catching her breath, she sat unmoving except for her free hand, which twisted the fabric of her skirt back and forth.

William recognized the struggle. He knew it well, and also knew that neither of them had to win it entirely. Before Judith could speak again, he wrapped one arm around her waist, steadying her on his lap, and pushed her skirts up again with the other hand. She'd turned sideways slightly, the better to reach his buttons, and the position gave him access too. It was quite easy to slip his hand up her thigh and trace his fingers over the opening of her drawers.

“Oh,” again, but this time it was desire and relief mingled. She arched up, seeking his touch—and at the same time, her hand slid between them again, returning to her prior task. Her fingers moved with even less finesse than before, often going still entirely as William stroked her, but before very long the buttons opened.

William didn't want to close his eyes. He wanted to watch her. But he was overwhelmed: cool air and then a warm, firm hand closing around his shaft, soft heat and wetness beneath his fingertips, the smell of pine and smoke and female arousal. He couldn't do anything but lean his head back, let his eyes close, and lose himself in the moment.

Neither of them had the time or the inclination for gentleness. Judith was wet and hot around his fingers, stiff beneath his circling thumb, and her hand slid up and down his cock with sure, steady pressure. William held on to his control by a thread as she started rocking her hips again…and the thread started to snap when she flung her head back and her whole body went tense for a second. In the next instant, she was climaxing around his hand, and he couldn't hold back. He thrust into her grip again and again, until pleasure crashed through him and blotted out all sense of time or place.

* * *

They had no time to linger. William was still collecting himself, breathless and boneless, when he heard footsteps outside the compartment and a knock at the door. He pulled his hand back to his side, while Judith yanked down her skirts, but the door, thank God, did not open. He only heard the conductor's voice outside: “Belholm, next stop,” and then more footsteps as the man moved on, impatient to get to his other duties.

A hasty bit of work followed: cleaning, rearranging, and otherwise trying to make themselves look like they'd just spent a placid journey being completely respectable. Of all the women he'd known, Judith possessed the most impressive facility for putting her hair up neatly without maid, mirror, or even stable ground to hand. William didn't say it aloud.

He didn't know what
to
say. He half expected Judith to warn him again that nobody would believe or care about any tales he chose to spread, or question his motives. That had been insulting, but William thought he might prefer it, since now she didn't speak at all. She barely even looked at him, concentrating on her dress and her hair.

Preoccupation? Shame? Anger? He couldn't tell.

“Have you a way of getting back tonight?” he finally asked as the train pulled into Belholm station.

“I left a horse in town,” she said. She sounded surprised but not affronted, much to William's relief. More reassuring still, she went on, “You're not likely to find the ride comfortable, though. Nor would he be very inclined to carry two people our size. What will you do?”

“Take a room in the town and walk back tomorrow when it's light.” He smiled at her. “You don't have to tell me that I don't know the road as well as you do, and I don't much enjoy broken ankles.”

“Good,” she said. She stood up, fastening the last button on her coat. Her hair was tidy under the hat, the wool coat concealed any rumpling of her clothes, and the only signs that she'd recently been writhing in his arms were her swollen lips and flushed cheeks. “Have a good night, then,” she said as the conductor opened the compartment.

“And you,” said William, and he watched her leave. She walked into the darkness as if she were meeting an old friend.