Lois Greiman (5 page)

“F
orgive me, my lord.” The voice was quiet but fraught with tension. Was she in hell? No one answered. Apparently Satan was the laconic sort. “I thought you meant to punish her.”

Punishment. So it was hell. Nicol had been right. She should not have been so haughty, so aloof. She should have tried to understand the plight of her subjects. Should have listened when she could, done more to set things right when possible. Still, even in hell it felt good simply to lie in silence and let time slip quietly past her.

“I had no way of knowing she meant something—”

“Peters!” Satan growled. “Shut the hell up.” Someone chuckled.

“Yes, my lord. Am I dismissed, my lord?” There was another growl, which she failed to comprehend. A door opened and closed. Too loud. It echoed in her head. She moaned and lifted a hand tentatively to her brow. Lights sparkled in her cranium, rocking her world.

“Here, put your hand down.”

She opened her eyes, but only to slits, for the light seemed ungodly bright, blurring her vision.

“Who—”

“Quiet now,” he said.

“MacTavish!” So he was the devil. Of course. She attempted to sit up. He wrapped a hand around her upper arm and pulled her upright.

“So you’ve finally learned my name.” His voice was rough, his touch the same. It took little enough effort to hold her. Hell was intimidating, even for a princess.

“Here. Drink this,” he ordered, and pressed something to her lips.

She would have enjoyed refusing, but she was horribly thirsty. Sitting was difficult. He steadied her with a hand to her arm and tipped a mug forward. Too fast. She sputtered and gagged as the herb-laced wine burned her lips and throat.

She coughed, winced, coughed again, then opened her eyes to glare at him. “I’d think Satan would have better seduction skills.”

The boyish expression of yesterday was gone, replaced by a brooding glare. “You’re raving,” he said, and felt her forehead with the back of his hand.

She jerked her head to the side and was rewarded with a quick jab of pain through her eyeballs. She gritted her teeth and spoke nevertheless. “Threats and imprisonment and drowning in cheap wine. Is that the only way you can convince women to sleep with you, MacTavish?”

Someone chuckled again. She turned her head painfully, sweeping her gaze past a tumble of hazy artifacts to land on a man near the door. It was a giant dressed in fur and plaid. He raised a loaf of bread to her in a sort of salute and chuckled again.

She scowled groggily and turned back to her captor.
“What’s next? The cat-o’-nine-tails if I don’t capitulate?”

He was silent for a moment. “The dungeon is generally incentive enough for most maids.”

“I am not most maids,” she said.

“The indomitable Magical Megs,” he said, and leaned back slightly, his hand leaving her brow.

She laughed. The sound was gritty and coarse, befitting her location perhaps. “Even in prison you called me Megs. I would think you would know my true identity,” she said. “Given your…station.”

“My station?” He was ungodly handsome, but of course Satan would be. Some thought the god of the underworld old and ugly, but she had always known better. Beauty disguised a host of sins and drew admirers all at once.

“God of hell,” she explained, though reality was seeping painfully into her head.

Anger sparked in his eyes. “So you prefer last night’s accommodations?”

She refused to shudder, refused to dwell on the stench of the dungeon he had saved her from, for he had also been the one to put her there. She tightened her fingers in the blankets that covered her. Memories from the day before sluiced in, and she glanced down quickly, but she was still clothed, though her sleeve was torn.

So she was well, basically uninjured and virtually untouched. Circumstances could be worse. She raised her gaze back to his and pursed her lips.

“Let me go, MacTavish, and I’ll not seek vengeance.”

“Vengeance!” He didn’t laugh, but it sounded like a close thing. Instead, he jerked to his feet and paced back and forth before the enormous bed she found herself in for the second time. “And tell me, Megs, how would one in your position go about seeking vengeance?”

She longed to tell him the truth, to inform him that she had an army at her disposal, but she had said too much already, for she had no way of guessing what his reaction to her news might be. Instead, she remained perfectly still and watched him in silence.

“If you think Wheaton will avenge you, you’re a greater fool than I believed.”

“Tell me, MacTavish, how long have you been obsessed with this Wheaton fellow?”

Anger flashed in his eyes, and for a moment she thought he might strike her, but he settled back onto the mattress and watched her instead. “I might ask the same of you.”

