To snuff him like a candle . . .

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

Glorious!" Meg's call reached Simon as he cantered forward to meet her. They rode together every morning and always started with a wild, reckless gallop to burn off the horses' energy. He usually stayed a couple of lengths behind because he enjoyed watching her blaze through the soft morning air. She was a magnificent horsewoman. Being able to enter a horse's mind was obviously a plus.

Laughing, she brought her horse into step with his. "A run like that drives Lord Drayton from my mind. Or at least reminds me that he's just a nasty little ferret, of no real significance."

Drayton did have significance, but Simon didn't ruin Meg's exhilaration by contradicting her. "I shall probably see him at tonight's meeting of the Royal Society. You might want to invite Jean Macrae over for dinner to bear you company."

Meg brushed at the strands of dark hair that had escaped from the ribbon tied at her nape. "Why do you wish to attend if Drayton will be there?"

"It is wise to know one's enemy," he replied. "Tonight's lecturer is a professor from the University of Leipzig. He's speaking on electricity, a special interest of mine, so it would be odd if I didn't attend when I'm in London." He shrugged. "Since I must see Drayton sooner or later, it might as well be tonight. I'm curious to see how he'l behave toward me."

Meg frowned. "He will taunt you about not proving your case before the council. Don't let him provoke you into losing your temper."

"I will do my best not to become enraged." He chuckled. "If I turned into a unicorn at the lecture, it would be a demonstration that would impress even the most jaded member of the Royal Society."

"Much better to bore them. Shall I give you virgin's blood for safety's sake?"

He grimaced. "I know we've joked about that, but there is something profoundly barbaric in the thought of carrying a vial of your blood."

"Rubbing it into a cut would look odd in the midst of a meeting of natural philosophers." She stretched out her hand. "Remember that I am only a mind-touch away if needed."

He took her hand. That was safe enough since they were on horseback. At home, they avoided touching or drawing too close, since the results would be unpredictable.

Actually, the results were highly predictable. s.e.xual tension hummed between them and every time they succ.u.mbed to it, if only for a kiss, the attraction became even more unruly. If not for the need for her to remain a virgin-and their mutual qualms about a deeper relationship-they would be lovers already.

Sometimes he wondered where this unusual relationship would take them. And then he would try to think of something else.

Simon paused in the doorway leading into the lecture hall of the Royal Society. He liked that most members were mundanes. There was more to the world than magic.

His mouth tightened when he recognized Drayton in a group near the speaker's podium. Usually Simon found satisfaction in confronting his suspect after he finished an investigation, but that wasn't the case with Drayton. The rogue mage was so closely connected with Meg that even Simon's best efforts at protection couldn't completely guarantee her safety from the man. The thought was deeply troubling.

Drayton must be attuned to Simon's energy, because he broke off his conversation and turned to face the door. He smiled with pure pleasure and crossed the hall to Simon, saying amiably, "Good to see you, Falconer. I guessed that a presentation on electricity would bring you here." He accompanied his commonplace words with a ma.s.sive energy attack.

Simon's shields sprang into effect, but it was harder to control his shocked reaction. b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, was Drayton insane? He had to know that he couldn't do any real damage, and he risked catching the attention of others. Most mundanes had at least a trace of power, and a major blast of energy would not go unnoticed. Already men were glancing in their direction. d.a.m.n the man!

A familiar blurring sensation flowed through Simon, and his shock turned to horror. The unicorn spell was reactivating.

No! Instinctively he reached for Meg, needing her strength and magical innocence. When he touched her mind, her flash of surprise changed to quick understanding. She flooded him with her energy, as pure as it was powerful. After an instant of nausea, his normal form stabilized. He sent a swift thanks and rea.s.surance to Meg, thinking wryly that he would resent his dependence if he didn't need her so much.

Could Drayton have known that provoking Simon's anger would trigger the transformation spell? No, the rogue was merely hara.s.sing him, confident that Simon wouldn't make a scene in front of mundanes. If his a.s.sault hadn't been so outrageous, Simon wouldn't have become angry enough to trigger the spell.

Only seconds had pa.s.sed since Drayton's attack, so Simon replied blandly, "Electricity is a tremendous power, if we ever learn to harness it." On the magical plane he returned a fierce, narrowly targeted blast, rather like slamming a door on a snake that was trying to slither inside. "My own experiments have been most interesting."

Drayton's eyes lit with pleasure at the skirmishing. "I suppose you bought a Leyden jar to play with." He returned another blow.

"I didn't buy one. I built it after I read an article describing how they work." Tired of Drayton's games, Simon altered his shields so that the next attack would bounce back on the attacker. Few people could master the attack-repulsion spell. It was worth reminding Drayton that Simon was one of them.

