Blackmailed Bride

“Idle village gossip. I hadn’t thought you the gullible sort.” He opened a drawer, the solid flex of his muscles beneath the shirt uninterrupted by her barb. He searched the drawer’s contents, slammed it shut, then started on the next. “Everyone has a price.”

“You don’t even know who I am.” Arms crossed over her chest, Cathlynn waited for his next move, icy expectation standing between them.

He stopped suddenly. His shadow loomed long and spectral on the wall behind him. “Your name is Cathlynn O’Connell and you’re an antiques dealer from Nashua.”

His smile caught her off guard. It lit up his face in a most attractive way, and she almost forgot her anger.

“How did you know?” She turned away from the desk, eclipsing his smile from her sight.

He picked up an index card and let it float back to his desk. “Your registration card for the auction.”

He resumed his search and came up with an antique silver frame, then handed it to her, his fingers hesitating for a moment against hers. She took the frame more to break the unnerving contact than anything else, but a warm shiver still managed to snake through her. Even as she focused on the picture, she couldn’t stop the heated hum where skin had touched skin.

The photograph showed the face of a happy bride. The hair color, framed in white lace, was different than hers, she noted—darker, richer. The eyes also appeared darker, but the picture’s colors had mutated with time. The facial features were similar enough that Sterling might put down to maturity the differences in their looks. Yes, the young girl in the picture might have grown into something like her. A shiver crawled along her scalp and slid down her spine.

“Uncanny, isn’t it?” Jonas’s voice startled her from her reverie.

“Yes.” Cathlynn placed the picture on the desk and retreated to the fireplace. She needed warmth to thaw the cold ice clogging her veins.

“Think of this as a vacation.”

“I haven’t said I’ll take your offer.” She rubbed her hands and offered her palms to the heat emanating from the weaving flames.

“I saw the way you looked at that piece of glass.” Jonas came to stand behind her. His presence pulsated along her skin, raising the hairs along her arms in static protest. “I saw how fervently you tried to hide your desire while you bid.” His breath caressed her hair like a Chinook wind. “You want the Aidan Heart more than you want anything else in the world.” His voice wooed her like a gentle spring breeze. “What’s a few weeks of your life for something you want so much?”

His fingers reached for her shoulders and the possessive weight of his palms felt as if it burned a hole through her coat. “Cathlynn…”

Her name sang into her soul and echoed in her mind. He’d said it so gently, she could almost believe this dark man had a heart. And God help her, she couldn’t leave without the Aidan Heart.

What were a few weeks when she’d searched for her ancestor’s sculpture for most of her life?

A log in the fireplace broke in half and crashed on the hot bed of coals, sending up a shower of sparks.

“Why do you need me to pretend I’m Alana?” Cathlynn asked, trying to figure out exactly what she’d get herself into if she accepted. Her throat felt dry, her palms sweaty. “How do you expect to fool Sterling? What if he sees a more recent picture of her?”

“That won’t be a problem.”

Jonas slipped his hands from her shoulders, and Cathlynn found herself inexplicably bereft. “Won’t he find it suspicious that there are no pictures lying about?”

Jonas returned to his desk. “Alana hated to have her picture taken. She didn’t realize this picture existed. It’s the only one I have of her. You’ll do it then? You’ll play Alana?”

“I haven’t said so. I still don’t know exactly what you expect from me. What if Sterling wants to talk about Alana’s family, her past?”

“I’ll coach you on the basics. You’ll do your best to avoid him most of the time.” Jonas sat down in the big leather chair behind his desk. “Basically, you need to be seen but not heard until Sterling leaves after Alana’s birthday.”

“Why?”

“Because there’s a lot at stake.” Guarded tension stretched his features taut. Secrets, dark and dangerous, oozed from his every pore, igniting her curiosity and firing urgent warnings along her strained nerves like the dots and dashes of Morse code.

“Like what?” Cathlynn dragged a chair by his desk and sat down. Even if the village gossip proved true, he needed her alive, she had nothing to fear from him.

“Like a trust fund worth millions that reverts to her in a few weeks’ time on her 30th birthday.”

Greed, always a good motive for murder. Why hadn’t anyone else thought of it? But then, only the gossip of old ladies had Alana dead. To the rest of the logical world she was merely missing. And wouldn’t he wait until after the signing over of the trust to kill her?

