Devil at Midnight (14 page)

He was certain he had held hands with women a time or two. He was also certain the sensation had never run through him this sweetly. The gesture reminded him of Grace’s innocence, of the differences between them that had nothing to do with how many years they had lived. He knew her life had been troubled; he even wished he had been there to protect her from her father. The seriousness of her trials aside, she was still a gentle, openhearted girl. She
wanted
to be given reasons to trust. Lord help him, Christian was becoming increasingly eager to provide them. Her attachment to him was as addicting as the touch of her flesh.

He was a little disappointed when he realized she had taken his hand, at least in part, to catch his notice.

“The minstrel is doing something to your men,” Grace said, her ephemeral side nestled close to his. “I know it sounds kooky, but I think she’s weaving some sort of spell.”

Christian lowered his chin and spoke toward his feet. “Why do you say that?”

“My vision has been different since I died. I can see in the dark, and around her I see a sort of black energy. I noticed it in the tavern before I got zapped.”

“And now?” Christian murmured.

He had been trying to hide his tension at the reminder of her disappearance. Grace must have sensed it, because she squeezed his hand. “Now the energy is like a web raying out from her. She’s casting it over your men. It think it’s making them”—she cleared her throat—“more
interested
than normal.”

Under other circumstances, Christian would have grinned at her delicacy. Under this one, he simply nodded. He could not doubt her perceptions, though he did not know what to do about them. His father did not seem to observe anything amiss; his focus was on their surroundings. Was Gregori resistant to Nim Wei’s powers, whatever they were? Was that what had surprised her earlier? Christian’s father was a practical man, without much mystical bent. If Christian claimed Nim Wei was an enchantress, Gregori was liable to guffaw. Christian would have laughed at the idea himself, had his view of the spirit world not been expanded recently.

He shook himself from his musings, reluctantly releasing Grace’s hand as Michael fell back to speak with him. Though Michael probably would not have felt it, Grace scooted to Christian’s other side before his friend could bump into her.

“This is not good,” Michael said in an undertone. “That woman is stirring up everyone.”

Christian was glad someone beside himself and Grace thought so. At least, he was glad until he took a closer look at his friend. Michael resettled the pack he wore on his shoulders as if he also was disturbed. His handsome face was disapproving, his generous lips pinched thin. Christian wondered why Mistress Wei had not set her sights on him from the first. Did not seductresses like the godly? And was not Michael’s golden beauty fair enough for an angel?

But none of this was appropriate to bring up.

“She is only flirting with Charles,” Christian said. “Or, rather, letting him flirt with her. The men simply are not used to having females around.”

“It is more than that,” Michael insisted. “She flaunts herself in that costume, worse than some bawd. Those hose are clinging to her. Everyone can see the shape of her thighs and calves.”

Christian grinned in spite of himself. “I did not know you were so partial to women’s legs.”

“She wears her hair loose, Christian. It falls halfway down her back. She tosses it every time she laughs.”

Christian’s eyes widened at the heat behind his complaint. His friend was that bothered by the minstrel’s
hair
?

“I cannot order her to cover it,” he said mildly, hoping not to make too much of this. “And, given what she is paying, my father seems unlikely to object to her immodesty.”

Michael grunted and fell silent. The tramping of booted feet mingled with the creaking of the three horses’ leather. It was odd to be traveling after dark, to watch the clouds of their breath rise gray to a starry sky. Nocturnal creatures rustled through the adjoining fields, gleaning what remained of the last harvest.

To Christian’s dismay, his friend was not letting the matter drop. “You could not talk to Charles? Warn him against succumbing to that siren?”

“Do you think he would listen?”

Michael’s mouth twisted ruefully. “I would swive her myself, if she turned her eyes to me.”

Christian did not know what to say to this. Michael almost sounded wistful, and he was not a man of casual amours. Yes, he took women but never on a brief acquaintance. Christian sometimes thought his friend would do without the act of carnal knowledge altogether, had the urges of his body permitted it.

“At least we need not fear for Matthaus and Philippe,” Michael commented.

“No,” Christian agreed slowly, discovering he was not as confident as Michael. Matthaus and Philippe might not be lovers of women, but who knew what havoc their strange employer was capable of wreaking?

Without looking around, he reached leftward for Grace’s hand. A warm buzz of sensation told him she had accepted it.

“Just be certain
you
stay away from her,” he said to both his companions.

 

 

T
he men made camp an hour or so before dawn on the top of a wooded slope that overlooked a flourishing farm village. When Grace asked, Christian said it was called Cluses. A river ran beside it—the Arve, according to him. Neither of the names rang any bells for her. If her angel was right, and she got another life someday, she’d pay better attention in Geography.

She noticed the men were very efficient: seeing to the horses and the mule, and warming a simple meal at a central fire as if they’d done it a thousand times. The mercenary who was in charge of cooking was one of Christian’s father’s men. His name was Oswald. The other men, Christian’s included, treated him with respect, not joking or teasing as they did with each other. Oswald was tall and taciturn, and only had one eye. Every so often, as he sweated over his bubbling pots, he’d slide up his patch and wipe the ruined socket dry on his sleeve. It looked to Grace like the eye had been burned, but the scars didn’t seem to pain or embarrass him. So many of the soldiers had them that she supposed they weren’t cause for shame.

Remembering the bruises she’d expended so much energy concealing, she wondered if she’d wasted her time. Was being her father’s victim any more disgraceful than a battle wound?

