And for once the damn thing was quiet.
Chapter 28
LOS ANGELES
FRIDAY MORNING
Dana Gaynor was wearing the kind of sleek wool pantsuit that was perfect for a blustery January day in Los Angeles, when the wind blew cold off the ocean and the clouds were serious about unloading rain onshore. The cranberry color of her clothes set off her smooth dark hair and provided a warm focus to the room full of windows overlooking a rainy day, but at the moment she wasn’t conscious of such unimportant details. There was a frown line between her eyes and an unhappy curve to her mouth.
Joe-Bob McCoy shifted uneasily. He wasn’t used to coming up empty on a Rarities assignment, particularly one that had Dana’s full attention. He wished the job had involved Old Master paintings rather than medieval manuscripts; Dana’s interest in Old Masters was barely room temperature in a meat locker.
The phone rang, giving McCoy a reprieve.
Dana gave the instrument a lethal look. She had told her assistant Ralph Kung not to bother her unless it had to do with Serena Charters and the manuscript pages.
“This better be good,” she muttered as she grabbed the phone and snarled. “Who?”
“Cleary Warrick Montclair.”
“Not good enough. Hold her hand.”
“She declined. Rather shrilly, if you must know.”
“Where’s Niall?”
“He took the day off. It’s bare-root time.”
“What?”
“Time to plant bare-root roses.”
“Flowers? I’m working my butt off and he’s out planting ruddy flowers?”
“It’s raining,” Kung offered as a kind of consolation. “You can see him from your window.”
She didn’t bother to look. “Do bare-root roses have thorns?” she demanded.
“I believe so.”
“I hope he sits on one. Give me thirty seconds and put Cleary on.” She pinned Factoid with a glittering dark glance. “Spit it out.”
“Nothing new on the grandmother except for death-scene stuff,” he said in a rush. “She completely invented herself.”
“Bloody hell, I knew that. Now I want to know who she was before that and why she reinvented herself. So quit sniffing after Gretchen and get to work.”
“I haven’t been sniff—” he began, turning to leave.
“No.” Dana cut in. “Work here. In my office. Where I can watch you.”
“But—”
Dana was talking again, and not to McCoy. Even if he couldn’t have heard the words, he would have known she was talking to a client. Her tone was calm, cultured, confident, and above all, reasonable.
“Hello, Cleary. How is your father?”
“Livid.”
Dana wished she could feel sorry about it. She couldn’t. Warrick was a very rich, very unpleasant, very old man, and his daughter had been on the phone to Rarities every half hour since 6 A.M.
“Have you tried adjusting his medications?” Dana asked pleasantly.
Cleary was too surprised to speak.
Dana took advantage of it. “Ms. Montclair, I will be blunt. It is difficult for us to accomplish anything when the House of Warrick is on the phone demanding minute-by-minute updates. We appreciate your concern, we share your sense of urgency, and we will work much more efficiently if we are interrupted less often. We have your phone number, your fax, your E-mail, your cell phone, your pager, and your instant Internet connection. We have a man with Ms. Charters right now. If anything opens up in regard to purchasing the leaves, we will notify you immediately.”
The client was unimpressed. “Look, the House of Warrick pays a lot of money to Rarities for—”
“Exactly,” Dana cut in smoothly. “You expect a return on your investment. You will get it. You will get it much faster if you let us work unhindered.”
Silence, then, “But he’s so angry,” Cleary said, her voice ragged. “His heart . . .”
Privately Dana doubted that the old bastard had one. “Have you called his doctor?”
“Of course!”
Every half hour, no doubt. Dana sighed. The passions that art or business created in people were difficult enough to deal with. The more personal traumas and dramas of family life were impossible.
“We are doing everything we can,” Dana said soothingly. “Would you like me to reassure your father personally?”
“No. When I suggested it, he said your time would be better spent working rather than baby-sitting.”
Dana’s eyebrows lifted. Maybe the old man wasn’t so bad after all. He certainly seemed to have a better grip on the realities of the situation than his daughter.
“In that case, Cleary, we’ll be in touch. Soon.”
“At least have your assistant send in hourly updates.”
“During business hours, of course.”
“But—”
“Thank you for calling, Cleary. We appreciate your concern.”
Dana hung up and looked at McCoy. She expected him to be in some kind of computer trance, but he was looking at her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Erik was trying to reach you a minute ago but he settled for E-mail, copy to me.”
“Urgent?”
“There’s a guy augered in down the street from the Charters house. Erik sent the license plate and description. He wants to know if the guy is ours.”
“I didn’t request anyone.” She reached for one of the two-way radio units that Niall insisted she keep within reach at all times. He had the matching one. By tacit agreement, it was used only for emergencies. “Niall, you there?”
“What’s up, luv?”
“Did you assign anyone to watch Serena?”
“No.”
“Backup for Erik?”
“No.”
“Bloody hell. We’ve got a bogey.”
Chapter 29
LEUCADIA
FRIDAY MORNING
Erik looked at the old leather portfolio tucked beneath Serena’s arm. “I still can’t believe you kept that in your van in a locked plastic toolbox that was bolted to the floor.”
