Stranger (12 page)

Frustration and anger, for himself, welled. Life was easier in his workshop or out in the field. But not this. The complex, baffling architecture of the heart.

And surely his ridiculous circumspection would only drive Gemma further away. He started to turn, to blunder in the dark, but her hand on his arm stopped him.

“All right.” Her voice was gentle. “It’s all right, Catullus.”

He stood, frozen, then heard the soft rustling of the linens. “I’m in bed. Come on.” The sound of her hand patting the blanket. “Lie down.”

Gingerly, he lowered himself to the bed, then reached out and found the shape of her leg beneath the coverlet. Twin impulses assailed him: to stroke her leg, feeling its lithe strength, or to snatch his hand away as though singed.

He did neither, instead slowly pulling his hand back and then stretching out carefully beside her, lying atop the blankets. Her presence beside him held the living energy of summer, radiating out warmth and possibility. The intimacy of a shared bed shortened his breath—he could not remember the last time he’d slept beside a woman, if ever.

“I should warn you,” he began.

“You snore?” A trace of amusement.

“No! At least, I don’t think so. But I usually don’t … sleep much.” Here was another obstacle. His inherited, bizarre insomnia. “Only a few hours at a time, and then I have to get up and … work.”

“On inventions?”

“Yes.”

“Do you go back to sleep after working?” “Sometimes. Often, not.”

He waited for her disapproval, or perhaps for her to tut and say that he simply needed a proper inducement to sleep.
When he was younger, he did try to fight the restlessness that always woke him. He used to exercise—box, swim, fence, run—until barely able to move. Or prohibit himself from doing anything related to work, even reading, at least two hours before bed. None of it succeeded. He had even tried drinking himself into a stupor. When he’d awakened four hours later, he was still drunk and miserable. And, during his earlier attempts at having lasting affairs, his lovers eventually banned him from their beds, saying his insomnia made
them
lose sleep.

“Is that all?” she asked.

He started. “I believe so.”

“I’m a deep sleeper,” she said, her voice already growing drowsy.

“Truly?”

“My mother said someone could operate a cotton gin beside me and I wouldn’t notice.” She yawned hugely. “I’m already halfway asleep. Been an
“—yawn
—“eventful day.”

“It has.”

Then she rolled toward him and gave him a quick, familiar kiss. “Good night, Catullus.” Before he could return the kiss, she had rolled away again. Her hair made a silky scrunching sound as she adjusted her head on the pillow.

“Good night, Gemma.”

A minute passed. Her deep, even breathing confirmed she was already fast asleep.

For some time, Catullus lay beside her, stiff and unmoving, his hands at his sides. His mind swam with everything that had happened that day, the ongoing threat of the Heirs, the Primal Source, King Arthur, thoughts of his distance communication device, but mostly thoughts of her.

It was a fair assessment to say that Catullus had seen a tremendous amount in his time as a Blade. He’d traveled more than most ten men combined. He’d battled frost demons and floods of fire, vicious creatures that defied logical definition, and sloe-eyed enchantresses. Yet never in his
whole life had he met a woman like Gemma Murphy. And she fascinated and terrified him.

But, being a Blade meant he rather enjoyed being fascinated and terrified. And so he eventually drifted off to sleep, his mouth curving into a bittersweet smile.

Catullus met them all at first light. He waited for Gemma, Astrid, and Lesperance in the taproom, having already been up several hours. Yet he felt refreshed, ready to face anything.

Almost anything. When Gemma appeared before Lesperance and Astrid emerged from their room, she was properly dressed, hair pinned, and he found himself caught upon the rack of his self-consciousness. What, precisely, did one say to a woman whose hand alone created the greatest sexual experience of one’s life? And whose own most intimate parts one had touched to her intense pleasure? Then he’d gone and made an ass of himself by insisting he sleep on top of the blanket out of some misguided sense of honor.

“Good morning.” A fair start. “I trust you … ah … slept well.” Too familiar? Not familiar enough? “That is, I hope I didn’t wake you. When I rose. To work.” Which only confirmed the fact that he was, and would always be, too idiosyncratic for any woman to accept.

Gemma, however, smiled, unperturbed. “Mm, I slept
very
well. Thanks to your very skilled hands.” Her smile turned sultry.

