His Wicked Charm

by Candace Camp

  It wouldn’t be that way, though. She would be in love with her future husband. He would be a man who loved and respected her. Who wanted to marry her. She would make love with him, and it wouldn’t be a mistake. The problem was that when she tried to picture such a man, he had black hair and green eyes and an engaging grin.

  Con looked over at her, as if he had felt her gaze. His eyes darkened, and his hand stilled. For a heartbeat they gazed at each other. Con took a step, and Lilah whipped around to stare out the window again. Con stopped and returned to looking through the desk.

  They worked their way through the office bit by bit. Con found one carved wooden box that proved to have a puzzle of sliding pieces, exciting their interest, but it proved to have nothing inside it but a woman’s glove and a curl of reddish-gold hair bound with a blue ribbon.

  “Your mother’s, I presume,” Con said, touching the lock of hair, his face unaccustomedly sad. “He must have loved her very much.”

  “He loved her more than anything. He wasted his life away, trying to call her back to him.” Lilah heard the touch of bitterness in her voice. “I’m sorry. It’s wrong of me, I know, to resent his abiding love, his grief.”

  “No, it’s not.” Con set the box aside. “He should have been devoted to raising you, not chasing after her memory. I’m sorry he was obsessed.” His face hardened. “I despise the frauds who prey on the grief of those like him, the mediums who claim they can contact dead loved ones.”

  Lilah raised her eyebrows, surprised. “But you believe in that sort of thing.”

  “No. I am open to belief, but I’ve never yet come across a medium who was anything but a swindler using a bag of tricks. Some may actually believe they can contact the dead. But I’ve never found one who had any real proof. Olivia used to investigate mediums. There was a wave of them a few years back.”

  “I know,” Lilah replied drily.

  “Of course. Your aunt.” He paused. “Mrs. LeClaire seems to believe it. Perhaps she’ll prove me wrong.”

  “I doubt it. She lives in a world of her own making.”

  They continued to work through the day but had found nothing by the time they stopped for tea. Lilah was dispirited. “I had hoped we would find something here—the key, a location...”

  “We’ll find them,” Con assured her with his usual confidence, but he frowned. “Hopefully soon. I worry...”

  “What?” Lilah asked. “Don’t tell me Mr. Dearborn’s deadline matters.”

  “No. Well, perhaps, some. The thing is, as long as this remains undiscovered, there’s still a threat to you.” He looked into her face searchingly. “Lilah, is there something more going on here that I don’t know about?”

  “No.” Her answer was quick, and she firmly suppressed the flicker of guilt. Last night had nothing to do with the search or the key. “Of course not. And I doubt that there’s any danger to me. Mr. Dearborn has threatened us with doom—what else can he offer?” She put up what she hoped was an insouciant smile.

  Con nodded, but he didn’t look entirely convinced. She could hardly blame him. Whatever she said, Lilah could not deny that now there was something awful hanging over her head.

  * * *

  AS THEY MADE their way downstairs for tea, Lilah was surprised to hear her aunt talking and the murmur of a male voice in response. Lilah glanced at Con, who returned her puzzled look. “Don’t tell me Dearborn’s returned.”

  Their steps quickened, but when they reached the open doorway of the drawing room, they came to an abrupt halt. Con muttered, “What the devil is he doing here?”

  “Lilah, dearest!” Her aunt rose. “Look who’s come to visit us!”

  Lilah forced a smile. “Sir Jasper.”

  “It’s wonderful how popular Barrow House has become,” Aunt Vesta said blandly.

  “Yes, isn’t it?” Lilah walked forward, extending her hand to her cousin. “This is indeed unexpected, Sir Jasper.” Drat the man. How could they talk about the key, much less hunt for it, with Sir Jasper hanging about?

  “I do hope you will forgive me for not sending notice,” Sir Jasper responded. “Mrs. Summersley urged me to come. She feared you might be lonely on your own.”

  “As you can see, I’m not alone.” What was Aunt Helena thinking, to thrust Sir Jasper on them like this? It certainly would not further Sir Jasper’s suit to be placed in constant comparison to Con. “You remember Lord Moreland.”

