Gift of Gold

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  The man had also had a bawdy sense of humor. Jonas savored one of the light carnival songs Lorenzo had penned for a holiday procession. It was a paean to Bacchus, desire, and dance. Wine, women, and song. But underneath the bright lyrics was a subtle warning that life was short and it was foolish to postpone pleasure and happiness. Lorenzo must have had a few premonitions. He had died at the age of forty-three.

  Jonas reflected briefly on the sobering thought of just how close he himself was getting to forty-three. He had wasted a lot of years running from something he still didn’t understand, let alone know how to control. Some would say he had taken Lorenza’s advice and opted for life’s pleasures during the past five years, but he knew better.

  He got up out of the steel and gray-leather armchair and walked to the window. He had taken off his shirt and boots earlier and now wore only his jeans. He had planned to go straight to bed but that had proved impossible. The room was filled with a disturbing influence that made him restless and uneasy.

  Jonas didn’t like the room, the house, or the whole situation. Its sense of wrongness was stronger than ever. Everything about Caitlin Evanger set off his internal alarm signals. He only wished he could make Verity understand his feelings, but she was hell-bent on being Caitlin’s friend. He stared out into the darkness and wondered again how much that woman knew about his past.

  The damn room was really getting to him. It didn’t take any great intuition to guess the immediate source of his problem tonight. Jonas had known what the trouble was right from the start. It was that rapier hanging on the wall. The thing was packed with resonance. He had been trying to ignore the weapon for the past hour.

  At the window, he focused his thoughts on himself. He had put off his future long enough. Now that he had found Verity he knew he was on the brink of coming to terms with that future as well as with his past.

  The storm that had been gathering out at sea all afternoon had just struck an hour ago and was now in full regalia. Rain hammered the bulbous windows and the wind screamed as it lashed the cliffs. Jonas thought fleetingly about Caitlin’s story of the death of the house’s previous owner. Then he wondered if Verity was lying awake in bed listening to the storm and thinking about Sandquist’s ghost.

  There were times when she would look at Jonas in a certain way that gave him the eerie feeling that she saw more than he intended her to see.

  His mind leaped from that disquieting thought to the memory of the night he had made love to her. He had been so desperate for her after handling the dueling pistol. After chasing her down the endless corridor in his mind, he had been unable to resist catching her for real and pinning her safely beneath him.

  His body tightened with the tension of gathering desire as he tormented himself with the recollection of what it was like to make love to Verity. He had lost himself in her softness that night. He wanted nothing more than to lose himself that way again. It was taking all his self-control these days to live up to his promise to take things slowly. He could still feel the sweet pressure of her legs and the sharp edges of her nails as she clung to him. She had been so tight and hot and sweetly, innocently sensual.

  Jonas still marveled that she had waited all these years to experience the mysteries of passion. Then he grimaced wryly at the memory of his haste and clumsiness. In one very important way, he acknowledged, Verity was still waiting to experience the mysteries of passion. She had not found the ultimate satisfaction in his arms that first time and had kicked him out of bed before he could give it a second try.

  They had been dancing around each other ever since; a frustrating, precariously balanced pattern of advance and retreat that was bound to explode sooner or later. Jonas hoped it would be sooner. His body ached to possess again the fire in Verity.

  He turned away from the window, grimly aware of his aroused state. Just the thought of Verity lying naked in his arms was enough to put him in this condition. It was ludicrous. At his age he should have a hell of a lot more self-control. Maybe a cold shower would help.

  At least the dull ache of desire had one positive side effect, he reflected as he walked past the shadowed rapier: it helped take his mind off the weapon. He stepped into the stainless steel bathroom and flipped on the light.

  The cold-water treatment would be excruciating but probably fairly effective. It should help him gain some control over his rampaging hormones. At this rate Verity was going to drive him crazy. The little tyrant probably didn’t even realize what she was doing to him. He wondered how much more time he could afford to give her before he lost his sanity.

  He had his hands on the buttons of his jeans, and was wishing they were on the fastenings of Verity’s pants, when he became dizzyingly aware of the rapier.

  For an instant a series of violent emotions flitted through his brain. Fury, lust, fear.

  No doubt about it, the pull of the thing was getting stronger. The remnants of the past that still clung to the steel of the rapier were powerful. Too powerful. He knew he had better stop trying to fight them.

  Jonas stalked across the room to examine the weapon. Proximity was a factor, he knew. The closer he was to an object carrying the residue of old violence, the more he was affected by it. It would help if he got the rapier out of the room. He decided to store it in a closet overnight.

  He went to the wall, aware of the increasing level of his awareness as he approached the old metal. No doubt about it, the thing was genuine. He was willing to bet the steel had been forged in Milan. No reproduction would be screaming silently at him the way this thing was. It was from the era to which he was most psychically vulnerable.

  Jonas reached up and tentatively took hold of the edges of the plaque. He didn’t dare touch the rapier itself. It was generating too much emotional energy.

  He lifted the plaque from the wall and started toward the closet, thinking that if Verity saw him now she would be certain he was crazy. A part of Jonas secretly wondered if he really was crazy.

