Obsession Wears Opals

by Renee Bernard

  Helen of Troy.

  Damn.

  Such an apt name for a woman of such astonishing beauty, but that’s not all. Darius sat up to let out a long, painful exhale. He’d picked the name as deliberately as a surgeon selecting a scalpel. Because Helen of Troy wasn’t just lovely. She was also the wife of a jealous king and stealing her had led to the tragedies of the Trojan War and the downfall of many a hero.

  It’s a good lesson to remember. For this Helen is a woman I intend to protect, but God help me if I fall in love.

  Chapter

  4

  “How far do you think he was ridden?” Darius stroked the stallion’s velvet black neck, admiring his firm lines and the proud way the animal tossed his head as if to shirk off a mere mortal’s uninvited touch.

  “Too far,” Hamish grumbled, refilling the hay bin. “Too fast, too hard, too far. That’s all I can tell, but if ye were hopin’ for a report in miles—he’s not talkin’.”

  The morning light cut through the stable door and Darius leaned back against the rough wall. His breath fogged out in front of him in the crisp air, so cold it made his chest ache. “Will the leg heal? I may have . . . promised the lady that you would set him to rights.”

  “Did ye now?” Hamish looked up with a wry grin. “Any other promises I should know of?”

  Darius ignored the question. “Can you mend him?”

  “I can mend any animal that’s got limbs still attached,” Hamish said. “I’ve wrapped his knees and he’s to rest. I’m going to try warm blankets on his back with a good mint rub, twice a day if he’ll allow it. But he’ll mend. He just needs time. Two or three weeks of babying and then I’d ease him back. If it’s rushed, you’ll ruin him sure! You tell her that!”

  “Thank you, Hamish.” Darius left the groomsman to his work and began to cross the small yard to the house, only to be arrested by the sight of Helen in the doorway. She was bundled against the cold in a brown wool coat. He could see Mrs. McFadden’s hand in the warmer elements and the green morning dress. Darius smiled at the joy on Helen’s face. She strolled forward to meet him in the middle of the yard.

  “Good morning, Mr. Thorne.” She managed a playful curtsy. “I have escaped the confines of the sickroom!”

  “Good morning,” he said. “Does your keeper know or should I make an attempt to distract her while you stretch your legs?”

  “She knows.”

  “Did she approve?” he asked with a stifled laugh.

  “Of course not!” Helen readjusted her knitted scarf. “Which means I’m apparently on a strict time schedule to avoid pneumonia and certain death, Mr. Thorne.”

  “Then there’s no time to waste! Samson is waiting.” He held out his arm and escorted her across the muddy yard, noting that the lady was wearing her riding boots. As they entered the stable, he called out, “Hamish!”

  The surly groomsman’s head popped up, his expression instantly changing from open annoyance at the intrusion to shock at the sight of Samson’s owner. “Oh . . . he’s . . . there,” he said gruffly before ducking back down.

  What a world! My fearless bear of a driver is shy of one small Englishwoman.

  The stallion lurched against the boards keeping him from her, and Helen moved toward him calmly and quickly, removing her gloves to stroke his nose and muzzle. She whispered soft assurances and the beautiful hulk lowered his head to bury his nostrils in her hair and nuzzle her neck. “Samson, dearest, there, now. I’m here. You did it! We are away, my warrior, we are away,” Helen whispered.

  Darius tried not to stare but it was as intimate and lovely a moment as any he had ever witnessed. The beast was so dark and she was so fair, it was a striking visual portrait. The bond between them was as tangible as the ground beneath him, and Darius caught sight of his stable master equally astonished and impressed as he peered back over the stall’s low dividing wall.

  Helen and Samson gazed into each other’s eyes and Darius looked off to study the carriage tack for a few moments, wondering if it was a normal occurrence for a man to be jealous of a horse.

  At last, she turned back to Darius, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “He’d have run to the sea if I’d asked him.”

  Darius nodded. “Without question.” He moved closer to join her but kept a wise distance from Samson’s reach. It was one thing to be permitted a pet or two, but another to insert himself between a devoted animal and his mistress during their tender reunion. “Hamish has him in good keeping.”

