The Devil had come to Inverness, and he would drag her down to hell.
Chapter Eighteen
He spun her around and put his hands on either side of her head, caging her in the narrow alley. That voice in her ear - low, husky and dripping with menace, was one she would never forget. Maren had expected a phantom to stand before her – air, shadow, ragged flesh, and nothing more. But no, this was no corpse stalking her nightmares, creeping out of the gloaming to torture her with horrible memories.
Drayton Carver was all too real and alive - six feet of flesh and blood, and evil to the bone.
‘Surprised to see me, lass?’ he smirked, revealing wolfish, crooked white teeth and black eyes dancing with cruel glee. His rakish face was thinner than she remembered, the lines about his eyes more deeply etched, but the menace was still there, tainting his swarthy features. Lasses had always found his charm and brazen manner irresistible, but Maren knew all too well what thuggery lurked at the edge of his smile and that he could bite like a mad dog when he did not get his way.
Maren tried to swallow down fear, but her dry throat stuck tight, and she croaked out her words. ‘You died.’
Drayton grabbed her hand and put it to his chest. ‘Then how is my heart still beating for you, Maren?’ he growled.
The feel of his flesh on hers made her blood run cold, and his hand seemed huge, dwarfing her own. She stared at the long fingers with dirty nails as her mind raced. ‘Escape! Run! This cannot be!’
‘Did you miss me, my love?’ crooned Drayton. ‘Did you fall to your knees and weep at the sight of my poor, ruined body. In my dreams, I imagined you wearing black and covering your hair in ashes.’ His fingers tightened to bone-breaking pressure. ‘How you must have wailed and mourned your dead husband.’
‘No,’ said Maren, with defiance she did not feel. The wall behind her was the only thing holding her up.
He frowned. ‘Yet I heard you refused another suitor, lass, and would not wed again. I flattered myself it was because your broken heart would not heal.’
‘Flatter yourself all you like. It will not make it true. I was never happier than that day they brought you back as a corpse, Drayton.’
‘Hah. Always the little tease.’ Drayton grabbed her wrist, fingers pinching the tender skin. His other hand circled her throat. ‘Perhaps you did not have long enough in my bed to learn what a delight I can be when I deign to please a woman.’ He leant in, whisky on his breath, the stubble on his chin like a field of black wheat, just scythed. She remembered the rasp of it on her innocent flesh and shuddered.
‘A kiss for old times sake, Maren?' he said, and before she could protest, his mouth hit hers like a blow and pinned her head back against the wall. With her right wrist held, she could not reach her pistol to send him to hell. Instead, Maren endured Drayton and let him kiss her. Given no resistance, he soon tired of it.
‘Ah, you taste just as sweet as I remembered, lass,’ he said. ‘I have lived on the memory of your taste for years.’ Drayton let go of her hand to stroke hair off her face, leaving her wrist throbbing. She inched her hand down toward her pocket.
‘How is it that you still have the power to move me, Maren, for you were nought but an ignorant girl when I first took you?’
‘Drayton, you died. I saw your corpse. It was you,’ she babbled.
‘Then how can I be standing here? Did you turn into a dullard while I was gone, lass.’ He banged the heel of his hand into her forehead, and the back of her head connected with the wall. ‘Perhaps I should open your skull and see if you still have a brain in there.’
Maren tried to hang on to her wits. ‘The body had your clothes on. It looked like you, the height, the build, everything, even the hair.’
‘But not the face, eh? Did you get a good look at the face?’
‘I did not want to, for it was a fearsome sight.’
‘Ruined, aye. Nought left of a man, save slops for the butcher’s boy to scrape off the floor, hardly a face at all, just a bloody cavern of red. It took me a while to get it like that. A man works up a sweat with all that pounding with a musket butt, and ‘twas a hot day.’
‘You killed someone else just to make it look like you?’ she whispered.
‘Aye. The minute I met the poor fool, I knew he would be useful.’
Terror gripped Maren, but she had to divert Drayton and buy some time. ‘Who was he?’
‘A traveller I encountered on the road. We spent a stormy night sheltering in a barn together, and I killed him in his sleep. Dressed him in my clothes.’
‘Why?’
‘Your loving father. He sniffed out a secret about me that did not please him, so I had to disappear, and a fool who looked like me was the perfect opportunity.’
‘What secret?’
‘I was betraying him, and with good reason,’ he spat. ‘I endured years of your father’s commands and you were part of the reason I did, for I was sweet on you once.’ His eyes dipped to her bodice, and in their depths, swirled the old hunger. ‘But eventually, I could stomach it no longer. So I sold information to the redcoats, the magistrate and the lairds pursuing him so that I could bring him down by degrees.’
