She walked from the alcove as if she were stepping upon shattered glass, her heart bleeding from wounds far deeper than any enemy could have dealt her.
Deeper because they were dealt by those she loved.
Chapter 12
It took her hours to fall asleep. Adam marked every minute. He'd paced his tiny room, eyes accustomed to the darkness probing into her chamber where her pale features were washed in moonlight. Salty tracks of dried tears streaked her cheeks, purple-black shadows pooling like bruises beneath her eyes. But she never made a sound.
From the moment he'd first met her, she'd been heartbreakingly valiant. And attempting to break her will was the most despicable thing he'd ever done. Guilt had become his constant shadow in the years he'd lived by the sword. He'd donned it every dawn as he did his shirt and breeches, buckled it around his waist, then done his best to forget he was wearing it.
But he'd never been able to escape the chain of ugly memories—death cries and pleas for mercy on powder smoke-hazed hillsides, torturous wounds that forced men to linger on a blade-edge of agony, a far less humane fate than a swift death. And always, most potent and painful of all, the memory of Gavin, riding with Bonnie Prince Charlie across the Scottish moors, Adam's gentle, learned brother losing his soul a piece at a time in a war he'd never believed in. And why? To gain their father's approval for once in his life, and because Adam had urged him to come.
Adam closed his eyes, remembering how he'd borne Gavin to Armageddon. It was the only other time in his thirty-eight years that Adam Slade had loathed himself as completely as he did this night.
Blast, it had to be this way, he upbraided himself sternly. And Juliet's angels had been swift enough to agree with Isabelle, to show Juliet how hopeless her quest was. One glance at the older courtesan, and they'd scrambled like raw recruits behind their commander at the first blast of cannonfire. Even the timid little mouse who had dared to contradict Isabelle for a moment, grateful for the shelter Juliet had offered, had fallen in line with barely a squeak of protest. A twinge of guilt gnawed at Adam as he wondered what would happen to the child once Juliet closed the doors of Angel's Fall forever. But he shoved the question aside.
He'd find a way to deal with the girl himself, place her out of harm's way as soon as Juliet was safe. Doubtless Gavin could be prevailed upon to find a position for her somewhere on his sprawling estate in Norfolk. There was nothing the Earl of Glenlyon adored more than rescuing people from dire fates. Adam had suffered aplenty because of that particular trait in his half-brother. He might as well reap some benefit from it now.
Adam muttered a curse. What the devil was he thinking? He should be thanking Dame Fortune that Isabelle had found a way to stifle Felicity before it was too late. Truth was, the girl could have spoiled everything if the elegant courtesan hadn't interfered. But there was something suspicious in the whole situation, something that raked across his instincts like the metallic whisper of a dagger drawn from a sheath.
Isabelle.
Adam scowled and drove his fingers through the unruly mane tumbling about his shoulders. The courtesan had looked cunning as any general mounting a secret campaign, as she had moved the other women with consummate skill to chip away at Juliet's confidence.
In fact, it was as if she'd rehearsed the scene a dozen times. Adam's brow furrowed. Why was she so anxious to go back into the streets? Of all the women at Angel's Fall, she needed Juliet's sanctuary the most. Time was the cruelest foe any courtesan had to face. Its march was inexorable as it despoiled beauty, carving lines at the corners of even the most jewellike eyes, dragging down the most perfect breasts, sucking the ripeness from the most succulent lips.
Most men desired women who made them feel young and virile and vital as a youth of twenty, and despite her queenly carriage, Isabelle would remind any suitors that time was stalking them as well, just by her very presence.
Yes, if any woman among the angels should need the haven Juliet had built, Isabelle was the one. Unless, of course, she had made other provisions.
From the time of the Trojan War, battles had been won by slipping an enemy soldier into the opposing camp to wage battle from within.
That would explain how Elise's bit of glass had gotten into the gingerbread. It would have been ever so simple for Isabelle to slip down into the kitchen and arrange things. She would have known Juliet's propensity for the sweet, could have predicted that she would eat it....
