Page 24 of Secrets of the Highwayman (Immortal Warriors #2)

H er skin was warm and soft, and there was a vibration that ran up his arm as he made contact with her. Nathaniel was uncertain just how much of this was sheer physical attraction and how much was something else. Something new. Something he should be concerned about.

She was dazzlingly beautiful. Her eyes burned like lanterns, and when he looked at her he actually felt breathless with his desire to possess her. Utterly. Not that he hadn’t wanted her before, because he had, but now it was so strong it was almost like a separate force outside them both. He’d lusted after women in the past, but not like this. Never like this.

The sun was shining when they stepped outside, and her hair seemed to capture the light until it sparkled. Even her eyelashes shone as if they had been tipped in gold.

His mouth went dry, and Nathaniel forced himself to look away. Instead, he focused on the devastation wrought by the storm. Not that there was much he could do about that; Ravenswood wasn’t his anymore, and the days when he could order his servants about were gone. He should have appreciated what he had when he had it rather than throwing it all away in an act of impulsive insanity.

Pengorren had been too strong for him, too cunning. Nathaniel understood that now, and he was also beginning to understand that if he was ever to go back and relive those moments again, he would first have to learn how to defeat Pengorren. He’d have to learn what made Pengorren weak.

Water dripped on them from the drooping foliage, and the soft ground was littered with the sticks and small branches that had been shredded by the wind and rain. A thrush began to sing, and a rabbit stared at them from the protection of some bracken before vanishing into the shadows. They picked their way cautiously through the devastation.

The fallen tree was ancient and as enormous as Melanie knew it would be. In its death throes it had taken several smaller trees down, too, as well as numerous branches and a blizzard of leaves. The tree lay broken and blasted, the black scorch marks from the lightning clearly visible upon the trunk—the pungent smell of burning was still in the air.

Melanie’s hand tightened painfully on his. “This is exactly as I saw it,” she said. “Exactly.”

Nathaniel cast her a quick look, and even that was enough to stir in him the urge to let his eyes linger, to possess, before he dragged his gaze away once more, back to the tree. “You said that when you were a child you also had strange visions.”

“Yes. I didn’t like it. I stopped myself from doing it.”

“How could you stop yourself, Melanie?”

“I shut it out. I concentrated on the present. I worked harder at school, I spent every waking moment busy. Soon it got to be easy—apart from the headaches. Until I came to Ravenswood. Now nothing I do seems to stop it.”

“You saved my life, Melanie. I can’t regret whatever power you possess.”

Melanie managed a smile. “When you put it like that . . .”

He reached to take her in his arms, but the crunch of approaching footsteps stopped him.

“Someone’s coming,” Melanie said at the same time. “It’s Eddie.”

“You know this because you’ve had a premonition?”

Melanie gave him a droll look. “Who else would it be, Nathaniel?”

“Ms. Jones?” Eddie’s voice drifted toward them. There was a muffled curse as he tripped on some debris.

“We’re over here!” she called, and then whispered, her warm breath brushing his ear like a kiss, “He’ll be curious, but don’t worry, we can bluff our way out of this.”

“I heard the tree fall yesterday,” Eddie said, stepping around some fallen branches and into the clearing. He was looking at the mess. “Thought I’d better take a look, even though I won’t be the caretaker here much longer. Still my job though, isn’t it? For now?”

Melanie realized he was talking loudly to give them warning. He knew she had a man here—he’d seen them together on Neptune—and maybe he expected to find them stripped bare and making love in the wet leaves. She glanced at Nathaniel, but he still wouldn’t look at her. He’d been acting oddly ever since he found her talking to Suzie. And yet he seemed calm enough as he faced Eddie. As always he gave the impression of being in total control of himself and the situation.

“Eddie,” Melanie said, as the caretaker reached them. “I want you to meet—”

At the same time Eddie looked past her, to Nathaniel, and his genial face went the color of very old cheese.

