Bewitching: His Secret Agenda

by Carla Neggers

  By God, he thought. Then there’d be no stopping him.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “YOU’RE HOME EARLY,” Thackeray said when Hannah reported in upon her return to southern Maine. “I knew your common sense would prevail.”

  She smiled. “It wasn’t common sense, it was self-preservation.”

  “Whatever works.”

  When Hannah looked at her elderly cousin, she couldn’t help but think of Jonathan Harling in Boston. On the surface all the two old men had in common was their age, but Hannah suspected they were much more similar deep down than either would care to admit.

  He shoved a cat off the chair near the fire in his front room. It was cold, dank and foggy on Marsh Point, but Hannah had already been out to the rocks and tasted the ocean. She was home.

  While she had a small winterized cottage close to the water’s edge, Thackeray had a bona fide house, built in 1880, with high ceilings, leaded glass windows and four fireplaces. His wife, a native of Maine, had died ten years ago and they’d had no children, but still he’d managed to clutter up the place. He persisted in subscribing to a dozen magazines, plus the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. He refused to read any of the Boston papers, lest he run across the Harling name, be it a reference to a live one or a dead one. Boston, he maintained, had never been kind to the Marsh family.

  “Tea?” he offered.

  “No, thank you. I just wanted to say hi.”

  “Anything to report?”

  She decided not to tell him she had kissed a Harling, but filled him in on everything else, including the two Jonathan Winthrop Harlings’ suspicion that she was after the rumored copy of the Declaration of Independence. Cousin Thackeray snorted at the very idea. She laughed, appreciating his unconditional support. But it had always been there, as consistent as the tide.

  “What’re you going to do now?” he asked.

  Exorcise Win Harling from my mind....

  “Start writing, I guess,” she said, hating the note of melancholy in her voice. Her life would never be the same after Boston and her brush with the Harlings. “I’ve done more than enough research to get started, at least. I can’t help but feel I ran away from Boston, but I hope that will pass.”

  “You exercised good judgment, that’s all. You didn’t run away from a thing.”

  No, not from a thing. From Win.

  “You’re not the type,” Cousin Thackeray added, clearly convinced, as always, that any Marsh who deliberately avoided a Harling was just doing the right thing.

  Hannah wished she shared his certainty. Instead she could only think about the desire Win Harling stirred up in her with his kisses, his touch, his very presence. And it was not just a matter of physical desire. In spite of their differences, she had felt an emotional connection starting to grow between them, something beyond flaming hormones.

  But staying had become impossible. She simply hadn’t been willing to risk the Harlings finding some way to blame her for Jonathan’s ransacked apartment and the missing Anne Harling diary. She couldn’t risk reigniting their outrage over having lost their beautiful point in southern Maine to a Marsh. She couldn’t risk their finding some loophole—and Win was just the high-minded, bulldog type to find one—that would put it back in their hands.

  She couldn’t risk falling in love with Win Harling.

  She shook her head. No. She really couldn’t. She had her work. It would fill her mind, once she got into it.

  “Hannah?”

  Smiling, she kissed her cousin on the cheek and patted his hand. “It’s good to be back.”

  * * *

  UNCLE JONATHAN HAD spread a detailed map of Maine on Win’s table when he arrived home from work, the evening after Hannah Marsh bolted. It was after eight. He could see his uncle had helped himself to the leftovers of the aborted dinner. The old man had also polished off the last of the wine.

  “Trying to drown your sorrows in work, eh?” Uncle Jonathan said, cocking his head at his nephew.

  Win slung his suit coat over the back of a folding chair. “I had to catch up on a few things.”

  “Distracting woman, that Hannah Marsh. If I didn’t know better, I’d say old Cotton offed her ancestor, just so he could get his mind back on track.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Win said.

  “Of course it is, but if Priscilla Marsh looked anything like your Hannah, she made one hell of a Puritan.” Uncle Jonathan abruptly turned his attention back to his map, running one finger down Maine’s jagged coastline. “There’s another helping of that anemic spaghetti in the refrigerator.”