Rage surged through Adam, and he embraced it, for it was so much easier to believe Isabelle was capable of such ugliness than to confront the fact that someone had slipped past his guard to aim such a potentially devastating blow at Juliet. It was all he could do to wait until Juliet slept.
But when her face was at last wreathed in slumber, he crept through her chamber on feet soundless as an assassin's, and made his way to Isabelle's bedchamber door. It stood wide open, as if the courtesan had been expecting him. Silver candelabra melted candleglow in luminous rivulets down the ducal seal of her former lover, the room furnished as lushly as the queen's own.
Curtains of the finest garnet velvet obscured the simple bed Juliet had fitted out each chamber with, mounds of lacey pillows arrayed as if waiting for a lover's head.
The armoire doors couldn't hold all of Isabelle's gowns, ice-blue satin and primrose velvet, scarlet damask and indigo silk bursting the wooden confines, while petticoats of every color that might grace an artist's palette draped over the open doors.
Every available surface was littered with woman things; rouge to freshen the fading bloom in her cheeks, powder to whiten her curls, enough jewels to hide the fact that there was no longer such rich sparkle in her eyes, an expensive and elegant scent mantled the place like the coal-smoke that often hung over the city—completely inescapable.
There had been a time Adam had taken pleasure in such sophisticated feminine lures. But now, all he could remember was how sweet and clean Juliet's curls had smelled when he'd buried his face in their silkiness, a mesmerizing mixture of soap and rainwater and innocence.
Garbed in a buttermilk satin open-robed gown, Isabelle sat at her dressing table, smoothing some creamy concoction over her white brow. She caught a glimpse of him in her mirror and nodded her head in acknowledgment. "You managed to escape your cage at last, I see. The duke always said there wasn't a wall stout enough to hold a stallion prisoner in a stable full of pretty mares."
"That's not why I've come to your chamber and you know it."
Isabelle took one more swipe at the faint lines on her forehead, then wiped her fingers delicately upon a lace-edged handkerchief. "I don't have enough gypsy blood to read your mind, Sabrehawk. Perhaps you should tell me what this is about."
"What happened in Juliet's room a few hours ago. Why did you help me? Use your power to try to persuade her to leave this infernal place?"
Isabelle fingered the silver handle of her hairbrush. "Would you believe I've been struck with a bout of philanthropic zeal of my own?"
"Not if you wrote it in blood in St. Peter's book."
She raised the bristles to her lustrous fall of hair, brushing imaginary tangles from the shimmering skein. "We understand each other quite well, don't we, Sabrehawk? Adventurers, both of us, taking what we can from life. The only difference is that your sword is your fortune. It will serve you much longer than something as transient as a beautiful face."
"Don't try to engage my sympathy, Isabelle. Your face may not be what it once was, but I'd wager your wits are still sharp as the fangs of a snake."
"One must be prepared to use whatever weapons the fates grant us." Her lips parted in a half-smile. "Survival is, after all, the only thing that matters."
"Is it? Just exactly what is the price of your soul?"
Isabelle arched one winged brow, her eyes skating over his body from the jut of his jaw to the toes of his boots, then rising again to fix on the flap of his breeches. "I'm afraid it's higher than you could afford."
"You can ke
ep your poisonous charms to choke the next lordling you snare, madam. I want to know how much you're being paid to sabotage Juliet from within."
"Sabotage..." Realization dawned across Isabelle's once-exquisite features and her laughter tinkled out like crystal prisms stirred by the wind. "You think that I put that glass in Juliet's gingerbread?"
"Someone inside Angel's Fall must have done so. Who else could have known Juliet's habits? Who else could have gotten inside the house?"
"Who indeed?" Isabelle pulled a face. "In case you haven't noticed, our Juliet would invite the devil himself in for tea if he looked tired and chilled."
"I've given her orders that no one be allowed—"
"And you think she'll obey you? Obviously I underestimated your powers of understanding, where women are concerned. Juliet will do what she thinks right—though the whole world calls her a fool. Even if it means she'll walk through hell itself to rescue someone who doesn't want to be rescued. You should have seen her the day she came to snatch me from the establishment the duke had set up for me. Such an earnest little mouse, she was. Her fighting bonnet anchored beneath her chin, the most abominable cloak I'd ever seen rippling about her shoulders."
