Undine locked the door of her bedchamber and collapsed against it, stunned. She felt as if all the air had been removed from the room.
But this is no more than what you’d assumed would happen.
Aye, but having an assumption and being confronted with the cold, awful reality were very different things.
She touched her hair, her dress. It was as if the world had lost its hold on what could and couldn’t happen, and she needed to be reminded of the truth of things. Satisfied the strands hadn’t turned to snakes or the silk to flames, she took a few rubber-kneed steps.
“I wondered if you’d be joining me at some point.”
She jumped.
Michael stood in the shadows, wearing the dark blue coat of Morebright’s footmen. His hair had been slicked back, and the false beard had been rolled into a queue, extending a few inches down his back and tied with a red ribbon. It looked just like the queues worn by all of Morebright’s footmen wore. He was the inconvenient servant! She gasped, astounded.
“How did you…?”
He shrugged. “It’s so hard to find good help these days.” He’d rendered his wounds nearly invisible with some sort of face paint.
She threw her arms around him. The weight of him, solid and reassuring, steadied her, and it wasn’t until she’d found her voice again a long, long moment later that she realized the arms that held her held her with palpable restraint.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I’ve seen Abby. I have news of the clans.” He released her gently, but the air felt cooler than it had a moment earlier. And she knew without asking the clans weren’t the cause of the chill.
“What?”
“When I was tossed out, I went to Gerard and Serafina, who in turn took me to Abby.”
“In Black Blade?” He’d gotten himself into a meeting of the chieftains? For an instant, she had a vision of him as William Wallace.
“Aye. Very Scottish gothic. I expected a herd of vampire oxen to come charging around the corner at any instant.”
“I don’t know ‘vampire.’”
“Like poisonous snakes, only with wings.”
“I see.”
It seemed to her the conversation they were having was taking the place of the one they needed to have. Nonetheless, neither of them seemed to ready to abandon it.
“What did Abby say?”
Michael hung his head and sighed. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have told her, but I can’t change that now—”
“What did you tell her?”
“I told her Bridgewater was taking you to see Lord Morebright.”
“Oh my skies.” He opened his mouth to offer an apology and she waved it away. “Abby and I have a peculiar relationship, you see. We occupy different sides of the conflict here often enough to make a policy of silence on certain matters a requirement.”
“I’m sorry. I see that now.”
Undine imagined the scene. Two dozen clan chiefs, whose men in the borderlands were harassed on a daily basis, finding out the man who oversees the harassing is trying to travel through Scotland without notice. Abby, herself the victim of a highly embarrassing blackmailing at Bridgewater’s hands earlier in the year, forced by honor to reveal what Michael had told her and then arguing for a measured response.
Then it dawned on her that allowing Michael to come here might be part of a trap. “How did you get away?”
Michael told her the story, and when she heard his escape was Abby’s doing, her eyes grew moist. Abby would not have used Michael to deliver false information. Responsibility to her people might require her to work at cross-purposes to Undine, but Abby would fight every clan chief in Scotland before she’d allow Undine or a man Undine cared about to be used unknowingly to foil the rebels’ dreams of peace.
“And she led you all the way to MacDougal’s Fist?”
“I must say the Scots have a peculiar way with names, but yes, she led me to a rocky hill almost in sight of the river that led me here.”
Undine basked in the unique comfort that comes from a sister’s care, even when that sister is not truly yours. It was a feeling as powerful as magic—perhaps more powerful.
“She’s very protective of me,” Undine said.
“Indeed, she is. More than you know.” His eyes were like glass in the moon’s light, but it was the blue of regret, not pleasure.
“What is it? Tell me.”
“There’s more.”
“The letter. What did it say?”
“Bridgewater has been tasked with creating a diversion of his choosing before the vote. He was told to have it done by Midsummer’s Day.”
“That’s soon.” A shiver went down her back. She knew the sorts of diversions the English army created. The vision in her head was a cataract of orange and red, like the core of a blistering volcano. “Who tasked him?”
“We don’t know. The letter wasn’t signed—nor was it addressed to Bridgewater by name—and Lord Hay took it from me. I don’t know who has it now.” He sighed. “I’m sorry. I really blew it.”
