“Then I shall simply find someone else,” she said flatly.
“There is no one else. It is hopeless, and the sooner you accept it the better.”
“I thought I’d found a hero. I thought I’d found a man who would risk all for honor. Instead I’ve found a man with no heart at all.” Her voice held a mix of fury and despair.
Though Gabriel had thought his softer sentiments long since dead, her scorn cut deep. “You have found exactly what I warned you you would find, a man without principles or honor.”
Her eyes shimmered gold with fury as she studied him. “So you did. But I thought it was simply a test of my determination. How you must have laughed at my worthless offer of my body.”
The man beside her did not look up, keeping his gaze on the fire.
“Look at me,” she challenged. “Or is even that task beyond you?”
Gabriel’s hand tightened on the mantel. He didn’t turn. It was dangerous to look at her when he was so susceptible. “Go away.”
“One look. Can it be so very difficult?”
The man in Gabriel refused to ignore such a challenge.
As if in a dream he turned. And his breath fled.
She was haloed in the light of the candles. Her eyes were dark with shadows and some other unnameable emotion. “I would have given you anything you asked.”
Ashton closed his eyes, trying not to see her vibrant face, trying not to smell that haunting scent of lilacs. “Damn it, begone.”
He heard the rustle of lace. Her fichu slowly came free and slipped from her shoulders. “I would have been glad to come to you, glad to render any price you named.” The pale fabric slipped to the floor, bright against the shadows.
Gabriel closed his eyes, trying not to see the curves suddenly revealed, pressing against the lustrous folds of blue satin. But he found that imagining them was even worse.
“It would have been my pleasure, in truth. When our parents died, Isabel raised me as a mother, putting every other interest behind mine. Now I must do the same for her.” She laughed bitterly. “I am only glad that I discovered your true measure before it was too late.”
Gabriel shrugged. “Consider yourself lucky.” It took more effort than he would have imagined to keep his voice steady before her scorn. “And now that you’ve discovered my villainy, perhaps you’ll leave me in peace.”
“Peace?” She laughed grimly and Gabriel knew the sound would haunt him forever. “For such a man as you, there will be no peace, not in this world or the next.”
She was right. He was honest enough to admit it. But her accuracy only fueled his fury. “My peace will begin the first moment I am rid of you.”
She turned in a swirl of satin skirts and wrenched her domino about her shoulders.
“Haven’t you forgotten something?” Gabriel said icily. A moment later her silver-mounted pistol went hurtling through the air.
She caught it deftly. “So it would seem. My only regret is that my bullet hit the wall instead of your black heart.”
Gabriel was still standing before the fire when Stanton opened the door long minutes later. He did not turn. “Is she gone?”
“Yes, my lord.”
Regret tightened his throat, but Gabriel ignored it. “Very good. She is not to be admitted again. Now you may go, Stanton. I shall need nothing else tonight.” Nothing, at least, that he had any hope of obtaining.
“Very good, my lord.”
As the door closed, Gabriel stared deep into the dancing fire light, trying to forget the smell of lilacs, trying to ignore the heat that still washed through his blood from the nearness of a woman who would hold him in scorn for the rest of her days.
Below him the amber sparks snapped and hissed.
And every one left behind a bitter memory of haunting golden eyes.
AS NIGHT CLOSED AROUND the marsh and lightning lit the distant sky, Dominic Montserrat shifted on the couch, gray-faced and sweating.
The dreams clawed at him. He heard the echo of shouted curses and the pounding of feet. And always there was the banging of a shutter, somewhere in the distance. He fought on through the pain, through the storm of dark images, knowing some part of that was dreadfully important.
But he had no idea what.
And as he fought, the bandage at his head tore open and his wound began to bleed anew.
But the fallen blood Dominic saw in his dreams was hundreds of years old.
And he could have sworn that he caught the faint, drifting scent of white lilacs carried on the still air.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THUNDER BOOMED OVERHEAD, angry against the roar of the wind. The sound wrenched Dominic Montserrat from restless sleep.