Isabelle gave a careless shrug. "Believe what you will of me, Sabrehawk. My stay in this little nunnery, it's temporary at best. But I must make an advantageous match this time, and ravage my protector's purse for every sou I can, for this will be my last chance. There is no place for aged harlots but the streets. And I'm enough of a self-serving creature that I would do anything necessary to keep a roof over my head. Doubtless our Juliet would nobly starve to death in a gutter, but such an unsightly demise is hardly my style."
Isabelle withdrew the stopper of one of the glass bottles, dabbing scent between her breasts. "You should be thanking me for helping you tonight instead of treating me to a reprise of the Spanish Inquisition. You wanted to dash the Stardust from our Juliet's eyes, did you not? Wanted to convince her to abandon her absurd quest?"
"Yes, damn you, but—"
"Leave it at that, Sabrehawk. Pack up Juliet's dismal collection of gowns and trinkets and carry her off to that widow person in Northwillow she's forever penning letters to. Get her out of harm's way, so that both you and I can go back to the lives we know best—midnight trysts and playing at faro. Drinking wine and pretending that we are having a magnificent time."
"There's no guarantee Juliet will agree to leave, even after the scene in her bedchamber tonight."
"No. Amazing how hard-headed good-hearted people can be. But I would advise you to find a way to convince her to leave before the unthinkable happens. There is no knowing what lengths her enemies might go to in order to remove her from their paths."
A chill trickled through Adam's veins, and his gaze probed Isabelle's feline features, searching for some hint of deception, some shadow of enough evil to slip glass into a bit of cake, to wait, silent as a cat with its prey, until Juliet took a bite....
"That fate will sound like a tea with the Queen Mother if you ever do anything to endanger Juliet. If I discover you were at fault for this night's work, I vow you'll wish you'd never been born."
"You must think of some more creative threat, my sweet."
"Damn you to hell! Tell me the truth or I'll—" He grabbed at that slender wrist, the lace at her cuff falling back. His fingers felt a ridge of flesh beneath them. Dark eyes flashed down, and he glimpsed the white scar slashed into her wrist. He raised his eyes to Isabelle's.
"Yes. I did it," she said coolly. "A lifetime ago. Tragedy reigned then. Odd, is it not? How desperately we can wish we were never born? Yet to take one's own life... in the end, that was the one thing I hadn't the courage to do."
He felt a sharp jab of something akin to compassion, wondering what had driven her to such a desperate act. But he crushed the emotion. He couldn't afford the slightest weakness with Juliet in peril. "If I find out that you have done anything to endanger Juliet, I swear by my father's grave there will be no place dark enough for you to hide."
"My heavens, what a rather enthusiastic threat. I'd not have guessed you capable of such... passion—outside of the bedchamber." Those wide, jewel-hard eyes flicked up to his, and he felt as if the courtesan could peel away the layers of a man's soul. Doubtless, it was an ability that had served her well.
A smile tugged at her rouge-reddened lips, her brows arching with incredulity. "You're in love with her, aren't you?"
Adam recoiled as if she'd just rammed a lance full-tilt through his chest. "Don't be absurd!"
"Mon Dieu, who would have believed that our dowdy little mother abbess could tame the Prince of Sin to her hand?"
"Blast it to hell, enough!" Adam warned. "I'd have to be mad to fall in love with a woman like Juliet!"
"Considering the tales I've heard of you—charging into battle with twenty trained assassins, leaping from cliffs into the sea below—I would say that your sanity has always been in question."
Adam glared at her, loathing everything about her—her painted face, her cynical gaze, the smile that mocked him from her lips. Love Juliet? Was it possible he'd been such a fool? God, how Gavin would laugh—Sabrehawk, losing his heart to a slip of a girl with a warrior's spirit and a quest even more hopeless than the one Gavin had launched in Scotland years ago.
"I'll be damned before I love her!" Adam ground out.
