“Hmm. This fellow sounds lazy and uncaring.” He nipped her earlobe and shifted his body to cover hers. “You would do better to stay here in bed with me, lovely one.”

The delicious weight of him made Rebecca sigh and slide her arms around his waist. “I want nothing more than that, but I think my husband would have some strong objections.” She opened her eyes and grinned up into the dark, scowling face of the brute on top of her. “Oh, Sylas. ’Tis you.”

“Devious wench.” He kissed her hard. “For that I should chain you to this bed for a week.”

“Do you promise?” She curled her good leg over his hip, arching against him. “An entire week?”

Her husband’s scowl faded as his eyes, black as midnight, took on a faint blue glow. “’Twould not be enough, would it?”

No, it wouldn’t. Rebecca sometimes wondered if eternity would be. “I love you, Sylas.”

“And I you, wife.”

Shadows stretched over the bed, covering the lovers as time and thought slipped silently from the chamber. Later, when the sun had vanished and the night bedecked itself with the glory of a thousand diamond-bright stars, Rebecca kissed her husband’s damp shoulder and reluctantly untangled herself from his hold.

He rolled onto his side so that he might watch her bathe and dress. “You should take some time for yourself tonight. Have Lettice organize the women. She is in charge of your ladies; she should do something other than gossip with them.”

“I would, but Tish is besotted with the new armorer come last week from the Realm,” Rebecca told him. “Until he returns her affections, or sorts out how to discourage them, she will be of little use to any of us.” She remembered something. “Oh, that friend of Will’s telephoned. I may have to attend to her tonight as well.”

His black brows rose. “What friend of Will’s?”

She picked up a small square of stiff paper from her vanity table and read it. “She calls herself Reese Carmichael. Apparently she is a senior account executive of Peachtree Marketing, Inc.”

“A mortal? Coming here?” When she nodded, he sat up. “Why?”

Her husband disliked strangers coming to Rosethorn for various reasons, not the least of which was preserving their safety. He, Rebecca, and the remainder of the household were Darkyn, immortal beings whose only nourishment was the blood of mortals. Over the centuries the Kyn had learned not to kill for their needs, and had hidden themselves among them, protecting themselves and the human beings upon whom they still depended. Only the Darkyn’s mortal enemies, the Brethren, still pursued them with their single-minded determination. A renegade sect of fanatics who posed as Catholic priests, the Brethren had held as their sole mission for centuries to exterminate the Kyn.

Fortunately they had not succeeded, although the secret war between the Darkyn and the Brethren had endured for six centuries. For those reasons, and some their lord paramount had not bothered to explain, Robin of Locksley had chosen to build his stronghold on two thousand acres of land in the sparsely populated Georgia countryside. In the process he had also convinced the few mortals living near Rosethorn’s borders to sell their property to him. Most of his jardin, made up of some five hundred Darkyn who had pledged their service to him, lived at Rosethorn, while the rest managed more than twenty tenant farms surrounding the stronghold on all sides.

“It seems Miss Carmichael will be fashioning the new advertisements for the weaponry our lord sells to mortals, and wishes to use our home as something called a ‘backdrop.’ You needn’t worry. She’s one of the tresori from the city, so she won’t get into any mischief.” Rebecca came over to the bed, lifted her hair, and turned her back toward him. “Are you going back to the city tonight?”

“Aye, the master has need of me again.” With the deftness of long practice, Sylas fastened the long row of buttons from her waist to her nape.

As castellan of Rosethorn, Sylas carried duties not limited to supervising the suzerain’s stronghold. The safety of the estate was his primary responsibility, which meant constant monitoring, augmenting, and improving of stores, weapons, and defense measures. Through daily training on the proving ground, he ensured the readiness of the garrison to face any threat, from a full-scale attack by Brethren fanatics bent on destroying the jardin to the intrusion of a curious mortal unaware of their existence. In Robin’s absence, Sylas had complete authority over the jardin as well, and performed in his lord’s stead by hearing grievances, settling disputes, and granting requests.

Sylas refused to set himself above his men, however, and always took his turn among the suzerain’s personal guard, which required him to occasionally accompany their lord whenever he traveled from Rosethorn to his great house in the city.

Rebecca understood why he served as both castellan and warrior, and respected him for it, but that didn’t make her like the separation any better. “I wish you didn’t have to go.”