“Don’t sound so horrified. The box is waterproof, clean, and the alarm system and lock are good on the van. The locks on my house are as wonky as the doorbell. As for an alarm system . . .” She shrugged. “My smoke sensors have batteries, does that count?”
He opened his mouth, thought better of it, and shut it again. The sooner they were in the house with the pages, the better. Not that there was any real hope that the guy down the street hadn’t seen her open the van and casually pull out the big portfolio. Their tail was probably calling in right now, which meant things could get lively at any time.
Unless the man belonged to Rarities.
Silently Erik wondered if the tail was friend or felon. If the latter, it would be really nice to know if Serena’s grandmother had died randomly or because she had something somebody nasty wanted. Pages from the Book of the Learned, for instance. Or even the whole bloody book.
Damn it, Factoid! Where are you when I need you?
Nothing answered, particularly not the pager on Erik’s belt. He had an uneasy feeling that a gun would do him more good than the silent pager. It was the kind of feeling he hated, because he didn’t like guns. He liked the pattern that was forming even less.
Burning was an ugly way to die.
“Do you have a flat table that has good light?” he asked, heading for the door to the house.
Serena looked sideways at him. Though nothing in his voice or expression had changed, she sensed he was wary or angry or both. It was something about the clarity of his eyes and the predatory way he carried himself.
“How about the one in the kitchen?” she suggested.
He thought of the little knee-knocking café table that she used for solitary meals. It would hold a plate, silverware, and a cup. Salt and pepper were pushing it.
“Anything bigger?” he asked.
“I ca
n clear off my design table.”
“Perfect,” he said. Anything used for designing would have good light.
Serena wondered how he would react to her studio. Other than various delivery people, no one had seen it. She had been raised to be self-sufficient, a loner. Nothing had happened to change that, including men.
When she graduated from her twenties, she had decided to join that curious modern phenomenon of “born-again virgins,” single women who had quietly decided that living without sex was better than living with it. She didn’t need a man to support her; she supported herself. She didn’t need a man to get her pregnant; a sperm bank could take care of that. She didn’t need a man to keep her car going; there were a gazillion eager mechanics in the telephone book—ditto for landscapers, house painters, plumbers, and electricians.
As for company, she had never met a man who didn’t limit her possibilities more than he expanded them. Given that, Mr. Picky was the perfect male companion: he could take care of himself and only demanded occasional petting.
A trilling whistle cut through Serena’s thoughts, a sound like a wild falcon. She spun toward Erik.
He didn’t notice. He was studying the looms with something close to reverence. “Jesus, Joseph, and Mary.”
She blinked. “Actually that’s Big Betty, Middle Betty, K. L. Betty, Little Betty, and Betina.”
“You name your looms?”
“I spend most of my life with them. Should I call them one, two, three, four, and five?”
“You’ve got a point. Five of them, actually. What does K. L. stand for?”
“Kinda little.”
He looked at the nearly six-foot-tall loom and laughed. “Kind of is right.”
“You should have seen G’mom’s. It was the reason her cabin had a twelve-foot ceiling. The loom had been passed down through more generations than anyone could remember.”
Erik didn’t have to ask what had happened to the loom. Wood burned. Old wood burned even better.
Serena went to Middle Betty. The loom’s warp threads were fully strung but had no weft threads to give substance and pattern. Eight harnesses held heddles that were waiting for her to have time to start the design that had haunted her since she was six. She had dreamed it, drawn it, redrawn it, chosen yarns and colors, strung the warp, checked the drawing one last time, and promised herself that she would begin as soon as she tied off the Norman cross weaving she had finished during the long, restless night.
Despite her lack of sleep, eagerness fizzed through her blood at the thought of beginning a new weaving. Especially this one. She had been building her skill as a weaver for a lifetime with this design in mind. Finally she was ready. She was certain of it.
She had dreamed it last night, only . . . not quite. It was a loom holding cloth that looked like her scarf, and she was weaving, dreaming, humming.
Lure to one, deterrent to all others.
Erik watched Serena’s face while she stroked the warp threads as lightly and lovingly as a harpist stroked her favorite harp . . .
Ariane with her midnight hair and amethyst eyes and slender white fingers which could draw forth such sadness from a harp as to make his peregrine weep. Ariane, with her vibrant Learned dress, the cloth a guardian stronger than armor and a lure to just one man. Uncanny cloth woven by the sorceress Serena of Silverfells.
Cassandra had meddled brilliantly in Ariane and Simon’s match. Would that his own match had been so charmed.
With a lurch of adrenaline, Erik yanked his mind away from the haunting not-quite memories. It was one thing to have a medieval profession—calligraphy and illumination. It was quite another to have medieval memories that he had never written, never illuminated, never even read. That was called imagination, and his was entirely too vivid.
He was obsessed with the Book of the Learned. He knew it. What he didn’t know was how to escape the compelling grip of the mystery or the soul-deep need to know the fate of Erik the Learned.
“. . . the whole table?” Serena asked.
