Never.
She felt the tears threaten her already-sore eyes again. She bent her head to hide them, which was probably why she didn’t see the carriage until it was already beside her, the door flung open.
Pip was barking madly, the footman shouting behind her, but she was grabbed by rough hands and thrown inside, a hood pulled over her head.
And then she felt the carriage pull away as she fought to breathe, to free her arms from the strong hands, as Pip’s barks faded into the distance.
THE PROBLEM WITH dreary old secret societies was that they must have their ridiculous revels in arcane places, the better to invoke the supposed mysteries, et cetera, et cetera.
Val stared out his carriage window four nights later near midnight and thought that really, now that he was almost to the Dyemore estate in Yorkshire, he’d rather be at Hermes House, reading a book he hadn’t yet set alight. Or staring at the wall.
He’d been staring at the walls quite a lot recently.
It was all rather… well, dreary, really. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to make it through whatever revolting ceremony Dyemore had concocted without yawning and nodding off.
He kept wanting to turn and ask Bridget her thoughts on matters and she wasn’t there, was she?
She was never there.
Even fulfilling his vow to go through with it, to become the center of the Lords of Chaos and gather all that raw power and illicit knowledge for himself, now seemed… a tedious chore. Without Séraphine there to rant at him with burning eyes, to tell him why he shouldn’t do this or that, and to explain so seriously that it was wrong of him and that he really, truly ought to try to do the right thing, the whole procedure was really rather tiresome.
He’d turn the carriage round and head back to London if he weren’t fearful that he’d set fire to the entire library and leave himself without any source of relief in this life at all.
Oh, Bridget.
He closed his eyes and thought that had he not cut out his blackened heart and left it in that foul ivory casket long ago, it might—it just might—be a broken thing in his chest right now.
The carriage shuddered to a stop.
He opened his eyes as the door was thrown wide on the nightmarish sight of torches and naked men in animal masks.
Might as well get on with it, then.
BRIDGET HAD SPENT a hellish three days and two nights being jostled and bruised on the carriage floor as it had journeyed to where she didn’t know. She’d had time to be terrified, imagining rape and murder, to become so tired she’d dozed on the quaking floor, almost uncaring, only to be awakened, terrified once more, every time they’d stopped.
She’d been allowed to relieve herself at intervals, humiliatingly, at the side of the road, in front of whatever men had kidnapped her.
They’d given her water and bread.
They’d not offered anything else.
Which, on the whole, rather alarmed her. If they meant to keep her for ransom from her brother, surely they’d want to feed her better? She didn’t want to think about what they might want her for if not ransom, but it had been a very long journey.
They didn’t talk much, but she could discern four voices: two within the carriage and two riding outside. All, to her surprise, sounded refined.
That didn’t make sense.
They’d bound her wrists behind her back when they’d first caught her. The rope was rough and tied quite tight. She was lying on her side on the carriage floor and she’d tried several times to surreptitiously rub the bindings off. All she’d succeeded in doing was tightening the rope around her wrists, with the result that her fingers now felt thick and nearly useless, which frightened her more. On the second day her kidnappers had noticed her movement and she’d been kicked in the side for her trouble. Her side still ached.
By the time the carriage stopped for the final time she’d moved past terror, past exhaustion, past terror again, and on to determination.
Bridget decided that really, this wasn’t how she was going to die.
So when the carriage door opened, when they took the hood off her head, and she saw the torches burning and the nude men in masks, she fought. She kicked and she bit and she lowered her head and brought it up violently into the chin of the man standing over her.
He swore and staggered back, blood dripping from beneath the rabbit mask he wore.
Three others seized her bound arms, though.
One in a fox mask stood in front of her. He held a knife and he had a dolphin tattoo on the inside of his elbow.
He was also horribly erect.
She twisted, throwing her weight against the men behind her, and caught them off guard. All three of them went down to the ground. She rolled, elbowing one in the stomach, but the other held firm. The fox brought the knife down.
Cutting, slicing her clothes from her body.
A thrill of horror went through Bridget. She raised her legs, kicking, twisted her neck, biting. But more hands joined the first ones, holding her down, keeping her immobile as the fox cut every piece of clothing from her body. She lay on the hard, cold ground, naked, with scalding tears streaming into her hair.
One came to stand over her, his body wrinkled and old, his mask, in cruel contrast, portraying a beautiful young man with grapes in his hair. “Bring her.”
She clenched her thighs together. Bared her gritted teeth. She wouldn’t make it easy for them, these savage aristocrats, these bloody Lords of Chaos, for it had to be them.
But they lifted her, held her high above their heads among the burning torches, and carried her somewhere. She could feel their hard hands on her bare body. On her shoulders and legs and buttocks, holding her aloft like a slaughtered doe at some medieval feast. What were they doing?
They bore her into a circle of torches and lowered her onto a great stone, freezing against her skin. The fox was there again, cutting the ropes at her wrists finally. But before she could move, her hands were seized and her wrists were tied to posts at the upper corners of the stone. Her ankles were spread and tied to posts at the lower corners.
She was a sacrifice, spread-eagled and bound, ready for the priest.
