The Storm Within

‘Did you hear me? I said Bruno will arrange for your return.’

It was all she could do not to stamp her foot. ‘And I said I’m not leaving!

One arm swept in a wide arc. ‘I have no dealings with you. My arrangement was with Professor Rousseau.’

‘No. According to the documents, your arrangement was with her business, Archival Survival. When the Professor was unable to come, she contracted me.’

He grunted, no way about to concede the point. ‘So what is her excuse for being unable to fulfil her contractual obligations herself?’

‘If you’d read this letter you’d know. Her mother is in hospital after suffering a major stroke and she’s rushed to be with her while she clings to life. Admittedly, as excuses go, that’s pretty thin. Clearly it’s more about inconveniencing you.’

If his eyes were lasers, she figured, with the heated glare he gave her she’d be wearing holes right now, and she wondered if she’d overstepped the mark. She’d grown up in a family that prided itself on being straight-talking. Over the years she’d learned to curb that trait while in civilised company. The Count, she’d already decided, for all his flash clothes and a portrait gallery full of titled ancestors, didn’t qualify.

‘I expected an expert. I do not intend spending a week babysitting someone’s apprentice.’

She sucked in air, hating the fact it was tinged with a hint of sandalwood and spice, with undertones of something else altogether more musky, hating the possibility that it might come from him, hating the possibility that there might be something about him she approved of when the rest of him was so damned objectionable.

But that was still okay, she figured, because finding something she might possibly like only made her more resentful towards him. ‘Seeing you refuse to read this letter, where all the facts are set out in black and white, perhaps I should spell it out for you? I have a Masters in Fine Arts from Melbourne University and a PhD in Antiquities from Oxford, where my thesis was on the preservation and conservation of ancient texts and the challenge of discerning fraud where it was perpetrated centuries ago. So if there’s an apprentice on this island right now, I don’t think it’s me. Does that make you feel more comfortable?’

He arched one critical eyebrow high. ‘You look barely out of high school.’

‘I’m twenty-eight years old. But don’t take my word for it. Perhaps you’d like to check my passport?’

Dust motes danced on the slanted sunlit air between them, oblivious of the tension—dust motes that disappeared with those slanting rays as the sun was swallowed up by a cloud and the room darkened. She resisted the urge to shiver, resisted that damned illogical brain cell that suggested there was some connection between the Count’s dark looks and the weather. And instead she decided that his momentary silence meant assent.

‘And so right now I’d like to get to work. After all, I believe you want this text taken off your hands as soon as possible, and we’ve already wasted enough time, don’t you agree? Perhaps you could arrange someone to show me to the documents so I might get started?’

He scowled as he took the letter from her hands then, scanning its contents, finding everything was as she said and finding nothing to arm him with the ammunition to demand she leave.

He wanted her gone.

He didn’t want women around the place. Not young women, and definitely not halfway to pretty. He had his fix of women once a month, when the launch brought across a local village woman. He never asked her name; she never offered it. Each time she would just wait for him naked in the guest-suite bed, then throw back the covers and close her eyes …

And afterwards the launch would take her back to her village, considerably better off than before she had made the crossing.

No, Alessandro had no need for women.

He shrugged and tossed the letter down on his wide desk. What did it matter what the letter said or didn’t say? ‘I said you are not welcome here, Ms Hunter.’

She stiffened to stone right where she stood, her mouth pursing. ‘Dr Hunter, actually. And I will ensure my stay is as brief as possible. I have no desire to stay any longer than necessary where I am not welcome, I can assure you.’

He sniffed at the correction as he regarded her solemnly. She looked like a woman who had no desires, period. Sure, she was younger than the dried-up Professor, but with her scraped-back hair and that pursed mouth, and in khaki pants and T-shirt, it wasn’t as if she was anything like the women who had once graced his arm and his bed.

God knew, another twenty years or so of staring into her desiccated papers and she’d probably be as dried up and crusty as the Professor. Maybe he had nothing to worry about.

