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  “Alicia,” said Lord Carstairs—Edward. “I don’t want you to be concerned about what happened in the conservatory.”

  She stared dumbly at him.

  Edward stepped around the sofa, coming to stand directly in front of her. “If you experienced some…curiosity at what you inadvertently witnessed, it is quite normal and natural.”

  Alicia frowned. Curiosity? She considered the word, sorting through her store of emotional references. No. That was too mild a word for what she’d experienced. There was no heat in it, no conflict.

  “Alicia?” Edward touched her arm again. She wished there were more light. She wanted to see him plainly. She wanted…she wanted him to do something, to somehow recognize the wall that trapped her. It was as if some part of her thought his recognition could break that wall down.

  Or perhaps it was not recognition that was needed. Perhaps it was action.

  “Can you make me feel that?” she blurted out.

  “Feel what?” Edward lifted his hand away from her.

  “What she…what Melissa felt, from Julian. Can you do that?” Oh, she had gone mad. Entirely mad. But she felt she was being smothered. She had to find some way to fight free.

  The muscles of Edward’s face shifted. He was holding something back. Slowly and deliberately, he folded his hands behind him. “I have some skill at the art of passion,” he said soberly. “But it is not so simple.”

  “How so?”

  She watched him choose his next words carefully. “The delight that comes with passion is not just a matter of physical contact.” He leveled his stormy gray gaze at her. “If I had to hazard a guess, I would say this was not the first time they had been together, and that Melissa was very much in love with young Julian.”

  “Oh.” She should have guessed. Of course that passion she saw was a result of love. That was why she felt so strange. What fancy painted as a glass wall that could be broken, was only another manifestation of her inborn deficiency.

  “However.” Edward reached out again, and grazed the back of her gloved hand with one fingertip. “If you wish to attempt an experiment now, I will do my best to oblige.”

  Alicia swallowed. Her throat felt very tight and she clutched at her brooch. Did she wish it? She didn’t know. She feared his disappointment. Edward had experience with women. He’d just confessed as much. He would know if her reaction was not correct. He would know she was blighted.

  “I…I don’t know what is happening to me…” Her words trailed off. She was trembling, she realized, and her body could not decide whether it was too hot or too cold. She had no words to rescue herself from this situation, which she had set in motion with her blundering questions. “I am not usually susceptible…”

  Edward smiled. “We will talk about that later. For now, we will begin simply, with a kiss.”

  The strange tension she perceived before had vanished and Edward moved forward gracefully. He was warm and solid, and so very tall. Now she found herself with her nose almost pressed against the wall of his broad chest. She wondered what that silk-and-linen-clad plane felt like, what he felt like.

  “You can touch me,” he murmured. “If you wish.”

  Alicia lifted her hand and laid it against his chest, right above the seam of his striped waistcoat. His breath moved underneath her fingertips, and something else. She drew her palm down, until she felt the steady beat of his heart. Standing like this, she felt unexpectedly steady and focused. As much as the sight of Melissa and Julian’s passion had agitated her, the feeling of Edward’s heartbeat calmed her.

  “Alicia.”

  She looked up. The moonlight had gotten into Edward’s gray eyes, and they shone as he bent toward her. His lips brushed hers, as gently and deliberately as his fingers had earlier. He drew her closer with that light touch. It seemed her whole awareness pressed against the glass wall in her mind. That wall strained to hold her back, but it could break. She pressed closer to Edward, pressed closer to the barrier of her mind.

  Then, suddenly, he broke the kiss. Edward’s head went up, like he’d caught some strange scent or unfamiliar sound. It was not a pleasant sound, either.

  “What is it?” she asked uneasily. Did I do something wrong?

  “Something…” he murmured. “Something…” He stepped back, turning in place, his hand sweeping the air, as if feeling for an invisible object. He turned again to face her, his outstretched hand reaching for her brooch. Alicia shrank back, and Edward opened his mouth to speak.

