Blood bubbled in his throat and poured hot down his chest and between his legs. His life’s blood slipping away. It numbed him and made his eyes want to close.
“Wouldn’t want to lose Mother over this.” A deep voice touched with ice. Then something felt his neck. He hadn’t the strength to look. He was too heavy. Too cold.
Arms lifted him. As if he were a child. He forced his eyes open and came face to face with an angel. It must be so. The man’s skin glowed with silver light as if he were made of ice and glass. Inhuman. And… Christ, were those wings?
His vision dimmed, the feeling of being borne up, of bobbing in the wind made his head light and his wounds scream. A great whooshing sound filled his ears. He chanced a glance and saw only fog speeding past and the sculpted, icy profile of a man who look oddly familiar. As did his charm.
Despite his pain, everything in Winston focused on the silver charm pinned to the man’s lapel. He knew that charm.
With the last of his strength, Winston grabbed hold of it and tore it free, the metal cutting into his palm. Then he let the darkness have him. It pulled him down into an eternal rest, and he found he welcomed the embrace.
Daisy was already coming in as Ian strode down the stairs toward the main hall. He paused midstep, overwhelmed by the sight of her looking so sunny and fresh, a true flower with her bright hair curling in profusion around her face. She noticed him in the next instant and stopped short, her cheeks flushing as their gazes locked, and then her lids lowered to hide whatever it was she felt.
She makes you weak. His hand curled round the balustrade. Part of him feared he might careen down the stair and fall flat on his face before her. Christ, he didn’t like the sensation. But Daisy, her locks ablaze in a nimbus of gold from the light pouring in through the window, was a sight from which he could not turn away.
He had hated seeing her fear last night. He hated that this thing wanted her.
Mine. A ridiculous sentiment, given that his heart could not afford to claim her, but one that wouldn’t go away.
“You’re going out,” she said first, her voice music in the quiet of his house.
“Seems you’ve already been.” Damn but he sounded unhinged, affected. Aye, she made him weak, to be sure. But alive. So very alive.
“I went to visit my sisters.” Her eyes clouded for a moment. “We meet on Tuesdays for breakfast.”
He took the last few stairs at an easy pace and came to stand in front of her. The sweet scent of her, untainted by perfume, enveloped him, and he forced himself to speak lightly. “Are you well?”
“Yes.” She gave him a slight, practiced smile. “My headache is gone, and Tuttle’s potion patched me up quite well.”
Gently, he touched her temple, not missing the way she stiffened. The reaction slashed into his heart but he forged on. “I’m glad.” He let his hand drop. “However, I was referring to what you saw.”
Her jaw tensed but she met his eyes with an even gaze. “That was horrid. But you are healed so I shall not dwell on it.”
The fingers of a memory pulled at the edges of his mind. Of the earth quaking and men screaming. He’d been too lost in pain to remember it clearly. Perhaps he’d been hallucinating at that point. As neither Daisy nor Talent remarked upon it, he figured it must be so. But he’d been close, too close, to fully turning, and that scared the hell out of him. She makes you weak.
“It pains me that you had to witness it,” he said softly.
“It pains me that you had to endure it,” she said just as softly.
Quite suddenly, all he wanted to do was kiss her, to taste her flavor, lose himself in the decadence of her succulent mouth once more. His flesh tightened with need. Need enough to make him lean toward her. But her expression cried out Stay away, so he stepped back and put a distance between them.
“Need you rest now?” he asked. “Or would you like to come out with me?”
Her eyes widened as she blinked up at him in clear surprise. “Where are you going?”
He smiled at her, a devious grin he knew she wouldn’t be able to resist. “Somewhere proper ladies would not dare venture.” He offered his arm. “Somewhere foul and most likely dangerous.”
A smile crept over her features, turning her from lovely to breathtaking. “Oh, la. If it were truly dangerous, you’d endeavor to keep me away from it, Northrup.” But she put her slim hand on his arm anyway. The contact felt a balm to the irritation that had been plaguing his insides since he’d woken to find himself alone. How did she manage it? To always say and do the exact thing to keep him going.
