Love Entwined

by Danita Minnis

  “Wait.” Her heels clicked up the wide flagstones. She reached the landing and stopped to catch her breath. “Please, wait.”

  The corridors were dim in this closed-off wing of the manor. Weak, gray light came through velvet hangings in the long hall on either side.

  The woman stood far across the hall in front of the ballroom doors. As always, only auburn curls were visible where she stood in the alcove. She turned toward Amelie and the crying stopped.

  Amelie took a step closer. “Will you tell me what happened to you?”

  “They have deceived you, Amelie.”

  “What?”

  “You could not have known how you’ve helped them. How they have always sought your help.”

  The crying began anew.

  “I—I don’t understand.” She looked up and down the corridor. The crying was all around her. It reverberated off the walls. It whispered off the drapes.

  She tried to take a step closer to the woman, but could not move her legs. The velvet hangings swirled through the corridor.

  “Your lover’s rubies. Such an intricate design.”

  “Emil Garamonde? Do you mean Bijou?”

  The woman inclined her head. “D’accord. The oldest deceivers.”

  “My designs.” The wailing was so loud now Amelie covered her ears. “What did they do with my designs?”

  The woman’s voice resounded in her head. “Designs crafted especially for their purpose. For Artisan. You will remember, Amelie.”

  “But I don’t remember,” she screamed. Holding a hand out in front of her, she leaned into the blowing air to stay on her feet. “I can’t help you if you won’t tell me what you’re talking about!”

  “Bon, you are ready,” was the woman’s confusing response as shadows gathered and the hall darkened.

  Amelie pushed. The wind took her breath so that she had to turn her head. “Emil is dead!”

  The woman walked slowly toward her, pale gold skirts billowing. “Non. He waits.”

  She did not speak but saved her strength to take a hard-earned step toward the woman across the hall. She had to see the woman’s face.

  Thunder rolled. The glass panes shook throughout the corridor.

  When the wind changed direction, Amelie exhaled triumphantly. She pushed forward. She had to see. The woman was still too far away in shadows.

  “Understand this.” All the bronze wall sconces in the hall turned on and suddenly the woman’s face was directly in front of her. “They live forever.”

  Amelie gasped and backed away.

  Auburn hair framed a heart-shaped face. Emerald eyes glinted into hers. One highly arched brow lifted in satisfaction as Amelie stared into the familiar features of her own face.

  * * * *

  Amelie had a habit of humming the French lullaby Frère Jacques. She was damn near seducing him with her husky tone. He watched her walking about as carefree as if she were on holiday and not toiling away in the drafting room on this brilliant April day. Her smile was infectious and confusing at the same time.

  What is her game?

  “I missed you at dinner last night. Simon and my PR man left yesterday. It would have been the first dinner you and I were able to have together since I returned from Germany. Didn’t you miss me?”

  Frère Jacques stopped. Amelie’s lips quirked in the most serene expression. “Caro brought a tray up for me.”

  Annoyed that she had not missed him, he shot out, “Not feeling well?”

  Her carefree laughter hit that part of him that wanted to pound into her. “No, silly, I’m feeling fine.”

  Silly?

  He put his mechanical pencil down. “You spent the entire day and night in your suite. What were you doing?”

  “Really? Well, I was…” She bit her lower lip thoughtfully. “I must have been sleeping.” She sighed contentedly and looked down at her sketch. “I love this contour, but I would have something sharper at the end. More…moderne. Oui?” She turned her mechanical pencil upside down and began erasing. When done, she looked up at him and her large, emerald eyes crinkled at the ends. “I want to tell you something.”

  “Do tell.”

  “I love this house. St. Clair Manor is a treasure.” She put down her mechanical pencil. “But you don’t feel it?”

  Her hands folded on the drafting board waiting for his answer. He stared at those hands. They were always so efficient with some creation or another. But today…with as much as they had accomplished, everything those graceful hands had created was with gentleness, as if savoring every stroke of pencil on paper. There was something different about her today.

  He sat back on his stool. “I’m not sure I know what you mean. What am I supposed to be feeling?”

  She picked up her pencil and caressed it between thumb and forefinger while examining her sketch. “This restless desire you have to explore the themes of the old masters. You wonder why you’re driven to alter the line with which your father had such success.”

  He couldn’t take his eyes off that pencil her peach-lacquered nails slid over so sensually. “Yes…we had taken chances before with designs we were assured would not go over,” he heard himself say. “We reveled in the glory afterward when those same critics followed suit with thinly veiled knock-offs.”

  She inclined her head. “D’accord, your father was a risk-taker, a master artisan who used his talent for good. But you are even more. You are a warrior, Roman, like Grandfather Ian. You were born to the hunt.”

  He was speechless as her mechanical pencil lightened in color…the palest yellow…that transformed to white. The end of her white pencil formed two sets of hooves. They split apart and two miniature Arabians galloped across the white sheet. So small, and yet their hooves resounded in his head…

  “Do not let this hunger for more bother you, Roman. Your father Giles did his work, and now it is time for yours. It is time for the hunt. This is your destiny, ma chérie.”