Despite her worry, she had to smile. “‘Blew it’? I’m not entirely sure, but I think I can guess the meaning.”
But her quip did not smooth the concern on Michael’s face.
“If we’re parceling out blame, there are a number of tasks I’ve ‘blown’ too,” she said. “I shouldn’t have let Bridgewater talk me into coming here. I shouldn’t have risked the success of the mission by exploring his office with him so near. And I certainly shouldn’t have brought you to here, into this mess. This is my battle, not yours.”
“If I believed that, I wouldn’t be here. But there’s a different battle I’m fighting now—far more selfish, I’m afraid. I know you have…things you wish to accomplish here. And nothing would bring me more relief than to take you as far away from here as I could, but I know I can’t ask that. I know that your mission requires you to…endure…be willing to…” He shoved a hand through his hair, nearly destroying the neat queue. “Screw it. I want you to leave here. Now. With me.”
“Michael—”
“It’s not safe. It wasn’t safe before we found out the clansmen might be mounting an attack and now it’s not safe at all.”
“The things I do can’t be influenced by safety. If they were, none of them would ever get done.”
“Undine…” He shook his head. “Nothing changes. The Scots parliament agrees to the treaty. The Act of Union is signed into law. Scotland becomes a part of what we call—”
“I know what it’s called,” she said sharply. “And while it’s a ‘Kingdom,’ it’s never really ‘United,’ is it?”
“I think you underestimate the ties that can grow when two groups face hard times and fight a common enemy.”
“Germany, do you mean?”
He blinked. He hadn’t realized the extent of her knowledge. Good. Better that he knew.
“Yes,” he said. “And France in the nineteenth century. And America later in this century. And Russia and Spain and the Ottoman Empire. Scotland and England have their problems, but they are truly united after the Union.”
“Through the fighting of wars?”
His shoulders fell. “Yes.”
She groaned. “Why is it men can only find common purpose in fighting others? Michael, I don’t care if Scotland and England join or not. I want to defeat the men who can’t rest until they control more, the men who trample the homes and lives of people who only want peace and a chance to keep their children fed and safe—and Bridgewater is at the top of my list.”
“I told you this once,” Michael said softly, his gaze fixed in the distance. “Exacting revenge won’t bring you the satisfaction you think, and endlessly praying for it will destroy you.”
“I don’t want revenge, Michael. I want peace.”
She regretted the words the instant they’d left her mouth, not because they weren’t the truth, but because that same sadness had appeared in his eyes when he’d spoken, and she’d missed her chance to find a way to ask him about it by responding in anger.
“Bridgewater is the conduit through which the bribe money is coming,” she said. “We know that. If I can find proof of it, the trust the people of Scotland have placed in their parliament will be broken and the noblemen there will be forced to vote the will of the people or face their ire. Scots do not forgive easily—and they never forget.”
A wan smile appeared on his face. “No they don’t.”
“I can’t stop, Michael. I can’t.”
His hands moved as if he were arguing with himself and knew he wouldn’t win. “But you know what happens,” he said at last. “To Scotland.”
“I haven’t given up hope. I’ve borne witness to things that have changed—here and in the future. Nothing as big as this. Nothing,” she admitted with a pang, “even a tenth as big, or a hundredth. But that doesn’t mean it can’t.”
He took a long, deep breath. “And you’re willing to stay here to…do what needs to be done…and face whatever comes?”
“I am.”
His eyes, open and uncertain, met hers. She could feel his struggle, though she didn’t know its origin, and even thinking about it made her afraid. Dammit, she could face a hundred Bridgewaters and a thousand clansman but not this perilous divide that seemed to have sprung up between her and Michael.
“If you’re willing to fight,” he said, “then I am too.”
“Oh, Michael.” She caught his lapels like they were ropes for saving a drowning woman. His arms came to an awkward rest on her back. She lifted her mouth to him.
“We can’t,” he said.
“Do you not wish to?”
“Oh, God, how can you ask?” he said, groaning. “I want you so much.”
“Kiss me, then. The magic will take care of the rest.”
“The magic’s gone.” He tried to push her away, but halfway through he pulled her into a scorching kiss instead. “I can’t do this,” he said, voice choked, when he released her. “I’ll do whatever you wish me to do, but don’t make me do this. I can’t watch you take him to your bed and feel this way about you. I can’t. I’ll die.”