  A knock sounded on the door, hard, followed by a man’s voice calling. “Carstairs? Carstairs, are you in there?”

  “Damn it!” Edward marched across the room and yanked the door open. A tall, black-haired man strode in, and froze. His eyes shifted from Edward to Alicia, and back again.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” said Mr. Rathe calmly. “But a messenger has arrived, Carstairs. Captain Smith has sent for us.”

  Edward snapped at once to attention. “I will be there directly.”

  Rathe nodded to Edward, bowed to Alicia, and left, shutting the door firmly behind himself.

  “I’m so sorry, Alicia.” Edward took her hand in both of his and kissed it swiftly. “This is a government matter and I must go. Will you return to the ballroom and make my excuses?”

  “Of course.”

  He cupped his hand around her cheek, lifting her face so she had to look into his eyes. “We will continue our conversation later, I promise.”

  With that he was gone, and she was left alone in the moonlight. As Alicia stared at the closed door, she could feel her awareness backing away. Almost without knowing it, she retreated into the mists that cocooned her away from all violent sensation. She should have been relieved, for it was a return to normalcy. But she was not. She wanted to race after Edward, to beg him not to leave her alone. Alone she was lost, smothered, dead.

  But slowly, that impulse fled. It was a temporary fancy after all. They said engaged women grew nervous. Surely that was what was behind all this charging about. These idle notions of walls and mists, were bred by those same nerves. She was who she was, and she was well suited to the practical, straightforward marriage offered her. She was also fortunate that Lord Carstairs was not easily perturbed. Something tickled her cheek. She brushed at it, and looked down at her hand. Her fingertips were damp. Curious.

  Head held high, face placid, Alicia opened the door and started down the long, dark corridor toward her engagement party.

  Three

  Within moments, Carstairs climbed into the waiting carriage. Rathe signaled to the driver, who touched up the horses and pulled away from the steps.

  “Are you all right?” asked Rathe.

  Carstairs nodded curtly. But he was not all right. He was disturbed and surprised, profoundly so. There had been no messenger. He had used his power to call Rathe to his side.

  He had seen Alicia leaving the party after talking with her cousin Verity. Partly from curiosity, partly from the desire to find a moment alone with his fiancée, he had followed her. But what he had found was far more than a moment alone.

  “What happened in there?” Rathe asked. “Aside from the very obvious, that is.”

  “I don’t know,” replied Carstairs. “I was kissing my fiancée, and all at once I felt a great, cold knot of magic tightening all around us.” Rathe did not need to hear about the circumstances that led up to that kiss. As it was, his face had turned pale.

  “This is very serious.”

  “I would agree, yes,” Carstairs replied blandly.

  “Could she be a changeling?” The Fae, humanity’s powerful, inimical and profoundly magical enemies, had a fondness for human children and would abduct them when the chance arose. In most cases, they left behind one of their own in its place. Usually the changeling appeared to die quickly, but occasionally it remained in the home, causing mischief and misery. Sometimes, the changeling even had one human parent. These half-blood creatures had some Fae power and some human hea
rt. The combination could be exceedingly dangerous. It was such a creature who had killed Carstairs’s older brother.

  Carstairs felt his eyes narrow as he cast his mind back over the evening. Before this, he had spent very little time with Alicia Hartwell. But they had met, and talked, and he had been her escort to several society affairs. He had held her hand as they danced, and sat with her at dinner. All this time, he’d noted she was fair and levelheaded and an intelligent if cool conversationalist. Nothing about her had stirred his Catalyst’s senses.

  “No, she’s not a changeling; neither is she half-blood. I’m sure of that.” If she were a Fae, or carried Fae blood, he would have felt it as clearly as if he’d put his hand too close to the fire. “But she is laboring under some enchantment.” It had been cold as death, that spell around her, but at the same time clear as crystal. He had thought unaccountably of the German folktale he’d read as a young man, in which a princess, thought to be dead, had been laid in a glass coffin.

