A Temptation of Angels (3 page)

S
he was well past surprise when the door swung wide, revealing another staircase. This one wound upward, a faint light coming from somewhere above. She allowed the pendant to fall back against her chest, relieved to have a free hand as she ascended the stairs. She didn’t stop climbing until the stairs abruptly ended, opening directly onto a rain-wet street, weak yellow light seeping from a streetlamp near the curb.

Daring a look back, she took note of the wall through which she had emerged. The door was gone, the brick wall at the bottom of the staircase unbroken. She blinked a couple of times to be certain and in the end could only add the disappearing door to the catalog of unexplainable things that had happened this night.

Turning her attention to the street, she glanced left and
right, trying to get her bearings. The long descent from the house and the winding journey through the tunnel had been disorienting, but one look at the elaborately lettered sign quickly clarified the matter.

Claridge Hotel.

The windows and door beneath the sign were familiar and lit from the inside. It gave her an odd sort of comfort. It could not be a coincidence that her escape route led to the hotel where she so often accompanied Father to high tea. It was some kind of message, some kind of sign, and this one led her to thoughts of others.

Leaning against the brick wall of the hotel, she opened the valise. She felt past the clothing and other personal items her mother had packed until her hand closed around the crumpled piece of paper. The ink was already faded, and she slanted the paper toward the light spilling from the hotel windows, trying to make out her mother’s script.

It was a name. Two names, to be exact, and an address.

Darius and Griffin Channing. 425 Oxford.

She knew the streets surrounding Claridge’s well. She and Father had often strolled the neighborhood after tea. Still, it was a different matter entirely to walk alone and unaccompanied
in the dark of night. She hurried through the streets as fast as her bare feet would allow.

The gas lamps lit her way, smoke swirling eerily near the flames as it had before the light of the pendant. She felt a moment’s self-consciousness as the cold seeped through the fabric of her nightdress, but her soot and dirt-smudged arms were oddly comforting. With any luck, she would pass for a common street urchin with nothing to steal. Nothing to lose.

Of course, that was now truer than she was prepared to admit.

In any case, the streets were empty, save an occasional drunkard, and she made her way carefully over the wet cobblestones until she came to the right address. Her gaze traveled upward, taking in the imposing structure. It rose into the night sky, carved marble gargoyles and unnameable beasts flashing pale in the dark above her, as light flickered from behind the curtained windows. She stood for a moment, gathering her wits. Who were Darius and Griffin Channing? And why would Mother and Father send her to strangers for shelter? The questions found no answers. She was alone, and if ever anyone had been without answers, it was her. It was not courage but desperation that finally led her up the steps leading to the great front door.

There was simply nowhere else to go.

She had just reached the top of the steps and was lifting her hand to knock when the door opened. A young man about her age stood in the light of the porch lamp, blinking as if he was surprised to find her there, despite the fact that he had opened the door without prompting. Even in the faint light, she could see the flecks of yellow in his green eyes.

“G-good evening. I’m looking for…” She made a show of glancing down at the paper, just so he would know someone had sent her. “Darius and Griffin Channing.”

Something moved behind his eyes. She thought it was, perhaps, an understanding of the situation in which she found herself. A situation even she didn’t fully comprehend.

“You’re younger than I imagined,” he said.

Helen didn’t know how to respond. The very idea that he had imagined her of any age was so beyond her grasp that she didn’t even attempt to inquire about the particulars.

“I’m Griffin.” He stepped back from the doorway. “You must be cold. Please come in.”

She hesitated for a moment. It was more than unseemly to enter a gentleman’s home in the dark of night. Even she, with her limited social experience, was aware of such rules.
Yet, Mother and Father had sent her here. And this was no ordinary night.

She stepped into the house. “I don’t know who you are or why my parents sent me to you, but I need your help. They’re in great danger. We must—”

“You can’t go back,” the man interrupted. “I’m sorry, but it’s impossible.”

