Seduced by a Stranger (27 page)

“Now here is a question,” Madeline said, whirling to face her. “Will you scream for him as you burn? Or will you leap from the window to your death?”

Smoke began to fill the room now as more and more of the books caught the flames that snaked and writhed from the hearth to lick at the carpet and the edge of the curtains.

“What of the servants?” Catherine cried. “They will be killed.”

“I care naught for them.” Madeline shrugged. “But probably, most will get free. You are the only one who will stay here to burn.”

Catherine screamed then, long and loud. They only looked at her as she drew breath to scream again.

“Go ahead,” Madeline said, weaving her fingers with Geoffrey’s as she smiled gently at Catherine and nodded her head. “You and I are the only ones housed in this wing. Go ahead and scream. No one will hear you.” She laughed. “Tell me now how you will stay with me and keep the monsters at bay, how you will let none harm me. You fool. You would have done better to think of how to keep them from coming for
you
.”

“Don’t do this.” Catherine looked about desperately, seeing no way to escape, her eyes and nose and throat stinging from the gathering smoke. “Do not.”

But they disappeared into the yawning black tunnel and pulled the portal shut. Catherine turned to the door and closed her hand on the doorknob, twisting and yanking in desperation. Locked tight. And Madeline had taken the key.

Panic surged. She snatched a towel from the washstand and held it over her mouth and nose as she flew to the portal they had closed behind them. She ran her hands along the wood, but whatever trick would open it evaded her.

The fire roared and the smoke churned and she thought that Madeline was right.

She could scream, but no one would hear her.

Geoffrey led the way through the narrow, dark passage, the single candle he held sending out fingers of light to touch the shadows. He could hear Madeline close behind him, breathing fast.

He wanted to turn and strike her.

She had cheated him. Anger churned in his gut, a simmering rage. Catherine was to be his. He wanted her. Wanted to lead her through the steps of his dance. She would be his most satisfying partner, one who fulfilled him. One who could assuage his need, soothe the burn that coursed through his veins. Because she was strong. Because she was brave.

And because his brother loved her.

It would be excruciatingly sweet to take her from him.

But Madeline said no. There was no time. Did he dare go against her? Somehow, over the years, they had become intertwined in a way that made them equal, but not. He was the stronger, the more deadly. But she was cunning and wily. It was always Madeline who helped him hone and channel his urges, helped him created a lovely finesse in his work.

She had even helped him kill during the years he was at Hanham House, utilizing an isolated shed deep in the grounds, bringing him three victims and disposing of them when he was done. Those encounters had been exercises in planning and timing such as no other. But Madeline was ever so good at planning.

Perhaps that was why the episode with Susan Parker had devolved so quickly. Because Madeline was not there to guide him, to calm the power of his need. Susan had been an aberration, an unplanned kill. Not since the first had he been alone like that.

Oh, Madeline had not been there when he killed Martha. Not in person. But they had discussed it at length, and so she was there in his thoughts, in his heart, in the surge of electricity that thrilled his blood. Her voice was there in his mind, guiding him.

He stopped dead, and turned to face her. She was so close at his back that she bumped against him.

“Geoffrey, we must hurry. Do you not smell it? The smoke?”

He did. But he could not squelch the growing urgency to go back, to fetch Catherine.

“I want her,” he said. “In the confusion of the fire, we can bring her away.” They could do it. And he could slake his urges upon her. The thought made him shiver, made his hand stray to his blade, his fingers playing over the hilt.

Pushing Madeline aside, he paced back the way they had come, the tunnel dark and narrow around them.

Madeline caught his arm and tried to make him stop, but he would not.
Could
not. He shook her off with a snarl. Catherine was the jewel in his brother’s heart. There was no surer way to strike him than to take her. Savor her. Cut her and make her bleed.

Aside from the sheer delight of taking her life, she would serve a second purpose. One of vengeance. He owed Gabriel for all the years at Hanham House.

Behind him, Madeline coughed. The sound made his own chest feel heavy and scratchy, and he too began to hack, his nose and eyes stinging.

“Geoffrey, the smoke rises from below,” Madeline cried, clutching at his arm once more. “Where did you set the second fire?”

He paused, looked about. She was right. The air was thick, the smoke curling about their heads and shoulders.

“The library,” he said, and realized that he had made a poor choice. The tunnel from the library joined with this one.

Madeline turned to and fro, agitated, and Geoffrey froze, undecided now. Press on? Retreat? What to do?

“We will go back,” she said, then coughed long and hard into her hand. “Quickly now.”

Good. This was what he wanted. They would go back and fetch Catherine and bring her with them, find another way to flee the burning abbey. Yes, this was good.

He caught Madeline’s hand and they hurried on, the smoke growing thicker, the air warmer.

They came to the portal, and Geoffrey thrust it open. Smoke billowed out toward them, a heavy yellowish-brown cloud. A sickly tongue of flame reached through the open door and curled along the ceiling.

“Geoffrey?” Madeline’s voice was tentative, wary, her fingers curling tight with his.

They could see nothing beyond the door, the fire that Madeline had started earlier creating a thick, greasy barrier. Of Catherine, there was no sign.

