"Alas, the storm erased the roads. I'd have made better time in an ark." It hadn't laundered much of the soil from Lucan's heavy coat, or yet all of the blood from his hands. Evidently his usual fastidiousness had deserted him sometime after he entered the cellar of the pub in Dublin; now he suspected it was gone forever. "The Brethren do not send their regards."

"Indeed. Were you successful?"

"Seran is missing, and Angelica is a pile of scorched bone. The rest I recovered." Lucan inspected a vase of roses. The largest bloom shed a petal, then another, then another. "I brought you something."

A languid, black-gloved hand emerged from the darkness to tug at a bellpull. "A gift?"

"An unhappy one." Lucan tossed the keys to a waiting servant. "Don't open the back doors."

The servant departed as silently as he had arrived.

"Will I enjoy this gift?" Tremayne asked idly.

"Not as much as the good brothers did."

Lucan had been under orders to bring several of the Brethren back alive. He had fully intended to, until he saw what had been done to the Durands, and the rage had swallowed him.

"One of us." Velvet turned to steel. "Who?"

"Thierry Durand." More petals fell from the roses as Lucan reached and caressed one wilting, darkening head. "Or I should say, what's left of him. They took their time and did their work well."

"Did?" Weight shifted and feet shuffled behind the desk. "How many did you dispatch to their G.o.d?"

Lucan thought of the shaved skulls and gaping mouths. He had seriously considered bringing one head back with him, but Richard despised grandiose gestures as much as he disliked dead flesh. Perhaps he would go to Orkney and bring back a few from the Brethren's abbey there. "Twenty."

"That would be-"

"The entire cell." Lucan moved to drag his wet hair out of his eyes, saw the blood clots on his hands, heard again the screams before, and the screams after. He found the square of silk he had lent to Liliette and wiped his hands with it. "I left them in their toys."

Wood creaked, and leather slithered. "Your humor will be lost on Rome."

If Lucan had his way, after this night the Brethren could laugh themselves straight to h.e.l.l. In fact, he would personally escort them. "I believe I will winter in Italy this year."

"I think not." Richard's shuffling steps did not move him into the light. "They would not allow you within three hundred yards of him."

Errand boy. Lucan's spine straightened. "Have I ever needed three hundred yards?"

"It cannot happen now," he was told. "When we go to Rome, we will lead an army."

We. This incessant we, when the Vatican hunts us like dogs and our numbers dwindle with each pa.s.sing day.

"An army of what? The Rapt? Our tresori?" Lucan spit into the flames. "The Brethren will cut through them to get to us." He wiped his face and closed his fist over the handkerchief, squeezing red-tinged watery drops to sizzle away on the hot hearthstones.

"Your temper will be the death of you, Lucan."

"Probably. Why not let me go? I may fare better than Cyprien did." He hated the resentment in his own voice, but Richard had favored the Frenchman over Lucan one time too many. Hearing that Michael Cyprien's face had been obliterated had provided Lucan with the only honest amus.e.m.e.nt he had felt in decades.

"They nearly killed Michael. As it is, he will be scarred for life."

"That is not what I have heard." Elizabeth Tremayne, resplendent in a gown of golden silk, came into the room.

"Lucan, you look wholly dreadful." She extended small, delicate fingers sparkling with dainty rings.

"Lady Beth." He bowed into the s.p.a.ce above her wrist. "Forgive my dishabille."

"Nonsense, it is a wretched night to be out." She tossed a reproving look at the desk. "Shall I have a room prepared?"

Lucan imagined a feather mattress, linen sheets folded back, soft and clinging hands. The tick of a heartbeat in a bared ivory throat-how easily the pampered flesh tore, the unexpected wetness and heat. Something swelled inside him, and the scent of jasmine rose to blend with that of mud and wet, bloodstained wool. "Thank you, no."

"What have you heard about Cyprien's troubles?" Tremayne asked his wife.

"My little bird tells me that our dear Michael has procured the services of a plastic surgeon. A woman surgeon, if you can believe it." Her hand fluttered helplessly over her breast. "How utterly modern of him, don't you think, darling?"

