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Romancing The Crown: Drew and Samira: Her Lord Protector
Carla Cassidy
Eileen Wilks
Her Lord Protector by Eileen Wilks Lord Drew Harrington didn’t believe in psychic nonsense – and he never seduced virgins. So why couldn’t he stay away from the woman who claimed to be both? Shopkeeper Rose Giaberti seemed the least likely suspect when a bomb went off near Montebello’s palace. Yet Rose had reported the bomb minutes before it exploded. Drew swore to learn the dark beauty’s secrets!Secrets of a Pregnant Princess by Carla Cassidy When Princess Samira Kamal found herself pregnant and abandoned, she faced shaming her family. Then her mysterious bodyguard made a shocking proposal: “Marry me. ” She’d thought Farid Nasir more machine than man – now Samira needed to uncover the hidden depths of the man she would call husband…


Royalty is their birthright, power andpassion are their due!
ROMANCINGTHE CROWN:DREW &SAMIRA
A pregnant princess and asuspicious aristocrat…
Two exciting, intense stories of regalromance from two favourite authors

ROMANCING THE CROWN: DREW & SAMIRA
Her Lord Protector
EILEEN WILKS
Secrets of a Pregnant Princess
CARLA CASSIDY

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Her Lord Protector
EILEEN WILKS
ROMANCINGTHE CROWN
An explosion near the royal palace of Montebellosets off a frantic manhunt. One that begins witha confrontation between a proud lord and amysteriously beautiful woman.
Meet the major players in this royal mystery…
Lord Andrew “Drew” Harrington: Romancing a suspect is not his usual style – but Rose is not a usual suspect.
Rosalinda “Rose” Giaberti: Her visions of fire have saved lives, but it will take a very special man to accept everything she is – and to protect her from others’ fears.
Duke Lorenzo Sebastiani: As head of Montebello’s Royal Intelligence, he will spare no one’s feelings when it comes to keeping the country safe.



Dear Reader,
I’ve always tended to take on some of my characters’ traits while writing about them. When I wrote about a super-organised heroine, I bought a planner and actually used it instead of losing it. While writing about a heroine who was much more traditionally feminine than I am, I developed a passion for the colour pink. When a character gets hit over the head, I develop a headache. This is one reason none of my heroines ever suffers from morning sickness – I’m not taking any chances!
So when I started writing about a woman with a mysterious affinity for fires, I decided to avoid fireplaces and burning candles. Maybe that was excessive, but I’m happy to report that I finished the book without burning anything more than a roast dinner. (Though I did burn that thoroughly.) Maybe I only imagined I had more headaches than usual while writing about a hero who suffers from migraines…of a sort. And it was probably a coincidence that, shortly after I wrote about illness forcing Drew and Rose to stay overnight at an airport hotel, something similar happened to me.
But I still don’t want to ever give any of my heroines morning sickness. Just in case…
Happy reading!
Eileen Wilks

Prologue
Gretchen Hanson loved babies. It was their mothers she didn’t have much use for. ‘‘It won’t work,’’ she repeated, stubbing out a cigarette smoked down to a finger-burning butt. The noise level in the honky-tonk let her speak flatly, not bothering to whisper. ‘‘Midwives don’t sign death certificates.’’
The plump, wide mouth of the woman sitting across from her pursed in a pout. Carnation pink, those lips were tonight. And sulky. ‘‘I can’t believe you’re wimping out on me now, Gretchen. You’re always complaining about how dumb those doctors are. If you don’t think you can fool one of them—’’
‘‘I don’t.’’ After all these years, Gretchen knew Ursula Chambers pretty well. Well enough to know that while Ursula’s devious plans could lead Gretchen to a life of luxury, Ursula would have no qualms about using Gretchen as her fall girl if they were caught. And she knew how Ursula saw her. Barbie’s best friend. The girl who would always and forever be second-string, her only claim to glamour the fallout from her friend’s glittery shoulders. In high school, that had been true enough, Gretchen thought grudgingly. But high school was a long time ago. Not that she didn’t still play along sometimes, but secondhand glamour wasn’t worth risking prison over. ‘‘God, girl, get real. There’s no way I could slip her an overdose without anyone noticing. Maybe we should rethink this.’’
Ursula smiled and leaned forward, the tousled fall of honey-colored hair sliding over one bare shoulder. Her blue eyes were bright with mischief. ‘‘I’ve already thought of a way to get her to have the baby at her damned ranch. I’ll tell her the apartment is going to be sprayed for bugs—she shouldn’t be around all those chemicals, right? You’ll go out there with us. She’s due any day now, so we won’t have to keep her there for long.’’
The naughty pleasure in those eyes sent a chill up Gretchen’s spine. What had seemed like an acceptable plan months ago suddenly felt all wrong. They were talking about murder, not short-sheeting someone’s bed. Nervously she pulled out another cigarette and tamped down the end. ‘‘There would still be a body to explain.’’
Ursula rolled her eyes. ‘‘There’s only a body to explain if we tell people about it.’’
‘‘You mean…get rid of her. Bury her or something and tell people she left town.’’ Gretchen’s breathing turned shallow and fast. ‘‘It’s a huge risk.’’
‘‘It’s a huge amount of money we’re talking about. Remember our plans? Sweetie, we’ll never have to worry about money again. You’ll finally get out of this stupid town, the way you’ve always talked about doing. See new places, buy the kind of pretty things you’ve always wanted. Live the royal life. And don’t forget that you’ll be able to put that half-wit brother of yours in a good home.’’
‘‘Gerald isn’t a half-wit. He’s…’’ Gretchen laughed.
‘‘He’s dumber than a dog, is all. Drives me crazy sometimes. But he does mind me pretty well.’’ As long as he understood what she wanted… ‘‘It will be nice to live my own life without having to watch out for him all the time.’’ The possibilities glittered in front of Gretchen’s suddenly blank eyes. ‘‘But the risk. If I were caught…’’
‘‘I’ve got it all worked out.’’ There was a febrile excitement about Ursula now, as if something was burning her up from the inside. She stretched out a hand and gripped Gretchen’s wrist. A ruby glinted, blood-red, on one finger. ‘‘Think about that poor baby.’’
‘‘Huh.’’ Gretchen wasn’t so lost in fantasies that she bought that. ‘‘As if you care about the baby.’’
‘‘You care, though. Don’t tell me you don’t. And you know what Jessie has been saying. We’ve talked about all this, Gretchen. She wants to raise her baby all by herself out on the ranch. The poor little thing will never know his father, never know the life he should have had. She’s so selfish, Gretchen!’’
‘‘They all are,’’ Gretchen muttered. ‘‘They think they’re getting some pretty doll to dress up, then when the pain hits they start yelling. ‘Get me a doctor,’ they say. Like I’m not good enough—but the only reason they want a doctor is to give them drugs. They don’t care if it’s good for the baby or not. All they think of is themselves.’’
‘‘They don’t care like you do.’’ Ursula’s voice was almost a croon. ‘‘Jessie sure doesn’t. She wants to use the baby, that’s what it is. Keep him a secret to pay his father back for dumping her. Is that right? Is that what’s best for the baby? Letting the poor little thing grow up in a dreary house in the middle of nowhere when he could be living in a palace? He’s a prince, Gretchen. But he’ll never know it—unless you help him.’’
Gretchen’s stomach clenched and her eyes went soft. Yearning ripped through her system like a triple-hit of nicotine. This was how Ursula had gotten her hooked on this scheme in the first place. Oh, she thought about that baby. She thought about all the babies she delivered. All those babies she had to put into other women’s arms, all those blithely fertile women who didn’t deserve the precious gifts they were given, the innocence, the love….
She cleared her throat and tried to make her voice hard. ‘‘He won’t be a prince. He’ll be a bastard.’’
‘‘A royal bastard. The only male child in direct line for the throne.’’ Ursula tossed her hair back impatiently. ‘‘Trust me, sweetie, I know how these people think. They’ll be so delighted this baby exists they’ll pamper him, pet him, give him everything a bitty baby could want…and they’ll give us what we want, too.’’ She leaned forward again, her voice low, her eyes shining. ‘‘I’ll be the baby’s aunt, so of course I’ll live there with him. In the palace. But you know me, sweetie. I don’t know beans about babies. I’ll need you to take care of him. What do you say, Gretchen? Would you like to be a royal nanny?’’
Gretchen’s heart began to pound. All those months ago, when she and Ursula had first started scheming, she’d been distracted by the thought of wealth and famous connections. Now an even greater reason to go along with Ursula struck her. She wouldn’t have to hand this baby over to some other woman. The idea made her dizzy, almost sick with yearning. ‘‘You never told me how you’re going to convince the king and queen of Montebello to even talk with you, much less persuade them we’ve got their grandchild.’’
Ursula smirked. ‘‘I’ve got connections.’’
Some man, no doubt. Gretchen reached for her lighter.
‘‘Oh, please don’t. Smoking causes wrinkles.’’
‘‘Causes worse things than wrinkles.’’ Not that there was much worse than wrinkles in Ursula’s world. Maybe cellulite. She flicked the lighter and held the flame to the tip of her cigarette, inhaling deeply. ‘‘All right. I’ll do it.’’
‘‘Oh, I knew I could count on you!’’ Ursula was all but quivering with excitement. ‘‘I’ll get Jessie out to the ranch, but then I’ll have to leave. I’ll have to go to Montebello to set things up.’’
‘‘Fine. I’ll need some money up front.’’
‘‘You don’t trust me?’’
Not for a minute. ‘‘I won’t be able to work for a while, will I? I’ll have to lie low with the baby until you call me.’’ With the baby. That sounded good.
It sounded wonderful.
Ursula leaned back in her chair. ‘‘You know how strapped for cash I am right now. I wouldn’t be in this stupid town if I weren’t so broke.’’
‘‘Broke. Huh! You don’t know the meaning of the word. Sell some of the jewelry your back-stabbing ex-manager gave you. If there’s as much money in this deal as you say, you can buy more and better.’’
‘‘I already sold the diamonds Derek gave me.’’ Her mouth drooped. ‘‘I hated that, but the ticket to Montebello will be expensive.’’
‘‘Those diamonds were worth a lot more than the price of a plane ticket. And if you need more…’’ She grabbed Ursula’s hand and held it up. ‘‘This ring you’ve been flashing around has to be worth—Hey, isn’t this your sister’s ring? The one you’re always bitching about because your grandma left it to her, instead of you?’’
‘‘Oh, you noticed.’’ Ursula’s giggle was light and girlish. She wiggled her fingers. The ring was unusual, possibly unique, with a ruby and a pearl nestled together in an ornate golden bed. ‘‘I don’t think my dear sister Jessie will miss it, do you? Not where she’s going.’’
Chapter 1
Flames. Orange-hot, sucking the air from her chest, shouting smoke at the sky. Flames, drawing her skin hot and tight over the rapture within, the coiled secret at the bottom of her soul. Flames, calling her.
She fought. Wordlessly she fought, for she was deeply asleep, dwelling in a part of herself sundered from language and reason. But even here she knew the danger. And the draw. Unwilling, afraid, she resisted—yet when fire called, she answered, pulled from safety and darkness into a scene from hell.
Fire crackled merrily over the bones of its prey, a tumbled wreck she saw as dark angles and masses. There were people, too—she saw them as movement, their outlines blurred by possibilities. And there were bodies. They were dark and still and horribly clear.
She shuddered. Along with horror came the stirring of thought, still wordless but gathering focus. What she saw hadn’t happened yet. When fire skipped her willy-nilly across time’s boundaries, the living always appeared only as blurred, mobiles shapes, each person a small tornado of decisions awhirl with possible fates.
The dead carried no such freight. They lay quiet and dark, their final shapes fixed.
So there was time still. Not much, not when the vision was this clear, the pull of the fire this strong. But it hadn’t happened yet, so there was a chance that it wouldn’t. She had to think, had to remember what was needed in that other world, the waking world where reality was an orderly march of place and time, cause and effect.
Place and time…where was she? What was the fire eating?
She struggled, fighting the draw of the fire, the great, terrible beauty that called her to dance—fighting the part of her that quivered and yearned and wept with need for the flames. The need to call the fire to her. This time she won the battle, pulling more of reason and the other world into the vision.
She was standing in a smoke-black oven. Air stank in her nostrils and burned her lungs, a poison bath brewed of burning plastic and other man-made materials. People were screaming, crying, though she couldn’t see them. A siren wailed in the distance, drawing nearer. And in front of her, the fire. She felt it, heard it, though she could see nothing.
She turned away. There would be no answers nearer the fire, and much danger. When she moved, the fire dragged at her, so that she moved slowly, feeling as if the air itself was reluctant to let her pass. Her movement wasn’t quite like walking. Though she saw the floor, she didn’t feel it beneath her feet.
The floor. Yes, she could see it now—the smoke wasn’t as thick. A tile floor, vaguely institutional.
Think, she commanded herself. A store? Or, dear God, a hospital?
A shape loomed up out of the darkness, gasping—a person, blurred by smoke and possibilities. He or she stumbled past, going the wrong way. Toward the fire. Instinctively she reached out, trying to grab the other. Her hand passed through a barely seen shoulder. A shock of feeling shuddered through her—his feelings. Terror, shrill and desperate. Pain. The sobbing need for air.
Then he was gone. Gone, heading for death, and she had no way of stopping him.
It hasn’t happened yet, she reminded herself, and pushed on.
Light ahead. Not the red glow of fire, but a thinning of smoke that allowed something like normal vision. A long, low shape with other shapes on it…she moved closer. Suitcases! Suitcases on a conveyor belt—baggage claim.
The airport. Dear God. Where had the fire started? Swiftly she aligned her knowledge of the airport’s layout with the other sense, the one that knew where the fire was—but in turning her attention to the fire, she opened to it again.
Flames, orange-glow-heat-life, loving, eating, devouring, freeing—flames dancing there, dancing here, inside her—Shaken, she pulled back, but the call was so strong. Like a lover, fire entranced, compelled—come, come dance, taste my richness, join. Join. A rhythmic compulsion, heat of blood and beat of heart matching the wild cadence of flames, drawing her closer, drawing—
Terrified, she yanked her attention away from the fire. And stood once more in swirling smoke, lungs straining, desperate for air, desperately tired. And bereft.
She was no longer near the baggage claim. She didn’t know where she was, but it was hot, so hot she thought her skin might split. She had to leave, had to summon the will to wake herself…
Coolness. In this hot, breathless place she felt cool air waft over her, and the novelty distracted her. She turned. A shape moved toward her out of the smoke. A human shape. Startled but not frightened, she watched the blurred form come closer. A man, she thought, recognizing something in the movement or the shape, something that was wholly male.
He stopped in front of her, almost as if he could see her. And reached out a hand. And she saw it. Saw it clearly—a man’s hand, large, with a broad palm and long fingers. Pale, northern skin, kissed to a light tan by the sun, nails short and well tended. There was a small white scar on the little finger just below the second knuckle.
Tendons stretched along the back of that shockingly visible hand as it reached for her. Fingers closed, cool and living, around the hot flesh of her upper arm.
Her eyes flew open on darkness. Cool night air moved over skin still hot and tight. Her chest heaved as she sucked in air. Intimate muscles clenched around a throbbing pulse. And her heart was pounding, pounding.
Her hand shook as she reached for the phone beside her bed.
Heat rolled off the tarmac in waves. Much of it, though, was the trapped heat of the sun, released now into a soft June night, rather than the heat of fire. Emergency lights had been rigged to help the eighteen men who labored under the direction of a construction engineer, working to dig out the rubble at the west end of the Montebello International Airport. The fire hadn’t reached far—firefighters, mobilized and ready, had put the blaze out quickly. But the blast itself had brought down part of the second floor.
No one knew for sure if there had been anyone left in that section when the bomb went off.
Sweat trickled down Drew’s forehead, making the cut on his temple sting. His shirt clung to him, damp and clammy. His shoulder muscles strained as he heaved yet another ragged chunk of concrete off the pile of debris that was all that remained of Gate 22.
A little over an hour ago, he’d been one of the passengers who had deplaned at this gate.
‘‘Watch where you’re throwing your toys. I’d hate to have to arrest you for assault.’’
‘‘Lorenzo.’’ Drew straightened, wiping the back of his hand across his forehead as he turned. ‘‘I rather thought you’d show up. I didn’t muss your pretty shoes, did I?’’
‘‘I’m nowhere near as mussed as you are,’’ his cousin retorted. Lorenzo was one year younger than Drew, one inch taller and twenty pounds lighter. He had a tricky right, a fondness for good wine, secrets and handmade Italian shoes. He also had a new wife.
Lorenzo shook his head. ‘‘You look like hell.’’
‘‘Explosions will do that to a man.’’
‘‘Especially if he insists on playing hero.’’
Drew turned and snagged his jacket from the ground. He was far from being any sort of hero. ‘‘I’m glad you’re here. There’s a little wart of a police captain scurrying around, acting official. Please have him flogged.’’
‘‘Captain Mylonas.’’ A smile played over Lorenzo’s thin, clever mouth. ‘‘He’s not happy with you.’’
‘‘I’m not too bloody happy with him. He’s detaining fifty people who have already been through hell. He wants to question them. Some of them have small children.’’ He wiped his forehead again. The cut was smarting. ‘‘The man’s a toad.’’
‘‘You’re smearing the blood around. Here.’’ Lorenzo handed him a folded handkerchief. ‘‘He did give you permission to leave, I understand.’’
‘‘Of course.’’ Drew’s lip curled. ‘‘Toads don’t like to offend the queen’s nephew.’’
‘‘You put him in a difficult position when you refused to leave until he released the other passengers.’’
‘‘That was the idea.’’ Smoke drifted over from the area that had been hit by fire, irritating Drew’s raw throat. He cleared it. ‘‘The captain isn’t one of your men, but this is your investigation.’’ Lorenzo was head of the Royal Montebellan Intelligence team. ‘‘You could release the passengers.’’
‘‘I will, just as soon as we’re sure none of them is aware of anyone still missing.’’
Drew glanced at the pile of debris and wondered if some poor soul’s body was trapped beneath it. ‘‘But Mylonas isn’t questioning them about who might be missing. He’s hunting for his blasted terrorist among the victims. He’d like to show you up.’’
‘‘The captain was confused about his priorities. I clarified them for him.’’
Ah. Drew nodded, satisfied.
‘‘Aunt Gwendolyn’s worried about you.’’
His eyebrows lifted. ‘‘She knows I’m all right. I—’’ Annoyingly, a cough chose that moment to rattle its way loose.
‘‘Refused medical assistance, from what I hear.’’
