Enchantment & Bridge of Dreams

by Christina Skye

  “I’m not running,” Cathlin said flatly. “I’m not hiding.”

  “You’ll do whatever I tell you has to be done.”

  “Dream on, Ace.” Cathlin swung into the graveled circle beneath Seacliffe’s darkened windows and yanked open her door. “Right now I’m going up to bed. If you want to argue, fine. Stay out here and argue with the wind.”

  DOMINIC MADE NO MOVE TO stop her. He had enough demons of his own to fight without adding her to the list. He’d been slow and stupid and missed things no beginner should have missed.

  But as he went over the night’s events, frame by frame, thoroughly analyzing every detail, he couldn’t get one thought out of his mind.

  It had all been too bloody easy.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “IN THE TRUNKS? THAT’S wonderful.” Dominic was on the phone with his Great-Aunt Agatha the next morning explaining what kind of documents he needed when he heard Cathlin’s light step on the stairs. “Just a minute, Aggy.” He covered the phone. “We’re in luck. Aggy says she remembers an old packet of letters that might be from Gabriel. They’re stored away in one of her trunks. She was just going to—” His voice fell as he took in Cathlin’s pallor and the dark shadows under her eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m going back to London, Dominic.” Her voice was tense and determined. “I’m done with this cloak-and-dagger business. I’ll stop on the way and talk to Viscount Draycott out of respect for a woman I’ve never met and never heard of before, but don’t expect anything more of me.”

  “Not alone. Remember what happened yesterday.”

  “Yesterday was a bad dream. Today is—reality.”

  “Damn it, Cathlin, listen to me.”

  “No, you listen. I don’t want to hear the explanations and the excuses. No doubt they’re all brilliant, but I’ve heard them too many times before. My father never told me exactly what he did, but I’ll tell you this, he was exactly what you’ll be in twenty years, Officer Montserrat. Cool and smart and fatally charming. In fact, there was only one problem with my father. He was always off on some fantastically important business on the other side of the globe and never here, where we needed him. And even when he was here, his mind was a thousand miles away.” She looked at the walls lined with framed family photographs, her eyes resting on a picture of her father caught in a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “So I’m not interested. Not in you, not in your wine, and not in this crazy mess you’ve steered me into. I’ll go to Draycott Abbey because I owe it to myself and to my mother. Then I’m renouncing any claim that I or my family holds over that wine. Forever.”

  “You can’t do that. It’s your past, Cathlin. It’s also your future. You don’t walk away from something like that.”

  “No? Just watch me.”

  From the receiver in his hand, Dominic heard his aunt’s voice rise in quavering questions. “Yes, Aggy, I’m still here. Yes, that’s wonderful about those letters. I know it will be a load of work and your arthritis is devilish these days, but we’re really counting on you. Now I’m afraid I really must run. What? A woman?” He cleared his throat. “No, afraid not, Aggy.”

  By the time he put down the phone, the study was empty. So was the hall. When Dominic ran outside, he cursed darkly.

  It was already too late. Cathlin’s Jeep was hurtling off down the gravel drive.

  CATHLIN SLAMMED THE OLD Jeep over the rutted coast road. She coaxed and nurtured her anger, even as she felt the pain choke her. Anger was the only safe thing, because she was free inside her anger as she never could be in affection.

  But Cathlin found that she was draining the well dry. What she’d find beyond, where the shadows began, she didn’t want to think about.

  As she drove over the little stone bridge where Dominic had been wounded, she wondered just for a moment what things might have been like if they were two different people with two different pasts.

  If only…

  No use. No bloody use, O’Neill.

  She brushed at her cheek, jabbing the gears and grinding them angrily. She knew that she was bolting, running away from fifteen years of shadows.

  Seacliffe no longer held any protection for her. A jade-eyed man had brought the holes in with him, pulling up the questions and unveiling the shadows she’d managed to plug up every night with work and lists and fine, detailed dreams.

