“. . . look the other way . . .”
“. . . pay for passage . . .” In her rescuer’s deep voice.
“We don’t need your money.” She could barely make out the langue d’oil of northern France, spoken with a distinctly British accent. “These little trips pay for themselves.”
“If you sell her,” her rescuer said, clear and cold, “I will destroy you.”
“We don’t traffic in children.” Equal disdain in the speaker’s voice.
She crept closer to the trapdoor, trying to get a glimpse of the men below. They were barely more than shapes in the dark: her tall rescuer in his broad-shouldered cloak; a burly fellow in an oversized coat and battered hat; a younger man, slim as a steel blade.
“Your girl isn’t the first aristocrat we’ve smuggled across the Channel,” the burly man continued.
“You’re one of us,” the younger man said. “You should know that.”
One of what? Aimée wondered. Smugglers? English?
A light flickered. Not a flare like a match, not the honest yellow glow of lamplight, but a slow growing silver light, cupped like a ball in her rescuer’s hand. The eerie light illuminated his face, cold, pale, and perfect as the statue of Apollo in the chateau gardens. Wide, clear brow. Long, straight nose. Firm, unsmiling mouth. His fair hair fell, unpowdered and untamed, to his shoulders.
She quivered deep inside with fear and an instinct she did not recognize.
“But I am not like you,” he said softly.
“Not yet, maybe,” the younger man said. He, too, was beautiful, with a lean, clever face and a handkerchief knotted around his throat.
“Just a matter of time now,” the older man agreed. “Lucky for you we found you.”
“You came for the girl.”
“We were looking for you both.” The burly fellow swept off his hat to scratch under it. “Lord Amherst’s orders. You’re under his protection now.”
“I do not serve your earthly lord. Or require his protection.”
The boy shot him a look from thick-lashed eyes. “You won’t feel so high-and-mighty after they toss you out of Heaven.”
The large man cleared his throat. “Amherst will take you in. Assuming you make it to England.”
Aimée frowned. But he was taking her to England. He had said so.
“Damon Carleton, Earl of Amherst,” the burly man repeated. He replaced his hat carefully on his head. “Try not to forget.”
“I believe my hearing and my memory extend that far,” her rescuer said dryly.
“You’d better hope so. When you lose your powers, your memory goes, too. You come down to earth as a child. A little older, if you’re lucky.”
“So I will be . . . human.” His voice was flat, strained of emotion.
Aimée blinked. Of course he was human. What else could he be?
An angel come to save us, Maman had said.
Ah, no. Aimée’s mind whirled. Phrases floated up in the dark, muffled and indistinct, like voices in a blizzard.
“. . . gone before morning.”
“. . . find her relatives. Basing, you say?”
“. . . I can feel . . . not much time.”
“It’s all right, lad. We’ll get her where she needs to go.”
They were talking about her, she realized dully. It was her future they were deciding, these strange men with their shabby clothes and English accents.
Her pride stung. Her throat burned. She was young and dazed with grief but not spiritless or stupid.
She erupted from her nest in a flurry of skirts and resolution. Bits of hay scattered on the men below.
“I do not go with anyone until I know who you are,” she announced.
What you are, she thought, and shivered.
They looked up, startled.
She had a brief glimpse of their faces, the young one, lean and sardonic, the older man’s, broad and shrewd, before the light winked out.
But her rescuer . . .
Aimée forced air into her lungs. Her tall, handsome rescuer was already gone.
Chapter Two
FAIR HILL, ENGLAND, OCTOBER 1800
Damon Carleton, the Earl of Amherst, pinned Lucien with a look like a rapier blade, glinting, gray, and cold. “You need an occupation.”
Despite the autumn chill of the library, sweat pricked under Lucien’s high, starched collar. He resisted the urge to tug at his neckcloth. “I had an occupation,” he reminded the earl. “I was an angel. Now I am nothing. A cipher. A human.”
“You have had eight years to accustom yourself to that condition,” Amherst said evenly. “During which time you have been sheltered, educated, and well provided for.”
Lucien stiffened. He was well aware that he owed everything to Amherst. Still, the reminder stung. “Because the world believes me your bastard.”
Amherst raised his eyebrows. Even if one disregarded the earl’s earthly rank and powers, he was a formidable man, with a brawler’s build and an aesthete’s face. “When the old earl took me into his nursery to replace his dead heir, only the boy’s mother knew of the substitution. But you arrived on my doorstep as a youth of seventeen. I could hardly claim you as my legitimate son.”
“Especially as you never married,” Lucien said.
Amherst shrugged. “I have brought eleven bastard children to live at Fair Hill. Fallen, every one, of course. No wife could be expected to tolerate such flagrant reminders of her husband’s excesses.”
Lucien inclined his head. “Indeed, sir, we are all grateful for your single state. As well as your ongoing liberality.”
“Ongoing,” Amherst said, “but not without limit.”
Lucien eyed him warily. It had been years since he was last summoned to the earl’s study for discipline, but he recognized that tone. “Sir?”
“It is time you demonstrated some initiative. Made something of yourself. Made a difference in the world.”
Lucien swallowed the bitterness in his mouth. “My last attempt at initiative could hardly be termed a success.”
And that, of course, was the source of his discontent.
Amherst, he was sure, was aware of the resentment simmering under his small rebellions. But even the earl, the head of the Nephilim, the Fallen ones, in England, did not guess at Lucien’s loss of faith.
His heart burned.