Drew mastered the coughing fit and straightened. ‘‘Medical assistance—for a small cut and a sore throat? Don’t be ridiculous.’’
‘‘The cut’s still bleeding. And you swallowed a fair amount of smoke when you went back in to drag that old man out after the blast.’’
‘‘I’ve always disliked your habit of knowing everything.’’
Lorenzo chuckled. ‘‘But it pays off, in my line of work. Now, if you’re finished flexing your muscles, I’m under orders to tuck you into a limo and send you to the palace. The king’s orders,’’ he added. ‘‘Uncle Marcus doesn’t want Aunt Gwen worrying. I think they can find another unskilled laborer to take over for you.’’
Since he’d gotten what he wanted—the other passengers would be allowed to leave, too—Drew didn’t object. ‘‘Give me a moment to let the crew boss know I’m leaving.’’
When he returned, he and his cousin fell into step together. They skirted the firefighters still watching the smoldering wreckage of the gate and entered the main terminal through a service door on the ground floor. The interior was eerie, with the west end of the concourse tinted the smoldering red of emergency lighting and the east end normally lit. The hot air stank of smoke.
Uniformed men were stationed at every entrance, most of them in the colorful blue-and-gold uniforms of the capital’s police force, some in the crisp khakis of the army. The uninjured civilians had been herded to the far eastern end of the terminal, where more police officers were stationed. Most of them were quiet, although a few voices drifted down the empty concourse. A child was crying.
Drew didn’t see as many children as there had been earlier. Good. A few of the families must have been released. ‘‘I did make sure word was sent to the palace that I wasn’t hurt. It’s not like Aunt Gwen to fret without cause.’’
‘‘The past year has been rough on her.’’
So it had. Several months ago his aunt’s oldest son, Lucas Sebastiani, prince and heir to the throne of Montebello, had disappeared when his plane went down over the Colorado Rockies in the United States. Searchers had turned up no sign of him, and eventually the royal family had been forced to accept that he was dead. There had been little Drew had been able to do to help, either with the search or with the family’s grief. Still, he’d come here often in the past months. He might not have known what to do for them, but he could at least be here.
Of course, he hadn’t been the only one to offer the support of his company. Lorenzo’s half brother, Desmond Caruso, had practically haunted the palace. Drew had never been able to tolerate much of Desmond’s company or understand why others didn’t pick up on the stink of jealousy and ambition Desmond gave off.
Last month, Lucas had found his way out of the darkness of trauma-induced amnesia and returned home. ‘‘How is Lucas?’’ Drew asked quietly. ‘‘I’ve spoken to him on the phone. He insists he’s all right, but…’’ Drew shrugged, unable to put his worries into words.
‘‘I don’t know. He’s quieter. Broody.’’
Drew chewed on that a moment. God knew Lucas had been through enough to justify a little brooding, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that more had happened during Lucas’s missing months than his family knew. Or maybe his past was making him paint the other man with his own troubled colors. ‘‘The king is proceeding with his plans for the ceremony, I understand.’’
‘‘Yes. The country needs to see Lucas officially installed as heir.’’
‘‘Do you think the bombing is connected to the uncertainty about the succession? Tamir—’’
‘‘Good Lord, Drew, the last thing we need is to sling a fresh batch of accusations at Tamir! We barely made it through the last few months without a war.’’
‘‘Yes,’’ Drew said shortly. ‘‘I know.’’
‘‘Sorry.’’ He rubbed a hand over his head. ‘‘It’s been…difficult.’’
‘‘I was about to say that Tamir, however unwittingly, did play host to a number of those Brothers of Darkness fellows. Nasty bunch. They aren’t what they once were, thank God, with their leaders either dead or in prison, but there must still be some isolated cells operating. I heard they’re taking credit for today’s fireworks.’’
‘‘And just where did you hear that? We don’t know who called in the—yes?’’ Lorenzo’s attention swerved to the uniformed officer who approached.
‘‘Pardon me, Your Grace.’’ The young policeman looked nervous and excited. ‘‘Captain Mylonas would like to see you. He’s detained a suspect.’’
Drew’s eyebrows rose. Either Mylonas had gotten very lucky, or he was hassling some poor Tamiri visitor who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. After Drew’s encounter with the captain, he was betting on the second possibility.
‘‘Where?’’ Lorenzo said tersely.
‘‘In the security office off the atrium.’’
Lorenzo started moving. ‘‘Your limo’s out front, Drew.’’
‘‘If you don’t mind, I’ll go with you. If there’s anything to this, His Highness will want to know. I can brief him when I reach the palace.’’
Lorenzo acknowledged the sense of that with a nod.
Montebello’s airport was no Heathrow, but it was a fair stretch of the legs to reach the security offices, located slightly west of the center but not in the bombed section. Drew was tired. His head had started to pound and his lungs were issuing warnings of another coughing fit by the time they reached the office where Captain Mylonas had sequestered his suspect.
Who was not at all what Drew had been expecting. He stopped in the doorway.
‘‘Your Grace.’’ The captain practically clicked his heels together when Lorenzo entered. Mylonas was a small man with a small, round paunch. His mustache was so black and precise it looked inked on—a forlorn attempt to add distinction to a bland face. ‘‘I am pleased you could come so promptly.’’
‘‘You have a suspect, I understand.’’
‘‘He has heatstroke,’’ the suspect muttered. ‘‘Or maybe his mother dropped him on the head as a baby. That would explain it.’’
Good Lord, Drew thought. Her voice was as perfect as the rest of her.
Mylonas’s suspect had skin the dusky olive of the Mediterranean. Her face was oval, the features imbued with that fluid sensuality some Italian women possess. Black hair rippled down her back like wind-rumpled water. She was dressed plainly enough in a red T-shirt and khaki shorts, but the T-shirt was tucked in at an absurdly small waist, the shorts revealed legs that made him clench his teeth, and that soft red cotton clung with intimate favor to what might be the finest pair of breasts he’d ever seen.
Or mostly seen. The T-shirt wasn’t as tight as he might have wished.
‘‘Your name?’’ Lorenzo asked crisply.
‘‘Rosalinda Cira Giaberti. Call me Rose. And you are?’’
The sweet insolence of her tone had Drew smiling. This was a terrorist?
‘‘Lorenzo Sebastiani.’’
A blink cleared some of the boredom from those fine, dark eyes. ‘‘Pardon me, Your Grace, for failing to recognize you. You seem to have left your coronet at home.’’ When she glanced at Drew her brows lifted in haughty inquiry. ‘‘You aren’t a Sebastiani.’’
‘‘No. Call me Drew, Signorina Giaberti.’’ His smile suggested that if she didn’t call, he would. Soon. ‘‘It is signorina, isn’t it?’’ There was no ring on her left hand.
Her mouth twitched in amusement. ‘‘And if it isn’t?’’
‘‘Life is seldom fair, but rarely is it that absurdly malignant.’’ For some reason his bantering tone slipped, as if he’d spoken nothing more than the truth.
She tipped her head, curious, and met his eyes.
The hairs on his forearms stood on end. He looked into those dark eyes and he knew—he was going to have her. When and where didn’t matter. He would have this woman naked and damp and crying out for him.
Her eyes widened. A small, alarmed jerk of her head snapped the contact.
‘‘Signorina Giaberti called in the bomb threat,’’ Captain Mylonas announced with relish.
It took a second for Drew to throw off the odd spell and understand what the man had said. When he did, his stomach contracted in quick, hard denial. But however his body rejected the implications, his mind knew very well that lovely packages could hold ugly surprises. Yet he still wanted her.
How far had he sunk?
The woman was unimpressed by the implicit accusation. Her glance at the captain was annoyed, no more. ‘‘Madre di Dio. It was a warning, not a threat. You might consider thanking me.’’
‘‘Thanking you? For attempting to kill hundreds of innocent people?’’
‘‘I tried to kill no one. If I hadn’t called, the building wouldn’t have been evacuated and the fire—’’ She broke off suddenly. ‘‘I warned you about the bomb. I didn’t threaten you with one. The distinction may be subtle to one of your intelligence, so I will give an example. If I say that looking at your smug, shiny face might cause me to lose my supper, that is a warning. If I say I’m going to vomit all over your pretty uniform unless you go away, that is a threat.’’
Drew choked on a laugh, then doubled over as another coughing fit hit.
Lorenzo took a step towards him. He waved his cousin back, stepping out into the hall so he wouldn’t interfere with the interrogation while his body tried to eject the lining of his lungs. He ended up leaning weakly against the wall, eyes watering as he dragged deep breaths through his raw throat. His head pounded, a hard, hot throb of pain. He blinked the moisture back.
One of the police officers was staring at him. Bloody hell. In another minute he’d have the fool over here asking if he needed medical attention. He made the effort to straighten, glancing down at the scuffed white tiles of the floor…
And the world slipped behind a wall.
Sounds, color, vision—all were still there, but removed. Distant, as if everything had slid behind glass. The pain in his head went from a throb to a long slice of agony.
Not again—please, not now. Not again.
But his plea was as trapped as the rest of him. As if someone had taken a grip on two corners of the world and pulled, the square tiles of the floor stretched into parallelograms. Pain became pressure, livid, explosive, almost living, as if it could burst out of his skull and splatter his brains on the white, elongated tiles. He tried to move, to at least close his eyes. And couldn’t. He could only stand frozen while the tiles melted and the beast behind his eyes rose in a huge wave—
As suddenly as it had come, it was gone. The tiles dragged themselves back into their proper shapes, the pressure receded, tidelike, leaving him cold and clammy and weak. Last to go was the wall, the glassy barrier that muffled everything…
‘‘…all right, sir?’’
He looked up. The officer he’d seen earlier was standing in front of him, looking very young in a soot-smudged uniform. Those spaniel eyes hadn’t yet learned a cop’s detachment.
Drew dredged up a reassuring smile. ‘‘Afraid I inhaled too much smoke earlier. I’ll be fine.’’
As fine as a man could be, that is, when he was losing his mind.
Chapter 2
Montebello was a tiny island with a long history. Conquered, traded, overrun and reconquered, its 3,100 square miles—less than half the size of Wales, smaller than forty-eight of the United States—held detritus from more than two thousand years of bloody civilization. A farmer’s plow might turn up Roman coins, an Assyrian ax head, Egyptian pot shards or a handful of spent casings from a machine gun used by Mussolini’s occupying army. As Drew’s limousine climbed the stubby mountains that separated the airport from the capital city, it passed goats grazing in a tumble of hewn rocks that had once been the walls of a Byzantine monastery.
The Turks had destroyed that monastery after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Beneath the highway’s smooth modern paving lay earth once tramped by Roman legions, who had brought law and the cult of Aphrodite to this small, fertile island. Muhammad’s followers had walked here, proclaiming the oneness of God with curved scimitars while their mathematicians brought to the world new ways to measure its bounds. The militant Knights of St. John and the secular knights of Richard I arrived with their straighter swords a century later, housing God in different architecture. They also brought to the island those practical mysteries of commerce and government that supported the growth of a new class—a middle class.
Soon, though, they lost the island to the Doge of Venice. The local nobility didn’t fare well in that change of power, but the growing class of artisans and traders prospered under a ruler entranced with the glittering possibilities of commerce. The Venetian branch of a northern Italian family, the Sebastianis, invested heavily in the island and eventually moved there.
Not until Napoleon overran Europe did the little island taste autonomy. The French Emperor claimed it along with his Italian territory, but he had no troops to spare for so distant a possession. The local mechanisms of government persisted, but no one was truly in charge—at least, no one the locals could agree on.
A small, prosperous island without a strong defender wouldn’t be allowed to dabble in sovereignty for long. Augustus Sebastiani, by then a Duke, stepped into the temporary vacuum and by a combination of trickery and economic clout made himself the de facto head of state. He forestalled any violent courtships by Montebello’s acquisitive neighbors with a series of canny trade agreements and marriages. One Sebastiani daughter went to France, another to a Spanish prince, while the oldest son took a noble English bride.
This hedging of bets through arranged marriages proved wise when, after Waterloo, Europe divided the spoils and England acquired Montebello and held it in a loose and friendly grip. In 1880, either from altruism or a lack of interest, Great Britain bestowed the island upon its people in the person of King Augustus Sebastiani, who promptly married an English noblewoman with ties to the British throne.
The Sebastianis had ruled ever since. In some ways the family personified the results of the island’s long and bloody history—a mingling of races, religions, tongues and cultures that had produced a people both passionate and pragmatic. Over the years the ties with England had been strengthened through commercial and political agreements —and once more, thirty-seven years ago, through marriage. Montebello’s ruler, King Marcus II, had married an English noblewoman connected to the British throne—Lady Gwendolyn Sebastiani, née Peterson. Drew’s aunt.
In the quiet, cushioned luxury of the king’s limousine, Lord Andrew Harrington passed through the outskirts of the capital without seeing the lights, the old buildings leaning at age-settled angles or the new ones, briskly upright.
He was counting.
Exhaustion had hit the moment the spell passed, a great, gray, sucking swamp that experience told him would eventually drag him down. Once he gave in he would sleep for hours, sleep so deeply he might as well be unconscious, doped or dead.
Drew hadn’t come here to scare his relatives to death by arriving unconscious. Nor did he want to be admitted to the hospital for a malady the doctors wouldn’t be able to identify or remedy. He might not be able to avoid the gray tide entirely, but he could postpone it. This, too, he’d learned the hard way.
…ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred.
Sweat stood in suspended drops on Drew’s forehead as he released the muscles he’d held mercilessly taut in his left calf, then clenched those of his thigh. And began counting again.
Movement helped stave off collapse. Concentration helped, especially when turned to the cool realm of business. But he couldn’t move in the confines of the limo, and his laptop and briefcase had been left behind, with his luggage, at the airport. So he substituted a slow counting while isolating and tightening the muscles of his body. Holding each clenched set of muscles to the point of pain before he released it and moved on to the next.
Pain, too, helped.
At last the elongated luxury of the limo was climbing the cobblestone road to where the palace waited, pale and pristine in the moonlight, at the top of the cliffs capping the northeastern tip of the island. When Drew stepped out of the limo, the night air covered him, freshened by the ocean and the distinctive smell of northern Montebello, where oregano and thyme grew wild. The spicy scent mingled with the headiness of his aunt’s roses.
He wished he could pass through the gardens instead of the palace, take the rocky path down the cliff and walk along the beach, alone with the sea and the night. He wished, in fact, he could go anywhere but through the ornate doors at the top of the stairs. Once inside, he would have to deal with the people he loved. His inadequacies in that area were always painfully obvious. But even if he’d been willing to play the coward, the tide that waited to drag him under made that a foolish choice. Drew didn’t care to delight the paparazzi by passing out on the beach. He’d sold enough copies of their rags for them in his younger, wilder days.
Grimly he started up the steps. There were thirty-two of them.
Rudolpho, of course, waited at the door to admit him. ‘‘If you are not too tired, my lord,’’ the old man said in his excellent English, ‘‘the king wishes to see you before you retire. He and the queen are in their quarters. Shall I send up some refreshments?’’
‘‘Coffee would be welcome, thank you.’’ Drew preferred tea, but an extra jolt of caffeine might help. ‘‘And if you could locate a clean shirt, I’d appreciate it. My luggage is still at the airport and I’d rather not present myself to the king stinking of smoke.’’
‘‘You can have one of my shirts,’’ a voice said from the grand staircase. ‘‘We’re nearly of a size. A clean pair of pants wouldn’t hurt, either, from the look of you. But why is your luggage held up? I trust no one became so carried away by some notion of duty that he refused to release it to you.’’
The unconscious hauteur of that last statement pulled a small smile from Drew as he turned to face his cousin. Lucas was a very approachable prince—but he was still a prince. ‘‘I didn’t want to take the time to dig through the piles to locate my bags tonight. Things are rather a mess still.’’
Lucas’s face hardened. ‘‘No doubt.’’ He glanced at the majordomo. ‘‘I’ll see Lord Andrew upstairs. You may send his coffee to my father’s rooms.’’
Lucas looked much the same, Drew thought as he joined his cousin on the stairs. Thinner, perhaps, but fit. No shadows of illness, no obvious marks from his ordeal showed…yet there was a change. A certain guardedness about the dark blue eyes and around the fine, wide mouth. It reminded Drew of what he saw in the mirror every day.
Something had closed that used to be open. Silently, privately, he mourned the loss.
‘‘You can stop searching my face for signs of imminent collapse,’’ Lucas said dryly.
‘‘Sorry. I didn’t realize I was being obvious.’’
‘‘You’re never that.’’ Lucas started back up the steps.
Drew followed. What did you say to a cousin you’d grieved as dead? How did you tell him what it meant to have him back? Drew counted stairs, hunted for words and came up dry. ‘‘It’s good to see you, Lucas. Good to have you back.’’
Lucas glanced over his shoulder, and for a moment the tightness around his eyes eased. ‘‘I hear you’ve been a frequent visitor in my absence.’’
Drew shrugged. ‘‘For whatever good it did, yes.’’
Lucas didn’t reply. Drew struggled to find a pleasant topic. ‘‘How are your sisters?’’
‘‘Fat and happy. At least they’re all happy and two out of three are on their way to fat, though they aren’t showing yet.’’
‘‘Two?’’ Drew stopped near the stop of the stair. His legs seemed to weigh at least ten stone apiece. ‘‘I knew Anna was expecting. Christina—?’’
‘‘Yes, she’s a finalist in the baby sweepstakes, too, and so delighted we keep having to yank her back down off the ceiling. Her husband, Jack, too. She’s due to reach the finish line a month after Anna.’’ Lucas’s hesitation was brief. ‘‘It’s wonderful news, of course.’’
‘‘Of course.’’ But not, Drew thought as he started walking again, a completely happy subject for Lucas. In the months the prince had been missing, one of his sisters had become engaged and two had married, and Lucas didn’t know any of the men. In some ways, his family had moved on without him. Though he gave a decent impression of his usual upbeat manner, his heart wasn’t in it.
By the time they reached Lucas’s room on the second floor, Drew had had enough. ‘‘For God’s sake,’’ he said as he shut the door behind him, ‘‘would you quit working so hard at being cheerful? It isn’t necessary, you know.’’
Luke swung around to face him. ‘‘I suppose it interferes with your plans to pry the lid off my skull and lap up the contents.’’
‘‘Quite a gruesome turn of phrase you’ve developed.’’ Drew observed, unbuttoning his shirt. ‘‘No doubt your recent trauma has given you a fascination with cracked skulls and addled brains. Didn’t you promise me a clean shirt?’’