  “Did she cast it for herself?” asked Rathe. “Could she be a Sorceress? One of the Fae’s allies?”

  Carstairs considered. “I think not. It seems to me far more likely she is the victim in this.”

  Rathe looked out the window at the passing streets in silence for a minute. The noises of hooves, wheels, carriage springs and the shouts of late-night revelers filled the dark space. “Carstairs, you’re sure about that?”

  They met each other’s gaze. Carstairs bit back a sharp retort at Rathe’s unspoken implications. Both men knew Carstairs had once failed in the face of Faery glamour. In his mind, Carstairs could clearly see Nick’s eyes open to darkness as the life left him. Rathe was right to ask.

  “I am sure,” Carstairs said. “But you should perhaps check.”

  Rathe grasped Carstairs’s wrist and held his palm over Carstairs’s heart. Carstairs, in turn, reached deep within his spirit to open the channel between himself and the current of power that was the very breath of the world. Focusing will and sense, he directed a small portion of that power toward Rathe. The Sorcerer drank the magic into himself, shaping it into a spell of detection. If an enchantment had been cast over Carstairs, Rathe would find it. Carstairs felt a tingling warmth as the re-formed power glided across his skin. It was an intimate sensation and Carstairs’s cock, restless from the events of earlier in the evening, stirred fitfully. An ordinary man might have balked at feeling such arousal while being touched by another man, but neither Carstairs nor Rathe had ever been ordinary men.

  At last, Rathe let him go, and sat back. “You’re clear,” he said. “The captain’s not going to be happy to find you’ve engaged yourself to a woman with an enchantment on her.”

  “It’s not something I’m entirely happy with, either.” In fact, Carstairs found himself deeply worried.

  In the brief private time they’d shared before he’d become aware of her enchantment, Alicia Hartwell had intrigued and attracted him in a way he never would have suspected possible for a mature, sequestered virgin to do. He had followed her retreat from the ballroom with no thought other than to soothe her bride’s nerves, if she had them. To be holding her while she spied on a most erotic encounter had been the very last thing he expected from that moment. But she had melted so sweetly against him as they watched the lovers in the conservatory take their delight in each other. Then she boldly asked him to give her pleasure, although it was very plain she knew nothing of sexual matters. As surprised as he had been by this turn of events, Carstairs had wanted to accede to that blunt request. Badly. Reason and honor had taken to their heels as his cock had swelled beneath his breeches. He had spent years learning to control his response to beauty. He thought he had succeeded, but it seemed he had been deceiving himself on more than one level.

  Their carriage had reached the heart of London. Carstairs could see the bulk of St. Paul’s looming against the starry sky. Their driver stopped at the corner of a street that was little more than a cobbled alley.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” asked Rathe as Carstairs climbed down from the carriage.

  “Thank you, but I’d rather keep this private if I can,” Carstairs answered. Rathe nodded, his face serious. He knew enough of Carstairs’s personal life to understand at least some of the turmoil inside him. Rathe gripped Carstairs’s arm. “Good luck.”

  Carstairs shut the door and waved to the driver. As the carriage drove off into the dark, Carstairs turned down the sharply curved side street until he came to a nondescript door in a nondescript stone building. Very few people would even have noticed the unmarked portal, let alone suspected that it was the headquarters of the most secret branch of the Crown’s military forces.

  Carstairs laid his hand on the cool brass of the doorknob, and felt the enchantment recognize him. The knob turned, and he was permitted to enter.

  On the other side of the door waited a parlor that was as simple and unremarkable as its doorway had been. A fire burned in the grate. Armchairs stood ready for visitors or clients, and Carstairs hung his coat and hat on the waiting hooks.

  “Carstairs,” called a man’s voice, old but still strong and clear. “I’ve been expecting you. Come through.”