  Now there were shadows everywhere. An old mystery had forced her to face a more recent one. What had really happened that day fifteen years before? Her father had never found any answers, which meant that Cathlin was the only one left who could find out the truth.

  In that instant, with the ocean glinting before her and the wind rippling the canals behind her, Cathlin realized something else.

  She was looking for the child, the grieving child who had lost her mother too soon and been left with a father she’d never really known. No matter the pain, Cathlin knew she had to become that child again. Without opening up to that ache, she’d never be whole again. The woman stood just beyond that door of shadows, waiting for the child to open it; only through the child could the woman come truly alive.

  Her hands were trembling as she headed north, the wind whipping at her hair and cutting the salt tears into her cheeks. She listened to the thunder of the motor, the whine of the wind, the fury of her heart.

  As she did, she felt the child reach around that big rusty knob and slowly, slowly push open a door that had been closed far too long.

  A door of shadows that led to a bridge of dreams.

  PART II

  A Bridge of Dreams

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CATHLIN DIDN’T KNOW WHAT she had expected. After fifteen years the abbey was bound to look different, and her memories had been brief.

  Stone, probably. Dampness and crumbling age everywhere. A marshy pool, trees and untended grass, and the terror of irreparable loss.

  But she didn’t find that, not on this day in the sunlight of a spring morning.

  Instead she found…

  Eternity.

  Seacliffe had prepared her for age and grace, but not for great gray walls, flower-hung and vast. Not for swans sliding through a shimmering moat. Not for mullioned windows twinkling in the sheer sweep of the long gallery.

  Draycott Abbey, she thought wonderingly. She was fully prepared to hate this place and, looking around her, she tried very hard. But it was hard to hate something that was so beautiful.

  The weathered gray walls floated above the Wealden hills like a summer dream, playing on all her senses with almost tangible fingers. She blinked, caught by the rose-rich air, mesmerized by the gentle swirl and lob of the moat.

  And then Cathlin saw the small stone bridge, banks of lush white lilacs teeming over its granite foot. For an instant memory shivered through her mind—heavy, dark and formless, like thorns hidden by the petals of a rose.

  Just as swiftly, the image vanished, burned away by the sunlight and the flare of the moat.

  Cathlin remembered something her mother had once told her. One could live many years in a place of such age and beauty, but it would take lifetimes to understand.

  Cathlin frowned. She didn’t have lifetimes. All she was prepared to spend here was one day. She would walk and watch and listen, hoping that she found the answers she wanted. But if nothing came, she would turn her back on Draycott Abbey and never come back.

  That, too, she owed to her mother.

  A movement pulled her eyes to the ground. There among the blooms, drowsing against the warm gray blocks, lay a cat, great and gray, at ease, as if this bridge and all else were his realm and his alone.

  Standing in the magic of a bar of sunlight with the wind soft in her hair, Cathlin could almost believe it was so.

  She set her single bag on the car and sank down on the soft grass, listening to a bird sing over the ancient trees, listening to her heart.

  And there she heard again the dim strains of old memories.

  Here. It was all her
e. What Dominic had said was true, then. She would finally have her answers.

  If she wanted them…

  A door of shadows, she thought, looking through the vast oak door that opened into the gatehouse.

  A bridge of dreams.

  Did she truly want those answers?

  She was tugging hard at the grass, her eyes half-blinded by the glint of the sun on the moat when she felt something warm and soft slide past her leg.

  The cat ghosted next to her, amber eyes keen and clear, giving Cathlin the oddest idea that he was waiting for something. And that he might have waited here forever.

  She ran a hand uncertainly over the sleek fur, smiling when the creature turned imperiously and shoved against her opened palm. “You are one real beauty, aren’t you?”

  A quick, sharp hiss of sound. Protest.

  “Oh, I see. Handsome, I should have said.”

  A quick flick of the tail. The keen eyes blinked.

  “I am sorry. Truly.”