  He dragged his eyes away from those tiny galloping hooves to look at her face, this woman who looked like Amelie. She was sensual and seductive in the most relaxed way. Amelie was those things but she buried them as if they were dirty little secrets. This woman, who looked him in the eye with sexual confidence—even persuasion—was not trying to be something she was not. She knew her power over him, was amused by it.

  The hairs on the back of his hand prickled, looking into those probing emerald eyes. “And how do you know my destiny?” He whispered, almost expecting her to answer.

  A clap of thunder echoed outside.

  He glanced across the room and was momentarily blinded by white light that electrified the casement windows.

  He shook sense into his head. It was a minute before he could speak. “When did it start raining?”

  “She is crying,” Amelie murmured, staring out the window. She sighed, and wiping her brow, sat down on the drafting stool. “She has been crying all night.” Gone was the lightness in her tone. Her suit of armor was back, her expression wary. Her pencil was, of course, just a mechanical pencil. He must have been daydreaming.

  “Who has been crying?”

  “Jacqueline. What do you know of her, Roman?”

  He got up from his stool and walked the room. He’d been sitting too long, and stretched. “There is no one here by that name, Amelie.” He rubbed his eyes. He was suddenly so tired he was thinking about going to his room for a nap.

  “Tell me what you know.” Amelie was right behind him.

  He looked into her eyes. Amelie’s concerned eyes. “Very well, then. There is an old wives’ tale of the Lady of the Manor.”

  “Old wives’ tale? Nothing more…recent?”

  “No.” He folded his arms. “I imagine Caroline has been spouting this superstitious nonsense to you.”

  “Caroline has done no such thing. You leave her alone, Roman. Who is the Lady of the Manor?”

  “I don’t know. I have never heard the name Jacqueline in reference to the Lady
of the Manor, and I have never seen her.”

  “But someone has?”

  “My mother claimed to have seen her.”

  “The Lady came to Celeste Cardiff,” she murmured in thought.

  He held up a hand when she started to speak. “My mother was very ill. It was during that time that she told my father the Lady came to her.”

  “What does she want?”

  He paced away from her. “Amelie, this is an old shire, with even older inhabitants who should have all gone to their reward at least fifty years ago. These are just ghost stories, at best.”

  “She must want something. Haven’t you ever tried to find out what that is?”

  “I have never had the opportunity because she is not here, Amelie,” he said in exasperation.

  “What of your father, or his father?”

  He chuckled mirthlessly. “The master artisan and the warrior, as you called them?”

  “I did not.”

  “A minute ago you were acting as if you knew my father and grandfather. What did you do, read about them somewhere?” He expelled a breath and lowered his voice. “I think I’ve been too hard of a taskmaster on you.”

  “What did Jacqueline tell your mother?”

  “This is ridiculous, Amelie!”

  She stared him down, and he threw up his hands. “Years ago, my mother claims the Lady told her that someone was going to kill my father. As was widely reported in the news, my father suffered a massive stroke after living a long and happy life. Now do you see what foolishness it all is?”

  Thunder rolled.

  Amelie walked toward the window as wind lashed the panes. She stood before the glass with shoulders hunched, watching the storm build.

  He shook his head, sorry now that he’d shouted at her. “We need a break. Let’s have lunch.”

  * * * *

  The following week, Roman met with his security Chief Bryant. They had not come any closer to finding who tried to kill him in London. Surveillance did not pick up the Mercedes’ plate. According to Bryant, his team reported the car had virtually disappeared in one of the blackest fogs known on London’s streets once it cleared the garage’s exit. Roman ended the meeting on that note, of a mind to replace Bryant’s security company.

  Black fog, indeed.

  He strode into the drafting room.

  Amelie had much to do with his temperament and he wanted to spend the next few quiet hours observing her. She spent more and more time in her suite and seemed quite happy to while away hours roaming the manor doing God-knows-what alone. It was good to know she felt so comfortable in this ancient stone monument to his family, but for some reason it disturbed him. Sometimes he felt that he couldn’t reach her, even across the drafting room.

  She had not mentioned her dead lover once in the last two weeks. He watched in vain for any sign of angst.

  Was his would-be killer killed by a woman scorned? Or someone Garamonde had swindled out of money? The authorities might never be able to untangle the deceased heir of Bijou’s life of lies.

  Even while immersed in the quiet fury of creating designs, he took note there were no more attempts on his life. But he was not satisfied yet.

  He put down his pencil and stared across the drafting table at her so long that Amelie looked up with an amused smile. He didn’t even blink.

  “I am buying Bijou.”

  Her smile was gone in an instant. “I heard. Congratulations.”

  “Well now, that’s not a very congratulatory tone, Beauty. But I know how close you and Emil were. I should forgive you.” He watched the tremor in that small, elegant hand.

  She stopped drawing and put her charcoal down. “It was not that way.” The silence lengthened until a fat tear rolled down her cheek and plopped onto the drafting board.

  He came around the table and brushed the tears away. “You cry for him?”

  “Never.” She got up to stand in front of the casement window. “He used me. Salaud.”