Nathaniel smiled pleasantly, but there was a wicked gleam in his hazel eyes. “Nathaniel,” he said easily, “named for my ancestor. Wrong side of the blanket.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Melanie babbled on. “Foyle, Haddock and Williams turned up Nathaniel when we were searching for any legal heirs to the estate. His ancestor was illegitimate, but as you can see, there is a bit of a family resemblance.”

“Bloody hell,” Eddie muttered, gawking. “Thought I’d seen a ghost there for a minute, mate.”

“I’ve already been told that by Melanie here,” Nathaniel said easily, and she realized he was exaggerating his Cornish accent. “She looked as weak as a robin, the first time she saw me.”

Eddie pulled himself together and held his hand out. But he was still eyeing Nathaniel uneasily, as if he thought that at any moment the other man might vanish in a puff of brimstone.

Nathaniel took the proffered hand casually enough.

“I’m Eddie,” Eddie said. “I look after the place. You ride, do you?” he added, with a sideways glance at Melanie. But something about her seemed to catch his attention, and instead of looking away again, he fixed her with a frown.

“Ride?” Nathaniel asked, tucking his hands into his pockets.

“Yeah, I saw you during the storm. On that black horse you’ve got in the stable. I thought I was seeing things until I noticed Ms. Jones riding pillion. I didn’t think she was a ghost.” He was still staring at Melanie, without blinking.

She shifted uncomfortably, wishing he’d look away. “Yes, Nathaniel took me for a ride on his horse, but unfortunately the storm caught up to us.”

Eddie, still staring at her, said, “It must have been some ride.”

“Oh, it was. Nathaniel will be staying at Ravenswood for the next few days, Eddie. He’s kindly offered to help me with the catalogue of the house contents. He works for an, eh, auction house.” Eddie’s gaze was making her nervous. She wondered, feeling panicky, whether she could remember all this stuff so that she didn’t contradict herself next time.

“Ah-ha.” Eddie seemed unimpressed.

But Melanie had enough. “Eddie! What is wrong with you? You’re staring.”

Eddie blinked, and color flushed his cheeks. He shook his head. “Sorry,” he said, embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to stare. You just look different, somehow. I was trying to work out why.”

“Different?” Melanie demanded, upset and irritated. “How, different?”

But Eddie shook his head again, looking down at the ground now. “Sorry,” he muttered again, just like a chastened little boy. There was something endearing about Eddie, and she couldn’t be cross with him for long.

“It’s all right.” Melanie took a breath, and then let it out with a sigh. “I didn’t mean to jump on you like that. I’ve had a lot on my mind.”

“I suppose you have.” He cleared his throat. “I took the portrait back to the house.” Now he didn’t look at her at all, his gaze directed somewhere over her head and into the trees. “I didn’t know where you wanted it, so I put it in the library.”

“This is the portrait of Major Pengorren?” Nathaniel cut in with sharp authority.

Eddie turned to him and fixed his eyes there.

“That’s right, the good old major. Pity, really. Miss Pengorren tried to get it mended, but whatever’s eating away at the paint just seems to be getting worse. She was told it’d cost a fortune to stop it, and even then the bits that are gone are gone for good. From what I’ve read the major was a very striking man, but now we’ll never know what he really looked like.”

“So his face is destroyed?” Melanie said gloomily. “Aren’t there any other paintings? Sketches? He was an important man in the district, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, but as far as I know, that’s the only likeness known to exist. He must have been camera-shy, or whatever the equivalent was back then. Miss Pengorren told me that the portrait had been like that for as long as she could remember, with the face gone.”

A blackbird landed in the trunk of the fallen oak tree, and then changed its mind and flew off.

“You know much about Major Pengorren, Eddie?” Nathaniel appeared relaxed, but Melanie thought his jaw was tense and his eyes half closed, as if to hide their intensity. “Have you read The Raven’s Curse ?”

Eddie snorted. “I have, yeah. Don’t know if I believe it, though. Written in the ’forties. The author seems to have been completely blinded by Pengorren’s good side. And he had a good side, I’m not saying he didn’t, but he had a bad side, too. I can say that because I was also born on the wrong side of the blanket, Nathaniel. I’m related to Major Pengorren via one of his affairs with a servant girl.”

