Soul of Fire (10 page)

A sound of steps behind him—light and hesitant, as though afraid of themselves—and he turned around. And there she was, Miss Warington, less than ten steps behind him, her carpetbag in one hand, looking quite confused.

“Why are you following me?” he growled through clenched teeth. “Are you afraid of losing your prey? Are you, then, determined to collect the reward for turning in a dangerous were?”

He knew the moment the words left his lips that they were unmerited and possibly cruel. He didn’t need to see her eyes widen in shock and surprise to know she’d thought none of that and had no nefarious intentions toward him. Mentally he complimented himself on informing her of the reward. Perhaps she hadn’t known of it, and now he’d given her a truly strong motivation for turning him in.

Color drained from her face, leaving it a curious tone between milk and caramel, like the palest of brown sugar. She lowered her eyelids to hide her shocked gaze and dropped a curtsey in what must have been an unthinking impulse. “I beg your pardon,” she said, her accent frosty, her diction better than he’d heard it before. “I merely thought, as a woman alone at night, I might . . .” She stopped, and confusion painted itself on her features. “Foolish of me, when I’ve decided to run away from home on my own, to wish for protection.”

“Yes,” he said, and he thought that she was quite the most foolish young woman he’d ever met.

She shook herself a little, like someone wakening, or perhaps like someone who’s been languishing and decides to be about her work. “Of course,” she said, her voice flowing easier. “You are absolutely right. Since I will have to make my way to Meerut on my own, then I will make my way on my own. I beg your pardon for having bothered you. It won’t happen again. And you might as well forget my threat to turn you in. I’d never do that. I owe you a debt of gratitude for saving my life.”

And, like that, she turned on her heel, as neat and military a movement as Peter would have expected from a soldier, and marched down the street, holding her carpetbag. Peter frowned after her. She was so small. Her head had barely reached his shoulder. Small, and weak, and proud as hell. He observed the straight setting of her shoulders. A little slip of nothing, with a determination that would dwarf many a general’s.

Determination and courage, because she didn’t look nearly as much the fool as she acted. She knew what dangers she faced and yet faced them, unflinching. Peter had seen the look in her eyes as he described the unlikelihood that she’d find her beau waiting for her. He knew well enough she was aware of her folly. She might have run away from home in a sudden panic, but now she would be aware of how impossible it was for her to make it to Meerut. She would be aware of the dangers on the way.

Well, perhaps not all the dangers, Peter thought, observing how her narrow waist gently flared to well-contoured hips. At least, he hoped she couldn’t imagine what some—if not all—of the men she’d meet on the way would want from her. But then, he doubted she was as innocent as all that. They never were. Girls might never have met depravity in real life before, but they’d have read enough about it in lurid novels. And the smart ones understood easily enough what hid beneath the veiled descriptions. So she knew what she faced. And yet, she would go into India on her own, rather than face her parents back at home. She would brave almost certain death—or worse—rather than marry the native they’d chosen for her.

He frowned. His instinctive feeling was to dismiss it all. She was young. She was sheltered. She was deluded. He knew better than to imagine her parents would marry her to someone against her will.

And yet . . .

That small figure with squared shoulders was ready to face untold dangers, but not the danger that waited back at her parents’ home.

He stared at Miss Warington’s retreating form. She was leaving everything behind just as he must do. He felt bile sting the back of his throat at the thought of giving up Summercourt. His destiny had always been to end up alone and in exile, but that didn’t mean that he should let the decent people in this world go to their horrible fate without trying to stop them.

A shadow detached itself from a wall and surged toward Miss Warington. And Peter leapt forward. The native—whatever he was, probably no more than a beggar—took one look at Peter and fled.

Miss Warington, on the other hand, continued walking as though she hadn’t seen him loom large in her peripheral vision, as though she hadn’t heard him fall in step beside her.

Not knowing whether to be amused or scared, Peter cleared his throat. When no response came, he sighed. “Miss Warington, I am a fool. But not such a fool that I would let you walk to Meerut, or whatever other scheme you might have in mind.”

She shook her head, not looking at him. “There is hardly any question of your allowing me. Or not allowing me, for that matter. I am neither your ward nor your child.”

Peter thought about it. He’d talked to many women in his life. While his entire amorous experience could be written on the head of a very small pin, his travels around the world had brought him into contact with women of many classes and nationalities. But he would swear that he’d never met a creature as prickly as Miss Warington. Choosing his words carefully, feeling as though the wrong one at the wrong time might be his undoing, he said, “I beg your pardon for my rude words and for having insisted you should return to your parents’ house. It should have been obvious to me from your horror of returning, since you don’t seem at all to be disordered in wits—” He floundered as it occurred to him that taking a were-dragon in stride might well be considered insane by most people. But he charged ahead, thinking that, after all, the dragon had saved her.

“You must have reason for it. I will not force you to go. But I must beg you—indeed, I
do
beg you—to allow me to escort you on this travel to meet your . . .” Again he floundered, but decided to go with her view of things. “Your fiancé.”

For a moment, he thought his gambit had failed. She continued to walk, as though she hadn’t heard his voice or refused to acknowledge his words. But slowly her steps seemed to lose impetus, and finally she stopped and turned to face him. “Mr. . . . Oh, this is abominable! I don’t even know your name.”