  “Will he be sound enough to ride again?” she asked.

  “In time.” Darius glanced over to see if Hamish would weigh in, but the stubborn Scot retreated up the stairs to his loft and living quarters above the stables. “It will be at least two or three weeks. He’d be willing now, but you risk making his injuries permanent or more severe and losing him altogether.”

  “Too long, I fear.” She sighed. “Too long, but I cannot lose him.”

  “Too long?” Darius watched her closely. “Helen—”

  “I cannot impose on your hospitality for long, Mr. Thorne. I cannot—risk it.” She cut him off, her anxiety apparent.

  “Helen, you cannot risk running without a plan and alone. . . .” Darius took a deep breath, deliberately keeping his voice steady. “A woman is easier to track if she is traveling alone. People are more likely to take note of her, as it is unusual, and with your refined manners and singular beauty, even more so. They will wonder where your maid is or why you have no chaperone—and every question marks your steps like ripples in a pond.”

  Her eyes widened in new terror and he quickly continued. “I say this not to frighten you, but you must use your head. Solving puzzles is my specialty and I pride myself on the belief that, if given the facts, there is nothing that cannot be accomplished.”

  She managed a tenuous smile. “Am I a puzzle, Mr. Thorne?”

  “Yes, and a very challenging one.” He smiled in return. “So, let’s see what we have. You are safe here and you can stay here for as long as you wish. The two members of my household are sworn to keep your presence a secret, and Samson has every chance of recovering under Hamish’s care. But if you can tell me what pursuit you expect or what encounters you may have had on your journey here, then we can anticipate it and take measures to prevent your discovery.”

  Her smile evaporated. “I am not sure.”

  “Then let us start with an easier question. Do you know how far you rode, Helen?”

  “It was . . . a blur. It was midmorning when I set out. We rode all that day and then into the night. The snow and the cold made it hard and it was—afternoon when we landed in your garden? Is that right?”

  “Late afternoon, yes.” Darius readjusted his glasses. “You could have covered a vast distance in that time. But did you come from the city? Did you ride through streets and towns, Helen?”

  She shook her head. “It was fields and forest . . . and more than one country lane. We jumped so many walls that I lost count. I was so—frightened. I confess I tried to avoid civilization, Mr. Thorne. But as to distance, what if I was riding in circles?” She caught at his sleeve as she gave voice to her fear. “What if I didn’t get very far at all? He—he could be right behind me!”

  He took her bare hands into his gloved ones to warm her fingers and center her attention on his words. “No. You are safe. I don’t care if the man comes with an army of thugs, Helen. For here is the real Troy. I want you to imagine it. Great, vast, impenetrable walls that no one can breach and, even better, no one who will admit that you reside within.”

  She shook her head. “Didn’t the walls of Troy fall?”

  “Ulysses and the wooden horse,” he admitted with a shrug. “That was a literary version of Troy. You must trust me when I say if anyone puts a giant statue of a pony on my doorstep, I’ll have Hamish crack it open and turn it into firewood before we roll it into the garden.”

  “If he comes . . .”

  “In a worst-case scenario, he’ll find Sam
son but that’s all he’ll find.” He gently squeezed her fingers. “And I’ll offer him vast sums to keep Samson just where he is, all right?”

  She started to cry and for Darius it was a singularly horrifying moment as he had to resist his first instinct to pull her into his arms. A part of him dictated that she would fit against him perfectly and that nothing in his experience would match the sensation. But discipline won the moment and instead he pawed through his pockets until he found his handkerchief and handed it to her.

  “Thank you, Mr. Thorne.” She took the plain cloth from him and dabbed at her eyes while he forced himself to count the odd and even stitches on a nearby harness hanging on the wall to maintain his composure. A coil of heat warmed his spine and he began to pray for colder resolve.

  “I’m . . . ruining your handkerchief, Mr. Thorne.” Her voice was muffled as she spoke with her face buried in the white linen.

  “Tears can’t hurt it, Helen.”

