Читать книгу Brimstone Bride - Barbara J. Hancock - Страница 11

Chapter 3

Her sister had packed four bags for her. Katherine had spared no effort. It seemed as if Victoria’s entire wardrobe was in the cases as well as some of her sister’s. She shied away from her usual vibrant choices. Instead, she chose a black cocktail dress—a simple silk sheath with a chiffon overlay, complete with satin collar and cuffs. The sheath itself was formfitting and fell to midthigh, while the overlay was longer, with filmy panels that fell to her knees and floated softly around her legs when she walked.

The outfit said she was an opera singer going for a sexy librarian vibe. It also screamed not a spy. Poor Michael. He might be better off if she could do this in a costume and sing the part.

Adam Turov had told her she was safe, but he must sense she was more than she seemed. Even though he had gone back to the main house, there wasn’t enough distance between them to keep the affinity from pulling her toward him. He would be drawn to her too.

That knowledge was frightening...for many reasons.

Michael’s father had been gone for two years.

She’d survived, but she hadn’t thrived.

She’d been a patient, a mother and a sister, but she hadn’t felt like a woman in a long time. She could blame the Brimstone, the affinity, the adrenaline, or she could admit Turov was incredibly alluring without all that. His slight Slavic accent was both sophisticated and somehow rough. She thought he’d rather dispense with polite sophistication and speak bluntly. The mysterious roughness made her long to hear what he had to say. They could never have truth between them, but the idea seduced her.

She couldn’t allow that longing to thrive, so she took extra care with her party persona.

She freshened her makeup, brushed her hair and slipped on a favorite pair of shoes. She hardly noticed the faint light of a waning crescent moon or any movement in the garden as she left the cottage to follow the path to the mansion. She wanted to go to the party in spite of all the reasons she shouldn’t. It was the first party she’d wanted to attend in a long time.

* * *

She’d been dressed in gray and black, but her hair and lipstick had been closer to the truth of who she really was. He’d been mesmerized by the mass of curls under her hat, bright even in shadows. And her lips in soft light had been flush and full and painted boldly. They hadn’t matched the fear in her eyes. More than ever, he wanted to personally hand-deliver Father Malachi to the fires of hell and throw him in the flames. The Order of Samuel specialized in traumatizing innocents, yet they called themselves holy men. It was obvious they haunted Victoria D’Arcy. She was a bold woman shadowed by fear.

When he saw her enter the rooms he’d had arranged for her reception, his glass paused halfway to his mouth. The hat was gone. And her shapeless traveling clothes were gone too. She’d chosen bright crimson heels and she’d refreshed her lips in the same shade. Her hair was a richer, deeper auburn and more subtle in comparison. Against the black of her dress and her pale porcelain skin, those pops of color stunned. The myriad shades of red in her hair seemed almost iridescent in the shifting light.

It wasn’t only him. She entered quietly, but many faces turned her way. She had stage presence. No actual stage necessary. The whole room subtly shifted within moments of her becoming a part of it. It was no longer a miscellaneous gathering. It was a party with an anonymous star at its heart. She wasn’t a celebrity. She’d been away from the opera world too long and even before that her career had been held in check by daemon politics. She simply shone and everyone in the room unconsciously arranged themselves to bask in the glow.

This was the woman the Order of Samuel sent to bring him down.

He lifted his glass. He took a long swallow of Firebird Pinot Noir. He didn’t savor. He gulped. Because he’d rather fight an army of monks programmed to destroy than this one intriguing woman.

* * *

He watched her. She could feel his attention while she spoke to other guests. There were wealthy travelers, politicians, a celebrity chef, an aging rock star and a billionaire philanthropist—it was a posh gathering for an opera singer that had never been free to seek fame. They were here for Turov. He was sharing his guests with her. But he wasn’t being hospitable. She reminded herself that he used his sophisticated persona as a disguise for his covert activities. By and by, she was swept his way. Time and tide and Brimstone. When she took the warmed crystal stem from his fingers, she realized she’d abstained from accepting a glass of wine until she could receive her glass from his hand.

She sipped. And the room fell away. The aroma was delicate black cherry accented with a spicy hint of cinnamon. The flavor was of fruit and earth. But it was the texture that slayed. It was liquid silk on her tongue, soft and velvety. She savored. She swallowed. The rich, full-bodied vintage did soothe her throat and her spirits.

