by Trish Morey / Caitlin Crews / Nina Harrington / Raye Morgan
His eyes looked back at her, bleak and soulless. ‘It was my fiancée’s.’
She was leaving. He sat at the empty table, a hint of her perfume the only remaining trace of her.
She was leaving.
Somehow he’d made it through the dinner, forcing food into a body already shutting down.
She was leaving. And, beyond locking her in a turret room or throwing her into the caves below the castle, he had no choice but to let her go.
He’d always intended to let her go.
She did not belong here.
She did not belong to him.
But, God, he had not planned on losing her so soon.
The blackness was there, lurking in the fringes of his mind, bubbling away like boiling mud and fouling the air with stinking gases. It was there and mocking him for letting her go, ready to claim him again. He’d thought there was a chance of.
He searched helplessly to latch onto what he was looking for. He didn’t know.
Only that he had come to recognise she offered a chance of something—a chance to reclaim what he’d once had, a chance to reconnect to a world of light instead of dark. He wanted to at least taste that light.
And after a decade of burying himself away in the dark he’d seen that light in her expression and lusted after it for himself.
Just a taste.
Was that too much to ask?
Clearly too much. And so he’d pulled back before she could further cut him loose. He’d withdrawn into his dark state to preserve what little of himself there was left.
He’d hurt her in the process.
He’d seen her stricken face when he’d told her about the dress. He’d sensed the trembling under her pale skin before she’d fled in a flurry of blue silk on a wavering goodnight.
Why had he told her that?
Payback? Because she’d teased him with the taste of something he’d long given up on, only to deprive him of it when he’d been lured under her spell? Because she’d reminded him of his failure with the village woman he’d sent packing because he wanted her instead?
Or maybe just because he’d finally become that monster he’d always been made out to be?
Because that dress had been made to be worn, and even if Adele had ever deigned to select it from her extensive wardrobe it would never have looked half as good as it had tonight on Dr Grace Hunter.
Why hadn’t he told her that instead?
He knew why.
Because she was leaving tomorrow.
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CHAPTER NINE
SHE woke with a start, disorientated and wondering where she was, until she remembered she’d fallen asleep in his arms not that many hours ago. Bright light now poured through the windows—the kind of light, she reflected sadly, that heralded sunny skies and an absence of storms. The kind of day, she cursed, just perfect to take a boat ride.
She could hear his steady breathing behind her and eased herself over to look at him. Had they really done all the things she remembered? Oh, yes, they had, she realised, if the unfamiliar aches in her body were any indication.
And then she saw him.
He was lying on his back, the shirt she remembered tearing apart in the height of passion open, exposing his chest to her gaze. She’d got just a hint of his injuries last night when her fingertips had grazed a ridge or encountered an unexpected dip under his shirt.
Now the ridges and dips made sense. Whatever had sliced into his face had dug deep into his chest as well, and then something more terrible had happened. It looked as if the left side of his chest had been blown apart and roughly patched together in some kind of ugly puckered design, brutal and savage. It looked as if whatever had blown his life apart had blown his chest apart with the same brutal effect. It looked so damaged that she ached with knowing what it must have cost.
‘I told you that you didn’t want to see it.’
She looked at him. Saw him watching her from under hooded lids, his eyes guarded as if he was waiting for her, almost challenging her to look away as he made no attempt to cover himself up. ‘What happened? I read that your boat exploded, but how did this happen?’
‘This was metal flying through the air,’ he said, indicating the long line from his face to his chest. ‘And this mess came courtesy of burning oil.’
She shuddered, imagining the horror and the pain. Unable to come anywhere close. And then, because she could find no words that would express anything that would help, she dipped her head instead, and lightly pressed her lips to his scarred chest.
‘What are you doing?’ he said, recoiling from her touch. ‘Can’t you see how ugly it is?’
‘It’s horrible,’ she agreed. ‘But it’s just skin.’ She touched a hand to his scarred cheek. ‘And it’s still you.’
He pulled his cheek away, gave an anguished cry. ‘Don’t.’
‘I won’t if you don’t want me to.’
He pulled the shirt around him and flung himself from the bed and into an adjoining room. She knew she’d made him angry. She gathered her nightgown and pulled it over her head while he was gone, suddenly embarrassed by her nakedness and sorry she’d said anything about his scars.
Sorry they were going to end things this way after such a night. But how else could it end? They’d had a one-night affair and now she was leaving. It wasn’t as if there was anything to stay for. It wasn’t as if she was in love with him.
She stumbled over the last thought. No. Impossible. She would miss his dark, tortured looks. She would dream of this night for ever. But that was all it could be.
He came back in, wearing a robe this time, looking anywhere but at her. ‘I should get going,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
The word sounded as if it had been dragged from him, and if she’d needed any more reason to leave that was it. Clearly the Count wasn’t looking to extend their liaison and why should he? Why should she even want him to? Except that it had been the best sex she’d ever experienced. Probably the best sex she ever would.
