Chapter 2
Chapter Two
The compartment of the train was small, quiet and most of all… private.
Edwina sighed as she tried to lift her portmanteau onto the storage rack. Perhaps she shouldn’t have brought Sir Walton’s Original Thoughts on Black Magic, the pair of heavy volumes dealing with necromancy, or her grimoire.
Of course, one couldn’t tell what they were going to find in the wilds of Bedfordshire. Particularly when one was dealing with tales of ladies coming back from the dead.
It might be necromancy.
It might be a serious case of narcolepsy and an over-eager gravedigger.
Of course, knowing Sterling was interested in the case, it could also have something to do with demons.
Please not demons, she silently begged.
Because of all the entities she’d had to deal with whilst in his employ, she hadn’t yet faced those of the highest hierarchy of hell.
“Here,” he growled, caging her from behind and taking the weight from her.
“I’ve got it.” She fought back.
“Unless you’re about to reveal some hitherto unknown skills at weightlifting, I doubt it.” He slung the portmanteau on the rack above them. “Have you not been listening to anything I’ve said over the years? Always pack light, Miss Sheffield. You never know when you’re going to have to run.”
“Haven’t you been listening? Always be prepared,” she growled back, because he was giving her no space. No quarter. Turning around brought her nose-to-chest with his body, and if he hadn’t been looking up, resettling the portmanteau, he’d have noticed her flaming cheeks.
Edwina couldn’t help becoming aware of the way her skirts caressed his shins and thighs. She almost had to grab his bloody waistcoat in order not to topple backward onto the seat, her fingers grazing against tweed.
And that was horrific, because if she dared let herself touch him, she wasn’t certain she’d be able to stop herself.
It all went back to that kiss.
The way he’d sucked in a sharp breath as if she’d caught him by surprise.
And then the way his hands captured her waist as she began to draw back, as if to say, don’t you dare pull away now….
She’d been kissed before.
Despite his frequent commentary on her frilly spinster caps and man-repelling gowns, she’d had beaus. She’d been given flowers. Had the back of her hand drawn to a gentleman’s mouth. Even several, well, rather chaste kisses, now she had the hindsight to know better.
But nothing like this.
Sterling didn’t kiss. He consumed. The second he’d sensed her interest, he’d captured her mouth with his, and then his tongue had been lashing against her own, and a growl had echoed up his throat as he muscled her back against the wall.
She was fairly certain that if the butler hadn’t knocked on the library door at that precise moment, she’d have ended up on the desk—her own desk—with her hideous skirts all akimbo and Sterling’s hands beneath them.
Edwina became aware that she was frozen in time and space, and that both of them were barely breathing.
She looked up, and Sterling was watching her.
Aware of her seeming dilemma.
“That,” he said thickly. “Are we not going to discuss that?”
Edwina released a shaky breath. What did he want her to say? That she’d kissed him? That he’d most definitely kissed her back?
That it was the single most thrilling moment of her life?
That she’d spent years daydreaming of his hands on her skin, and every time she’d caught herself doing it, she’d forced herself to rein those fantasies back in and bury them deep.
He was her employer—or he had been.
She’d been his secretary.
He was the youngest son of a duke. Handsome. Educated. Brilliant. A veritable Adonis. When he walked into a room, a crowd formed around him always. Women gushing. Men shaking his hand and grinning.
And she was just Edwina.
Pale, unextraordinary, shy.
An orphan who had fought her way through this life, clawing for her magic, forcing those in the order to look her in the eye….
And even if the kiss they’d shared meant anything, he’d soon move on. She’d been the one who opened all his correspondence, after all. Though she’d stopped doing that to the ones liberally laced with perfume.
There were some things she didn’t need to know.
“Being prepared is not a sin,” her mouth said instead, and then she ducked beneath his outstretched arm, finding space and room to bloody breathe, even as her heart slammed behind her ribs.
A growl echoed behind her.
Words that sounded like “stubborn as a mule” were muttered under his breath.
She took a seat across from him, and tugged her journal out of her reticule. She needed to control this situation somehow. “So what do you know of the case?”
Sterling stared at her for a long moment, before he gracefully took his seat opposite her.
“Very little,” he drawled, lacing his hands over his middle as he reclined back in the carriage seat.
The train chose that moment to lurch forward.
“Adrian Bishop talked me into a few rounds of billiards last night and by the time I arrived home this morning, the order’s representative was waiting for me.
I barely had half an hour to shave and dress before I made my way to the station. ”
Of course he hadn’t bothered to read the missive.
It was so damned typical, and it raised her hackles.
Sterling had fallen into the venatori order—those that hunted the creatures that stirred in the night and solved the unsolvable—like a cat landing on its feet.
He hadn’t had to spend years proving himself, taking a job with the most reckless venatori on record, just because his cases drew attention.
Working on his magic at all hours of the night just to master the basics.
No. Magic came easily to him. Recognition. Awe.
Sometimes she wanted to punch him.
Better that than the alternative….
“We have another Reawakened Dead Lady,” she said instead.
“Another one?” His tone implied this was par for the course.
“It’s quite a common tale in several countries.”
“Well, yes. They’ve been burying people alive for centuries.”