And she was right about one thing: he did want the find off his hands as quickly as possible. If the Professor proved unable to do it personally because of her ailing mother someone else would have to be found, all of it spelling delay after delay.

He ground his teeth together. The longer he waited, the more likely news of the discovery would filter out. The last thing he wanted was the media sniffing around again, turning the place into some kind of fish tank.

‘Then make your assessment as brief as possible and make us all happy by leaving.’ He turned back to gaze out of the window again, knowing she would do exactly that. People always ran from him. And then he frowned, remembering the way her big blue eyes had stared at him …

Yes, she’d been shocked. But where was the revulsion? Where was the pity? Instead she’d examined him as one might regard some kind of science project.

And the snarling beast inside him didn’t like that notion any better.

‘I’d like to see the book now.’

He turned back, surprised she hadn’t changed her mind and taken the opportunity to flee while his back was turned. She was surprisingly feisty, this one, holding her ground when many men twice her age and size would have gone running for the hills. Did she want the opportunity of examining and documenting this discovery so much that she had somehow summoned the will to fight for it? Or was she always this feisty?

Her eyes held his, bright and blue and cold as ice. Once women had looked at him with lust and desire. But that was long ago. There was no lust in Ms Hunter’s eyes, no desire—or at least not for him. But there was something else he read in them. The yearning to become famous? Probably. This discovery, if it proved authentic, would probably make a young conservator’s career.

‘It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,’ he said.

She blinked—a fan of black lashes against her peaches and cream complexion. And it occurred to him that it was almost a shame to condemn such translucent skin to the Professor’s wrinkled fate. ‘Pardon?’

A rap on the door and the reappearance of Bruno curtailed any response. ‘The boat wishes to leave,’ he grunted. ‘Are you finished with the girl?’

And with the question came Alessandro’s first smile of the day. In one way he was—though not the way his valet was clearly expecting. He’d agreed she could stay, and this meeting was now over. He’d planned to have Bruno take her to the book. He’d need to have little more to do with her. But was he finished with her?

Maybe not.

What would it take to make her run? What would it take to shake up those frosty blue eyes and strip off that sterile scientific cladding she wrapped herself so tightly in and see what really lay beneath? Besides, if he admitted the truth, he could do with a little entertainment. The woman might provide some mild amusement. She was only here for a few days. What possible harm could it do?

‘No, I’m not finished with our charming guest, Bruno.’ And this time he directed his words at her. ‘In fact, I do believe I’ve scarcely begun. Come, Dr Hunter, and I’ll show you to your precious documents.’

She left her luggage and briefcase where he directed, following him through a tangle of passageways, down wooden stairs that shifted and creaked under their footfall, and then down again—stone steps this time, that were worn into hollows by the feet of generations gone before—until she was sure they must be well below ground level, and the walls were lined with rock. And finally he stopped before a door that seemed carved from the stone itself.

He tugged on an iron ring set into the stone. ‘Are you scared of the dark, Dr Hunter?’ he asked over his shoulder, and she got the distinct impression he would love it if she were.

‘No. That’s never been a particular phobia of mine.’

‘How fortunate,’ he said, sounding as if he thought it was anything but. Then the door shifted open and she got a hint of what was to come—a low, dark passageway that sloped down through the rock. When he turned to her the crooked smile she’d seen in his office was back. ‘Every castle should have at least one secret tunnel, don’t you think?’

‘I would have to say it’s practically de rigueur, Count Volta.’

His smile slipped a little, she noted with satisfaction, almost as if she hadn’t answered the way he’d expected. Tough. The fact was she was here, and with any luck she was on her way to the missing pages of the Salus Totus. Although what they were doing all the way down here …

A slow drip came from somewhere around her, echoing in the space, and while she wished she’d at least grabbed a jacket before descending into the stone world beneath the castle, it was the book she was more worried about now.

‘You are taking me to the book?’

‘Of course.’

‘But what is it doing down here?’

‘It was found down here.’

‘And you left it here?’