“It will be fine,” Lyssa had murmured, her last words as she smoothed a hand over Danny’s brow, dropped a kiss on her forehead and left her. “You’re so young, darling. It will be all right, I promise.” Danny sensed the presence of Thomas for a while, knew what an honor it was that the queen had left her own servant to watch over her. Or perhaps it had been a protection for her, from herself.

When she rose at dusk, she’d had a pleasant enough breakfast with Alistair and Lyssa, then bade them an affectionate good-bye, her usual composure locked in place, though it wavered when she was provided a cranberry concoction flavored with Dev’s blood.

Alistair reported that before her man had departed to attend to his duties, he’d left that with the kitchen staff, to ensure she was properly nourished by her own servant. She sat back, listening to the pleasant conversation, tasting his blood on her lips, savoring the last taste of it, aching.

When Danny took her leave, Lyssa gave her a long look, squeezed her hand before Danny turned away and let Alistair offer her a hand into the car.

She didn’t linger long at her house, finishing up with her servants and packing. The flight to Adelaide she chartered for that night was uneventful. During it, she reviewed the paperwork and found all was as Dev had promised. Everything she’d bought in Brisbane would reach Adelaide and be transported by truck train to the station in the coming days. The rest of the time, even the refueling stops, she spent staring into space, trying to think about what lay ahead of her and not about where Dev was.

Once in Adelaide, she verified what had already arrived. She also informed the charter company she’d need the plane’s use again the following week and set the itinerary for a trip to Darwin.

She’d been telling the truth to Dev, at least the part about taking care of Ruskin without the other vampires in attendance. Because when they arrived, she intended to be there to greet them—as the new Region Master, with Ruskin’s head on a pike on the front gate. Based on the savage turmoil she carried within her now, she couldn’t imagine a better time to challenge Ruskin to a duel.

When she returned to her station, she’d originally intended to divide her time between preparing for the duel and anticipating and then arranging her new items the way she desired. Making Thieves’ Station her home. If Dev had been here, she was sure he would have needled her with dry observations about females and their need to see a chair in every possible location before deciding on the spot they’d first chosen. Or quip about how she was abusing the stockmen, making them push the furniture about when she was so bloody strong she could twirl the sofa on her index finger like a circus player.

No, her heart just wasn’t in it right now. She refused to let herself think that, in such a short time, she’d decided Dev was an irreplaceable part of what she considered home. That was ludicrous. She merely had to get this matter with Ruskin out of the way first.

So she let Elisa and the house staff handle the planning for the new items, giving them a general idea of how she wanted them arranged, and turned her focus to that one thing.

But as she spent hours in the courtyard, practicing with her two sabers, she found it hard to concentrate. She imagined the crinkling around Dev’s eyes when he smiled. The way he’d doff his hat and wipe his brow before he stepped into the house in early evening, after working all day with the stockmen. The gap at his throat from the cotton shirt that lay just right along his shoulders and chest, the moleskins he’d worn at Surfer’s Paradise, just snug enough at the hips and backside, the eye-engaging groin area. Those beautiful sea green eyes studying her, thinking. She remembered the way they looked when he quoted poetry, when he shouldered a rifle to deal with the dingoes, when his lips curved in that smile.

Damn it, damn it, damn it. She pushed herself, wondering what level of exhaustion it would take to drive him out of her head.

Her fencing match with Ruskin had not been idle play. She’d wanted to know his capabilities. His arrogance, his anachronistic grasp of himself as an English lord, would all work to her benefit, as would her defeat in their earlier round. He didn’t believe she could beat him. She was younger, female, less experienced with the blades. She’d lost with enough of a struggle to convince everyone—including Dev, with his alarmed reaction—that she’d been trying her best to gain the upper hand, perhaps slaughter Ruskin on her own property as a follow-up coup to Ian. He’d thwarted it, soundly defeated her.

If he would accept her challenge to another duel on fair ground, she could take him. She would take him. And she was counting on that fair ground, if he thought he had superior advantage and so had no need to cheat. However, she’d be leaving sealed instructions with Elisa and Willis so if she didn’t return, they would know how to handle the station. But damn it, she was going to return. And she was going to arrange her furniture and enjoy it, damn it. Lyssa was right. A woman’s heart could break, but it could heal. Anything could heal, as long as you were still drawing breath, and the sun was rising and setting. She’d deal with her feelings of anger and loneliness after handling Lord Charles.