He smiled. He could not help it. She had seen him naked, but she did not know his name. They’d both be disgraced before any polite society imaginable. To his surprise, he saw his smile echoed in her expression. He quickly bowed, lest he should stand there smiling at her like a smitten fool. “Miss Warington, permit me to present myself. I am Peter Farewell, Earl of Saint Maur.” He stood straight, and smiled again at her expression of surprise, this time deprecatingly. “A few buildings and a farm, plus some tenants. Not enough, I assure you, to support the title in any style. Quite eaten up from the inside and worthy of no greater a representative than I.” But even as he said it, something in him flinched and he realized he was proud of his title. He, who’d always believed in the equality of man. What a fool he was.

“Oh,” he heard her say, and was not sure what that sound meant. It seemed to express dismay and surprise in equal amounts. “I am Sofie Warington,” she said. “My father is of the Yorkshire Waringtons.”

Peter allowed himself to look into her eyes. “That means little to me. I left England many years ago.”

She shook her head, as though embarrassed to have brought it up at all. “I learned to say that in England. Everyone asked, so . . . In fact, my father and my grandfather before him were born and raised in India.”

“I see,” he said. He only knew that she didn’t seem to be surprised at a man who became a dragon, that she didn’t sneer at him for his moth-eaten title and that she was silly enough to propose she’d find her own way across India. “Miss Warington, will you let me escort you?”

She hesitated. For a moment, he thought she was going to refuse him. But instead, she looked suddenly scared and dropped her bag, and her face crumpled a little, like faces do when someone is about to cry. “Lord Saint Maur,” she said, in a thread of voice, “I don’t know. . . . That is, you might be right about my course of action. It will take months all in all to get to Meerut, and what if I do get there to find that Captain Blacklock is dead or . . . otherwise occupied.” She swallowed visibly.

Peter couldn’t console her. He, himself, had pointed out to her the folly of her ways. And yet, if she wouldn’t go back to her parents’ house, what other course could he urge on her? “Miss Warington, you must understand that if you can’t go back to your parents’ house, there is nothing else I know to do with you. I am not . . . so situated that I can give you asylum.”

“It will take us months,” she said. “Months, and I—”

He shook his head and went a little mad. He knew, even as he spoke, that in later years he would look back on this moment in utter bewilderment, wondering how he could have suggested such a course of action, how it might have seemed reasonable to him. But at that moment, he was carried on the crest of a feeling he couldn’t describe. It was partly his admiration of this tiny thing who was ready to brave an unknown continent on her own rather than submit to a repugnant fate. And partly it was the intoxication he felt, like music distantly heard, whenever he looked into her dark blue eyes.

The final part . . . the final part might very well be the dragon, speaking in the back of his mind with a voice composed of longing to be out of the confines of the city. “Miss Warington,” he said, “I can’t help you find a place there, if your Captain be dead or ailing, or . . .” He couldn’t say
or not interested.
Not to her. “But, madame, I can get you to Meerut within the week.”

“The week?” Her voice squeaked as she spoke.

“If you don’t mind traveling dragon-back,” he said. And it
was
madness. The purest madness. Because Peter knew well—too well—what the beast could be like. And how, sometimes, it was difficult to control the dragon. And yet, here he was, proposing to take a defenseless woman with him, across the wilds. What if he should lose his grip on the dragon?

And yet . . . The dragon didn’t prefer to hunt humans. On the contrary. If other prey offered, then it took it. And if Peter could be sure to have the beast eat often, so it never got hungry enough . . . In the wilds of India there would be nonhuman food aplenty. And then there was something he couldn’t even understand, much less express: there was something to Sofie Warington, to the scent of her, which seemed to be from some fragrant tropical flower, that made the dragon . . . like her. Or perhaps Peter himself—he didn’t want to think about it—liked her so much that the dragon liked her in turn. It had tolerated Emily Oldhall. And Nigel, for that matter. But it had never before approved of a human.

“Would you mind?”

She looked up at him, serious, her eyes scrutinizing his face as though it were part of a puzzle she couldn’t quite decipher. “I . . . No, I would not mind.” She smiled a little. “Though I’m sure people would find it very odd. But people find all sorts of things odd.”

She was the strangest woman he’d ever met, and Peter couldn’t imagine why he found her so fascinating. He bowed, offering her his arm. “If you’d accompany me,” he said, “to the home where I’m staying, I can get myself some changes of clothing and other . . . necessaries for the voyage.”

“But . . .” she said. “The dragon doesn’t wear clothing.”

He had to smile at that. “Undoubtedly. But I won’t always be a dragon. And tell me, how strange would people find it if you were to travel with a gentleman in a state of nature?”

This brought a blush to her cheeks, which made her, if possible, more lovely. “Oh,” she said. But she accepted his arm.

It was stupid—foolish at least—to take time to pack, or to go to the house where he was staying. Surely her parents must be raising the alarm and sending out a search for her. He would have to count on their not having any idea who he was, or that he was a member of the gentry.

And he would have to leave a note for his hosts, who would be in bed by now. It couldn’t be helped. By tomorrow, the story of the maiden kidnapped by the dragon would be all over town, or at least the part of town inhabited by expatriates. And if he disappeared at the same time, leaving no trace and no account of himself, and having taken no clothes, he might as well announce to one and all that he was that dragon.

No, he must leave a note. And he must pack like a decent human being—even if he was not quite one. Easy enough to find a justification for his leaving. He’d been apprised of the death of his father. He could tell them that he was trying to see men of business, to set his affairs in order.

No one could find any problems with that. And Peter only regretted that it wasn’t true.

A JEWEL BEYOND PRICE; THE COST OF A CHILD; TIGER!