“Nor do I,” he said. “Our lord has been strangely restless of late. Will rarely has a moment of peace. Tell me more about this Carmichael woman.”

Rebecca recalled the brief conversation she had had with Reese. “She wishes to be shown through the interior of the house so that she might choose the most favorable spots for the photographs needed. She has never been here, and asked if I would take her on a tour of it.”

“She told you she wishes to spy upon us? Just like that?”

“Every curious mortal is not a Brethren agent wishing to destroy us all,” she told him. “Tish said something about her once. I think she is Will’s special friend.”

Sylas grunted. “I will speak to the men anyway.”

“I thank you, but I have already done so.” His indignant look made her chuckle. “You were busy.”

“I am castellan. You are chatelaine. The ladies and the household are your charge; the garrison, the weapons, and the fortifications are supposed to be mine.” He thought for a moment. “I will direct Alain to escort you and this mortal while she is here.”

“Alain will only wish to use her,” Rebecca pointed out.

“Aye, but you may keep him busy fending off anyone else who comes at her.” Sylas’s hand rasped over the short, tight black curls his constant cropping could never quite disguise. “Attend to this special friend of Will’s, but do it quickly, my lady. Strange mortals do not belong at the stronghold. Even those we are told to trust.”

While he buttoned her gown, Rebecca twisted her light brown hair into a neat coil, which she pinned against the back of her head before she slid two ivory combs on either side of it. She handed him an airy silk snood and sat down on the edge of the bed while he gathered it over her hair and tied the ribbons. “Do you think you are to stay in the city until the morrow?”

“’Tis likely.” He kissed the side of her throat. “No longer than a single night, I promise.”

Neither of them cared for being apart for longer than a few hours. Rebecca knew it was mostly due to the physical and emotional dependency they had on each other, a rare but enduring bond that had been born when they had risen from the mortal grave where they had been buried together, and walked the night as immortals. When separated from his sygkenis, a Darkyn male became uneasy and short-tempered; he could not rest or find pleasure in anything. If the separation was unwilling or extended, both partners would quickly grow unstable and even dangerous.

The bond Rebecca shared with Sylas was rather more than one merely of blood. In the last days of their mortal lives they had been two strangers desperately battling to save the innocent. That hopeless struggle had forged a sudden but deep friendship between them. Rebecca loved her husband, but she also respected and trusted him, as he did her. When death had come for her, he had not run away like the others, but stayed with her, holding her hand in his. She had begged him to go, to save himself, but he said that life without her had no interest or meaning for him anymore. He had not let her die alone and afraid, but went with her into the darkness.

There had been a price for that loyalty, one some might have found heavy or even terrible, but in time they had learned to deal with that, as well as all the other changes that becoming Kyn had wrought.

Rebecca made her way slowly to the full-length mirror on the other side of the room. She turned this way and that, examining her reflection.

“We need a holiday,” Sylas said, coming up behind her. “You work as hard now as e’er you did for the church.”

“Holiday comes from the words holy day,” Rebecca reminded him. “’Twas the church that used to give us leave from our duties.”

“Aye, so that we might sit and listen to hours and hours of promises of damnation in poorly spoke Latin.” He nipped her ear. “If you miss it, we could arrange to spend the day in bed watching the Evangelical Channel.”

Rebecca laughed. Her husband despised television above all modern things. “I think I would trade all my jewels to see you do such a thing. If I had jewels.”

He turned her around, his expression troubled. “You do not miss it still, do you?”

Rebecca’s humor faded a few degrees. She did miss it, her human life. The enjoyment of food, the pleasure of working in the sunlight, the companionship of her friends among the sisters. Few females rose to walk the night; those who belonged to Locksley had been either villeins or gently bred ladies. As chatelaine, she was responsible for them as well, so what friendship she felt toward them was ever tempered by her duty to watch over them.

But Sylas had lost as much as, if not more than, she. The plague had taken every member of his family, including his beloved younger sister, for whom he had sacrificed so much. That loss had nearly destroyed him.

“My only regret in this life and all the others that have been or will be,” she said, winding her arms around his waist, “is that I did not find you sooner.”

CHAPTER THREE

Will rose in the early afternoon, tired of staring aimlessly at the ceiling. He’d managed to rest an hour, but thoughts of Reese kept his mind as a dog chasing its tail, ever turning in useless circles.