  “Yes, of course. Sir.” Jasper’s stiff nod toward Con conveyed little joy at the memory.

  Con took Lilah’s arm in a proprietary way. “Sir Jasper. The depth of your devotion to your family is astounding.”

  “It’s so nice to have the company of young people.” Aunt Vesta beamed. “Makes one feel less old. No doubt you think the same, Sir Jasper.”

  Lilah hid a smile. Clearly Con had a champion in Aunt Vesta.

  “Are you on your way home, Sir Jasper?” Con asked as Lilah sat down. He took a chair between Lilah and the other man.

  “Sir Jasper lives in Yorkshire,” Lilah put in.

  “Ah, then you are indeed a good cousin to go so far out of your way.”

  The conversation limped along. Aunt Vesta filled in most of the empty stretches. Lilah wondered how long Sir Jasper meant to remain. It was unfair of Aunt Helena to interfere in her life this way. She’d already saddled Lilah with her dour maid. Why couldn’t she trust Lilah to do the proper thing?

  Lilah knew the answer to that—however much Aunt Helena hid it from her, deep down she feared that some wild Holcutt behavior would surface in Lilah before Helena could get her safely wed to a respectable gentleman.

  Guilt swept Lilah immediately. She shouldn’t be irritated at Aunt Helena. After all, perhaps she was right to worry, given Lilah’s recent behavior. Lilah told herself she should make more effort with Sir Jasper. She sat down to tea, putting on as agreeable an expression as she could muster. Con, she noticed, made no such effort but sat, staring a hole in the man the whole time.

  Lilah came up with a few pleasantries about Sir Jasper’s journey, to which he responded in far greater detail than she would have wished. After that, conversation lagged. For once, Con and even Aunt Vesta said little, leaving an awkward silence.

  “Barrow House is quite, um, interesting,” Sir Jasper said finally. “I should enjoy seeing more of it. Delilah, perhaps you could show me about the place after tea.”

  “Well, um, I—”

  “Oh, but surely you would rather take a rest first, wouldn’t you, Sir Jasper?” Vesta put in sweetly.

  “After that arduous journey,” Con added.

  Sir Jasper gave a forced laugh. “It takes much more than that to tire me, sir.” He gave Lilah an admiring look. “And no journey is too long with such a reward as Delilah at the end.”

  Con choked on his tea and gave way to a long fit of coughing. Lilah swallowed a laugh, feeling obligated to send Con an admonitory look. She hoped that the subject of a house tour was over, but unfortunately, when they stood up later, Sir Jasper said, “I believe you were going to show me the house now, Delilah.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  She had the unpleasant fear that Con would desert her to continue their search alone, but Con said cheerfully, “A tour of the house sounds delightful. I’ve a mind to join you.”

  Sir Jasper glared at Con, but before he could say anything, Lilah gratefully accepted Con’s offer. She led the way out the door, pretending not to notice the arm Sir Jasper extended for her. Con, sauntering along behind them, said, “We should see the kitchens, don’t you think?”

  “The kitchens!” Sir Jasper turned to stare at him. “Good Gad, why would we go there?”

  “I always find the servants’ areas interesting. One can tell a good deal about someone from the kitchens. The laundry, the stillroom.”

  “I’m surprised you don�
��t want to see the smokehouse,” Jasper grumbled.

  “Oh, the smokehouse would be much too hot in the summer,” Con replied earnestly.

  Lilah swallowed a giggle. “I believe we’ll stay with the main area. It’s a large house.”

  “Yes, difficult to heat, I’ll warrant,” Sir Jasper said.

  They moved along the corridor, slowed by Sir Jasper’s thorough perusal of each room. He interspersed his frequent and flowery compliments to Lilah with didactic pronouncements on the many defects of Barrow House: the stairs were oddly placed; there were too many windows, which, of course, was the reason the carpets were sadly faded; this room was too small, that one too large, and the smoking parlor would do well turned into a billiards room.

