Percival Avon’s son.
But they were a study in opposites. There was nothing of St. Silas in Lord Avon’s golden features. Lord Avon exuded vitality; St. Silas was cut from menace.
No.Leena remembered that there had been one striking similarity. Percival Avon’s voice had had the same smooth masculine intonation as St. Silas’s own—used to tempt, to seduce, to ensnare.
The voice had entranced Moira, raising a bloom in her cheeks as he called hermy little one—mere moments before he had strangled her.
Emotion tore through her, as serrated as a knife’s edge, leaving jagged scars in its path.
She could not tear her eyes away from the dying sun, its orange light a distorted reflection upon the heaving waves, the endless seething sea. The gray clouds loomed, a prelude to another storm. The shrieks of the seagulls surrounding the shore sounded like battle cries. Somewhere far off, she could hear the rumble of thunder. Now that Leena had learned to listen, she swore she could hear the distant cries of wolves.
She stood motionless as the freezing tide brushed her hemline,the arctic temperatures expanding her anguish until she felt she might go mad with it. With shaky fingers, she bent down and undid the laces of her boots before sliding down her stockings. Even that was not enough. Leena wanted to be lost within the elements, to submerge herself in the water until she felt awakened by it, far away from the entombment of Weavingshaw.
She thrust off her overcoat, throwing it behind her on the hard sand. One button followed another as she flung her dress where her coat lay. It was a greater struggle to undo the stays of her corset, but years of experience made her fingers deft with the laces. She almost ripped the delicate threads of her petticoat in her haste to be rid of that, too.
She stood shivering in her lace-woven undergarments, covered only by a simple white cotton chemise that offered little protection against the battering wind, and she could not remember a time she had been so bare in the outdoors. She gasped from the chilling bite of the ocean as she took her first steps into the water. It was a sort of liberation not to be pulled down by her heavy skirts as she advanced farther, the chemise only long enough to cover her thighs. Her arms were also free, catching goosebumps from the bitter wind. It was not eerie, butright,that Leena was the only warm creature in a barren land, surrounded by the shadows of cliffs and jagged rocks.
Within moments she was waist-deep, the waves crashing and breaking against her body as if intent on claiming her as one of their own. She closed her eyes, wishing the cold would breathe life into her, reminding her that she was a living thing that had not yet yielded to death.
Leena had an urge—not for the first time in her life—to scream into the wind. It shredded through her lungs, and the sea swallowed her howls, welcoming Leena as another shipwreck on the shores of Weavingshaw.
She only stopped once she remembered Percival Avon screaming wildly—pleadingly—before a black lake. She didn’t want totether herself any further to the Avons when she was already so deeply entrenched.
The Saint of Silence—Master Bramwell—My Lord Avon.
The raw edges of her body sensed his presence on the beach before he had even spoken.
He called to her.
She did not turn.
“Leena.”
His voice evoked within her relief and heartache in equal and unforgiving measure.
She shivered—not merely from the glacial water that had bled all the color from her skin, but from his voice as he said her name. Still she did not turn back, her gaze pinned on the looming waves that surrounded her.
“Leena, look at me.”
He was closer now, his command cutting through the burgeoning storm.
Finally, fighting the sob that had curled in her throat, she turned to him.
Fully clothed, St. Silas had come into the water after her, his dark riding coat undone and whipping in the wind. The light of the setting sun was at his back and it looked as if his entire outline was on fire. For a moment, he exuded the same force—the same holiness—as Percival Avon.
Once more she felt like Moira—her heart aching at the feral beauty that was the Avons.
He continued when she did not speak. “Have you been possessed?”
Slowly, Leena shook her head. Before he could ask, she said quietly, “You take two spoonfuls of sugar in your coffee. I do not.”
Leena was aware she must look every inch a madwoman, standing in her underthings in the winter sea, hair coming undone from the braid that had been coiled atop her head, the long tendrils whipping about her neck and waist in a frenzy. She could forgivehim for thinking she was possessed, for she must truly look a ghostly sight.
She refrained from folding her arms to cover herself, knowing that her white chemise had become see-through where it made contact with the water, her skin now exposed to the intensity of his focus.
From the moment she’d turned to face him, St. Silas’s eyes had darkened. And even from where she stood she could see his harsh swallow as he nodded his acknowledgment.
Then, as if his gaze could not contain itself, it dropped to outline the soft contours of her body.
