As tired as she looked, her expression was alive with interest. She fell into step beside him as he led her toward the huge fireplace. "Why are we going into the corner-oh!"
Her exclamation came as he took her hand and led her into the deep shadow at the side of the huge hearth. Only when they came close did the light from the oil lantern reveal a dark, narrow hall, cleverly designed to remain hidden by the ma.s.sive bulk of the fireplace.
He grinned at the look in her wide eyes. "I found it when I was clearing the chimney. It"s not quite a hidden pa.s.sageway, but it"s close. Servants would have used this, probably to carry food and drink to the high table and important guests, so it should lead back to the kitchen, b.u.t.tery, and pantry."
"And hopefully a water source," she said.
"Exactly. Also, this house is big enough, I have my fingers crossed for an inner courtyard."
The sounds of the men working faded as they went down the dark, narrow hall until black silence pressed at them on all sides. They could walk abreast of each other, but Nikolas"s sleeve brushed the wall on his side, and he could see that Sophie didn"t have much room on hers either.
She whispered gleefully, "This is creepy as h.e.l.l."
"It is, a bit." Smiling slightly, he laced his fingers through hers. "Are you sensing any shifts?"
She shook her head. "Not at the moment. I"ll be sure to tell you when I do." Her eyes gleamed as she glanced behind them. She shifted to telepathy. The man who tries to strangle me. You suspect Rhys, don"t you?
His brief amus.e.m.e.nt faded. He has pressed me for details at suspicious times. I look back at things he"s said and how I"ve sensed a certain antipathy in him from time to time. He knew about Gawain scenting Robin and me going to investigate Old Friars Lane. And tonight, not an hour after the men arrived, we got attacked by a large pack of Hounds. When we might have gotten information from the one you had spelled, he killed it. It"s all circ.u.mstantial, and none of it is definitive, but yes, I do suspect him.
She squeezed his fingers. I"m so sorry.
The warmth of her hand in his was a comfort he hadn"t expected to relish. He squeezed her fingers in reply. Thank you.
As they talked, they came to a heavy door, and he handed her the oil lantern before he set to pushing it open. The wood was swollen into place, and the hinges were rusty, so he had to throw his whole weight into the operation. The door screeched loudly as it finally gave and split into two pieces. The wood had rotted at the core.
He stumbled forward outside into the cool, wet night. Behind him, Sophie laughed and cheered. "You were right-there"s an inner courtyard!"
As he righted himself, she held the oil lantern high. It was impossible to see everything in the insufficient illumination, but he got the impression of tangled, overgrown greenery, knee-high gra.s.s, benches, and even a few fruit trees, all bordered by stone colonnades. It wasn"t by any means as grand as some courtyards he had seen, but still, it was a nice, s.p.a.cious place.
His catlike eyes adjusted to the lighting, and he pointed across the courtyard. "There are your privy chambers, and in the opposite corner, there is my well. This house is part wealthy family home and part fortress. I suspected they would have wanted to keep their water supply guarded and to have privy chambers safe from outside interference. n.o.body would want to get attacked while in such a vulnerable position. The kitchen, b.u.t.tery, and pantry will be somewhere over there, by the well."
"This is fantastic." Her eyes shone.
He smiled. "If you need to relieve yourself, you"d better go behind one of the trees for now. Tomorrow we can make sure the structure of the privy chambers is safe and inspect the well."
"Actually, erm." She gave him a sidelong smile and slipped her hand out of his. She tossed her blanket into his arms. "I"ll be right back."
"Take your time." He waited while she took care of her private business, content to study his surroundings.
The courtyard felt full of ghosts from the past. He could see the reason for everything they had done. The benches had been positioned so they would get the most shade from the fruit trees. The well had been covered before the household had left. It must have been an instinctive decision, in case they ever chose to return again.
The moon hung high overhead, lightly veiled in shadowed clouds. On the other side of the front doors, this night was the third night of the full moon cycle, but here, in this place, the moon was half-full. The sight was another reminder that they were not in alignment with the land outside the house, which was both comforting and disturbing at once.
She returned quickly, reclaimed her blanket, and pointed back the way she had gone. "There"s a shift over there."
He looked in that direction. "You didn"t cross it?"
