Conversation stilled as five men strode into the chamber, all gazes turning toward them like flowers following the sun’s progress across the sky. These men shone with the absence of light, a brilliant darkness, and the possibility that they might do anything, and no one could stop them.

A murmur rose up from somewhere in the crowd. “Hellraisers, the lot of them.” Yet the words were spoken half in fear, half in admiration.

Bram stood at the front of the group, leading the charge. The intervening years had hardened him. He was carved obsidian. Evening clothes had replaced his grimy uniform, and the sword at his side was meant for show, not killing. Shadows haunted his eyes and thoughts. She heard them, felt them.

What shall I take this evening? The dreams won’t leave me, but I can beat them back. Who will it be tonight?

Women swayed nearer. He might choose from any of them. More than a few had already filled his bed, if only for the night, but he sought something new, for his need never left him, nor did the black images that crept forward in quiet moments.

“Rothwell!”

A red-faced man stalked toward him. Collingwood. The guests stepped back to give him room, watching in scandalized fascination as he shoved closer. Then he stood before Bram, glaring up at him.

“You are a rogue and a villain,” spat Collingwood.

The crowd gasped at this insult, thrown so publicly.

“I own to both titles,” Bram answered.

“Have you no respect for the vows between a husband and wife?”

“Your wife does not, clearly. For she abandoned them with an extraordinary enthusiasm.”

Gazes turned to the wife in question, who stood at the other end of the chamber. Her hands covered her mouth, and her eyes were perfect circles of mortification.

Collingwood purpled. “You will give me satisfaction at dawn.”

Before Bram could speak, Whit drawled, “He already has his second.”

“And third,” added Leo.

“I advise you to spend the intervening hours with your fencing master,” John said.

As Collingwood paled, Bram smiled, his hand resting lightly on the pommel of his sword. It wasn’t properly balanced for dueling, but there would be enough time to return home and fetch his favorite Italian-made blade.

Collingwood stormed from the chamber. A cry rose up from the end of the room, and Collingwood’s wife was borne away, hanging limply from supporting arms. Excited words filled the ballroom, everyone eager to spread the news of scandal.

“Should we also retire?” Edmund murmured.

“There is considerable time from now until the sun rises,” said Bram. “And we’ve only just arrived.”

Edmund shook his head, but his smile was wry. Together, the five men moved further into the assembly, wearing their wicked reputations like cloaks of scarlet. Yet none of the other guests turned away. Their smiles came wider, the women’s glances more flirtatious.

Truly, we have whatever we desire. Yet it never satisfies.

The opulent chamber broke apart, and memories came so thick and fast that Livia could not separate them, lost in a tempest of one man’s history. Images and emotions. Faces, voices. Anger. Sensuality. Despair.

Wasn’t it torment enough that she must have her own memories of life? Now she was lost within the remembrances of a dissolute scoundrel, thick tendrils of sorrow knotted about his heart.

He prowled the streets now, troubled and restive, with Livia dragged along in his wake.

The Dark One had him in a stranglehold. Yet she felt Bram’s heart as though it overlaid her own. He was damaged but surviving. Not lost, not yet.

Though if he gave himself fully to the Dark One, then evil’s strength would grow a hundredfold. More. That could not happen.

She must fight the Dark One’s hold on Bram. Every passing moment he stalked closer and closer to ruination. Once he crossed that boundary, he would be an unstoppable force of evil, tipping the balance into darkness.

His former friends might aid her. They could help pull him back from that chasm. She needed out of Bram’s memories, needed to reach the few mortals who were her allies.

Furious, desperate, she clawed her way free. She had to disentangle herself from him, even if the price was a return to madness.

Chapter 2

He stood outside his own home. With no memory of how he got there.

“My lord?” The footman looked baffled at his appearance on the front step of his house on Cavendish Square.

Bram stepped into the foyer. The longcase clock revealed the time to be minutes after midnight. No wonder the footman appeared mystified. Bram had not been home at this hour in . . . he couldn’t remember when. Likely he had still been in leading strings.

“Shall I fetch for a physician, my lord?”

“Fetch brandy,” he answered. “Bring it to me in the music room.”

