Beneath the Skin (12 page)

I ate a bite because he wanted me to, but I really felt more like sinking into a hole and never coming back out.

After the food was cleared away, there was dancing.

Murphy and I watched, making sure not to look at each other and so be forced onto the dance floor together. My heart beat in a rapid rhythm against the tempo of the music, which continued to wind down, heading for the inevitable slow dance.

As if I’d summoned it, the lights dimmed even more and Madonna sang
Crazy for You.

Oh, Rudi,
I thought to myself. The man who sat beside me was a stranger and yet I wore his pendant around my neck. What had I done? What the hell had I done?

I must have made a sound, because Murphy leaned closer to ask what was wrong.

“Do you want to go up to the room?” I asked him, desperate to get out. If not for

whatever had happened to him at the Great Hunt, I would be sitting here tonight with Rudi and Lucy and all their pack. And we’d be laughing together and happy. If Rudi and Lucy had sat next to me instead of Murphy this song would have been absolutely perfect.

Instead it was a freaking nightmare. I put my hand over my mouth and shut my eyes

against the onslaught of grief that caught me by terrible surprise. It was almost as devastating as what I’d felt after Grey and Elena had been killed. I couldn’t help thinking maybe I’d made a horrible mistake to bond with Liam Murphy. The damned song played on and on while Murphy sat there and stared, because he didn’t understand me. Of course he hadn’t been there that night when I’d danced to this song with Rudi. He couldn’t know.

He smelled my despair--I saw it in his expression. His dark eyes were gentle and

reassuring as he scanned my face.

“Come on.” He touched my arm as he rose to his feet, and I felt absurdly grateful,

because he didn’t ask me what was wrong. I didn’t really know myself. I followed him from the ballroom, leaving the music and happy people behind. Murphy seemed to know where we were going, which was good because I didn’t. As we walked, I hoped someday we’d be happy together like the people in the ballroom.

Make the best of what you’ve got, Constance
, I told myself.
Don’t make this man regret
his generous impulse. This is your new start. A second chance. Don’t blow it.

“Wow,” I said, doing a double-take when Murphy opened the door to the room we’d

been given. All of us who had bonded tonight had been offered bedrooms in the chateau, and the one Murphy and I had been assigned was a far cry from the tiny little airless broom closet I’d been cramped in for the past two nights.

It was huge for one thing. The ceilings were massive and decorated with strips of gold.

Two chandeliers glittered--one over the enormous bed and the other by the floor-to-ceiling windows. A sofa, two armchairs, a scrolled desk, a flat-screen television, an ornate bureau, gold draperies that fell to the floor in puddles of silk and a fireplace. A fire leaped behind a scrollwork screen.

An oval mirror adorned the center of the mantel and was tilted to take in every corner of the bed. Lothario would have been proud to call this room his own.

The attached bathroom featured a sunken whirlpool tub big enough for two.

“It’s not heart-shaped, but what the hell,” I called out to Murphy who prowled around the bed, his brow furrowed in a thoughtful manner.

Away from the music and ballroom, my equilibrium was restored. The grief and doom

that had enveloped me like a shroud receded and left me with a feeling of near euphoria. I supposed leaping from one extreme to the next was hardly healthy, but I’d take the giddy high any time over the soul-sucking low.

“There’s bubble bath, though. You want to take one with me, Murphy?”

I knew I was being forward, but the man was my bond mate and I had to start

somewhere. Plus, Allerton was right. I was a spoiled little bitch and I needed to get a grip before I poisoned everything and everyone around me.

“Murphy?” I called his name again, because he didn’t answer me. I went to the bathroom door and saw him opening the door to the hallway. “You going somewhere?” For what, though?

There was champagne and lots of water and a bowl of fruit and even more macarons. We didn’t need anything.

“I’ll see you at breakfast tomorrow, Constance,” he said in a strange voice and the door closed behind him.

“Breakfast,” I repeated as if I’d never heard that word before in my life. The gloom tried to come back, but I wouldn’t let it. Instead, a creeping numbness deadened my heart and head.

I took a bubble bath, anyway. Alone. And drank the whole bottle of champagne.

