She screamed. The torches guttered and went out, sinking the room in darkness.
“Anne?”
She jolted, then felt Leo’s large, warm hand on her thigh. There was a hiss of a tinder being struck, then the flare of lit candle. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the light, but when they did, she discovered herself sitting upright in bed. Leo stared up at her, concern furrowing his brow.
“A nightmare?”
Yes, that’s what it had been. Only that. She looked around. No underground temple. No bloody altar. And no Roman priestess speaking of things Anne could not understand. There was no howling wind, nor even a breeze. The bedchamber was warm and still.
“I think so.” She resisted the impulse to check her feet to see if they were sticky with blood.
“You’re bone cold.” He drew her down beside him, surrounding her with his heat. He felt so solid, so real and alive, and Anne relaxed into him. “Better?”
She drew from his warmth, his substance. Her body slowly thawed.
A peculiar ache resounded through her, but she dismissed it as the aftereffects of very thorough, very enthusiastic lovemaking. In time, she might grow used to such physical activity, but she hoped and rather believed she would not. How could she grow accustomed to so much sensation, to a man like Leo?
“Better.” Still, when he began to nibble along her jaw, she added with regret, “I think ... I may be a little sore.”
He chuckled. “Madam, your husband is a brute.”
“Which is one of his more charming qualities.”
Leo gazed over her face. “Tell me what you need, sweetheart. How to keep the nightmares at bay.”
It was strange, she was seldom plagued by bad dreams, and this one had been particularly vivid. Yet Leo’s presence shoved away the last vestiges of the nightmare.
She snuggled closer. “Having you here is enough.”
He pulled away just enough to blow out the candle, then wrapped his arms around her.
“Sleep well, sweetheart.”
“And you,” she said, then added shyly, “my dear.”
His arms tightened, holding her closer. They lay together. Anne felt the gentle, rhythmic rise and fall of his chest as he drifted into sleep, and it lulled her. The darkness felt more comfortable now, everything secure, everything as it should be. Because of him.
Yet as sleep began to claim her, the priestess’s words echoed in her head.
He is most wicked of all. The Devil’s operative who makes the world ready for his master.
Chapter 8
The world spread beneath Leo’s hands. Seas, continents, nations. The span of his hand covered the whole of an ocean. If he so desired, he could crush all of it into a ball and consign it to the fire. He grinned.
“Have an interest in maps, do you, sir?”
Leo glanced up from his perusal of the map spread out on a table. The shop’s proprietor watched him with an eager smile. “I begin to.”
“My shop has all that you could desire. The very latest. The Americas, the East Indies. Even the newest geographical surveys of England. Here.” The proprietor hurried behind a curtain and emerged with a globe upon a turned oak stand, surmounted by a brass meridian. “Just come from France, sir. A beautiful example.”
He set the globe down on another table and waved Leo over to it. “Can’t do any finer than this. The latest in the cartographer’s art, and a stunning addition to the home of a distinguished, worldly gentleman.”
Leo peered down at the globe. The cartouche was in French, so he could not read it. He rested his finger atop the dot marked Moscou. How many souls beneath his finger? Giving the globe a push, he watched the world spin on its axis, the passage of days in a matter of seconds. A godlike power.
“My purchases today will not be for myself,” he murmured.
“A friend, then.”
Smiling, Leo moved away from the spinning globe. He perused charts hanging on the walls, with the shopkeeper trailing after him. “I believe so. My wife.”
The proprietor frowned. “Would they be for your wife, or a friend?”
“She is both.” It surprised him, but there was the truth of it. Anne was more to him than could be conveyed in the simple term wife. She accepted him as he was, and did not look for weaknesses to exploit. What she admired in him was ... him.
“Beg pardon, sir, but you mean to say, you would give maps to your wife?”
Leo looked at the shopkeeper, and the man shrank beneath the coldness of his expression. “That is exactly what I intend to do. I’ll take my coin elsewhere.”
“Oh, no, sir. No, no.” Seeing the fineness of Leo’s clothing, the rings upon his fingers, the proprietor was all solicitousness. “I think ’tis a wonderful thing for a man to dote on his wife, indulge her every fancy.”
It was more than a fancy for Anne, her love of maps. She considered not just the things themselves, something pretty or curious to be idly looked up, but what they signified, what they meant. It troubled him how little he had credited her when first he began to pay court. She had been merely an instrument to aid in his objectives. And he had been a fool to think her so easily rendered into a discrete, uncomplicated category.
All this, before he had known the sweet pleasures of her body. Now he had, and the world was new.
The proprietor gestured to a small chamber, separated by a curtain. “The best merchandise lays within, sir.”
Leo nodded and entered the chamber. He would give Anne the best. Anything she wanted, she would have.
The scent of paper enriched the air. Stacks of charts and maps lay atop tables and collected in V-shaped stands. Neat scrolls of parchment rested in cubbies built into the walls. Every sheet of paper represented a part of the globe, whole civilizations, and lives lost to the cause of exploration. But the world needed to be known, and in so knowing, owned. Leo understood this impulse, this covetousness. Always, it had been centered on his demands and what he could attain for himself. Now, he wanted everything for Anne.
“Here, sir.” The shop owner pulled a map of South America from one of the stands. “Taken from the most recent voyage. Mark the profusion of rivers. Most prodigious.”
Leo did not know much of cartography, but he trusted his own judgment. “I will find what I need. On my own.”
With a bow, the proprietor backed from the chamber. As he did, he drew the curtain, affording Leo privacy.
Leo made a thorough, careful survey of the contents of the room. He knew many of the places on the maps, for England served as the heart to the beast of commerce, pumping blood in the form of money and merchandise through the veins of global enterprise. Bending to study a map of the West Indies, he examined the multitude of islands dotting the Caribbean Sea. Barbados, Saint-Domingue, Hispañola. Growing the cane that sweetened the world’s tea, and distilling the rum that spun the world’s head.
“A marvelous place, the West Indies.”
Leo glanced up. The geminus leaned against a table. It had its arms folded across its chest, its legs crossed in a posture of perfect, gentlemanly leisure. Having gained Leo’s attention, it pushed away from the table and joined him in the perusal of the Caribbean map.
“I’ve never been,” Leo answered.
“Some call it a paradise.” The geminus chuckled. “My master particularly enjoys it.”
“The sultry climate.”
“The atmosphere is in all ways pleasing to him. Particularly that of the plantations.”
Leo replaced the map and selected another, this one of the Barbary Coast. Tiny ships sailed atop a painted sea, their sails billowing. Pirates, maybe, preying upon the hordes of merchant ships and their holds laden with wealth.