  “Why are you so kind?” she asked plaintively. “No one is this kind.”

  Darius had to swallow hard, marveling that any man existed who had the indecency to hurt such a creature. All he could think to do was attempt a bit of humor. “If I were truly kind, I’d have offered you my coat sleeve or thought to bring more than one handkerchief.”

  She leaned back and wiped her cheeks with a fresher edge of the cloth. “I swear at this pace it’s going to be impossible to convince you that I am capable of more than weeping, Mr. Thorne.”

  He held out his arm. “No need. I’m already certain that you are accomplished and strong.”

  “Why is that? All I have ‘accomplished’ is falling off my horse in your garden, Mr. Thorne,” she said. “As for strength . . .”

  “These things are measured in countless ways. Sometimes it takes courage to simply walk away.” He watched the shadows threaten her composure and decided a new subject was in order. “Here, let’s make the most of your last few minutes of freedom before Mrs. McFadden comes out to scold us in from the cold. Would you care to take a turn in Scotland’s most untidy garden, madam?”

  She smiled as she tucked a hand into his elbow. “Yes, that sounds lovely.”

  They walked back across the muddy courtyard and through the stone arch entrance into the house’s unkempt yard.

  “May I ask what you do for a living, Mr. Thorne? Are you a tutor or a writer?” she asked.

  “I’m merely a scholar,” he admitted. “I aspire to teach at a university but my own research has taken me far afield in recent years. I spent some time in China and then more recently India, but that adventure took quite a turn.”

  “Were you there during the rebellion?”

  Darius noted that the small tremble of alarm in her voice on his behalf was nothing short of delight in his ears. He had a strange urge to tell her all the wretched details if it meant she might sigh and fuss on his behalf.

  I’m turning into an idiot.

  “I was. In Bengal, in fact, and as my friend Dr. West would say, it was an ill-timed plan. I was so interested in ancient architecture and filling my notebooks, I don’t remember giving imperial politics a single thought. By the time I realized there might be trouble, I was standing in a dungeon in chains and studying a very different kind of architecture.” He shrugged. “A lesson learned, Helen.”

  “Oh my! You were imprisoned in India?”

  “Along with a small gathering of Englishmen as potential hostages, but it is my theory that the raja who had us was so insane that he simply forgot us, as we were there for almost two years, long after the worst of the uprising. Some of the locals had whispered of his cruel unpredictability before I was taken and apparently”—he smiled as he continued on—“they weren’t exaggerating. So his nature worked to our advantage, led to his downfall in a little rebellion of his making and to our escape.”

  “You speak of it so calmly!”

  “Because I am here. I am alive and out of it.” Darius kicked over a frozen, muddy root ball. “The brothers I made in that terrible place are more dear to me than any I’ve known, and I’m a better man for being one of their company. I choose to focus on the boon of it and not the price.”

  “Well, there you have it, Mr. Thorne.”

  “What do I have?”

  “Irrefutable proof that you are anything but boring as you’d claimed.” Her steps slowed and she let go of him to reassess the tangled dead vines as they clung to the outside walls of the house and garden around them. “Did you inherit this home, Mr. Thorne?”

  He shook his head. “I accidentally became something unheard of—a wealthy scholar, but that’s another story. I bought it after acquiring a bit of a windfall on our journey home. The solicitor said it had a stocked library and I sent the contract before I’d even seen it. I love books.”

  “Y-you bought a house for its . . . books?”

  “It seemed reasonable at the time.” He eyed the wide, desolate garden and the cracked stone fountain at its center. “Although, now that you say it in that tone, I wonder if I shouldn’t have asked a few more questions.”

  “You are a remarkable man, Mr. Thorne.”

  “I am an ordinary man, a bit too common in my tastes and horribly troublesome as I’m prone to flights of distracted thought that lead me to lose track of almost everything—time, meals, and undoubtedly, hats. Mrs. McFadden is a very tolerant and understanding woman.”

  She gasped at the outrageous lie. “She’s a bit of a tyrant!”

