Heir of Danger by Alix Rickloff Page A

didn’t prevent it either. And isn’t a sin of omission still a sin? Burying one’s head in the sand is not a defense.”
    He began playing. The hop-skip tune of “The Girl I Left Behind Me” rang out. His idea of a joke? If so, she wasn’t amused, but it did serve to snap them from the quagmire of this hushed room, these sinister broodings.
    “Should I worry you’ll turn me in for the bounty on my head?” he asked over the music.
    “Is there one?”
    “Oh, to be sure. I mean, as long as I’m to be hunted as a criminal, I may as well bring a high price. It’s undignified to be worth any less than a thousand pounds.” He joked, but a trace of unhappiness showed through his banter.
    “You won’t tell me what you’re hiding from, will you? Or who hunts you?”
    “Trust me, my love. You don’t want to know. And wouldn’t believe me anyway.”
    He finished the piece, the tension following almost palpable. It pounded against her ears. Throbbed in the air like the beating of great wings.
    “This is all to do with magic, isn’t it?” She caught herself peeking over her shoulder at every flickering dance of the candelabra’s flames. Feeling the gaze of unseen creatures lifting the hairs at the back of her neck. “Something to do with the
Other
.” She jumped at a breeze rattling the casement.
    “Easy, now. There’s no one there. You’re tying yourself in knots.”
    She continued to peer into the corners of the room. “So you say.”
    “Believe me. After seven years, I can sense danger a mile away. But aye, my difficulties originate within that world. So, keep my secret, Lissa. And when it’s safe, I’ll vanish as fully as I did the last time. You’ll wonder if I wasn’t just a figment of your imagination.”
    “What if I told you I was happy to see you again?” The words caught in her throat, low and halting.
    “I’d know you were lying. Shaw will whisper sweet nothings in your ear, and you’ll remember why it was you wanted to marry him. And why I’m the last person you want in your life.”
    He was right, of course. What on earth had she been contemplating in the dark with the music in her head, the listening shadows surrounding them, and Brendan’s dangerous magnetism working its spell? She shook off her fancies with a stern inner reproof. “Gordon
is
a good man, isn’t he?”
    “I’d say he’s a typical representative of the male species.”
    “You don’t like him.”
    “Does my liking him signify? It’s
your
feelings that matter. Do you like him?”
    Angry with herself for being taken in—even momentarily—by lost dreams, she straightened, scowling down at him as if he’d thrown her a challenge. “I love him as I ought to.”
    “Then marry him and be happy.” He quirked a teasing eye in her direction, and the lovelorn strains of Mozart’s concerto rang once more. “Sleep well, Lissa. If luck is with us both, I’ll be gone from here when you wake.”
    She left him still playing. But alongside her relief, grief spiked her heart and hot tears burned the backs of her eyelids. She’d marry Gordon. And be deliriously, ecstatically happy. So take that, Brendan Douglas!
    Brendan followed the riverbed from Dun Eyre, picking his surefooted way through stands of birch and willow, the pungent scent of ferns and boggy earth filling his head, the river a slow lap and gurgle against the muddy banks.
    Joining the lane skirting the village, he climbed the hill leading away from the cluster of cabins to the far meadows. From here it was a short hike across the fields to Belfoyle’s eastern boundary. Spring fragrance laced the night air, carried on the ever-present wind as it swirled up over the nearby cliffs, blew out over the wide, treeless meadows. The towers of the house rose up to his left, a roofline glimpsed between trees, a lighted window, a horse whinnying from the nearby stable block.
    The sky burned with a million stars while a low moon rose up over the far hills behind him,