Oh, Lord.
“Ah. Thank you. Likewise.”

Thank you? Likewise?
Catullus squeezed his eyes shut, mortified by his ineptitude. He wondered if the innkeeper kept any hemlock.

But either Gemma did not notice his social clumsiness or did not care, because she asked smoothly, “Was it a productive night?”

“By ‘productive,’” he began, cracking open his eyes, “do you mean—?”

“Work.” She pointed to the small leather case that held his tools, resting atop a wooden table. He had, in fact, only just packed the tools up minutes before she appeared. “I imagine sleeping only a few hours a night gives you many more hours to work on your remarkable inventions.”

He brightened. “Yes! Some of my best creations are constructed in the predawn hours, before everyone else is up.”

“No distractions.” She nodded with approval. “I’m too lazy to get up before the sun, but I’m sure it would make me a hell of a lot more prolific.”

Scowling, Catullus said, “You’re
not
lazy. Certainly no one who is lazy would have forged a career for themselves in a hostile environment, which is exactly what you’ve done.”

She appeared momentarily taken aback by his vehemence, as well as his praise; then she smiled again and the lovely sight tugged hard on his chest. “Thank you,” she said. “Likewise.”

He hesitated, unsure whether she was mocking him. She winked.

The tug on his chest turned into something else—a lightness with which he was unfamiliar.

Astrid and Lesperance chose that moment to stride into the taproom. Both wore matching expressions of alert focus, and, based on appearances alone, one would never have known that they had spent a goodly portion of the night engaged in some very—what was the word Gemma used?—
passionate
activities. Catullus, however, had been treated to their uninhibited sounds on and off during the night for the second time in his life. He flushed to see Astrid now, trying to block the mental images.

She was one of Catullus’s closest friends, yet listening to her making vigorous, ardent love made him consider developing advanced earplugs, or soundproof wall material, or both.

Considering the speculative glance Astrid sent toward him and then Gemma, he wondered if maybe his old friend had heard a few things of her own last night. His flush deepened. He had never been an exhibitionist.

He found refuge in command. “Everyone rested? Good. We’ll have a quick breakfast, and then we must leave. There’s a hard day’s travel ahead.” He consulted his pocket watch, then shut it with a decisive snap. “Every minute not spent on the road means the greater likelihood of disaster.”

Urgency meant they needed horses. Impossible to reach Glastonbury in time on foot. But the only horses to be found in the village were as old as its human inhabitants, so there was the loss of an impatient hour to reach a stable with horses to hire. Astrid was the best judge of horseflesh, and she selected three strapping, eager mounts.

They led the snorting horses away until they were a goodly pace down the road. A small wooded stand provided a bit of necessary shelter.

“There are four of us,” Gemma noted, casting a glance at the three mounts.

“I won’t need a horse,” answered Lesperance. He had already begun loosening his clothing as he strode toward the cover of the trees. This had to be out of respect for Gemma, since Catullus and most definitely Astrid had already seen Lesperance unclothed in preparation for his transformation.

Catullus watched Gemma’s face as she stared at Lesperance’s retreating back. Lesperance had whipped off his jacket and his shirt was being tugged off to reveal the sharply muscled expanse of his shoulders. She blushed as her eyes widened. Catullus scowled.

Here was something new: jealousy.

Ridiculous for Catullus to be jealous of Lesperance. If ever a man was entirely devoted to one woman, it was Lesperance, whose love for Astrid obliterated everything. And
the sentiment was returned with the same vehemence. Astrid had loved her late husband, but this bond she now shared with Lesperance glowed white-hot and eternal.

And Catullus and Gemma had spent only one night together. An incredible and awkward night, but just one. He hadn’t even slept under the covers with her.

So there was no rational explanation for Catullus’s surge of possessiveness. None at all. That didn’t stop him from glowering and wanting to plow his fist straight between Lesperance’s shoulder blades. Instead of falling to Catullus’s imagined punch, Lesperance disappeared behind a tree.

With her own far-too-perceptive glance, Astrid took in Gemma’s reaction to Lesperance, and Catullus’s scowl. She raised a brow in silent question at Catullus, and he turned away, pretending to rifle through his bags.