His eyes were kind, but that did not prevent her frustration from bursting forth. “You don’t understand! If you just let me explain—”

He held up a hand to stop her. “I don’t know the details, but I imagine your parents’ lives were threatened, and they worked quite hard to see that you remained alive. Is that right?”

“Yes, yes. But they… that is, we…” She stumbled over the words, unable to distill everything that had happened to a few sentences that would make the man listen to her.

She flinched as he reached out, touching a hand gently to her arm. “I know you’re upset and frightened, but you must trust me; your parents sacrificed themselves to ensure your escape. If you go back now, their bravery will have been for nothing. Do you understand?”

His words were an echo of her mother’s. Helen could only nod around the lump in her throat.

“Good.” Griffin shut the door. His tawny hair fell across his forehead as he turned to face her. “May I take your bag?”

His words did not make sense until she followed his eyes to the valise in her arms. It was all she had left.

“No, thank you.”

He nodded. “This way. We need to see my brother, Darius.”

There was nothing to do but follow. She trailed after him as he made his way down the marble hall to a massive door on the left. He turned to her before entering the room. She breathed a little easier when she saw the compassion in his eyes.

“Listen, I’m sure you’d like to clean up and change, but Darius won’t allow you to stay until he has cleared you. All right?”

“Yes… No… I don’t know.” The nod of her head turned into a shake.

He smiled. “It will be fine, you’ll see.”

He turned without waiting for an answer, and she followed him into a darkly paneled library.

At first it seemed they were alone. Helen took advantage of the moment to reach up and smooth her disheveled hair. It was the first time all night that she had thought of her appearance, but it somehow seemed important to impress Darius,
whomever he was and however impossible a task it might be, given her dirty nightdress, bare feet, and sooty skin.

“That cannot be her.” The voice, deep and low, came from a chair in a shadowed corner.

Griffin stopped in the middle of the plush carpet, very like the ones in her own home. She had an image of the rugs in her chamber burning, the carved bed aflame, the paint melting across the portrait of her mother in the parlor. A spasm of loss and grief almost brought her to her knees.

“It is,” Griffin answered. “At least, I believe it is.”

“Have you even prepared for the possibility that it’s not?” There was steel behind the question, though Helen had no idea what the man meant.

Griffin sighed. “She’s just a girl, Darius. And she’s cold and tired.”

“I should hope she is anything but a simple girl. Otherwise, you have let a stranger into the house at great risk to us both.” The shadow that was Darius continued without waiting for an answer. “Never mind. Bring her here.”

She saw the apology in Griffin’s eyes as he prompted her forward with a nod of his head.

Lifting her chin, Helen moved toward the chair. Dishevelment aside, she did not intend to be bullied.

“I have no idea who or what you think I am, but I can assure that I am, in fact,
just a girl
as your brother claims.” She was relieved to hear the anger in her voice. To feel it trickle through her bloodstream in place of the numbness she had felt since escaping her burning home.

The figure in the chair rose to his feet, his face still in shadow. She felt him survey her in the silence that followed. “She’s too young.”

The simple pronouncement fueled her annoyance. “If you have something to say about me, kindly afford me the respect of saying it
to
me, will you?”

Darius did not answer right away, and Helen wondered if she had gone too far. Anger seemed to flow outward from the shadow where he stood.

“Fair enough,” he said, his face directed toward hers. “You’re too young.”

She shook her head, feeling as if she had landed in some kind of alternate reality. “Too young for what?”

“Too young to be who you’re supposed to be and too young to be of any use if you are.”

“And who exactly am I supposed to be?”

She saw the tip of his head, even in the shadows, as if he was considering his answer. When he stepped into the light
of the desk lamp, she saw that he was taller than Griffin, with a fine scar running from his right temple nearly to his chin. She thought him striking, and not as old as he sounded when shrouded in darkness. His eyes, identical to Griffin’s, flashed yellow-green when he answered.