She wasn’t an expert on wine, but she savored this one with her eyes closed, well aware that it was one of the finest she’d ever enjoyed. When she lifted her lids, she met the deep blue of Turov’s eyes. He watched her drink as if her reaction to his wine mattered more than fire and Brimstone. She lifted her glass for a second sip, to savor and swallow again while he watched. His gaze tracked the movement of her lips and tongue and her throat. His intensity made her flush more than the pleasure of the wine or the effects of the alcohol on an empty stomach.

“You like it,” he said.

Though they danced a dangerous dance of deception, she was stripped to raw honesty by the expression on his handsome face. This. The tasting of the wine between them was not part of her mission or their mutual disguises. Her reaction must be honest and real. His art deserved no less.

“It’s beautiful. Pure pleasure on my tongue. I want to sing—and that is high praise. I haven’t wanted to sing for a long time,” Victoria confessed. This time when she swallowed, she also swallowed emotion. The lovely black cherry flavor lingered as a reminder of her honesty. She hadn’t told anyone the truth about her lack of desire to sing. Not even Katherine.

“You honor my family,” Turov replied.

His voice was rougher. Not as polished. In this moment, his disguise slipped. His face was both harder and more vulnerable. The set of his jaw was a tight line, but one made of marble that could be chipped if she wished it.

This man was the man she’d been sent to harm.

She swayed on her feet as if she’d forgotten to eat before a major dress rehearsal under hot lights. Turov snapped out of his trance. He took her glass and set it on a nearby table, urging her to patio doors that were already thrown wide. They walked through together with his warm hand on her back. Solicitous? Was he the host vulnerable to her enjoyment of his wine? Or nefarious? Was he the damned man who had sold his soul for success? There was no way to tell. Victoria could only step out in the cool air and breathe deeply of rich earth and growing things.

They walked out onto the broad expanse of a decorative-tiled veranda, framed by stone columns and a black slate rail. She leaned against it for support, but also to look out at the vineyards that stretched far into the night. Better to look there than to face her host. How could she read him when she was too afraid of what she might see? She needed to turn him over to the Order. To free their brethren. If he wasn’t a greedy man who had sold his soul for success, who and what was he? She couldn’t afford to care and yet she was intrigued by him. It was as simple as that.

“The Turov family has grown grapes here since they fled the Russian Revolution in the early twentieth century,” Turov said. He had come to stand beside her. His profile was strong and proud. Anyone unaware of the Brimstone in his blood would assume he spoke of history rather than from personal experience.

“And you’ve built on what they established,” Victoria said, playing along.

“In Russia, there’s a saying. ‘You live. You learn.’ I have found this to be true,” Turov said.

It was a confession, but one that was revealing only if you knew his Brimstone secret.

He had refined Nightingale Vineyards’s pinot noir since 1918. He. Personally. He had overseen the process of living and learning for one hundred years.

Michael’s father had been much older, but he’d been a daemon, not a man. Standing beside Adam Turov was different. He wasn’t an immortal creature. He was a human whose life had been extended by selling his soul. How? Why? It didn’t matter. It would be wiser to see him as corrupt and leave it at that. She didn’t need to understand him. She needed only to betray him.

“Sometimes I feel as if I’ve missed a few lessons along the way,” Victoria said. “Opera is all-consuming. Life is more complicated. Reality is harder to navigate.”

“You’ll rest here. You’ll recover. There’s something about being surrounded by growing things. It rejuvenates. Even a jaded soul like mine,” Turov said. “Complications fall away. Simplicity reigns.”

She looked at him then. The house blazed with light behind him. The soft haze from a sliver of moonlight came from the cloudless sky. People laughed. A piano played classical jazz while glasses clinked and indistinct conversation whispered all around. She was most vulnerable when she was seduced into thinking it might be possible for her to relax. Always, after, she regretted her weakness. Her greatest enemy wasn’t someone trying to sell her safety and protection. Her greatest enemy was her wanting what they were selling with all her heart.

Nowhere was ever safe. Any haven was a lie. Her life would always be too complicated to set down roots.

“I look forward to relaxing,” she said. She’d played this role a thousand times. The ingénue. Young and naïve. It was impossible to tell what he thought of her performance.