Isabelle swept to her feet with an airy laugh and glided toward the open door. "You were damned before you loved her. For a thousand years troubadours have fashioned songs of how love is the great redeemer and the most ruthless destroyer." She paused in the portal, her gaze meeting his for a long moment. "Have a care, Sabrehawk," she warned. "You may at last have met the woman with the power to destroy you."
Adam walked away, his chest feeling torn wide, black horror pulsing through him for the second time that night. Was the blasted witch right? Was he in love with Juliet?
He closed his eyes, remembering the unfamiliar hunger that she'd unleashed in him. The bursting sweetness of her mouth when he'd crushed it beneath his kiss, the primal need that tormented him to mate with her, to guard her, to fight with her and laugh with her. Not for merely a string of nights, but for all eternity.
But she was pure and good, with a spirit that burned with the luminosity of angels—the embodiment of every dream he could never have.
Adam reeled, stunned by the realization that he'd spent a lifetime trying to avoid this calamity, flinging himself across a hundred different battlefields, some part of him knowing how agonizing it would be if he ever had to face the one legacy he could hate his father for.
A bastard had nothing to offer an angel—not even an honorable name.
Chapter 13
Juliet huddled beneath her coverlets, her knees drawn up to her stomach, her arms clutched tight about her pillow, but nothing could ease the knot of despair lodged beneath her ribs. It shouldn't have hurt so much—hearing the women's scorn for Angel's Fall, hearing the truth about how they had used Juliet for the naive little fool that she was.
The laughingstock, the country church-mouse who thought she could heal the world's wounds by creating a tiny haven of peace and gentleness in the midst of the ravening streets of London.
But she'd plunged into dangerous waters—dark and deep and so swift she couldn't keep her head above the waves. Worst of all, she'd lost her courage somewhere in the tiny pantry, with her mouth bleeding and the square of gingerbread crumbling in her hand.
"What if you hadn't been the one to eat it?" Adam had demanded, his rugged countenance fierce with emotion. "What if one of the other women had? Or if you'd put it in the beggar's basket and some child had wolfed it down?"
What if someone else had died because of her stubbornness in remaining here? And for what? For some wild dream that she could fashion courtesans into seamstresses and governesses and ladies' maids? That they would eagerly embrace a life of stitching until their fingers bled, banished forever into the back rooms o
f life where the sunlight could rarely reach?
Was that possible, after the lives they'd known? She had barely tasted such passion, and she was intoxicated with the power of it.
Juliet pressed her fingertips to her lips, remembering with sizzling heat the sensations that had swept through her at Adam Slade's kiss. Had Isabelle ever felt such soul-searing need for her duke? Millicent for her rich merchant? Jenny for the dashing young squire's son who had carried her away?
That wild pulse-pounding splendor was what Juliet was asking her ladies to surrender forever. It had seemed so simple a sacrifice when she was packing up her meager belongings in the vicarage at Northwillow, making her plans for Angel's Fall.
But that had been before Adam Slade had drawn her into his embrace, taught her the secrets of a man's kiss, infused her with the desperate need to know more, learn everything, every mystery of love—not just the chaste love that had seemed enough back in Northwillow. But a love that encompassed bodies as well as souls.
A love Adam Slade didn't want.
He'd never made any secret of his desperation to be rid of her. The women of Angel's Fall had done little to conceal their misgivings about the new life she'd promised them. But she'd been so certain that she was right. That if she merely showed them the way, they'd take pride in their independence.
Yes, she'd known the truth deep down in her soul. It shouldn't have hurt so dreadfully to have it dragged up into the light.
What was she really fighting for? Here, in this godforsaken corner of London? She was getting tired. So tired.
How odd that, in her pain, the one person in the world she wanted to run to was the man who had systematically destroyed her illusions hours before. She needed to know why he had betrayed her.
She threw back the coverlets and climbed out of bed, the floor so chilly her bare feet ached. Quietly she stole to the door of the alcove. She must have dozed sometime during that interminable night. Slade's bed was untouched, blankets tucked haphazardly beneath the pillow. But Adam was nowhere in sight.