He replayed the last few moments in his mind and answered her question. “I’ll just need enough to spread out the pages.”
“One whole table coming up.”
While she cleared the table, he fought the temptation to just sit down on the floor and go through the manuscript pages right that instant. But he had felt the reluctance in her fingers when she handed over the portfolio. Having him rip into it like a kid opening a candy bar wouldn’t make her any happier about sharing the pages. He had waited years. He could wait a few more minutes.
Erik was still telling himself that when he put the portfolio on a drafting table that was only partially cleared. As he lifted the scarred leather flap, his breath came out in a low sound that was both triumph and awe.
Curiously Serena watched him. Like Warrick, he seemed to recognize the pages. Unlike Warrick, he wasn’t angered by them.
Erik was enthralled.
Silence stretched until it vibrated like a plucked harp string.
“Well?” she demanded.
“Well what?”
When he spoke, he didn’t so much as glance away from the pages he had spread across the part of the table he had given her time to clear. He wouldn’t have looked up for an explosion. Four leaves from the Book of the Learned lay before him, gloriously intact. No letters had been scraped away to make room for inappropriate—if beautiful—miniatures. No courtiers and castles of fifteenth-century French style had been drawn over a page of simple calligraphy: simple, but precious, for in those words lay fragments of the story of Erik the Learned.
He read quickly, silently, ravenously, translating the words in his mind.
I long for sons to marry the daughters of Simon and Dominic, and I yearn for daughters to marry the sons of my lord and friends. I pray for a wife like Amber or Meg or Ariane, women brave enough to love and strong enough to teach their fierce lords compassion.
It should be enough that my blood lives on in my sister Amber’s children, blood joined by that of Duncan, her dark and beloved warrior. Their children will share marriage and estates and babes with those of Simon and Dominic. They will hold and protect this land as their fathers did.
Yet it is not enough.
I want more than my nieces and nephews, my godsons and goddaughters, and my friends’ sons fostered in my home. Would to God that I had sons to foster in their homes, daughters to cast melting eyes at foster sons. That is the way lasting alliances are built. That is the way history begins.
No history will begin with me.
I do not know whether to damn the sorceress Serena or damn my Learned self for being unable to escape her. She is woven into my very soul. Would to God I could rip her out and be free to live as other men live, even Learned ones.
Enchantment makes fools of all men.
Especially Erik the Learned.
“Are they forged?” Serena asked when she couldn’t take the silence any longer.
His head snapped up. He was still hearing echoes of a name in his mind, the sorceress’s name he had known before he could have known it: Serena. “What makes you ask that?”
She thought of her grandmother’s warning note, but all she said was, “Isn’t that why people have things appraised? To find out if they’re real?”
Erik smiled thinly. “Most people just want to know what they’re worth.”
Serena waited.
“I’ll have to run some tests,” he said.
And he would, for his own pleasure rather than for any personal doubt. The pages were real. He was as certain of it as if he had created them himself.
Then, like ice crystallizing across an autumn pond, freezing everything, came the certainty that he had done just that.
Chapter 30
What type of tests?” Serena asked quickly.
Erik wrenched his attention back to the here and now, but still he saw the past so close, so real, like a colored shadow cast by an uncanny light. Or perhaps it was the opposite;
the past was real and the present but a colored shadow of the past’s vibrant life.
“Nothing destructive.” Erik touched the edge of a page as though it was alive, breathing, whispering to his soul. “Script comparisons, text comparisons, technique comparisons, ultraviolet, visual examination of the vellum, that sort of thing. If there’s still doubt, I’ll take the pages to a lab that can do paint analysis as delicately as a butterfly makes love.”
She frowned.
“This lab is very clever about not hurting the original,” he reassured her, stroking one page again.
It was the care and the intense restraint of his fingertips touching the vellum that convinced Serena more than any words Erik said. He was a man touching something he cherished. No, loved.
Jealousy snaked through her, startling her. She told herself it was simply her reluctance to share the pages. She didn’t quite believe it. But she did believe it would be wonderful to be touched like that, with caring and gentleness and the kind of longing that made breath back up in her throat.
Then she looked at the page that so fascinated Erik. She hadn’t sent him a copy of this page, but she had sent one to Warrick. The heavily gilded, deeply complex design covered the full page. It would have shimmered even under thin moonlight. In daylight it was dazzling. By candlelight, it would be beauty and mystery woven together until the page breathed and trembled with life.
“That’s my favorite,” Serena said softly.
Erik jerked as though he had forgotten he wasn’t alone. “The initials?”
She smiled crookedly. “You saw them very quickly.”
“Practice,” he said, knowing it was only partially true.
“It took me a long time to see the initials,” she admitted. “The E and the S are so heavily intertwined that they’re impossible to separate without destroying the pattern. The complexity is both beautiful and intimidating.”
“Intimidating?”
“To a weaver, yes. Especially to a child who had seen nothing like it before, except in her dreams.”
Slowly he focused on her. “I don’t understand.”
Her chin lifted in a gesture that was both self-conscious and defiant. “Did I ask you to?”
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