"Oh, no." She shuddered. "The last thing anybody needs is for me to disappear for two weeks while I"m going to the bathroom."
"You"re d.a.m.n right." Setting aside the lantern, he drew her into his arms. She leaned into his embrace and tucked her face into his neck. Rubbing his cheek against her damp hair, he muttered, "You still make me crazy."
Crazy with desire. Crazy with a tangled mess of so many other emotions he didn"t know how to track them all or sort through them. She flung him hurtling along a manic symphony of reaction. Interacting with Sophie was like trying to herd twenty cats at once.
"I make you crazy?" Dropping the blanket, she slipped her arms around his waist. She whispered, "I lost ten years of my life when I saw those Hounds racing after you. It was the most terrifying thing I"ve ever seen, Nik."
He felt her body shudder against his. Remembering his own rapid, violent array of emotions as he watched her run toward him, he pressed his mouth to the thin, fine skin at her temple and told her, "You"re still fired. I mean it, Sophie. I won"t work with someone who disregards my orders so blatantly."
"Pfft," she said. "I don"t need your stupid consulting job. You can keep your money and your high-handed, arrogant a.s.sumption that you get to order me around however you like. I"m going to still do what I want and act as I think best. I meant what I said too-I"m not one of your foot soldiers. Screw you."
As she told him off, she rubbed his back, the touch soothing and arousing at once.
"You are a truly horrible woman," he growled. He slid the tips of his fingers underneath the edges of her sweater, connecting with the warm skin at her torso. The need to kiss her, to feel her full mouth pliant and moving under his, was pounding in his head. "s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g sounds better and better all the time."
"And I can"t believe you"re such an a.s.shole." She crooned the words, almost as if they made her happy.
He tilted her face up. "Sophie," he whispered. "I"m no good for you. My life is desperate and violent all the time, not just tonight, and now you"ve gotten trapped in a conflict you can"t leave."
"Oh Nik," she murmured, stroking his hair. "It really is impossible for you to grasp that I am fully capable of making all my own choices. I am fully autonomous in my own right. I"m not going to agree with you all the time, and I"m not going to take your orders. I am my own sovereign state, and I"m standing right here in front of you because I want to be here. I"m beyond being insulted by you. Right now I"m just weary. If you can"t respect me enough to accept that, I don"t know what the h.e.l.l we"re doing."
As she talked, she slipped out of his arms and turned away. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her back. "If I didn"t respect you, I wouldn"t be standing here right now," he growled. "Do you want to know the truth? You scared me tonight. I watched you running straight into danger, and I thought my heart was going to burst out of my chest. And when you don"t take orders, and when you act like a loose cannon, I don"t know how to plan my actions around you. That"s what orders and acting like a cohesive fighting unit are for."
Her eyes flashed with shadowed fire. "All that would be true, and I could take it, except you ordered me back to the house like I was a delinquent child. Maybe I could accept your orders if you treated me like you treat your other men."
"You"re not my other men!" he roared furiously. "I"m not in love with any of them!"
She froze, then whispered, "What?"
"I said I"m not in love with any of them!" he snapped. All but flinging her wrist away from him, he pivoted away to pace. "Everything about you drives me insane. We have been arguing and sniping at each other from the moment we met. But then I started to like you. You"re courageous, funny and generous, and more beautiful than any woman has any right to be, and when we first made love..." He stopped pacing to run his hands through his hair as he tried to gather his thoughts.
"Made love?" she murmured.
"Made love," he repeated fiercely, turning to glare at her as if she might try to take the experience away from him. "When we first made love, I felt something I had never felt before. Instincts that I didn"t even know I had. I"m part Wyr, and I felt the drive to mate with you. So I left because that"s not what we said we were going to do that night. It was supposed to be an interlude of pleasure, nothing more. But then I couldn"t keep my d.a.m.n hands off you. I still can"t."
In the golden slant of light shining from the oil lantern, he could see the shock in her face. Her lips parted as if she would say something, but he couldn"t bear to hear it.
"Don"t worry," he said bitterly. "I"ve thought it through. I"m not Wyr enough for the mating urge to kill me. You"re under no obligation to be concerned about it."
She wrapped her arms around herself. "So you"re not forced by the Wyr mating instinct to do something you"re not willing to do. You sound as if you don"t welcome it at all."