  Lilah began to think it would serve the man right if she did drag him through the kitchens and laundry. But she couldn’t risk the cook leaving when Jasper began to correct her method of baking.

  “You certainly have a lot of plans for a house that isn’t yours,” Con commented acidly.

  Sir Jasper preened, Con’s sarcasm sailing past him. “Yes, well, I have a bit of an architectural bent.” He surveyed the library in which they were now standing. “This room, you see, has far too many books.”

  “It’s a library.” Lilah looked over at Con, who had let out a snort and turned away, his shoulders shaking with muffled laughter. She wasn’t sure which was more exasperating, Sir Jasper’s presumptuous statements or the way Con tempted her to laugh at every turn. “Gentlemen, I’m sorry, but I think that’s enough of a tour for one day. I believe I must rest before supper. I have contracted a headache.” That was certainly true.

  She gave Sir Jasper a brief insincere smile and walked away. She didn’t dare even glance at Con.

  The evening passed in a similarly annoying manner. After supper, Aunt Vesta decreed that Lilah should entertain them by playing the piano. Sir Jasper was quick to offer to stand beside her and turn the pages, and the piano turned out to be sadly out of tune. But at least there was no need for conversation.

  None too soon for Lilah, Aunt Vesta, her eyes glazing over in boredom, announced that she was retiring. Lilah seized the opportunity to go to her room, as well. In the end, all four of them tramped up the stairs together. Sir Jasper said a prolonged good-night to her, bowing over her hand and holding it far too long. Lilah snatched her hand back and hurried into her room. Sir Jasper’s visit could not end soon enough.

  * * *

  CON OPENED HIS door a crack and, positioning a chair where he could see Lilah’s closed door, settled down to wait. He hadn’t believed Lilah’s denials this morning for a second. He was certain that the figure he had seen was Lilah.

  Lilah would have his head if she found him spying on her. It made him feel a little guilty; she was entitled to her privacy. But whatever she was doing was dangerous. The escaped kidnapper could be lurking out there in the dark, waiting for an opportunity to grab the right woman this time. Or Niles Dearborn. He might very well still be around. And there had to be something wrong with whatever Lilah was doing or she wouldn’t be this secretive about it.

  The click of a door opening brought Con out of his thoughts. He leaned closer, watching Lilah, clad in her nightgown, walk down the hall away from him. Con waited until her head disappeared down the stairs, then eased out of his room and followed her. He crept down the stairs, careful to avoid each spot where he had discovered a board would creak. His heart was beating faster, the atmosphere of mystery heightened by the dark silence all around him.

  When he reached the foot of the staircase, he hung back in the shadows, watching Lilah. He expected her to turn down the cross corridor leading to the rear door, but to his surprise, she walked past it without a glance. Now he was even more intrigued.

  She passed the library and the dining room in the same unhurried way, neither dawdling nor rushing. It was riskier to follow her here, where he would be exposed if she glanced back, but she had not looked around her yet, and the hall was dim, the only light the moonlight coming through intermittent windows. Con kept in the shadows well behind her, matching his pace to hers. When she reached the end of the corridor, she turned, clearly heading into the oldest wing of Barrow House.

  Con sped up the steps, and as he pulled open the door into the Great Hall, he saw the door opposite him shutting. Where was she going? He tried to remember if he had seen an outside door in this section. If so, it would certainly explain why he’d missed her yesterday when he ran to the garden entrance. It was almost pitch-black in the hall, but there was the faintest glimmer of moonlight before him that he hadn’t noticed last night. It was hardly worth calling a light, but it enough to allow him to keep up his speed.

  When he emerged from the Great Hall, there was no sign of Lilah. He instinctively turned to the stairs. It was so quiet in the narrow stairwell that he thought he could hear her breathing. She kept climbing, and he realized that she must be going to the top floor. It was perhaps the last place he had suspected as her destination. Hard to imagine that she paid a visit to her ancestors’ portraits at midnight.