Woozy and with a slight feeling of unreality, I staggered naked to the bed and more fell on the damn thing than lay on it.

I was just about to pass out when I heard them outside. The Belgians and French girl.

Howling. Shifted.

“Lucky bas’ards,” I muttered thickly then I did pass out.

Someone had brought my clothes to the room and I put on my jeans and the sweater I’d worn for three days now thanks to the fact I’d been a near prisoner. Wet hair hanging in my face, I spent thirty-five horrible minutes trying to find my pendant.

I’d thrown it at the wall while waiting for the tub to fill. I’d have thought if a person threw a necklace at a wall and heard it hit it be would relatively easy to find the necklace the morning after. Especially when the curtains were open and the vile sunlight poured into the room like an invading army, illuminating every damn thing around except, of course, the necklace.

Eventually I found it tangled around the curtain rod. I had to stand on a chair balanced on the coffee table, then get up on tiptoe to reach it.

I broke the chain in the process, luckily not my neck. I found my regular one in the bottom of my purse coiled up in knots that took me half an hour to unpick.

To say I was rather late to breakfast would be like saying Columbus was rather late to India.

There wasn’t even coffee left when I walked into the grand ballroom, Sarah’s black dress over one arm. My hair was mostly dry, but still annoyingly damp, I had no makeup on and my head was splitting.

Murphy sat at the same table we’d shared the night before, a cold cup of coffee before him as he stared out the windows.

I didn’t care that the coffee was cold. It was caffeine, so I took the liberty of separating the man from his coffee and downed it in one, heavenly gulp.

“No hair dryer in the room?” He took a good look at me.

“Don’t ask.” I set the cup down with regret and looked around to see if by chance there were any waiters carrying even a sip of coffee anywhere. All I saw were a few people lingering at their tables caught up in conversation or the last bit of breakfast. Most of the dishes had already been cleared, so the wait staff was probably in the kitchen loading industrial-sized dishwashers, or taking smoke breaks. The great urns of coffee had been removed as well, so I couldn’t even get up and get my own cup.

“Last day of this damned thing. Where are we off to first? Boston or Belfast? What does your pack think? Our pack.” That sounded weird on my lips. Nice but weird. “Do they do anything special when you join with your pack, or is it just no big thing? When can I meet them?

Are there many of them?” I asked way too many questions, but my head hurt and I didn’t want to talk about the night before, not that Murphy seemed likely to bring it up.

“Constance,” he said softly, but it was enough to shut me up. “We don’t have a pack. At least not at the moment. I’m working on it, though, so just give me some time.”

“What do you mean? But they sent you here to find a bond mate, because they wanted

you back.” My lips felt numb, as if I’d put a grandmother’s ointment on them, the one for easing pain by deadening sensation.

Why hadn’t I realized this last night? They should have sat at the table celebrating with us. I ought to have been accepted into the pack last night.

Instead, we’d been alone at a table for ten.

Murphy’s fingers tightened around the handle of his coffee spoon.

“They don’t want me back, okay? Can we drop this now?”

I stared at him.

“You mean they don’t want me. You’re not the problem, I am.”

“I said let’s drop this.”

“No!” My voice was shrill and he squeezed his eyes shut against the volume. I tried to modulate my volume a little but I shook I was so upset. “No, Murphy. We’re not going to drop this. They didn’t want me. Say it. Tell me to my face. I need to know.”

“They don’t want you,” he said after a tense moment. Anger flashed across his dark eyes.

“To hell with them, Constance, all right? I knew what I was getting into when I told you I’d do this, so to hell with them.”

My head thumped queasily and I could taste burned coffee in the back of my throat as well as last night’s champagne. It was not a good combination.

My fingers fumbled with the clasp to my pendant, I jerked it off and smashed it down on the table top.

“What are you doing? Put it back on.” He kept his voice low so only I could hear him, but he was upset.

“No. You take yours off. Take it off, Murphy,” I was humiliated. “We need to find one of the jewelers and get our own stones back and then you can go to your pack and tell them it’s over with us. We need to sever ties now, because we only have forty-eight hours, otherwise we’ll need to wait until my birthday and that’s not until August, so screw that. I doubt you can find somebody else between now and the end of the Gathering, but there’ll be a Regional soon somewhere and you can go there and--”

“Shut up and put your damn pendant back on.” Murphy glared at me. He hadn’t shaved

again and the stubble on his cheeks and chin gave him an edgy, dangerous appearance.

