Awaken the Curse Read online

  “Do with him?”

  “Not proper him being here without the professor at home. Mayhap he can go stay with the French gentleman at the Hall.”

  “Monsieur d’Espe? I doubt he’d appreciate an uninvited guest dumped on his doorstep. I wouldn’t worry. My virtue is completely safe from Lord Duncallan. Besides, he’s hardly in any shape to play the dangerous seducer.”

  Enid sniffed. “That’s as may be, but men is men. Show me a chap that don’t take advantage of a girl on her own, and I’ll show you either a corpse or a molly.”

  Katherine choked back a laugh despite the tightness across her back and the pounding at her temples. Enid had a point. James’s reputation could never have been labeled saintly, but not even the most disreputable rumors swirling around her father’s handsome student had prepared her for the raw masculinity of the actual man. He’d been every girl’s fantasy. Every father’s nightmare.

  Charmingly seductive. Heartbreakingly dangerous.

  Thank the gods Enid knew nothing of their scandalous past or she’d have packed James off to the chevalier d’Espe still bleeding and unconscious.

  “It’ll be all right. I grew up sharing a house with my father’s students,” Katherine explained. “Until his retirement, I spent every term with one or two undergraduate boarders. More in the summer months.”

  “Aye, but you were a child then. Now you’re all grown up, and that young gentleman in the spare room don’t look like no student. A regular out-and-outer, and him with those handsome looks. Enough to turn any girl’s head, that.”

  “Yes, he is rather nice to look at, isn’t he?” Katherine said with a sour smile. “But he was a student—once. One of my father’s most promising until . . . well . . . it doesn’t matter now.” She bit down hard on her words. “I know you mean well, but I think it’s best if Lord Duncallan stays. We’re awfully isolated. A man about the place might be smart when Cade leaves to search for Father tomorrow.”

  Enid gave a grudging nod, her fears over nightwalkers trumping the impropriety of having a strange man in the house. “I suppose, but I’d still sleep with one eye open if I was you.”

  With a final sniff, she departed, leaving Katherine alone, lip caught between her teeth as she stared hard at her reflection. Enid was right. She wasn’t a child anymore. The first blush of youth had slipped away while she wasn’t looking. Too busy staying busy to notice. She had turned all her energies to assisting her father. Making herself indispensable, whether it was keeping the household running smoothly, organizing his lectures and notes, or simply lending an ear in the long, quiet evenings when the silence grew deafening. For years, this had been enough. She had been content with her lot and with her life. But tonight, for a few minutes, Katherine had remembered the quick, vibrant girl who’d been deliciously happy and completely in love. A stupid, foolish girl who’d trusted a man and been burned for her self-indulgent folly.

  A man who now slept a few tempting footsteps away.

  She closed her eyes on a sigh and a roll of her neck. By the gods, but what had she done to deserve such a punishment? Since James’s betrayal, she’d been good. More than good. She’d been docile to the point of servility. Never once straying by even the slightest misstep, obeying every rule and toeing every mark. Was it too much to ask that she never lay eyes on the callous bastard again? Never look into those gold-flecked brown eyes and relive her humiliating gullibility? Never hear that smooth, deep voice and recall his endless stream of lies?

  If only Father hadn’t written that dratted letter. If only James had refused the invitation. If only the blasted man had never walked into their parlor on Holywell Street six years ago with his mop of dark hair one couldn’t help but ache to run fingers through and those heart-melting, deep-set eyes. All he’d done was smile and ask her name, but that had been enough. Enough for both of them.

  Giving herself a shake, Katherine stuck her tongue out at her maudlin reflection. If she’d a pound note for every regret, she’d be rich as a duchess. No, she would take comfort in the fact that an elegant man-about-town would hardly want to spend more time than necessary tramping about the mountains like a shepherd. James would quickly grow bored and flee home to London with nary a backward glance.

  Just like last time.