  The creature settled back on velvet paws, one eye on the moat. Cathlin could have sworn his other eye stayed on the tiny path that ran through banks of lilacs and roses twisting down from the bridge above.

  She shook her head. Coffee, that’s what she needed. Not daydreams. Lord, anything besides these odd, fanciful sensations. The wild idea that—

  “Were you looking for someone in particular?”

  “Oh, heaven!” She jumped to her feet, hand to heart. “You—you frightened me!”

  He was a tall man, dressed all in black. A certifiable English eccentric, Cathlin thought. With a home like this, she supposed a man could afford to be eccentric. His face was all hard planes and unforgiving angles, not handsome in any usual sense of the word.

  But it was an utterly compelling face just the same.

  He bent to his knees and ran his fingers through the big cat’s sun-warmed fur. “Did I? I’m vastly sorry for it.”

  “You were so quiet. It sounds mad, but, well, you seemed to come from nowhere.”

  A smile, faintly sad. “Maybe I did at that.”

  Cathlin felt a lump in her throat. “Strange.”

  “Strange?” he murmured, picking up her conversation as if they had known each other for years.

  “I know someone else who has that particular trick of silence.”

  Sharp eyes the color of cold gray walls probed her face. “And it bothers you, does it?”

  Cathlin shrugged. “It might. If I let it, which I won’t.” She looked up. “Do you own all this?”

  The hard lips curved. “You might say that.”

  Might? Either he did or he didn’t. Definitely eccentric, in the best English tradition.

  “You like it.” Oddly, it wasn’t a question.

  Cathlin frowned. For a moment she’d had the strangest feeling that those granite eyes were looking right through her. Seeing things that she couldn’t see herself.

  Memories.

  Dreams.

  Thoughts buried so deep she didn’t even know they were there.

  The cat at her leg purred softly.

  “Yes, I do. More than like it.”

  “And that frightens you.” Again, it was no question.

  “No.” Something about the keen eyes called for honesty. Cathlin sighed. “Well, perhaps a little. Maybe even a lot. Because I can see the shadows behind all this beauty. Sometimes they even keep me awake at night. I…lost someone here, you see, a long time ago.”

  The gray eyes narrowed. “Your mother.”

  Cathlin nodded. It was hardly a secret.

  “And still you can find it beautiful?”

  “I didn’t want to,” she said frankly. “I expected to hate this place.”

  “And you don’t. Very interesting.” He nodded. “My abbey does seem to have that effect on people. Especially my roses.”

  “They are lovely. You must be very proud of such—” She searched for the word. Something about the man demanded she get the word right. “Power. And beauty. Beauty that will last an eternity.”

  He looked down at the cat. “Ah, this one is good, Gideon. She sees much more than one would expect.”

  The cat’s tail flicked slowly, a study in elegant geometry, all smooth arcs of gray.

  “No? I don’t agree at all, you know.”

  Cathlin found herself smiling in spite of the rank improbability of it all. A granite abbey? A man in solid black who spoke to a cat who looked intelligent enough to talk back?

  Definitely, coffee is needed here, O’Neill. And fast.

  “You will be here long?”

  “Long enough to poke around in your cellar and see if that wine you discovered is authentic.” Cathlin looked out over the haze of green hills. And to find out if this wretched story about a murdered man and two lost lovers has any truth to it. “I only wish I knew more about the man who left the wine there.”

  “Gabriel? Yes, he was a most complex man.”

  “Do you know very much about him?”

  The expressive hands stilled for an instant, pale against the cat’s sleek fur. “What would you like to know?”

  “Everything. Dominic—that is, Lord Ashton—led me to believe no one knew anything at all about his Mad Uncle Gabriel.”

  “Is that what he calls him? How amusing. And how very much Gabriel would dislike that term.”

  Cathlin was growing impatient with this vagueness. “Can you tell me how he died?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Then why was he interested in the wine and why did he end up in the cellar?”