“As her husband, won’t you inherit?”

Jonas picked up a pencil from his desk and tapped it on his other hand in an annoying nervous rhythm. His eyes hardened, putting more distance between them. “With Alana missing, there will be delays and I need my promised share now to continue my work. I’m close to a breakthrough. She couldn’t have picked a worse time to…leave.”

“That sounds awfully cold.”

The pencil stilled; the eyes didn’t. They seemed to bore deeper and deeper, past the cracks in her mask, to her soft inner core, and anchor. What was he looking for? What did he want from her? Jonas’s unwavering scrutiny narrowed the room, making her edgy and stifling her breath low in her lungs. She smoothed the skirt of her dress to remind herself she was indeed fully clothed.

“There are mitigating circumstances,” Jonas said.

“Such as?”

The corded tendons along his jaw drew tight, relaxed, then tightened again, but he didn’t say anything.

“What if she comes back?”

Jonas dropped the pencil and stood up abruptly. He walked to the window, but Cathlynn could have sworn he didn’t see the mad dance of snowflakes falling past the windowpane. The iron-stiff set of his face frightened her with its severity. Something ate at him. Guilt? What had happened between him and Alana to cause such unbending grimness? His skin had paled, making him appear even more formidable.

“What if she comes back?” Cathlynn found the courage to ask again, not sure she really wanted an answer. Her mind had already worked overtime on sinister conclusions.

“I doubt she will.” His voice grated with something close to hatred. His jaw tensed, raising tiny knots along the muscle. He didn’t amplify. Or was the harshness due to his loss? Could she be mistaken? Had he loved Alana, and were the ominous feelings snaking through her just a product of her fertile imagination fueled by the house’s ghoulish grimness?

Cathlynn digested the information he’d given her while a dozen questions popped into her mind. If he loved Alana, why had she left? Why wouldn’t she be back? Was it because of Jonas, or something else? Something permanent…like death.

Some even say he killed her himself…

“What about the people in the village, won’t they know the difference?” Cathlynn asked, trying to sway her thoughts away from their direful direction.

“Alana rarely ventured there, and there’s no need for you to leave the monastery. All your needs will be taken care of. Only Valentin, my butler, and David Forester, my assistant, will need to know the truth, and they’ve both proven their trust.”

Trying to slow down her mind and make sense of the bits of information he fed her, she focused on the tapestry over the fireplace. A medieval battle took place. Knights in shining armor on trusty steeds fought for the Holy Grail, killing for their perception of Truth and Right.

Well, that didn’t help at all. The bloody carnage darkened her already dismal thoughts. There were always two sides to everything, weren’t there? Perceptions changed truth. Didn’t all the wars in the name of God prove that? Would she really be compromising her honesty by accepting the role in exchange for her heart’s desire? And there was Gram’s to think of. A week, a month. The doctors weren’t sure how long she had left; they could only say that her time was near. Would two weeks be too long?

Cathlynn studied the room, looking for an answer to her dilemma among the sullen whispers of the past swirling about the room. The stones seemed to pulse again with unseen life.

Beware.

The whisper into her brain chilled her to the bone. She looked around the room, but saw nothing out of place. She shook her head, and put the perceived thought to a figment of her overtired mind.

Oh, Gram, what am I getting myself into?

Could she live for two weeks in the coldness of this grim stone house, among the austere monks’ ghosts and the cloak of sadness permeating the walls?

“Can’t you get your funding elsewhere?” Cathlynn asked, trying to fill the heavy silence while she thought her alternatives through.

“My options are…limited. The income from the monastery’s various holdings isn’t enough to support the monastery, let alone my research.”

“The Monastery Company. That’s you?”

“Yes.”

“Why stay here then?” Cathlynn asked. “Why not sell this place?”

He sat down, leaned his elbows on the chair’s armrests and tented his fingers. “You want the Aidan Heart, don’t you?”

She nodded.

“And there’s no logical reason for it, right?”

“No.”

He lifted his hands. “I love this place, and there’s no logical reason for it.”

For an instant, his eyes showed the truth of his words and his face softened. Just as fast, the fleeting impression vanished, leaving Cathlynn to wonder if she’d simply imagined it.