Lucas’s mouth twitched. ‘‘Good old Drew. Same chilly bastard you’ve always been. It’s nice to know some things didn’t change while I was gone. I’ll see what I can find.’’ He opened the door that led to his dressing room.
‘‘I suppose the rest of the family has been tiptoeing around you.’’ Drew followed, tossing his filthy shirt into the hamper just inside the dressing room. ‘‘When they aren’t hugging you.’’
‘‘Lord, yes. Everyone’s so blasted careful with me…you won’t bother with that, at least. You’ll just stand around not saying much until I spill my guts.’’ Lucas handed him a pale-blue shirt. ‘‘It’s quite a trick. I’ve often wondered how you do it.’’
‘‘So have I.’’ Drew had never understood what about him prompted confidences. Lord knew he didn’t have any special wisdom to offer, nor any great warmth. Yet people told him things. Private things. Griefs and guilts and choices made or unmade, all the aching questions that can trouble a soul when the night is dark and lonely. This compulsion to confide, to confess, was alien to Drew. He couldn’t imagine willfully violating his own privacy that way. Yet often those who breached their privacy with him seemed to feel better for it afterward, the way one does after a splinter is removed or a bad tooth has been pulled.
And sometimes, afterward, they avoided him. Drew slipped on his cousin’s shirt and stepped out of his slacks—which were, as Lucas had noted, much the worse for wear.
His unwanted knack for eliciting confidences had been the one thing he could offer his aunt and uncle while their son was missing, and later, when they thought him dead. He wondered if they would be uncomfortable around him now, if they would avoid him. He told himself it didn’t matter. Or not very much, anyway, not as much as helping them had mattered. If he had helped. ‘‘Why do people answer questions I don’t ask?’’
Lucas, rummaging through the hangers, turned around holding out a pair of slacks—gray, clean, faultlessly pressed. ‘‘I guess it’s like dropping stones in some dark pit. There’s the assurance that any foolishness we let fall won’t come back at us. Lord knows nothing else does. Clams have nothing on you.’’
‘‘Hmm. Vanessa compared talking to me to howling at the moon or going to confession. Except, of course, that I don’t hand out penance.’’
Lucas’s mouth turned up wryly. ‘‘Sisters can be the very devil, can’t they? They know us too well and spare us very little. Here. These won’t be a perfect fit, but at least they won’t leave soot on the upholstery. Speaking of sisters, one of mine is upset with you.’’
‘‘Which one?’’ He stepped into the slacks, which were a trifle long—Lucas was six-two to Drew’s six-one—but were a major improvement otherwise.
‘‘Anna. Have you offended Julia and Christina lately, too?’’
‘‘Probably. I’d better go see your father now that I’m decent.’’ Before he collapsed. Fatigue was lapping at his defenses like a flood-swollen river. He started for the door.
Lucas fell into step beside him in the wide hall. The king and queen’s private suite occupied a separate wing that lay an achingly long distance away, from Drew’s current perspective.
‘‘So why is Anna mad at you?’’ Lucas asked as they crossed the picture gallery.
‘‘She didn’t care for the way I treated the last candidate she sent me.’’
‘‘Candidate? But what—no, she didn’t. Surely she didn’t decide to play matchmaker. Not with you. I know she was very successful with your brother—’’
‘‘It went to her head.’’ Briefly Drew’s expression softened. His brother Rafe had settled into marriage as if he were made for it—and perhaps he was. As long as his partner was Serena. ‘‘The last bit of bait Anna trolled across my path was a pretty blond bundle of innocence named Theresa. I gather I was supposed to have been struck by the contrast she made with my usual fare and collapsed, smitten, into matrimony. Or at least come down with a mild case of honorable intentions.’’
‘‘Ah. What did you do? Or maybe I don’t want to know.’’
‘‘Probably not.’’
Lucas held his tongue through the picture gallery and into the green sitting room. ‘‘I take it you aren’t feeling any overriding impulse to unburden yourself.’’
‘‘You sound very American. Another result of your trauma?’’
‘‘Dammit, Drew—was the girl an innocent? And just what did you do?’’
‘‘Nothing extensive, though I’m afraid the tour I offered her wasn’t exactly what your sister had in mind. Don’t worry,’’ he added drily. ‘‘I may have done more sightseeing than I should have, but I don’t tour virgins.’’
It was easy to see Lucas didn’t approve, but then, Sebastiani males were born with a hair-trigger impulse toward chivalry. ‘‘Was that really necessary?’’
‘‘It seemed so at the time. She wasn’t the one I was trying to discourage.’’
‘‘You wanted her to run crying to Anna so she’d stop matchmaking.’’
‘‘Yes.’’ He paused. ‘‘I suspect my mother had been encouraging her.’’
Lucas didn’t respond, a courtesy Drew appreciated. It was well-known within the family that Drew and his mother were, if not estranged, at least at odds. Her Grace did not approve of her son’s lifestyle. In time-honored female fashion, she considered that the cure lay in finding the right woman—kind, gentle, well-bred and as close to untouched as possible.
Drew often wondered how a woman as perceptive as his mother could read her own son so poorly. ‘‘You haven’t asked me about the bombing,’’ he observed.
‘‘No need for you to go over everything more than once. I think I should warn you—oh, hell, that’s presumptuous of me, isn’t it? You’ve been here.’’ Bitterness bit down on the last words. ‘‘I haven’t.’’
‘‘You’ve been here for the last three weeks.’’
‘‘But not for months before that. What that did to them…I’ve never seen age sit on my father the way it does now. It worries me. I’m trying to help, to take over some of the responsibilities—but dammit, why did he stay up to hear from you tonight? It’s past one o’clock. He might have trusted me to find out if there was anything urgent. Or even to act on it myself.’’
They’d reached the double doors that led to the king’s suite. Drew stopped. ‘‘It isn’t about you, you know. Marcus doesn’t lack confidence in your ability or your dedication, but letting go doesn’t come easily to a man accustomed to rule.’’
Lucas stared at him, grim and silent, then gave a quick bark of laughter. ‘‘God help me, you did it again. You’re like a bloody stage magician—no matter how closely I think I’m watching your hands, you still pull secrets out of my hat.’’ He slapped Lucas on the back harder than was necessary. ‘‘Go on, go in there and talk to my father before I tell you about the time I lost my virginity.’’
‘‘You told me that years ago. Not long after it happened, as I recall, though the disclosure was more along the lines of bragging than confessing. You were—’’
His cousin opened the door and shoved him through it.
When Drew passed through those doors again forty minutes later, he was alone. The suite reserved for the Harrington family lay in yet another wing. By the time he turned into the second-longest hall on his route, he was weaving, and after a while he realized he’d stopped moving altogether. Instead, he was leaning against one wall, staring at the paintings hanging on the other.
A Monet and one of Segatini’s rural scenes. He remembered them, but he couldn’t see them. It’s not my eyes, he thought. There were shapes, forms, colors. His brain had simply stopped processing the input.
A vague mental image of a sofa, brocaded and plump with pillows, rose in his mind. He wouldn’t have to stagger all the way to the bedroom. The sofa in the sitting room would do. Or the floor.
But not this floor. He was still in the hall. Blinking, he managed to focus, push away from the wall and take a few steps.
‘‘Drew? Are you all right?’’
Lorenzo. Turning his head, Drew saw his cousin about twenty paces away. Had Lorenzo seen him propped drunkenly against the wall? No, he decided. If he’d seen that much, he wouldn’t ask if Drew was all right. It would be all too obvious that he wasn’t. Drawing on the stubborn dregs of his pride, Drew shut the fatigue away once more, closing up the part of him that knew how few minutes remained before he collapsed. ‘‘I’m fine,’’ he said curtly. ‘‘More tired than I’d realized.’’
Lorenzo started toward him, frowning. ‘‘You look like hell.’’
‘‘I’ve been running short on sleep the last few days, that’s all. It’s caught up with me.’’
Lorenzo stopped in front of him. ‘‘You shouldn’t have stayed at the airport so long, flexing your muscles.’’
Drew couldn’t penetrate the fog well enough to read the other man’s expression. God, he wanted to be alone. Like an injured animal dragging itself back to its den, he craved the closed door that would shut out the rest of the world. ‘‘I was hoping for a medal. Something tasteful to wear on state occasions.’’
That earned him a grin, but it was perfunctory. ‘‘Yeah, such a glory hound you are. I’d intended to talk to you after reporting to Marcus, but maybe I should ask you now. You don’t look as if you’ll be upright much longer.’’
True. Though he was apt to go horizontal more dramatically than his cousin expected. ‘‘Ask me what?’’
‘‘About the woman Captain Mylonas found. Signorina Giaberti. Mylonas is an idiot, of course, but he may have accidentally turned up a decent lead. We don’t have any evidence against her, nothing that links her to any known terrorist groups, but she’s involved somehow, or she’s protecting someone who is. God knows her story doesn’t hold water.’’
It was hard to follow a thought long enough to reply sensibly. ‘‘What’s her story?’’
He snorted. ‘‘She’s psychic. Saw the whole thing in a dream.’’
Drew pictured her, the knowing eyes and amused mouth. The body, lush and firm and inviting. A small, distant flicker of sexual interest arrived with the image, along with a tinge of disgust. ‘‘As lies go, that one sucks.’’
‘‘It’s nonsense, of course, but there’s a certain superficial credibility. Her mother was burned as a witch.’’
‘‘Good God, Lorenzo, this isn’t the sixteenth century!’’
‘‘Not for you and me, maybe, but in some ways Montebello is one big village, and time moves differently in the village mind. Never mind that now. I can fill you in on her history tomorrow, if you agree.’’
‘‘You haven’t asked me anything yet.’’
‘‘I noticed a certain chemistry between you and the si¬ gnorina. I’d like you to pursue that. See her socially, get her to trust you. Talk to you. You’re good at that.’’
So he was. He couldn’t keep the distaste from his voice. ‘‘Pillow talk?’’
‘‘If that’s what it takes. I don’t want another bomb going off. Drew…’’ Lorenzo’s hesitation was brief. ‘‘You know what a powder keg we’ve been sitting on the past few months. The king kept us out of war by sheer force of will, but you’ll have seen what a toll it’s taken on him. Now that he considers the danger over, he’s…not as clearheaded as usual. I’m not going to tell him what I’ve asked you to do.’’
‘‘He wouldn’t stand for it, would he? Too bloody unchivalrous.’’ Colors were starting to fade as the gray at the edges of his vision blurred into the rest. He could scarcely think beyond the need to be alone. ‘‘Of course I’ll do it. Why not?’’
Chapter 3
The flame was blue-white with heat—but tiny. Small enough to be safe. The woman guiding that flame wore a canvas apron over pink chinos and tinted safety glasses. No jewelry, no makeup. Her black hair was tied in a rough knot at her nape, though curly bits escaped to frisk around her face.
The worktable she was bent over was cluttered. Tongs, tweezers, wire cutters, a two-inch nail and a tiny hammer, spools of silver wire and several thin golden squares crowded the surface directly in front of her. Small wooden and plastic boxes lined the back of the table, and more tools hung on the pegboard on the wall behind it. A draftsman’s adjustable light was clamped to the table’s edge. A vise gripped a silver arm cuff, three inches wide and partially worked, at the front of the table.
The little soldering iron kissed the air beneath the bit of wire Rose held, kissed and retreated in a butterfly’s insubstantial salute. Silver beaded and fell, directed by a subtle flick of her wrist.
‘‘Natala Baldovino is at the market,’’ Rose’s aunt Gemma announced gloomily from the doorway.
‘‘I thought you were watching the shop.’’ Rose released the button on the little soldering iron. The flame died.
‘‘I needed pancetta for the carbonara sauce, and some olives. Pietra offered to go. I think she has her eye on the youngest Christofides boy.’’
‘‘Pietra has her eye on both Christofides boys, along with any other male who crosses her path. She doesn’t mean anything by it. Nothing serious, at least.’’
‘‘I’m not sure the young men realize that. She said Natala Baldovino had already made the rounds.’’
Rose studied the way silver swirled over gold in a stylized, intricate yin-yang design on the arm cuff and nodded, satisfied. ‘‘I suppose Signora Baldovino is allowed to buy olives.’’
‘‘If that had been her purpose, I’d have no objections,’’ her aunt observed in a fair-minded way. ‘‘But you know it isn’t. You know what she’s saying.’’
Rose had a pretty good idea. She also cherished some hope of finishing the cuff—and avoiding the lecture Gemma had been trying to deliver ever since the police released her yesterday. She loosened the vise, turned the cuff and tightened it again. ‘‘I’m thinking of using mother-of-pearl here, for the moon.’’
‘‘Very pretty, dear. It reminds me of that new ring.’’
‘‘What new ring?’’
‘‘Didn’t I tell you? A rather flashy young woman brought it in yesterday morning. An American.’’
‘‘You bought a ring for the shop.’’ Rose inhaled a slow breath for patience as anxiety bit. The shop did well normally, but this summer hadn’t been normal. The possibility of war with Tamir had discouraged tourists, sales were half what they’d been last year at this time, and her bank balance hadn’t been this low since she’d first opened the shop.
Now it might be in the red. ‘‘You didn’t check with me. You know you have to check with me before you buy anything.’’
‘‘How could I? You were in jail.’’
Defeated, Rose swiveled on her stool.
Her aunt stood in front of the desk Rose used when she couldn’t avoid paperwork any longer. Gemma Giaberti was a small woman, plump and firm as a pear, with black hair coiled high on her round head. She had cow’s eyes—big, brown and placid, with extravagant eyelashes. Her skirt was long and full, the color of moss. Her blouse was white and embroidered. Today she wore only two necklaces, a baroque locket of about the same age as her house, and an intricately worked chain her niece had made for her two years ago.
‘‘I wasn’t in jail,’’ Rose said, studying those placid eyes with suspicion. ‘‘I spent hours at the police station because Mylonas is an idiot, but they didn’t put me behind bars. How could they? They have no evidence of any wrongdoing.’’
‘‘Of course not, but that isn’t stopping Natala Baldovino from passing around her version of events.’’
‘‘Maybe the gossip will bring people into the shop.’’ When her aunt just blinked at her in polite skepticism, Rose grimaced. ‘‘I know, I know. They’re more likely to put a rock through the window.’’
‘‘Oh, surely not. No one’s done that in years, have they? Except for the Peterson boy, and really, I don’t think he counts. He threw rocks through everyone’s windows until he went into the army.’’ Gemma clucked her tongue. ‘‘Rose, your head is hurting. You forgot to eat lunch again, didn’t you?’’
‘‘I had a big breakfast. Do you by any chance remember how much you paid for this ring?’’
‘‘I’m sure I wrote it down. I know you like everything to be accounted for…the receipt book?’’ Her forehead, smoother than a woman her age had any right to have, puckered now as she considered the matter. ‘‘Yes, that’s it. I asked her to give me a receipt for the money, and she did. She signed it and—’’ Gemma finished with triumph ‘‘—I had her put her address below her signature.’’
‘‘That will help—if it’s her real name and address.’’
That brought a moment’s silence. ‘‘I suppose I should have asked to see identification. A passport or something.’’
‘‘It might have been a good idea.’’ Rose stood and stretched, unkinking stiff muscles. How long had she been bent over her newest design? A glance at the clock informed her that Gemma was right. She had forgotten lunch. ‘‘Just think how happy it would make Captain Mylonas if we bought stolen goods and he found out.’’
‘‘Bah. He’s a worm.’’
‘‘A worm with a badge.’’ Gemma had been right about something else, too. She had a headache. Nothing vicious, more like a tired child whining for attention. Rose reached up to loosen her hair and rub her temples. ‘‘I’ll need to give the police a description of the ring so they can check their list of stolen property, just in case. Is it in the stockroom?’’
‘‘I put it with the receipt book, I think. In the cash drawer.’’
‘‘The cash drawer? No, don’t tell me. I’m sure it made perfect sense at the time.’’ She untied her apron as she walked briskly to the door. ‘‘What does the ring look like?’’
‘‘Not terribly old, but unusual. A ruby and a pearl set in a thick band. I’m sure you’ll like it. After all, the pattern is the same as the one you’re making now, so that proves it, doesn’t it?’’
Her apron went on a hook on the back of the door. Her hands went to her hair, finger-combing it quickly. Fruit, she thought. Or maybe some nuts. A little food would cure the ache in her head. She pushed open the door to the shop.
Her spirits lifted. The shining counters, the shelves and display cases full of the beautiful, the fanciful, the unique—this was hers. Her aunt helped, certainly. So had the bank. But persuading a banker to take a chance on a young, unmarried woman—one who lacked the convenience of a father —had been as much of an accomplishment as finding the stock, teaching herself bookkeeping and building a clientele and a reputation.
A different reputation, that is. The one she’d been born with had its drawbacks.
She turned the key in the cash drawer. First the receipt book… The figure she saw entered in Gemma’s rounded handwriting made her mutter something in German. Rose considered German the best language for cursing, partly because of all those clacking consonants. Partly, too, because her aunt didn’t understand it.
‘‘Where’s the ring?’’ she demanded. ‘‘Is this it?’’ She held up a small glass box, her eyebrows raised. ‘‘Glass, Zia?’’
Gemma smiled vaguely. ‘‘It seemed best.’’
Wonderful. She was going to have to use almost all of her savings to cover a check written because her aunt refused to stop meddling. Rose scowled and snatched off the lid. ‘‘This had better be…’’
‘‘Yes,’’ Gemma said softly from Rose’s shoulder. ‘‘I thought it was the same, and it is.’’
Executed in miniature on the band of the ring was her own yin-yang design—a design that had come to her in a dream. She gave one quick, irritated shake of her head. ‘‘Damn. I’d better see why it showed up, then.’’ She reached for the ring.
‘‘Rose, wait until—’’
Too late. She’d closed her hand around the ring.
Seconds later her knees went soft. She swayed.
A plump arm closed around her shoulders, steadying her. The ring left her hand, breaking the connection. Her eyelids lifted. ‘‘My God.’’
‘‘Are you all right?’’
She blinked. Gemma had put the ring back in its glass box, shielded once more. ‘‘You might have warned me.’’
‘‘I tried to,’’ Gemma said tartly. ‘‘Though I had no idea it would hit you so hard.’’
‘‘You put it in glass. You knew it needed warding.’’
‘‘I knew it was for you to see, that’s all. Psychometry isn’t my Gift.’’ She released Rose’s shoulders. ‘‘What did you feel?’’
Her aunt’s voice held all the crispness it usually lacked. Rose responded automatically. ‘‘Grief. Wild and deep…whoever she is, she’s hurting.’’
