falcon that took an instant dislike to Mr. Lesperance,” Corporal Mackenzie added with a wry smile. Nathan scowled down at his battered enameled tin plate.
Hastings, eager to shine in the eyes of his superior, pulled out a notepad from his pocket. “A scientific expedition, all the way from London,” he read.
“Scientific,” repeated Williamson. “Botany? Zoology?”
Hastings flushed. “He wasn’t specific, sir. I tried to get more details but he gave me a lot of bluster, saying he was a very important man in England and he didn’t have time to waste on”—he cleared his throat and turned redder, matching his jacket—“‘boys in pretend uniforms.’”
All the Mounties grumbled at this.
“But they did hire three mountain men as guides,” Hastings added. “And I heard they’re heading west at first light.”
“Good work, Corporal,” Williamson said, and Hastings beamed. He turned to Nathan. “Are you sure you want to leave tomorrow, Lesperance? It’s jolly exciting around here. Always something going on.”
“I’m sure,” said Nathan, thinking once more of Astrid Bramfield’s silver eyes. A welcome distraction came when something brushed against his leg. He glanced down to see an enormous orange tabby cat twining between his boots. The cat placed its paws on his knee and chirped. Nathan stroked the cat’s head and was rewarded with a series of purrs.
“That’s Calgary,” said Mackenzie. “I named him after the place in Scotland where my pa is from. He isn’t usually this friendly. Just eats and sleeps all day. Terrible mouser.”
“You’ve got a way with animals,” Williamson noted as Calgary tried to climb into Nathan’s lap.
“Except those Brits’ falcon,” Nathan said.
The men continued to share stories until darkness fell completely, and the only light came from their pipes and the lantern on their table. At last, aching with fatigue, Nathan stood, dumping the irate Calgary from his lap, and bid the Mounties good night. Tomorrow would be another long day.
Once outside, Nathan took a deep breath of night air. Most everyone at the trading post was either asleep, passed out, or had since left, so the evening was cold and silent. Hardly any light penetrated the darkness, save for the glinting stars and waning moon. Yet Nathan felt them, just the same, the huge, dark forms of the mountains, pulling on him like a lodestone. He’d struggled against it all evening, and now that he was out of doors, their draw became sharp, insistent. He gritted his teeth against it. Come to us. We await you.
So strong was their pull, Nathan didn’t notice the shadowed forms creeping up behind him. By the time he became aware of them, it was too late. He felt several men leap upon him, binding him, forcing a gag into his mouth. He struggled fiercely, almost dislodging them, but there were too many. A falcon cried. Something exploded behind his eyes and then he was swallowed by nothingness.
Chapter 2
Solitude Shattered
Morning frost turned her lungs brittle, each inhalation a reinforcement that she continued to breathe and live.
There was a time when even that reminder would have been too much. Astrid had hated the fact that, despite everything, her body persevered, pressing on, a machine with no consideration for her heart or soul. Each dawn had proven again and again that she must go on without Michael, regardless of what she wanted. So she did. She awoke and moved and, eventually, fed herself, dressed herself, and went about the business of being alive. In time, living no longer was an effort of titanic proportions. Birthdays passed. She turned thirty-three last May. She went forward.
Now she rode through the low mountain pass leading to her homestead, glancing about her. Gold-glimmering mountains rose out of the morning mist that seeped up from the evergreen woods. In the scrub, animals returned to their burrows after their nighttime forays for food. Thrushes sang to each other. And nowhere could be heard the sounds of human habitation.
Being out in the expanse helped. In this wild place, every day she fought to survive. No room or time to huddle into herself. Self-pity opened the door to disaster. She pushed herself ahead and had done so for four years. She would continue to do so until she stopped appearing at the trading post, and some curious trapper or dutiful Mountie made the trip out to her cabin to find what remained of her. But her loss wouldn’t matter, because she had been careful, very careful, to form no attachments.
Something shifted in her peripheral vision. Astrid swiftly took up the rifle slung over her shoulder, then lowered the gun when she saw it was only a fox trotting home from a nocturnal hunt. A beautiful creature, sleek and red, all economy and motion. The animal barely sent her a glance—it had too little exposure to man to see her as a threat—before darting into the brush to seek its den.
“A wise choice.” Astrid chuckled to herself. Thoughts of her own secluded homestead, as comfortable as a place could be well away from civilization, had her urging her horse on. She’d spent the night sleeping on pine needles with her rifle cradled in her arms. Her bed at home offered better rest.
Her solitary bed.
Against her will, her thoughts turned back to the man she’d met at the trading post yesterday. Nathan Lesperance. Just thinking his name sent a shiver of heat and awareness through her. There were men in these mountains who were bigger and brawnier, but the raw masculinity of Lesperance’s lean and muscular body, even underneath his heavy traveling clothes, hit her at once with the strength of a hot avalanche. A striking man, with high cheekbones, aquiline nose, and full mouth, his skin the color of cinnamon, sculptural in his virile beauty. Hair and eyes as black as mystery. Her own body, so long used to its seclusion, thrummed into wakefulness, stirred by the male splendor of him. Even the sound of his deep, smoky voice enthralled.
An attorney from genteel Victoria. She never would have believed it. Not because he was Native, but because she sensed it at once, the elemental wildness in him, barely contained, glittering in the jet of his eyes.
There had been something else, too, a kinship. She felt instantly that he knew her, knew her innermost self—the hurt, the anger, and, yes, even the fire that burned in her deepest recesses, the fire for life itself. That fire had brought her to the Blades, made her love her work with them. To seize the world with both hands and never let go. She’d tamped it down after Michael’s death. But it never truly extinguished. Lesperance, somehow, had seen it. He’d done the impossible, piercing the fortifications she had raised. No one, not even her closest friends or her family, had been able to do that in all this time. She could not fully understand how Lesperance managed it, only that he had.
He had looked into her. Not merely seen her hunger for living, but felt it, too. She saw that at once. He recognized it in her. Two creatures, meeting by chance, staring at each other warily. And with reluctant longing.
Yet it wasn’t only that immediate connection she had felt when meeting Lesperance. There was magic surrounding him.
Astrid wondered whether Lesperance even knew how magic hovered over him, how it surrounded him like a lover, leaving patterns of nearly visible energy in his wake. She didn’t think he was conscious of it. Nothing in his manner suggested anything of the sort. Nathan Lesperance, incredibly, was utterly unaware that he was a magical being. Not metaphorical magic, but true magic.
She knew, however. Astrid had spent more than ten years surrounded by magic
