War Chest: Even Gods Fall in Love, Book 5 (12 page)

Abruptly, she scraped her chair back and got to her feet. “I will pack. I won’t stay here past morning.” The stage passed through the village a mile away. She would catch it and head for London. Surely she could find something there?

As she left the room she imagined she head him call her name, but she did not stop to find out.

Chapter Eight

“Give her time,” d’Argento said as Marcus started from his seat. “Let her cry in peace. No woman wants a man to see her in that state.”

Marcus regained his seat. He wouldn’t give her too much time. She might do something stupid, like leave in the middle of the night. He would not stand for that. “She didn’t deserve that, Amidei.”

“Just as you didn’t deserve an interloper in your house. Devil take it, man, her sister caused enough trouble. Why didn’t you take precautions of your own? What possessed you not to read her mind?” D’Argento reached for the decanter and poured himself a liberal glass of brandy.

“I felt her resistance when I tried it,” Marcus said. “She has natural resistance to intrusion, and you know my thoughts about reading mind to mind. I despise myself for doing it. It is nothing short of thievery.”

D’Argento snorted. “It is what we do. We possess the godhead inside us. It behooves us to use it. How do you expect to defeat our enemies if you remain wilfully blind to taking action? She could have been from Hecate, or any of the forces ranged against us.”

“Why do you name that one?” Marcus said.

“She is behind much of the enmity that faced us in London.” D’Argento sipped his drink. “I am sure of it. Either her, or some other powerful sorceress. Our enemies were helped by someone we have not yet discovered. We will.” He swore long and low, with an inventiveness Marcus reluctantly admired. “We lost good people because of her. Either lost them to death or to wasting their time guarding the Titans in captivity.”

“It sounds odd,” Marcus said. “I was not brought up to think of myself as primarily a god. I was a man first, my mother always told me.”

“Ah yes.” D’Argento raised his glass in a silent toast. “Your parents were heroes. I salute them both. Even more reason why you should be constantly on your guard.”

“The children are mortal. They are no danger to us.”

“You don’t know that. They could be the children of an immortal. You need immortals to care for them, and to watch them. I am sending one such.”

“The nursery maid?” Marcus groaned. “I should have known, when the last one cried off. You did that, did you not?”

D’Argento nodded. “Everything must be secondary to our cause. How do you know you are not harbouring vipers in your home?” He jerked his head, indicating the closed door. “That one could be a viper, sent to defeat you and spirit the babies away. You were so foolish as to not read her, to ensure she was harmless?”

“Is she?” Marcus said, grim-faced. His jaw stiffened.

“Yes, as it happens,” his friend said. Very few people perturbed d’Argento, or Mercury, messenger of the gods and their healer when they needed one. Not even Marcus, the embodiment of the god of war. He was also close friends with Jupiter, who was living in the country with his wife, jailers to Jupiter’s father. “She is Rhea’s older sister, in case you were wondering.”

“I was not.” That was the last thing on his mind. Why should he care how old she was?

D’Argento finished his drink and leaned back, propping his feet on the edge of the table in a totally reprehensible way. Since he was wearing evening pumps and not boots and spurs, Marcus let him get away with it. “You should take care, brother-in-arms. Those children may not be everything they should be. Sometimes attributes are not immediately apparent.” He shrugged. “I believe they were born for a reason.”

“I’m surprised you don’t know exactly why they’re here. You seem to know everything else.” Marcus shook his head. D’Argento looked for enemies around every corner. The fact he had been right a time or two did not negate the times he had been wrong.

“They may be as everyone claimed. Merely babies. They’re six months old, are they not?”

“Nearly seven,” Marcus said. Damnation, how could he recall that so precisely? He did not care for the children and refused to build a bond with them. So why should he care how old they were?

Because Ruth arrived when they were six months old, that was why, and she cared for them. Even before he knew her true identity he had seen that. He marked the time not for the babies’ sake, but for hers. He’d had her in this house for a month. In some ways it seemed longer, as if she’d always been here, and in others, no time at all.

Tonight d’Argento had changed the game. Marcus and Ruth had no more questions to be answered with truth. In the last week or two he had desisted from asking truly meaningful questions, preferring to ask her about her tastes and her experience. She answered, sometimes evasively, but he never caught her out in a lie.

