20 EVERY LADY NEEDS A SHE SHED—ALEX IS ENTERTAINED—CHANGE OF TACTICS—ALEX WISHES FOR AN EXPLOSION—MUTUAL DISAGREEMENT—WATER-COLORED MEMORIES—SILENCE Lady Armitage was excessively fond of dungeons. There was always so much discomfort, so much elegiac charm, about them. She had built herself one in the cellar of her battlehouse, where she might drive husbands down at any time, and collect a few gruesome memories, and be happy. She advised everyone who was going to maraud, plunder, marry, or generally commit piracy, to build a dungeon. Alex himself also had a dungeon in his cottage, since the house had belonged to another pirate before him. He stored his beer and potatoes there. Sitting now on the stained wooden floor of Lady Armitage’s oubliette, staring into the shadows, he thought he had never been more content. His back ached as he leaned against the wall, he was literally in sore need of a cushion, and he very much wished he had not thought about beer and potatoes, considering his last meal was hours before. But none of this signified in comparison to the pleasure of Charlotte’s company. She appeared to have forgotten he existed, other than the times when, in the course of her pacing, she stepped over his outstretched legs. Each time she did so, her expression was careless, but her boots gave an eloquent clack against the floor, and Alex had to struggle not to laugh. He knew if he did, she would ignore him even more vehemently. The dungeon’s bolted door, high tiny window, wall shackles, and spikes occupied all her attention. She worked upon them with an effort that went undeterred by its complete and utter failure. At one point she even levitated parallel to the ceiling, searching for a possible trapdoor. But incantation, boots, fingernails, outraged witch glare all proved inadequate. Alex watched her grow more pale, more furious, as time wore on. He thought she had never looked more beautiful. But then, he was starting to realize she could be covered in effluent and he’d still think her beautiful. She could be deeply asleep and yet fascinate his senses. In fact, more than once this week he had accidentally woken her by stroking the smooth little half-moon of her thumbnail or tasting the pulse at her wrist. There always followed a moment in which their eyes met undefended, as bare as their bodies in the night-shrouded bed, and he could see in hers the same loneliness and longing he felt himself. Seconds later they would be hiding them again behind passion—mouths burning together, legs tangling, bodies having a conversation their hearts were not brave enough to undertake. But Alex found himself scarcely able to sleep for the sake of that tiny moment. He looked for it through the day also, yearning, frightened, more vulnerable than he’d been in years. Even now, while she applied herself yet again to the door’s handle as if she might have missed something all seventeen previous times, he watched her in case she glanced back. He followed every movement of her lips as she muttered magic. He guessed what she would do next, and grinned with a boyish thrill when she did so. He was fascinated by her, spiky little witch that she was, and being locked in a dungeon with her now did not feel grievesome in the least. He himself saw no need for wasting energy on escape attempts. This was not his first stint in a dungeon, even if not counting the time he got drunk on beer in his own and accidentally locked himself in. He felt confident Lady Armitage would eventually turn up to gloat, threaten torture, or propose marriage, and so they might as well wait as comfortably as they could. Charlotte did not seem to appreciate this. He could have sworn he heard her mutter work ethic once or twice amongst her magical Latin. It endeared her to him all the more. At last, as visibility decreased with the fading of daylight through the window, she came to sit on the floor beside him. The manner in which she did so, stiff-backed and precise, communicated clearly that this was no surrender to the situation, but rather a change to more subtle, long-term tactics. She gave Alex one sidelong glance then looked away, adamantly disapproving of his piratic insouciance. He shifted slightly closer. She sniffed, raising her chin and glaring at a spiderweb in one high corner. Alex could almost see brooms in her eyes. He put his arm around her shoulders. She huffed— And leaned rigidly against him. Smiling to himself, Alex closed his eyes, breathing in her now-familiar scent of good plain soap. Even after a day of running, leaping, and generally scraping herself against the rough edges of life, she smelled like he imagined perfection would smell if someone managed to bottle it. He was hard-pressed not to take off his coat and lay her down on it so as to while away the cloistered hours kissing every single inch of her luscious skin. But he was not quite that much a scoundrel; besides, he suspected Charlotte would consider it improper behavior for a dungeon. “Everything will be all right,” he promised. These were the same words