“True, but that wouldn’t stop you from trying to follow, now would it?”
Her smile was the sun itself. “How very clever of you to realize you’ve been bested and admit defeat now.”
Although he laughed, his heart clenched with sudden, brutal force, for he feared truer words had not been spoken.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Tell me about her.”
Daisy’s soft voice cut into Ian with the stealth of a switchblade as they waited for a skiff to take them to their destination. Standing beside her on the wooden docks, Ian tensed. Talking about her was the last thing he wanted to do. The very idea made him sweat.
“Her who?” Lovely response. Made him sound like a bloody night owl.
The corner of Daisy’s succulent mouth lifted but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. “The woman whom you seek in redheaded whores.”
Jesus. Where was this coming from? What did she want of him?
“I no longer seek whores, luv.” Not when what he wanted stood less than a foot away.
Again that look, pitying, accusing, and sad. It made his insides itch and his collar go tight.
“Ian,” she said softly, “do not play games now.”
Ian. The sound of his name on her lips surely did make him weak.
Blue eyes pinned him. “Was it truly another? Or is it… Is it my sister whom you think of when you bed them?”
Right. She’d been visiting with Miranda just now. Lovely.
He must have scowled for Daisy made a furtive move, as if to place a hand on him in placation. “I will not judge you for falling in love with her,” she said quickly, insanely. “Who wouldn’t love her? I love her to distraction myself. But after last night…”
White teeth dug into her bottom lip, denting it, but she faced him without flinching. “I need to know. I won’t be a substitute for what you cannot have. Especially not if it is my sister’s shadow you mean to place me in. I will not be that woman, Ian.”
Brave, proud lass. Something inside his chest shifted.
“And if I should tell you that you are more than what I craved before?” he asked. “That you are not a substitute, or distraction, but a balm, would you believe me? Or accuse me of saying what I would in order to get you into my bed?”
Her expression grew pinched. “You cannot deny that is the tactic most men would employ.”
“So I am buggered no matter how I answer?”
She flinched.
When he spoke, his voice came out rough and angrier than he’d like, for he could see her skittishness. “There is only one thing you truly need to know about me, Daisy-Meg. And that is that I will not lie to you. Ever.” His fingers curled over the silver wolf’s head of his walking stick. “I told you before that it was not your sister who made me want to seek ginger-haired lasses. That was truth.”
She nodded with a jerk of her head, but her eyes did not clear. “But you did fancy her.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” He threw a hand up out of sheer irritation and a passing dockworker flinched. The man gave Ian a wide berth as he walked around them, and Ian lowered his voice. “Yes, I fancied her, but it wasn’t what you think.”
Surrounded by swirls of fog, her heart-shaped face glowed like a fine pearl. “What do I think?”
“That I was so beguiled by her beauty that I lost my mind to it.” He made a sound of disgust.
“Well…” She frowned.
“I’ll tell you, and then we’ll have no more talk of your sister. I’ll not have her standing between us, aye?”
Again she nodded stiffly, but she’d flinched at his use of “us.” Out of surprise? Or distaste? His hand shook as he raked his fingers through his hair. He wouldn’t lose her to this. Not this. Damn Miranda. And damn himself too for letting the world believe she meant more to him than she did.
“Part of it was her looks. Her ginger hair and green eyes mostly, mind. I’ve had plenty of beautiful women in my life. Enough to not be turned into a panting pup by appearance alone.” By God, it wasn’t redheads that plagued his dreams now. Not even a little. He took his eyes from Daisy’s golden locks.
Her voice was hesitant, unbelieving. “If it wasn’t her appearance, then what?”
Thick, cold fog seemed to creep down his throat and smother his nostrils. He struggled not to pull at his collar. “She was a supernatural. Like me.”
Around them, commerce teemed with activity: dockworkers and sailors, streetwalkers and pickpockets went about their daily lives. Here, standing beside a wooden piling, it was just him, just her.
“Most humans would likely think I was mad if I revealed my true self. I thought she would understand. I found the notion of not having to hide what I was attractive. And she was loyal. So very loyal to Archer.”