‘‘You’re rubbing your stomach. Is she in physical pain?’’
Oh. So she was. Rose stopped rubbing but kept her hand on her stomach, turning her attention to the echoes of feeling still trembling inside her. ‘‘Not physical pain. Emotional. An empty womb.’’ Her voice went flat and bleak. ‘‘Whoever she is, she’s lost a child. Miscarriage, maybe…’’ Rose shook her head, throwing off the traces of someone else’s heartache. ‘‘I don’t understand why the connection was so strong. Aside from the ring being made of metal, there’s no link to fire—’’
‘‘Are you sure?’’
She glanced at her aunt, impatient. She knew what Gemma wanted. The same thing she always wanted—for Rose to explore her Gift, to learn it, use it. That was why she’d bought the ring. ‘‘I couldn’t very well miss that. I didn’t recognize her.’’
Gemma patted her arm. ‘‘You will next time, dear.’’
‘‘No.’’
‘‘The ring came to you. There’s a reason for that, even if—’’
The chimes above the door rang. ‘‘Later, Zia.’’ Rose tucked her hair behind her ear, turned to the door—and froze.
It was him. The man from the airport. The one who’d been with His Grace, Duke Lorenzo Sebastiani, nephew of the king and head of Montebello’s intelligence service. His clothes were cleaner and more casual today, but just as expensive. His face was hard, lean. Not a lovely face, but the sort a woman remembered. And the eyes—oh, they were the same, the clearest, coldest green she’d ever seen.
So was the quick clutch of pleasure in her stomach. ‘‘What are you doing here?’’
‘‘Rose.’’ Gemma’s tone was repressive.
‘‘Your store is open, isn’t it?’’ He had a delicious voice, like melted chocolate dripped over the crisp consonants and rounded vowels of upper-class English.
Gemma moved out from behind the counter. ‘‘Pay no attention to my niece. Missing a meal makes her growl. Did you have something specific in mind, my lord, or would you like to look around awhile?’’
My lord? Well, Rose thought, that was no more than she’d suspected, and explained why he seemed familiar. She must have seen his picture sometime. This man wasn’t just rich, he was frosting—the creamy top level of the society cake.
She, of course, wasn’t part of the cake at all.
‘‘Quite specific,’’ he said. ‘‘About five foot seven, I’d say, with eyes the color of the ocean at twilight and a sad lack of respect for the local police.’’
Rose lifted one eyebrow. ‘‘Are you here on Captain Mylonas’s behalf, then…my lord?’’
‘‘I never visit a beautiful woman on behalf of another man. Certainly not on behalf of a fool. I asked you to call me Drew.’’
Ah. Now she knew who he was. ‘‘So you did, Lord Andrew.’’
His mouth didn’t smile, but the creases cupping his lower eyelids deepened and the cool eyes warmed slightly. ‘‘Stubborn, aren’t you.’’
‘‘Do pigs fly?’’ Gemma asked.
‘‘Ah…no, I don’t believe they do.’’
Rose grinned. ‘‘Aunt Gemma has a fondness for American slang, but she doesn’t always get the nuances right. She enjoys American tabloids, too. And Italian tabloids. And—’’
‘‘Really, Rose,’’ Gemma interrupted, flustered. ‘‘His lordship can’t possibly be interested in my reading habits.’’
‘‘No?’’ Rose’s smile widened as she remembered a picture of Lord Andrew Harrington she’d seen in one of her aunt’s tabloids a few years ago. Quite a memorable photograph —but it hadn’t been Lord Andrew’s face that had made it so. His face hadn’t shown at all, in fact. ‘‘I’m afraid we don’t sell sunscreen. If you’re planning to expose any, ah, untanned portions of your body to the Mediterranean sun, you’d do better to shop at Serminio’s Pharmacy. They have a good selection.’’
‘‘Rose!’’ Gemma exclaimed. ‘‘I’m sorry, my lord, she didn’t…that is, she probably did mean…but she shouldn’t have.’’
The creases deepened. ‘‘I’m often amazed at how many people remember that excessively candid photograph. Perhaps my sister is right. She claims the photographer caught my best side.’’
His best side being his backside? Rose laughed. ‘‘Maybe I do like you, after all.’’
The door chime sounded again. Tourists, she saw at a glance—a Greek couple with a small child. She delegated them to her aunt with a quick smile. To her surprise, Gemma frowned and didn’t step forward to welcome their customers.
Her zia didn’t approve of Lord Andrew Harrington? Or possibly it was Rose’s flirting she didn’t like. Ah, well. She and Gemma had different ideas about what risks were worth taking. She answered her aunt’s silent misgivings with a grin, and reluctantly Gemma moved toward the front of the shop.
Lord Andrew came up to the counter. ‘‘Perhaps you could show me your shop.’’
How odd. She couldn’t feel him. She felt something, all right—a delightful fizzing, the champagne pleasure of attraction. But she couldn’t feel him. The counter was only two feet wide, which normally let a customer’s energy brush up against hers. Curious, she tipped her head. ‘‘Maybe I will. But I’ll have to repeat my aunt’s question. Are you looking for something in particular?’’
‘‘Nothing that would be for sale. But something special, yes.’’
Oh, he was good. Rose had to smile. ‘‘We have some very special things for sale, though, all handmade. Necklaces, earrings…’’
He shook his head chidingly. ‘‘I’m far too conventional a fellow for earrings—except, of course, for pearls. Pearls must always be acceptable, don’t you think?’’
‘‘Certainly, on formal occasions,’’ she agreed solemnly. ‘‘I’m afraid we don’t have any pearls, however.’’
He looked thoughtful. ‘‘I believe I have a sister.’’
She was enjoying him more and more. ‘‘How pleasant for you.’’
‘‘No doubt she will have a birthday at some point. I could buy her a present. In fact, I had better buy her a present. You must help me.’’
‘‘Jewelry, or something decorative?’’
‘‘Oh…’’ His gaze flickered over her, then lifted so his eyes could smile at her in that way they had that didn’t involve his mouth at all. ‘‘Something decorative, I think.’’
‘‘For your sister,’’ she reminded him, and left the safety of the counter. Quite deliberately she let her arm brush his as she walked past, and received an answer to the question she couldn’t ask any other way.
Nothing. Even this close, he gave away nothing at all.
Rose’s skin felt freshly scrubbed—tender, alert. Her mind began to fizz like a thoroughly shaken can of soda, but she didn’t let her step falter as she led the way to the other side of the store, away from her aunt and the Greek tourists.
Here the elegantly swirled colors of Murano glass glowed on shelves beside bowls bright with painted designs. Colors giggled and flowed over lead crystal vases, majolica earthenware, millefiori paperweights, ceramic figures and crackle-finish urns. Here, surrounded by beauty forged in fire, she felt relaxed and easy.
A purely physical reaction. That was all she felt with this man. That and curiosity, a ready appreciation for a quick mind. She turned to face him and she was smiling. But not like a shopkeeper in pursuit of a sale. ‘‘What is your sister like? Feminine, rowdy, sophisticated, shy?’’
‘‘Convinced she could do a better job of running my life than I do.’’ He wasn’t looking at Rose now, but at a shiny black statue by Gilmarie—a nymph, nude, seated on a stone and casting a roguish glance over one bare shoulder. He traced a finger along a ceramic thigh. ‘‘I like this.’’
The nymph was explicitly sensual. Rose’s eyebrows shot up. ‘‘For your sister?’’
‘‘I have a brother, too.’’
‘‘No doubt he comes equipped with a birthday, as well.’’
‘‘I’m fairly sure of it. I’m not sure I want this for him, though. I like the look on her face. The invitation.’’ His eyes met Rose’s then. There was no hint of a smile now. ‘‘Any man would.’’
What an odd thing a heart was, pumping along unnoticed most of the time, then suddenly bouncing in great, uneven leaps like a ball tumbling downhill. ‘‘She’s flirting, not inviting.’’
‘‘Is there a difference?’’
‘‘To a woman, yes. I think of flirting as a performance art. Something to be enjoyed in the moment, like dancing. Men are more likely to think of it as akin to cooking—still an art in the right hands, but carried out with a particular goal in mind.’’
The creases came back, and one corner of his mouth helped them build his smile this time. ‘‘I am a goal-oriented bastard at times.’’
So they knew where they stood. He wanted to get her into bed. Rose hadn’t decided yet what she wanted, but thought she would enjoy finding out. She didn’t doubt for a moment that the decision would be hers. She smiled back. ‘‘Are you a patient bastard, too? Even when you don’t get what you want?’’
‘‘I can be. Have dinner with me tonight.’’
She tipped her head to one side. ‘‘Where?’’
‘‘Why don’t I surprise you?’’
‘‘I like surprises. But somewhere with people around, I think.’’
‘‘A reasonable precaution. Perhaps I should mention that while I may be goal-oriented, I play by the rules.’’
‘‘You did say something about being conventional. But then, there’s your hair.’’ It was too long, too curly. It contradicted the hard face and remote expression, hinting at sensuality, even exuberance. The color was a pure, pale ash-brown. She wanted to touch it.
Impulsively she did. ‘‘Soft…and hardly businessman-short. It doesn’t fit the rest of your image, does it?’’
His face tightened. ‘‘I’m not a soft man. Just a busy one. I’ve been forgetting to get it cut.’’ He caught her hand and drew it between them, toying with her fingers. ‘‘You’re rough on your hands.’’ He ran a finger along a scabbed scratch on her thumb.
‘‘I—’’ She glanced to where he held her hand in his. And stopped breathing.
After a moment, unsteady, she said, ‘‘I make jewelry. Little nicks are inevitable.’’
‘‘Is some of the jewelry here yours?’’
‘‘Most of it.’’
‘‘You have talent.’’ He carried her hand to his mouth and placed a kiss, almost chaste, on the tips of her fingers. ‘‘Be ready at seven. Where should I pick you up?’’
‘‘Here. We…my aunt and I live above the shop. Use the stairs at the side of the house. Will you be wearing your pearls?’’
‘‘It will be a dressy sort of surprise, but not formal enough for pearls. You would be lovely in black.’’
She said something and he didn’t stare at her as if she were crazy, so she must have sounded reasonable. Then he left. She managed to respond appropriately when two more tourists, both female, wandered in while her aunt was ringing up a purchase for the Greek family. Rose sold her tourists a bracelet, three postcards and a beautiful ivory vase.
But all the while her mind was whirling. She’d recognized his hand. She’d seen it quite recently. For the first time, the only time, she had been touched while walking a fire dream. Touched by his hand. While around them the airport burned in a vision that now—thank God—would never come true.
Rose had no idea what it meant. But the slamming of her heart against the walls of her chest felt very much like fear.
Chapter 4
Rose wasn’t surprised when her aunt joined her that evening while she was getting ready. ‘‘I had hoped you would take another look at that ring,’’ said Gemma, settling on the edge of the tub.
‘‘I haven’t decided yet.’’ Rose leaned over the sink, shut one eye and stroked color on the closed lid.
‘‘You didn’t pick up any feeling of urgency when you held it?’’
The hopeful note in Gemma’s voice made Rose smile. ‘‘No. And you ought to be ashamed of yourself, wishing danger on some poor woman so you can coerce me into working with my Gift.’’
‘‘I never would! But there must be some reason the ring came to you. You need to find out what that is.’’ She cocked her head like a curious parrot. ‘‘You aren’t wearing that to go out with Lord Andrew, are you?’’
Rose grinned, studied the smoky color on one eyelid and applied herself to making the other match it. She was wearing black, as Drew had suggested—a skinny silk swish of a dress with straps thin as spider silk. ‘‘Don’t you like it?’’
‘‘What there is of it. I hope you know what you’re doing.’’
‘‘Where would be the fun in that?’’ She dropped the eye shadow in the caddy that held her play-pretties and dug through the brushes, boxes, tubes, crayons and pencils. Rose didn’t always bother with makeup, but when in the mood to indulge, she did enjoy her paints.
Red lipstick, she thought, but not siren red. More of a mauve, maybe…then she saw her aunt’s face and paused, creamy color dialed but unapplied. ‘‘Zia? What’s wrong? This isn’t exactly the first time I’ve gone out with a man.’’
‘‘This one is different.’’
Rose couldn’t deny that, since it was his difference that intrigued her. Quickly she smoothed color over her lips. ‘‘I like him.’’
Suddenly vehement, Gemma stood. ‘‘It isn’t him you like, it’s his silence. You thought I hadn’t noticed? My Gift may be small, but I’d have to be spirit-blind not to notice that nothing at all comes from Lord Andrew Harrington. If you were to close your eyes when he kissed you, you wouldn’t know he was there. And that’s why you’re going out with him.’’
‘‘Well, yes.’’ Rose turned, a smile tugging at her mouth. ‘‘But trust me. If he kisses me, I’ll know he’s there.’’
Gemma tossed her hands in the air. ‘‘Rose, this man is trouble. Even if he weren’t wild…oh, the stories I’ve heard about him! I’m sure they can’t all be true…but some of them must be, and his birth, his family—you must see how impossible it is. Lord Andrew is looking for fun and games, love. A playmate, nothing more.’’
‘‘Maybe I want to play. Have I shocked you?’’ She put an arm around her aunt’s plump shoulders. ‘‘Surely not. You know what it’s like. If anyone knows, you do.’’
Gemma’s eyes were troubled as their gazes met and held. ‘‘You mustn’t think that because I’m alone, you will be. You’re only twenty-seven. There’s time.’’
‘‘I suppose. But—’’ the twist Rose gave her mouth landed between a smile and a grimace ‘‘—I don’t think I’m made for celibacy.’’
Gemma turned and put her hands on Rose’s shoulders. ‘‘So, you want a fling? With that man? Bambina, I didn’t raise you to be stupid.’’
‘‘Is it stupid to go out with a man I find attractive? Whatever happens, it will be my choice. I want—oh, just to be normal. For once, to be normal.’’ Too much bitterness colored that last statement. She moderated her voice, dug deep and found amusement. ‘‘I don’t have my heart set on a flaming affair. I may have hopes, but no definite plans.’’
‘‘That, I gather, is supposed to reassure me.’’ Gemma’s voice was tart. ‘‘You are going to be hurt.’’
‘‘Hey.’’ Rose dropped a kiss on her aunt’s soft cheek. ‘‘I’m supposed to be the seer around here. No dire predictions, please. I don’t expect to be hurt, but if I am, what of it? Most women my age have stumbled in and out of a few heartaches.’’
‘‘Bah. I don’t know why I try. Once you have your mind made up, there’s no reasoning with you. Oh, here, you’re going to be late if you don’t hurry.’’ She gave Rose a little push, turning her to face the mirror again, picked up a hairbrush and began drawing the bristles firmly through Rose’s hair. ‘‘I’ll braid it for you.’’
‘‘Thank you, Zia,’’ Rose said meekly, then, ‘‘Ouch! Do you mean to discourage Drew by making me bald before he gets here?’’
‘‘It wouldn’t pull if you’d hold still. At your great age you should be able to stand quietly a few minutes… Did you want me to use the clasp you have out? No, hold on to it a moment, I’m not quite ready. No one is born blocked, you know. Somehow, sometime, he was hurt.’’
Rose’s heart felt suddenly larger as it filled with warmth for this dear woman who could no more hold on to anger than she could add a column of figures and come up with the same answer twice. ‘‘Now you’re worrying about him.’’
‘‘I’m quite capable of worrying about more than one person. And I’m ready for the clasp…thank you. I don’t know when I’ve seen someone so completely blocked—well, there’s my cousin Pia, poor soul. And old Arturo Domino, but he’s crazy.’’
Amused, Rose said, ‘‘I doubt that Drew talks to aliens on a regular basis. He has a solid feel to him, don’t you think?’’
The busy hands gave one last tug to Rose’s braid, then Gemma stepped back. ‘‘How would I know? How would you, when he keeps himself fully to himself?’’
‘‘A hunch?’’ She turned, smiling mischievously.
‘‘Where would you find a hunch when you can’t read him, not at all? Sitting out on the stoop, waiting for you to pick it up? Unless… Rose, have you dreamed him?’’
‘‘No. How do I look?’’
‘‘Mia felicitá.’’ Gemma’s eyes were moist. ‘‘So beautiful. Maybe I should be worrying about Lord Andrew. Tonight, you could break a man’s heart.’’
So of course she had to hug Gemma. ‘‘If you make me cry, my mascara is going to run.’’
‘‘It would serve you right. Oh, go on, finish getting ready.’’ Gemma pulled away. ‘‘You don’t have your shoes or your purse, and he will be here any minute. I suppose you had better borrow my Spanish shawl. It won’t keep you warm in that dress, but it will look pretty.’’
Gemma hurried out. Rose went to get her evening bag and heels from her room, her steps slowed by guilt. The shawl was one of her aunt’s chief treasures, a lacy extravagance purchased on a long-ago trip. Gemma had been twenty and still hoping to find a man, the right man. For the women in their family, there was only ever one man. Gemma’s mother had traveled with her to Greece, Italy and Spain. So had her younger sister, who eventually became Rose’s mother.
Gemma had found love on that trip. And lost it. He had died before they could marry, this man Gemma seldom spoke of but had never forgotten. Yet the shawl held only happy memories for her.
I didn’t lie, Rose told herself as she stepped into her heels. Not exactly. True, Drew had appeared in her vision, but the sending had been about the bombing, not the man. But she didn’t want to tell Gemma about the hand that had touched her during the time that wasn’t. Gemma would fuss, wanting Rose to enter into a fire-trance to find the truth. She would assume Drew was tied somehow to Rose’s Gift.
In a sense, he was. Because of her Gift, he might be the only man she would ever be able to go to bed with.
Summer days were long in the southern Mediterranean. At seven in the evening the air was warm as a baby’s bath, the light slanting but still rich. Voices called greetings and chatted in high-speed Italian or the musical English that was the island’s official tongue, punctuated here and there with German, Greek or Spanish from tourists wandering from shop to shop.
Not as many tourists as usual. Fear had kept many away, a situation that wouldn’t be helped by the recent bombing. Drew was considering the economic consequences as he strolled along with the tourists and the natives. It was easier than thinking about what he planned to do that night. And the woman he planned to do it with…or to.
Sex was a mutual activity. Deceit wasn’t.
It was hard not to like her. That was a problem he hadn’t anticipated. He reminded himself that she wasn’t, couldn’t be, what she seemed. She’d known about the bomb before it went off, which meant she was connected, somehow, to the Brothers of Darkness. Maybe she wasn’t really part of them. She might have heard of the attack through a lover or a friend—but if so, she hadn’t given the investigators the name of that friend or lover. Whether her silence came from complicity or misguided loyalty, she was guilty of protecting killers. And his own guilt was misplaced.