She slipped from the bed, balling her panties and pulling her robe around her, giving the tie an extra tug. She would become practical Dr Hunter again, and put away the wanton she had been for just one short night.
And then she heard it—the unmistakable thump of the boat engine drawing closer. ‘I guess that’s my cue. Thank you, Count Volta, for your hospitality.’ She was almost at the door when he finally spoke.
‘Stay.’
She blinked and turned around, her veins still sizzling, her heart afraid to beat for a moment at his unexpected request, and then resuming with a thump that challenged the sound of the approaching engine. ‘What did you just say?’
He crossed the room in rapid strides until he stood before her. ‘I said stay.’
‘Why?’
‘Because there is no reason to cut and run. People expect you to be here a week. Why do you need to go before you have finished your research?’
He managed to smile a little then, as he touched his fingertips to her forehead and traced down the line of her hair. ‘You enjoyed our night together?’
She blushed so hard there was no need to answer. She leaned her face into his touch. ‘I thought you were angry with me.’
His fingers stilled at her cheek, his smile vanquished. ‘Nobody has ever touched my scars by choice. Yet you put your lips to them. I was—’ He looked down at her and she could see both the anguish and the confusion in his eyes. ‘Don’t you understand? I was shocked.’
She smiled uncertainly up at him, touched by his simple declaration. ‘It’s not something I generally do, I admit.’
‘Then why this time?’
‘I don’t know. It just seemed the right thing to do.’
‘So stay,’ he urged, winding his fingers in her hair, pulling her closer. ‘That is also the right thing to do. I know it.’
‘But the boat …’
He kissed her forehead, then rested his
head against hers. ‘The boat will return when you need to go. Stay for now and do your work, and when you are finished the boat will come back and you can leave.’
But will I want to?
If she was having trouble leaving now, if she was tempted to stay now, what would it be like in two or three or however many days’ time? How could she just board a boat and sail away, knowing she would never see him again?
His hands trailed down her back, tracing the curve of her behind and warming her, firing up desires she’d thought well quenched during the night but which were clearly all too ready to be reignited. What would cool, calm Dr Hunter do? she wondered as he pulled her closer until she could feel the press of his erection against her belly. The wanton in her knew the decision she would make. It made sense to continue her study here, where the documents had been found, and she could do her work during the day and enjoy the pleasures of the night.
It made perfect sense.
Just a few days, she told herself as his mouth dropped to hers, coaxing her lips open with a kiss that promised paradise. She knew it didn’t. She knew she was kidding herself. But after all, she rationalised, she had to work somewhere.
Three more days she stayed, working on her report during the days, making love with the Count late into the nights. Three more days that took her closer and closer to the time she knew she would have to leave.
Neither of them spoke of her departure, and she wondered if he’d even noticed—whereas she was counting down the hours, her inevitable departure like a dark cloud growing ever more heavy over her. A dark cloud to replace those that had graced her first two nights here. For now the weather steadily improved, the storms almost forgotten as they made love on crisp moonlit sheets.
But she would have to leave. Her report was almost complete. She was already spinning out the topics, taking more time to check and double-check every word, every reference, avoiding the page on the fatal affliction as much as she dared. Its message was still unsettling.
There was no real reason she should stay.
Except that she could not bring herself to leave.
For with every passing day she knew it would almost kill her to leave—just to walk away and never see Alessandro again, never to feel his strong arms around her, never again to feel the thrust of his hard length. And so she put aside concerns about how long she was taking and how much she wasn’t doing and revelled in what he could give her. That was the now. And she had no intention of leaving before she had to.
They were in the bath, breathless and replete, when the phone call came—an urgent call for Dr Hunter from Professor Rousseau, otherwise Bruno would never have bothered them, he assured the Count.
She wrapped herself in a thick robe to take the call, still shuddering from her latest climax and guilty with it, as if the Professor might know, just by talking with her, what she’d so recently been doing.
‘Professor,’ she said. ‘How is your mother?’
‘No better, sadly, but no worse. But, tell me, what have you found?’
Grace summarised her findings, unable to keep the excitement from her voice.
‘Excellent,’ the Professor said. ‘Because I have yet another favour to ask you …’
She listened to her colleague’s request, one part of her alive to the opportunity she had just been offered, another part so heavy she thought her heart might fall clean out of her chest. But in the end, despite the warring inside her, she knew she had no choice. This was what she had wanted, what she had worked and hoped for.
‘Of course, Professor. Of course I will do it.’
‘What did she want?’ Alessandro asked when he joined her from the bathroom.
‘Her mother is still gravely ill. But she has a speaking engagement in London tomorrow evening and there is no way she will make it. She wants me to take her lecture, to use the chance to announce the discovery of the lost pages.’
‘And you said yes?’
‘Of course I said yes. What else was I supposed to say?’ And immediately she felt contrite, because she hadn’t wavered, and she’d made it sound as if she couldn’t wait to get away. But it hadn’t been like that.
‘Alessandro,’ she reasoned, when he turned away to his dressing room, ‘I was always going to leave soon. We both know that.’