Daisy was silent for a moment, her head tilted slightly as though she were contemplating. Which he gathered she was. How could she not ponder on his humiliating confession of neediness? Again came the feeling of suffocation, the air too heavy, the smell of brine and fish overwhelming. His hand convulsively clutched his thigh.
Daisy saw the action. “If not Miranda, then who is the redheaded woman you seek?”
He hated the softness in her voice most of all. Perspiration bloomed along his upper lip as he stared at the mucky brown water of the Thames. When her pointed silence grew unbearable, he made himself say it. “My wife.” He swallowed. “Una.”
Saying her name was akin to calling forth her ghost, and his hackles rose in defense. Under the cold eye of scrutiny, Ian didn’t really know what he was after when he bedded women who resembled her. Forgiveness? Another chance? Revenge? His thoughts were muddled, and part of him resented Daisy for making him examine his motivations.
Daisy’s eyes were wide when he looked back at her. Hadn’t expected a wife, had she? Perhaps she thought him incapable of love. If only that were true. It would have saved him much. He almost laughed, save his chest hurt too much. “Not to worry, she’s been dead some seventy years.”
Daisy’s bottom lip pushed out. “I did not think you had her tucked away somewhere while you dallied about, if that is what you are implying.”
“Didn’t you?”
“No. You are too honorable to treat any woman so poorly.”
“You are the only one who seems to view me as honorable,” he said with an unfortunate rasp in his throat.
Her expression did not alter but stayed hard, piercing. “What happened to her, Ian?”
I thought I could stand it, Ian. I was wrong to hope for the best. They’d both been wrong to hope.
His nails turned to claws, catching on the fine weave of his trousers. “She died.”
“How?”
You destroy everything! You and your… beast. Just by being.
His jaw clenched. For a moment, he wanted Una in front of him so badly he could taste it. “Of a broken heart.”
“Oh.”
Yes, oh, he thought with a silent shout. He saw Daisy’s frown of disappointment and wanted to punch something. He took a ragged breath, and then another.
“Did you… did you no longer fancy her then?”
His laugh was light, sardonic, yet it burned like acid in his throat. “Who said I was the one to break her heart?” God, if only Una were here. He would put his hands around her slender neck, and wring it.
Possession of an excellent sense of smell was not always a boon. Beautiful in its own way, the River Thames was nevertheless a foul place to be. Overcrowded on the dock with the sweating bodies of men laboring to lift and transport huge crates as well as the riffraff of hawkers, vendors, pickpockets, and cutthroats—and the whores who serviced them all.
But on the river, well, one could not get away from the thick, burning stink that came from the millions of gallons of raw sewage that emptied into it twice daily, nor the briny dampness that clung to one’s hair and clothes.
A fact that had Daisy breathing through her mouth and resisting the urge to burrow her nose in the folds of Northrup’s coat. It couldn’t be any better for Northrup, whose senses were no doubt stronger than hers. But he sat erect and alert as their hired skiff bobbled across dark, glossy waters toward a ramshackle-looking barge moored near the Waterloo Bridge. Only a certain tightness around his eyes and nostrils betrayed that he too was suffering from the smell.
At some point, Northrup had quietly taken her hand in his, pulling it close. He had yet to give it up. Now and then, he would idly play with the tips of her fingers in a gesture that she realized was subconscious. She had yet to take her hand back, for the touch left her feeling warm and cosseted. Were she to concentrate too greatly upon the sensation, she’d crawl into the circle of his very capable arms and nuzzle his well-formed mouth. Kiss and suck those lips until she forgot everything. A shiver lit through her. God, he’d been delicious last night. And she wanted more. Always more.
Which was insanity. A wife. He’d had a wife. One that he had obviously loved. She had seen that much in his eyes. A wife whose ghost he sought in so many others. And yet the woman had her heart broken by another. Daisy had wanted to ask by whom and why, but instinctively, she knew he would have cracked if she’d asked more just then. She wouldn’t do that to him. Because she cared. She needed to end this… thing between them. Now, before she sank in too deep.