And he would not read her mind without her permission. Since she did not know who he was, how could he do that? He respected her privacy, marked it as special to her. He would not violate it.

He went back in his mind to the questions he remembered. Not once had she lied. That must mean something good, surely? Or maybe it was just because a lie was an awfully hard thing to keep hold of in the longer term, unless one was a professional liar, a fraudster. Or a politician.

Some questions he wanted answers to. They remained, and he would not rest until he asked them. “I need to see her.”

“Leave her,” d’Argento said. He levelled a direct stare at Marcus, emphasising what he was saying. “She is distressed, not thinking. And, my friend, so are you.”

Marcus’s immediate reaction was to tell Amidei to go to hell. His urge was to go to her. D’Argento was right. Ruth was a proud woman and she deserved time to try to get her senses in order before he bombarded her with more questions.

After the first shock, his rationality returned and he could think once again. She had done nothing to endanger the children or to remove them since she’d been here. She’d proved such an excellent companion he was not sure he ever wanted to part with her. Would she agree to stay on in another capacity? To call her a housekeeper would not do her any favours, however, and in the household of a single gentleman, there were few positions a woman could fill and remain respectable in the eyes of her peers. He feared he had probably done her some damage already.

“If it helps,” d’Argento said quietly, “I did not detect any malice in her. I merely skimmed her mind, but the matter of her identity was troubling her, and it remained foremost. Had you merely touched her with your mind you would have seen it. Every time you call her Miss Carter, the truth springs up to confront her. She must have worried about it recently.” He sipped his brandy. “You must never discount hidden malice. Our enemies are cunning. Someone could have bespelled her.”

“No.” Marcus shook his head. He was familiar with the miasma affecting a person under an enchantment. He never detected anything of the kind in Ruth. “She thinks clearly, and her reasoning is excellent.”

“It might be buried deep and waiting to emerge.”

The dark pronouncement held no fears for Marcus. “If it is, then I will deal with it. I’m not without my own defences.” Had d’Argento forgotten just how powerful he was? Or what he had done to free himself? In the pantheon of Olympian gods, Mars was accounted as next only to Jupiter. While Marcus sometimes took his powers for granted, he never underestimated them, nor did he wish himself rid of them, as some immortals did. He would not succumb, not again.

Again? He blinked. D’Argento would help him with something else. “The enchantment Virginie and I suffered. Is it gone?”

D’Argento regarded him steadily. “If you will allow me deep into your mind I will discover if there is anything left.”

“Of course.” As the healer to the gods Marcus trusted d’Argento implicitly. For other matters he would reserve judgment.

Accordingly, he dropped his shields, the ones he had developed to protect his attributes. Vulnerability attacked him from all sides, but also an immense sense of freedom. He was open to the world, waiting for attack, like a warrior on the battlefield who dropped his shield and fought with his hands.

D’Argento entered without fanfare. Warmth and then heat spread through Marcus’s head, then spread to the rest of his body. He waited, expectant, wary of attack. He had no idea how long the examination took, but eventually d’Argento said, “I’m finished.”

Immediately Marcus crashed his protective mental shields back up. They settled into place with a sound like the slamming of an iron door echoing through his mind. He blinked, and turned his attention to d’Argento.

“Nothing,” Mercury said. His eyes were gleaming silver, his face and hands almost unnaturally smooth, as if they were hard instead of soft skin. An illusion that passed quickly, so the lines in his face, such as they were, reappeared and the brilliants on his waistcoat glittered as his breath deepened. “I saw nothing. The enchantment is gone.”

Marcus had suspected as much. For the last few nights he had slept better than at any time since his affair with Virginie. However, confirmation was still a relief. “How?” he demanded. He preferred rational reasons for the events that affected him most.

“Virginie is cured. In her case, love cured her.”

Marcus waited for pain to pierce him at the thought of his lover finding happiness elsewhere. It didn’t come. Only a lingering sadness their affair was doomed from the start. His reaction shocked him. He had become accustomed to thinking of Virginie with regret and longing. When had the change come?