  He paused at the top of the stairs. Lilah was only a few feet ahead of him, strolling down the gallery at that same even pace. The long gallery had been an eerie scene the night before, desolate in its emptiness, its gloom crossed by patches of moonlight through the windows. It was even more chilling now to see Lilah’s ghostly white figure gliding along, never glancing right or left as she moved from shadow through moonlight and back into shadow again. An icy finger trailed down Con’s spine.

  He started after her, a strange dread, almost panic, seeping into him. Lilah stopped at the end of the gallery in front of the high, wide windows. Moonlight cascaded over her. Con realized too late that when she turned back, he would be directly in her line of vision. There were no doorways to take shelter in along this long, unbroken corridor.

  Lilah turned slowly, and for the first time Con saw her face. Her eyes were blank, her face empty. She looked straight through him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  AN ATAVISTIC DREAD froze Con in his tracks. He could only watch as Lilah turned and opened a door he hadn’t noticed before. She walked through it, as emotionless, as mindless as an automaton. Lilah was walking in her sleep.

  The almost-inhuman blankness of her face, the utter lack of recognition or response, was enough to make Con shiver, but now he understood it. No wonder she had denied her trip to the maze last night; she didn’t remember her nightly rambles. With a start, Con realized that Lilah had disappeared through the doorway while he stood here like a dolt.

  He rushed after her and came to an abrupt halt, stunned. Lilah stood in a round room. On the left was a staircase leading downward. The curving walls around her were covered in clocks. Large, small, of every sort, they covered the walls and filled the cabinets. It was the room of his nightmare.

  Con let out a loud and profane exclamation, and Lilah whirled around with a shriek.

  “Lilah. It’s me. Just me.” He held out his hands in a pacific gesture. “You were walking in your sleep.”

  Lilah stared at him, then looked all around the room, confusion and panic mingling in her expression. “Where—no, oh, no...” With a moan, she sank down onto the floor, covering her face with her hands. “I thought it was gone. I thought I could manage it.” Lilah glanced around and shivered. “Please. Let’s go somewhere else.”

  “Of course.” Con took her arm and pulled her up; she was cold as ice. He infused warm good humor into his voice. “I would offer to sweep you up in my arms like any worthwhile hero and carry you to your room, but I fear we might wind up in a messy heap at the foot of that staircase.”

  He was rewarded by her breathy little laugh. “I’d rather not. I’m not a wilting damsel in distress anyway. Just a fool who has no control over what she does,” she finished bitterly.

  “Nonsense.” Con put his arm around
her shoulders and pulled her to his side as they walked down the gallery. “You are without a doubt the most controlled woman I know. Perhaps sometimes you just need to escape those shackles you bind yourself with.”

  “You can see why I have to keep them there. God only knows what I might do otherwise.”

  “Trust me. You won’t act like a madwoman.”

  “Really?” She gave him a skeptical look and pulled away, starting down the stairs. “Look at what I’ve done—apparently I wandered out to the maze last night, and tonight I wound up in Grandfather’s tower.”

  “What is that place anyway?” Con said, only in part to divert her from her self-criticism.

  “It’s the tower room where my grandfather kept his collection. All his clocks and compasses.”

  Con remembered the smaller dials scattered among the clocks. There had been compasses in his dream, as well. It was the very same room. He would swear to it. The thought didn’t bring him any comfort. “Ah, yes, the tower—that tumorous growth at the end of the house.”

  “Yes.” Lilah continued, “Whatever hapless ancestor added the gallery stuck on the tower as well—obviously someone with no understanding of architecture.”

  “Or taste.” Con’s mind buzzed with questions about the bizarre room, but this was hardly the time to interrogate Lilah. He needed to get her warm again, to soothe her shaken nerves. Underlying that was a driving need to take her in his arms and hold her, but he couldn’t let himself do that.

  Con thought of whisking her upstairs to her bedroom, but, considering how it had felt to have her body pressing against his side, he thought her bedchamber might prove to be a dangerous place. Besides, he wanted to talk to her without risking anyone waking up and finding them. God only knew what her idiot cousin would do upon finding Con in Lilah’s bedroom. Probably challenge him to a duel.