  He was halfway across the room when he realized he’d made a terrible miscalculation. He was in big trouble.

  His fingers were well clear of the steel, but Jonas reeled under a wave of powerful emotions that had been generated four hundred years in the past. He was suddenly in the endless corridor. It was already coalescing around him and he knew that the spectral tentacles of old feelings would be waiting. And they would find him soon, seeking with a rampaging hunger. Instinctively he fought the compulsion to fling himself heedlessly down the psychic tunnel. That way lay madness. He had always known that. There was no way to outrun the snakelike ribbons of old hate and lust and vengeance.

  Sweat dampened his forehead and trickled down his sides in tiny rivulets. Jonas hung on to the remnants of his consciousness with all his willpower. He staggered and lost his balance, going down on one knee.

  He had to get rid of the blade. He had to drop the metal plaque on which the rapier was mounted.

  It was so simple. All he had to do was drop the damn thing.

  Jonas struggled to relax his grip. But the pull of the rapier was far more violent and compelling than he had expected. Under assault, he sensed with grim shock that it had never been worse than this except that day in the lab when he’d almost killed a man.

  Few things he had ever touched had hit him this hard. Tonight he was going to lose himself in the dark corridor. He was going to be overwhelmed by the past. It would either kill him or drive him out of his mind.

  He had been a fool to touch the plaque. He should have guessed how powerful the rapier on it was. But it had been so long since he had experimented with an object from his prime time period that he had almost forgotten how strong the past could be. Perhaps he had grown overconfident because of his experience with the dueling pistols the other night.

  Or perhaps that subtle confidence had started growing in him the day he had found Verity.

  Jonas shoo
k his head, groping for the reason why he had gotten away with handling the pistols.

  He remembered picking up one of the guns and simultaneously reaching for Verity in his mind. She had been there, running ahead of him down the corridor. He had chased her. He hadn’t been able to touch her but had gotten close enough to learn that she exerted as much pull on him as the gun itself. What’s more, the twisting ribbons of emotion were drawn to her. She could chain them.

  Verity.

  If he could touch her now, Jonas knew, be stood a chance of escaping the compulsion of the rapier. He had to get to Verity.

  Jonas struggled to his feet. The effort sent him reeling against the bed, where the metal plaque was jarred from his grasp and hit the floor with a sharp thud. The rapier bounced free, clattering.

  Before Jonas could get out of the way, the weapon rolled twice and came to a halt against his bare foot.

  Fury rippled through him. Raw, murderous, overwhelming fury. He would kill the man who had tried to rape his lady. He would see the bastard’s blood soaking into the tiles of the palazzo before the light of the new day dawned.

  Jonas reached down and scooped up the rapier. He had to get to Verity. His red-haired lady was in mortal jeopardy. He had to get to her and kill the man who threatened her.

  Chapter Nine

  Verity was hovering on the edge of a dream when the door to her bedroom opened with a crash. She struggled up out of sleep, wondering vaguely if the storm had smashed one of the insect-eye windows. Sitting up against the pillows, she blinked sleep out of her eyes.

  Although the room was in darkness, she noticed a patch of lighter gray where the door should have been. It was then she realized that the door was open and she was looking out into the shadowed hall. Before she had time to wonder how the door had been flung back on its hinges, she saw the figure of a man looming in the opening. She could barely make out the object he held in his right hand. Then it came to her.

  A rapier.

  She tried to scream but in that instant the man moved into the room, gliding forward in a fencer’s crouch. Lightning crackled outside the window, briefly illuminating his lean, powerful figure and the menacing shape of the naked blade he held. She knew then who it was. Stunned shock ricocheted through her.

  “Jonas.”

  The figure jerked at the sound of his name as if one of the bolts of lightning had struck him. She saw him shake his head as if to clear it and then he came toward her soundlessly to stop at the foot of the bed. While she saw the blade gripped firmly in his hand, it was not pointed at her. Verity scrambled backward until she was crouched against the wall.

  “Jonas, for God’s sake, what’s wrong?” The words were hoarse with fear and tension.

  “Touch me.” Jonas’s voice was so raw it was almost unrecognizable. “Touch me.”

  He was in the grip of some terrible nightmare, Verity thought. As long as he held the rapier, she didn’t dare get near him. Caught up in his fevered dream, he might easily mistake her for some imagined foe. He held the rapier as if he knew how to use it, even in a nightmare. Warily she edged over to the side of the bed.

  It was then she realized that there was something wrong with the room. It seemed to be curving around her, cutting her off from reality. A new fear washed over her.

  “Jonas, wake up. Do you hear me? Wake up!”

  He tracked her sidling movements with eyes that burned in the darkness. “Verity, touch me. Hold me or I’ll never make it. Touch me.”

  She wanted to run but the desperation in his voice forbade it. Verity got to her feet beside the bed, her nightgown tangling with her legs. She took a deep breath, searching for the words that might bring Jonas out of his delirium.

  He took a step closer to her and she realized that now he was much too close. She was trapped.

  The room finished its bizarre twisting movement and she was back in that terrible corridor she had found herself in the night Jonas had picked up the dueling pistol.

