Blackmailed Bride

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

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

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

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

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

“That won’t be a problem.”

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

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

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

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

“Why?”

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

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

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

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

“As her husband, won’t you inherit?”

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

“That sounds awfully cold.”

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

“There are mitigating circumstances,” Jonas said.

“Such as?”

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

“What if she comes back?”

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

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

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

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

Some even say he killed her himself…

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

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

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

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

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

Beware.

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

Oh, Gram, what am I getting myself into?

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

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

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

“The Monastery Company. That’s you?”

“Yes.”

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

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

She nodded.

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

“No.”

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

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

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

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