kiss him, gently at first, then more ardently as the depth of his reaction drove me. I found myself aching to learn the limits of the man, all the nuances and subtleties of his responses. I had meant to hold back, to build gradually, but fell helplessly into the desire to push and master him, reading without conscious thought his unuttered needs. When I came at last to press my teeth to the vein in his throat, tangling my hand in that burnished hair and drawing his head back almost to the point of pain, my own release was shattering. The rich sweetness of his blood filled my mouth, and his body shuddered as wave after wave of pleasure engulfed us both.
I withdrew from the spent and sobbing man beneath me, turning him and drawing him up until the tear-soaked face rested on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Hal,” I murmured, kissing the sweat-dampened curls. “I hadn’t meant for it to belike that.” Hal pressed his fingers to my lips, to hush me.
“Don’t be sorry,” he whispered, then raised his face to mine.
“Lo, I confess I am thy captive, I,
and hold my conquered hands for thee to tie,”
he quoted, smiling, and I stared at him in surprise. “It’s from Marlowe’s Ovid,” he explained quietly. “Kit Marlowe was the dead friend that Walsingham has named you for.”
“Yes, I know,” I said, disentangling myself to fetch the basin, which held heated towels, and the ewer full of water that was still pleasantly warm. I began to wash, first myself, then him. Hal shivered at the attention, his eyes growing heavy with content. He reached a hand and caught my wrist, kissing the fading scars still visible there.
“If that was not how you meant it to be, you might still show me how you did intend it . . . ” his voice trailed off as I leaned over him, a shadow between him and the fire, then a fire between his teeth when our lips met. I was gentle this time, using every ounce of my skill to bring his release, and every ounce of my will not to feed from the man again. All too soon, it seemed, we broke apart. Hal laid back and when I asked him what he was doing replied: “Drinking the sight of you like wine, some heavy and heady rich wine, red as blood, rarer and more precious than rubies,” and laughed at the giddy simile. I brought the tray, uncovering the dishes to reveal the rare beef and sallet of sorrel and rose petals, and poured him a wine redder than blood from a second flagon. He leaned against me, letting himself be fed and basking in my attentions.
“I am more content this night,” he told me, “than I have been since ever I came to court.”
Chapter 8
Northumberland prowled the gallery and fidgeted in the old chapel he had taken as his study at Malvern Hall. The disturbances there had begun quietly enough some two or three weeks after the disastrous attempt to summon the demon Cadavedere, begun with a few rappings and tappings, and had grown in intensity until they could not be ignored. A sudden flung stone had broken a retort, spilling the results of two weeks work across the pages of an irreplaceable grimoire, and Percy had had enough. He briefly considered calling in a priest to try to exorcise the spirit, but had decided against it on the grounds that he probably knew more than his priest did on the subject of exorcism. Instead he had carefully set a mirror and murmured the spells of concentration and calming he had always found so useful preceding attempts to scry. A second stone shattered the costly mirror, and a tattoo of rapping broke out.
The earl, enraged, found himself shouting “Who in the name of hell are you?” then watching in horror as a massive wax candle began to burn down one side, as if it were subject to a heavy draft, although there was no breath of air stirring and the flames of every other candle in the room burned straight and still. The wax streamed from the candlestick, splashing onto the scarred tabletop, but oddly, deliberately. Northumberland leant forward, and gasped as his nearsighted eyes picked out the device that imprinted itself in the hot wax, the sigil of Mars encompassed in a star of thirteen points. He knew of only one man that had used that device: Aestatis Montague. Percy cleared