Stealing Midnight. Tracy MacNishЧитать онлайн книгу.

      Aidan Mullen became aware of pain before anything else. His body felt as if it had been badly beaten. Every single inch of him ached and burned.

      Too weak to even open his eyes, smells wove their way into his senses: fire smoke and earth, tanned furs and boiled wool, musky incense and sage.

      The last thing Aidan recalled was dying. It came back to him in sickening detailed snippets of memory. The heaving, rocking ship. The throat that felt as if it were full of hot, broken glass. The burning fever. The spasms of wrenching, wracking convulsions. And the gradually encroaching black shroud of death, numbing him until there was nothing left.

      His body remembered the pain, and he shuddered as the memories rolled through him.

      Aidan slowly began to come more awake. He realized he was completely naked, his skin prickling with awareness against scratchy wool and silky furs.

      His fingers twitched. His foot moved.

      And beside him, a person shifted and sat up.

      Aidan’s heart, already weak, nearly stopped. Where was he, and who lay beside him?

      Aidan held perfectly still, eyes kept closed, feigning deep sleep. Fingers gently touched his neck, feeling for his pulse. Hair fell over his face like silk rain, scented with exotic incense. A cheek pressed against his, soft and most definitely female.

      She whispered in his ear, a quiet, fluid stream of language he did not know, a lilting melody that sounded like a song. Her voice was sweet and slightly husky, and when she finished speaking, she sat beside him silently, stroking his cheek.

      Aidan stayed motionless, but inside, his mind spun.

      Who was this woman? What had happened after he’d slipped away on the ship? He searched his memory, but there was nothing there but a huge gaping black hole.

      It seemed as if he’d died and awoken in another life.

      There he lay, nude and covered in furs, before a fire and atop what felt like cold, hard earth. The woman beside him spoke a strange tongue, and touched him all too familiarly.

      Before he could muse upon it further, she rose, patting the covers snugly around him before tending to the fire. Aidan slit his eyes, trying to see her through the fringe of his lashes, not wanting her to know he had awakened.

      He could only make out her silhouette, limned by firelight. The light stung his sensitive eyes and he quickly shut them, but not before he had noticed her slim form, clothed in garments more suited to the Middle Ages than 1806.

      He fought to stay awake, but his fatigue swept over him and he faded again, dreaming of standing stones, ancient fables, and tales told over bonfires of travelers that came from different times.

      Chapter Five

      Chester, England

      Padraig stood in the magistrate’s office and tried very hard to listen to the words that were being spoken to him, but he felt as if he were trapped in a nightmare. The men seemed far away, their voices muffled, the meaning obscure. The room was paneled with dark wood, and the walls pressed in on him, suffocating, smothering.

      Like a grave.

      The words were getting through, however, and Padraig’s blood had turned to ice, his skin hot and sweaty.

      An outbreak of morbid croup, the man was saying, more than sixty passengers and crew struck, and Aidan amongst them.

      Padraig could barely hear the man. Recrimination had his mind spinning.

      “In truth, my lord, ’twas such great respect for your brother’s station that prevented him being thrown overboard, along with the others who sickened,” the magistrate said in a low tone that was obviously meant to be soothing. But Padraig wanted to grab him by the throat and rip out his words before he could speak any more.

      The magistrate swallowed heavily before continuing, obviously reluctant to deliver such dire news. “Your brother’s remains were handled with the greatest consideration, I assure you, and were kept in his stateroom until the ship docked, at which time he was afforded a space in our city’s crypt. We dispatched a notice to your family, but were forced to inter him immediately. Fear of contagion, I’m sure you understand.”

      Padraig understood nothing, except that the man before him who stank of garlic and body odor was telling him that his twin, his brother, his best friend in the entire world, had perished.

      Padraig’s hands curled into fists, and though he wanted to battle for his brother’s life, there was no one to fight. His heart insisted that Aidan was not dead. He hung onto that thought, the only one that made sense in a world that had suddenly turned to quicksand.

      “It can’t be true,” Padraig whispered, more to himself than to the others in the room. “I would have felt it.”

      “My lord, I am so sorry,” Mira said softly, standing at his side. She laid a tiny hand on the sleeve of his coat, and Padraig had to restrain himself from swatting her away.

      “Leave me,” Padraig said harshly. He turned away from them so they could not see the mask of horror that he knew must contort his face.

      “A deartháir, a leathchúpla, a anam,” he whispered aloud, like an entreaty, a prayer. My brother, my twin, my soul.

      There was no life Padraig could envision that did not have Aidan in it. No laughter, no joy, no future.

      The magistrate cleared his throat awkwardly. “The letter was sent by messenger just yesterday, my lord. If it arrives on schedule, His and Her Grace ought to receive the missive by Monday.”

      And Padraig’s grief spread through his body like a malignant cancer, eating him alive, slowly killing him. He could see his parents’ faces as clearly as if they stood in front of him, and Padraig knew that this was their worst nightmare. It was Padraig’s, too.

      Questions arose in his mind like smoke from fire: did he suffer? Did he call out for his family? Did he die alone and afraid?

      As if reading Padraig’s mind, the magistrate reached into his vest and pulled out a letter. “He wrote this before…”

      Padraig whirled around. The man held out a rolled sheet of paper. With shaking hands, Padraig took it.

      Mira wept softly as she stood there beside him, dabbing at her eyes with a lacey handkerchief. Why should the young woman’s tears be so enraging? She was Aidan’s betrothed, after all, and was entitled to her own grief.

      Padraig reached deep for a semblance of manners. He bowed, keeping his gaze averted. “Excuse me. I need to be alone.”

      Gripping the paper that bore Aidan’s last words, he left the office and went outside. The frigid air bit at his face, but he took no note. He wandered a bit, not quite knowing what to do. The parchment was crinkled and dry, and a few days before it had been beneath Aidan’s hand. Padraig wanted to read it, but he was afraid. If he read it, Aidan’s death would be real.

      All around him the city of Chester bustled with afternoon activity. The world seemed normal enough, the streets were ringing with the rattle of carriages and the clopping of horses’ hooves on cobblestones. Shopkeepers conducted business, women bought assorted sundries, children played around the legs of their mothers, and somewhere in the distance a dog barked.

      Padraig glanced up and down, north to south, east to west. The normalcy of the sunlight seemed an insult. Aidan was dead. The sun should not shine, the birds should not sing, the sky should not be such a beautiful, clear blue. Padraig wanted darkness and rain, whipping winds and pounding, howling storms.

      His driver called to him, and Padraig saw that he held the door to the carriage open in invitation