A figure revealed itself, moving in the shadows of the grounds in between the house and the vineyard. From grass to walkway to grass again, the figure crept.

The transformation in Turov was absolute. In a nanosecond, he went from cultured host with a hint of the Carpathians in his voice to a no-nonsense ruler whose California kingdom had been breached.

“Go to your cottage and lock the door. Don’t let anyone in except me,” he ordered.

He easily vaulted over the rail, dropping a story below onto the manicured grass. The party continued behind her while Turov ran across the lawn. The atmosphere was no longer seductively normal. Now, she strained at noises and squinted at shadows.

Before Michael was born, she probably would have obeyed such an order. She was no spy. She was no warrior. Before the fire, she could sing. That was all. And now even that was in question. Instead of going back to her cottage, Victoria moved quickly to the stone staircase that led down to the lawn. She couldn’t afford to be the woman she’d been before she’d become a mother. She’d longed for love. She’d longed for life.

She still longed for those things, but now she wanted them for her baby instead of herself.

She’d recognized the stocky figure of the monk who was following her. She needed to stop Turov before he confronted the careless man, or her mission would be over before it had begun.

* * *

What could be more innocent than strolling through the garden, softly humming under the stars? Her heart pounded. Her steps were hurried and clumsy. She’d chosen her shoes for the party, not for a walk on the loose pebbles of a dimly lit path.

Still, she hummed.

She needed to draw Turov away from the monk.

The tune was scratchy and unused. A few bars from Romeo et Juliet. “Je veux vivre.” “Juliet’s Waltz.” Her hum was rough and unmelodic to her trained ears. She didn’t even know if it would work. She could only try. And pretend her effort was only about distracting Turov from the monk stalking her. The tightness in her chest and the heat of her flushed cheeks against the night air mocked that lie.

She had to keep Turov from finding out why she was here and inadvertently uncovering her ties to the Order of Samuel. She couldn’t allow him to confront or capture her evil stalker.

But she also had to know.

Would her music act as a conduit between her affinity and the power in his Brimstone blood in the same way that Katherine’s cello had called to John Severne?

From the moment when she’d first heard his voice tonight, she had to know.

She’d loved Michael, but his power as a full-blood daemon had completely overshadowed any she might possess. Their relationship had been fast and entirely based upon his fire. She’d been eclipsed and consumed by his daemon light.

And then that light was gone.

She walked and hummed in the darkness because she suspected there was a different sort of light to be found.

To be reclaimed.

Her own.

The night was silent as the soft noise of the party faded behind her. It was foolhardy to go too far into the darkness without telling anyone where she had gone. She wasn’t dressed for a hike. In addition to the handicap of the heels, her dress was thin and the air was chilled. This wasn’t the stage. If something failed, there wouldn’t be a props manager to fix it. If she forgot her lines, there was no prompter to help her. She’d had no rehearsal to prepare for confronting an evil monk alone in a deserted garden...or a damned man for that matter. What if she encountered Turov on the starlit path with no one else around?

The idea frightened her, but not only that—there was also a hint of awakening in her quickened heartbeat and her rusty hum. Its tingle felt like an adventure waiting to happen.

A hard figure crashed into her and a cry replaced her hoarse hum, cut short prematurely by a cruel hand over her mouth. She was held in the hateful grip of the monk who had followed her to Sonoma. She recognized his stocky build and bare head in the moonlight.

“I have a message for you, D’Arcy. From Father Malachi. You met him in Louisiana. I bet you didn’t realize you were talking to the best and brightest of us all. Father Malachi has chosen me to deliver another warning. We are always. We are watching. Do not distract or delay. Free our brothers before Lucifer’s Army comes with the waxing of the moon. You have one month. Or your son will pay the price.” His spittle-fueled voice dampened her ear. She was crushed breathless by his powerful arms. His words and the physical abuse of his bruising hold made her recall the madness she’d seen in his eyes.

“Release her and die,” Turov ordered from the shadows.

Gone was any hint of sophistication.

This was his truth.

He stepped into the soft glow of garden lanterns and starlight. The seriousness of his face was revealed.

Hard.

Fierce.

His jaw was no longer marble, but iron.

Adam Turov reached behind his shoulder and with a metallic rasp he drew a small sword that glinted, sharp and deadly with purpose.