“One of us.”

I
’m
not
one of you.”

She had no idea what Darius was getting at. Still, she was certain that she was not anything approximating
one of them.

“You’re getting too far ahead, Darius. You’ll frighten her.” Griffin’s voice came from her left, irritation evident in the look he shot Darius before turning to her. “Come. Sit down.”

Helen allowed Griffin to lead her to the sofa, scolding herself the whole way for cowering in the face of Darius’s questionable authority. Father always said that people only had the power you gave them. She had already given Darius too much.

She surveyed him from the sofa as he crossed to a cabinet against one of the walls. He poured clear liquid into a crystal tumbler, and she took in the sandy hair, cut too long for a gentleman. She saw the resemblance between brothers in the eyes and the strong set of their jaws, but in every other way,
Griffin seemed a gentler version of his brother. He sat at the other end of the sofa, tipping his body toward her.

“Why don’t you start with your name?”

She was suddenly unsure about divulging her identity, despite the piece of paper that had led her to them. “Why don’t you tell me? You already seem to know who I am.”

She caught a trace of admiration in Griffin’s smile. “It doesn’t work that way. They didn’t tell us your name. And with good cause. We’ve been kept separate for a reason, though it doesn’t seem to have helped.”

She didn’t understand the meaning behind his words, but it was obvious that they would all be here for a very long time if someone didn’t start talking. Somehow Helen knew it would not be Darius.

She sighed. “My name is Helen Cartwright. My parents are Eleanor and Palmer Cartwright and they were taken or… something earlier this evening.”

“What do you mean they were taken ‘or something’?” Darius narrowed his eyes, as if trying to gauge her truthfulness.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. One minute I was in bed and the next my mother was packing up my things and hiding me in the wall. I… I think the house was on fire.”

“Why would your mother hide you in the wall?” Even as
Griffin asked the question, it seemed he knew the answer.

“They were meeting with their colleagues, a group of business associates that often came to the house for evening meetings.” Helen looked down at her hands. “They became noisy or… upset, and then my mother told me to hide and not to make a sound or I would be killed. She gave me this.” The piece of paper was still crumpled in her hand, and she held it out for Griffin and Darius to see.

“May I?” Griffin asked.

She hesitated before handing it to him. It was the last thing her mother had touched before closing the door between them.

He opened the piece of paper, tipping it to the light of the desk lamp before looking at Darius. “It’s our names and address.”

Darius’s face betrayed no emotion. When he spoke, his words were directed at Griffin. “There’s only one way to know for certain who she is.”

Griffin nodded, reaching into the neckline of his shirt at the same time Darius reached into his trouser pocket. When their hands emerged, they were each holding pendants.

“Does this look familiar?” Darius asked.

They were not identical to hers. Not exactly. She could see
even from a distance that the scrolled crown at one end of their pendants had a slightly different pattern than the one that hung from the chain around her neck. But there was no mistaking it.

“It’s… It’s almost like mine.”

“What do you mean?” Griffin asked, though she heard relief in his voice that told her he already knew the answer.

Helen swallowed hard, hesitating only a second before pulling her own pendant from the neckline of her nightdress. She held it up without removing the chain from her neck.

“Like this. Only it seems yours is different on the end,” she said softly.

Darius stood, his eyes locked on the pendant in her hand, as still as one of the statues outside the house. Finally he turned toward the bookcase lining one wall. In his voice was a new resignation.

“Show her to a room. Then, we go and see Galizur.”

The house was even bigger than it seemed from the street. She followed Griffin up an elaborately carved staircase and down a series of richly carpeted halls.

Darius did not accompany them. He had not, in fact, even turned around after instructing Griffin to show her to a room.
She had been dismissed, and though she gave a moment’s thought to refusing the room on principle, reason quickly settled in.

“Here we are.” Griffin stopped at a large wooden door. As he leaned in to open it, his face was contorted in the gleaming brass of the knob.