“And I might tell you…again…that I know no one by that name.”

He smiled. It held no charm, no lightness, no joy, and yet, as pure physical beauty went, it was stunning. If she cared a whit about physical appearances, she might have been moved, but she had learned long ago that it mattered not at all. Her mother had been a rare beauty, yet she had no warmth for her only daughter.

Reaching out, he touched her cheek. She refused to draw away, but met his gaze with her own hard stare. Nicol had once said she could freeze the Cocklewall Falls if she turned her glare on it.

Unfortunately, MacTavish did not freeze. “Maybe you don’t realize what I can do to you, Megs,” he said instead.

“I think you already did it,” she replied.

The giant chuckled.

MacTavish turned to glower, but Tatiana didn’t shift her gaze. Her statement was not entirely true, of course, for he had saved her. Why? If he meant to have her tortured, Pikeshead Prison seemed a good place to start. Even in Sedonia they heard rumors of it. So why was she back here in his private chambers?

“Don’t you have something else to do?” MacTavish asked, and she realized he was talking to the giant.

“Nay, lad, not at the moment. Since it seems I’ll have to wait to torture the girl.”

She snapped her gaze from MacTavish to the man by the door. The difference between them was shocking, for surely there were never two men whose looks were more at odds. The giant was as homely as his lord was beautiful. She liked him immediately.

“What is your name?” she asked.

Both men turned toward her in unison, and she realized her mistake. Most women, even wealthy widowed women, would not assume to question a man in such a situation. Still, she had already spoken, and it was too late to draw the words back. She kept her gaze fast on the giant.

“Me Christian name be Olaf.” He said the words slowly, as if wondering why she’d asked. “Me friends…and the bastard here…” He motioned toward MacTavish. “They call me Burr.”

“You are of Swedish descent?”

“Norwegian,” he said. “Late of Kristiansund.”

She nodded, remembering traveling to that beautiful peninsula as a child, but MacTavish was scowling. Who was this giant of a man who could call the sovereign lord of Teleere a bastard and live to tell of it? Someone very foolish or very brave. Perhaps a meld of the two. It intrigued her.

“Tell me, Burr,” she said. “Are you in need of employment?”

His heavy brows rose. “What’s that?”

“I seem to have lost my guard. I but wondered if you might wish to take up that position.”

The huge man shrugged. A shadow of a grin played around the peripheral edges of his mouth. “What do you pay?”

MacTavish swore under his breath.

She didn’t glance toward him. “I will give you twice what he does.”

Burr laughed. “That won’t be difficult, lass, for he pays me nothing.”

“Ahh. Just in my price range then.”

He laughed. She smiled.

“Get the hell out of here,” MacTavish ordered.

Burr glanced at his master in some surprise. “The lady made me an offer, lad.”

“She’s not a lady.”

Burr smiled. “Better yet.”

“Go check on Peters.”

The Norseman turned his gaze on MacTavish finally, his eyes still laughing. “You worried he’s going to kill himself for disappointing you?”

“I’m afraid he’s not.”

Burr snorted, then turned back toward Tatiana. “Me apologies,” he said, and bowed at the waist. The movement was strangely graceful. “It seems I am being sent to rout wild geese.”

“Consider my offer.”

“Aye,” he agreed, and nodded. “That I will. And if the lad here gives you too much trouble…” He bowed again. “You’ve but to call.”

“And if I call, what will you do?”

He shrugged. His shoulders were the approximate size of a river barge. “I’d have to charge extra to kill him.”

“I shall bear that in mind.”

Burr chuckled as he turned to leave. The door shut solidly behind him.

She shifted her attention slowly back to MacTavish. “Loyalty is a difficult commodity to come by.”

“I don’t believe in loyalty,” he said.

“Why is that?”

“Because there are women like you.”

“You think me disloyal?”

He was still scowling. “Here,” he said, and lifted the cup to her lips again. “Drink this.”

She turned away, making a face of disgust. “It tastes like sheep dung.”

“Which begs the obvious question,” he said, but didn’t explain. “Drink it before I pour it down your throat.”

She considered arguing, but his expression changed her mind. “What is it?”

“Heather wine laced with arsenic.”

“Then I am certain you will understand why I must respectfully refuse.”