  Lying down upon her bed, she shifted from her back to her stomach, struggling to get comfortable. Punched her pillow. Stared out the window at the snow, listening to the hours tick over on the clock in the hall.

  Midnight.

  One o’clock.

  Two.

  It was no use. Her mind spun in endless circles, her body too taut for sleep. It was too late to ring for a cup of tea. Enid had retired long ago. Besides, even if she appeared with tray in hand, it would most likely be accompanied by another sour dose of suspicions and plots. Easier just to do it herself.

  Katherine rose, wrapping her robe tight around her and sliding her feet into slippers against the perpetually cold floorboards as she took up her candle.

  The passage was dark, but a glimmer of light flickered up from downstairs. Eerie shadows leaked beneath the study door, and the wind chose that moment to moan around the house like a banshee’s wail. The ghostly combination lifted the hair on Katherine’s arms and at the back of her neck, but she merely raised her candle higher as she pushed wide the door.

  An enormous humped and shadowed shape sat in her father’s chair, sending an icy shiver along her already frazzled nerves. Then the chair swiveled with a screech of rusty joints and a frustrated mutter, and she recognized James as he shoved a hand into his rumpled hair.

  “Lord Duncallan, what are you doing here?” she asked, releasing her held breath even as the prickly tingle continued up and down her limbs. “You should be in bed.”

  He lifted his head, the candle’s flame reflected in his dark eyes, carving hollows over his chiseled features. Even with a gray sickroom pallor, he managed to exude an easy confidence, a startling magnetism. Then he ruined it with a twitch of a smile and a brazen stare. “Is that an invitation?”

  She wrapped her robe tight across her body, but it didn’t stop the tingle from spreading. “What do you think, my lord?”

  “I think we know each other well enough to dispense with the formalities, don’t you . . . Katherine?”

  All he had to do was say her name and butterflies the size of cannonballs bounced in her stomach, but she squashed the traitorous sensation with ruthless efficiency. “I think being alone with you is bending the rules more than enough. Enid’s certain you’re after my virtue.”

  “Did you tell her she’s too late?” he asked quietly.

  Fury burned her throat and churned her stomach. “What do you think?”

  He shook his head as he fingered the pages of the book he was holding. “You don’t want to know, but your secret is safe with me.”

  His gaze drilled straight through her, and she tightened her hand on her candle. “You’re too kind, my lord,” she replied curtly. “If I was at all concerned about your intentions, you’d be sleeping in the stables with Cade.”

  He gave a snort of amusement. “I suppose you are past the age when chaperonage is strictly necessary.”

  “ ‘Past the age’?” If looks could kill, Lord High-and-Mighty Duncallan would be dead ten ways to Sunday. “You know very well how old I am.”

  His amusement ripened into an actual smile, as heart-meltingly dangerous as ever. “A gnarled old twenty-two last August, if my math serves.”

  “Twenty-three, thank you very much.”

  “I stand corrected.”

  “That’s new. You were always horrid at admitting when you were wrong.”

  “That’s because I never was.”

  She tightened her grip on the candle, fighting the urge to beat him senseless, and yet this sparring felt better than the chilly reserve of earlier, as if something hard and hot had finally loosened in her chest. “Have it your way. I just want to know what you’re doing in Father’s study .
. . James.”

  “There. Was that so hard?”

  She folded her arms, glaring down her nose at him.

  He unfolded from his chair and came around the desk, still smiling that slow, lazy smile that had always set her stomach flipping. “My shoulder hurts like the devil, it’s too bloody quiet, and I finished my novel. I decided to review your father’s notes on the obelisk. It is why he asked me here.”

  “I wish he hadn’t. I don’t know what made you answer his letter or, worse, come all this way to assist him. Not after . . . after what happened.”

  There. She’d said it right out. No more beating around the proverbial bush.

  “Call me perverse . . . curious . . . bored. Or all three at once. I’m sorry you didn’t want to renew my acquaintance.” He placed a hand over his heart. “I’m crushed.”