  At the end of a short, shadowed corridor waited a room that took up most of the building. Lit by several lamps as well the low fire in the hearth, it might have been taken for a solicitor’s office or perhaps the library of a highly eccentric man. The comfortable scents of leather, parchment and dust rose from bookshelves stuffed with fat, leather-bound tomes. In the middle of this literary wealth sprawled a broad desk, crowded with stacks of paper, inkwells and pens, as well as scrolls tied with ribbons of various colors. With them sat the wizened, bright-eyed lord of this confounding place.

  “Captain” Smith was a small man with a ring of grizzled gray hair around his bronzed and mottled scalp. He wore a long, unfashionable black coat over white breeches and stockings. At the moment, he bent over a massive book, examining its crabbed writing through his gold-handled quizzing glass. Without looking up, Smith beckoned Carstairs. Carstairs felt himself diminish as he walked forward, from the grown man he was to the slender youth he had been when he first entered this room.

  Unlike some, Edward had known he was a Catalyst from a young age. His family traced its lineage from the magic workers of the Plantagenet courts. They’d survived purges under Queen Mary Tudor, and risen again when Queen Elizabeth had mustered her secret army against the Fae invasion. They passed on their secrets in whispers during Cromwell’s time, and even helped smuggle innocent men and women out of Scotland under the noses of King James’s inquisitors. Father had brought Edward and his brother Nicholas to London and Captain Smith for training at an age when other boys were handed over to tutors to prepare for Cambridge or Oxford.

  “Good evening, sir.” Carstairs bowed to Captain Smith. “I apologize for the interruption.”

  “Not at all, Lord Carstairs.” Smith closed the huge book and fastened its brass latch across the cover. “If something is important enough to take you from your engagement ball, I wish to hear it at once.” Smith leaned back in his creaking chair and gestured with his quizzing glass for Carstairs to begin. So, with a deep breath, Edward told his captain how he had discovered the enchantment surrounding Alicia Hartwell—omitting only a few details, such as the passion they had both witnessed and enjoyed.

  Smith held up his glass and studied Carstairs through its lens for a long moment. There were whole worlds of speculation about what the captain actually saw through that glass, but no one in the Service would admit to knowing.

  “Have you any notion what the purpose of this enchantment might be?” Smith asked.

  Carstairs shook his head. “I had no time to make a proper examination. It was very subtle, but very strong.”

  “Strong enough to throw a cloak of humanity over a Fae changeling? Perhaps even convince her she is a human girl?”

  Carstairs’s fists knotted as he struggled to control his temper. Of co
urse the captain asked the question. Given Carstairs’s history of weakness, Smith had to ascertain whether he was seeing clearly this time, just as Rathe had.

  “I am sure she is no changeling.” Carstairs had looked deep into Alicia’s eyes before he’d kissed her. The truth of a Fae’s nature lay in their eyes. They were always filled with impossible promises and beauties. This was the creatures’ ultimate lure and their ultimate weakness. If Alicia had been even part Fae, she never would have permitted him to meet her gaze and still be free to speak of it afterward.

  Smith nodded, and sighed. “At another time, we might dismiss this as a small mystery to be pursued as time and leisure permit. But with the events surrounding the birth of the new princess having come so close to disaster, we cannot afford to ignore the smallest irregularity, especially when it touches so close to home for one of our agents.”

  “No, sir.” Carstairs bowed in acknowledgment of this truth. “How do you wish to proceed?”

  Smith twirled his glass for a moment in his long, dexterous fingers. “We need more information,” he said. “And you, Carstairs, are the one best placed to get it. Fortunately, now that your engagement has been officially announced, custom allows you leeway in calling on your betrothed, and you can reasonably be seen to escort her about under lighter chaperonage. You should avail yourself of these opportunities. See her alone, and often. Draw her out about her background and her upbringing.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But remain alert, Carstairs. You are one of our most powerful and experienced men, and our enemies have attacked Catalysts before. We must not discount the possibility that this is an attempt by the enemy to get at you.” Especially considering your family history. The captain, of course, did not say this. He did not have to. He had attended Nicholas’s funeral.