Touch of Rogue (4 page)

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Authors: Mia Marlowe

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Fantasy, #Historical Romance

BOOK: Touch of Rogue
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“Very good, sir.” Fenwick pulled the door closed behind him.
Jacob squared his shoulders and retrieved the dagger, careful to hold it by the leather scabbard. He pulled out his handkerchief and drew the blade, laying it on the escritoire in the corner, where the lamplight was stronger.
The dagger was beautiful in the manner of deadly things, elegantly formed and honed to razor sharpness. Now that he had time to study it, he realized the undulating design etched into the blade resembled a tree with branches spread.
The Tree of Life?
he mused. Not likely on an instrument of death.
Perhaps a representation of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, or the Norse World Tree, Yggdrasil.
Jacob shook his head. He felt as though he’d seen this design fairly recently, but couldn’t quite place it. Perhaps if he concentrated on the dagger’s other properties, the meaning of the etching would become plain. He suspended his hand a half inch above the blade and let the ore sing to him.
Since the metal was an alloy, the sound of individual ores rose from an indistinct blur, like a choir warming up in myriad different keys. First came the low rumble of iron, followed by nickel’s tinny voice. Cobalt, the element named for an evil spirit with a lugubrious cackle to match, joined the chorus.
Given that mix of metals, he’d lay odds the blade had magnetic properties. To test it, he picked a steel letter opener from the top drawer of the desk, careful to protect himself from direct contact with the handkerchief. No point in flooding his senses with metals to no purpose. Sure enough, the blade point chased the opener in jerky pivots when he held it close. The field was a strong one and seemed to grow in power the longer he tested it. He had to use both hands to keep the dagger from stripping the letter opener from his grasp and barely managed to yank it away before the blade whipped off the desktop in its lust to follow the opener.
It flew across the room and buried itself in the spine of his copy of
Cicero
, an old tome whose ink was heavily laced with iron. The ornamental hilt quivered with the force of the blow.
“Why in God’s name would anyone want a magnetic blade?” Jacob could envision all sorts of unforeseen outcomes in the course of a fight. A magnetic blade might become firmly attached to any susceptible metal. The hand that wielded it could lose it to a lamppost, come to that.
Unless the purpose of this blade was more ceremonial than combative. The heavy ornamentation suggested as much, but the lethal edge was wickedly sharp. Jacob suspected Lord Cambourne hadn’t even felt it slide between his ribs till it punctured his heart.
Jacob replaced the letter opener and retrieved the dagger. With a healthy respect for the unknown, he centered it on the desk again and brought his forefinger closer to the blade, careful not to make actual contact. The melodious tones of gold and silver peeled through his mind next, making this an odd alloy for a blade. They were too soft for weaponry, but he heard their presence in unusual abundance nonetheless.
There was something else there as well, a rustling sibilance on the edge of sound, but Jacob couldn’t quite make it out.
He’d have to touch it.
He lowered his fingertips to rest on the cool surface and then jerked them back in reflex. It was iridium. A hard, almost unworkable metal he’d first encountered at Prince Albert’s Grand Exhibition a few years ago. Men of science doubted its usefulness since it was unavailable in any but the smallest of quantities and possessed such a high melting point that common metallurgical methods were ineffective.
And yet long ago someone had discovered a means to meld it into this dagger and its five doppelgängers.
Jacob drew a deep breath. He’d learned as much as he could this way. It was time to bond with the dagger. He removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. Then he closed his eyes and laid his palm across the flat of the blade, leaning his weight on that hand to maintain contact.
And was sucked into a cold, dark hell.
Disembodied, he tumbled through pitch blackness, pinpoints of light wheeling around him. Then he felt himself accelerating, faster than the fleetest steam engine, tight as a silent scream. He gained a sense of heaviness, of falling toward the blue and green orb that loomed ahead.
He shuddered into something he couldn’t see. Flames licked around him, burning off dross in a fiery rendering. He was buffeted by hot wind, the sudden noise of flame and friction deafening after the silence before. He shot across an inky sky, trailing fire. Then an empty moor rose to meet him and he slammed into the ground, leaving a trench behind him and finally coming to rest in a smoking crater.