“Yes, my lord.”

As he strode down the corridor, he pulled at his stock, loosening it from around his throat. He cast off his coat along the way. Both stock and coat dropped to the ground as if he shed a carapace. He was not usually so careless with his clothing, but tonight he could not bring himself to care about spoiling the velvet or dirtying linen.

The music room had earned its name years prior, but the pianoforte was now covered with Holland cloth, and the chairs and harp were gone. Bram stalked to a press, the chamber’s sole piece of furniture. Throwing open the press’s doors, he found not silver, nor linens or clothing. Swords lined up in neat rows. He brushed his hand over their scabbards, then selected the curved hanger sword.

Stepping back, he gave the sword a few practice slashes through the air, loosening his shoulders. The sword was an extension of his arm, as natural as his own muscle and movement.

The footman came in with a decanter of brandy and a glass on a tray, unblinking at the sword in Bram’s hand. He knew his master well enough not to falter at seeing Bram armed. Yet the footman approached slowly. Bram plucked the decanter from the tray, ignoring the glass. The servant bowed before leaving.

Taking a long drink directly from the decanter, Bram paced toward the chamber’s only other occupant. He stalked to the figure, readying his sword. An expressionless face stared back at him. But he expected no response from the straw-stuffed dummy positioned in the middle of the chamber. He stared at its blank face and drank again.

The brandy burned on its way down. It wasn’t enough. It would take far more than drink to ease this monstrous emptiness within him.

Prowling around the dummy, he assessed it as if it was an enemy. He feinted. Then swung his blade at the dummy. It hacked into the straw-filled canvas. Bodies felt different from straw—meaty and yielding, until you hit the resistance of bone. Dummies didn’t bleed, either. But if you hit a man just so, his blood would spray across your clothing, your face. He had taken a coarse rag to his skin after one fierce battle near the Niagara River and not known whether the blood staining the water was his or if it belonged to the French soldiers he’d killed.

He’d come to learn the feeling of steel meeting flesh. Grew skilled enough to know where to strike a man so that he could no longer run, and how long it took to die from a wound to the stomach.

And how much of his own blood he could lose, and still stay alive.

The blank face of the dummy shifted, transforming in his sight to the Algonquin who’d cut his throat. Snarling, Bram now launched into an attack, chopping into the dummy as if he could kill the Algonquin all over again. He still sometimes woke, choking on imaginary blood, hand pressed to his throat. But instead of an open wound, a scar snaked across his flesh, its every contour familiar.

He thrust his sword deep into the dummy’s chest. Its face changed again, and he found himself staring at Edmund—looking just as he did when he’d been stabbed. His mild brown eyes were wide with shock, his mouth forming soundless words. Only this time, Bram killed him, not John.

Perhaps he was responsible. He hadn’t been able to stop it. He could have moved faster, blocked John’s blade.

Rearing back, he pulled the sword from the dummy, and it clattered to the ground.

Bram hadn’t called upon Rosalind, Edmund’s widow, half afraid of what he might find. He didn’t know if she even mourned her husband, or if she’d woken from the dream, and now embraced autonomy. With the Devil’s magic no longer binding her to Edmund, she might do anything she pleased.

She’d better mourn. For Edmund had loved her, in a way Bram could barely fathom.

The same emotion was in Whit’s eyes when he gazed upon his Gypsy woman. And Leo with his wife, Anne.

Bram had no knowledge of what it meant, how it felt.

He didn’t want to know. Love was unreal. Or worse—perishable, fragile. Like everything else in this world. Once he believed friendship could outlast anything. Curse him for a damned fool.

After taking another deep drink, he paced back to the cabinet. His hand closed around the handle of a tomahawk. Holding it up, he studied its brutal, efficient lines. A memento he’d taken from the bastard who had cut his throat. Bram had torn it from the Algonquin’s grasp and buried its blade in the Indian’s skull. The weapon was his now.

He hefted the tomahawk and turned his attention to the thick logs leaning upright against the wall. Strange decoration for a room that still had gilt paneling and crystal chandeliers, but he’d insisted, and no one dared gainsay him.