Drayton attacked again, then gasped as his own power ricocheted back into him.

Simon said coolly, "You might not want a Leyden jar. They can be . . . quite shocking."

"Not half as shocking as I am." Drayton's eyes glittered with anger, but he didn't attempt another attack. Instead, he surrounded the two of them in a spell that would make their words unclear to listeners. It would also discourage anyone from joining them. "You are going to get exactly what you deserve, Falconer. I will personally destroy you."

Something dark and hungry lurked under the other man's words. Simon frowned. "I expect to be resented by lawbreakers, but it's more than that with you. Why?"

"You know why."

"Actually, I don't. Is there some history I should be aware of?"

Drayton's brows arched. "I suppose it's no surprise that your father never spoke of an incident that was so shameful. He accused my father of breaking the Guardian laws and stripped away his power." His eyes narrowed to slits. "My father killed himself rather than live without his magic."

Simon was rocked by the news, but he kept that from his voice. "My father would never take the power of a mage who was innocent of misusing it."

Drayton's laughter was chilling. "Any more than he would murder your mother and kill himself? You're a fool, Falconer."

His words struck harder than his earlier magical attack. News of the Falconer murder-suicide had been covered up and very few people knew of it. Hearing Drayton gave Simon a sudden unprovable conviction that the other man had been involved in the double death. He had wanted vengeance against Simon's father, and perhaps he had found a magical way to wreak it.

Putting aside the thought for later, he said, "My father kept his files private, so there's no special meaning in the fact that he didn't mention your father's case. But he would never have been able to punish your father unjustly-the council would have known and held him to account. Your father had to have been doing something that merited punishment."

An odd glint showed in Drayton's eyes. "My father was experimenting with older spells. As we are encouraged to do. Your father judged and destroyed him."

The pieces of the puzzle clicked together in Simon's mind. "Your father's experiment involved stealing the magic of others, didn't it? That must be what started you on your crimes. No wonder my father hunted him down and stripped away his power. As I shall do with you."

Drayton's smile was feral and full of teeth. "After you are dead, I will have Meggie again. My illusion spell was so good that I never noticed what a toothsome morsel she had turned into. I need a wife to bear me sons, and when I put her into thrall again, she will be the wife of any man's dreams. Lovely, obedient, and a wh.o.r.e in bed if I ask that of her."

Instead of rage, Simon reacted with ice-cold control. "I have never taken pleasure in destroying a fellow Guardian, but for you I will make an exception. When I strip your power away, I will do it slowly so that you suffer as each particle is ripped from your soul. You will scream and beg, and I will be glad of it."

He pivoted and stalked away to find a seat since the lecture was about to start. In a distant corner of his mind, he recognized that the danger of hatred was that it could turn a man into a mirror of what one hated. Because Drayton was brutal, Simon was discovering brutality in himself.

That was another thing to ponder later.

During a pleasant evening with Jean, Meg monitored Simon with a corner of her mind. She had sensed disturbed emotions for a time after his call for help, but they didn't rise again to the level of triggering the transformation spell. Eventually his mind settled into concentration. She guessed that the lecture had begun and it was engrossing.

Long, too. After Jean was sent home in the Falconer carriage, Meg retired early with a good book. Now that she had regained the ability to read, she raced through books as if trying to make up for all the years she'd missed. When she wasn't practicing magic, she read all kinds of volumes from Falconer House's impressive library. She'd found that mage lights were much better for reading than candles, and they didn 't run the risk of burning the house down.

She had set her book aside and fallen asleep when something brought her abruptly awake. A noise in the street? No, Simon had returned. She concentrated on him, and decided that he was safely bipedal but troubled.

And he wasn't going to bed, blast him. She tossed and turned and punched her pillow restlessly, unable to separate herself from his overactive mind for what seemed like hours. Gradually it occurred to her that his energy was different from usual. Though she'd seen him in a range of moods, tonight his mind had the tenor of a . . . a ringing blade.

She rose to don slippers and robe, then went into the corridors with mage light in hand. Finding Simon was easy-his energy flared like the sun. She bypa.s.sed his bedchamber, where any sensible man would be at this hour. He was downstairs, probably in his study.

Wrong. When she opened the door, the study was empty. She frowned. He was very close, but where if not here? She sharpened her magical vision-then blinked when the image of a door shimmered into place at the far corner of the study. How long had Simon been concealing that door from her and the rest of the world? Crafty devil!