‘Yes,’ he said, glancing back over his shoulder. ‘And it’s the opportunity you wanted when you took this job. You will be famous the world over, Dr Hunter. People will fill auditoriums and hang onto your every word and credit you for bringing to light an unknown chapter in the development of human society. That’s what you wanted all along, isn’t it?’
Yes, but why did he have to make it sound as if there was something wrong with that? And why the sudden ‘Dr Hunter’? How long had it been since he’d called her that?
‘You know what this means to me,’ she argued. ‘It’s my career.’
‘Then go,’ he flung over his shoulder. ‘As you say, we knew you would leave. I’m not stopping you.’
His rapid change of face did not deter her. He’d been disappointed with the news of her imminent departure, she was sure. Or at least unhappy with the news.
‘Come with me,’ she said on impulse, following him. That way she could have her career and not lose Alessandro. And suddenly not losing Alessandro was more important than she could fathom. ‘This is your discovery as much as mine. People will want to know everything they can about the pages.’
‘And what could I tell anyone beyond the fact they were found in the caves below my castle? You do not need me there for that.’
‘Then come anyway. Come and keep me company. It will do you good to get away from here for a while.’
‘My place is here!’
‘Why? So you can bury yourself on this island while your castle crumbles around you? Until you end up as dried and broken-down as that fountain outside?’
‘You do not know what it is like.’
‘Because you’re scarred? No, I don’t know what it’s like to be scarred. I don’t know what it’s like to have people turn from me in horror. But I do know you can’t let your scars define you. You are more than that. And I know I couldn’t live that way, burying myself away where nobody might see me.’
‘How do you know? You do not know the first thing about me! You have no concept of what it is to like be the only survivor of a party of eighteen. All of them dead. Dead! All of them. Apart from me. How do you think that feels? Special? No, Dr Hunter, it does not. Instead it makes me feel damned. Cursed. And the scars are a constant reminder. The scars never let me forget it.’
She felt his pain in the wave of anguish that rolled off him. ‘I’m sorry for what happened. I’m sorry for what you suffered—’
He rounded on her. ‘You have no concept of what I suffered!’
She recoiled from his outburst. Recoiled and then reloaded, knowing she had to let him know she understood. That she cared. ‘I know you lost your fiancée and your friends.’
‘I lost much more than that. I lost hope that night. I lost trust.’
Her heart went out to him. ‘I understand how that could happen after an accident like that.’
‘Do you? I doubt it.’ His mouth pulled into a snarl. ‘I doubt that you have any idea of the kind of woman my fiancée was—the kind of woman who was so in love with the media fantasy that we were the “It” couple that she would have done anything to maintain it, even when it was already over.
‘She threatened to leave me that night, for another of my friends she said wanted her. She would go with him if I did not marry her immediately and fulfil the destiny she had planned. But our relationship was already soured, and her attempt to make me jealous was her last-ditch effort to save our floundering relationship. I told her it was over. And that instead of having a blazing row in a nightclub we would break amicably and put out a joint press release the following day. That night, on our way back to the castle, the accident happened.’
He dragged in air,
as if struggling with the memories. ‘Someone there overheard us talking and reported it to the police, and so when they came to the hospital, while I was barely recovering from injuries so horrific they expected me to die, it was to inform me that I was the suspect in a mass murder case.’
Ice-cold water sluiced through her veins. She took a step closer. His pain was so clear on his face she could read his story there, etched in his scars. That anyone had suffered so much pain, that he had suffered so much, destroyed her. His pain became hers, and she wanted to do anything she could to make things right. Knowing she never could, no matter what she felt for him, knowing now she’d had a right to be scared of staying.
‘Alessandro …’
‘Can you blame me for burying myself here and hiding away from the media’s macabre pursuit, Dr Hunter? Can you begin to understand?’
‘It doesn’t have to be like that,’ she offered softly, but knew it could indeed be like that. ‘It never has to be like that again.’
‘No. Not if I stay here.’
And she knew she had to play her final card—the final truth she had taken this long to admit. ‘And if I told you that I loved you?’
He looked at her then, savagery mixed with tragedy. ‘Then I would say you are the most cursed of all.’
CHAPTER TEN
THE applause rang out loud and long in the Washington auditorium, and Dr Grace Hunter smiled in her sensible suit and bowed one final time to the audience, finally able to withdraw to the quiet of the room generously labelled her dressing room—little more than a closet to store her things, really, but at least it provided her with a bolthole.
The lecture in London three months ago had been such a resounding success that she’d been booked almost solid ever since. City after city wanted to hear the story of the lost pages, wanted to see her presentation and hear the lost messages from the fabled book of healing.
She felt a fraud every time—tonight more than ever. How could it be a book of healing, she wondered, when she felt so heartsick every minute of every day? And yet she had the fame she had sought. She had the respect of her peers and her colleagues. She had a book deal and offers of chairs at universities all around the world. Even, in her latest coup, a last-minute slot on a prime time chat show.