“As for my research,” he continued, “I do it for a very personal reason, and the trust would enable me to keep it—and the monastery—going without worry. I won’t be the only beneficiary of your kindness. A lot of people depend on me for their livelihoods, and maybe even their lives.”

The reasoning seemed noble enough, yet Cathlynn sensed there remained much untold. Did she really want to know the truth? Shadowed fear fought with her soul’s deep yearning.

“I can’t afford to take two weeks off work,” Cathlynn said, mirroring his seated stance. Years of dealing had taught her the fine art of negotiation. “I have to keep buying and selling merchandise.” But they had been lonely years. “I have to keep visible.” They hadn’t taught her to manage these strange gut feelings, or the way this man’s mere presence could short-circuit her usually ordered thinking. She fought now for her edge, for the safety of her professional mask, for the knowledge that his need matched her own in ferocity. How far would he go? “As much as I want the Aidan Heart, I do have to make a living. Then there’s the complication of my grandmother. She may not have two weeks to live.”

His cold, gray gaze fixed on her. She didn’t flinch. The silence grew between them until Cathlynn thought she would suffocate from it. His pointed stare made her want to squirm, but instinct told her she couldn’t let her discomfort show. She kept very still outwardly, but inwardly everything buzzed.

Staring back at him didn’t help, because she saw so much and yet so little in the vivid gray pools. Everything about him seemed so contradictory—sensuous lips and a hard demeanor; eyes that thawed and iced over with no rhyme or reason; a seemingly logical approach to everything and an illogical love for a place. Which was the real Jonas? The murderer of village gossip who’d killed his wife in a fit of rage, or the driven researcher looking for some mysterious cure?

“Over the years, I’ve collected a fair amount of antique glass,” Jonas said finally, breaking his mesmerizing eye contact. Cathlynn swallowed her sigh of relief. “I’ve put off my collection’s appraisal for far too long. I’d like to hire you to do the job.”

“I—”

“I’ll pay you your going rate, and I’ll also give you free title to the Aidan Heart when you leave after the Christmas Fete.”

Jonas Shades was no fool. He knew exactly which string to pull. Cathlynn was sorely tempted. She wanted the sculpture.

She couldn’t leave without it.

“I’ve worked hard for what I’ve earned,” Jonas added, leaning back in his chair. “I’d hate to see it go to my wife’s cousin, who hasn’t worked a day in his life and would squander it, when it could be put to good use. How much care does your grandmother need?”

“She’s cared for physically. What she needs is my presence to tie her to reality.”

“Would a visit every few days work?”

If she accepted his offer, she’d have her treasure and money besides to increase her inventory of merchandise. Her work here would be legitimate, and the telephone would keep her in touch with Gram’s condition on a daily basis, and with the outside world should the need arise. Professionally speaking, she’d be a fool not to accept. What about personally? Could she trust this man?

“Be assured, Miss O’Connell,” Jonas said. He had the air of a man who’d had enough of negotiations and now played his trump card. “As long as I’m alive, the Aidan Heart will never make its way onto the market. If you want it, make your decision. Now.”

The deceptive silky smoothness of his voice rang with implicit power. She didn’t want to, but she yielded. She had no choice. Not if she wanted the Aidan Heart—for herself, for Gram.

But she wouldn’t capitulate completely. She’d been her own woman far too long to submit meekly to anyone—especially someone who could buffet her like a rudderless ship in a storm.

“All right, I accept, but I refuse to do anything illegal. I won’t call myself by your wife’s name. I won’t sign any documents. And if I find you’re using me to defraud Alana, I’ll report you to the authorities.”

HE WATCHED the woman leave the library. She was a complication. But he was used to those. Jonas had never made anything easy for him, had taken so much from him already. The woman’s resemblance to the departed Alana was uncanny.

His memory drifted to the real Alana and their last night together. How sweet the taste of her final breath in his mouth! He tugged the cuff of his shirt over the faint scar of scratches on his wrists. The bitch. She deserved what she got. They all did.

Perhaps he could use this resemblance to his advantage. Use her to put the final screw in his revenge when he exposed her treachery. Then he’d set his trap and watch Jonas’s world fall apart. Watch Jonas lose all claims to the trust fund, to his research, to his future. Watch Jonas as he realized he was doomed to die the same horrid death his father had died—painful, destructive.