Jacob lifted his palm from the blade and was snapped back into his own reality. He grasped the desk with both hands to steady himself, half expecting to see smoke rising from his bare forearms, but real as it seemed, even his hand was not scorched by the vision. As expected, though, pain lanced his head.
So the metal was sky-born.
Offspring of a meteorite,
his rational mind corrected. Still, its unusual origins explained some of its properties. He might try again later to discern how the ore was discovered and by what magic of metallurgy someone had fashioned it into the dagger.
But now he turned his attention to the hilt. It should tell him about the people through whose hands the dagger had passed. Before he reached for the haft, he settled into the desk chair, deciding it wiser to attempt such a melding while seated.
Jacob held his hand close, letting the haft speak to him. The hilt’s composition was much less exotic than the blade. Common, in fact, but for the inlaid precious metals and gemstones. The jewels were silent to his gift.
If he needed to, he’d take the dagger to his cousin Viola. She had the same affinity for gems that Jacob did for metals, a quirky inherited ability that touched only a few of his relations as far as he knew.
His brother didn’t possess it, he was certain. Jerome was a stolid sort, thoroughly grounded in the material world. The idea of perception beyond the normal senses made the earl scoff. Viola suspected some of their other cousins might have inherited the enhanced gift of touch, but the ability was freakish enough that none of them wanted it noised about. It wasn’t something the Prestons discussed often, even among themselves.
But Jacob suspected the metals in this dagger would tell him all he needed to know without bothering Viola about the gemstones. With grim determination, he closed his fist around the hilt.
The old man leaned down, peering through a glass that rendered his eye bulbous and out-sized as he gazed at the weapon. He smiled, the satisfied acquisitive smile of the dedicated collector. He stroked the dagger on his massive desk, fingering the flat of the sleek blade as gently as if it were his lover’s skin.
Then he wrapped his fingers around the haft and hefted its weight, making a few practice cuts in the air. He rose and cavorted about the room, an aged pirate with cutlass drawn. His years dropped away and his face lit up like a boy’s on Christmas morn.
Then his face changed. His heavy silver brows beetled as the hand that held the blade began quaking. The tip of the dagger turned back, bending his wrist toward him.
Eyes wide, he extended his arm, trying to lock his elbow, but the joint gave way. He grasped the hilt with both hands, but the blade drew inexorably toward his chest. The man’s mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. His lips locked in a rictus of terror. A vein bulged on his forehead, straining with the effort of holding back the dagger.
He stumbled backward into his desk chair and lost his grip on the hilt. The blade zinged into his chest with the force of a cannon shot.
“Sir, please, sir. You must wake up.” Fenwick’s voice drifted down to Jacob as if he was lying at the bottom of a deep well. A hand clamped on his shoulder and gave him a shake. “You’re bleeding, sir, all over the carpet. Mrs. Trott will be fit to be tied if I don’t get that stain cleaned up before she sees it.”
Jacob pried open one eye. He was vaguely aware that he was splayed on the floor instead of seated at his desk, with no notion of how he’d come there.
Fenwick’s homely honest face peered down at him, pinched with concern.
“Ah, that’s the ticket, sir. Let’s get you up and see what’s what. Mind the blade there. No hiding the rip in the rug, I suppose. That’ll put Mrs. Trott on a proper tear and no mistake.”
The dagger was standing upright near Jacob’s armpit, its point buried in the Persian rug. Fenwick was right about how Jacob’s housekeeper would react. Mrs. Trott’s parents had given her the unlikely Christian name of Waitstill, but she wasn’t the sort to suffer fools in silence. His housekeeper would have a conniption when she discovered the new defect in what she considered to be “her” carpet. In fact, all of Jacob’s town house was Mrs. Trott’s domestic domain, and for the most part, he was pleased to allow her that fantasy. As long as his home was spotless and his meals hearty and served on time, Jacob was content.
With Fenwick’s help, he struggled to his feet. His tongue felt three sizes too big for his mouth.
Fenwick investigated the bloody rip in Jacob’s vest and shirt, searching the skin beneath for the source of blood. He heaved a relieved sigh. “Only a scratch. Have you right as rain in no time, sir. Come now.”
