countered. Attack and parry over and over, David giving ground as he struggled to keep the silver blade at bay. As weak as he was, it wouldn’t take but a scratch to bring him down. The sword flashed, Beskin bringing it up and under David’s guard. He threw up his shovel handle in a last-ditch effort to keep the blade from taking him in the ribs. But Beskin’s strength and the force of his blow proved too much. The handle splintered, the flimsy wood unable to withstand a determined effort to crush it. David threw himself sideways to escape the sweeping follow- through edge of the silver blade from opening his unprotected gut.
“Give me the damn book!” Beskin snarled.
“Fuck you!” David replied through a clenched jaw. His muscles screamed in protest. Sweat rolled down his face, damped his shirt to his back. He rolled up and onto his feet, but he was trapped. There was nowhere to escape and no weapon at hand, not even a stray piece of planking.
Beskin closed in, triumph glittering in his eyes. “Tell Kineally I said hello when you see him in hell.”
“Leave him alone!” The satchel came from nowhere and struck Beskin square on the side of the head. The man crumpled dazed to his knees, his sword clanging to the cobbles.
David immediately grabbed it up, his hand falling easily into the grip’s well-worn grooves. He stood over the enforcer, fury and vengeance eating through him. Hazing his vision. Vising his chest. His lips pulled back in a low snarl from deep in his chest, his own fangs extended, the beast prowling close to the surface. “Tell Kineally yourself, you fucking bastard.”
Pounding boots rang on the cobbles. Raised voices bounced off the close walls of the narrow mews. “There they are!”
“Stop! Corey wants you!”
David couldn’t fight. He was too weak. Too slow.
With a muttered oath, he tossed the sword away, shot a last rage-filled glance at Beskin, and, grasping Callista’s hand, fled into the dark.
5
Mac wasn’t at home. Of all the possibilities David had envisioned, that one hadn’t even entered his mind. Mac was always at home. The man barely budged from his hearth these days. He and Bianca had been married for almost six months, and though David assumed the novelty of a bride would have worn off by now, Mac seemed content never to leave the side of his new wife unless absolutely necessary. Now that she was breeding, he was practically glued there.
Except for tonight, the one night David needed his help . . . urgently and without delay. “You’re certain he didn’t leave word telling you when he would return home? Or where he was going?”
Bianca eyed him with a look of waning patience. “Would you please tell me what’s going on, David? I’ve seen that ghastly death-warmed-over look before. Something bad has happened, hasn’t it?”
Despite the late hour, she’d welcomed them attired as if she’d only just arrived home. And perhaps she had. He remembered vaguely reading about her most recent role as Desdemona at Covent Garden. She must have performed tonight, though he personally couldn’t imagine Hamlet’s suicidal girlfriend played by a woman as round as a pudding.
“It’s nothing,” he hastened to reassure her. “At least, nothing to do with Mac. That is . . . not directly.” He was babbling but couldn’t seem to stop.
Bianca gave him her famous ice queen stare, the leveling power of a firing squad behind her Arctic blue eyes. “Don’t treat me like a child, David St. Leger,” she snapped, strain edging her words. “Miss Hawthorne, do you know what this is about?”
“I’m as clueless as yourself,” Callista answered.
Though not for lack of trying. She’d peppered David with questions every time they’d slowed to catch a breath. Which in his present state had been frequently. He’d dodged her pointed interrogation with a rambling monologue about the three faces of the Mother Goddess and a long roundabout legend involving Idrin the Traveler and a ship that sailed among the stars. At least, he told himself that was the reason for his meandering, one-sided babbling. In fact, he might have just been entering the final stages of delirium right before complete collapse. He couldn’t be certain.
Bianca gripped a chair back, fear overtaking her anger. “If Mac is in danger, so help me God, David, I’ll —”
“You’ll what?” came a deep voice from the doorway. “Send out the cavalry? Storm the fortress with sword and buckler? Claw your way to my side like the Valkyrie you are?” Mac Flannery entered the drawing room, flapping the water from his dripping greatcoat.
“All of the above.” Bianca swung around to greet her husband, but not before David caught the fleeting look of complete and utter relief cross her face.
“Bloody spring weather,” Mac grumbled as he accepted a kiss from his wife, dragged off his coat, and ran a hand through his wet hair. “Halfway up Bond Street, it began pouring like the second flood.”
David sent up a silent thank-you to the Mother of All. Hopefully, the downpour would erase any scent trail Beskin might follow. The last thing David wanted to do was to lead the enforcer straight to Mac and Bianca.
Mac’s gaze traveled over Callista before settling on David, his expression sobering, though David caught the shock that passed across his face.
He rose to meet his host, though his legs didn’t seem to want to hold him, and he had to grab the chair back to steady himself. “We need to talk.”
Mac lifted his brows in an obvious question. David answered with an almost imperceptible shake of his head and a slant of his gaze toward the women. Events had grown too complicated, and he was far too tired to path his explanation. The look, the gesture; both were enough. Mac nodded in understanding. “My study.”
“Mac?” Bianca said. “What’s going on? David refuses to explain.”
Mac shot David another cautious glance before turning to his wife. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”
Bianca placed her hands on her hips, her pose one of imminent argument. “Cormac Cuchulain Flannery . . .”
Mac wrapped an arm around his wife’s waist, whispering a few quiet words in her ear. Whatever he said seemed to mollify her for now. She offered David a sharp nod and, with the bustling maneuverings of the soon- to-be mother, took Callista in hand. “I’ll find Miss Hawthorne some supper and a place to sleep.” Just before she left the room, she turned one last spearing gaze his direction. “But don’t think I’m through with you, David St. Leger. You’ve got some definite explaining to do.”
Once the women were gone, David motioned with a wave of his arm. “After you, Captain.”
Only after he’d spoken the words did he realize how often over the years that phrase had left his lips. They had fought together from Lisbon to Waterloo, but it had always been Mac who’d been the first to volunteer, the first to leap into any situation no matter how dangerous, the last to retreat no matter how impossible. If David had to describe his comrade, the words
But
It had begun as a company of four. Adam, Mac, Gray, and David. Infantry scouts. Imnada clansmen. They had quarreled, teased, laughed, and loved like brothers. The friendship had frayed after the Fey-blood sorcerer set his curse upon them in the chaotic days before Waterloo, but it had never unraveled completely. And when Adam had been murdered last year, it had been his tragic death that finally reminded the remaining three of that unbreakable bond.
Oh, they still quarreled. David thought Gray a self-righteous prig and Mac a besotted fool, but he’d lay down his life for either one of them. It was as simple as that.
Mac closed the study door behind them. “You can collapse now if you like. There’s none to witness it.”
David’s legs gave out as if his strings had been cut. Only Mac’s quick shove of a chair in his direction kept him from falling to the floor in a heap. He closed his eyes, a shudder running through him as he fought the teeth-