  “Thanks, but I’m not hungry.”

  “Going to starve yourself over a woman?”

  Win sighed. “I had a late lunch with a client. Uncle Jonathan, what are you doing here?”

  “Besides acquainting myself with the pitiful existence you endure here?”

  “Besides that,” Win said, unable to stop his mouth twitching. He never quite knew when to take his uncle seriously.

  “For heaven’s sake, how much do decent chairs cost? You know, the Harlings have never been cheap. Frugal, yes, but not cheap.”

  “This from a man who hasn’t bought a suit since 1980?”

  “Don’t need one.”

  “The map, Uncle Jonathan.”

  “Oh, yes.” Placing one hand on the small of his back, he stretched, clearly a delaying tactic. He put the half-moon glasses he had hanging around his neck upon the end of his nose and peered more closely at the map. Then he tapped a spot in southern Maine. “That’s Marsh Point.”

  Win leaned over and took a look. “So it is.”

  “You can take Interstate 95 north to Kennebunkport, then get off on Route 1. There’ll be signs you can follow.”

  “‘You’ as in me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why would I go to Marsh Point?”

  Uncle Jonathan exhaled, pursing his thin lips in disgust. “Do I have to spell everything out for you, Winthrop? Hannah Marsh is there.”

  “I know, but what—”

  “She’s probably curled up by the fire with her stolen view of the ocean, studying Anne Harling’s diary for clues about where she can lay her greedy little hands on the Harling Collection and our copy of the Declaration of Independence.”

  Win stood back and crossed his arms over his chest, trying to figure out his uncle. “I thought you liked her.”

  “Did I say that? I’m strictly neutral. I don’t like her or dislike her. I can objectively admit she’s an attractive woman who might discombobulate a stubborn monk like yourself, but that’s not to say I trust her.” He yanked off his smudged glasses. “She can’t help being born a Marsh. It’s in her genes to want whatever she can get from us.”

  “How do you know what she wants is the copy of the Declaration of Independence?”

  “I don’t. Maybe it’s just you.”

  Win scowled.

  “The point is,” Uncle Jonathan went on impatiently, “you can’t wait for her to make the next move.”

  “Uncle, Uncle,” Win said, “who says I’m waiting?”

  * * *

  WITHIN TWO DAYS Hannah knew she would have to take another crack at the Harlings of Boston. Specifically, at J. Winthrop Harling.

  Although she’d resolved to put him out of her mind, she had done a little research on him, thanks to Google, her local library and Cousin Thackeray’s pack-rat habits. Most interesting was the article on him she’d unearthed in the Wall Street Journal. It painted the picture of a financial wizard even richer than Hannah had guessed. He had surprised no one by leaving New York for Boston. It was apparently his destiny to restore the Harlings’ position as an active financial and social force in the community. Having a prestigious name wasn’t enough fo
r him. His purchase of the Harling House on Louisburg Square was, he was quoted as saying, only the beginning, a small step.

  Cotton Harling’s hanging of an innocent woman wasn’t even mentioned. Steeped as she was in Priscilla’s story, Hannah found this omission insulting. “How ’bout a little perspective?” she complained to Cousin Thackeray.

  He sniffed. “Precisely what the Marshes have been saying for three hundred years. One doesn’t begrudge the Harlings their successes or overly enjoy their failures, but putting them in context, it seems to me, isn’t too much to ask.”

  She had also learned that J. Winthrop Harling had never been married. And when he did marry, he would—according to rampant speculation and unnamed sources—likely choose a woman who could further his dream of reclaiming his family’s lost heritage. It sounded pretty calculating to Hannah, but then, Win Harling could be one formidably calculating man.

  Except for their kiss. That hadn’t been calculated.

  Or had it?

  “Thackeray,” she said, “there’s something I’ve been meaning to bring up. It’s about the Harling Collection.”