“No,” Jacob whispered hoarsely. “Have to ...” He fetched out his handkerchief and reached for the dagger again.
“Don’t trouble yourself, sir,” Fenwick said. “You tasked me with it. I’ll see to that infernal thing presently.”
“No!” he said with all the force he could muster. The dagger had killed Lord Cambourne. It had tried to kill him. Damned if he’d let anyone else handle it.
Even though his head was near to exploding, he shook off his servant and bent to retrieve the weapon. He slammed it into the protective leather scabbard and trudged across the room. With a touch on the secret spring behind the Gainsborough landscape over the fireplace, the painting slid to one side to reveal a platinum-lined wall safe. Once he secured the weapon, Jacob sagged against the fireplace, resting his pounding forehead on the cool marble mantel.
“Here, sir, I’ve brought your tonic.” Fenwick pressed the drink into his hand and then positioned himself under Jacob’s arm on the unwounded side to help him to his chamber.
Jacob upended the glass, waiting for sweet oblivion to deliver him from pain. He’d learned one thing at least. Lord Cambourne’s hand might have been on the hilt of the blade that killed him, but he hadn’t meant to use it to end his own life. Lady Cambourne would be gratified to know her husband’s death was not a suicide. It was obvious from Jacob’s vision that the poor man had no control over the blade.
Who or what did was another question entirely.
He flopped on his bed, letting Fenwick tug off his boots. Before he faded completely into the opiate cloud of his tonic, Jacob realized he’d learned another thing as well.
Lady Cambourne was right to be afraid. But why did she feel guilty as well?
C
HAPTER
3
 
J
acob thrashed on his bed, slipping in and out of fitful, opium-laced dreams.
A shining cream-colored orb filled his vision. Subtle lights swirled in the hard nacre of the pearl button. He closed his teeth over it and bit it off.
Lady Cambourne laughed. He spat the button out and went for the next one, marching down the front of her bodice as they rolled together on his capacious bed.
“No,” she said, palming his cheeks to turn his face away. “Let me undo them or my modiste will have a field day gossiping with her friends about how I lost my buttons.”
“Be quick then,” Jacob said.
Or maybe he only thought it. Words were slow to form on his tongue after taking his tonic. His dreams were just as bum-fuzzled. It was hard to be sure whether this
was
a dream or whether Lady Cambourne was actually there with him, writhing on the sweat-soaked linens. Either way, his need to see more of the countess’s skin was fast becoming more important to him than determining the reality of the encounter.
As quickly as she undid the buttons, he peeled back the fabric of her bodice.
Her breasts rose in soft mounds above the lace at the neck of her all-in-one. The fabric was sheer enough that her dark areolae showed through, beguiling shadows around the pointed tips. He bent and suckled her through the thin linen.
She clutched his head to her, murmuring incoherent encouragement.
Even with the fabric separating them, she was the sweetest thing he’d ever tasted. Her flavors burst on his tongue—honey and treacle and spun sugar.
But he wanted more.
He turned her around to face away from him, none too gently, and yanked at the laces of her bodice. His fingers were too large, too clumsy, and he fouled the cords in a hopeless knot.
He growled in frustration, skimming the surface of consciousness. Her voice called him back to the poppy-laced deeps.
“Use the dagger to cut them,” she suggested.
He and Lady Cambourne were suddenly no longer in his soft bed. They were somehow standing in his parlor and the safe’s door hung open at an odd angle, like a drunkard clinging to its hinges trying to remain upright. A chill crept over him as the dagger began to sing.
He stopped his ears against the weapon’s summons, focusing on the call of his cock instead.
“No, milady,” Jacob said. “We’ll manage without using the blade.”
He kissed her while he tugged the undergarment down far enough to free her breasts. They were plump and soft and fit his hands perfectly. When he thrummed her nipples, her whole body hummed in response. He smelled the color of her skin, tasted the sound of her sighs. His hand found the slit in the crotch of her all-in-one.
She was slippery as a mossy well. Warm and fragrant as a hothouse orchid. He plunged a finger in to gather her nectar. She shuddered when he stroked the right place, delight making her chant his name.