She stared up, horrified, stunned, terrified, and a man came to stand over her. He wore a wolf’s mask, his body was beautiful and without flaw, his nipples pink, with just a scattering of golden hair between his pectorals. She couldn’t see his dolphin tattoo, but she knew that was because he wore it on his left buttock.
Oh, God, no.
The old man handed the wolf-masked man a long knife. “This is your initiation sacrifice. Enjoy her in whatever manner strikes your fancy. You can share her, if you wish. And then kill her.”
And all Bridget could think of were Val’s words, whispered as he leaned his forehead against hers: you have to kill the thing you love.
Val raised the knife above her…
Chapter Twenty
In the morning Prue and King Heartless showed their embroidered cloth to the magician.
“Well,” said he, turning the cloth this way and that. “This is quite a fine… er…”
“Lion,” said the king, yawning.
“Or possibly a pig,” muttered Prue.
“I’ve finished the three trials,” the king said.
And he summoned the royal physician to listen to his chest.
But though the physician tried and tried, he heard no heartbeat.…
—From King Heartless
Val raised the knife above Bridget, his Bridget, and gazed into her burning eyes, and thought, You have to kill the thing you love.
She might never forgive him this. Never, ever, in all eternity.
But he must do it anyway, for though he’d lost her love, he couldn’t lose all of her. Not now. Not ever.
He whirled and plunged the knife into Dyemore’s gut. Looked into the old goat’s wide eyes, growled, “Mine,” and twisted the knife, drawing the blade up and out, disemboweling him.
Val stepp
ed nimbly back to avoid the entrails, kicked over two of the torches, and bent down to slice through Bridget’s bindings and pull her into his arms. The wooden stage around Dyemore’s graceless altar caught flame as Foxy came at him with his knife. Val swung at his balls—sadly missing, but carving a nice slice into the meat of his thigh.
Foxy went down in a gush of arterial blood.
That stopped the rest of them short. They milled in confusion, leaderless, unable to decide quite what to do. The thing was, even in masks they were a cowardly lot. Why else hide their vile desires in a secret society?
Val ran with Bridget, nude as Adam and Eve, into the night. They passed more revelers in masks, either rushing toward the commotion or unaware that anything had happened. Two more nudists on this night and at this place weren’t anything out of the ordinary.
Dyemore had used the ruined abbey on his own estate as the location for the revels. Val hadn’t far to go before he found the old road where the carriages had been left to wait.
Aristocrats, even nude reveling ones, don’t like walking far.
His carriage was, thankfully, already pointed in the right direction. Val tore off the wolf mask.
“Ainsdale Castle!” he shouted at his startled coachman before bundling sweet Séraphine into the carriage.
He immediately turned to her as the carriage rocked into motion, wrapping her in his cloak and examining her. She had bruises on her shoulders and on her arms. Her wrists were bloodied—he growled under his breath as he examined them, picking away the remains of the ropes. Her plump little toes were muddied and cut and cold. He warmed them with his hands, crooning to them. She had quite a nasty bruise on her left side and he tenderly pressed his fingers around that, soft sounds leaving his lips helplessly. Oh, that he had been there when this had been done! He would have put their eyes out. He would have cut off their noses and made them eat them. He would have—
“Valentine.”
He blinked and realized that she had the palms of her hands on his face and was looking at him. “Valentine. I’m all right.”
His eyes narrowed as he looked at her face, for he was no fool. They must’ve had her for several days to bring her here. “Are you, though?”
She looked at him very firmly. “Yes.”
“They didn’t rape you?”
“No.”
“Or touch you in any way?”
She sighed. “They grabbed me when they took me. They tied me up.”
He thought about that. He didn’t like it. “Did they make you do anything you didn’t want to?”
She hesitated.
He went icy cold. “Tell me.”
“They…” She went a deep red and looked away. “They… when I needed to… to urinate they didn’t turn away.”
“Ah.” Well. That settled that.
He wrapped his arms around her. “I am truly sorry you had to endure such horrific events, my Séraphine. Had I the ability, I would travel through time and strangle these men as infants.”
“That’s…” She gulped and laid her head against his bare chest and began to shake.
Perhaps she was having some sort of fit brought on by the nightmare of this evening? He looked at her with alarm.
She raised her head and she was laughing. “Oh, Valentine, whatever shall I do with you?”
He looked at her calculatingly. She seemed soft, amenable, perhaps even open to suggestion after her shock.
He smiled as charmingly as he knew how. “You could marry me.”
She smiled back, a little sadly. “Could I?”
“Yes,” he said earnestly. “You could.”
But she merely shook her head and laid it again on his breast.
He thought and thought—many considered him quite a genius, including himself—and at last he thought of something he could say. “I’m sorry.”
She lifted her head. “What?”
Yes, this was obviously the correct thing to say. “I’m sorry for killing Dyemore.” He remembered the pool of blood around Foxy. “And possibly the man wearing the fox mask.”
He thought about the men who had kidnapped her. But he hadn’t done anything to them… yet. He glanced out of the corner of his eye at her. Surely she didn’t have some nonsensical rule about future murders?