  She smothered a smile. It wouldn’t do to offer him any encouragement. “I doubt that very much. You’re a wealthy titled gentleman. Women probably fling themselves at you.”

  “I wouldn’t say fling, exactly. Nor would I say wealthy. Duncallan may be an old title, but it’s never been a rich one.”

  As he spoke, he closed the distance between them until she had to look up to meet his gaze. He’d always been tall, but now broad shoulders complemented his height, and his face had lost the smoothness of youth to become square jawed and lean, his dark eyes and curled lip giving him an almost piratical expression. It made her very aware of her state of undress, the thinness of her robe, the lack of layers between them.

  “I’m grateful for Father’s sake.” She took a step back. “Since leaving his teaching post, he’s grown very lonely. There are few here equal to discussing his work.”

  He stepped forward. “He always has you, doesn’t he?”

  Was that resentment she noted or wishful thinking on her part? This conversation was quickly veering into places she didn’t want to go and dredging up memories she’d thought she’d locked away. She shuffled away again. “A daughter is hardly the same as a colleague.”

  He followed after as if they took part in some strange silent dance. Lifted his free hand as if he might caress her cheek—or slap it, his eyes blazing with some indefinable emotion. Lost in his gaze, she swayed close, awaiting his hovering touch. To feel the press of his hand against her ribs, the warmth of his caress at the small of her back.

  “Who knows, Katie love?” he murmured. “Had things worked out differently, he might have ended with both.”

  A silly endearment last whispered when life stretched golden and beautiful in front of her. How dare he throw it down between them like a gauntlet? She stiffened and backed away, angry with him and furious at herself.

  She crossed to the desk, absently straightening papers. Stacking books. Anything to put a safe distance between them. Enid had been right about James. Katherine would have to be on her guard. Even after all that had passed between them, he still managed to wreak havoc on her self-control. And now he knew it.

  “Since you’ve taken it on yourself to muck about with Father’s papers, have you discovered anything?” She made her best attempt at breezy disinterest, though desire coiled in the pit of her stomach and her heart galloped.

  His smug expression and offhand shrug told her he recognized her ploy and was amused by it. He rested a hip against the desk, one leg swinging. “He’s managed to sift through an amazing amount of information, but is he certain it points to the Imnada?”

  “The nightwalker legends, the obelisk. They must have once lived within these mountains.”

  “Nightwalkers—your maid blamed them for the attack tonight.” He fumbled with his bandaged shoulder, pain stabbing his gaze.

  Katherine’s hands fisted against her stomach. James might have been killed. Why did that thought freeze her blood and set her limbs trembling? After all, she was more than ready to murder the arrogant horse’s ass herself. “Don’t listen to Enid. She’s never happier than when she’s prophesying doom.”

  “You don’t believe there’s more to these stories than mountain superstitions? That somehow the Imnada survived the wars and live among us?” His voice dropped. “Perhaps lurking just outside the door?”

  The hush of the snow-filled night and her own restless fears closed around her until a pricking between her shoulder blades shivered her chilled flesh, and she glanced quickly out the window, expecting to see a gleam of cats’ eyes.

  She gave a laugh and a shrug, her gaze still locked on the open notebooks, her father’s neat script laid out in page after page of tidy rows. “Ridiculous, and you know it. The Imnada died off ages ago.”

  “You mean we Other wiped them out.”

  His voice from just behind her fell warm against her ear. She spun around to face him, to find his dark eyes locked on hers. “Don’t sneak up on me like that,” she scolded.

  A corner of his mouth curled in a sly smile. “You used to count my ability to creep an asset—one of many you enjoyed.”

  Heat stole up her neck to heat her cheeks as the cold room grew instantly stuffy. She stepped once more beyond his orbit, clearing her throat and changing the subject. “Maybe the Other were to blame for the Imnada’s extinction. But every war has its winners and losers.”

  “If you call what the Fey-born did to the shapechangers a war. I call it a slaughter.”