He stared about him in confusion.
Stone fireplace. Old Peking carpets. Fine etchings of English wildflowers on the walls.
Rain hammered at the window, and as he sat up, Dominic discovered his head felt roughly the size of Outer Mongolia.
Grimacing, he focused on the woman bent before the fire, prodding the dying embers to life.
Cathlin.
“What day is it?”
She whirled around. “Welcome back. It’s either very late Saturday night or very early Sunday morning. The clocks have stopped because of the storm. I’m glad to see you’ve rejoined the living.”
“I’m not entirely sure I have.” Dominic scowled as pain slammed through his head. “What truck ran over me?”
“No truck, just a bridge. You hit your head and I found you wandering on the road just this side of the tidal plain.”
“Grand.” Dominic frowned as he felt the white bandage around his head. He shoved back the covers and tried to sit up, only to feel the blood flow summarily from his head.
Cathlin caught his shoulders. “You’re not going anywhere, you fool. You’re bleeding again and your neck’s the color of ripe eggplant.”
He pushed her hands away. “I’ll be fine.” He pushed back the bedding, oblivious to his near nakedness.
Cathlin flushed and looked away. “So go ahead and bleed to death. But before you do, I’d like to know just what happened out there.”
“So would I.” Dominic ran his hands over the painful lump at his neck. It was a fight to remember much of anything. There had been the roar of the wind, then the sickening jolt of the bank giving way. And then—nothing. “Still storming?”
“Straight through till morning, no doubt.”
Dominic frowned. The ache in his head made him curse, the sounds all but swallowed up by the howl of the storm outside. Grimly, he focused on trying to stand up.
“Are you crazy? You can’t—”
“Just watch me, O’Neill.” As he rose carefully to his feet, his head felt as if it had been kicked several times around a soccer field.
“Oh, that’s very smart. Who do I call to pick up your body?”
“Beats me. Try the pope. I’m going to need someone with lots of clout.”
“He won’t have any clout,” Cathlin snapped. “Not where you’re going.”
Dominic pulled himself forward. Something warm oozed down his forehead.
“You’re bleeding.”
What was a little blood compared to the pain in his forehead, Dominic thought grimly. Even that was better than the strange dream he’d had, something to do with pistols and blue satin.
And amber eyes. The same eyes he’d seen as he walked along the marsh in the rising wind.
A dream? Dominic thought. Or something more than a dream? “Where are my clothes?” he demanded irritably, pushing away a question he wasn’t prepared to face.
“Why? It’s the middle of the night. Besides, you won’t even make the door.”
The problem was that she might be right, but he still had to try. There were things he had to tell her about Gabriel Montserrat’s will, and he wasn’t about to hold the discussion half-naked and flat on his back, no matter how much his head hurt.
He took another awkward step. “See, I’m fine. I’m
fabulous, in fact. The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” He wavered and caught himself with a hand on the back of a wing chair. “Hand me my clothes.”
“Forget it. You’re not going anywhere.” Cathlin blocked his way, her hands crossed over her chest.
They glared at each other as the angry seconds crawled past.
Outside, lights dotted the hills. In the distance the streets of Rye gleamed faintly, a crown of color atop the gray blur of the marsh.
“Did you see anyone else out there? Tire tracks, or any sign of a hiker?” he asked.
“As I told you, there was only you and me and a heck of a lot of blood.”
“How vastly romantic.”
“Listen, this is an incredibly entertaining conversation, but it would be even more entertaining if you weren’t about to pass out.”
“I’m just bloody fine.” Dominic stood back from the chair and raised his hands over his head. “See, no hands.”
“Well, if the phone weren’t out, I’d ask you to call a doctor for me, because I’m getting weak just looking at you.”