“Take him to my bed?” she said, shocked. “My God, I’d put a knife in his belly first—or my own.”
“You kissed him. I saw it. I don’t deny you your right to use whatever means you choose to help the cause, but I can’t feel what I’m feeling, Undine. My heart’s like a mortar about to go off in my chest. If I don’t get it away as far and as fast as I can, I’ll be destroyed.”
“He kissed me—and it was disgusting. I’d rather kiss one of your vampire oxen. I stopped him instantly. I’m so sorry you saw it. I-I…should have known you wouldn’t leave. I felt you there, but I couldn’t bring myself to believe it.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have so little experience of a man’s kindness. Because your wounds were—Oh, Michael, they were so awful. And because, I think, I’d hoped for you to stay so much.”
He folded his arms around her, this time with no restraint, and held her close. “I want to teach you to expect kindness—to depend on it.”
Her heart swelled into her throat, and she dared not speak. Here, in his arms, she felt safe.
“And I dinna want you to sleep with him,” he said huskily, sounding very much like a Scotsman. “I don’t care if Roman centurions march into the streets of Edinburgh and threaten to clap every Scot in chains.”
“Roman centurions?” She gave him a look of mock concern. “You know we’d have to do something.”
“Aye, and I’d start with offering Bridgewater to them for their lions.”
The scent of his skin and promise of his protection made her dizzy. The kisses he was applying to her neck and ears were only adding to the effect.
With a firm clasp on her buttocks, he lifted her to her toes. “Let me show you what else you can depend on.”
She had a general idea what it was, being held rather closely against it.
He backed her onto the bed and rucked up her skirts.
She wondered what Bridgewater would think if he found her fornicating with a footman, but the wondering was brief, as certain movements of Michael’s made it impossible to think of anything else.
The emotions that had carried her this far were more than happy to let desire take over, and their bodies scrabbled roughly to mine the pleasure. She wanted every thought banished from the tiny palace of happiness they were making for themselves within the four bedposts.
“I want ye naked, lass,” he whispered. “But first I want ye surprised.”
Surprise was hardly the word for this quaking, clawing hunger, but the great force of it, she knew, was not in this heated tangle of limbs but in the vows he’d spoken before they’d begun.
The embers had been licked into flames, and then, with an urgency that starved her of breath and thought, time stopped.
But he was true to his word, and when she caught her breath, he undressed her and then himself, and this time they made a slow dance of it. He held her as she moved, watching her with an unembroidered affection that made her forget everything but the warmth in his eyes and the rumble of joy in his chest. The moon was high in the sky when she arched against him and realized she’d found something she hadn’t even known she was missing.
“No more, lass,” he said. “I’m too old for this.”
“How old are you?” she asked eagerly, rolling onto her stomach to look at him.
“Old enough to know better than to try that a third time.”
“I’d believe you,” she said, “if it weren’t for that.” She ducked her head in the direction of what appeared to be incontrovertible evidence of his will to continue.
“Have you heard of a piñata?”
“‘Piñata’? Like ‘pigna,’ pinecone?” She frowned, looking at the pigna in question.
“And she speaks Spanish. No. More like an oversize toy—”
“Oh, aye,” she said, understanding.
“Oh, no,” he said, catching her hand. “Made of paper and glue. Filled with sweets. And one takes swings at it with a stick.”
“Oh, no.”
“Now you’re getting it. Once the sweets are gone…” He held up his palms.
“We make more sweets?”
“Oh dear. I can see I’ve made a terrible mistake. Theoretically, yes, but when you’re as old as I am, one has to make do with a few days of thin gruel first.”
“I don’t care for gruel,” she said, flopping petulantly onto her back.
“Aye, well, one never knows,” he said, catching her hand and lifting it. “And I’ll promise you the possibility of changing until I’ve tricked you into letting me put a ring on your—”
He stopped, and with an awful shock, Undine remembered.
“What’s that?” he asked.
She tried to pull her hand away, but her muscles seemed to have lost their ability to respond to the commands of her brain.
“His ring,” she said, her voice no more than a whisper.
“You…married him?”
“It doesn’t matter. It means nothing.”
He let go of her hand, and the bed went cold.