  “They betrayed their king. Their treachery led to Arthur’s death and the collapse of Other supremacy that followed.”

  He gave a one-shouldered shrug, though his stare continued to pin her like a bug under glass. “There are some who say Arthur’s demise and the downfall of the Other were writ by the Fey at the birth of our world. A fate that couldn’t be turned aside.”

  “Fates aren’t doled out like candies in a shop,” she said, her voice shakier than she would have liked. “We’re free to make our own destiny.”

  “And free to change it?” His stare burned her skin, his words squirming her insides.

  She opened her mouth to respond with a tart and cutting response when the pricking between her shoulders returned, spreading into a cold rush of fear across her back. The candle guttered and went out. A shape moved beyond the window.

  “James! Outside!” She pointed. “Is it Father?”

  He threw open the casement, letting in a draft of freezing wind as he peered through the stinging snow into the night.

  “Who’s out there?” she asked, hugging herself against the sudden cold infecting her inside and out.

  “Who, Katherine?” He lifted his brows as he closed and latched the window. “Or what?”

  Chapter 2

  After a restless sleep filled with golden cognac eyes and full honey-sweet lips, James was more than ready to leave his bed at first light. Being alone with Katherine last night in scant more than a slip of silk, her auburn hair gleaming like fire down her back and the scent of her perfume like wine in his blood, had brought too many uncomfortable memories boiling to the surface.

  The blast of winter he met when he left the house after breakfast slapped him back to the present. He wasn’t here to rekindle a failed romance. He was here in answer to a tantalizing mystery. He retrieved Professor Lacey’s summons from his coat pocket and scanned the familiar script, the words almost falling into one another as he recounted his findings, and the sketch at the bottom that had drawn James like a lodestone upon a string.

  Four symbols. Crudely and hastily drawn but instantly recognizable.

  He pulled the amulet from inside his shirt. The notched disk of pure silver was engraved with an arch bisected by a triangle and arrow to the right, a rod and crescent to the left.

  A match to the third in the row of symbols.

  James’s search for answers would begin at the obelisk.

  Detouring from his walk to the stables, he headed round to the east side of the house and the terrace doors letting onto the study. No footprints marred the drifts of snow spread over the bricks. No sign of anyone standing among the garden’s shrubbery in the mi
ddle of the night. But he’d seen something or someone out here. He was sure of it.

  Continuing on to the stables, he found a sturdy pony blanketed and tucking noisily into its oats. In the loft above came humming and the scrape of a pitchfork.

  “Hello!” James shouted up the ladder.

  “Be down in a titch.”

  James rummaged within the harness room until a shadow blotted out the light.

  “Let me help ye with that, sir. Hard to do with your shoulder paining you.” A man eased the saddle and bridle from James’s grip.

  This must be Cade, though he wasn’t anything like James had pictured after seeing the disheveled maidservant Enid. Silver threaded this man’s hair and fine lines seamed his sun-bronzed face, but even so, his commanding looks and whipcord athleticism would have been enough to turn any woman’s head, and his carriage contained far more of the king than the beggar.

  “Surprised to see you up and about after the shape I found ye in last night. Lucky I came across you when I did. Hour or two longer, and you’d have bled out or froze to death.”

  “I’m tougher than I look.” James rolled his sore shoulder. It ached with the twinge of stitched flesh but beyond that there was only the buzz and tingle of Katherine’s healing magics. “Are you heading out to search for Professor Lacey this morning?”

  “Aye. Just as soon as I finish here.”

  “Do you think you’ll find him?” Another, darker question left unspoken. James had offered Katherine platitudes to ease her fears, but did he really believe them? Cade had said a few hours more and James would have frozen to death. The professor had been missing for three days now.

  “I told the young miss if he’s found shelter, he’s more than likely safe enough. For now.”

  “For now?”

  The man paused in his work long enough to level a strange unblinking stare upon him. “These mountains are dangerous for those who didn’t grow up in their shadow. I warned the professor what might happen if he went wandering about on his own.”