Just in case he crossed his fingers.
And smiled at her.
But she was looking at him rather oddly now. “You don’t have to apologize for killing the Duke of Dyemore—or the man in the fox mask.”
He blinked. “Come again?”
“You were acting to save me—and yourself.” She knit her brows. “Although I do hope you won’t be charged with his murder.”
“Who is going to do so? All the witnesses were at a naked pagan orgy. Try explaining that in court.” He came back to the more important point. “But I don’t understand. You’re saying that at times it’s perfectly all right for me to kill a man.”
“Well…” She bit her lip and he could tell she was trying not to say it, but in the end she had to. “Yes.”
He smiled very slowly at her. “Séraphine, are you making these rules up?”
“Noooo,” she said. “No, I am not.”
And her burning saint’s eyes were so earnest that he had to draw her back into his arms and kiss her, moving his mouth over hers possessively because he’d lost her once already. Lost her and he might not have regained her.
She drew back finally and looked up at him, all dark eyes in her pale face, and said, “What is in your mother’s letter, Val?”
OVER AN HOUR later Bridget sat before the fire in Ainsdale Castle wrapped in Val’s purple velvet coat—the same one she’d worn to escape him on the moors. It had been rescued by Mr. Dwight, who had seen to its cleaning. It smelled only faintly of bacon now and was deliciously comfortable.
She’d had a warm bath and eaten a meal hastily prepared by Mrs. Smithers, and now she was sitting with her hands in her lap, contemplating the terrible ivory casket. Apparently Val had kept it with him ever since Kyle had traded it back to him.
Val had given the casket to her, after the bath, after the meal, and then left the room. She had the suspicion that he couldn’t bear to stay and watch her read the letter. That made her very sad.
She sighed and reached for the thing, turning it over and finding the carving on the underside as she’d seen him do only weeks before. She pressed into it with her thumbnail. The sliver of ivory popped out and she slid it over, and then opened the box.
The letter within was still there.
Opened.
She blinked and then narrowed her eyes. Well. At least the Duke of Kyle had returned it.
She picked it up and unfolded it.
His mother had had a beautiful hand. Flowery and precise, like beautiful embroidery upon the page. She’d used it to describe her son as demon-possessed since birth and a patricide, giving a date and details that sounded quite truthful.
Bridget let the letter fall to her lap as she stared into the flames thoughtfully.
Then she nodded and put the letter into the fire.
She watched it burn and then went in search of Valentine, her true love.
THE WIDOW’S TOWER was cold and dark, the stars in the sky a thousand miles away, and Val thought that this was how he would always be if she left him. So very cold and dark and alone, forever gazing at the stars, burning bright and too bloody far away to reach.
Then her arms wrapped around him, warming him, and he turned, clasping her to his chest, relieved, so relieved that he wouldn’t have to gaze at the stars all alone forever.
He buried his face in her black hair, still damp from her bath, and said in a rough whisper, just this once because she deserved to know, “He found her. Eve. I’d taken her to Geneva. Far away—or so I thought. But Father found her somehow two years later, and he was going to bring her back to his Lords and… so I had to… I had to… I took a dagger and I killed him in his sleep. Thrust it through his throat. But m
other knew. She told me I must leave England while she lived or she’d give the letter to the magistrates.” He drew in a breath, thinking wildly. It wasn’t enough. She would consider killing a parent too awful a crime. “It was him or Eve, Séraphine. You must understand. If I hadn’t killed him I would have had to kill Eve… and I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t. Not Eve.”
“Hush,” she whispered, pulling back from him, though he tried to keep her close. “Hush. I understand. Do you hear me, Valentine? I understand.”
And then he saw her burning eyes. They gazed at him calmly and he saw in them benediction.
He fell to his knees before her, pressing his face to her purple-velvet-clad belly. “Séraphine, Séraphine, Séraphine. O most beloved of women, most fiery of saints, never leave me, please. I’ll erect columns of white marble to you, build gardens of delights for you, cause ships to sail and warriors to rise for you, if you’ll only remain by my side.”
She smiled down at him and cupped his cheeks. “Valentine, do you love me?”
Ah, God, it was like a shot to the gut.
He squeezed tight his eyes. To come so close and lose her because of this. “If I were able I would love you as no man has ever loved a woman since the beginning of time.”
She knelt then to face him and whispered, “But you are able.”
He clutched her. He wouldn’t let her go, no, not even when she realized… “Séraphine, my darling, burning one, do you not remember? I told you, so long ago now, that I lacked that part. I cannot—”
“But you can, Valentine.” She touched a finger to his cheek and then showed it to him.
He blinked.
Her finger was wet. His eyes were wet.
She smiled at him, his burning Séraphine, and it was as if the night sky were ablaze. “You love me.”
“I love you,” he said in wonder, and felt his chest fill with warmth. “I love you.”
“And I love you,” she whispered, her hands cupping his face.
So he kissed her until she was limp and pliable and so very hot against him, and then he purred into her ear, “Does that mean you’ll become my duchess, darling Bridget Crumb?”