“Remember what I have said,” the monk growled. He flung her away and Victoria fell, but even the sharp sting of gravel against the side of her face didn’t distract from the monk’s surprised scream. It gurgled in his throat and was cut off as his stocky body fell heavily, dead and headless. She heard a light, sickening thump as his decapitated head hit the ground and rolled to rest several feet away. She’d lived a much more violent life than your usual run-of-the-mill opera singer. Would a normal woman have recognized the sounds in the dark?

“I said release her and die. Not or,” Turov clarified softly, as if the dead man might question his semantics.

Victoria shifted to look toward Turov without being obvious. He wiped the blade he’d used on the monk with a pristine white handkerchief, rolling the silky cloth to cover the blood before placing it back in his pocket. Then he sheathed the blade at his back beneath his jacket. When he had finished the practiced moves of cleanup, his sophisticated costume was in place again. He straightened his cuffs and rolled his shoulders before he reached to help her to her feet. The monk didn’t move at all.

“Is he...?” Victoria said, although she knew the answer. The monk was dead.

“He gave up the right to your consideration when he hurt you,” Turov said. “My people will take it from here.”

The Order of Samuel was violent and ugly and murderers, all. And the man she was supposed to best had just dispatched one without a blink of effort.

Turov took her hand and led her back toward the house. She didn’t resist. Suddenly, her bold humming seemed reckless. This was a man with Brimstone in his blood. She couldn’t afford to play games with the affinity that even now made her tremble near him. That awakening in her earlier hadn’t been about anticipating an adventure. It had been a warning.

Adam Turov had killed the monk to protect her. But what would happen to her when he discovered she was on the Order of Samuel’s side against him?

* * *

A little over an hour ago she had left the cottage for a party. Now she returned with blood on her shoes. She didn’t notice the blood until they were inside, and even then not until Turov knelt to take her shoes from numb feet.

“I’m sorry. I’ll replace them,” he said. “I didn’t mean to spoil your shoes.” He tilted one shapely pump this way and that, as if appreciating its curves in spite of the blood. “From several years ago, I think, but I’ll manage.”

She backed away as he left the room to throw the shoes away like some bizarrely opposite Prince Charming. And, yet, he did have charm. Out in the dark, under the stars, with blood dripping from the blade he’d used to save her, he’d been charming as hell.

“You followed me into the garden even though I told you to come back to the cottage. Why?” Turov asked when he returned. He didn’t stop inside the door. He continued with purposeful steps all the way to her. When she backed up at his continued advance, he followed until she bumped up against a bookcase. The scent of aged leather bindings filled the air to pair with Turov’s Brimstone heat.

She wasn’t afraid. Not of him. She was afraid because she refused to be a damsel in distress. No matter how distressing her life became.

“You may not be able to sing, but I heard you humming. I felt it,” he said. “I’ve never felt anything like it before.”

He didn’t touch her.

He didn’t have to.

The heat in his blood did.

The Brimstone that sealed his deal with daemons sang its own song to her music-starved ears. He’d made the choice to barter his soul. He wasn’t a knight in shining armor. Too bad for her that she seemed to prefer much darker heroes.

“It won’t happen again,” she promised.

He leaned down to catch her whispered words. She was sure the breath that propelled them from her lips bathed his. He was close enough to taste with only a tilt or a sigh. She held very still. Apart. Contained. While her former nature urged her to boldly tilt, sigh, move to join him.

She ignored the urge to sing. She refused the desire to touch her mouth to his.

He looked into her eyes. His were brilliant blue, so bright to have seen so much, so clear to have just killed in her name. Where was his damnation hidden? Where was his shame? He looked undaunted and strong and so damn noble it made her ache.

“I hope that’s a lie,” he said. His gaze dropped to her open lips, but he didn’t close the distance. The warmth between them flared until she tasted salty perspiration on her upper lip when she moistened it with her tongue.

His eyes moved to watch the pink flick of her tongue tip. For a second, he seemed almost as if he would dip to claim it. He seemed mesmerized. But he straightened up and backed away before she made the fatal mistake of wanting his kiss enough to make it happen herself.

He blinked. The move was gloriously slow, as if he really had been in a trance and had needed to force himself to lower his lids. When he opened them again, his jaw had hardened and the expression in his eyes had cooled. She could still feel his Brimstone heat, but he was no longer controlled by it.