he’d used when they were first locked into the room, and she appeared to like them as little now as she did then. “That is impossible to determine,” she said, her voice sounding remarkably similar to how her heels had on the floor. “What if Lady Armitage is even now discovering how to use the amulet to its full capability? Think of what she might destroy while we sit here resting!” “Refusing to purposelessly exhaust myself is not the same as resting. Try to preserve your energy too, darling. You’ll need it when Armitage returns for us—as she certainly will before she attempts any destruction. She’s the sort who likes an audience.” Charlotte muttered under her breath, and Alex tried not to smile, recognizing in her vexation a reluctant agreement. She squirmed, apparently trying to get herself more uncomfortable. Her shoulder pressed at a difficult angle against his rib cage, but he dared not stir even a little to relieve the annoyance, lest she decide to move entirely away from him. “Where do you think we are?” she asked. Alex looked around the room. “This is called a ‘dungeon,’ I believe. You can tell from the great big lock and the torture device on the wall.” She clicked her tongue with exasperation. “I meant, the house itself.” “Still in Clacton, I’d say. Armitage might try to escape under the cover of darkness, but that’s risky, even for one so deranged as her.” “Certainly she has qualities which I had not before supposed to exist in such a degree in any human creature.” Alex opened his mouth to reply, then closed it, frowning with puzzlement. “I feel like I’ve heard those words before.” “I doubt it,” she muttered. “I’ve seen the kinds of books you have in your house.” He did not understand what that had to do with anything, but he was at least wise enough not to inquire. Instead, he kissed the top of her head, then bent to kiss her brow. It was as if each kiss eased the great aching knot that bound his heart. He would have continued on, but she hummed contentedly and relaxed against him, and he sat back with a sigh. Slowly Charlotte’s breath slowed, her Plimmish stiffness melting into a warm, quiet lassitude. Alex frowned as the knot shifted up into his throat. She’d slept in his arms over the past week; he ought to be used to it, not feeling like any moment he might cry. He held her tighter, for no reason except to flaunt the muscles in his arms. He laid his big strong hand with its ruby thumb-ring against her dainty one. The juxtaposition of rough, tanned skin against a smoothness that had been protected by gloves and crèmes thrilled him. How odd. He’d spent years developing his potency, stocking it with weapons and outfitting it with leather and boots, bashing it against the world so he could steal whatever was left afterward—only to feel more powerful in this moment than ever before, although all he did was quietly hold a woman in her gentleness. A woman—a witch. Memory twisted suddenly in the pit of his stomach. Instinctively he clenched his hand to reach for a weapon, despite the fact they had been taken from him by Lady Armitage’s footmen. He might have punched the wall instead, but then Charlotte was speaking, and the hushed blur of her voice distracted him. “You were right.” Alex blinked. “I was what?” She tilted her face up to give him a sleepily factitious look. “You heard me, sir. You merely want me to say it again. Very well, since you do deserve the acknowledgment: you were right. The amulet must be hidden away—or broken apart—or, I don’t know, thrown into the sea. I confess, I am not sure I’d trust even myself with it.” He went on blinking, his vision switching between Charlotte’s beautiful, luminous eyes and the darkness inside him. “You’d give up such enormous power?” “Yes.” Wariness tightened her expression. “You seem to find that unbelievable.” He tried to answer, but his pulse had begun thudding with such force, it broke his breath into soundless pieces. You were right. The words were turning him all soft inside, and he began to panic. Softness meant his defenses were failing. Already he could hear whispers rising from the dark. He wanted his sword. He wanted to bloody well stop feeling at all. But Charlotte was touching his face now, muttering something about how he could trust her, and a barrage of hope, lust, fear, grief threatened to completely overwhelm him. Damned if the witch wasn’t doing housekeeping in his heart. He could not bear it. So he picked his favorite of those feelings and, capturing her jaw a little too roughly in his fingers, began kissing her out of her sleepiness into a tumult of emotion right along with him. She murmured against his lips but did not pull away, and he took that as permission. He tasted the warmth of her—felt the crack of a birch switch against his back—tilted her chin so he could kiss the silky white throat beneath it—crawled into a corner—clenched a fist in her bright, honey-colored hair—turned his face to the wall, although that was no sanctuary from birch or bootheels or the spitting Latin that fired books across the room at him until he said one word enough times for it to count . . . “Sorry,” he whispered again now, the sound trembling against Charlotte’s pulse. She answered him, but her words echoed with the clatter of tiny golden bee charms as a fist slammed against his ear. “Sorry,” he said again, following a path of tiny freckles down, down, toward shadow and secrets . . . He breathed in for one last desperate moment before memory drew him under.