Was she dead?

“No!” He would not be cheated of his prize. Geoffrey surged forward, dragging Madeline with him. The smoke seemed to recede before them, sucked back through the open portal into the chamber beyond.

“Geoffrey—” Madeline cried as a ball of fire erupted toward them. Bright. Hot.

So hot.

“Catherine!” Gabriel flung open the heavy, iron-girded door and tore up the stone stairs. The metal strongbox was open on the desk, the letters and journals gone, the fire almost dead in the hearth. But Catherine was not here.

Which meant she was somewhere in the house.

He knew not what malady took him then, but it was a twisted, monstrous thing that robbed him of reason and broke out cold sweat on his skin.

Catherine was in the house, and it was burning.

With a roar, he ran down the stairs, half sliding on the smooth, worn stone, then burst through the door and ran, legs pumping, chest heaving. He could see the flames, great, grotesque flames, ravenously swallowing anything that was not metal or stone.

The servants were running, panicked, across the lawns. Some were organizing to bring water from the lake. Wooden buckets of water passed from hand to hand. A mosquito against a behemoth. A part of him was cool and calm, rational enough to recognize that he must stop and organize them and cull a few from the line to help him search.

But the greater part was filled with hot, swelling terror that rivaled the flames themselves, burning him to ash, eating him alive.

Where? Where would she be?

Madeline’s chamber or her own were the most likely places. His gaze slid to that wing. It was alive, a writhing, twisting creature of orange and red and unbearable heat, belching great towers of black smoke into the darkening sky.

On instinct, he ran full tilt for the garden door. It was the closest. His best hope. If he could only reach her. He would save her. He would drag her from the greedy fire and—

Panting, he reached the door, grabbed for it, and cried out as the handle seared his skin. He tried a second time and a third, even tearing off his coat to wrap it about his hand, but the door would not open. Locked or melted.

From above him came a loud, whooshing roar and the sound of glass shattering. Shards rained down on him, a hailstorm of sparks and ash and glass. He stumbled back, his gaze jerking frantically along the windows on the lower level, searching for one, just one, where fire did not dance behind the panes.

There. At the end.

He ran, vaulting a line of shrubs. He bent his elbow to slam it hard against the glass.

“Gabriel!” A woman’s voice, but he could not stop. Could not wait. He had to reach her. Reach Catherine. She would burn. She would die.

And he could not lose her. Could not face a life without her.

He would survive anything but that.

“Gabriel!” Again, the cry. Louder, more frantic, and he turned and saw her, running toward him, her face streaked with soot, her hair falling about her shoulders, her dress mottled with black-rimmed holes where sparks must have landed and singed the cloth.

The blood rushed from his head until he was dizzy and swaying, barely able to trust what his eyes beheld. Catherine, there before him.

His throat too tight to speak, he surged forward and caught her against him, brutal in his handling, too far into the terrible miasma that overcame him to understand what he said or did. He only held her and buried his face in the curve of her shoulder, and led the two of them in a stumbling dance away from the fire and the danger.

Terrible sounds surrounded them, like an animal crying out in pain, and it was only when she caught his hair and yanked it hard enough to draw his head back and when she pressed her mouth to his and swallowed the din, only then did he realize the sounds came from him.

He was crying, great choking sobs that tore him in two, because he was so grateful, so damned grateful.

“Catherine,” he whispered, and kissed her with all he was, with passion and dominion. She was his.
His
. And she was safe, here in his arms. He kissed her as though there was no one else there, as though he was buried inside her, as though they were not here on the vast lawn with the fire at their back, its monstrous roar filling their senses.

He kissed her as though he was a drowning man and she was air.

“I could not save you.” His chest rose and fell with harsh, gasping breaths. “I could not see how to save you.”

“I found a way to save myself,” she said and kissed him, then kissed him again.

“How?”

“Susan Parker saved me.”

He thought then that she was as addled as he. “Susan Parker is dead.”

“I know, and I am sorry for it. I shall be sorry for the rest of my days. But she saved me. The first night I came to Cairncroft, she accidentally gave me a master key for any room in this wing. I had it in my pocket. It set me free.”

Her words made no sense to him and he did not care. She was here in his arms, and she was alive.

“I thought I had lost you. I thought you were gone,” he said. “I thought—”

Then he only kissed her again because she knew what he had thought.

She eased away and drew a deep breath, cradling his face in her hands before continuing in the tone he recalled from the very first time he heard her speak, her enunciation clean and crisp, her dusky pink lips forming consonants and vowels with perfect elocution. “What sort of wife would I be if I deserted you in your time of need?”

The reflection of the raging flames turned her skin to gold and her hair to copper. In all his wretched life, he had never dared dream that he might find love. That he might find peace from the demons of his past. How was he to know they would come twined together, one and the same?

“What sort of…wife, indeed,” he murmured.

“Gabriel St. Aubyn, will you marry me?”

“Tell me you love me,” he said.

“I love you.”

“Then, yes, Catherine Weston, I will marry you.”

Leaning close, he kissed her, and she clung to him and kissed him back and he could taste smoke and ash and love on her lips. He thought it the sweetest flavor he had ever known.