  “Yes, he was a bastard.” He was right behind her, close enough to smell the perfume of her wine-colored hair. She uprooted his senses, reduced him to the most primal being with the weapons in her arsenal; tears, laughter, or blazing anger, it didn’t matter. She was the most genuine woman he had ever met. He wanted her. “What do you mean that he used you?”

  “At first, he was so sweet and always there. And then…well, he wasn’t. We completed the Artisan Collection anyway and were about to start on another project when his fiancée called the office. Emil wasn’t around and I took the call. She congratulated me on a job well done. ” Her shoulders shook.

  He took her in his arms.

  “I left the new project that day. I have not seen him since. I’ve turned into a crybaby.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “I have soaked your shirt, just as I did that night in the vault.” She tried to pull away, but he tightened his hold on her. When she couldn’t get free, she kept her eyes trained on his chest. Finally, she looked up at him.

  He held her gaze. “I have not forgotten that night.”

  Her tongue glided over that bottom lip; a sexy, nervous gesture that had his lips aching for hers. And then came too many words that had nothing to do with the two of them.

  “It is my fault. I should never have gotten involved with Emil. I let my guard down when I should have focused on the assignment. That’s all he wanted of me anyway, despite what I chose to believe. I was such a stupid, romantic fool.”

  He put a finger to her lips. “That is the very best kind, you know.”

  Her laugh came out as a sob, and then she hiccupped.

  He didn’t know how, but they were connected in some way. Even while he fought for purchase of this uncomfortable reality, he was a man possessed. She was not the type of woman he wanted to get involved with. She wanted a relationship. Marriage would certainly follow suit, and he had no such intentions. But for all that, he could not allow her to avoid what was between them a moment more.

  He rubbed her back, bringing her closer. “Don’t let him do this to you, Amelie. Don’t let one man ruin the rest of your life. Don’t let him keep you from me.” His lips came down on hers. When she wrapped her arms around his neck, he lifted her to the drafting table.

  He was working on the buttons of her sweater but the damned things were so small and there were so many of them, and she was pulling him down. Finally, he just tugged the sweater over her head. Neither of them heard the knock on the door.

  “Ah-hem. Sorry to disturb. Your four o’clock is here, sir.” James said. The lackluster drawl he affected compromised by laughing eyes.

  Amelie jumped off the drafting board and pulled Roman in front of her.

  James bent and retrieved the discarded sweater, which Roman had thrown clear across the drafting table. The sketch in his other hand had been shoved off the table with all the rest when Roman had served Amelie up for a feast. He handed the sweater to Roman while examining the sketch. “This is quite something.”

  Amelie plucked her sweater from Roman’s hand. “Th—thank you, James,” she said from behind Roman’s back.

  Drunk from the sweet musky scent of her, Roman worked to focus on the butler’s words. He had the good sense to remain where he stood while Amelie dressed. “I thought the Western region contracts were next week.”

  “I do believe that is tomorrow’s engagement,” James said, walking to the door. “Tonight you have a date with the Central region. Indeed, you are promised to Mr. Cobbs and Mr. Marchant for dinner. The contracts are to be consummated this evening for overnight delivery.” James’s droll summation left them both speechless as he walked out of the drafting room.

  “Cheeky bastard.” Roman pushed the hair out of his eyes. “Will you come to dinner?”

  “If I do, you will not be attending to business.” She was still flushed.

  God, she looked so alive right now. He tasted her lips once more. “Tonight, then.”

  Chapter 13

 
North Yorkshire, England – April 1988

  The next morning, there was a knock on the sitting room door.

  Amelie opened it a crack.

  Roman was dressed in faded jeans. They were not tight, that wasn’t his style. That was one of the things she liked about him—he didn’t try. Not that he had to. The man’s confidence was as breathtaking as that prominent bulge the denim would never cover up.

  His eyes traveled over her silk nightgown. “Good morning Beauty, I hope you slept better than I did.”

  She stood on tiptoe to nip his lips. “I told myself I wasn’t going to fall asleep and the next thing I knew the sun was in my eyes. You should have woken me.” He lifted her against him and deepened the kiss. He pressed into her and, too soon, set her back down on her feet, keeping her close with an arm around the waist.

  “It was late by the time I came up and you’ve been working so hard, I didn’t have the heart. There is another meeting later and if I stay here, they won’t leave me alone.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “You want me to aid you in an escape.”

  His eyes dropped down to her hips and his hands followed. “There is a hunting cabin I want to show you. I thought you might like to go horseback riding this morning.”

  “I’ve never ridden Arabians before! I would love to ride. I haven’t ridden since…”

  “University?” His dimples made her breath catch in her throat.

  A frisson of desire coursed through her. No, since I dreamed of you, she thought, but said with a mock grimace, “Oui, monsieur, you avail yourself of every opportunity to point out what an un-fun life I lead.”

  He had the audacity to give her a curt nod in agreement. He turned to walk away, and then turned back. “One more thing. I don’t own Arabians. What made you think I did?”

  “I see them galloping near the River Wharfe sometimes. They are so beautiful.” The expression on his face made her add, “They must belong to someone else.”

  “That someone else lives miles away. My nearest neighbors are in Scarborough. That’s a long way for prize horses to roam. You’re certain that you saw them?”