Nathaniel smiled, as he was meant to.

“What about Nathaniel Raven? Did he have a good side?” Melanie asked. “That book didn’t seem to think so.”

Eddie began to turn toward her, and then changed his mind. Awkwardly, he turned his eyes back to Nathaniel. “Do you mean the stuff about him having to be insane to do what he did?”

Nathaniel’s smile didn’t waver, but Melanie could feel his increasing tension. He shifted his feet. “That’s the stuff she means,” he said quietly.

“Nah,” Eddie was enjoying himself. “I don’t think Nathaniel Raven was insane. That’s just rubbish. He was probably bored after his time in the army, and he was always a bit wild. But the truth’d be hard to sort out from the lies—too much time under the bridge since then. This Raven’s Curse idea doesn’t seem to have been around when Nathaniel died, not when you search through the records still existing from that period. It’s a later invention. If you’ve read The Raven’s Curse, then you’ll know the author is trying to convince his readers that he knows when it all began. He says that Nathaniel Raven cursed Major Pengorren with his dying breath: You and your descendants will never be happy at Ravenswood, and no generation since has been safe from tragedy. If you take a look at the family tree, you can see there were an awful lot of deaths for one reason or another. But what that has to do with Nathaniel’s state of mind . . .” He shrugged.

“He cursed him with his dying breath,” Nathaniel repeated, and all humor had vanished from his voice. His eyes were bleak. “I don’t remember hearing such a thing before.”

“Oh yeah, it’s common knowledge now, and your average visitor to the village doesn’t bother checking his facts. Everyone believes what they read in The Raven’s Curse.”

Nathaniel didn’t answer.

“You really do know your Pengorren history, don’t you, Eddie?” Melanie said brightly, uneasily aware of Nathaniel’s silence.

Eddie looked sheepish, as if she had caught him out.

“Look, I should come clean,” Eddie said abruptly. “The book I’m writing . . . it’s about Ravenswood, about the Pengorren family. I’m trying out a new slant on it. It’s about time someone debunked that Raven’s Curse nonsense. Before she left, Miss Pengorren agreed with me. Nathaniel Raven wasn’t the villain; he was the victim.”

Nathaniel shifted, and Melanie caught his eye. His face was haggard. “I’d like to read your book.”

“Oh, it’s not finished. I couldn’t—”

“No, really, I mean it.” Nathaniel forced a smile. “I’ve always wanted to know more about my family, but until now I haven’t had the chance to find out. I agree with you, there was something, eh, skanky about the major. I’d certainly appreciate you allowing me to take a look at what you’ve got on him. You never know; I might be able to help.”

Melanie watched with amused incredulity as Eddie’s resistance crumbled beneath Nathaniel’s charm. Maybe, she thought, that book in the library should have been called The Raven’s Charm; it seemed more appropriate.

Eddie was nodding. “All right. I’ll bring it up to the house. Tomorrow morning? I have a few loose ends I want to tie up first.”

Nathaniel smiled again. “I’m looking forward to it.”

Eddie seemed happy with that. He turned away, his eyes sliding over Melanie without really focusing, and after lifting his hand in a wave, he began to make his way back across the clearing and into the trees.

“I never spoke any dying words to anyone,” Nathaniel said with quiet fury. “Edward’s right, it’s all rubbish. Almost as if the whole purpose of the author was to blacken my name.”

“Which is easy enough to do when your victim is dead and can’t defend himself.”

“Pengorren would do something like that,” Nathaniel said. “I thought he was my friend, but it was all a pretense. Maybe he made up the last words story, and the author of that bloody book found a mention of it somewhere.”

Melanie touched his cheek with her fingers. “Do you think Pengorren was jealous of what you had and what you were, Nathaniel? Maybe that was why he came to Ravenswood? Because deep in his heart he wanted to be you.”