Yes, he could make this work to his advantage. He would watch and manipulate. He would stir the pot of suspicion. The lies would be exposed. Then he’d have his revenge…and more.

CATHLYNN FOLLOWED Valentin up and down the meandering, dimly lit corridors to a set of stairs carved straight out of the gray stone. The cool, damp air chilled her to the bone. She tried to shake the uneasiness licking at her heels, then shifted her concentration to memorizing the path they followed, but one colorless stone wall pretty much looked like the next, and she lost count of the multitude of shadowed arched doors with black iron locks they passed.

“The place doesn’t look this big from the outside,” Cathlynn said, trying to dispel the gloomy silence between them.

“Non, madame.”

“Do you ever get lost?” Cathlynn asked with a forced chuckle. The eerie clipping of her footsteps behind the butler’s silent ones on the stone stairs reminded her irrationally of a prisoner being led to his execution.

“Non, madame.”

Valentin, it seemed, was not a man of many words. Between Jonas’s glowering silences and Valentin’s sparse conversation, this could prove to be a very long two weeks.

“It must be hard to keep up with the housework.”

“Most of the house is closed, and in the summer we hire staff to keep up appearances for the weekend guided tours. Curiosity about the monks’ legend brings them in.”

“I’m not familiar with the legend.”

“The curse of the Holy Cross Brotherhood.”

“Ah.” Cathlynn couldn’t think of anything else to say as she followed Valentin’s ramrod-stiff penguin gait.

When they turned into an upstairs hallway, the walls’ wraithlike shadows reached out for her again. Their cold, clammy fingers snatched at her hair, prickling the base of her neck with a feeling of coming doom. She quickly reached back to brush the uncomfortable feeling away, half expecting her fingers to twine into the sticky ectoplasm of a ghost. Instead, they met only empty space.

Beware.

The whisper echoed eerily inside her head, erupting a series of shivers down her spine.

“Does anyone besides you and Jonas live here?” she asked, sure a logical conclusion could be found for her auditory hallucination.

“No one, madame.” He paused for an instant. “Except perhaps the ghosts.”

“Ghosts?” Cathlynn had a feeling Valentin wanted to scare her deliberately. Why? Whatever the reason, his tactic was definitely working. Cathlynn couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this spooked about anything, and wondered again at the wisdom of her decision to stay. I’m safe, she repeated to herself like a mantra. The joy she’d bring her grandmother with the Aidan Heart was worth a few nights in a scary house. It couldn’t be worse than the sleepless nights she’d spent after listening to some of her brother’s ghost stories.

“The monks, madame. They lived and died here for a century before disappearing.”

“What happened to them?”

“Their secret was discovered.”

“Their secret?” She almost wished Valentin had stuck to one-word answers. The old geezer was giving her a bad case of the creeps.

He shook his head. “Too unspeakable to mention.” He stopped by a door and clinked keys from a large brass ring until he found the right one. Probably enjoying the macabre echo they created as the noise bounced off the stone walls, Cathlynn thought. “Their legacy lives on.”

His answer left her imagination to run rampant with dastardly possibilities. Fourteen more days of this. She’d scare herself to death before she could take the Aidan Heart home.

Valentin unlocked the door and handed her the key before he stepped inside the room and flicked on the lights. “This was Madame Alana’s room.”

The house’s stony coldness extended to this room. Cathlynn felt out of place in the large room’s opulence. Not that she didn’t appreciate the fineries of life, but this room, despite its picture-perfect decor, lacked something. Her own house in Nashua might be small, but each room radiated a feeling of warmth, a feeling of life. She found this room’s rigid formality depressing.

Yards of sheer material draped the large bed’s canopy. A rich coverlet of emerald and gold, decorated with a dozen pillows in all shapes and sizes, lay over the mattress. Valentin snapped open the heavy emerald brocade curtains trimmed with gold, covering the single window. The darkening gray sky didn’t allow in much light. If anything, it heightened the caged feeling, increasing Cathlynn’s uneasiness.

A huge English walnut wardrobe crowded the back wall. Valentin opened the double doors. “I doubt many of these clothes fit you, but…”

Cathlynn stuck her tongue out at the butler’s back. Not that she’d want to fit in them, anyway. From what she could see, Alana’s taste in clothes might be expensive, but it lacked subtlety. “I’ll get some of my own stuff tomorrow.”