“Love?” He shook his head. “Not in my case.” Who could he fall in love with? Ruth? Before he could muffle the sensation, a surge of pleasure soared through him. But that was impossible.

D’Argento spread his hands and shrugged in a continental gesture. “I am still learning about that affliction. There could be another cause for the cure. Abstinence, for example. I would ask a favour of you, if you would.”

Marcus raised a brow in query.

“Let me know the eventual outcome, would you? You have no trace of the enchantment within you I can discern, but I would know what cured you.”

He could see no harm in that. He nodded. “If I know, then you will.”

“Thank you.”

Oh, lord! “I sometimes walk around the house at night. One night I left fiery footprints which burned themselves out, but I also set my bed on fire.” That night, when Ruth saved him and he kissed her. “Would that be when the last of the enchantment left me?”

D’Argento regarded him with more than a little interest. “You’re the god of war. That means fire. That’s your element.”

“I thought it was earth.”

D’Argento shrugged. “It depends which tradition you subscribe to. Let’s assume fire, shall we? Those prints were your body’s last traces of the spell. You were getting rid of them the most efficient way you knew.”

“I see.” Relief flooded him. Reaching forward, he poured himself another drink and passed d’Argento the decanter. He was free of whatever had afflicted him.

But why? Was it because of his separation from Virginie, or his abstinence from intimate relations? Or something else? Someone else?

They enjoyed their brandy before d’Argento spoke again. “Another matter, if you would. You are about to receive visitors.”

“Oh?”

“I rooted them out on my way here. They live in a castle close to Scarborough, on the coast.”

“Scarborough is hardly on the way.”

“It is if you are coming from the north.”

“Or the sea.”

D’Argento made no comment on that. Did he possess a secret of his own? If he did, he didn’t vouchsafe it to Marcus. “I traced them the mortal way, as I have done for a while. I listed all the people I knew were at that fatal dinner more than thirty years ago, and then followed their movements.” He had done that with Marcus, although Marcus had never been lost. He had always known who he was and the role he was intended to play. “I found them in one of the family’s smaller properties. Their parents are still alive, although they do not venture beyond their house much these days.”

Marcus suspected a sinister reason for that, but he forbore to say anything. He was too interested in what d’Argento needed to tell him.

“Two women. I found Diana, and the nymph Nerine.

Marcus stiffened in shock. As a child he’d been betrothed to a lady called Nerine, but he had not thought of that contract for years, ever since his man of business informed him it was invalid. He’d never pursued the matter and considered it closed. But what if she was meant for him?

An odd sensation made him shudder, instant revulsion to the stray thought. Perhaps because he’d suffered one brush with a potentially disastrous love affair, and he did not want another so soon. Not to mention a potentially disastrous marriage to Rhea Simpson.

Or something else? Even at the height of the affair, he’d kept a part of himself detached, watching like a cynical observer as he made a complete fool of himself in front of London society.

“They have two brothers. One is abroad, and I’m reliably informed he is Diana’s twin Apollo, and the other is a man called Barnabas. He’s immortal, but not a named one.” Many immortals, like nymphs and giants, were just that, without names. “He’s also somewhat simple.” Amidei touched his temple in a delicate gesture. “I met him briefly. By his appearance, I would assume he is a giant of some kind. Though he has two eyes.”

“So not a Cyclops, then.”

“Unlikely.”

“You told them to come here?”

D’Argento slanted a look at him. “Just the ladies. Barnabas does not travel. He feels safer in familiar surroundings. Is there a problem with them calling? They have been living isolated, not sure who they could trust. I want to introduce them to society. Our society, to be specific.”

“No problem.” Except he resented his privacy being invaded.

“They told me they had a contract with you.”

Apprehension gripped him, making his wine sour. He put down the glass. “Not really. Their parents took a notion to marry me to Lady Nerine, and they did draw it up as part of the contract that passed a parcel of land from their possession to ours. In truth I forgot their existence. Our paths never crossed. Since Lady Nerine and I were mere children at the time, the contract has no validity in law.”

D’Argento nodded. “Nevertheless, if you truly want nothing to do with them, you would be wise to have them sign to that effect. Court cases can be expensive, if they decide to pursue the case.”