"Everything I first said to you is still true." Unable to look at her any longer and fight the pounding urge to take her back in his arms, he turned his back. "I"m in the middle of fighting a war, and I still don"t have anything to offer a lover-no safety, no home, not even the promise of my time and attention."
Her breathing sounded harsh in the still of the courtyard. "Well, I guess we know where we stand now. You know what"s funny? I fell in love with you too, you jacka.s.s. Your commitment, your bravery, even your imperious att.i.tude. It hurt when you walked out so quickly after we barely finished making love, but I went with it. You asked me to trust you when you said you had good reasons for walking away, and I went with that too. In fact, I"ve gone with all of it-the danger, the uncertainty, the fighting, and just so you know, your finer sensibilities for why you shouldn"t take a lover are outdated and delusional, because we"re probably not getting out of this house again alive. But you know what I can"t go with?"
He looked over his shoulder at her. "What?"
"I can"t go with how unwelcome all this is to you. How unwelcome I am to you. I can accept everything about you, even your worst, most imperious, biggest a.s.shole moments. But you can"t accept me and who I am. You can"t accept the fact of me in your life, for however long or short that life ends up being. You can"t accept the fact that I might accept everything about your life, how restrictive it is and how dangerous-that I have the power and the ability to make that choice rationally and accept the consequences, whatever they may be." Pausing, she dug the heels of her hands into her eyes before continuing raggedly, "So you may say you"re in love with me, but you"re not in love with me the same way that I am in love with you. We"re using the same words, but we are not having the same experience, and I"m... I"m not going with this any longer."
As she said the last words, a footstep sounded in the hall behind her. Before Nikolas had consciously thought about it, he had drawn his sword and leaped to her side.
Gawain stepped out of the hall, into the light. The other man took in the scene at a quick glance-their tension, Nikolas"s drawn sword. He cleared his throat. "Sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to let you know there"s a hot supper when you"re ready."
Sophie wiped her face as she turned to Gawain. "That sounds good."
"We"re not done talking yet," Nikolas said harshly.
She didn"t look in Nikolas"s direction. "Yes, we are," she said. "We"re done."
Bending to gather up her blanket, she stepped into the hall. After a brief hesitation, Gawain followed, leaving Nikolas standing alone in an overgrown courtyard filled with ghosts.
Chapter Eighteen.
As Sophie followed Gawain back to the great hall, exhaustion set in, darker and heavier than ever. Not only did her whole body ache, but this time the exhaustion was emotional, and she knew she wouldn"t be able to access a second (third? fourth?) wind.
Back in the great hall, light, warmth, and a certain amount of order greeted her, along with the appetizing smell of hot food. Either they had constructed torches, or they had brought some with them, for lit torches filled sconces at strategic intervals.
They had shifted the Mini and the Harley so that they lined the outside wall, under the windows. Supplies were coordinated and stacked along the inner walls. There were a lot of supplies, so it made the remaining s.p.a.ce that much smaller, but there was still enough room to create a small sitting area in front of the fire with the settee and chair and a dining area with the kitchen table that was extended with a few crates added to one end. Sleeping pallets lined the stacked supplies along the sides.
Automatically she counted the pallets and came up one short, but before she could ask Gawain about it, he nudged her shoulder. "Come over here, la.s.s. Look what we did for you."
Obediently she followed him to one of the two corners closest to the fireplace. He lifted a curtain st.i.tched roughly together from the cottage curtains, and with one hand urged her to step inside. She complied and discovered they had created a tiny bedroom.
Two walls were the stone walls of the great hall, and the other two were built from crates and boxes of supplies. The double bed from the cottage was inside, and someone had even made it, complete with blankets and pillows. The bedside table held an oil lantern. Her luggage was stacked neatly at the foot of the bed, and the dresser was tucked in one corner.
The area was small and cramped, but it was private, and it offered a degree of comfort she hadn"t been expecting. "This is amazing and incredibly thoughtful," she said. Her argument with Nikolas had left her feeling so raw she had to blink back tears. After giving herself a moment to recover by looking at everything, she faced him with a smile. "Thank you so much."
Gawain hadn"t stepped inside. There wasn"t enough floor s.p.a.ce to accommodate his large bulk in addition to hers.