She chewed that question over as she wandered the camp. Christian was too busy to remind her to be cautious, but she did take care to avoid the sumptuous tent that had been pitched for Nim Wei at the center of the flat clearing—the better to protect their client, Grace supposed. The structure was round and large with a pointed top held up by a pole. Scalloped edges circled the roof, exactly as she’d pictured a king’s siege tent. The temptation to sneak closer was very strong. Though the outer walls were a heavy black silk brocade, their inner lining glowed in red satin. Much of the minstrel’s baggage had consisted of vibrant pillows. Some of the men were tossing them through the open flap with laughing remarks about why a woman would need so much padding, but this was probably because their employer wasn’t inside yet.

To judge by their behavior, Nim Wei’s male dress made her seem fast to medieval folks. Grace thought the way she acted, the way she carried herself and spoke, made her seem queenly. It didn’t strike her as so farfetched to think of the minstrel weaving magic—a theory that wouldn’t have occurred to her before she herself became a character from a ghost story. Even if she was mistaken about Nim Wei casting spells, this woman was used to people doing her bidding.

Considering Grace was pretty sure she
wasn’t
mistaken, Nim Wei shouldn’t have fascinated her as she did.

Not wanting to be seen the way she’d been in the tavern, Grace hugged a tree and peeked around it. Nim Wei and the lean, orange-haired man named Charles were strolling hand in hand up the wooded hillside to the minstrel’s sybaritic silk shelter. Charles’s boots crunched through the bracken, but Nim Wei was so light and graceful her steps didn’t make a sound.

The pair had been down to the river. Charles’s bright hair was wet, his gaudy clothing damp here and there. Nim Wei must have ordered him to strip and wash for her. He didn’t seem to have minded it. His eyes were all for her, his smile mischievous and broad, anticipating the pleasures he either thought or knew she’d be offering. His fresh-scrubbed skin was covered in ginger freckles, but both his face and his physique were nice. Charles was tall and strong and healthy, and Nim Wei was licking her lips as if she enjoyed all those things. When she paused to look up at him, the starlight seemed to strike gold sparks in her tilted eyes. Charles gazed into them, utterly enraptured.

For one strange moment, Grace wanted to be the minstrel, wanted to know how it felt to cram so much feminine power into one petite package. That Nim Wei might be a witch hardly mattered, or that she had—current seduction notwithstanding—obviously set her sights on Christian. This interlude with Charles might even be a ploy to make him jealous. The possibility didn’t squelch Grace’s interest. To her, Nim Wei seemed enviably free of fear, not to mention consideration for opinions other than her own.

If Grace had been a woman like that, and if she hadn’t died, she really could have made something of her life.

Longing poured through her, as unexpected as it was intense. Grace wanted her dreams back, wanted everything she’d found in this time
and
everything she’d lost. Charles seemed the perfect reflection of her yearning as he glanced around to make sure the other men were gone, then clasped the minstrel ardently to him. Nim Wei stretched to him as he kissed her with his mouth open, wrapping him in her arms and unabashedly urging him on. Charles began to writhe in her embrace, the part of him that most desired contact pronounced enough to make Grace flush when she caught a glimpse of it. Her fingers dug into the bark of the tree that hid her, needing something to hold on to.

“Grace,” said a soft voice behind her. “What did I tell you about spying?”

When she spun to Christian, his face was both amused and concerned. He reached out his hand for hers, jerking his head for her to come away with him. Grace wished she could truly feel the fingers she accepted.

“You aren’t worried about your friend?” she asked. Though it seemed to her that she was walking—she could almost feel the ground—her footfalls made no more noise than Nim Wei’s. “What if that woman does something to him?”

Christian strode half a minute longer before answering. They could still see the camp through the red-leafed trees but were too far from it to be heard. “I expect Charles is hoping, most heartily, that she will do quite a bit.”

“But what if she has more in mind than—”

Christian placed his buzzing hand on her lips. “Charles is a grown man, and she is clearly a grown woman. Whatever her methods of luring men to her, they are both entitled to their pleasure.”

“But—”

“Hush, Grace. I do not think she would truly hurt Charles, not with so many witnesses.”

Still unsettled, Grace threw a look over her shoulder in the direction from which they’d come. She hadn’t gotten the impression that Nim Wei meant Charles harm—unless you counted the harm that could come from riding a man just as hard as could be done.

That thought pulled hot blood to her cheeks again.

“Grace,” Christian said, calling her attention back with a low chuckle. “Stop wishing you were in Nim Wei’s slippers and come with me to my bedroll.”

“She
can take him,” Grace said, unable to keep her resentment in. “She can touch and hold and kiss him all over.”

Christian’s breath caught and then came faster at her words. She suspected he was trying to control his responses. She couldn’t actually hear him panting, but she could see his ribs expand. He must have realized this, because he laughed softly at himself. “You are the witch to be reminding me of that. You know we shall have little privacy even if you—”

Abruptly overcome by what he wanted, he stopped speaking and swallowed. He stared at her eyes, her mouth, and then his gaze drifted to her breasts as if magnetized. Grace knew their tips were pointed, just as she knew her bosom must be trembling from the quick thumping of her heart. Every ache she’d ever felt for him seemed to pile into a heap between her legs. She looked down his torso to find his erection thrusting aggressively behind the cloth at his groin. It seemed an intimate thing to be staring at. When he made a soft, longing sound, Grace could have wept for it.

“I wish ...” she said.

Christian placed his hand above her heart, the gesture tender and featherlight. He wasn’t trying to hush her, but to show her he understood.

“Yes,” he said. “So do I.”

W
hen Christian returned to camp—with Grace in his ghostly tow—Michael was spreading both their bedrolls on the bare, hard ground. Michael had chosen a spot at the edge of the main clearing, within eye- but not earshot of the others. Two axe-headed halberds and the upper portions of their armor leaned at the ready against a tree.