“I’m not going to ruin your life, Murphy!” I almost shouted and he pounded a fist on the table, making the coffee cup rattle in the saucer.

“Will you shut the fuck up?” His voice was low, but venomous. “Ruin my life! Jesus

God, woman, who do you think you are that you can ruin my life? And what are you thinking about saying we should sever the ties? You think Ducharme will shrug her scrawny shoulders and let you go back to Boston alone just because you bonded with me only to sever the ties not even twenty-four hours after? That’s not what you agreed to, not what we all agreed to. And you said you didn’t want to be her dog. Didn’t I hear you say that, or am I going deaf?”

“It’s not worth all the bullshit, Murphy,” I argued, my chin wobbling. I was going to cry again and I wanted to smack myself. When the hell had I become such a baby about everything?

“I say it is, Constance Newcastle.”

“Then why did you leave last night? You can’t even stand to be alone with me in the same room and you want to stay bonded with me? I don’t understand.”

“Well, don’t try to understand me. Just put your damn pendant back on.” He heaved a sigh and looked as if he wanted to strangle me. “Besides, you don’t want to walk out just before the curtain goes up on Act Three, do you now?”

“Act Three?” Now my voice wobbled just as much as my chin. I reached out for my

pendant and he moved it closer within my reach.

“Act One, we were introduced by the mysterious Councilor Allerton and it was suggested we bond. We both declined, he laughed and rubbed his hands together like a comic opera villain and curtain. Act Two, all that drama with the old hag, Ducharme, the setup, the choice between indentured servitude, or a fate worse than death--bonding with me. Agony, indecision, some very dramatic speeches and we’re bonded. Curtain, intermission. Now it’s Act Three when we find out what he wanted us bonded for. Sure and you’re not thinking he’s some sort of half-assed Cupid, shooting arrows dipped in love potion at random unattached people of the Pack, are you now?” Murphy smiled, his dark eyes dancing as he looked at me.

“It wasn’t a setup, was it? Rudi?” I was horrified and the smile died from his eyes.

“No, no, never go that far, but he used it. He used the situation. Turned it to his advantage. He sat there waiting for his opportunity with Ducharme. Hell, the two of them may have been in cahoots with each other. Maybe she never really meant for you to be her indentured servant, only to scare you into thinking she did. Nobody could believe for a minute you killed Rudi. Nobody in that room did believe it but her. And maybe she was playing along with Allerton. The point is we’re just about to be propositioned. I thought he might have done it last night when he came to sit with us for coffee, but he’s a sly one. He’s letting the pot simmer just a little bit more.”

“Ducharme meant it,” I said with conviction. “I could smell that much. She might not think I killed Rudi, but she wanted me to crawl to her.”

“So maybe Allerton used her too,” Murphy said. “The bitch.”

“How do I know you’re not in on it?” I said doubtfully, which made him laugh again.

“Sure and are you really thinking I’d not be straight with you right off? Am I truly such a manipulative bastard as all that? Or are you thinking I’d never had a chance at bonding with you if it hadn’t been a choice between that and something dreadful bad like Ducharme?”

“You don’t want to be bonded with me,” I said, unable to keep some of the hurt from my voice, which was stupid, because I didn’t want to be bonded with him, either.

His eyes went dark and an unbearable sadness filled his face.

“That’s not you, Constance. I didn’t want to be bonded with anyone. I loved Sorcha so much, you see. I never wanted anybody but her, and if weren’t for my pack hounding me, I never would have come here. Sometimes I wish I was an old grandfather and everyone would leave me the fuck alone.”

“You never thought they wouldn’t take you back, did you?” I kept going, because I had to, I had to.

“No.” His mouth got tight. “That part hurt. I admit it. But it’s done and I’m bonded to you and I’m not severing the ties. We both have to agree to it if we do it within the first forty-eight hours. I can’t stop you from doing it on your birthday, but that’s nine months away, isn’t it?