“Aubrey.”
Not Mr. Preston. Not even Jacob. She called him Aubrey in breathy, loving tones. No one had ever used his middle name except his mother, and then only as in “Jacob Aubrey Preston, you young scamp, just you wait till I tell your father.”
He decided he liked it this way much better. It gave him license to think of her as Julianne instead of “milady.” The way she said his name made it seem as if she knew him, and not just the parts he wished her to know, but all of him. His weaknesses, his strengths, his honor, and his shame—he was laid bare by that simple “Aubrey.”
And yet he felt accepted.
But then from the corner of his eye, he saw that the dagger was no longer in the platinum-lined safe. It lay like an ill-wish between the fire irons of his hearth, the lethal tip pivoting from one to the other in time with Jacob’s heartbeats, steady as a metronome. The tree on the blade swayed as if caught in a stiff wind. An oak in a gale.
A Druid oak.
The connection bubbled up to his conscious mind and lodged there. He groaned, tangling the bed sheets as he rolled over to seek his dream once again.
He walked the countess backward and pinned her against the wall, so he wouldn’t have to look at the dagger. If it came nearer, his unprotected back would be in its malevolent path, not hers. The lady made a soft, needy noise and arched against him.
He shoved the blade from his mind.
She hitched a knee over his hip and rocked her pelvis, coating him with her slick dew.
“If I don’t take you now, I’ll die,” he gasped.
“Don’t die.”
He lifted her, poised himself at her entrance. Her gaze locked with his, her eyes sloe-lidded and languid. Balls clenched, he began to lower her by inches on his hard length, watching her mouth go passion-slack as he filled her. He felt her heartbeat between her legs, pulsing around his cock, her life’s blood flowing around him, through him.
He wanted to go faster. He wanted to draw out their loving. He wanted time to collapse on them and leave them suspended in aching need till they both came in ragged waves from sheer wanting.
There was a loud pounding in the distance. Someone was calling his name. And they weren’t calling him Aubrey.
He lowered his mouth to hers, determined to ignore the voice, and slid the rest of the way into her velvet channel. She made a sound of surprise and pleasure in his mouth and licked his hard palate with the tip of her tongue. It tickled a bit and they laughed together, the secret laughter of lovers who recognize how ridiculous lovemaking is and how deadly serious at the same time.
Two souls in one joined body, two hearts in peril because the only thing sure in this world was that their joining could not be forever.
Then Jacob heard the dagger’s voice again, but nearer now. It was clear of the scabbard, flying through the air like a loosed crossbow bolt. Headed straight for them.
Lady Cambourne screamed.
 
Julianne pounded on the bedchamber door, but there was no response. “Mr. Preston, I insist you open at once or I’m coming in, whether you will it or not.”
“Your ladyship, I beg you. It would not be seemly,” Fenwick said, trying in vain to insert himself between her and his master’s chamber.
“Is it seemly for your employer to keep me waiting again?” Julianne glared at him until he stepped aside. “Mis-ter Preston!” She rapped her knuckles sharply on the door between each syllable.
A low bellow came from the room, the feral noise sounding more like the guttural cry of a bull standing at stud than something torn from the throat of a man. Fenwick’s eyes went round and he jumped farther away from the door. Julianne grabbed her chance, turning the crystal knob and pushing it open.
“Mr. Preston, I—”
Words failed her. Jacob Preston was standing on his bed, legs spread, knees flexed and fists clenched. His red-rimmed eyes were wild as a stallion’s, his hair sticking out at odd angles like a startled hedgehog. His brows were lowered in a gladiator’s frown. He looked ready for the fight of his life.
Except for the fact that he was naked.
And fully roused, further reinforcing Julianne’s earlier impression of a bull at stud. She’d seen some impressive male members in the past, but this one rendered the others pale and flaccid by comparison. Fully engorged, Jacob’s length and girth were beyond her experience. His ballocks were drawn tight, nested in chestnut curls at the apex of taut thighs.