Drew returned his attention to the street and the people on it. He’d had to park a few blocks away. Rose Giaberti’s shop was on one of the old streets, tight and twisty, that made no provision for such modern intrusions as automobiles.
There were streets like this in England, narrow and crowded by buildings leaning comfortably into old age, but the light was different. So were the faces—smiling, frowning, emotions flowing freely, with hands gesturing to support a point or touch a friend. People stood closer to each other here. This communal urge toward intimacy might have made a man like him uneasy. Instead, in Montebello he relaxed as he seldom could at home. Here, he was known to be different—British, and therefore foolish about some things. His reserve, therefore, was a national trait, not a personal failing.
Her shop was still open, he noticed when he reached the two-story stone building. A girl with a pretty smile and short, shaggy hair was ringing something up on the antiquated cash register as he passed the big window. As instructed, Drew climbed the stairs on the side of the house. The balustrade was wooden and old. The steps were much older, and stone.
At the top of the stairs was a small balcony and a yellow door, which opened at his knock. The aunt invited him in without apologizing for her home, which he liked. Her parlor was modest and colorful, not terribly neat, and a fierce, inexplicable wish suddenly split him, leaving half his mind making sure he said what he should while the other half longed to sit in the faded blue armchair and talk with this warm, silly woman. Just sit and talk, in comfort.
Foolishness.
Rose, she said, would be ready in a moment. She made proper if slightly scattered conversation and offered him a seat, but she didn’t sit down herself, so courtesy kept him standing. He didn’t find out if the blue armchair would welcome him as this woman, however polite, did not.
Gemma Giaberti might be silly, but she was no fool. She didn’t trust him. Maybe he should have tried to charm or reassure her, but that particular deceit was beyond him. The woman was right to worry. He would almost certainly hurt her niece.
Some small noise must have alerted him. Or maybe it was her scent, sensed but not consciously noted, that made him turn to look at the doorway just as she reached it.
She wore black.
For once Drew’s inability to show his feelings was a blessing. His reaction couldn’t be concealed entirely, of course—there were some things no man could hide—but his dress slacks fit loosely enough to offer some concealment.
‘‘I’m sorry I kept you waiting,’’ she said, coming forward with a smile. ‘‘Last-minute emergency. I couldn’t find the right purse.’’
‘‘For results like this, I would have happily waited much longer.’’ He didn’t offer his arm. Instead, acting on impulse, he held out his hand.
Her palm was warm, her clasp firm. The contact felt obscurely right, and he didn’t want to analyze his motives or consider consequences. She gave her aunt a kiss on the cheek, her aunt gave her a lacy black shawl, and he left the house with Rose’s hand in his.
The air felt like silk on what little bare skin it could reach. Drew found himself regretting the way he’d chosen to entertain her tonight. It demanded far too many clothes.
On his part, at least. He glanced at the woman beside him. There was a great deal of her skin available to the evening air. Perhaps he hadn’t made such a bad choice, after all.
Dammit. He had no business regretting or enjoying his plans for the night. Rose was a beautiful woman, but more than that, she was vivid—sensual, unexpected, brimming with life. He couldn’t help responding and needn’t apologize for it. But tonight wasn’t about him and his unruly libido. He needed to remember that.
‘‘Am I allowed to know where we’re going?’’
‘‘First to the car. I had to park a few blocks away. Then, I’m afraid, to pick up my cousin.’’ That startled her. And didn’t please her overmuch, he thought.
‘‘Which one?’’
‘‘Lorenzo. It’s his car. Is it my imagination, or are we attracting more than our share of attention?’’
She chuckled. ‘‘What did you expect? I didn’t tell anyone I was going out with the queen’s nephew, but I did ask my assistant to close the shop for me tonight—after you’d come to see me this afternoon. That would be all it took to start the gossip moving. They’re probably disappointed you didn’t pick me up in a limo.’’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘‘Do you know all the people who have been staring at us, then?’’
‘‘Don’t you know most of the people in the village near your family’s estate?’’
‘‘Montebello isn’t a village. The population of the capital alone is over two hundred thousand.’’
‘‘But there aren’t two hundred thousand people on my street. I’ve lived in the house we just left for seventeen years.’’
He was reminded of what Lorenzo had said about Montebello and the village mind. ‘‘Most of our admirers seem to be smiling. They must approve. No, wait. The woman standing in front of the pharmacy you recommended to me for sunscreen is scowling at me. No doubt she reads the same magazines your aunt does.’’
‘‘Natala Baldovino.’’ She sighed. ‘‘It isn’t your reputation that puts a scowl on her face. It’s mine. She probably thinks I’ve put a spell on you and is trying to decide which authority to report me to. Maybe I should warn her not to bother telling Captain Mylonas. He doesn’t go in for all that psychic nonsense.’’
Startled, he said nothing.
‘‘Look.’’ She stopped, pulling her hand away from his, and faced him. ‘‘We may as well get this out of the way. How did you get my address?’’
‘‘From Lorenzo,’’ he admitted, since it was obvious she’d guessed that much.
‘‘That wouldn’t be the only information he gave you about me. Your cousin, whose car you borrowed, thinks that either I’m responsible for the bomb at the airport or I know who is. He would have told you that. You must have decided to give me the benefit of the doubt, and I appreciate it. I don’t appreciate being manipulated.’’
‘‘I beg your pardon?’’
She made a small, disgusted noise. ‘‘This business of picking up your cousin because you have his car. His Grace owns more than one car. He could catch a ride with a dozen other people, not counting the police or his own staff. But you’ve arranged things so that I have to face a man who thinks I’m in league with the—oh, I don’t have any words bad enough for them. With the Brothers. That’s a surprise, all right, but not the kind I was expecting when you asked me out.’’
Her perception of him shook him—but she didn’t really know why he’d set things up this way. She’d guessed part of it, but not all. ‘‘I’m sorry.’’
‘‘Judging by the expression on your face, that much is true.’’
His face wore a readable expression? ‘‘I didn’t think you’d realize Lorenzo held you in suspicion. He did arrange for Captain Mylonas to let you go.’’
‘‘Because there’s no evidence against me, not because he doesn’t suspect me. I’m not an idiot. He’s probably having me followed, though I haven’t spotted anyone lurking behind us yet. I understand why your cousin is suspicious, but that doesn’t make him pleasant company for me.’’
Best, he decided, to speak as much truth as possible. She was too bright to swallow a comfortable lie. ‘‘I’m afraid you’re right. Lorenzo believes you know more than you’ve admitted. He insisted I arrange things this way tonight. I think he wants to reassure himself I haven’t fallen under your spell.’’ He captured her hands. ‘‘Not the kind of spell your Signora Baldovino has in mind… I’m not sure I’ll be able to convince him, though. I’m not sure it isn’t true.’’
She studied him for a long moment before pulling one of her hands away. ‘‘She’s not my Signora Baldovino,’’ was all she said, but she left her other hand in his as they started walking again.
Neither of them spoke again until they reached the car, a silver Mercedes Benz. For Drew, the silence was a relief. Concealing facts and feelings came naturally. Deceit, he was learning, wasn’t the same as concealment.
He reached across her to unlock her door, but paused before opening it. ‘‘Do you see the man in the blue shirt who just rounded the corner? We need to give him time to reach his car, but it’s me he’s following, not you.’’
She stood so close, almost within the circle of his arms, that he could see the dark rims around her irises, like midnight encircling the ocean. ‘‘Why is he following you? And why do we want him to?’’
‘‘I refuse to go everywhere flanked by bodyguards. My cousin refuses to let me wander around Montebello without them. The gentleman in the blue shirt is a compromise.’’
Her eyes widened. He could feel the warmth from her body calling to his. She smelled of roses and something darker, a hint of musk and secrets. ‘‘You’re a target because of your relationship to the Crown. I…hadn’t realized.’’
‘‘Not a primary target. Maybe not a target at all, now that Lucas is back and war seems unlikely, but kidnapping remains a possibility. My uncle wouldn’t deal with terrorists, no matter whom they held hostage, but we can’t be sure they believe that. It’s only fair that you be aware of this. I wouldn’t have asked you out if the danger was great, but there is some risk. There’s also some loss of privacy.’’
Her smile came slowly and her voice, when she spoke, was light. Deliberately so, he thought. ‘‘As long as the gentleman in the blue shirt doesn’t find it necessary to peep in windows, I’m not worried about the loss of privacy. My neighbors will be watching us much more keenly than he will, believe me. As for the danger…we’ll just have to hope I’m a good enough seer to keep us both out of trouble, won’t we?’’
Something complex and silent seemed to pass between them, a communication he lacked the understanding to translate. Heat, yes—that was there. It was the other message he didn’t have words for. But he felt it.
He looked away before she did and opened her door. She slid inside.
How could he keep from respecting her courage? Drew had no answer for that as he settled behind the wheel.
‘‘So where will you, me and your suspicious cousin be eating dinner?’’
‘‘Didn’t I tell you?’’ A smile touched his lips as he clicked the seat belt in place. ‘‘At the palace. With my other cousin, Prince Lucas. And his parents.’’
This time, he noted with slightly malicious pleasure as he pulled out into traffic, she was the one startled into speechlessness.
Chapter 5
At thirty-five minutes short of midnight Drew headed for Lorenzo’s new home on the palace grounds. It was ironic, really, Drew thought. For years Lorenzo’s half brother had been jealous because Lorenzo lived in the palace, while Desmond had to settle for a house on the grounds. Now that Lorenzo was married, he’d casually relinquished what Desmond wanted so fiercely, preferring the privacy of a separate dwelling.
Drew doubted that the move had done anything to ease Desmond’s envy.
Lorenzo’s new wife, Eliza, let Drew in and showed him into the study, then withdrew discreetly.
Lorenzo was sitting at his desk with a map of the palace grounds spread before him, anchored at the corners by a book, a half-full decanter, a chunk of quartz and a .9-mm pistol. ‘‘If you’d like some brandy,’’ he said without looking up, ‘‘the glasses are on the credenza.’’
Brandy sounded entirely too civilized. ‘‘Not now,’’ Drew said, sitting in the chair across from his cousin. Lorenzo had been pressed for time that morning. He’d briefed Drew quickly on what they knew about Rose Giaberti, and he’d given him some instructions. Tonight Drew meant to learn more—and make a few suggestions of his own.
‘‘I hadn’t expected to see you back quite so early.’’ There was a gleam of amusement in Lorenzo’s dark eyes.
‘‘If you’re expecting regular reports on my sex life, you’re doomed to disappointment.’’
Lorenzo leaned back in his chair. ‘‘No. I wasn’t expecting you to be this prickly, either.’’
He hadn’t even kissed her good-night. She’d been angry when she learned he was taking her to the palace and on her guard when he took her home. That was one of the reasons for his restraint. There were others—he preferred not to do the expected. Her aunt had been waiting for her behind the yellow door at the top of those stairs. He wanted her to trust him, and quick, hot sex wasn’t the way to build trust.
But those reasons were garbage. He knew that, just as he knew that, wary or not, she’d wanted his kiss. But he remained unsure of his real reason. ‘‘Have you any evidence that a cell of the Brothers of Darkness remains intact here? Any names you can give me, descriptions, anything like that?’’
‘‘I’m afraid not. There were indications in the records we recovered after the raid on their headquarters that there had been a cell in Montebello at one time. Nothing to identify its members. We don’t even know for sure it still exists, though the bombing at the airport makes that seem likely. If so, it’s operating on its own now.’’
‘‘I don’t think she’d have anything to do with the Brothers.’’
‘‘You’ve reached that opinion based on one evening? An evening spent in the company of others?’’ He shook his head. ‘‘I don’t see how even you could have coaxed any confidences from her in between salad and chicken piccata.’’
‘‘Logic,’’ Drew said dryly, ‘‘is sometimes more useful than waiting for people to tell me secrets. First, the Brothers are exclusively male. Their beliefs about women wouldn’t allow them to admit a woman to their councils. At most she might be a friend or lover of one of the terrorists, but that doesn’t fit. This isn’t a woman who would waste time on a man who wanted to put her in purdah.’’
Lorenzo gestured impatiently. ‘‘People kill for love, for money, for more twisted or obscure reasons—hatred, revenge, even social advancement. We can’t assume she has no reason to cooperate with the Brothers just because we don’t know what it is. She could be part of some other group that’s climbed in bed with them for their own reasons.’’
‘‘If that’s the case, why isn’t she dead?’’
‘‘Because she tipped us off about the bomb, you mean? Trust me, that has occurred to me. She’s being watched. But it’s possible they don’t know who called in the tip.’’
Drew drummed once, twice, on the arm of the chair. ‘‘Your Captain Mylonas detained her for questioning at the airport, then took her to the police station. If the Brothers are too stupid to figure out what that means, they aren’t much of a threat.’’
‘‘Please. Mylonas is not one of my men, which he made quite clear. The idiot wouldn’t turn her loose until I persuaded his superior to override him. As to why she’s still alive…you have to remember that we’re dealing with a small, isolated remnant of our old enemy. The Brothers had resources in terms of arms, information and men that these people lack. They may not have enough men to risk exposing one of their number by trying to kill her right now. They’ll know we’re watching her.’’
It was some consolation. Drew’s heart was pounding too hard, and there was no reason for it. None. He steepled his fingers. ‘‘It’s also possible that she isn’t tied to the Brothers in any way. I’m going to proceed on that assumption.’’
Lorenzo’s eyebrows snapped down. ‘‘You want to tell me why?’’
‘‘Because that’s the most useful assumption for me to make.’’ Not because he found it impossible to believe otherwise. Though that was true, it was subjective and proved nothing. ‘‘I won’t be much help if she’s connected to the Brothers. She isn’t going to open up to me about that. But if she heard or saw something she wasn’t supposed to, she might have decided to use this psychic nonsense as a way of tipping you off without admitting she can identify one of the Brothers.’’
‘‘I see what you mean. She’d be afraid of what they would do to her if she identified one of them. But she may trust you enough to tell you the truth.’’ Lorenzo nodded. ‘‘All right. You work with your assumption, but don’t forget that’s all it is. Watch yourself.’’
‘‘Of course. You want to tell me why you had me bring her to the palace tonight?’’
‘‘Because I’m hoping like hell your assumption is wrong.’’ Lorenzo stopped suddenly, as if mastering whatever emotion had his jaw so tight. ‘‘We had another tip.’’
‘‘And?’’
‘‘There may be an attempt on the prince’s life at the Investiture.’’
‘‘Holy hell.’’ The Investiture was a centuries’ old ritual in which the king officially named his heir, who was then installed by the island’s elected body as the Crown Prince. ‘‘If they smuggle in another bomb…’’
‘‘They could wipe out most of the government.’’
Drew sat in bleak silence a moment, absorbing the implications. ‘‘How reliable was your tip?’’
Lorenzo shrugged. ‘‘Hard to say. It came from a petty criminal who sometimes turns informant. His information has been reliable in the past, but he’s never given us anything of this magnitude before.’’ Lorenzo paused. ‘‘He’s since disappeared.’’
‘‘Dead?’’
‘‘Or gone into hiding. The information he gave my man was vague. We’re trying to corroborate some of it. No luck so far, but it’s early yet.’’
‘‘You’ve told the king, I assume. He intends to go through with the ceremony?’’
‘‘I tried to talk him into postponing it. He refused. He’s convinced it’s necessary to hold the ceremony as soon as possible, both to secure the succession and as a symbol for the people. Hell, he may be right. My job, as he pointed out, is to make sure he can do his job.’’
That sounded like his uncle. ‘‘And the prince?’’
‘‘Lucas knows. The queen hasn’t been told.’’
‘‘I still don’t see why you had me invite Rose to the palace tonight.’’
‘‘Like I said, I’m hoping your assumption is wrong. If she’s one of them and seems to have easy access to the palace—to the prince—they may decide to make their attempt through her. It’s easier to guard a single, known quantity than to prevent attack from an unknown direction. And if she does try something—’’ his left hand closed into a fist ‘‘—then we’ll have her. And through her, the rest of them.’’
Drew’s temples were beginning to throb with the dull precursor of a headache. He needed to finish up and leave. ‘‘I have a suggestion. Ask her to help with your investigation. Police departments do occasionally work with psychics.’’
Lorenzo’s chair creaked as he leaned farther back. He laced his fingers together over his stomach and spoke mildly. ‘‘I’m sure you have a good reason for suggesting we work with a suspect.’’
‘‘Her value to you is as a conduit to others. You need her alive, so you need to convince the Brothers they have nothing to fear from her. If she is working with them, this might help persuade them to make the next attack through her, as you said. They’ll think you trust her. If she’s an innocent witness, let it be seen that she’s sticking to her story of seeing visions. The Brothers will have a good laugh at us for believing that psychic nonsense and put less of a priority on silencing her.’’
Lorenzo considered that for a long moment. ‘‘And if they believe in that psychic nonsense? We could be making her more of a target than she is now.’’
‘‘If they actually believe she can peer into her crystal ball and identify them, she’s as good as dead now,’’ Drew said flatly. ‘‘Unless you lock her away somewhere for her own good.’’
‘‘I need her alive and where they can contact her. And dammit, I need to know what she knows and hasn’t told us. All right. We’ll try it your way and see how it goes. Not that I plan to believe a word she says, you understand. Here’s how we’ll play it.’’
They talked for another ten minutes. Drew was on his feet, about to leave, when Lorenzo said, ‘‘One more thing.’’ He moved the chunk of quartz and picked up the pistol, letting the map roll up in a quick shudder of paper. He held out the gun. ‘‘From now on, I want you armed whenever you leave the palace.’’
Silently Drew accepted the weapon. It was a Glock automatic, the model he’d learned to shoot with on the firing range below the palace more than ten years ago. ‘‘Your memory is remarkable. I’m still better with a rifle, but a rifle would be hard to tuck under a jacket. I’ll need a shoulder holster.’’
‘‘That could be awkward. Not that I’m asking about your sex life, mind. But she’s apt to notice it.’’
‘‘Not a problem.’’ Drew slid the gun into his jacket pocket. It was heavy, the weight obvious. ‘‘I pointed out my tail earlier and gave Rose a brief explanation. She might be surprised to discover that I’m armed, but she’ll associate it with the threat of kidnapping.’’
‘‘You pointed out Roberts?’’