  “Verity, don’t run from me.”

  She heard the words in her mind, echoing down the tunnel from a great distance. They sent panic through her. She knew now for certain that it was Jonas who was hunting her in that dark, endless corridor. In her mind she tried to flee but her legs would barely move. It was like running through quicksand. She was in a waking nightmare of her own.

  “Hold me. Hold me or I’m lost.”

  The words were a fierce command and a poignant plea. It was the plea that touched her soul. Verity came to a shaky halt in the corridor and turned helplessly to confront the man who pursued her. She could not run from that desperate demand.

  For a shattering instant she couldn’t see him. The tunnel was dark and yet there was shape and form to it. She was aware of Jonas’s presence, aware of him closing the gap between them, but she could not yet identify him. Something moved in the shadows and once more Verity wanted to flee. Every instinct warned her to turn and run.

  “No. Don’t run from me. I need you. Help me.”

  Verity gasped for air as if she had been running for her life. And then she took a step forward in the bedroom. Simultaneously she was moving again in the corridor; making her way toward the voice that had called out to her. Shadows swirled mistily around her. She was afraid to look at them too closely.

  Lightning crackled again and a fierce, hot whiteness temporarily lit the room. Verity, dazed, saw two realities at once, the room where she had been sleeping and the inside of the dark corridor. Jonas still held the rapier there in the bedroom but he was holding out one hand to Verity. His lightning-lit face was a mask of savage intensity.

  Verity saw the hunger, desperate hope, and violent command in his eyes before the white glare faded. She hesitated no longer. She didn’t know what was wrong but she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jonas needed her.

  She broke free of her paralysis and hurled herself across the room into his arms. She came up against his hard, bare chest with enough impact to send a shudder through him. He brought his left arm around her in a rough, near-violent embrace.

  “Verity!”

  In the corridor in her mind, she simultaneously found Jonas in the shadows and reached for him. His outstretched hand touched hers. Ribbons of violent color, black, bloody, some the shade of steel, roared out of the tunnel’s darkness and whirled around her as if drawn to her. She had the impression they wanted to cling to Jonas but were sidetracked by her presence.

  Verity tried to scream and couldn’t.

  “It’s all right,” Jonas said there in the corridor. “They can’t hurt you. You have power over them. You draw them and hold them. You can chain them for me; you’re my anchor.”

  She didn’t understand anything he was saying but in the bedroom the rapier clattered to the floor at her feet and Jonas’s other hand closed convulsively around Verity.

  The curving walls of the corridor vanished.

  Another deep shudder went through Jonas. Verity wrapped her arms around him and held on as if he might somehow slip away from her. She heard the sound of his deep, heaving breaths and felt his face as he buried it in her hair.

  “Verity. Verity.” Jonas was holding on to her as if she were his lifeline. His body was hard and fiercely aroused. “You don’t know…you can’t even guess what it means—what you did. You held on to those things and you held me here” His hands moved over her as if he were trying to assure himself that she was real. He dropped a thousand urgent little kisses into her hair, on her temple, down her throat. Hot, equally urgent words poured over her in a mixture of triumph and relief. “If only you knew what you just did. Dammit to hell, honey, I can’t explain…Not now. Not yet. I need you. God, how I need you.”

  “Jonas, please, tell me what happened.” She raised her head and cradled his hard face between her palms as she tried to steady him long enough to get an explanation out of him. “Wha
t was going on just then?”

  “Later,” he breathed, kissing her forcefully back into silence. “Later. Everything later. I swear. Right now I need you. I have to have you. I’m on fire for you. Put your hands on me. Feel me. Feel how much I want you. I’m going to explode.”

  He caught hold of one of her wrists and pushed her hand down to where his jeans were stretched taut over a heavy erection. Verity flinched at the heat in him. She tried to free her hand but he held it where he wanted it, groaning thickly as she cradled him.

  The fighter’s tension that had gripped Jonas when he entered her bedroom earlier had transformed itself into violent sexual desire. Verity could feel the change in him. She realized with a shock that the two emotions seething within him were not unrelated. The knowledge alarmed her, but before she could deal with it Jonas picked her up and tossed her lightly onto the bed. Then he yanked at the fastening of his jeans. A moment later he was naked, fully aroused and ready. His expression in the shadows was taut and intent. Muscles rippled smoothly across his shoulders as he came toward her.

  Verity sucked in her breath as he lowered himself quickly to the bed and sprawled heavily on top of her. His need for her was as irresistible as the tide. She was suddenly pulsing with her own feminine desire.

  His legs tangled with hers and his hands pushed up the hem of her nightgown until the material bunched around her.

  “I want you,” Jonas rasped. “I want you so damn much. I have to have you. You belong to me.”

  She was catching fire under his touch. His urgency was now hers. Verity twisted beneath him, responding recklessly to the relentless emotions that were driving Jonas. She was swamped with a cascade of feelings that ran the gamut from fearful excitement to an aching desire for surrender. She felt wild and free and chained all at once.

  “Yes,’’ she cried out softly as his palm closed over her dampening female flesh. She arched against his possessive touch and clutched at his shoulders. “Yes, Jonas.”