  “I didn’t say she was soft-spoken but—” He stopped in his tracks at the unexpected sight of a sword sticking up from the ground in the midst of a hedge. “Ah, that’s where that went!”

  Helen spied it and laughed. “Shall I pull the sword from the stone and earn a crown?”

  “Please leave it.” It was an impulsive request, but the instant he’d spoken he meant it. It was the weapon he’d thrown aside in his haste to reach her that fateful night and he’d forgotten it in all the chaos. The blade gleamed in the wintry sunlight, defiantly beautiful in the miniature winter’s landscape.

  “But someone might think you hate rosemary.”

  “Or that I’m daft out here trying to murder garden fairies and gnomes and keep them from my garden.” He chuckled. “Well, as I’m English I can see that rumor sticking with the locals but let’s leave it all the same.”

  “Are you certain? It will be rusted and ruined by the weather before long.”

  He nodded. “When Mrs. McFadden sounded the alarm, I grabbed it on my way out and then cast it aside when I saw you. It’s a tiny residual of your arrival and I like it.”

  She looked away from him, suddenly shy and quiet.

  “Helen, why don’t you plan on eating downstairs with me this evening? It is not much of a change of scenery, but if you would like some company . . .” Darius suddenly felt unsure of the rules of etiquette. He’d probably shattered at least a dozen firm social commandments already by sheltering her and inviting her to cry on his coat lapels. Hell, at least a dozen commandments . . .

  “Yes.”

  It was a small victory but he took it. “We should go in. For once, I would like to comply with my beloved housekeeper’s orders before she utters them.”

  Helen laughed, a true, unrestrained melodic peal of laughter that demonstrated just how far she’d come in the brief span of time that he’d known her. For one moment, she looked like any other young lady, unhindered by the cares of the world or the strains of a dark past.

  Just as she should be.

  Chapter

  5

  Isabel nervously touched her pale blond hair to make sure it was in a respectable chignon. Her hair was fine and forever eluding the hold of combs and pins. It was the habit of a lifetime to try to dress for dinner and make a good showing for her host. Mrs. McFadden had brought her two dresses that morning from the housekeeper’s own wardrobe, both plain and ready-made, but Isabel was thrilled to have them. For shoes, Isabel had kept her riding boots since the women
did not share a common shoe size.

  Mrs. McFadden had tried to apologize for the drab gowns, but Isabel didn’t mind and had praised the fashions as if they’d come directly from a couture house in London. She’d abandoned a closet of satin shoes and fripperies, and as she studied her reflection wearing simple green gingham, she couldn’t remember feeling happier. Mrs. McFadden was slightly taller, but the women had solved the puzzle with a decorative belt to hide the folds that temporarily hemmed the skirt to a better length.

  The dark green made her look even more pale than usual, but Isabel was grateful to be out of a nightgown. She pinched her cheeks to try to add a little color and then gave up on the enterprise.

  I’m acting like a ninny. This is no time to be primping and I’m not a woman in a position to worry about what Mr. Thorne thinks of the lack of color in my cheeks—or to invite him to notice.

  Even so, Isabel leaned in closer to the glass, drawn to her reflection. She studied the familiar sight of her own features and looked to see what traces the last few months may have left there. But there was almost nothing. Her cheeks were thinner, along with the rest of her, but other than the anxiety in her eyes, Isabel saw nothing to betray her experiences. Not a single scar or sign of Richard’s games marred her face.

  It was a hollow miracle that made the nightmare of her life even more surreal.

  But then she thought of Mr. Thorne’s handsome face and the agile light in his green eyes. Surely he had also suffered in that Indian prison, horrors he wasn’t sharing. But she would never have guessed it from his warm countenance and generous manners.

  “If he can be brave, so can I.”

  Yes, but his monsters are a world away and mine—could be anywhere. If Richard has hired agents to search or—

  Isabel set the framed little mirror abruptly over on the table, banishing her reflection and ignoring the hysterical bubble of fear that was threatening to ruin her hard-won composure. “Troy,” she whispered. “This is Troy and I am safe within these walls.”