“Areyoulovers?”
Lindsay groaned. “I suppose,” he muttered. “Although ‘lovers’ suggests some kind of continuing arrangement. It’s... not like that.”
“What is it like, then?”
“Hmm, let me see.Heis tormented by regret,” Lindsay said, his tone deceptively light, “whileIpine for whatever scraps of attention I can get from him, even as I realise there is no future in it.”
He felt Francis’s eyes on him but couldn’t bear to meet his gaze and show the depth of his feelings. Not that it mattered. Francis would scent exactly how he felt.
At last Francis said softly, “That is not a happy situation. Is it you that wants him, or your wolf?”
Lindsay snorted. “It’s both of us. I hardly know what to make of it. He makes me feel so...” He trailed off, searching for the right words and finding none adequate to describe the intensity of the longing that filled him whenever he thought of Drew Nicol.
Francis, ever patient, didn’t try to fill the silence, merely strolled beside him, his cane and heels tapping the ground rhythmically.
Lindsay tried again. “I’ve never felt soattunedto another person. The day we met—the instant I smelled his scent, I felt as though I recognised it somehow. His presence—it’s so alive to me, as though there are invisible threads between us, trembling whenever he moves.”
He felt Francis’s eyes on him again, the weight of his regard.
“Did you ever feel anything like that?” Lindsay asked finally, turning to meet Francis’s light brown gaze. “With Marguerite?”
Francis and Marguerite were as close as two of their kind could be without being lovers. Francis had once told Lindsay that he’d known the instant he’d seen Marguerite that she was his fate, but he insisted theirs was not a romantic bond. Not on Francis’s side anyway, though Lindsay had wondered sometimes about Marguerite’s feelings.
Francis had been a novice priest prior to his transformation and had once admitted to Lindsay that he’d had no doubts about taking his oaths and foregoing the prospect of romantic love. In all the years that Lindsay had known him—near enough a century now—Francis had never taken any lover, not once. As far as Lindsay knew, he remained a virgin.
Now though, as Francis gazed at Lindsay, his expression serious, he confessed, “Yes, I have felt something like you describe. I thought that maybe it came from being part-wolf and part-human, a mingling of animal instinct and human attachment.” He shrugged. “In truth, though, I just don’t know why it works like that. I’ve spoken to many wolves over the years and from what I can make out, very few have experienced this. It is not common.”
Lindsay frowned, in no way reassured. “At first, I thought it was simple lust,” he admitted. “And perhaps it is, at least in part. Or rather, it feels as though it’s all snarled up with lust, so the two things can’t be untangled. Does that make sense?”
Francis offered him a half smile and a shrug. “Yes, and no. It’s not related to lust for me, but it is connected to other, physical feelings in a way that sounds similar to what you describe. I think the bond—that’s how I’ve always thought of it—is simply there, between you and your bond-mate. The emotions between you shape the bond and give it meaning. Sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another.”
“Bond-mate,” Lindsay repeated. Somehow the term felt right. It fit the almost physical sense of connection he experienced whenever Drew Nicol was nearby.
For a few minutes they walked in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. And then, when they were about halfway down the North Bridge, Francis touched Lindsay’s sleeve and slowed his pace.
“Lindsay, there is something I need to tell you.”
Lindsay glanced at Francis. His friend’s expression was taut, anxious.
Francis let out a long breath, then he said, “Duncan MacCormaic isn’t heading for Paris. He’s on his way to Scotland.”
It wasn’t much of a surprise. Lindsay had known there had to be more to Francis’s arrival in Edinburgh that he’d first claimed—and yes, it had occurred to him it might for this reason. Nevertheless, his stomach still clenched tight at the news and a wave of intense fear ran through him. Just the sound of his master’s—no,Duncan’s—name was enough to provoke the inevitable panicked response. He heard Duncan’s low, rough voice in his head—Come here, cur—and saw his big, beckoning hand, the twitch of his fingers as merciless as an iron chain, reeling Lindsay in. Lindsay squeezed his eyes closed, trying to banish the image from his mind.
Taking a deep breath, he opened his eyes and said, “What makes you think that?” He had wanted his voice to come out steady and calm, but it sounded thin and fearful.
“We knew he’d left Granada, but we assumed he was making for Paris to find you. However, soon after you left we learned he was making for the northern coast of Spain with the intention of sailing to England.” Francis sighed heavily. “Perhaps it was never his intention to go to Paris, perhaps he was always on his way to Scotland, and he is unaware you are here. But perhaps”—Francis met Lindsay’s gaze and his own was grave—“perhaps he heard you’d left France. I do not think he would be able to resist coming after you. Especially if he was aware I was safely out of his way in Paris.”
Lindsay smiled bitterly at the irony of that. Duncan doing his utmost to avoid Francis, the very man he longed for above all others, so that he could recapture Francis’s likeness in Lindsay. God, to think of the hours Lindsay had spent listening to Duncan, telling him all the things he wanted to do to Francis... and then doing those very things to Lindsay.
His stomach heaved and he swallowed hard against the bolt of nausea.
Francis had little notion of how truly horrific Lindsay’s years with Duncan had been. Lindsay could not—simply couldnot—speak of what had been done to him, and Francis was too gentle to imagine such senseless cruelty.
“How close is he now?” Lindsay asked flatly.
“I’m ahead of him,” Francis said, “I’m not sure by how much—perhaps as much as a fortnight, perhaps less.” Francis’s gaze was worried. “You cannot take the risk of being in Edinburgh when he returns.”
Lindsay’s gut roiled. “Where do you suggest I go?” He gave a bitter laugh. “I only just arrived.”