  “These are useful questions.” Her companion nodded slowly. “The why is always the most important thing.”

  “I was hoping for some answers.” Cathlin frowned. “After all, you must know this place better than anyone.”

  “Much better,” he affirmed.

  “So what’s your guess? Why would a man do something like that?”

  The dark eyes narrowed. For a moment Cathlin felt their force through every molecule and atom of her being. Divining. Assessing.

  “Love. Hatred. Jealousy. Revenge.” He smiled bitterly. “All the usual reasons.”

  “We know who he loved. She was my ancestor, Geneva Russell. But her life is just as sketchy as his. Did they fall in love, only to fall out again? Or did something come between them?” Each question seemed to leave things more tangled.

  “I expect there must be records of some sort,” her companion said absently, stroking the great cat. “There usually are. Damned nuisance, too, don’t you agree, Gideon?”

  The cat popped open one keen eye and blinked at Cathlin.

  “Ah, well, you would.”

  Did the man always speak in riddles? “Do you know where I might look? For the records, I mean.”

  “There are many treasures in this ancient house, Miss O’Neill. And the greatest treasures of all are those that cannot be seen. I suggest you remember that.”

  Unseen? Oh, that was going to be really useful, Cathlin thought irritably. Couldn’t the man give a single straight answer?

  “Beyond that, I’m afraid I can’t help you,” he said, somehow answering the question she had not asked. “Ask the right questions and you’ll find the right answers,” he added cryptically. “But all the answers—and all the questions—must come from you.” He smiled faintly. “And from him.”

  “Him?”

  Again the smile. “The one with that trick of silence you’re not going to let bother you.”

  “Dominic? But how did you know—”

  “We are remote here but not entirely out of contact with the rest of the world, my dear. Besides, you have a most expressive face. I suggest that you forgo prevarication.”

  Cathlin swallowed. The wind trailed over her hair, enveloping her in a cloudlike scent of roses and lilacs. Maybe he was right. Maybe she hadn’t been asking the right questions at all—about this wine or about her own past. As a bee droned from one heavy bloom to the next, she considered that possibili
ty.

  And the seconds stretched out, full and silent and companionable in the warm sunlight.

  After a long while her companion nodded to the cat. “Yes.”

  Cathlin hadn’t any idea what he had said yes to. It might have been to her or to the day, or even in some strange way to the keen, imperious cat who seemed so comfortable here.

  It might even have been a yes to something much, much more.

  But before she could ask, the cat stirred and uttered a low cry.

  “I must go.”

  She felt a sudden tug of disappointment. “Must you?” There was power in his company. A strange comfort.

  He laughed, a sound as soft and fluid as the moat’s swirl. “I’m afraid so. But there is one thing you might do for me, if you will.”

  “Of course.” She studied the hard face, the face of a man who had tasted far more than his share of pain and pleasure, anger and despair. “Anything.”

  “Anything?” The hard lips curved. “I suggest you be rather more careful with your promises, my dear.”

  “Why? Should I be afraid of you?”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not. For now at least, you are quite safe. As it happens, my request is harmless.”

  “I’m listening.”

  His eyes narrowed. Again that faint tug of lip that seemed to send light into every corner of his hard face. “Tell him I send my greetings. And my blessings.” At his feet the cat stirred, suddenly restless. “Yes, I know, my dear Gideon. But blessings, I send nevertheless. Such good as they are. I have every confidence that this mystery, too, will be solved, just as all the others were. And you will be part of its solving, my dear.”

  “But how? And whom should I tell—”

  The cat ghosted past her ankles and vanished into the tossing lilacs, silver-white against the weathered stone. Something about those movements was lulling, effortless, almost…hypnotic.

  “Who…” She tried to speak, had to swallow first, fighting a pull of sleep such as she had never felt before. It was only the sun, of course, bounced a hundredfold back across the moat. Only the high, sweet trill of a bird somewhere in the high hills.