“Look, we have to talk and I’d like to be on a little more equal terms when we do it. After that, we need to start going through whatever family records you can find around here. Gabriel Montserrat was murdered and I want to know why.”
“So now you’re blaming someone in my family?”
“No, I just want some answers.”
“Be my guest. Get dressed and go look. At least you’ll be fully dressed when you succumb to blood loss and complications from a cranial concussion.”
Dominic cursed. “Just tell me where my clothes are, will you? I’ve got a letter in the pocket of my shirt that I’d like you to read.”
“Get back on that couch and I’ll consider it.”
He swayed slightly. “First we talk.”
“Now.” Her eyes were fierce. “No couch, no deal.”
Dominic gave her a crooked smile. “From anyone else, O’Neill, that statement might be promising.” With a sigh, he turned and made his way back to the sofa. “I doubt if I could manage a serious response right at the moment, anyway.”
His eyes were closed before his head met the pillow.
DAMNED STUBBORN FOOL.
Cathlin glared down at the man filling her faded chintz settee. At least his color was good and his breathing steady. Yes, Dominic Montserrat would be fine. He just needed some rest. It was herself she was worried about, especially if there were any more shocks like this in store.
She was supposed to be here for a quiet weekend, but nothing had gone right since that wretched wine auction. Richard Severance had already called her three times, persistent as usual, and now this man showed up on her doorstep with this wild talk about a two-hundred-year-old wine.
Cathlin frowned. What had he said about a letter that he wanted her to read? Feeling slightly guilty, she pulled his shirt from the wing chair and went through the pockets.
Nothing.
And that was probably how much truth there was to this whole ridiculous story. So much for Lord Ashton’s honesty!
She sank down in a chair across from Dominic, listening to sand and pebbles clatter against the window. Suddenly Cathlin remembered how Seacliffe used to be, full of joy and laughter when her mother was alive. Every morning her father had risen early and dressed in an oilcloth jacket, red tartan scarf, and battered Wellies. He had liked nothing more than to tramp the marsh as the first mists drifted up from the sea, reminding him of the Galway Coast where he’d been born.
She looked out into the darkness, imagining the green reeds and tidal pools her father had loved so well. But he’d been a stubborn man in a dangerous profession, and that profession had finally caught up with him. When an old colleague had called him back for one last job, Donnell O’Neill had reluctantly agreed.
He’d never come back, felled by a sniper’s bullet in a country whose name Cathlin couldn’t even pronounce. She hadn’t forgiven the men who’d pulled him back in, not then and not ever. She had never understood what made a man take that kind of risk, and she would never stop feeling bitter toward the country that had stolen him from her.
But all the anger in the world wouldn’t bring him back.
She brushed a tear from her cheek, staring out into the night. Yes, her father had loved this old house and the deserted marsh, whose fierce storms and blustery moods were so much like his own. Perhaps it came from the memories of the five years in his youth when he’d appeared on every police blotter in Europe. Paintings by the old masters, Fabergé eggs, or uncut emeralds, none of them had been safe from the quick, clever fingers of Donnell O’Neill.
Or Patrick McKee, as he had called himself then.
But he had seen the error of his ways in time. One night a bossy female art student from Oxford had caught him rifling her jewelry chest.
Donnell had been lost before he’d gotten one full look at the striking, ebony-haired beauty. They’d spent the next twelve hours arguing over the morality of theft—and the following twelve making passionate love in Elizabeth Russell’s lavender-filled room overlooking the canal.
Afterward Donnell joked that he’d stolen Oxford’s brightest jewel that night, and there was always a trace of seriousness in his voice when he said it.
Soon Cathlin had come howling into the world, the product of an irrepressible Irish love and an adoring English heart. She’d thrived on that love and over the years she had learned to expect the occasional shouting and broken dishes, knowing that afterward would come the sudden, abrupt silences, when they did some unknown thing called “making up.”
Under Elizabeth’s pressure, Donnell had turned his back on crime and begun working for the English government, which always had jobs for a man with light fingers like his.