“Good night, Victoria. I told you that you’d be safe here and I meant it. From every danger,” he said.

* * *

He was shaking with it—anger, desire, the willpower it took to not pick her up and carry her away from the life she’d been forced to lead. His men were already discreetly cleaning up the mess he’d left them in the garden. It wasn’t the first time he’d had to kill one of his “brothers.” The Order was twisted, obsessive, and they never stopped. There were times when it had been kill or be killed, although his primary mission was to capture them and turn them over to the justice of Lucifer’s court. One of the reasons his body quaked from adrenaline overload this time was that capture had ceased to be an option as soon as the evil monk had hurt Victoria.

He was supposed to be a sophisticated vintner with her. No more. No less. But she stoked the fire in his blood until his disguise went up in smoke.

He checked on his men. They had standing instructions. When he saw all was in hand, he turned away to seek sanctuary in his own rooms. What the guests would make of his and Victoria’s early disappearance from the party wasn’t his concern. He needed to wash away the blood and forget the look of fear in her eyes.

She’d pretended not to fully understand what had happened, but a darker knowledge had been in her hazel gaze when she’d trained it on his face.

A spiral iron staircase provided an outside entrance to his private retreat in the house. It was almost hidden by his mother’s roses. She’d loved the climbing vine varieties and he’d continued to have them tended after she was gone. They’d become a profusion of tangles near the staircase where he’d instructed the gardeners to allow them to grow unchecked. In this back corner of the house, he had a bed, bath and study that were completely separated from guest bedrooms. Guests were rarely invited to stay longer than a night. He didn’t run a bed-and-breakfast. He only allowed visitors at all in order to provide an alibi for his actual activities beyond wine making.

As he climbed the familiar treads of the staircase, it wasn’t the Brimstone in his blood that made him see red. His memory called up the image of the petite opera singer in the grip of a madman trained to be merciless. His anger came from the same sense he’d always had of a wrong that needed to be righted—magnified by fury at an innocent’s pain.

Victoria was caught up in a war that wasn’t her making. Just as he’d been as a child.

Adam shed his ruined clothes and left them for a housekeeper he could count on for stoic discretion. She’d seen worse. All his people had. The small sword he wore in a specially made sheath that fit close to his body between his shoulder blades he placed in a hidden compartment in the top of his mahogany dresser. He would clean it later after he’d cleaned himself.

He couldn’t afford empathy for Victoria, this sense of connection to her that shook him to his cursed core.

He told himself this even as he recalled the tense moment when he’d almost given in to the temptation to taste her lips.

Steam filled the bathroom when the cool water hit his Brimstone-warmed skin. Clouds of it rolled and swirled, disturbed by his movements as he scrubbed his hair and his hands. Beneath the soap, he felt his scars as he washed. A familiar reminder of what he’d been through and what he still needed to accomplish with the long life the Brimstone had given him.

Father Malachi was his objective. Finding him, capturing him, delivering him to Lucifer’s court. It wasn’t revenge. It was justice. Not only for the abuse he’d suffered at the obsessive monk’s hands—all in the name of “training”—but also to keep him from harming other children.

This dance with Victoria added another element of challenge to his mission. If she knew he was aware of why she’d come to Nightingale Vineyards, she might become even more determined and reckless to find and free his prisoners before Lucifer’s Army came to claim them. The Loyalists came when the moon was full each month. On that night, he held a party to provide cover for the prisoner delivery. The full moon galas were much larger than the occasional dinner parties held at other times. The gala was a coveted invitation, never more so than in June. To commemorate his mother’s birthday each year, he brought in an orchestra, dancing and a Firebird theme. He needed to keep Victoria in the dark until then, or longer if possible.

And while he kept her in the dark he needed to keep himself under control.

The water became superheated to the point of pain as it ran down his skin. Paired with the stitched wound on his back, the discomfort distracted him from the lush, full red lips he saw every time he closed his eyes. They’d been slightly open, welcoming, even though she’d seen him at his most ferocious.

He’d been trained to be a ruthless killer. Though he’d turned those skills on the men who had made him, he was pretty sure that didn’t negate the fact that they’d created a monster.

It had been dark in the garden and she’d been thrown to the ground with her face in the grass, but she’d seen the blood on her shoes.

And a monster had no right to kiss a woman with the voice of an angel, even if she’d temporarily forgotten how to sing.