The Warlock's Daughter (7 page)

“How very convenient for you—a doting
consort
of the correct lineage.”

“It didn't turn out that way,” he said, clenching his hand on the heavy draperies as he rested his forehead on the cool glass of the window. “I saw you, spoke to you, and was enchanted—more than that, entranced. The future seemed perfectly cloudless.
At least for a few short minutes.”

She considered what he had said while watching the portion of his set face that she could see from where she stood. “And what happened to change it?”

A short laugh shook him. “I realized exactly who and what you are, how you think and feel and the depths of love you are capable of giving. And I was consumed by terror.”

“I don't think I understand.” She had some small inkling, but could not bring herself to accept it without confirmation.

“We have spoken of your origins, but not of mine,” he said without turning. “As it happens, both my mother and father have the power. You, on the other hand, are only—”

“Only a warlock's daughter.
A half-breed, you might say.”

“It's possible that it matters.”

“A case, I perceive, of correct lineage and royal protocol.” Her voice was constricted.

“You know better!” he said in savage denial. He paused. When he spoke again, he was calm once more. “You should understand it perfectly, since you pointed out the problem. I saw it from your side earlier, and found it amusing. It never occurred to me to turn it around until just now when—”

“When you took me in your arms.”
She was growing used to finishing his sentences for him, and having her own finished. It was the one of the many consequences of over-acute perception.

“In a manner of speaking,” he agreed with the wraith of a smile.

“I am not like my mother,” she said, because it seemed that he might not go on.

“No. And yet, how much difference is there? You were concerned enough for me when you thought that your strength might be a danger to me. You are a potent force, made more so by intelligence and imagination. But I know—without arrogance if you please—that my power can overcome yours. It has been proven.”

“And because of that,” she said slowly, “you are afraid that you are a danger to me.”

“The possibility exists. It is too dire to be ignored.”

The tension between them had teeth and vibrancy. She said against it, “It could be given an ultimate test.”

He turned with careful control. There was
a sheen
of perspiration across his forehead. “No.”

“Don't you think your concern is excessive? You said yourself that a single night of love could hardly be fatal.”

His laugh was mirthless. “I said a great many things, but—no.”

“Why?” she asked, and let the single word stand as a bald demand.

“I don't want or need the pain of something that must end so soon.”

“It would pain you to end it?” she said softly.

“Rather, such a temporary joining is useless to me. I prefer forever.”

“Forever,” she repeated with light rising in her eyes and the soft, sweet echo of the word ringing in her mind along with her own preference.

“A permanent union being clearly impossible, a few hours of pleasure is a risk for which the penalty may be too dear.”

His eyes, she saw in the brightness of the many candles, were not actually black but a dark and mysterious green. Across them was a near-mortal wash of pain and distress. It gave her courage.

“Only,” she said in quiet certainty, “if you value the thing will you lose too—dearly.”

Renfrey
watched her from across the room while his mind raced in cogent thought. He knew he had shown momentary weakness, knew it must be corrected. His decision was made and accepted between one breath and the next.

The words even, he said, “You think I am concerned because I love you? I have admitted to being entranced, and might have been more, given time. But there is none available and my emotions are, in keeping with my kind, imminently controllable. I have a care for you now, but no more than I would take with any moderately pretty lady of the evening who happened to be weak, silly and supplicating.”

The verbal blow was devastating, and meant to be. She had expected something of the kind, however, so did not permit him to see her flinch. Her eyes clear, her tone acid-edged, she said, “It's just as well then, don't you think, that I'm none of those things?”

He tested that declaration, accepted it. When he spoke it was in answer to her thought rather than her words. “You are feeling combative? This is a duel no one can win, a challenge I must refuse. If you will change your clothes again, I will take you home to your aunt.”

“Change?” she said with a lifted brow. “Oh, but I believe I've grown fond of this ensemble; it makes me feel quite—regal. In any case, it was chosen especially for me and I am convinced that it flatters.”

“Keep it, then,” he said shortly. “Shall we go?”

He was anxious to be rid of her. That was promising.

“You know,” she said judiciously, “I don't think we shall. All these exertions have made me hungry, and it would be shameful to waste the midnight supper you so thoughtfully ordered.”

He watched her for long, unblinking moments before he said in pleasantly conversational tones, “I could send you on a whirlwind.”

“No doubt,” she answered at once. “Then who would be throwing a—what was the phrase?
Oh, yes, a temper tantrum of the elements?”

“
Carita
—”

The word, ragged at the edges, ground to a halt.
He looked down at his hand that was curled into a fist. By slow degrees he opened it, forced a gesture of graceful acquiescence. “Yes. Well. By all means let us
be
adult and mannerly and civilized, at least in so far as we are able. You are hungry. So
am
I. Shall we dine?”

“Sup,” she corrected him. “It's too late for anything else.” She paused, watching him, but if he recognized the allusion to his own declaration, he did not show it.

They took their places at the table. Polite to a fault, stiff with decorum, they began their meal.
Renfrey
drank too much. It did not make him drunk, of course, but did incline him to morose self-judgment.