“You’ve heard the story of the Lady of Mount Edgcumbe’s ring?” she asked.
“Cornwall, end of last century. Correct?”
That damned memory of his.
“They say it was Lady Emma Edgcumbe, wife of the 1st Earl of Mount Edgcumbe. On the eve of the wedding, the bride is walking back from the church when she trips and falls into a deep slumber from which she cannot be woken. Her maidservant runs to St. Julian’s well, gathers up some water, and revives the young lady with a sip of it. It happens again on the wedding night—”
Sterling snickered. “Well, there’s one way to lie back and think of England.”
Edwina shot him a censorious look.
“What?” He spread his hands. “If he cannot keep her awake, then clearly the poor fellow isn’t up to snuff. It’s hardly something nefarious.”
“Anyway,” she continued, pointedly ignoring him.
“They rouse her again with water from the well and when they go on their honeymoon, her new husband takes a flask of well water with him, just in case.
She falls with child and as the months pass, all is well and the earl thinks the danger is over.
Until she falls into a death-like sleep from which she cannot be woken.
“They hold a mirror to her lips and no breath fogs the glass. They prick her with a needle but she doesn’t start.
And she’s cold as ice. Frozen right through.
The desperate husband sends an old servant to fetch water from the saint’s well, but the servant is lazy and disgruntled and figures nobody is going to know if he uses water from the nearest pig trough. ”
“Ugh. Disgusting. And of course, she doesn’t awake this time?” he asked.
“She doesn’t. Instead, she’s given a funeral and laid to rest in her finest gown and jewels in the family tomb. Furious with grief, the earl fires the lazy servant and descends into melancholy.
“But the servant is full of resentment and so he thinks to himself: The lady cost him his employment, so he’ll get some of his own back.
She was buried with all her jewelry, so the servant breaks into the family tomb with the intent to steal it.
He takes her necklace and other bits and pieces, and lastly his eyes catches upon the diamond ring on her hand—”
“I can see where this is going.”
“But try as he might, he cannot remove it. So he takes his sharpest knife and tries to cut it off—”
“But the lady lets out a scream and sits up, and the servant falls down dead,” Sterling said.
Edwina scowled at him. This was her story. “His hair turns white, he runs into the night and he’s never seen again. The lady is restored to her husband, bears him a son, and all live happily ever after.”
“Bravo.” He clapped. “However, Cornwall seems a fair way from Bletsoe.”
“Well, this sort of thing has happened at Bletsoe too. There was a wealthy and beautiful young lady who once lived there. After a long illness, she was pronounced dead and was buried in a vault beneath St. Mary’s church with her wedding ring on her finger.
Of course, in this case, it’s the sexton who slips into the vault after the ring.
As he tries to slice it off, the lady sits up with a shriek and the terrified sexton flees the vault and even the village. He’s never seen again.”
“How coincidental that these servants and sextons are never seen again. And the lady?”
“Died of old age eventually.”
“And this time she’s not going to wake up again?”
“Not unless you’ve secretly been studying the Grave Arts and intend to revive her.”
Sterling waved a languid hand. “I’m one of the venatori, not the sicarii. I hunt things. I protect people. I go where my prime directs, and I bring her what she wants.”
“I thought the sicarii were a myth?”
She’d heard rumors of course, about the secretive group of assassins who were pledged to protect the order—and to remove threats to it. The bogeyman in the dark. Sorcerers who could wield the Grave Arts—necromancy, the art of killing with a mere thought, communicating beyond the grave….
Sterling laid a finger against his lips.
“It’s a little like this mysterious lady and her ring.
Hundreds of stories, and only a few know the truth.
But I do know this: Don’t talk about the sicarii and you won’t bring them sniffing into your affairs.
So if she died of old age then why are we heading into the heart of Bedfordshire? ”
“The original reawakened lady of Bletsoe has been gone some twenty years. But now there’s a new one. You should read your missive.”
Sterling tugged it out of his coat pocket and scanned it swiftly.
“Lady Willoughby fell suddenly ill and passed away last week. She was interred at St. Mary’s, and the sexton—a new one presumably—was awakened in the middle of the night by a horrific banging.”
“Lady Willoughby, somewhat distressed by waking in the vault.” Edwina smiled at him. “She claimed she wasn’t alone. She woke with some sort of presence sitting on her chest, and swears there was a knife in the creature’s hand—”
“Creature?”
“We don’t know. It could be the shock of the situation.
It could have been someone in there, trying to steal her jewelry.
But by all apparent circumstances, the vault was locked and when the sexton released her there was no one else inside and no apparent means to get inside, beyond the door, which was locked from the outside. ”
Sterling tapped the missive against his lips. “Well, now. Now I’m intrigued.” His smile held an eager edge. “Are we taking bets? Demonic possession? Imp? Hellspawn? Necromancer?”
Edwina sighed. “I’m going to go with narcolepsy and an overeager burial.”
“Spoilsport,” he said.
“Practical,” she reminded him. “When something goes bump in the night, nine times out of ten it’s because someone tripped over a garden rake.”
“Yes.” Sterling practically grinned at her. “But it’s that tenth time that gets me excited.”