Smiling briefly at her pleasure, he told her telepathically, Until we find out who the traitor is, Nikolas and I will be sleeping right outside. n.o.body will get past us, la.s.s.
Aloud, he added, "Well, you have enough walls for now. Eventually those will disappear as we use up supplies, but hopefully by then, we"ll either know if it"s safe to use the bedchambers, or we"ll have reached some other solution."
"It"s wonderful. I love it." Impulsively she gave him a hug. Looking surprised and pleased, he hugged her back.
"Come get yourself some supper. There"s oxtail soup and sandwiches."
Oxtail soup sounded decidedly odd, but she followed him to the dining table, where she was greeted with friendly looks and a few smiles. Nikolas hadn"t returned yet, and abruptly she knew she couldn"t face him again that night.
When one of the men-Gareth, she thought-made as if to shift over to make room for her, she told him, "Don"t bother. I don"t mean to be unfriendly, but I"m so tired I can hardly stand upright. I just want to grab one of these sandwiches and go to bed."
"No shame in being tired," Gareth said. "You fought well tonight."
"Thank you."
"Wait," Rowan said as he stood. He dug out a large mug, filled it with steaming soup from a camp stove, and offered it to her. "Take this."
She accepted it, along with a sandwich, and retired to a chorus of good nights. Setting her food on the bedside table, she pulled the privacy curtain down, and her bedroom fell into shadow.
She had the brief impulse to light the lantern but then realized she didn"t know how, and suddenly the small task and her lack of knowledge became obstacles too big to overcome. Stripping out of her jeans and sweater, she crawled shivering between cold sheets. While she waited for the bed to warm up, she sipped at the soup, savoring the warmth and the rich, meaty flavor, and ate a few bites of the ham and cheese sandwich.
By then the worst of the chill had left the sheets, so she stretched out horizontally, and as she listened to the men"s quiet conversation, she plummeted into a black pit.
For a while.
Then she was running through the warehouse while the gunman chased her. She rounded a corner, looking for a way out, but it was a dead end. As she whirled to run the other way, the gunman walked around the corner.
He brought up his gun. She stared down the barrel and heard the flat tat-tat-tat as he shot her, and she was falling.
Always falling.
Rodrigo, she tried to call. Help me.
She plunged awake as a hand settled over her mouth. The men had gone to bed, and the indirect light from the fire had died down, leaving the s.p.a.ce in near total darkness.
A figure leaned over her, weight pressing down the edge of the mattress, but before she had time to panic, Nikolas whispered, "Shh, it"s me. It"s all right."
She gripped his wrist, shaking, and his hand shifted from her mouth to stroke the hair back off her forehead.
He said telepathically, You were having a nightmare and whimpering.
Unsurprised, she nodded. Sorry I woke you.
He exhaled, an impatient, nearly inaudible sound. Move over, Sophie.
She hesitated, torn between wanting to so badly she could practically taste it and remembering the bite of the last things they had said to each other. Her telepathic voice sounded small and uncertain to her own ears. Maybe that"s not such a good idea.
He brought his forehead down to hers. Let"s take a time-out. You still meant everything you said, and so did I. Let this be its own thing. We can go back to fighting again tomorrow.
Was that okay? Maybe that wasn"t okay. Maybe she was supposed to stay strong on principle, but he was here and offering, and principle didn"t have arms to put around her. Still trying to decide how she felt about it, she slid to one side of the bed.
Lifting the covers, he slid in beside her. Long, hair-sprinkled legs entwined with hers as he gathered her into his arms. The comfort was immediate and staggering.
She turned into him, burying her face in his chest while he stroked her hair. He wore nothing but a pair of silk boxers, she discovered, as she fitted her body to his. He was longer, broader, and more muscular than she, and the sensation of his bare body against hers caused a tension that was coiled tight inside of her to ease.
Better? he asked.
She nodded.
Tell me about it, he said. The nightmare. Maybe if you talk about what happened, it will make it go away.
She sighed. The nightmare doesn"t bear much resemblance to reality. I"m in the same warehouse where the shooting occurred, but in the dream, I"m lost and the gunman is chasing me, and that didn"t happen. I never make it out, and he always catches me. I see the barrel of his gun-that did happen-and he shoots me, and I fall. I always fall.