his head remained full of questions, mind leaping from thought to thought like a tennis ball.
The man at the theater. The man outside Bianca’s house. Who was so interested in the actress that they stalked her? And why?
He rubbed a finger between his brows, his mind returning to that one instant when he’d looked back at Bianca’s darkened town house and caught sight of her face in an upstairs window. Pale as the moon. Hair a loose ribbon of silver over a shoulder bare but for the thinnest of chemises. His own imagination had filled in the rest: delectable curves, creamy-soft skin, lips that could wring a hallelujah chorus from any man with a pulse.
He tried shaking himself free of the groin-tighteningimages. Bianca Parrino had been Adam’s mistress. She was off-limits.
And yet, their eyes had locked for a split second before he’d melted back into the alley, and he’d been struck by the infinite sadness in her gaze. He never should have pathed her that warning last night. It had been an instant’s panic when common sense failed him. He’d seen the danger, understood the menace, and—damn it—he’d been unable to stop himself.
He only prayed he hadn’t revealed too much with his heedless actions.
He tried easing his worry with the knowledge that when confronted with incidents out of the bounds of their understanding, most humans chose to ignore the truth and live on in ignorant bliss, never believing in the fantastical realms existing side by side with their own.
He prayed to the goddess it remained thus. He prayed—
“Captain Flannery, sir?” A pimply faced ensign hovered at the doorway, a sheaf of letters in his hand. “Captain Stockbridge just found these. They’d been mixed in among his mail.”
Mac accepted the post from the young man, who started to say something else before Mac’s forbidding expression had the fellow jerking a salute and making himself scarce. But his whispered comments back and forth with the sergeant on duty in the outer anteroom about worn-out old Flannery seemed to reverberate through the cramped office.
“. . . queer duck. Not right in the head . . .”
“. . . scout during the war . . . battle sick . . .”
“. . . makes love to his requisition forms . . . useless . . .”
Mac had heard it all and worse over the last yearhe’d been assigned to the army’s headquarters. He felt his fellow officers’ grudges and suspicions like a buzzing at the base of his skull, along with their disapproval and, in more than one instance, out-and-out dislike. They thought him a cold, emotionless bastard. A man who held himself aloof and above all others.
They blamed the war. Said it had changed him.
They didn’t know how right they were.
Stuffing the letters unread and unremarked in his coat pocket, he turned back to his mountain of supply ledgers, the columns of inventory making his eyes cross and his head ache. How had it come to this? How had he become a cheese-paring, stoop-shouldered pen nibbler? On campaign, he’d always scoffed at Adam’s constant scribbling in that damned book of his, the way he recorded every little tidbit as if how many times the four of them pissed between Tolosa and Vic-en-Bigorre mattered.
The ink from Mac’s poised pen spread over the forgotten page, his idea bursting forth like a live shell. Of course! Why hadn’t he thought of it before? Adam wrote everything down. He treated that battle-scarred book of his like a Bible. If the answers Mac sought were anywhere, they would be there.
Throwing himself to his feet, he ignored the tottering pile of requisition requests, consigned the damned pages of damned lists to the devil.
“Makes love to his requisition forms”? He’d feed them to the flames if he could. But what would be left to him then? Soldiering had become his life. Duty and honor had become wife and child to him. The only family he would ever know unless he changed fate and shattered the Fey-blood’s
The man at the theater. The man outside Bianca’s house. Who was so interested in the actress that they stalked her? And why?
He rubbed a finger between his brows, his mind returning to that one instant when he’d looked back at Bianca’s darkened town house and caught sight of her face in an upstairs window. Pale as the moon. Hair a loose ribbon of silver over a shoulder bare but for the thinnest of chemises. His own imagination had filled in the rest: delectable curves, creamy-soft skin, lips that could wring a hallelujah chorus from any man with a pulse.
He tried shaking himself free of the groin-tighteningimages. Bianca Parrino had been Adam’s mistress. She was off-limits.
And yet, their eyes had locked for a split second before he’d melted back into the alley, and he’d been struck by the infinite sadness in her gaze. He never should have pathed her that warning last night. It had been an instant’s panic when common sense failed him. He’d seen the danger, understood the menace, and—damn it—he’d been unable to stop himself.
He only prayed he hadn’t revealed too much with his heedless actions.
He tried easing his worry with the knowledge that when confronted with incidents out of the bounds of their understanding, most humans chose to ignore the truth and live on in ignorant bliss, never believing in the fantastical realms existing side by side with their own.
He prayed to the goddess it remained thus. He prayed—
“Captain Flannery, sir?” A pimply faced ensign hovered at the doorway, a sheaf of letters in his hand. “Captain Stockbridge just found these. They’d been mixed in among his mail.”
Mac accepted the post from the young man, who started to say something else before Mac’s forbidding expression had the fellow jerking a salute and making himself scarce. But his whispered comments back and forth with the sergeant on duty in the outer anteroom about worn-out old Flannery seemed to reverberate through the cramped office.
“. . . queer duck. Not right in the head . . .”
“. . . scout during the war . . . battle sick . . .”
“. . . makes love to his requisition forms . . . useless . . .”
Mac had heard it all and worse over the last yearhe’d been assigned to the army’s headquarters. He felt his fellow officers’ grudges and suspicions like a buzzing at the base of his skull, along with their disapproval and, in more than one instance, out-and-out dislike. They thought him a cold, emotionless bastard. A man who held himself aloof and above all others.
They blamed the war. Said it had changed him.
They didn’t know how right they were.
Stuffing the letters unread and unremarked in his coat pocket, he turned back to his mountain of supply ledgers, the columns of inventory making his eyes cross and his head ache. How had it come to this? How had he become a cheese-paring, stoop-shouldered pen nibbler? On campaign, he’d always scoffed at Adam’s constant scribbling in that damned book of his, the way he recorded every little tidbit as if how many times the four of them pissed between Tolosa and Vic-en-Bigorre mattered.
The ink from Mac’s poised pen spread over the forgotten page, his idea bursting forth like a live shell. Of course! Why hadn’t he thought of it before? Adam wrote everything down. He treated that battle-scarred book of his like a Bible. If the answers Mac sought were anywhere, they would be there.
Throwing himself to his feet, he ignored the tottering pile of requisition requests, consigned the damned pages of damned lists to the devil.
“Makes love to his requisition forms”? He’d feed them to the flames if he could. But what would be left to him then? Soldiering had become his life. Duty and honor had become wife and child to him. The only family he would ever know unless he changed fate and shattered the Fey-blood’s
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