"Have you any other details?"

The gold silk over one shoulder shifted. "That is all thus far."

"I would hear more about this, Beth," Tremayne told his wife. "Keep your bird seeded and chirping."

The notion of a doctor treating a Darkyn patient almost made Lucan laugh. Cyprien was an idiot, and the surgeon was a dead woman. "Perhaps it would be prudent to choose someone else to serve as seigneur over the American jardins." Even if Lucan's old rival successfully obtained a new face, there was no guarantee he would keep it.

"It will be Michael."

Jealousy twisted in Lucan's gut, the only scar that refused to heal. "You still intend to give him the colonies? All of them?"

"States, my dear." Elizabeth released one of her scathing, polite t.i.tters. "You should read the papers occasionally.

They haven't been the colonies for quite some time now."

"I stand corrected." He bowed again.

"You grovel so elegantly, Lucan. I've always admired that about you." Elizabeth glided around him, allowing the hem of her skirt to come dangerously near his muddied boots. "Michael should appreciate your bootlicking."

Lucan eyed her. At one point in his service to Tremayne, he had been quite besotted with Elizabeth. It was still something of a shock to glimpse the shallow, mean-spirited b.i.t.c.h lurking beneath her lovely exterior. "Unless you wish to join me in bed, wife," Richard said mildly, "you should go to yours."

Elizabeth paled. "Yes, I think I will retire. Lucan, lovely to see you again." She had to stand on her toes to whisk her lips over his cheek, but she made no move toward the seigneur. Indeed, she departed with the silence and speed of a servant.

That was all Elizabeth had ever been to her husband, so her viperous personality was somewhat understandable.

Idly Lucan touched the cool spot her mouth had left behind.

"I want you out of Ireland by morning," Tremayne said as soon as the doors closed. "Go to America and stay there until this business in Dublin dies down."

Lucan would go, but he would not return. He was through being Richard's errand boy. The United States was large and the Darkyn there still scattered. Michael Cyprien was not the leader Richard imagined him to be. "Any particular colony? State? Whatever they call them now?"

"Something in the South."

His head jerked up. "You think Cyprien's leech may fail."

"I think perhaps she may succeed."

Are you finally feeling threatened by your fledgling, Richard? "I doubt it. Cyprien's success rate has not been very promising of late."

"Michael never makes the same mistake twice. Neither do I." The seigneur moved partially into the light, and smiled a little. "You would do well to remember that, Lucan."

The light, softened by hearth fire and night, tried to be kind to Richard Tremayne. As always, it failed unreservedly.

Sweat ran like tears down the sides of Lucan's face, but he didn't turn away. If this was the last time he would ever willingly be in Tremayne's presence, he would not avoid those eyes, that face.

"I will, Master."

Chapter Four.

Dr. Alexandra Keller made several demands that night. Some of them Michael Cyprien agreed to, others he refused.

The two conditions she tried to insist on were the two most impossible for him to fulfill.

"I cannot travel to Chicago," he told her, "and I cannot be admitted to a hospital. You must work here, privately."

"Unless you've got a medical wing tucked away that I don't know about," she said, her tone snappish, "that's not going to happen."

"Tell eliane what you need, and she will have it delivered." He took a cigarette from the pack tucked in his robe pocket. The moment after Phillipe lit it for him, it was s.n.a.t.c.hed out of his fingers. "You object to smoking?"

"I object to politics, beets, and rap music. I despise smoking."

He smelled burning wool, heard a heel grinding against carpet. "Yet you have no difficulty in marring a priceless antique."

She made a rude sound. "Your rug is probably cheaper and definitely easier to replace than your respiratory system."

Although Michael Cyprien no longer had use of his nostrils, he could taste Alexandra's scent. She had used the hand-milled vanilla soap his staff provided for guests, but something lingered beneath it, a smell something like cinnamon or cloves. When her cool hand touched his face for the first time, he realized it was the natural scent of her skin.

Michael had never tasted a woman who smelled of spices. It made his mouth water and his jaw ache.