  He groaned, throwing down his newspaper. He had the business section out, but Hannah knew he’d been reading the comics. “I thought you’d given up on that angle.”

  “Did you know a Marsh had been accused of stealing it?”

  “Even were we all dead and gone for a hundred years, the Harlings will blame us for anything that happens to them that they don’t like.”

  “I’m not talking about us. I’m talking about your Uncle Thackeray, the man you were named for. Not long after the Marshes moved to Maine, the Harlings accused him of having stolen a collection of valuable family papers.”

  “Where’d you hear this?”

  “I found mention of it in an old Maine newspaper.”

  Her elderly cousin snatched up his paper and flipped back to the comics, not bothering to pretend he was reading about the latest stock market tumble. “So?”

  “So, I’m just wondering if things between the Harlings and the Marshes aren’t exactly what they seem.”

  His eyes, as green as hers, narrowed at her over the top of his newspaper. “What have I been trying to tell you these past weeks?”

  “Thackeray, did the Marshes steal the Harling Collection?”

  He didn’t even look up. Chuckling, he wagged a finger at her and made her read a comic strip he found particularly amusing. Hannah didn’t laugh. She thought her cousin was being deliberately obtuse.

  To clear her head and sort out her thoughts, she headed out to the rocks. The tide was coming in, and the wind out of the north was brisk and cold, but the sun glistened on the water. Hannah climbed down below the waterline, out of sight from Thackeray’s house or her own cottage. Careful not to slip on the barnacle-covered rocks, she squatted in front of a yard-wide tide pool soon to be inundated. Waves swirled and frothed all around her. Wearing her jeans, sweatshirt and sneakers, she felt more like herself than she had in weeks.

  A crunching sound on the rocks behind her startled her, and she started to fall backward, putting out a hand to brace herself. She felt barnacles slicing into her palm and cursed. It was probably just a damned seagull. Obviously she wasn’t used to being back in the country yet, away from the city of the Harlings.

  “I thought for a minute there you were heading for the sharks,” Win Harling said above her.

  “You!”

  He jumped lightly from a dry rock, landing next to her tide pool. He grinned. “Me.”

  Hannah regained her balance and shot to her feet, the wind whipping her hair. Caught completely off guard and seeing Win, so damned breathtaking, so incredibly sexy, so unexpected, she needed a few extra seconds of recovery time. “I thought you were a seagull....”

  He laughed. “I suppose people have thought worse about me. Are you all right?”

  “Fine.”

  But he took her hand into his own and examined the scrapes from the barnacles. The skin hadn’t broken. His touch was gentle, careful.

  “I’ll stick it in the ocean,” she said, still breathless. “Ice-cold salt water’s a great cure for just about anything.”

  “Anything?”

  She saw the heat in his eyes. “Win, we need to talk....”

  But talk, she knew, would have to come later. He lifted her into his arms while the wind churned the waves at their feet, spraying them with a fine, cold mist, but all she could feel was the warmth of wanting him.

  “I’d hoped I could think with you out of town,” he murmured, “but I couldn’t. All I could think about was you—and this.”

  She tilted up her chin until her mouth met his, their lips brushing tentatively at first, then hungrily, eagerly. His hands slipped under her sweatshirt to the warm skin at the small of her back, and she sank against his chest, trying, even on the cold, windswept rocks, to meld with his body.

  Then a wave crashed into the tide pool and soaked them to their ankles, its icy water a shock to their overheated systems.

  Win swore.

  Hannah smiled and brushed strands of hair from her face. “Welcome to Maine.”

  * * *

  HANNAH’S COTTAGE WAS about what Win had expected. Its cedar shingles weathered to a soft gray, it stood amid tall pines above the rocks. In the tiny living room, the picture window provided a view of the ocean. A fire in the stone fireplace was just dying down as they entered. Hannah pulled off her wet sneakers and socks and set them in front of the fire while she stirred the red-hot ashes. She threw on some kindling while Win, also barefoot by now, wandered down the short hall, taking note of the two small bedrooms and bath, then back up the hall and into the kitchen, all knotty pine and copper-bottomed pans. The entire floor area would probably fit into his dining room and foyer. It would be sort of like sticking a map of New England inside a map of Texas.