‘‘She would have spotted him sooner or later. Chances are she’ll spot whoever you have on her, too, but that’s okay. She’s expecting it. And no,’’ he added, smiling at the expression on Lorenzo’s face, ‘‘I didn’t tell her you would have her followed. She told me. She’s bright, and not one to play ostrich when life gets nasty. Will palace security be alarmed by the bulge in my pocket?’’
Lorenzo didn’t look happy. He stood. ‘‘I’ve notified them. Find some time to visit the shooting range. I doubt you’re in practice. You know, Drew, if it were anyone but you, I’d be worried. This woman is smart, she’s sexy, and you sound as if you admire her. Maybe it’s just as well you came home early tonight.’’
Anger hit, making Drew’s head throb. ‘‘But you know better, don’t you? If I were capable of losing my head over a woman, I’d have done it long ago.’’ He nodded curtly and left.
The night was warm and quiet, the noise of the city cushioned by the trees that rimmed the grounds. From somewhere nearby a nightingale called, its song rising in a liquid crescendo. Drew hurried along the path that led to the palace, wanting to be in his room, alone, as soon as possible.
It might be a normal headache. Probably it was, and a couple of aspirins would prove that. In the past year he’d had six crazy spells, none of them closer together than four weeks. But the interval between them had shortened, and a headache was the usual precursor.
Still, this particular ache could be the product of pure sexual frustration. He’d been very ready for Rose when he didn’t kiss her good night. Alarmingly so. And maybe that was the real reason he hadn’t kissed her—on some level she frightened him.
No. No, that was absurd. He might fear losing control, but he wasn’t afraid of the woman.
For once Rudolpho, the majordomo, wasn’t on duty, and if the guards at the palace door noticed the bulge in Drew’s pocket, they ignored it. He took the stairs quickly.
He’d done what he could to protect her. He wouldn’t apologize for wanting to. Drew thought of the way she’d discussed the economic consequences of the bombing at the dinner table with four royals, himself and Lorenzo, and smiled. She’d been nervous, but she hadn’t let it show.
What made him think she’d been nervous? He frowned as he crossed the picture gallery, unable to remember an expression, an awkward word, anything but his simple certainty. Maybe he’d imagined it, or assumed—
Between one step and the next, it hit. All at once this time—the glassy separation, the slicing agony in his skull, the dislocation of his senses. Walls melted into floors, colors ran together, and chaos chuckled in the hollow space between self and madness. He lost touch with his body—was he moving, falling, frozen in place? Was he anywhere?
He still was. He was here, dammit, even if he couldn’t find here in the swirls of colors and jutting angles, the walls that moved and traded places with floor or ceiling. Even if he couldn’t feel his body, he still existed in his mind. Desperate, he began to count, then switched to long division…
‘‘…get help? Drew, answer me!’’
He blinked. He was standing in the hall near the royal suite. His skin was clammy, chilled. And his aunt’s face was looking up at him, the patrician features tight with worry. Her hand clutched his arm. He felt her fingernails, dulled by the cloth of his sleeve, digging into his flesh.
He felt. The reliable witness of his senses had returned. Dizzy with relief, he tried a smile. ‘‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to worry you.’’
‘‘Never mind that. Are you all right? I haven’t seen you look like that since you were a boy. Those migraines you used to get—’’
‘‘Yes.’’ Gratefully he seized on the explanation she’d unwittingly offered. ‘‘I’m afraid they’ve come back.’’
She released his arm, but her worried frown didn’t ease. ‘‘Are you sure that’s what this is? You look ill. Have you seen a doctor?’’
‘‘A neurologist, actually.’’ Amazing how easy it was to deceive while speaking the truth. ‘‘He put me through any number of indignities and didn’t find anything wrong. No bleeding, tumors or other abnormalities.’’ No traces of drugs. No explanations at all.
‘‘Now, that scares me almost as much as your pallor did a moment ago. The headaches must be severe for you to give in and see a doctor without being nagged into it. Unless…oh, your mother must have—’’
‘‘She doesn’t know,’’ he said quickly. ‘‘I hope you won’t tell her. You know how she worries.’’
‘‘Oh, Drew.’’ She caught her lower lip with her teeth. ‘‘It doesn’t seem right to keep something like this from her.’’
‘‘Aunt Gwen.’’ He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. The exhaustion was already sweeping over him, making his thoughts sluggish. I can’t hold it off this time. Panic and adrenaline turned him light-headed even as they plundered the last of his reserves. How long did he have? Minutes? ‘‘You know why I had migraines as a boy. Mother doesn’t deal well with reminders of that time.’’
The queen was still chewing on her lip. ‘‘It was terrible for all of us, but worse for you. If the migraines have come back, is it because of Lucas’s disappearance? Oh—I’m so selfish. That never once occurred to me. We did think at first he might have been kidnapped, and I never stopped to think how that might affect you.’’
‘‘Don’t.’’ Drew had to get away. Now. But he took a moment to put an arm around her shoulders and squeeze quickly. ‘‘You had no reason to think about that. You were sick with fear, then grieving. I didn’t want you to worry about me. I still don’t.’’
Her mouth turned up wryly. ‘‘I know that well enough. But I reserve the right to worry about the people I love.’’
‘‘I’m fine,’’ he told her with every bit of sincerity he could muster. ‘‘Aside from being more of a sorehead than usual. I’ve got some medicine for it in my room, if you’ll excuse me.’’
Hearing that, of course, she sent him on his way.
When the door to his suite closed behind him, he locked it, closed his eyes and leaned against it. He was shaking.
This time had been different. He’d been in the hall leading to the wing that held the Harrington suite when the spell hit. When he came back to himself, he’d been near the royal suite. This time, he’d continued walking after the spell hit. That had never happened before.
Fear bit deeply. What else might he do while out of his senses?
He straightened and pulled the gun from his jacket pocket, staring at it with a chill that cut partway through the exhaustion dragging him down. Maybe he shouldn’t carry it. Tomorrow…tomorrow he would decide. Weaving slightly, he made it to the desk, opened a drawer and shoved the gun inside.
Seconds, now. It was all happening much faster this time. He had only seconds left.
Lorenzo was right to worry about him, though he had hold of the wrong reason, Drew thought as he stripped, his clothes falling in a ragged trail to the bedroom. He wasn’t losing his head over a woman. He was losing his head, period. Or his head was losing his body…. And as the darkness closed in, taking him to a place where thought stopped, there was time for one image to float through his mind—a woman’s face, her lips moist and parted, her eyes smiling, her skin as soft and smooth as every unbroken promise ever made. Rose’s face, tilted up to him as it had been earlier, inviting his kiss.
There was time, too, for the flash of fear that followed him down into the waiting darkness.
Chapter 6
Rose woke all at once the way she had when she was a child. The air was warm, the light pure, as if it had been born fresh for that day. But this wasn’t her birthday or a holiday….
Then she remembered. And smiled. Rose had never been one to hold on to anger. It flowed hot when it hit, but then it flowed on. And Drew had been so charming…. No he hadn’t, she thought grinning. He was far too direct for charm. He’d been courteous, certainly—holding doors, taking her arm—but beneath the courtesy had been something much headier.
He’d been focused on her. Even when speaking with the others, he’d been aware of her, as he’d shown in a dozen small ways. Turning to her just before she spoke. Asking her opinion of a new trade treaty. Catching her gaze with his when the prince told a joke, that secret smile in his eyes.
It had been a magical evening. The palace had been splendid—a little overpowering maybe, but the king and queen had been warm and gracious, and the prince, truly charming. And if Cinderella had had to return to her garret, well, it was a very nice garret, made even nicer this morning by lovely memories.
And the hope of making more and even lovelier memories. Unable to lie still a moment longer, Rose climbed out of bed and stretched.
No wonder she’d woken up anticipating something wonderful. It wasn’t likely to happen today, though. Drew hadn’t even kissed her last night, though she’d let him know she would welcome his kiss.
But he’d wanted to. She walked the short hall to the bathroom with her clothes folded over her arm and her blood humming. Turning on the shower, waiting while the pipes banged and the old hot water heater labored to rise to the occasion, she smiled as she remembered the look in his eyes.
They’d been standing in front of her aunt’s home, after all. Not much privacy there, and he was a man who valued privacy, she thought. He was also a man who liked to plan things. She slipped out of her nightgown and under the shower, tilting her face into the warm spray to savor the pleasant shock of heat hitting night-chilled skin.
The question was, should she allow him to plan her seduction? Or should she plan his?
By the time he called her later that day, she had some ideas about that, and a plan of her own.
The fioreanno of the eldest daughter of Cletus Anaghnostopoulus was a great success. On every table the flowers were fresh and bright. Laughter rang freely and the little cafe´ was satisfyingly crowded, while in the piazza across the street a band played—the same one the Calabrias had engaged for their daughter’s wedding and really quite good, though the trumpet player had started playing jazz after a few drinks, and who could dance to that?
Among the friends, neighbors, relatives and well-wishers attending were such important people as Adolfo Oenusyfides, Commissioner of Roads; Signore Calabria, who owned three fishing boats, as well as the cafe´ where the celebration was held; and several members of the Vinnelli family headed by old Porfino, whose son was a doctor and whose niece had married a rich American and lived in Los Angeles with the movie stars.
If Cletus was inclined to congratulate himself rather too often on the success of the party, his friends overlooked this while their wives complimented his wife on having had the foresight to ask Signora Serminio to stand as godmother sixteen years ago. For a fioreanno is always given by the child’s godmother, and Signora Serminio was herself a person of importance now, the owner of a fine pharmacy and the mother of a son with a promising career at the palace.
And if a few people glanced at one of the guests and muttered under their breath, most were more tolerant. Maybe Rose Giaberti was una strega, maybe not. Her mother had been, but young Rose did not sell charms and potions and fortunes as her mother had done, and if she didn’t attend Mass as often as she ought, what young person did? Certainly she was lively and friendly, with good manners. And she always brought a nice gift to a fioreanno.
She had brought more than a prettily wrapped box with her that night.
‘‘You should try the souvlakia,’’ Rose said, indicating the spicy shish kebab, one of many offerings on the groaning buffet table. ‘‘Emil—he’s the cook here—has a wonderful way with lamb.’’
Obediently Drew placed one on his plate, but slid her a wry glance. ‘‘I think you just want to see me dribble sauce on my shirt.’’
She grinned. ‘‘No, I wanted to see if you’d eat it with your fingers or struggle with a knife and fork.’’
Rose had brought Drew to the fioreanno after giving him the same amount of notice as he’d given her last night. None. She’d told him something of what to expect on the way here, assuming that, while he might have heard of the fioreanni, he wouldn’t have attended one. The upper classes didn’t. A fioreanno was like the quinzeñero celebrated by young Mexican girls, or the coming-out ball given young ladies of his class in England. His sister, she supposed, would have been presented to society. This was much the same thing.
She’d also given him a hint of how to dress, since he’d done that much for her. Casual, she’d said, and for herself she’d chosen a sleeveless sundress, full-skirted for dancing, baticked in the deep colors of a dying sunset. She wore one of her favorite necklaces with it, a copper-and-brass design of her own.
Of course, what passed for casual with Drew stood out in this company every bit as much as she’d failed to blend with royalty at the palace last night. He looked every inch the relaxed aristocrat in khaki chinos and a shirt of unbleached linen that had probably cost more than her favorite little black dress.
They carried their laden plates to one of the tables that spilled out onto the sidewalk. A short, middle-aged man sat alone at a nearby table—Drew’s bodyguard. He’d followed them here in a tiny Fiat and was looking everywhere except at them.
He was the only one who wasn’t watching them. Amused, Rose sat at the little table. ‘‘Will you dribble sauce on yourself, do you think?’’
‘‘Undoubtedly, if there’s a photographer from the Tattler or Le Stelle within flashbulb range. Otherwise I may manage to muddle through. Which brings up a question,’’ he said, putting down his plate so he could draw out her chair. ‘‘Why did you introduce me to our host and hostess as Drew, no last name? You said your neighbors all know who I am.’’
‘‘This way they can pretend they don’t. More comfortable for everyone that way. Rather like the way your aunt, uncle and cousins pretended last night that they didn’t know that I am, at best, that crazy woman who claims to be psychic. Or at worst…’’ She lifted her eyes to his as he sat across from her at the tiny table. ‘‘The worst would make me something unspeakable.’’
‘‘I don’t believe the worst,’’ he said quietly. ‘‘As for what my family believes, Lorenzo asked me to—’’
‘‘Please.’’ She put her hand on his wrist. ‘‘I shouldn’t have said anything before we’ve had a chance to taste Emil’s souvlakia. I didn’t intend to. If His Grace asked you to convey some message to me, you can tell me after the party, all right? For now, let’s eat too much and talk about our neighbors and enjoy ourselves. That’s what a fioreanno is for.’’
He didn’t respond right away. She wouldn’t have known what he was thinking, what he was feeling, if her fingers hadn’t been resting on his wrist, where his pulse beat. It had picked up when she touched him.
As had hers.
‘‘All right,’’ he said, but it was his mouth that carried his smile this time, not his eyes. ‘‘Tell me about your neighbors, since none of mine are nearby to gossip about.’’
So she did. While they ate souvlakia—he did use his fingers and didn’t get any spots on his shirt—she told him brief, amusing stories about some of the people she knew in the crowd. And insisted he uphold his end by talking about people he knew back in England. You could learn a lot, she knew, about a person by the way he spoke of others.
At first he resisted. ‘‘I’m not asking for secrets,’’ she told him severely, spreading melitzana on a slice of crusty bread and handing it to him. ‘‘Or anything hurtful. Just the sort of thing that everyone knows already. You know…who’s been married five times, who is getting married—and why, if possible. That makes it more interesting. Who collects Elvis memorabilia, or better yet, thinks she’s spoken to Elvis recently.’’
Amusement softened his face and made his green eyes bright. ‘‘The sort of thing they’d put in the Tattler, if the Tattler were ever to do an edition about normal people?’’
‘‘Exactly. Though you can omit the candid photos.’’
Though his stories were short, they revealed a dry wit and tolerant acceptance blended with a good deal of perception. She listened, she chuckled at times, and she watched the strong bones of his wrists and the way the candlelight gilded the messy curls of his hair.
Impulsively she asked, ‘‘Why do you wear your hair long? I like it, but it doesn’t seem to fit.’’
If her question surprised him, it didn’t show. But for a second, she thought he looked uneasy. ‘‘I don’t like getting it cut. It’s childish, of course. As soon as I’m told to sit still and behave, I get restless.’’
It was easy to forget that he wasn’t a handsome man or a charming one. He was too self-contained for charm, and his face was too long, his shoulders broad but too bony for true masculine beauty. But there was something in the way he moved that drew the eye, something compelling in the way those uneven features were knit together, something in even his silences that fascinated…and then he smiled. He smiled, and you forgot whatever silly ideas you’d once held about what was and wasn’t beautiful.
They were interrupted a few times. Drew watched their latest visitor—an old woman with a mustache and a black cane—hobble off. ‘‘Amazing. I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so thoroughly interrogated without being asked a single question.’’
Rose chuckled. ‘‘It would be rude to question you, since everyone knows you’re here incognito.’’
His gaze flicked back to her, the creases beneath his eyes deepening. ‘‘Everyone knows? As in, one of those things everyone already knows and part of the stories making the rounds tonight?’’
She grinned. ‘‘You and I are being discussed and speculated about with almost as much interest as is given to what all this cost. And that, you know, is a matter of great importance. You noticed the compliment Signora Lorenzi paid just now to the florist who provided the flowers?’’
‘‘You told her you would pass it on to someone named Adrian.’’
‘‘That was to let her know that Signora Serminio probably got her floral arrangements wholesale. Adrian is a florist. He is also a second cousin of Signor Anaghnostopoulus, our host. I’m expected to pass on some of these details, since my shop is across the street from Serminio’s.’’
‘‘Who sells sunscreen.’’ A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. ‘‘You didn’t share these important financial details about your neighbors with me.’’
‘‘Somehow I didn’t think you’d be interested.’’ She smiled, shrugged. ‘‘We’re a nation of merchants. It’s how we’ve survived all these years in spite of conquerors, imperialists, Nazis—and now, terrorists. We bend, we accommodate, we compete with each other and we help each other. It’s why we’ve been content to remain a monarchy. Let the Sebastianis do most of the hard work of government and leave the rest of us free to pay attention to important matters.’’
‘‘Such as how much Signora Serminio paid for her goddaughter’s fioreanno?’’
‘‘Exactly. Oh, look—we have to be quiet now. Speech time.’’
The father spoke first. He had a long list of people to thank, rather like an actor at the Oscars who feels obliged to mention every member of his family, every friend and friendly influence—including, but far from limited to, his third-grade teacher—as well as the Almighty and various business acquaintances. Then the priest blessed the young girl, her family and all those attending, closing with a special prayer for the guidance of the king in ‘‘these difficult times.’’ At last, to everyone’s relief, the talking was over and the band started playing once more. Some of the guests began drifting across the street for the dancing, while others headed for the bar.
Drew commented, ‘‘The priest is Orthodox.’’
‘‘Of course. The family is Greek.’’
‘‘But many of the guests are Catholic. That’s typical of Montebello, though, isn’t it? There isn’t much religious friction here, though you have Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant churches. Not to mention the mosques.’’
‘‘And if we could get our Muslim neighbors to come to more fioreanni, there would be even less strife. They’re wary of the dancing and the naked faces and opinions of the women at these affairs, but I have been to fioreanni that had Muslim guests. This is how we make it work, you see. We remind ourselves how much we have in common, how much we need each other.’’
Drew was frowning, but not in skepticism. More as if he was trying to understand. ‘‘By giving coming-out parties for your young women?’’
‘‘All this—’’ she spread her arm, indicating the café, the piazza, the people ‘‘—it’s really about connections. I’ve made you think the money is what counts, but by itself the cost of a fioreanno means nothing. Anyone who spends enough could give a good party, but that alone wouldn’t make them an important family, one that other families want their sons or daughters to marry into. It’s the connections that matter.’’
‘‘So while the cost of the flowers is interesting, the second cousin who’s a florist is more important?’’
She smiled, pleased with him. ‘‘Exactly. This, tonight, is how Signor Anaghnostopoulus says, ‘Look at my family. We are stable, settled. We know how things work. We know these people in the merchant community, these in government, these in the Church. And maybe, if you are lucky, your family can join with mine through this, my beautiful daughter, and our connections will grow and we will all prosper.’’’
For the first time that evening he touched her deliberately, taking her hand. He played idly with her fingers and looked at her, and she wondered if he could feel what happened to her pulse the way she’d felt his change earlier. ‘‘Did you have a grand fioreanno when you were sixteen, with fresh flowers on every table?’’