Pacing footsteps, the faint shift of hair being sifted through fingers. She didn't move away from his bed; she only marched back and forth beside it. A controlled pacer, the good doctor was, no doubt accustomed to channeling frustration in small, confined places. Operating rooms. Waiting rooms. Patients' rooms.

He wondered how she would cope in the tiny cell of the catacombs, where the interrogators had worked on him.

Would she hover beneath the suspended cross rack, or circle around the copper vat as they engaged the winch to lower the chain hoist?

Would she scream, as he had?

"Look, there are some things I can't do outside a hospital." She was giving him her patient tone now. "Things like X-rays, blood work, CT scans... we won't even discuss what the surgery itself will entail."

He had no interest in learning what she would do to fix him; it was too much like what had been done to inflict the damage. Only the results mattered. "Give a list to eliane."

"You can't pick up this stuff at Wal-Mart, Mr. Cyprien."

"I do not shop at Wal-Mart." Her humor also unsettled him, the same way the touch of her clever hands had. It took a brave soul to make jokes under such circ.u.mstances. "You are hungry, and I must... rest now. Go and have your dinner, Doctor."

"Hands off, Scarface," she said. "Cyprien, am I still your prisoner?"

Of course that was how she would see herself. Not as his savior. He had offered her nothing but fear, but he had nothing else to give to her.

"I will speak with you tomorrow." He reached out and closed the curtain.

Phillipe returned a short time later to attend to him. His silent efficiency was usually a comfort, but tonight Michael felt restless and irritable.

"Enough." He rose from the bed and found his robe by touch. As he took out his cigarette case, he made a mental note not to smoke around the doctor, if only to save his carpets. "You should go and hunt while it is still dark."

"I have arranged for a delivery, Master," his seneschal said. "Until the lady leaves the mansion, I must stay." "Why? You are keeping her locked in the safe room, are you not?" He found a candle by tracking the heat of the flame and bent over to light his cigarette.

"We are."

"You worry too much, Phillipe. And if you would, try not to threaten to kill her every time she touches me." He exhaled a small cloud of smoke. "She may not understand French, but she can read you like a child's picture book."

"I only wish I could do the same. Master, what does 'Bite my a.s.s' mean?" Phillipe carefully enunciated the English phrase.

Amused, Michael translated it for him. The colloquial dialect they spoke had not been in common use in France, or any other country, for centuries. They used it only when they were alone.

"She is fortunate I do not take her up on her invitation." His seneschal sighed. "She is in no danger from me, but I think your tresora would smother her, given the chance."

Michael thought of Alexandra's scent and the touch of her strong, competent hands. Her gentleness in examining him had aroused him; she had touched him carefully, even respectfully, but without hesitation. He wished he could only have seen her face, looked into her eyes. Then he would know if what he sensed of her was false or true.

"What does Dr. Keller look like?" he asked without thinking. His seneschal uttered a grunt that indicated his general approval. "No, I mean describe her to me."

"She is small and st.u.r.dy," Phillipe said. "Strong legs, full b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Good hips."

His seneschal had come from generations of anonymous peasant stock, and thus evaluated every woman for her potential as a worker and breeder. Just as Michael had once looked at women only through the eyes of an artist.

There was some irony in that, but little satisfaction for Michael's curiosity. "Give me her colors, Phillipe. Make me see her."

Never comfortable with being verbose, Phillipe smothered what might have been an annoyed sound. "Her skin is dark; I think she may be metisse. Her eyes are the color of polished burled oak. Her teeth are very white, her lips red.

Her hair is a nest of corkscrews."

Michael thought for a moment. "Is it long?"

"Oui. When she unbinds it, her hair reaches to the middle of her back. The color is..." Phillipe trailed off, searching for words.

Michael remembered how it felt, the ends of her soft, springy curls brushing his skin as she bent over him. He had wanted to push his fingers into that lively ma.s.s and use it to bring her to him. So he could put his mouth to her skin and learn if her flesh tasted as enticing as her scent. The urge had frankly shocked him; he had not felt that way about the Swiss surgeon who had vomited after seeing him.

"Well? Is it black? Brown? Red?"