Stealing Midnight. Tracy MacNishЧитать онлайн книгу.
him that peculiar awareness.
Padraig, however, was not the sort of man to engage in wishful thinking. Instead, he sought out the sort of reality he could see, touch, and measure. He wanted answers, not feelings.
Heading through the dining hall of the inn, he nearly mowed down Mira Kimball, who stood in the entranceway.
Mira’s mouth formed an O, her pretty blue eyes wide. “My lord, where are you off to?”
Padraig used every ounce of his self-control to keep from pushing her out of his way. “I’ve got business to attend to, my lady. Please step aside.”
“But, my lord, I have incredible news.”
“Not now,” Padraig bit out. He couldn’t help but noticing how lovely she looked in her pale, silky gray gown, trimmed with black lace. He noticed a decided lack of tearstains, and of swollen eyes. Did she care nothing for his brother? Another thought dawned, and he narrowed his eyes. What was the girl up to? “Did you come alone? Where’s your maid?”
“Right there,” she answered, and her tone suggested offense that he would think her improper. She gestured to the simply-garbed woman who stood at a discreet distance.
Holding up a yellowed leather-bound book, Mira said, “Do you recall the letter I showed you in Warwick? Well, I had found a few of these old journals in some crates in our attic, and I brought them on my travels so I would have something to read at night.”
Padraig stared at her, slightly agog that she would continue pattering away about her family history in the light of all that had occurred. Did it matter nothing to her that Aidan was dead?
Mira continued on, her face glowing with satisfaction, “’Tis incredible, my lord. You see, I brought a carton of papers and journals from Warwick, so I’d have something to occupy me in the evenings, and it has yielded the most interesting findings!”
She held out the old, tattered book as if she were presenting it to a king. “This is the journal of Bret Kimball, the same one who your great-grandmother, Amelia Bradburn, summoned to your family’s home in Southampton. And even more intriguing is that my great-uncle was apparently promised to wed your grandmother, Camille Bradburn.”
“That’s nice,” he said tightly. Padraig moved past her.
She reached out and touched his cloak. “Are you not interested at all?”
Padraig swung back around, and the bloodlust that sang through his body must have shown on his face, because Mira gasped and took three steps back.
“My brother is gone, and my thoughts are consumed with my grief. I can’t seem to summon an inkling of interest in your petty dabbling into the past, and your insipid nattering about a marriage that quite obviously never occurred.” Padraig bowed slightly, and trying to hang onto the barest vestige of control, said, “Do not speak of this nonsense to me again. My brother, your betrothed, is dead, and as such we will not be family after all. So forgive me for saying so, but I cannot fathom what he ever saw in you in the first place.”
Mira’s face reflected her shock, but it quickly faded and her eyes took on that same glitter as the day she’d shown him her museum. It was the look of a woman who showed far less than she felt, and for that alone Padraig felt a stab of pity for her.
“Well, my lord, you’ve certainly made your true feelings known, haven’t you?” she said softly, and that shine in her eyes took on a nasty light. However, her tone was as sweet as always when she said, “’Tis my turn to beg forgiveness. Perhaps you and I grieve differently. ’Twas only a wish to distract myself from the pain of losing Aidan that had me reaching for the diversion of my hobby. I am sorry I bothered you.”
The meekness of her words did nothing to soften that light, nor did it detract from the brackets that formed at the corners of her lips. Mira Kimball was quite obviously not accustomed to being spoken to in such a manner.
Padraig mentally apologized to Aidan. This was certainly not how his brother would have wanted him to treat the woman he was going to marry.
“My lady,” he began lamely. “My own grief is making me act like a madman. Your pardon, please, for my brutish words. My brother would have called me out had he heard me speak so unjustly to his beloved.”
Mira’s expression softened; the glitter in her eyes did not. “’Twas rude of me to come to you with such triviality.”
“No, you’d had the right of it, thinking to give me a diversion from my grief.” Padraig didn’t think he’d ever lied so boldly. He gestured to several men who’d gathered out on the street, thick thuggish men in seamen’s garb. “Excuse me, my lady, but I’ve my own form of distraction to see to. Good day.”
“Make it up to me,” Mira said softly.
“Pardon?”
“You could join me for dinner.” Mira smiled invitingly. She held the journal in her hands in such a way that Padraig caught the glint of the ring Aidan had given her, worn over her lacy glove.
“My lady,” he began, but she cut him off.
“Not tonight, of course.” Her smile deepened, and she reached out to pull an invisible piece of lint from his cloak. “You’ll just owe me, my lord.”
Padraig managed to extract himself from her presence, wondering once again what Aidan had ever seen in the girl. There was something about her demeanor that discomfited him, an edge to her smiles, and that glitter in her eyes. Mira Kimball struck him as a woman whose beauty veiled a dark ugliness inside.
Dismissing the girl from his thoughts, Padraig headed outside and joined the men he’d asked to accompany him to the Welshman’s keep. There were three of them, well muscled, well armed, and well paid. Together they would see to it that the anatomist gave up his secrets.
Penarlâg, Wales
Smoke hung like a fat angry cloud over the ancient, crumbling keep, darker than the gray stormy skies. The winds blew hard, freezing, wet, and gusty, carrying whiffs of the burning bonfire to Padraig and his men.
Padraig recognized the stench; it hit him in the gut, turned his stomach, and made him instantly enraged. He kicked his mount into a thundering gallop, urging the beast on as he pulled his pistol.
The winds blew hotter as he drew closer, throwing bits of ash and bright red cinders high into the air, swirling, whipping eddies that reeked of burning human hair and flesh.
And Padraig knew with a terrible certainty that if his brother were in that bonfire, he’d slaughter the Welshman and throw his body in alongside Aidan’s. Justice would be served in their own private Gehenna.
Padraig reined in the stallion as they reached the gates to the property, but the animal had seemed to sense his bloodlust. It pranced and snorted, reared up on its hind legs, and scraped at the sky.
As if summoned by hell’s own messenger, an old man came flying from the keep. He wore ragged outer garments, outmoded breeches, and shoes made of animal skins. His hair was long and wild and silver, his black bushy eyebrows drawn into a deep scowl. He had the look of a crazed eremite, waving his arms in the motion of pushing them back.
“Begone,” he screamed. “Get off my land! Begone, begone!”
Padraig waited for someone else to come, someone to be drawn to the ruckus the man made. But there was silence behind him.
The blackstone building must have been a thousand years old, and bore the signs of years of neglect. What had once been huge ramparts were now rutted and pitted, the fallen stones returned to the earth to be slowly reabsorbed. A huge portcullis listed against one tall wall, once a daunting fortification barring entrance to an intimidating dwelling, but now nothing more than a trellis for climbing vines.
Padraig leveled his pistol at the man, cocked it, and hoped the fool was not so addled as to no longer understand mortal danger. “I know everything the night watchman in Chester’s kirkyard knew,” he warned