Blackmailed Bride

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

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

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

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

“I—”

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

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

She couldn’t leave without it.

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

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

“Would a visit every few days work?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Non, madame.”

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

“Non, madame.”

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

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

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

“I’m not familiar with the legend.”

“The curse of the Holy Cross Brotherhood.”

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

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

Beware.

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

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

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

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

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

“What happened to them?”

“Their secret was discovered.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“As you wish, madame.”

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