The door had been disguised with the strongest look-away spell she'd ever seen. She marveled at its construction as she turned the k.n.o.b. The door opened soundlessly, which made sense. It would be silly to waste magic on a door that squealed.

The chamber revealed was surprisingly large-how did Simon manage to hide so much s.p.a.ce in the house?-and was some sort of workroom. Two long tables bore strange devices as well as occasional scorch marks, and cabinets and shelves held tools, journals, and gla.s.s jars of mysterious substances.

As Meg examined her surroundings, Simon rose from a desk at the right end of the room, setting aside a journal as he did. "Good evening, Meg. I'm sorry I woke you."

The night was warm and he had removed his coat and waistcoat. Meg found it unnervingly erotic to see him in dishabille. His shoulders looked much broader in white linen than when disguised by fashionable tailoring, and the mage light above him struck silver and gold highlights in his fair hair.

She fought an impulse to cross the room and wrap herself around him. Vivid sensory memories of the touch of his lips and body briefly overwhelmed her. Pa.s.sion was altogether too distracting. Would it become less so if they became lovers? That was hard to imagine.

She drew a deep, slow breath. Erotic fascination was a daily, even hourly, occurrence when she was near Simon. In some ways she might be childlike because of her lost years, but in this area, she had jumped directly into feverish womanhood. But she wasn't here to seduce him. Though if he tried to seduce her, she wouldn't protest.

She gave her head a sharp shake. "Simon, is something wrong?"

"Not really." He gestured at the room. "I just realized that I never brought you here to my laboratory. I do experiments here, mostly with electricity. I also have odd mechanical devices that amuse me. Have you ever seen an orrery before?" He gestured to a nest of wire loops with b.a.l.l.s of different sizes fastened to them. "It's a model of our solar system. See, when I put a mage light in the center to represent the sun, I can turn the crank and one can observe the motions of the planets."

He began to crank and the model planets moved. "This is a particularly fine orrery. It has all the planets of our system. See Saturn all the way out here with his shining rings?"

It took a major effort to tear her gaze away. Reminding herself that she hadn't come to look at gentlemen 's toys, she said, "I heard you worrying and it kept me awake. What mischief did Drayton cause? I gather that before your meeting began, he made you dangerously angry. You still look . . . dangerous."

He abandoned the orrery and rubbed the side of his head, tangling the thick blond hair. "Sorry. There are two kinds of anger. The fierce, red blazing kind comes from the heart. Much rarer is the cold white rage than comes from the head. Talking to Drayton triggered the latter."

White rage. She nodded, understanding the distinction. "So red rage is what threatens to transform you into a beast. What does white rage do? I want to know because I don't ever wish to become the target of that."

He smiled faintly, his tension easing a little. "You won't. It takes evil like Drayton's to cause such cold fury."

"I'm guessing that his insults included me. What else did he say?" She studied a mechanism of wheels and suspended b.a.l.l.s, wondering what on earth it did. The question was more intriguing than wondering what Drayton was thinking about her.

"He was insulting and threatening on a number of subjects. Most interesting is what he told me about his father. The elder Drayton was also a rogue mage, and he was stripped of his power by my father. This lends a particularly personal note to Drayton's desire to bring me to a nasty end."

She caught her breath. "You didn't know this?"

He shook his head. "Records are kept private whenever possible. Punishment is rare, actually. Usually only a quiet suggestion is needed if someone has crossed the line of magical ethics. Though I speak of stripping away the magic of renegades, I've actually done that only rarely. Twice on the Continent I helped administer justice when a local mage had gone rogue. Only once have I stripped away the power of a Briton, and that was a poor mad old member of the Polmarric family whose lost wits were endangering him and those around him."

He touched the journal he'd been studying when she entered the room. "My father had to administer justice in earnest, fighting an unrepentant renegade the whole time. Can you guess what crime the last Lord Drayton committed?"

Though Meg wasn't gifted in clairvoyance, the answer was obvious. "He was stealing the magic of others."

"Exactly. From my father's case notes, it's clear that he was less ambitious than his son, or less skilled. He didn't imprison magically gifted children, but he regularly drew energy from Guardians around him. That included his wife and son, and the notes don't suggest that he asked permission first."

Meg winced. "No wonder Drayton thinks such behavior is normal."

"He knows better. There is no excuse except for his l.u.s.t for power," Simon said dryly. "The case notes are intriguing, not to mention alarming. Apparently the elder Drayton speculated that it might be possible to develop a device that would store magical power. He made some experiments in that direction, but never succeeded, though he was adept at forcibly taking power from people around him."

She gasped. "If Drayton developed a storage device, he'd be unstoppable."