“As you wish, madame.”

Cathlynn walked to the small vanity and trailed a finger along the dust on the old wood. This house with all its empty rooms and cavernlike corridors would dampen her natural optimism if she let it. Was that why Alana had left? Had the incredible sadness of the house finally overcome her?

“What was she like—Alana?” Cathlynn asked as she picked up a silver brush scrolled with a fancy S from the tray on the vanity.

“It is not my place to answer your questions.” Valentin bustled about at amazing speed for someone so frail-looking. He heaped the decorative pillows onto the carved trunk at the end of the bed, turned down the coverlet, then opened the heavy wood door next to the vanity. “The bathroom is through here. There are fresh towels behind the door.”

“You don’t approve, do you?” Cathlynn asked as she replaced the brush in its exact position, then turned to face the stern butler.

“It is not my place to pass judgment.”

“I’m not trying to replace her.”

“As I said, madame, it is not my place to say. But…”

“But what?”

Valentin’s balding pate, beaked nose and loose jowl skin reminded her of an aging eagle. He searched her face with a narrowed gaze, then as if changing his mind, he shrugged. “Madame Alana’s disappearance has saddened us all.”

“I’m sure it has…” Cathlynn felt sure he’d wanted to say something else.

He bowed and backed out the door. “If you need anything, madame, the intercom is by the door. Ring the service button and someone will answer.”

He made it sound as if the house teemed with servants. “Thank you, Valentin.”

“Soyez prudente,” Valentin mumbled as he left.

What had he said? Before Cathlynn could ask for an explanation, Valentin shut the door with a resounding boom that echoed down the empty corridor like a small explosion. She looked at the ancient key in her hand. At least he hadn’t locked her in. She could leave at any time. With a sigh she went to the window. Maybe she should leave.

The snow fell in fat weighted flakes that stuck to the glass with the wind’s force. Shapeless white blanketed the cobbled courtyard. The last of the auction goers were leaving, their headlights cutting bright arcs across the darkening sky. Only her own Volvo remained—a white mound in the flat yard.

She sat on the window’s stone ledge, leaned her head against the frigid glass and blew against the pane, clouding it with her warm breath. With a finger she squiggled a random doodle.

As Cathlynn’s mind drifted to her childhood, a circle of pines replaced the monastery’s shadowy landscape. The roses of her grandmother’s garden bloomed all around her. Gram’s finest china and linen graced the flaking wooden picnic table. Cathlynn saw herself carrying a plate heaped with cakes and tarts as Gram poured the tea into cups. She remembered well the taste of the tangy lemon curd sauce she heaped onto scones. But most of all she remembered the way her grandmother’s face lit up when she spoke of Aidan and Deirdre’s love. Cathlynn had felt so secure, so safe in that circle of pines, surrounded by the scent of roses and her grandmother’s friendship. Was it so wrong to want the feeling back? Was it so wrong to want to see that bright light in Gram’s eyes once more?

She studied Alana’s room again. Secure was the last thing she felt right now. She was cold and alone, and if truth be told, a little scared. What did she know about Jonas Shades? What if he had killed his wife? If the house wasn’t creepy enough, her unseemly reaction to its master would be enough to shake her confidence. But he needed her alive, didn’t he? Until this mysterious Christmas fete she would be safe—then she’d be gone with the Aidan Heart.

Cathlynn sighed wearily. She didn’t have long to wash up before Jonas expected her to put in her first performance. She couldn’t let herself fall prey to the house’s dreary mood.

She crossed the room and went into the bathroom. Again the opulence caught her by surprise. Who would have thought the plumbing could be so modern? A sunken tub, big enough for two, took up most of the room. Had Jonas and Alana shared loving baths here? She giggled at her image of Jonas surrounded by frothy scented bubbles—not too likely!

Alana’s toiletries still stood on a mirrored tray. How odd. Cathlynn picked up a half-used blood-red lipstick and replaced it before trailing a finger through the assortment of bottles and jars on the tray. Wouldn’t a woman bent on running away have taken at least some of her toiletries with her? Wouldn’t she have taken some of her clothes, too? How fast had she fled, and why?