Regency Rogues Omnibus (77 page)

“Canna I?” she responded tartly. “You will not deter me, Mr. Duneagan! And if you do not tell me what you know now, two things will happen. First, the men I hired to help me investigate this will have your name on the top of the list. And second, you will never get Yojo to talk before you take him all the way back to, Joelle, and then you might miss this, Incubus, because he could be here, right now, in Paris!”

“Incubus left, Yojo! Left Paris!” Yojo screeched from under the bed.

Brynmore heard that! He lifted his upper lip to Kit with a male sneer. “Where did Incubus go?” Brynmore asked the bed.

“No! No! No! Yojo, never heard of Incubus!”

Kit’s pretty lips smirked back at him and her cheeks seemed to glow with challenge. Brynmore did not want to admit what a fine-looking woman she was as he stalked toward her. He grasped her arm lightly, but with purpose, guiding her further away from the bed, crossing the room.

His voice lowered. “I would explain, but you have to promise to go home and let me handle this. I give you my word on that-,”

“No,” Kit interrupted him. “I am in this all the way, Mr. Duneagan, with or without your help. Without, I am sure we will be stumbling across each other as it seems what we are both searching for might lead us in the same direction.”

“Are you daft?” he retorted, with a sharp edge to his voice. “This
is
dangerous. We are not playing parlor games here, Miss Montoya.”

“I’m now aware of that,” she said, lifting her arm from his grasp. “I’m afraid to think about what all this means to where my brother might be.” Brynmore had a tragic feeling of where her brother might be. However, he would never voice it. “Tell me, would you stop if it were your family?” she asked him in a fierce whisper.

Chapter Twelve

Brynmore curled his fingers into fists on both his hands. He was vehemently against involving Kit further ... ever, if at all. But he needed the information Yojo could provide. Now! Not days from now. The main villains could be getting away. Something was off somewhere. He could not trust that all the evil players were going to England. Otherwise, why would the German brothers have been ransacking Remior’s residence? Remior, who was likely Incubus. The fact that Incubus left Yojo behind did not sit well either. It appeared the group was breaking up their partnerships and not in a friendly way. Damn it, the woman had him by the balls, and some inner intuitiveness she had about him told her so. He was going to regret this.

Kit watched Brynmore’s large hand rise, and then he grasped her arm again, this time nearly dragging her behind the curtains. He began to tell her the tale in a low and intense voice. Kit could barely believe the things he told her about the macabre names, Hellion, Incubus, Dame Baset, and the others. All members in The Order of the Satyr. Her heart grew cold when she realized that Clay had gotten a love letter from Remior, the supposed Lord Incubus. Brynmore explained about his friends, Saxon and Joelle, and their kidnapping. He told her about his combined friends and their intentions to stop the cult and its leaders.

Friends indeed. Kit wagered that the male friends Brynmore spoke of were more than friends. What they were, she could not imagine, but Brynmore’s every reaction and movement told her that he was no novice at hunting down criminals. She knew without doubt that Brynmore left out large pieces. However, the parts he told her about were horrible enough, and she shuddered away from hearing the worst, glad that he did not say it. Kidnapping, raping, sexual depravity, cult worshipers. It was all so bazaar. So unthinkable!

But she believed him because too many circumstances surrounding him fit too well. She had seen him at her brother’s, and then again at the police, and he knew Yojo’s name without asking. Oh, she believed him. It was just that the details about The Order of the Satyr were so hard to believe, and she clung to that because it gave her hope. Clay could be all right. He might not be involved with this at all. No one had seen him or placed him in these circumstances.

Nevertheless, Yojo might know, and she had to ask him as much as she dreaded it. She would have to ask him, as well as the things Brynmore needed to know. Kit was surprised at how she was able to remain composed on the outside, while she was a wreck on the inside. But she held to the pretense, acting as if she was ready and strong enough to tackle what needed to be done.

“I’m in,” she said. “And I must go with you!”