Cutting off the Region Master’s head would take care of the anger. As far as the loneliness, well, she’d force herself to consider the idea of another third-marked servant. Maybe not a man. While most chose their sexual preference, she thought she might give Elisa the honor. The girl seemed potentially suited to the life, and less likely to cause Danny the same problems with her heart being involved. Perhaps she needed to grow up a little more before she could handle a male servant. And she thought Elisa would be lovely to cuddle with in bed before the dawn, her blood sweet and feminine, her arms wrapped around Danny’s waist and hips, head pillowed on her breast. She’d be devoted, loving and undemanding, but intelligent and useful as well. Everything a third-marked servant should be.

Danny went to the courtyard wall, picked up the soft cloth she’d left there and brought it to her face. She wasn’t wiping sweat, of course, because a vampire had to be sick and wounded to perspire, but she hoped her staff didn’t realize that. For she needed the reassuring touch of that cloth—Dev’s cotton T-shirt, the one she’d slept in and he’d inadvertently left behind.

23

IT was easy enough to catch a ride out of Brisbane. He could head from there into northwest Queensland, and move at his leisure out into Western Oz again. Instead, he found himself taking a room in the hotel at Surfer’s Paradise. He watched the waves move in and out, and the other families there. As he studied the clouds floating over the blue sky, he thought of how, in the Outback, there was so much blue sky the clouds looked like a complex, shifting world of their own, suspended above the earth.

He reoutfitted himself with some new gear, drawing on his little-used bank account. Spent a couple of the nights in the hotel pubs, intending to get drunk enough to justify a harmless fistfight or two and be unconscious if she tried to speak to him during her waking hours. But then he recalled it took an extraordinary amount of alcohol to keep a third-marked servant drunk, and with his enhanced strength and speed, he might easily kill someone in a friendly brawl.

That depressing knowledge, and the fact he didn’t hear a peep out of her, just made his mood more savage. It was done, he’d said so, and it would be unkind, not to mention pathetic, for him to try to keep talking to her. Like some girl asking to be “friends” with the bloke whose heart she’d just mangled. Of course, he hadn’t mangled Danny’s heart. They didn’t love like that, the vampires.

He would have been her tool, her . . . God, he knew some of the terms for what he’d done at that dinner, and didn’t want to think about it anymore.

But as he lay there on the veranda of the hotel with other single men, at the end of a full week away from her—which would have been an accomplishment except he couldn’t get his arse to leave this damn little town where he’d enjoyed so much with her—his mind went there anyway. Remembering the glimpse in her mind, how absolutely absorbed she’d been, taking him over that way, making him the center of all that pure sexual pleasure, washing over him like the waves here. Salty, punishing, pummeling, a challenge to those who couldn’t surf well, but exhilarating and dangerous at once, something that called you back to it again.

Not a bad description of her, for that matter. He’d have to walkabout the whole of Australia before he could deal with her again, as much as she was haunting him. But he wouldn’t be given the blessing of that much time. The faces of those children pricked him hard. Ruskin would replace the ones Dev had killed; he knew it.

Danny said they had to wait until after that vampire gathering thing, and that rankled. But maybe she figured Ruskin would be too busy to recruit new kids until after that. Of course, if he had entertainments planned on a larger, party-sized scale, sure enough those monsters he’d created out of innocent souls would be a part of it. And new ones would bring him even more of a charge.

As badly as it bothered him, he knew it had torn at her as well. When something genuinely pissed her off, her mouth tightened slightly, and there’d be a flash in her eyes, like the hint of a lightning storm. She’d had it a couple times on the trip to the station when she’d talked about Ian, but at that point Dev had read it only as a bit of pique. A mistake he wouldn’t make twice. When she’d fought Ruskin, fencing, it had been there, and he’d known she’d been prepared to go all out then, if she’d had the opening.

He was a pretty damn good poker player himself.

She was cool, cool as the desert nights, but only as a prelude to the blasting heat she could summon during other times. She did feel. She’d let him see some of what she felt, opened up to him in those few days they’d been all alone. And that was what had captured his heart . . . because in those few days he’d met a woman as unflinching as himself, one who didn’t ask him to love her more than any other . . . just to love her as much as he could, and perversely, it made him want to stretch himself beyond what he’d thought himself capable of giving.