She didn’t let her smile slip. ‘‘I’m afraid not. A father is necessary for the occasion, you see, even though it’s the godmother who gives the party.’’
He still held her hand. ‘‘You are an orphan?’’
What she saw in his face wasn’t as trite as sympathy—more like a vast, incurious acceptance, as if he couldn’t be moved to shock, pity or any intrusive emotion, no matter what she said. As if it was safe to tell him anything. ‘‘My mother never married. I don’t know who my father was. And that,’’ she said, smiling brightly, ‘‘is one of those things that everyone knows, but such old history it won’t have been part of many of the stories told tonight.’’
‘‘I think we’ve exchanged enough stories for now.’’ He stood and drew her to her feet. ‘‘I’d very much like to dance with you.’’
* * *
The moon was mostly full, a child’s lopsided white circle painted on a charcoal sky. Cyprus and oak filtered the lights and sounds of the street on three sides of the piazza. On the fourth side the band stood on its modest platform with the curved wall at the back, designed to catch and reflect the music outward. Later, when mostly young people remained, they would probably try out more modern music; now they played the old songs. So far, the trumpet player was behaving himself.
The dancers were all ages, from nine to ninety. Drew led Rose to the edge of the square, where she slipped into his arms as easily as if they had danced together a hundred times before. A waltz was playing…and oh, the man knew how to waltz.
He held her correctly, one hand warm at her waist, the other clasping hers lightly, with the prescribed distance between their bodies. And he looked into her eyes as they moved in smooth, swooping circles, their bodies joined by movement rather than touch, the lilt of the music riffed now and then by laughter.
Did he know how seductive this graceful courting was, when her body learned to follow his while still separate and sovereign, so that each turn became an act of surrender?
She smiled up into his eyes. He knew.
After the waltz came a lively country tune that invited the dancers to romp. To her surprise and delight, after watching the others for a moment he abandoned formality and spun her around the crowded square as if he’d been dancing like this since childhood. There followed another quick country dance, which left her breathless and happy.
Then they played ‘‘Moon River,’’ and he pulled her close.
Her head fitted his shoulder perfectly. His shirt smelled faintly of starch. His skin had its own perfume, which passed like a secret through her senses, and her heart beat fast and hard.
So did his.
They circled slowly now, gliding together in a dark, closed space bounded by music. She felt the movement of his legs and the way the linen moved over his body as she stroked her hands from his shoulders to his waist. The skin beneath the thin cloth was heated, slightly damp. Already, an ache had begun, growing larger as they drifted—easy, langorous, important.
It didn’t occur to Rose to hide what she felt from him. She was sweetly, dreamily aroused. She wanted him to know. She lifted her head so she could look in his eyes and let him see hers.
What she saw on his face wasn’t sweet or dreamy. His jaw was taut. His focus on her was so intense, so complete, her breath caught in her throat. He lifted a hand and traced the side of her face with his fingers carefully, as if all he knew of the world must be drawn to him through his fingertips. She shivered. He bent his head, and she glimpsed his eyes before her own closed—the lids heavy, the pupils dark but gleaming from some fugitive reflection.
His lips touched hers, a quick shock of feeling, then retreated. His fingers tightened along the side of her face and his mouth came back, firmly this time, to join hers.
Heat. A rushing—in her head as her blood answered a new tide, making her ears echo the ocean like shells. In her body, as if her center were suddenly lost and, dizzy, she spun without moving. His tongue painted promises on her lips, her hands dug into his waist…a sudden tremor in his left hand, the feel of her skin beneath the fingertips of his right hand, need growing, loins aching, flesh rising to press against cloth, her heart pounding, his heart pounding, our hearts—
Hands dug into her shoulders, thrusting her back. Air moved, cool, along her heated body. And she stood alone in the small space left them by the shifting bodies of the other dancers. Alone, body and mind and heart, staring at his face, where there was no expression at all. And at his eyes, where she saw a deep and consuming horror.
Drew turned and started walking. It wasn’t a conscious decision. There was nothing in him capable of reasoning or deciding at that moment. He walked, that was all. Away. Quickly.
There were too many people. People everywhere, their voices and faces blurring into a crowd—pressure he couldn’t tolerate. Instinctively he sought darkness, privacy. A moment later trees loomed around him, and as the press of people grew less, thought began to return. He remembered to watch for traffic when he crossed the street, almost running now.
No headache, not yet. But it would come. The sliding disorientation, the loss of reality—there was no mistaking that. It had hit while he was kissing her, dear God, while she was in his arms….
But the rest of it hadn’t hit. His steps slowed, stopped. For the first time the spell, once begun, hadn’t taken its terrible course. He was in control, body and mind. In control, and standing in a dark, dead-end alley beside a garbage can. Somewhere behind him, the band swung into a cheerful rendition of ‘‘Tequila.’’
The world hadn’t left him.
Neither, he realized as footsteps approached and stopped, had she.
‘‘Drew?’’
What the hell did he say? Excuse me, didn’t mean to run off, but I just remembered I left the water running somewhere?
God. He ran a hand over his head, front to back, ending with his fingers squeezing the base of his skull as if he could press out an answer.
His head didn’t hurt. The terrible exhaustion wasn’t hovering, waiting to drag him down. He was pathetically grateful to be spared that, along with the rest of it, even if he had no idea why he’d been spared. But he couldn’t try to figure it out now. Now, he thought, bitterly aware of the irony, he had to persuade Rose he wasn’t crazy.
‘‘I’m sorry,’’ he said without turning. ‘‘I don’t have a good explanation.’’
‘‘You don’t have to explain. I’ve never… It scared me, too.’’
Relief poured in. She thought he’d been frightened by—what? Passion? Excessive emotion? It didn’t… No, he realized, shamed. It did matter. If she’d been frightened by what she felt when they kissed, he couldn’t let her go on thinking he felt…whatever she thought he felt. ‘‘Rose,’’ he said, turning, unsure how to make himself clear without hurting her.
She stood three feet away. Worry or strain wrinkled her forehead. ‘‘Why didn’t you tell me you’re an empath?’’
He stared. She was as crazy as he was.
‘‘Oh. Oh, Lord.’’ The hand that pushed her hair back was shaky, but her mouth shaped a rueful smile. ‘‘You haven’t the foggiest idea what I’m talking about, do you? I don’t suppose you believe in all that psychic crap.’’
Carefully he said, ‘‘I try to keep an open mind.’’
For some reason that set her off. She laughed so hard it doubled her over. He was about to grab her, thinking she was hysterical, when she straightened, gasping. ‘‘An open mind. Yes, I’m sure you think so.’’ One last chuckle escaped, then, when he reached for her, she stepped back. ‘‘Hands off, I think, for now. Things have changed.’’
He took a deep breath. Still no headache. Otherwise, things were pretty much all mucked up. ‘‘All right. If that’s how you want it.’’
‘‘If I knew what…’’ She sighed. ‘‘Never mind. I’m sure you think I’m a nutcase. Maybe it’s time we talked about it—about my claim to be psychic, I mean.’’
He wouldn’t have a better opening. ‘‘Maybe we should. But not here. Let’s go back to the party.’’ Where they’d be surrounded by plenty of nosy people.
His head might not hurt, but he damned sure ached elsewhere. He would need all the help he could get to follow her blasted hands-off policy.
Chapter 7
They made their way back to the café in silence. A light mist began to drift through the air, the droplets fine as dust motes. The dampness didn’t discourage the dancers in the piazza, but it had chased those at the sidewalk tables into the shelter. The little café was crowded, loud with cheery voices. Roberts was there. He looked relieved when he saw Drew. Drew was relieved, too, though for a different reason. Apparently his bodyguard had lost him in the crowd. He hadn’t seen Drew race off like a frightened rabbit.
They didn’t go in. There was a tiny bistro three doors down, away from the noise and curious faces. Music and mist floated in the open door, but the narrow room was dark and quiet, with lights over the bar and candles on the tables. A few customers were talking, their hands flying in occasional counterpoint or emphasis.
Drew went to the bar for their drinks, leaving Rose staring moodily at the fat, red candle on the table. Roberts found a spot at the end of the bar.
Drew wondered if the story of his flight from the dancing was making the rounds back at the café. So far, he’d bungled the evening badly. He wanted to get this next part right, but wasn’t sure how to proceed.
Rose was still studying the candle as if it held all sorts of secrets and solutions when he returned. She didn’t look up when he set her wine in front of her, sat down and spoke. ‘‘I mentioned my cousin Lorenzo earlier.’’
‘‘You said something about having a message from him.’’
‘‘He’d like you to work with him.’’
Her head jerked up. ‘‘What?’’
‘‘Police departments work with psychics sometimes. He needs leads. He’s willing to try this.’’
‘‘I’m not.’’
She sounded very definite. Drew studied her. Her lids were lowered, the lush eyelashes screening whatever was happening in those expressive eyes. She started digging little fissures in the softened rim of the candle with a fingernail, letting the melted wax escape in lavalike runnels. As the pool of wax went down, exposing the wick, the flame grew larger. ‘‘Why not?’’ he asked.
‘‘You don’t know what you’re asking.’’ Now her eyes lifted, meeting his. Her eyebrows were drawn in an uncompromising frown.
‘‘Explain it to me.’’
‘‘Just like that?’’ She gave a half laugh. ‘‘Drew, you don’t even believe in psychic phenomena.’’
‘‘My belief or lack of it doesn’t determine reality. People once believed, based on good evidence, that the world was flat.’’
‘‘That open mind of yours.’’ This time she didn’t laugh. She just looked tired. ‘‘Maybe you’re willing to change your mind if I can prove you wrong, but I’m not interested in proving anything.’’
‘‘I’m not asking you to. Listen.’’ Impatient, he claimed her hand. Her palm was very warm. ‘‘If Lorenzo is willing to give you a chance, why can’t you try? Don’t you want to see the bastards caught?’’
‘‘Oh, unfair. Of course I want them caught. But I’m not…’’ She sighed and pulled her hand back. ‘‘I’ll try to explain. I doubt you’ll accept what I say, but I’ll try. First, I use the word psychic because that’s the term you understand, but I was raised to think of myself as Gifted.’’
‘‘I see.’’
She chuckled. ‘‘No, you don’t. You’re trying not to let on that you think I’m a few bubbles shy of a full bath, and my family must be weird, too.’’
‘‘I can accept that what you say is fact to you.’’
‘‘Good enough.’’ She sipped her wine, her brows drawn slightly in thought. ‘‘I won’t begin at the beginning, because that goes back a little too far—more than twenty generations. The women in my family have always been Gifted, you see, some only slightly, some…quite strongly. Of course we aren’t the only ones. The Gifts—psychic abilities —appear in people all over the world, and I suspect that almost everyone has some trace of them. But because they have appeared so consistently and strongly in those of my blood, they have been studied. We know a great deal about how these abilities work, how to nurture and train them. And how to protect ourselves from them.’’
‘‘There is some danger in these, ah, Gifts?’’
‘‘The stronger the Gift, the greater the danger. Especially if the Gifted is unaware and untrained.’’ The delicate skin around her eyes tightened and she looked away. Once more she started playing with the softened candle wax, this time pushing the sides in toward the wick, forcing the melted wax higher on the wick. The flame retreated, diminished, until it was a small, stubborn bubble of fire, nearly drowned.
It was obvious she believed utterly in what she was saying. Drew thought of the fioreanno she hadn’t had, the father she’d never known and the way she’d smiled so brightly when she told him her mother had never been married. His throat ached with pity. There was a great deal she hadn’t said, a great deal he knew from Lorenzo that he had no business knowing. Such as how her mother died.
Yet she understood and applauded the strengths of the society that had made her an outsider. Was it surprising, then, that she would cling so fiercely to a set of beliefs, however bizarre, that gave her a heritage? That sense of belonging may have been what gave her the strength to reject bitterness.
‘‘You’re trained, though, I take it?’’ he said carefully. ‘‘And certainly not unaware. Wouldn’t that lessen the danger?’’
‘‘Yes, but…the nature of the danger varies according to the nature of the Gift, which is fourfold—what you would call telepathy, empathy, healing and prophecy. We name them Air, Water, Earth and Fire. My Gift is Fire. I see visions.’’
He didn’t want to know any more. The tally of her delusions was already troubling. But she posed a threat to people who liked to deal with their problems by killing. He had to persuade her to cooperate with Lorenzo. ‘‘And what is the nature of your danger?’’
She raised her eyes to his. Some trick of the light reflected the tiny candle flame there, twinned. ‘‘Burning, of course,’’ she said. Suddenly she breached the candle wall with one finger, spilling the liquid wax. The flame leaped high, higher. And she set her hand, flat-palmed, atop that flame.
He seized her wrist and yanked her hand away.
The wick smoked, dead and black, filling the air with the pungent scent of a just-snuffed candle. He turned her hand over.
Her palm was unmarked. There was no reddened spot, no sooty residue. Nothing.
His gaze flew to her face. Her expression was clear, remote, smiling. ‘‘A little fire like that can’t hurt me. It’s the big ones I fear.’’
It had been a trick, of course. The candle must have been extinguished before her palm touched it. ‘‘That’s why you won’t help?’’
She pulled her hand away. ‘‘I can’t help. From what I can tell, psychics who work with the police—the ones who aren’t charlatans, that is—are empaths or telepaths. I’m not. I can’t slide inside a terrorist’s mind that way.’’
She was too calm. He didn’t think she was lying, exactly, but she was holding something back. ‘‘What aren’t you telling me?’’
‘‘All sorts of things. It would take rather longer than you and I have to pass on the accumulated lore of the last thousand years.’’ She stood. ‘‘I think, for me, the party’s over. It’s time I went home.’’
He shoved his chair back and stood, too, reaching across the table to grab her wrist—as if he had to anchor her to keep her from vanishing as suddenly as the snuffed candle flame. ‘‘A thousand years?’’
When she lifted her eyebrows that way, she reminded him of his grandmother, who was capable of depressing pretension at twenty paces with just such an expression. ‘‘Roughly that. Twenty-seven generations, to be precise, traced through the female line. I could recite my begats for you.’’
‘‘Twenty-seven generations’ worth?’’
‘‘I had to memorize them as a child. Look, Drew, this evening hasn’t gone as either of us intended. I think it’s best I saw myself home.’’
‘‘That isn’t happening.’’ He moved around the table, transferring his grip from her wrist to her hand. ‘‘Does your aunt believe all this, too?’’
‘‘Of course. She taught me a good deal of the lore.’’ Rose didn’t protest his hold on her hand as they left the bistro. She ignored it.
The mist had deepened, thick enough now to dampen his face when he stepped outside. Overhead, the sky was lost in the drizzling darkness; on the street, lights from shops, cafés, the piazza and lampposts were draped in gauzy drifts. It was still early, barely ten o’clock, and the weather didn’t seem to have discouraged anyone. The sidewalk held plenty of others with their own goals for the night.
Drew wondered at himself. Why did he keep seizing her hand? It would have been reassuring to put the urge down to desire, but it wasn’t a woman’s hand he usually wanted to hold. ‘‘Does your aunt have one of these Gifts?’’
‘‘Yes, though hers isn’t strong. She’s Earth-Gifted—a healer, among other things.’’
‘‘What other things?’’
‘‘Oh, children and puppies adore her, plants grow for her and she loves to cook. She can take a headache away, ease a fever or speed the healing of cuts, breaks, burns, scrapes or scratches. She also acts as my…but that wouldn’t be of interest to a confirmed skeptic like you.’’
The way she cut off whatever she’d been about to say left Drew a bread-crumb trail he intended to follow. When they reached the street corner, though, where an awning kept the mist out, he stopped. ‘‘The car’s about four blocks away. Why don’t you wait here while I get it?’’ She’d be safe. He’d glimpsed Roberts in the crowd, hanging back in an effort to be unobtrusive. He’d tell the man to stay with her.
‘‘But there’s no need for that!’’ Rose tipped her face up into the dampness, letting it dew her cheeks. ‘‘This feels good.’’
‘‘Your affinity for fire doesn’t make you dislike getting wet, then.’’
‘‘It doesn’t work that way. I enjoy the ocean.’’ She started walking again, so he kept pace with her.
The street beside them was busy with buses, bicycles, cars and taxicabs, but traffic in Montebello was leisurely compared to the frenzied battle of Italian streets. For the most part the people, too, ambled along with a lack of haste typical of this city, an easy flow of workers in wrinkled cotton, young men in neatly pressed shirts with their arms around women in bright dresses, teens of both sexes in jeans and Reeboks, old men in stiff shoes and black pants, and old women with shawls and full skirts. Here and there he saw a uniform—police or army. Most of the faces held the sun-kissed duskiness of the Mediterranean peoples, though a few were tourist-pale or African-dark. He didn’t see a single umbrella.
‘‘So you like the water?’’ he asked after a moment.
‘‘My family’s lore says that a Fire-Gifted who fears or dislikes water is out of balance. It’s rather like the Chinese system of feng shui, in which the elements have a constructive and a destructive or balancing cycle. Fire without water to cool it becomes purely destructive.’’
‘‘I’ve heard of feng shui,’’ he said neutrally. He wasn’t interested in it, any more than he was in fortune-telling or numerology. But people told him things. ‘‘The astrological signs are divided along similar lines, too, aren’t they? And, ah, what’s it called—the witchcraft religion. It refers to earth, air, fire and water, too, doesn’t it?’’
‘‘Wicca, you mean? There are similarities in most of the mystical or magical systems, probably for the same reason religions all over the world value the same qualities—like love, kindness, courage, loyalty, honesty. Some things are universal. As for astrology… Drew, you don’t believe that nonsense, do you?’’
He delivered his line with appropriate shock. ‘‘You mean you don’t?’’
‘‘I don’t mean to criticize anyone who does believe in it, but it seems silly. Though I suppose a half-awake seer might be able to use horoscopes to tap into her abilities,’’ she conceded. ‘‘It can’t be worse than using a crystal ball.’’
‘‘You don’t believe in astrology or use a crystal ball. My illusions are shattered.’’
‘‘You’re teasing me,’’ she said resignedly.
‘‘So why don’t you use a crystal ball?’’
‘‘Real crystal can be useful, but those glass globes people call crystal balls aren’t of much use, except as a neutral focus. Glass is a psychic insulator. Drew, do you really want to hear all this? I feel as if I’m delivering a lecture in Psychic Studies 101.’’
‘‘I want to hear it.’’