Moments later, an avian shriek unfurled, and a red-tailed hawk flew from behind the tree. Astrid held out an arm. The bird perched there, accepting Astrid’s strokes along its feathered throat with a series of soft chirps that could only be described as contented.

Gemma slowly approached, her wide gaze fastened on the hawk. “Is that …?”

“Yes, it’s Nathan.” Astrid smiled warmly at the bird. “He’ll scout for us, and if he sees any trouble ahead, he’ll let us know.”

The hawk chirped again.

“How will he know where to go?” Gemma pressed. “Has he ever been to Glastonbury before?”

“No,” answered Astrid. “But I have, and so he’ll know.”

Gemma turned confused eyes to Catullus, seeking an explanation.

Still riled, disturbed by his own jealousy, he gritted, “The bond they share. It enables them to find one another.”

Gemma nodded with growing understanding. Wonder lit her face, and she glowed with delight at this newest discovery. “Like a homing beacon.”

“Something like that,” Astrid murmured, scratching just beneath the hawk’s beak. The bird’s eyes shut, rapturous.

“Ready?”

The hawk bobbed its head. Astrid gave a small push with her arm, and the bird took to the air with a few beats of its powerful wings. Everyone watched the ascent, until the hawk became a tiny, wheeling fleck against a pearl gray sky.

“That must be wonderful,” Gemma breathed. “I’ve always wanted to fly.” She turned to Catullus. “Have you ever built a flying contraption? Is such a thing possible?”

“I have and it is,” he answered with a small sliver of pride. He might not possess magic, nor a younger man’s physique, but no one disputed his ingenuity. “Bennett Day used it in Greece not too long ago. Still needs refinement, though.”

And he felt a gleam of satisfaction when Gemma looked up at him with genuine respect. Different, too, from the usual looks he received, especially from women, who were occasionally intimidated. Often mystified, as if he’d wandered in from the bottom of the ocean to display his gills and drip on the floor.

“I’d like to see that,” she whispered. “Maybe when this is over …”

Reality returned with a snap. There might not be
anything
after the battle with the Heirs. A battle they might be able to avert if they reached Glastonbury in time. He had his duty to Blades. And to Gemma, to keep her safe. Which meant there wasn’t a moment to waste on his fumbling attempts at flirtation.

“You can ride astride?”

Gemma blinked at Catullus’s abrupt change of topic, but recovered quickly. “Yes—there weren’t many sidesaddles in the Northwest Territory.”

“Good. Mount up.” He gave a clipped nod and turned away, his mind already miles down the road.

Hard travel taxed the horses and the riders, but as the hours and miles rolled past, alternating between a run and a brisk trot, Catullus pushed everyone—especially himself—even harder. Glastonbury was still half a day away. He saw with a strategist’s eye the familiar English landscape unfold around him: its gently undulating hills dotted with bare trees rattling in the late-autumn winds that offered little shelter against a possible attack, the exceedingly domestic villages and towns that had to be skirted, those stretches of road bound by hedgerows that left the travelers far too exposed for his liking.

Yet he wasn’t alone in his vigil. Astrid was at all times aware of her surroundings, and Lesperance kept watch from the sky. Even Gemma, a stranger to the way of the Blades, never relaxed into complacency as she bent low over her horse’s neck. Catullus allowed himself a moment’s distraction to watch Gemma ride.

She had a natural confident grace in the saddle, despite her skirts bunching as she rode astride. Though she wasn’t a toughened mountain woman like Astrid, Gemma commanded a supple strength all her own. He recalled lucidly the satiny, bright feel of her legs beneath her nightgown and cursed himself for his vivid imagination when his body responded to the mental image. Arousal and horseback riding made for a bruising combination.

Shortly before midday, a hawk’s cry drew them all to a halt.

“Heirs.” Astrid squinted up at the sky, where Lesperance wheeled and banked overhead in a sequence of intricate circles. Catullus at once detected a pattern in the hawk’s movements. “One mile up, at the junction of two major roads. Three men on horseback. There’s a bridge that spans a river, and they’re on it.”

Gemma also looked up, shading her eyes with her hand. “You worked out a communication system ahead of time.”

“A simple code. Easier this way, so he needn’t go
through the bother of landing and transforming into a man.” Astrid turned to Catullus. “Suggestions?”