Jobs like planting a false set of documents at the Russian Embassy, replacing the attaché case of Tito’s private courier to Albania, and filching a set of incriminating negatives from an East German who was blackmailing a very high-level English cabinet minister had come in quick order.
The big Irishman had come and gone like a shadow in the night, and with every success his handlers had grown more greedy. Just one more job, they’d swear. And he had agreed, because it was the only career he knew.
So the months had stretched into years. Cathlin grew to a fine girl of ten and began fretting to be out of London and into a cottage where she could have her own pony and a half dozen cats.
But it had never come to pass.
The week before Cathlin’s eleventh Christmas, Elizabeth had taken Cathlin with her to Draycott Abbey, where she was to examine some Elizabethan textile samples at the request of the old viscount. And sometime during that night, while the servants slept and Cathlin lay lost in childish dreams, Elizabeth Russell O’Neill had been murdered, by whom it was never discovered.
No words could assuage Donnell’s grief. Only little Cathlin kept him from crossing over the edge to madness. Together they had left England, settling in Philadelphia. There Donnell had established his private security business, among a grand extended family who had come over from Ireland years before. But even then, the painful memories of Elizabeth had persisted.
Three years ago Seacliffe had come into Donnell’s hands with the death of Elizabeth’s brother, and Cathlin and Donnell had moved back to England, to the old stone house perched on the rolling hills overlooking Romney Marsh and the silver sweep of the southern coast.
After twelve years in America, Cathlin had no ties to her mother’s country and with the death of her father, her bitterness toward England had grown. But she had thrown herself into her work and stayed on, knowing her father would have wished it. And finally her wine business had prospered.
She smiled faintly, remembering how he had railed at her choice of career, saying she spent too much time in dark, cold cellars and too little with living, breathing people. “It’s not healthy, a woman like you caught down there verifying humidity and cork conditions fr
om morning to night. There’s more to life than that—flesh and blood things. And if you don’t reach out and take them, you’ll wake up one morning and find it’s too late, macushla.”
Macushla. My dear. The sweet word still brought a tear to her eye. And her father had been right. One day Cathlin had awakened to find both her parents gone and this great old house hers to maintain.
But the cellars at Seacliffe had precious secrets, a vast cache of old wines and brandy laid down over a century ago. Undisturbed and perfectly preserved, those dusty old bottles had provided the capital to repair the house, and Cathlin had sold the old vintages judiciously. The business had grown swiftly, supported by her fine palate and ability to ferret out old bits of research and documentation. Soon she had commissions from around the world, and returned to America to set up shop in Philadelphia.
Staring out at the rainswept night, Cathlin frowned. She still didn’t like England much. Its climate was dour, its food unremarkable. But the real reason she was uncomfortable here was because England represented too keenly the loss of those she’d loved most.
As Cathlin stood in the window, listening to the wind and the churning sea, she shivered, feeling a sudden premonition that she was about to lose something precious yet again. And then she heard a crack from high overhead. Dear God, not the roof, she prayed.
THE ROOF WAS EXACTLY the problem.
Cold wind and a hail of sand poured into the attic as Cathlin rounded the top of the stairs, candle in hand. It took her long moments to trace the source of the draft, a jagged hole in the south wall, where wind rushed in from the outside, fraying the rapidly eroding layer of plaster.
Muttering words that wouldn’t bear overhearing, Cathlin dragged hammer, nails, and a roll of heavy plastic from a corner storage closet and set about sealing the hole.
When she had pounded in the last nail through plaster that felt as though it might pull away at any second, she sank down against the wet wooden floor. And there, strangely enough, she began to laugh, caught by the utter absurdity of trying to hold out a sky full of rain and a marsh full of sand. It wouldn’t work, of course. Cathlin was far too practical not to see that. But she laughed on, clutching her sodden sides until tears rolled down her cheeks and the candle guttered beside her.
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