“Sweet dreams, Farah Leigh.”
Pausing, she turned very slowly back to where he looked up at her. “What did you call me?”
“Farah Leigh. What did you think I said?”
“I thought I’d heard you say Fairy.” She whispered the word.
Sir Morley’s hair gleamed copper as he threw his head back and laughed. “That kiss must have affected you as much as it did me.”
“Indeed.” Farah turned and climbed the rest of the way to her door, unwilling to show him the sudden sadness washing over her. Because he’d been utterly wrong, her mistaken hearing had nothing at all to do with the kiss.
As she unlocked her apartment, her heart was heavier than it had been in months. An old and familiar grief twisted through her, its blade as sharp as it had been a decade ago. Closing the door behind her, she leaned against it and stood in the frigid darkness for a moment, her trembling fingers hovering above her lips.
How was it, after all these years, she could feel so … conflicted? Like in some way she was being unfaithful? No, that was too strong a word. But, somehow, it still applied.
Stop this, Farah, she scolded herself. It had been ten years since the boy she loved had died. Seventeen since they’d been separated. She was nearly thirty. Surely she deserved to build a life with someone if she so chose. Certainly Dougan would understand.
Guilt compounded the sorrow until Farah felt so wretched she knew there would be no sleeping tonight. Crossing her cozy parlor, she took longer than usual to light the candle on the mantel so she could see enough to lay a fire in the stone hearth.
Lifting the candle, she reached for her basket of kindling. A swift movement in her periphery caused her to jump and turn around. The candle flame flickered, danced, and sputtered madly, as though trying to escape the devil whose face loomed above hers. His dark eye full of sin, the blue one with malice, he glared down at her with lips pulled back from white, predatory teeth to form a disgusted sneer.
Farah’s screams crowded in her throat, preventing their escape as she groped behind her for the fire poker. To her shock and despair, two other large forms melted from the shadows and advanced from either side.
“I hope you enjoyed that kiss, Mrs. Mackenzie.” Dorian Blackwell licked his finger and pinched the flame of her candle, plunging them back into darkness. “For it shall be your last.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Ye could love me … that is, if ye wanted.
Of course I’ll love you, Dougan Mackenzie … Who else is going to?
Nobody.
Farah drifted through a mist of memories punctuated by a swift but faraway click-clack rhythm that cut through the pleasant haze with loud and perplexing consistency.
I’d never leave you, Fairy.
Truly? Not even to be a pirate?
I promise. I might be a highwayman, though.
Click-clack. Click-clack.
Her head felt quite unattached to the rest of her as the softly floating mist began to swirl away and awareness permeated her pleasant dream.
“We’re close enough to Glasgow, sir, that ye might want to dose her again so she’ll be out for the ship ferry.” A gruff Scottish voice that reminded her of sawteeth and strong drink cut through the sweet voices of her youth.
“In a moment, Murdoch.”
That voice. Dark and cultured and smooth with just a touch of … something foreign and altogether familiar. Where had she heard that voice?
Will you try to love me, too?
I’ll try, Fairy, but I havena done it before.
I’ll teach you.
“Do ye really think she’ll help ye?” The grizzled voice sounded closer now, along with those maddening rhythmic noises that seemed to heave her entire body this way and that.
“I’ll leave her no choice.” The dark voice was also closer. Terrifyingly close.
Farah was angry at them both. These men didn’t belong here in the treasured memories of her past. They were corrupting it, somehow. Especially the smooth dark one. She wanted to tell it to leave her. Dougan Mackenzie was a precious tragedy who belonged to her alone, and she wanted to order this dangerous voice far away from him. She couldn’t, though, as it reached into the miasma of her odd waking dream and wrapped cool fingers of dread around her throat.
Love is for fairy stories … No such thing.
They’d loved each other, hadn’t they? Farah felt the need to reach out as Dougan’s solemn dark eyes began to fade. His sweet boy’s voice was ripped from her and replaced by something cruel and frightening.
Yes, Farah Mackenzie, you should run.
“What will ye tell her when she wakes?” the one called Murdoch queried.
“The question you should be asking, Murdoch, is what information does she have that will be useful to me?”
Troubled, Farah tried to make sense of what she was hearing, but her thoughts seemed to be swept from her reach like fallen leaves in the first winter storm. Her limbs felt just as stiff and treelike, heavy and unbending. But still she swayed like a branch would in an errant wind.
Click-clack-click-clack.
“Ye mean, yer not going to let her know—”
“Never.” The dark voice carried a hint of passion in the vow, but pulled away from her.
“But I thought that—”
“You. Thought. What?” Cold. That man was so cold. Like the Thames in January. Or the deepest levels of hell where the souls too dark to burn went to keep the devil company.
A deep, long-suffering sigh could just be heard above the sound of the train. “Never ye mind what I thought.” Murdoch sounded cranky and disappointed rather than frightened, and Farah thought that he must likely be the bravest man in the world.