  In contrast to the sparsity of his furnishings and the impersonal, motel-like quality of his spacious rooms on Louisburg Square, every inch of Hannah’s cottage was crammed with stuff. Pot holders, hummingbird magnets, wildlife wall calendars, samplers cross-stitched with silly sayings, old quilts, throw pillows, odd bits of knitting, photo albums, pottery bowls and teapots; all of it vied for space with the mountains of books, files, notebooks, clippings and office equipment.

  The only order he could sense was indirect: Hannah Marsh seemed absolutely at home here. She padded about with an ease that he hadn’t sensed in Boston.

  He spotted a yellowed newspaper picture of himself, then saw that it was the vile profile from the Wall Street Journal. He hadn’t agreed with the writer’s highly subjective, not to mention uncomplimentary, slant on his motives for making money. Couldn’t a man simply be drawn to a job that he did well and that also happened to pay well?

  The fire caught and Hannah stood back, appraising her handiwork with satisfaction. Or relief? Perhaps it had occurred to her that he might have suggested they manage without a fire.

  “Nice place,” Win said. “How long have you lived here?”

  “Almost five years.”

  “Before that?”

  “Oh, here and there. I traveled a lot.”

  She wasn’t so much being evasive, he thought, as cryptic, holding back a part of herself from him. But that was all right. He had conducted his own research into the life of Hannah Priscilla Marsh, finding a thorough, if brief, biography of her in the New York Times Book Review’s critique of her study of Martha Washington. Hannah, the only child of an army officer and his would-be artist wife, had led the peripatetic life of a member of a military family until her father’s death in a helicopter crash when she was fourteen. She and her mother had then wandered from art school to art school, until Hannah had finally gone off to college. Her mother had eventually settled in Arizona, making her living as a painter and
teaching as a volunteer in low-income neighborhoods. Her death five years ago had left Hannah alone, until she’d found her cousin and Marsh Point...and that elusive sense of belonging Win thought he understood.

  These details were just a few important pieces of the puzzle that was Hannah Marsh.

  “How’s your uncle doing?” she asked, her tone conversational.

  “Just fine, thanks.”

  “Did he ever report his break-in to the police?”

  Win thought he detected a note of suspicion in her tone. “No, why?”

  “Just curious.”

  More than curious, he decided. “You have a theory, don’t you?”

  “Nope.”

  She shoveled free a space on the sofa for him and disappeared into the kitchen without another word. Win sighed and sat down. The fire crackled, and he could hear the rhythmic crashing of the waves on the rocks. It was an almost erotic sound. Or maybe his mind was just being driven in that direction.

  Hannah, Hannah.

  She wandered back in a few minutes with a tray of mugs, teapot, English butter cookies and crackers. She set them down upon an old apple crate she used as a coffee table, atop a stack of overstuffed manila folders. “Be back in a sec,” she said, and disappeared again. When she returned, she held a pottery pitcher, sugar bowl and a tea strainer, which she set over one of the mugs.

  She poured the tea, and he immediately noted that it was purple. Honest-to-God ordinary tea was bad enough.

  She smiled. “It’s black currant—very soothing.”

  “Do I look as if I need soothing?”

  Color spread into her cheeks. Seeing her discomfort—her awareness—was almost worth having to drink purple tea. “It’s great with milk and sugar,” she added quickly, “almost like eating a cobbler.”

  The “almost” was a stretch, but at least he could drink the stuff without gagging.

  “Do you like it?” she asked, seating herself on a rattan rocker.

  “It tastes like tea with something that shouldn’t be in tea.”

  “I’ve been drinking more herbal teas lately.”