"Precisely." Simon set the journal on a stack of similar volumes, squaring the edges meticulously. "The principle underlying Guardian justice is that no single mage, no matter how powerful, is stronger than the combined council. That principle has been a sufficient deterrent for generations. But if Drayton could store power until he had enough to overwhelm our most powerful mages even when they're working together . . ." He shook his head.

She remembered the searing horror of the ancient mage war that Simon had shown her, and shuddered. "Do you suppose he joined the Royal Society to find out how to design and build such a device?"

"It's certainly possible, though I cannot imagine how a mechanical object could hold magical energy." Simon frowned. "Using living creatures seems more likely. Perhaps a group of magically talented individuals placed in thrall could be spelled to hold more power than they have inherently."

Meg thought back to her time with Drayton. "If that was his plan, I don't think he has succeeded. At least, not yet. Whenever he stole my power, he used it straightaway. There was no storage."

Simon's voice softened. "I'm sorry. This must be unpleasant for you to discuss."

"Not as unpleasant as experiencing it." She shivered as she remembered the helpless horror of Drayton's mind rape, and wondered again if he had others enslaved to his will. "Even if he hasn't found a way to store magical energy, he might still be able to defeat the combined council if he has enough people in thrall. We must find out if he has others."

"I've been investigating, but so far I haven't found signs that he has links to other captives." Simon's brows drew together. "It's almost unimaginable that he would be able to find and abduct other mages with power that is anything like yours. There simply aren't many with such power to begin with, and most are members of the Families who couldn't be easily abducted, so I think Drayton's threat is limited, at least for now."

"He may not have enthralled anyone with as much power as I have, but he might have a dozen with lesser power." Meg forced herself to face unpleasant necessity. "You are famous for your ability to trace magic, especially its illegal use, but I have experience with Drayton that you lack. Perhaps I can do better than you in finding if he has others in thrall."

"You may be right, but it would be a dangerous search. Look at what happened when you explored the memory block and ended up in Drayton's mind." Simon retrieved his coat and wrapped it around her shoulders. "You look cold. I wish I could believe you are merely chilled, but it's a warm night."

She pulled the coat tight around her shoulders, inhaling the rea.s.suring scents of cologne and healthy male. "I loathe the idea of poking around Drayton's mind, but I think I can do it more effectively than anyone else."

"We'l be seeing Drayton soon at Lady Bethany's ball. Why not wait and investigate him there?" Simon suggested. "In the midst of a crowd, many of whom are Guardians with strong magical auras, he is less likely to notice your probing. Plus, I'l be there. If I lend you my energy, perhaps you can learn more than either of us can alone."

"I like that idea. What is the technique for borrowing another person's power?" She shivered again. "I'm an expert at supplying it, but not at taking."

"The technique is simple." Simon took her right hand and raised it to his lips. His kiss vibrated through every fiber of her being. "But not a task for tonight. Sharing power voluntarily is a very intimate process. In our present moods, if we try we will surely end by becoming lovers in truth."

She gazed at him, pulse pounding. "Would that be so bad?"

"Until Drayton is defeated, yes. I need you more for the magical power of your virginity than as a lover." His smile was wry. "Which is saying a great deal."

"Until later, then," she whispered.

"When Drayton is gone, the rules of society will still exist, Meg," he said gravely. "When I am with you I tend to forget, but honor, propriety, and reputation matter."

She laughed. "Are you trying to tell me that society has no illicit lovers? Even I know better than that."

"Reputation always matters, especially for innocent young ladies."

"I am a false countess who has been in thrall to a monster, so I am already far outside the rules of normal society," she said with a humorless smile. "If I survive our struggle with Drayton, I want to leave London to discover the girl I once was, but before that happens, I want to know what it is to be a woman. Will you grant me that?"

He drew an unsteady breath. "Nothing would please me more, and you know that, you minx. But sharing bodies and souls is more complicated than you think."

"I will worry about that later." Their hands were still clasped, so she squeezed his. "For now, I want to know that there will be a reward for all this struggle and unwanted self-discipline. If I were still Meggie and you had kissed me, I would have given myself to you in a haystack. To be honest, I think there is much to be said for that kind of simplicity." An unwelcome thought struck her. "Unless-is your heart given to another and you don't wish to betray her?"

He shook his head. "My life has been much duller than you might imagine. If you truly wish this, of course I will honor your wishes and consider myself blessed. But you may change your mind between now and the time when Drayton is brought down."

"I won't." She rested her cheek against the back of his hand before letting it go. The prospect of abandoning propriety and discovering the sins of the flesh with Simon was yet another incentive to destroy Drayton as soon as possible.