“You’re in no position to refuse anything.”

“What about Burr?”

He laughed. “You expect him to save you?”

She lifted her lips into a parody of a smile.

“From me?”

She said nothing.

“For a woman of the world you’re a poor judge of people, Megs.”

“Am I?”

“If you think Burr will set himself against me to save you.”

“So loyal is he?”

He saw the trap just a moment before it snapped shut. Indeed, he almost smiled at his misstep. “I prefer to call it force of habit.”

“He has been with you a long while?”

For a moment some unknown emotion crossed his eyes, but it was gone in an instant.

“Drink the wine,” he ordered.

“I’ve a strange aversion to poison.”

He looked tired, she realized. And older than she had first thought. “’Tis naught but herbed wine.”

“And I should trust you?”

“I don’t care if you trust me or not, but I’ll not have you swooning again.”

“Swooning!” Indignant anger bubbled up inside her. “Is that what you call it when one is struck on the head while defending herself from execrable brigands?”

“Execrable brigands!” He scoffed, perhaps at her choice of words. Nicol had once suggested that she spoke like a constipated scholar. “They were nothing but a one-armed petty thief and his dwarfed companion. If you totaled their ages, they were older than the stones of this castle.”

She drew herself up. “I am sorry if my tormentors weren’t to your liking.”

He shook his head. “’Tis a sorry day when Teleere’s premier thief can’t best a pair of doddering miscreants.”

“Again, my apologies.”

The room went silent. He had the deep penetrating gaze of a peregrine falcon, though his eyes challenged the blue of the morning sky. “So you admit your true identity?”

“I admit that you are a spineless cur.”

“You almost make me wonder why I rescued you.”

“Rescued me!” She growled the words at him, though, if she remembered correctly, ladies were not supposed to growl. Drawing a deep breath, she steadied herself. “’Twas you who tossed me into their midst. ’Twas I who distracted them with their own witless brawling.”

“You set them to quarreling?”

“I thought it preferable to rape.”

For a moment she thought he would respond, but he remained as he was. “Drink the wine,” he said instead.

“No.”

“Drink it,” he ordered, “or I swear, Pikeshead will look as rosy as an afternoon jaunt in the park.”

She wanted nothing more than to resist him, but his eyes were deadly earnest, and she was no fool.

The wine tasted like yesterday’s death. She drank it in one long draught, shuddering at the end, but forcing herself to glare up at him.

“Where else do you hurt?”

“What?”

“Besides your head.” He said the words as if she were daft. “Where else are you injured?”

“Why? Do you keep a list? So many a day to reach your quota?”

“Dammit, woman! I’m surprised he didn’t kill you, too.”

Her stomach twisted. “You said he was only a petty thief.”

MacTavish scowled. “Is that what he told you?”

“We didn’t have a great deal of time to converse. What with his companion wanting to rape me and the woman in the next cell—”

“Christ! I’m talking about Wheaton.”

She blinked, trying to assimilate this new information. “Whom did he kill?”

A muscle jumped in his jaw, and he drew a deep breath through his nose as if trying to steady his nerves.

“Where else are you hurt?”

“If you’re so concerned for my well-being, you could have me see a physician.”

“Hoping to escape, Megs?”

“Hoping to stay alive regardless of your cruelty.”

“Perhaps you want me to check your well-being for myself?” he asked.

She glared at him. “Touch me again, and I shall not need Burr’s help to dismember you.”

“You threaten me again?”

“Nay.” She raised her chin. He touched a finger to its center. She jerked away. “I tell the truth.”

His eyes laughed at her. His mouth remained absolutely immobile. “So you would kill me.” He dropped his hand to hers. Lifting it, he turned it over. “With this hand?”

She nodded. Regal pride was all she had just now, but it had stood her in good stead in the past.

Bending slightly, he kissed the center of her palm. Hot feelings shot through her like a flaming arrow, beginning at the point of the caress and streaking madly up her arm and off in a thousand sizzling directions.

“’Tis a soft little hand, for one who uses a threat so boldly,” he said, and pushed her sleeve up her arm. The simple cotton fabric had a rent near the elbow. He ignored it. “And a frail arm,” he added and kissed the veins that throbbed rhythmically in her wrist.