She forced her gaze away from his groin, traveling up his torso to his well-muscled chest and forearms. Clearly, Mr. Preston didn’t spend all his free time in gaming hells and brothels. A man didn’t acquire that sort of muscular development without regular strenuous work. But there was a blood-soaked bandage near one brown nipple, so perhaps he regularly participated in bar fights instead.
Julianne met his ferocious gaze and wondered if he could even see her. His bloodshot eyes were unfocused and darting. She didn’t think he was drunk. If this was the aftereffect of too much alcohol, she doubted he’d sport such a formidable cockstand.
She sniffed the air and thought she detected a subtle, cloying odor mixed with whisky fumes.
Opium,
she thought with disgust. The upper crust complained about the way gin had enslaved the masses but were blithely unconcerned by their own addiction to laudanum. How was Jacob Preston to be of any use to her if he woke with a head full of poppy each morning?
“Oh, dear, oh, no. Oh, my lady, you’ve ruined me. He’ll have my guts for garters, sure as there’s snot on the face of an urchin,” Fenwick fretted from behind her in the doorway.
“Don’t despair, Mr. Fenwick. It’s not your fault your employer is an opium fiend.”
“Oh, but he’s not usually ... I mean, you don’t understand—” Fenwick began, then seemed to reconsider arguing with a countess. He slipped away, murmuring something about fetching that sovereign English remedy for all ills—tea.
The opium fiend in question rested his bleary-eyed gaze on her and blinked slowly. Then Mr. Preston gave his head a vigorous shake, like a water spaniel emerging from an algae-coated pond.
“G’morning, Julianne,” he said, his speech far clearer than she expected it to be. He seemed to have shrugged off the ill-effects of his night of drugged indulgence with surprising quickness.
She stiffened her spine. “I have not given you leave to use my Christian name.”
One corner of his mouth kicked up. “If a woman’s staring at a fellow in his altogether, you can’t blame the man for assuming she’s given him leave of some sort.” Heedless of his nakedness, he stepped down from the bed and stomped over to the washstand. Then he leaned over the basin while dumping the contents of the pitcher over his head. “We’ll take it turn and turn about. You may call me Jacob. Or Au—well, Jacob will do for now.”
“I’ll do no such thing.” His buttocks were as tight and firm as his thighs, Julianne noted despite herself. His long legs were lightly dusted with the same chestnut hair as his head.
He toweled himself off, sleeking his hair back like seal’s fur. Then he grinned at her. “You will call me Jacob if you want to know what I discovered about your dagger last night.”
Her fingers curled into impotent fists. The man made her want to hit something. Mostly, his cocksure face. “What did you learn?”
His brows arched, clearly waiting.
The name curdled on her tongue till she spat it out. “Jacob.”
“There. Was that so hard?” He still was. His cock pointed toward her merrily. “You know, Fenwick’s a thoroughly capable chap, but it’s much more satisfying to wake to a pretty face like yours. Makes a man glad to be a man.”
“Yes, well ...” There was certainly no questioning his masculinity. She looked away, aware he’d caught her gawking at his male attributes. “Perhaps you’d do me the decency of covering yourself.”
“Haven’t seen one angry in a while, eh?” he said as he ambled toward the bed and pulled off a sheet to wrap around his waist. “But if we want to be sticklers for decency, Julie, may I point out that you’re the one who burst into
my
bedchamber? And I distinctly remember you promising that you’re not easily shocked.”
“I meant about whatever we might discover in the course of our investigation,” she reminded him, trying not to react to the diminutive “Julie.” She refused to give him the satisfaction.
“Does that make this a social call then?” He cocked a brow at her. “I like the sound of that.”
“You’re insufferable.” The sheet slid down on his hips, revealing a thin strip of dark hair starting at his navel that widened as it disappeared into the bulge beneath the linen at his groin.
“Yes, I am, aren’t I? Too bad you need my services, but there it is and no help for it. Ah! Here’s Fenwick with your tea and, if there’s a God in heaven, my shave.” He ran a hand over his stubbled jaw. “A nice close shave makes a man utterly civilized.”
Julianne perched on a small chair near the window while Fenwick poured out a steaming cup for her. “In your case, I suspect it would take a good deal more than a shave.”
“Now, now,” Jacob said. “Is that how friends speak to each other?”

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