‘‘All right.’’ Her attention seemed fixed on the sidewalk in front of her, or else on an interior landscape. ‘‘Many materials hold psychic impressions. Some contain or insulate them, some disperse them, like water or salt—that’s why they’re used in cleansing rituals. Gemstones intensify whatever is impressed on them, which is probably why they’ve often been thought to have magical properties. Being Fire-Gifted, I’m especially sensitive to the emanations of materials that have been through fire, such as metal or pottery.’’
‘‘I see. Your abilities aren’t limited to visions.’’
Her sudden tension revealed itself in the way her fingers tightened, then relaxed in his, telling him he’d followed the trail correctly. ‘‘I do pick up impressions from objects sometimes. From animals and people, too. But not the way an empath or telepath would, so I don’t see how I could help.’’
‘‘What kind of impressions do you get from people?’’
‘‘I feel their ‘‘I feel their èsseri—call it their essence, or their auras. When I’m close to someone, it feels as if the air is denser, slightly resistant. And I get a sort of blunt sense of who this person is. Like a smell, I guess. Just as dogs recognize a person by scent, I recognize people by the way their auras feel.’’
‘‘But you don’t pick up actual thoughts? I can see why you didn’t think you could help. But,’’ he added thoughtfully, ‘‘I don’t understand why you were so reluctant to tell me about this.’’
‘‘Don’t you?’’ Her mouth twisted. ‘‘But then, right now you don’t believe any of this is real. Think about how you’d feel if you did believe it, or just started wondering if it was true. Would you want to be around someone you thought could read your mind?’’
‘‘I suppose not. But this business of feeling people’s auras isn’t like reading their minds.’’
‘‘No. I don’t pick up thoughts. Sometimes I can tell when someone is lying, if I’m close enough. Well—almost always,’’ she corrected herself reluctantly. ‘‘But a lie detector does the same thing, and that evidence would be admissible in court. My testimony wouldn’t.’’
‘‘And is what you pick up from objects similar? A unique ‘scent’ from those who have handled them?’’
She shot him an annoyed look. ‘‘You’re persistent. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were taking this seriously.’’
He took it very seriously. He didn’t believe it—hell, he’d lied to her consistently and successfully. But her life might depend on his finding the right argument. ‘‘If you could pick up a residual aura from fragments of the bomb, you might be able to identify the person who planted it.’’
She bit her lip and looked down. The sidewalk here was old and canted as it climbed a hill. It glistened damply in the red-and-blue light from a neon sign on the store they were passing. So did her hair, black and lustrous.
Hunger bit, and frustration. He wanted his hands in her hair, his mouth on hers again. And didn’t dare touch her.
‘‘It’s called psychometry,’’ she said quietly. ‘‘And yes, it might work. I hadn’t thought of trying to trace the bomber that way. Are the fragments metal?’’
He had no idea if they’d even recovered any fragments. ‘‘I’ll have to check with Lorenzo about that. Will you do it?’’
She nodded slowly. ‘‘I’ll try, anyway. Tell him not to expect too much. Even if I do pick up a clear impression, I won’t be able to identify the person it came from unless I already know who that èssere belongs to.’’
‘‘Good.’’ Satisfaction filled him. At least he’d done one thing right tonight. As for the rest of it… He stopped, facing her and putting his hands on her shoulders.
Her skin was slick from the mist, but warm, not chilled. His thumbs moved, savoring the softness. ‘‘What I say next has nothing to do with Lorenzo or anything he wants from you. This is just from me.’’ It was true. True enough to worry his security-minded cousin. Hell, it worried him, too. ‘‘I want to see you again.’’
The dim light made secrets of her eyes, and her voice was too low to give anything away. But her shoulders were tense beneath his hands. ‘‘How long will you be in Montebello, Drew? A week? Two?’’
‘‘I haven’t decided. My business…’’ He shrugged. ‘‘It’s flexible. I can handle a great deal of it from here.’’
A small smile. ‘‘I thought you were an international playboy. That’s a job with duties you could fulfill pretty much anywhere.’’
‘‘You’ve been reading your aunt’s magazines.’’
The smile widened. ‘‘I look at the pictures sometimes.’’
He thought of the one picture he knew she’d seen—him, bare-bummed on a nude beach on the Riviera. The woman he’d gone there with hadn’t been in the photograph, but there’d been several coy references to her in the accompanying article. ‘‘There was a time when I worked hard to earn my reputation. I’ve grown up some since then, but no one wants to read about my real-estate investments for some reason.’’ His thumbs moved over damp, warm skin. ‘‘Is that a problem for you? My reputation?’’
‘‘No. But you aren’t going to be here long.’’ She paused. ‘‘I didn’t think that would be a problem, before…before you kissed me. Now…I don’t know what I want now.’’
He knew what he wanted—to follow the heat that moved between them, see where it led. He wanted his hands on her, and his mouth, and he wanted to know what sound she would make when he drove inside her. And if they had been alone, if only they’d been somewhere private right now, he was almost sure he could have found out.
Unless, of course, he went crazy on her. That would be a real mood spoiler. ‘‘You said you liked the ocean. Have you ever been snorkeling?’’
‘‘A few times. But—’’
‘‘Come with me tomorrow. There’s a private beach attached to the palace grounds, a little cove that’s perfect for snorkeling.’’
Tartly she said, ‘‘I’m not royal or noble or rich. I can’t close my shop on a whim to go play.’’
‘‘You must close it sometimes.’’ He moved closer, thinning the space between them until he could catch her scent—roses and musk, an unexpected blend of the cultivated and the wild. Like her. His fingers curved around her arms, rubbing lightly. ‘‘When can you get away?’’
‘‘I haven’t decided to get away with you. Or even to see you again.’’ Her expression was haughty, like a cat that hasn’t given permission to be petted. But her breath was hasty. ‘‘I need time and space to make that decision. I want you to back off.’’
‘‘That would probably be the smart thing to do.’’ Her hair turned frisky when it was damp, he noticed, losing its sleek gloss to curls. He pushed it back with one hand, tucking those wayward curls behind her ear so he could see her face better. Neon light, filtered by mist, fell rosy and soft on the curve of her cheek and jaw.
He really should back off. She’d asked him to. But maybe it would be best to find out if he was going to lose more than his control every time he kissed her.
Bending, he claimed her mouth.
Her lips were warmer than the skin he’d caressed. Her hands flew to his shoulders—maybe to push him away, but she didn’t. Instead, her fingers dug into his skin. Held on. Hunger twisted through him, smoky and treacherous.
He wouldn’t lose control this time. If he took it slow, held back, maybe he’d be safe. Maybe he could go on kissing her, holding her.
He fitted her into the curve of his body. She felt perfect there, held tight against him. She made a small sound. His arms tightened, and his mouth took. But the hands that had been kneading his shoulders were pushing against him. She was trying to end the kiss, to stop him—and he didn’t want to stop. Instead of letting her go, he held on more tightly. I can make her accept my kiss, accept me…
The thought echoed in a suddenly empty mind. He was thinking of forcing her? Shaken, he loosened his arms.
She tore herself free. Her chest was heaving. Her hands were clenched into fists at her sides. But it wasn’t anger he saw in her eyes. It was fear.
Appalled, he could only say he was sorry, that he had never meant to frighten her. Then he thought he should have kept his fool mouth shut, because a woman with her pride wouldn’t like being accused of fear.
She took a steadying breath, met his eyes and said something that made no sense. ‘‘I know. But you can hardly help scaring me.’’ And she turned and walked away.
He stayed with her, of course. In silence. In silence they climbed into his car, and neither of them spoke for several blocks. He told himself he was being ridiculous—he’d grown up knowing how to make social small talk. This silence shouldn’t be hard to fill. But she was the one who spoke first.
‘‘I suppose you’ll tell His Grace that I’ve agreed to help, if I can.’’
‘‘I’ll let him know.’’ They’d left the busy streets behind. Here, near her shop, the street was almost empty. He could see Roberts’s little Fiat in the rearview mirror. ‘‘I’ve screwed things up, haven’t I?’’
‘‘It’s not you. Or rather, it is you, but it’s me, too.’’ Her laugh was shaky and short, but genuine. ‘‘And if you understood that, please explain it to me.’’
‘‘You’re confused about what you want. There’s a hell of a lot I’m not too sure of myself, but I know what I want.’’ He double-parked in front of her shop. ‘‘I’ll walk you upstairs.’’
‘‘There’s no need. Truly.’’ She turned in her seat to face him. ‘‘Once you’ve had time to think it over, you’ll probably be relieved things ended between us when they did.’’
The muscles along his shoulders tensed. ‘‘You said you needed time to think, not that you were refusing to see me again.’’
‘‘Drew.’’ She shook her head slightly. ‘‘I’m confused, yes, for a lot of reasons, but mainly because I had a psychic moment.’’
He smiled, relieved. If that was her main objection, he could find a way to reassure her. ‘‘Is that what happened?’’
‘‘Can you honestly say you’re still interested in me? A woman who thinks she has visions?’’
‘‘Oh, yes. I want to see a great deal more of you. And I mean that in every way, including the one that worries you.’’
Her expression was calm, but her fretful fingers told another story as they slid the pendant back and forth on its chain. ‘‘That’s honest, at least. I’m not sure it’s flattering, since you think I’m nuts.’’
‘‘I think you’re brave and smart and lovely. Will you go to the ocean with me as soon as you can take some time off?’’
‘‘I…no, I don’t think so.’’
‘‘You pick the place, then.’’
She grimaced. ‘‘Pushing me to make a decision won’t get you the answer you’re looking for.’’
He wanted to push her, to make her agree, but some sliver of conscience or common sense held him back. ‘‘Just a minute,’’ he said, and got a business card from his wallet. He scribbled a number on the back of it and handed it to her. ‘‘That’s my cell-phone number, so you won’t have to go through the palace switchboard. Call me. Day or night, whenever you decide, call.’’
She turned the card over, studying it as if it held a mystery more significant than a private number. ‘‘All right.’’
When she got out, he didn’t stop her. He watched as she climbed the stairs, forcing himself to sit in the car instead of seeing her to her door. The drizzle had stopped, leaving the air clear, the shadows stark. A car moved slowly around him.
No doubt he was blocking traffic. He couldn’t bring himself to care. He watched as she opened the door, watched as it closed behind her. And still he sat there like a fool with nowhere to go, feeling as alone as he ever had in his life.
Chapter 8
Rose knew her aunt had waited up for her before she reached the top step. Strains of an aria from Carmen drifted out through the walls and door, and the window nearest the door glowed.
Damn. Rose wasn’t sure she wanted to talk about what had happened tonight. Not yet. She jabbed her key in the lock and twisted.
‘‘Couldn’t sleep?’’ she asked dryly as she closed the door behind her.
Gemma was curled up in the big green recliner reading a magazine. Her hair was braided for the night, as usual. The long braid hung over one shoulder of her powder-blue robe. She looked absurdly young. ‘‘I’m thinking of diversifying a little more,’’ she said placidly. ‘‘There’s an interesting article in the Economist about utility bonds.’’
Rose shook her head. Gemma sometimes had trouble with simple addition. She had no problem with esoteric economic principles, however, or investment strategy. Her portfolio wasn’t large, but it was as healthy as her herb garden. ‘‘Well, you can stay up and read if you like,’’ she said lightly. ‘‘I’m for bed.’’
‘‘That’s fine, dear,’’ Gemma said, putting the magazine down and uncoiling her legs. ‘‘I’ll make you some tea. Chamomile, I think. You’ll need a little help sleeping tonight.’’
Rose’s breath huffed out in exasperation. ‘‘How do you do that? I know darned good and well you aren’t reading my mind.’’
Gemma padded up to Rose and patted her cheek softly. ‘‘Cara mia, I know you. I don’t need telepathy to know when you’re hurting. Maybe valerian would be better than chamomile?’’
Abruptly Rose’s eyes stung. ‘‘Aunt Gemma, he’s an empath. A very strong, completely blocked empath.’’
‘‘Oh, my dear. I’m so sorry.’’ She blinked as her eyes, too, filled. ‘‘That poor boy. But he can’t be completely blocked, can he? I really don’t think he’s homicidal.’’
Her laugh was ragged. ‘‘No. No, Drew isn’t a sociopath. I exaggerated. His shields are thick and strong and utterly involuntary, but there must be some leakage I can’t detect. Maybe another empath could, if we could find a strong Water-Gifted who isn’t nutty.’’
‘‘There’s my cousin Pia…well, no, I suppose not. She’s strong, but…’’
‘‘Nutty,’’ Rose said wryly. ‘‘She’s blocked, too.’’
‘‘Her shields are voluntary,’’ Gemma said chidingly. ‘‘But I suppose she wouldn’t be very helpful. She doesn’t process what she receives well. There’s Cousin Gerald, too, but he only has a thimbleful of the Gift…and Gerald’s daughter is only seven, so I don’t think she…’’ Gemma sighed. ‘‘I’m not sure how much it would help to have another empath try to read Drew, anyway. He isn’t likely to cooperate. Unless he’s had some training?’’ she ended hopefully.
‘‘He’s completely unaware, from what I could tell. He doesn’t believe in psychic nonsense.’’
‘‘Still, you were able to get past his shields at some point. You must have, or you wouldn’t know he’s an empath.’’
‘‘His shield slipped.’’ She hugged herself, thinking of the split second when he’d been unshielded. He’d been kissing her…such a tiny slice of time to change her world so completely. ‘‘Just for a moment, it slipped. And scared him half out of his mind.’’
‘‘I’m sure it did, since he doesn’t believe in any of this. Though he can’t have been so completely blocked all of his life, surely. He seems to function very well.’’
Silence fell. Rose thought of all the ways an untrained empath could fail to ‘‘function well.’’ The Water-Gifted were in danger two ways—from the deluge of emotions their Gift exposed them to, and from blocking that Gift. It was impossible to predict what damage a blocked Gift would do, but Rose thought of it like water backed up in a dam. The results varied depending on where the dam was located, but one effect was inevitable: the conscious part of the blocked empath slowly dried up, becoming parched of emotion, while behind the dam the power built. And built. Until eventually no dam—no block—could hold it.
The solution was shields, not blocks—soft, layered shields that were flexible and porous, allowing some leakage. Shields the empath controlled. Shields that were acquired, learned, from childhood on.
Rose didn’t know an adult empath with Drew’s power who hadn’t been trained from childhood. Because without that training, they generally went insane.
‘‘There’s something…’’ A faint wrinkle formed in Gemma’s smooth, round forehead. ‘‘Something I can’t quite bring to mind. I read it a long time ago…’’
‘‘Something you read about Drew?’’
She nodded. ‘‘Not about any of his affairs or that woman he was engaged to. This was long before that.’’ She sighed. ‘‘Oh, well. I suppose it will come to me eventually.’’
‘‘He was engaged?’’ Rose asked, startled.
‘‘Oh, yes, years ago. It ended quite sadly—the poor thing wasn’t very stable, apparently. She tried to kill herself.’’
‘‘Dear God.’’
‘‘Of course, the tabloids printed a lot of nonsense about it. You know I don’t take the things they say seriously.’’
‘‘Of course not,’’ Rose murmured.
‘‘And it was all very one-sided, making Lord Andrew sound like a beast. I remember feeling sorry for him. It can’t be pleasant to be accused of driving your fiancée to attempt suicide—assuming, of course, he isn’t a beast, and I don’t think he is.’’
But she didn’t sound sure, and Rose knew why. ‘‘I’m going to wash and get into my nightgown,’’ she said abruptly.
Gemma patted her arm. ‘‘I’ll make your tea.’’
All evening Rose had been calling up everything she remembered of the lore as it applied to the Water-Gifted. It wasn’t encouraging. She creamed off her makeup and tried to be realistic.
Most people had a touch of empathy, just as many were brushed lightly by the other Gifts—dreams did sometimes come true, close friends or lovers sometimes knew what the other was thinking, and nurses, mothers and doctors often did bring comfort with a touch. In small doses, the Gifts were normal and human. They didn’t become troublesome until they reached a sort of critical point, when the Gift was too strong to remain unnoticed.
Empaths were the least stable of the Gifted when the Gift was strong, for obvious reasons. A strongly empathic baby didn’t distinguish between its feelings and those of others. It never developed much sense of self.
The Gifts didn’t usually show up in babies, of course. But an empathic toddler still suffered. Even the most loving of mothers had moments of anger, exhaustion, frustration, times when she just wanted her screaming or whining darling to shut up and go away. Such perfectly normal feelings didn’t damage most children, and actually helped civilize the little monsters. They learned that temper fits didn’t get them what they wanted.
An empathic child, however, felt its mother’s anger and knew itself to be the object of that anger. This didn’t make for a healthy child, or a healthy adult.
It all depends, Rose reminded herself as she slipped her nightgown over her head, on when Drew’s Gift first appeared. The more powerful the Gift, the earlier its arrival—that was the maxim. But sometimes a Gift didn’t manifest fully for years. Unfortunately her family’s lore was confusing, even contradictory in places, about why or how a Gift’s full strength might be delayed.
Gemma’s cousin made that point quite adequately. Poor Pia. She’d been identified as a Water-Gifted soon after she was born, thanks to Rose’s mother. Elenore Giaberti had been Fire-Gifted, like her daughter, and so able to touch the baby’s èssere.
The members of Pia’s family had done everything they could. It hadn’t been enough. Oh, Pia wasn’t damaged in the way an empathic baby in an unaware family might have been. But her Gift had been so strong. Pia had never been able to process the welter of emotions she received when unshielded, so she spent most of her life cut off from her Gift—with decidedly peculiar results. She was a gentle soul, mildly paranoid and convinced she talked to aliens.
But at least she’d been guided in developing her shields. Some empaths developed shields naturally. And those who shielded too completely, from too young an age, felt no connection with their fellow humans. They became sociopaths.
Drew’s Gift couldn’t have shown up when he was still a baby, Rose thought as she sat on her bed and began brushing out her hair. If it had, he wouldn’t have such a strong sense of self. And she couldn’t, she wouldn’t, believe he was sociopathic. She’d touched his èssere…
Her hand stilled, the brush, her hair, the room and everything else forgotten as she remembered. Such a tiny slice of time…
‘‘Here’s your tea, dear.’’
Rose stirred and put the brush down. She hadn’t even noticed Gemma come in. ‘‘Yes. Thank you.’’ The woodsy scent of chamomile soothed her. She took a sip.
‘‘What are you going to do?’’
She found a reassuring smile. ‘‘I’m a big, soggy, confused mess right now, but I’ll be all right.’’

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Carla Cassidy и Eileen Wilks

Тип: электронная книга

Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература

Язык: на английском языке

Издательство: HarperCollins

Дата публикации: 16.04.2024

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