He should have forced her to go. She might have fought him, but he had no doubt that he could have prevailed. To be constrained to sit and watch her, knowing that he had only to reach out his hand for her to come to
him,
was indescribable torture. It was perverse of him to be grateful for every minute of it.

He loved the proud tilt of her chin, the determined set of her lips,
the
light of battle in the deep and rich sea-blue of her eyes. She had not given up; he knew that. He must and would counter every wile and stratagem she concocted, still he saluted her fiery spirit. Even as it gave him cold chills.

By all the saints of this hallowed eve, but he wanted her. She knew it, because he himself had told her. In exerting himself to convince her that the glory of loving was possible between them, he had succeeded far too well. Now he was determined to convince her otherwise, and all her powers were arrayed against him.

He had, ordinarily, a penchant for irony. This particular incidence of it did not entertain him.

Still, this time could be used for the accumulation of memories.
The gleam of the candlelight on her skin.
The imperious sweetness of her smile.
The perfection of the gown of his choosing.
He would not remember, if he could help it, the pleasure of dressing her in it.

Mental perception could sometimes be more vivid than bodily experience.
Such as the moment when he had embraced her out on the street.
That rare accord had, of course, been shared.

He looked up, startled, to find her watching him. She lowered her lashes at once, but he had seen the dazed satisfaction there. She had, for an instant, slipped into his mind as he had penetrated hers. It had felt like a wondrous completion.
Something more to guard against.

It was also, he thought, the first foray in the battle. As such, it was an indication of the tactics she might use. He wondered how strong his defenses were against that kind of insidious invasion.

It did not help, of course, to realize that he had shown her the maneuver himself.

There were methods in her repertoire, he discovered, that he had certainly not taught her. The way she drank her wine, wetting her lips with it and licking the drops with small, delicate strokes of the tip of her tongue. The manner in which she curled her fingers around a bread stick, buttered it with care on one end, and then ate it with tender precision. Her deliberate movements as she chose a small ripe peach, rolled it between her hands while breathing the aroma, then bit into it with small, sharp teeth.

Wincing,
Renfrey
swallowed hard and reached for his wine glass. It tasted, he found, of peach juice and the fresh sweetness of her lips. Damn her.

How had she known? How had she discovered his most fevered fantasies? She was an innocent. Unless.

Unless she was following the lead of his own licentious thoughts and impulses.
No one else, ever, had been able to do that to him. He felt the tops of his ears grow hot.

He was—or had meant to be—a gentleman: impassive, correct, forbearing. This was too much. He focused his attention on her peach.

She exclaimed and spat out the next bite that had become a virulent, poisonous green. Screwing up her mouth, she reached for her water glass.

She drank deep, slowed,
tilted
the glass at a slight angle. A single, pure drop fell from the base of the crystal stem. It caught the candlelight in prism fire as it struck her chest above her décolleté and rolled, unerringly, over the blue-veined curve of her breast and into the shadowed valley between them.

Renfrey's
eyes burned as he watched. The inside of his mouth was desiccated, parched for the taste of that life-giving drop of water. He could feel it on his tongue. He could also feel his tongue on her skin, circling the satin firmness of her breasts, tasting the taut nipples. She was a fountain, bounteous, endlessly flowing, life for the taking.

She had done it to him again.
Incredibly.
Anger smoldered, rising to heat the top of his brain. He glanced at her fingers on the glass, tipped his head a bare inch.

Her hold on the piece of crystal slipped. Water cascaded. The front of her gown was drenched with icy cold wetness.

She
gasped,
a sound of shock. She reached for her napkin.
Stopped.

Her eyes, as she raised them to
his own
limpid gaze, were bright with fury. An instant later, they turned fluid, piteous yet rueful. “Oh, dear,” she said. “It seems I'll have to change after all.”

It was a fascinating transfiguration. The gown dissolved into a delicate mist, the jewels disappeared. For an instant, there was a glimpse of rose nipples, a narrow span of waist compressed by a miniscule corset, the slender turn of shapely thighs under
pantalettes
. The vision evolved, became one of sentient ivory nakedness behind drifting folds of tissue silk. Then she was covered by swirling material forming a simple oriental robe of robin's egg blue edged at the low-dipping neckline with the icy sparkle of perfect diamonds.

He should have looked away, but could not find the will. “Mesmerizing,” he said, and meant it. God help him.

Something must be done to counter the effect of her ploy. Hot, he was so hot; he had to cool off. Yes, of course; that should help. He added with false concern as the temperature in the room began to drop precipitously, “But I hope you won't be too chilly in your light draperies.”

She was apt, inconceivably so, in her intuition. And she had no hesitation in the attack.

“It's doubtful I will freeze,” she answered as log fires laid in the marble-faced fireplaces under the mirrors at either end of the room burst into flames. “But a fire is so much more enjoyable on a rainy night. Think how lovely it would be to lie before it, even to make love there to the music of the rain.”

Outside, a slow and steady downpour began. It pattered and drummed into the garden, releasing the fragrances captured there so that they penetrated into the closed house. The rhythm of the rain was hypnotic and infinitely inciting.
Renfrey
listened in stony silence while he conquered the tightening in his groin.