He cringed as the closet door slammed shut on him. The whole world turned to shadow. Sorry, he cried, and the darkness crawled into his lungs, filling them with the sensation of clinging, corrupting damp. He imagined rotting away in that darkness, amongst his father’s old coats. When Deirdre unlocked the door for him two days later and demanded a proper apology for whatever it was he’d done, he was unable to answer, all his words decomposed. “You don’t get out until you say sorry,” Deirdre warned, smiling in the way that always made him think of hooks and bones. She held the door half-open, ready to slam it shut at a whim’s notice. Her voice, dry and crackly from years of incantating instead of walking across a room to pick up whatever she wanted, dropped hard little promises at his feet. “Say sorry and you can come out. Say sorry and you can have dinner. There’s bacon, Alex. We all know how much you love bacon. Say sorry and there’s hot chocolate.” He tried, but only managed a crippled sound. “S-s-s-” Deirdre laughed and started to shut the door again. At least I’ll die in peace, he thought. But his father, furious and determined to make a man of him somehow, pulled him out—dragged him through the kitchen where he could smell the bacon and thought only with surprise that Deirdre had been telling the truth—and tossed him out of the house ten feet above Lough Caragh . . . His body flashed cold as if it were hitting the water again. He felt himself being sucked terrifyingly deep into the old dark. With an instinct of hope and longing, he reached up toward light—and as he moved, the shift of his legs against hard wooden planks beneath him brought time crashing back into place. Floor, not lake bed, he told himself. Walls, window. Now, not then. Breathe . . .
“Breathe, Alex.” Charlotte’s voice came out of the dark, taut but certain, like a lifeline. “Tell me what’s wrong.” He supposed her sensitivity had sensed tension in the air; either that or he’d been screaming without realizing it. Which, judging from past experience, was always possible. “Nothing’s wrong,” he said. He could swim for himself. He always had. He didn’t need anyone now. And then he felt a warmth against his heart. She was touching him again. Oh God. “Alex,” she said, uncharacteristically gentle. “Your pulse is racing.” He gave her a swaggering smile. “It’s because you’re so close, sweetheart, and I want to—” He stopped, choking on the words as if they were lake water. She was so close. She was right inside his soul, prodding bossily at all the things he kept hidden there, making him forget how to be sardonic, or seductive, or any of the measures that had protected him from himself these past twenty years. This was why he’d worked hard to create a reputation that would attract only the kind of women who wanted to ring his doorbell then run away before they were caught. But of course witches made it their business to get in. “What do you need?” Charlotte whispered, still prodding. He answered her in the same way he drew his sword whenever someone disturbed him—immediate, unthinking, with sharp edges and a brutal warning. “For all the bloody witches in the world to have their power stripped away.” But Charlotte only stroked the wall across his heart, undaunted. “All of them, you say?” “One of them,” he relented. “One Lancaster witch who found herself in Donegal some two-and-twenty years ago with a fancy for a man, never mind that he was already taken, and a determination to get herself a home even if it had to be made from bones pasted together with blood.” “That doesn’t sound very weatherproof.” He laughed. Good God—she made him laugh, even in the midst of talking about Deirdre. It was some kind of magic. She was magic. Her hand pressed with a firm serenity against his pulse as if she could settle it just from her will alone. “This witch hurt you.” “Aye, well, who didn’t, darling? Once one person starts, seems it’s hard for everyone to stop.” “And is she still alive, resident in Donegal?” The calm, conversational tone of her voice sent a thrill along his nerves. “Will you fly on over there, Lottie, and wreak vengeance for me?” She shrugged. “I may. If I have nothing more pressing in my calendar next week.” “My terrifying girl. But fear not, the witch died from consumption some years ago. The father’s totally banjaxed from whiskey half the time, can hardly stir himself, let alone his house. And the nuns—” He stopped, memories extinguishing any humor in him. Charlotte went back to stroking, soothing. “I’m so sorry.” He shrugged. He shoved a hand through his hair, glaring at the torture