Brynmore did not look happy about it, but he nodded. It was one of those trustworthy male agreements. In the end he would do what he thought was best for her and claim, if he faltered on their agreement, that it was for her own safety and protection. Well, she would keep an eye on him. He would find it hard to detach himself from her.

Then she blurted something strange, even to her, as she looked up at him. “I wonder what you look like without all that hair,” she muttered.

She told herself that it had nothing to do with anything, and she had only said it to throw him off balance. But nothing in his body moved, his eyes, his lashes, his mouth . . . even his breathing it seemed, yet his presence intensified. So much so that she stepped back with the female inside her feeling checkmated. She’d never felt such a powerful amount of maleness in a man before, and she realized in that moment that Brynmore could affect her. Woman to man. Male to female. That surprising realization, more than the duty she felt to try to unravel real-life dangerous mysteries, sent her hurrying away from Brynmore, toward Yojo, to find out what she could.

Yojo was difficult. However, having a fuller picture helped her to lead his babbling talk in a somewhat more informative direction. She got him to come out from under the bed. He sat on top of it, fidgeting, but still a bit calmer.

“We want to be friends, Yojo, to help each other.”

Yojo peered at her. “You would be my friend?”

“Yes, of course,” she promised, sitting next to him.

Kit noted that Brynmore stayed strategically across the room, trying, it seemed, for a more relaxed and nonthreatening pose for his large frame.

“Yojo, does bad things,” Yojo muttered, looking down at his square hands. Then, he bounced them on top of his short legs. “But I helped, pretty Lady Joelle!” he added suddenly, with excitement rising in his voice, then falling away.

“Yes, Brynmore, told me. She wants to thank you, I believe,” Kit tried.

“I can see, Joelle?” Yojo exclaimed.

“Yes, if you want to,” she said, patting his leg in an effort to hopefully keep him calmer. “But to do that we need your help. You need to tell us about Lord Incubus and Lord Hellion.”

At just the mention of the names, Yojo squeaked, then he turned and scrambled under the pillows at the head of the bed. “Damn,” Kit muttered.

Brynmore moved as though he would leave his station across the room, and she raised her hand stopping him. “Yojo, we know all about The Order of the Satyr. Joelle, told us everything, and we still want to be friends with you. We need your help. I need your help.”

It was a coaxing affair, lasting over thirty minutes. Yojo would reveal some things, then become afraid again, and she would coax him anew. By the end, she had likely promised him the very moon, and she wondered at Yojo’s methods, because she felt bound to her assurances and promises.

He told them in bits and pieces that he was very frightened because Hellion and Incubus had a very loud argument and falling out. Hellion was furious at Incubus because Incubus was going to leave Hellion and stop their partnership. There was more to the actual reasoning and how it happened, however Kit could only get that fact out of Yojo. The next informative jewel, she could see immediately excited Brynmore as it completely distressed Yojo, was that Incubus had left Yojo behind. But Yojo knew where he had gone ... St. Petersburg!

Hellion, it seemed, wanted to kill Incubus. There was simply no leaving Hellion’s Order of the Satyr. It was stay, or try to leave and die. Yojo was terrified that Hellion wanted to kill him also, and he said over and over that he just followed his Master Incubus’s instructions. Kit could readily see why Yojo wanted to desperately cling to his, “new,” friends and to Joelle. It seemed his life was in danger. Yojo was becoming so agitated, she knew the end was coming to what she could reasonably gather from him for the evening.

Nevertheless, she’d gotten Brynmore the essential parts that he needed, and now it was her turn. “Yojo, I think my brother, Clay knew Incubus. But now Clay is missing and I want you to think hard if you have ever seen him.”

Brynmore started forward hearing Kit’s sudden turn of direction in her questioning. “Clay has golden eyes, Yojo, nearly like a lion’s eyes. He is as tall as, Brynmore, and...”

“Golden eyes?” Brynmore uttered, at the same moment Yojo exclaimed.

“Never see him! Yojo, never, never, never sees him!”

