She crossed herself again.Mary, Mother of God, protect me.
“Some of my brothers and sisters in darkness are angered by my decision to take you. They fear your disappearance could draw attention to us.”
Was one of them Eleanor Cobham? Was that why Eleanor gave her warning?
“Others want to use you as our blood sacrifice, but I have refused them,” Pomeroy said, his voice steadily rising to fill the small room. “For you are meant to be my bride in darkness, the goddess to my priest.”
He was mad.
She told herself that if he meant to rape her, he could have set upon her as soon as he entered the room. Chained to the bed, she could do little to fight him. He talked of her being a bride. Did he want a ceremony of some kind to justify the deed?
“I shall never be a bride of yours,” she said.
“I tell you, you are worthy,” he said, his eyes glowing. “Even I did not see your special power until these last weeks. But I was right when I called you sorceress all those years ago. I see that now. I have watched how you pursue your enemies and know we are kindred spirits.”
“Nay, I am not like you.”
“Are you not? What has driven you? Love? Mercy?” He gave a harsh laugh. “Nay, you are filled with hatred, as I am.”
But she did love. She knew with utter certainty she would give her life to protect Jamie or Francois.
Yet, the hard truth was that she did not put their happiness first. She meant to, once she had punished those who had hurt her and righted the wrongs of the past. Jamie’s words came back to her, choking her:Love is not what you consider after every other blessed thing.She wanted to weep for her failings.
“When you cross over into darkness, we will be one with the great Lucifer,” Pomeroy said, his eyes wide and staring, “and one with each other.”
“If you harm me, Jamie Rayburn will kill you.” Her own words surprised her, and yet as soon as she said them she knew them to be true.
Pomeroy’s fingers went to a deep scar across his cheekbone that she did not recall him having before. As he traced it with his fingertips, his eyes scorched over her.
Then he lunged for her. She screamed and tried to scramble to the far side of the bed, but he caught her and hauled her toward him. Bile rose in her throat as he held her with his face against hers, his greasy hair pressed to her cheek.
“Tonight I shall cast the spell, and you will accept your place at my side,” he said, his hot breath in her ear. “Until then, I shall have to restrain you.”
“Jamie!” she screamed.
The cloth was over her mouth, the distinctive medicinal odor filling her nose and mouth and numbing her lips.
“James Rayburn will be dead soon,” he said against her ear. “And you will think of him no more.”
Chapter Forty
Jamie rode across the City, his mind on that day in November when he and Francois had seen Linnet approach the fat alderman in Westminster Hall. That was also the day he and Linnet had begun their affair. Those few days in her London house had sealed his fate. Though he had tried to fight it, he was hers from that time forward.
Nay, he’d been hers since Paris. He had loved the girl who defied convention and dragged him behind the shrubbery… the girl who looked him in the eye and told him she loved how he touched her… the girl who ignored her father’s attempts to restrict her and refused to meet his expectations.
But the girl was nothing compared to the woman Linnet had become. She was fierce in her loyalty, awesome in her determination, courageous, clever, and witty. None could match her. God had given him a second chance with this beautiful, avenging angel of a woman, and what had he done? He’d left her at the first sign of trouble.
Please, God, let me find her.Once he did, he would never let her out of his sight again.
“Master Woodley,” he called over his shoulder to the clerk, who followed on a pathetic mule, “where precisely in the Cheape is Alderman Arnold’s house?”
“Not far from Saddlers’ Hall and Saint Paul’s Cathedral.”
When they reached the alderman’s house, a prosperous-looking, three-story wooden structure, the servant who answered the door insisted Arnold was not home.
Jamie pushed past him, saying, “I shall see for myself.”
“Sir, you cannot—”