device on the far wall even though he could see nothing but darkness. Why couldn’t Armitage have put them in it, rather than leaving them to talk about feelings? Clearly the ferocious old pirate understood well how to best employ her dungeon on a man. “It’s all grand, my darling,” he said, as if that might have some hope of stopping the conversation. “Don’t be preposterous!” Charlotte said. “It is not grand; it is appalling and utterly intolerable that anyone caused you harm. Well, it shall not happen again so long as I am in your company. Lady Armitage may have confiscated my besom, but I still have my voice.” He grinned. “You’ll keep me safe, will you?” Her eyes narrowed in the way he loved, all fury and adorable deadliness. “Are you laughing at me, sir?” He did laugh then, but he also raised a hand in assurance. “By God, Charlotte Pettifer, I would not ever.” “Excellent. Because I am serious. And I am a powerful witch, Alex. I prophesize that no one will hurt you again. Not even you yourself.” He drew her closer. “Ah, you’re awful good to me, Lottie.” “I am not,” she protested, all stiffness in her voice but growing soft again, warm and lush like the aftermath of magic, in his arms. “Good is for civilians.” “True, that.” “You told me once you knew a woman with a bee bracelet. Was that her?” “Aye.” She reached for the bracelet on her own wrist, and Alex frowned as he watched her try to tug it past the heel of her hand. The bee charms clattered as if in protest. “What are you doing, my darling?” he asked. “I would not want to wear anything that reminded you of her.” She yanked harder, wincing as metal dug into her skin. Alex’s heart leaped. He laid his hand over hers. “No, it’s fine. Thank you. But you’re so far from being like Deirdre as to be holy water on my memory.” Lifting her hand, he kissed the knuckles. “Oh.” She blinked as if he’d whispered some spell over her and now all she could see were sparkles in the deepening dark. But it took her only a moment to sweep them away and restore her equanimity. “Well, good. I’m glad that is all sorted.” She patted him, woman-like, clearly believing her job done. He had been ruffled—discomposed—and reorganized—in thorough witch fashion. But even as he began to relax, she proved to have one more intervention up her sleeve. “You know, when your accent comes through, you sound like a poet standing on a wild shore. I remember when I first met you I thought you must be strewing poetry like bombs all through London, making a ruin of women’s hearts. I suspected you of being very untidy indeed.” “And now?” he asked warily. She shrugged her mouth. “Now I know exactly how untidy you are. It is . . .” He held his breath . . . “. . . compelling.” He laughed again, and marveled at the way the dark, endless suck of lake water in his mind ebbed away. “What do you want, Alex?” she asked. He imagined inside her brain a tiny Charlotte standing in her knickers and chemise, holding a clipboard and waiting to add his response to her checklist of How to Manage Alexander O’Riley. An answer rushed at once from his warmed-up heart, but he dared not speak it. All his weapons were gone, but even if he had them he’d not feel safe enough to tell her the truth. You, witch. I want you. And he certainly would not admit to her how she’d infiltrated his defenses from the very start—at least not by using words that were half-buried like land mines inside of him. Love, beautiful, naked. He loved the darts in her beautiful, deadly shoes. He loved the way her hair felt, slipping over his naked skin. And he loved how her own defenses came apart like a windblown rose when he smiled at her, for all she tried to hide it from them both. He’d spent the past few days smiling more than he ever had in his life, just to watch its effect on her, the darkening of her eyes and the way her properness cracked until she was muttering insults that not only rang his doorbell but his fire alarm as well. He loved it. He loved her. And not just in the metaphorical sense. The thought of her leaving him, returning to London and the witches’ League, hurt like hell. Damn. He was most definitely not telling her that. But it was true. The aggravating little witch had crashed him with her magic, and there was nothing he could do about it. He’d fought smugglers and talked back to Irish Catholic nuns, but there was no defeating this soft-skinned, sensitive grenade of a woman. “Alex?” she prompted. “What do I want?” he echoed lightly. “Dinner, my darling. I want dinner, and a bottle of wine.” She sighed. “You are incorrigible.” “At last, something we can agree upon.” He smiled, and lifted her gently onto his lap so she would be more comfortable than on the cold, hard floor. She nestled close, laying her cheek against his shoulder. It felt like a whole-body kiss. I love you, he thought silently, trying not to tremble. “Fiend,” she muttered. “Witch,” he replied, stroking her hair as her breathing grew lighter, lighter, until at last she slept. And he sat there staring into the darkness, thinking, Damn, damn.