Dread crawled up Brynmore’s spine. He knew immediately that Hellion would crave unusual golden eyes. He was thrice grateful that he’d left out Hellion’s human appendage altar from his explanation of events to Kit. Nevertheless, he could tell by the look on her lovely face that she saw Yojo’s reaction as clearly as he did to mean the opposite of what Yojo exclaimed. He had to divert her. There was no use speculating.

When he reached the bed, he interrupted something Kit was about to say, and Yojo’s excessive noise, by speaking sharply. “Pack one bag, Miss Montoya. You, I, and, Yojo, we are all going to leave for England immediately. Then, I will go onto St. Petersburg.”

Yojo fell silent, looking up at Brynmore, but Kit’s voice caught, seeming to change direction as she stood and grabbed his arm. “Tell me what happens to the missing men, Brynmore.” Her voice rose. “Tell me!”

Brynmore wanted to grab her hand, and then pull her close to comfort her in her rising panic. Instead, he shrugged off her hand and he winced inwardly at the sharpness of his voice. “We have
no
time for this. If you are going to accompany me, I will give you ten minutes to dress and pack, because there is a ship set to leave at midnight and, Yojo, and I will be on it!”

He moved away from Kit, lifting his hand toward Yojo’s shoulder, “Yojo, do you have things to pack. I’m taking you to see, Joelle.”

Kit followed, grasping his shirt sleeve. “Tell me what happens to them!” she exclaimed. Then, she turned to Yojo who had trundled down off the bed. “Yojo, tell me what happens to them!”

She went down on her knees before Yojo as Brynmore nudged Yojo toward the other bedroom. Only Yojo’s pitched voice could be heard clearly, and he shrieked, “Hellion God, sacrifices the worthy.”

“Sacrifices as
in
kill?” Kit asked, exclaiming. The sound Yojo returned, as Brynmore coerced him away, while not saying, “yes,” was a clear affirmative.

Then, an unexpected event happened to all of them, it seemed to Brynmore. The bedroom door came open with its solid surface slamming onto the wall. A tall slender man appeared and marched into the room along with the door leaping open. Brynmore turned with the intent to defend against an assailant, when he heard the thin man yelling.

“What the hell are you doing here with
my
wife? Kit, is this what you do? Sneak away to fuck, this bear!”

Kit gasped, then came to her feet, exclaiming. “Don’t be ridiculous, Nick. How did you find me? What are you doing here?”

Brynmore halted his attacking advance. Strangely, he felt as though he had been punched in the gut. Kit was married!

“When a man’s wife, of infantile character, disappears on some addled-minded investigation, it is her husband’s only course, to save her from her own folly! I’ve had to lower myself to bribe hotel managers to tell me the room of the short blond-haired American woman staying in this establishment!” Brynmore watched this, “Nick,” stop in front of Kit and glare down at her imperiously. “But I see I was only partially right, instead you are of cheap character and not involved with an insipid investigation, but engaged in fucking bears and midgets! My god, Kit, have you fallen completely into your idiocy?”

Brynmore shoved Yojo into the side bedchamber, charging under his breath tersely. “Get your bags. Hurry!”

“Nick, this is none of your business!”

“It is all my business! Someone must school you from your defective ways!”

Brynmore was stunned and livid at the same time. The man was an ass. However, what shocked him more was feisty Kit Montoya taking the ridicule from her donkey-assed husband. He could see she was aghast, but also shamed and somehow instantly downtrodden. It was a travesty, and he wanted to leap to her defense and show her bastard husband what a fine woman he was abusing with his demeaning words and attitudes.

Brynmore knew he would forever regret not doing so. He tried, in his mind, to defend his next unconscionable actions by telling himself that the man was Kit’s husband and he had no right to interfere. However, that was a sham, because his real intent was to immediately use the situation to leave Kit behind, and he hoped, to get her out of The Orders mess and the resulting danger. Cold hearted, aye. He was a bastard, but he would damn well catch the killers in the end.

Kit tried to tug her arm out of Nick’s grip, but Nick held her from following Brynmore and Yojo out of her hotel room.