Only her heart, full of peace in this odd, beautiful place.
“I can’t just—” She spun around.
He was gone.
As the roses tossed in the wind, Cathlin caught a glimpse of black through the tangle of leaf and bud. And she could have sworn she saw white lace flutter at his dark wrists.
A MAN IN A BLACK SUIT AND lime green running shoes was clipping crimson roses from a hedge as Cathlin carried her single bag toward the weathered gatehouse. He stopped when he saw Cathlin. “Miss O’Neill?” He tugged off his gloves and held out his hand. “I beg your pardon, but I should have introduced myself at once. I am Marston, Lord Draycott’s butler. Let me take that for you, please.”
Butler? Cathlin had to repress an urge to pinch herself. Butler. Of course. “Shall I trade you for the roses? The bag’s not heavy, since I won’t be staying for the night. I’m only here to look at the wine Lord Draycott discovered.”
The butler frowned as she handed over the bag. “But his lordship is definitely expecting you to stay. He and his wife will be very disappointed otherwise.”
Cathlin shrugged as waves of glorious scent filled her lungs. “The viscount seems to be an unusual man.”
“Ah, you’ve met him, have you?”
Cathlin nodded. “I ran into him by the moat as I came in. He is a most…interesting man.”
“Indeed he is.” Marston led the way across the forecourt toward a wall of rose-covered granite. “I have prepared a room overlooking the courtyard. I thought you might like the roses. Will veal with strawberries and asparagus vinaigrette be satisfactory for luncheon?”
Satisfactory? Was the man serious? “It sounds wonderful. But I’d like to wash up and take a look at the wine cellar first.”
“Ah, yes, the wine.” Marston shot her an assessing look.
“Is something wrong?”
“Pardon me, but you seem so very young to possess the amount of expertise that you have.”
“Not all wines need age to develop body or character.” Cathlin had used the phrase often in her first tough years carving out a consulting business in London.
“You’re right, of course. Forgive me.”
His sincerity made Cathlin feel a little small. “Only if you let me carry some of these lovely roses.”
That won her an answering smile. “Very well. We’ll call it even. And perhaps you would be so kind as to have a look at our cellar conditions. There are two or three old clarets that I fear may be showing signs of damaged corks. Perhaps there is a problem with the humidity.”
Cathlin looked sideways. She had a fair idea of this man’s character and doubted that he cared to ask advice from anyone. Either he was trying to compliment her or he was treating her as an equal.
Both sounded good to her.
“I’m rather looking forward to poking around down there. Draycott’s wine cellar has quite a reputation, you know.”
“Indeed.” Marston looked pleased. “It was largely the work of the eighth viscount, you know. So were all these roses. According to legend, he led an unhappy life and devoted his rather considerable skills to building up Draycott for his heirs. There are a number of Sauternes and champagnes that he personally selected, along with some particularly fine vintages of Lafite. There is even an 1825, I believe.”
Cathlin’s brow rose. “You’ll have to watch for cracking of the glass there. Those old commemorative bottles are the devil to protect.”
Marston nodded thoughtfully. “I shall relay your instructions to the viscount. He’s just been out riding, so he will wish to change before he greets you himself.”
Riding? Dressed in formal black? Another mark of eccentricity, Cathlin decided. If so, it was no business of hers. “You needn’t trouble him to show me around. We can talk later, after I’ve looked through the cellars.”
Marston looked genuinely horrified. “Not show you the abbey personally? His lordship would not dream of it.”
Protocol, O’Neill. Cathlin thought of the man in black, a man with eyes like granite. He would be the sort to live by all sorts of ritual and formality, she decided. And he probably had an ironclad sense of honor to go with them.
She decided there was a lot she had to learn about the Draycotts and their abbey.
“Does that great cat go everywhere with him, by the way?”
Marston faltered for a moment. “I beg your pardon.”
“The cat,” Cathlin prompted. “The one with the gray fur and black paws. I found him dozing beside the moat.”
Something came and went in Marston’s eyes. “I couldn’t say, miss.”
Couldn’t say? Either the cat did or he didn’t. Cathlin sighed. No good getting upset. Good butlers were notoriously tight-lipped, after all.
“You say you met—the viscount? With his, er, cat?”
Cathlin nodded. “They seemed great friends, although I know that will sound odd.”
A frown worked between Marston’s eyes. “Did you happen to note what the, er, viscount was wearing?”
“All black, actually. He looked very—rugged.”
Marston looked off in the distance, his eyes narrowed. “About ten minutes ago, would you say?”
“More or less.”
“I see.”
You see what?
But he didn’t say anything more. By then they were at the great oak doors covered with trailing roses and Cathlin felt her heart tighten.
Memories. Or were they simply shadows?
She turned her head, forcing herself to look at the abbey and really see it, not as a place of shadows and dread, not as the image of childhood memories, but as it truly was.
From here she could see every cleft and fissure of the sun-warmed stones, their ancient faces speaking in a language she could not hear but only feel. And it felt like peace, like abiding age. Like a vast will that had walked every foot of Draycott’s ground and left an indelible mark there.
Oh, it was definitely time for coffee, Cathlin told herself, shaking her head. But memories teased her as she followed Marston over the small granite bridge, through the sunny courtyard, and into the rich darkness of the abbey. Her pulse only quickened as she walked past walls hung with priceless Tintorettos and Whistler Nocturnes, past rooms bright with costly old tapestries. It was the antique fabrics which had drawn Cathlin’s mother here fifteen years before, and Cathlin had never forgotten their fragile beauty.
But there were also differences. Now there were roses everywhere, arranged in old porcelain jars and crystal bowls that filled the house with fragrance. Tapestry pillows brightened fragile gilt wing chairs. Sunlight spilled through opened curtains, bouncing off polished wood and casting a mellow glow over the ancient rooms.
Peace.
Again the thought came to her, playing over her senses like summer sunshine, like a sweet and very heady wine.
Steady, O’Neill. There are shadows, too. And memories. Don’t forget those. Frowning, she shoved a strand of hair from her cheek and looked at Marston. “I’ve changed my mind, Marston. I’d like to go straight down to the wine cellars, if you don’t mind.”
The butler smiled faintly. “Lord Ashton predicted that you would,” he murmured.
Lord Ashton. Cathlin’s eyes narrowed. “Lord Ashton might be wonderful at stalking around dark alleys and snapping off assassins’ heads, but he doesn’t know me as well as he imagines.”
Marston gave her a sidelong look.
“I’m sorry Marston. It’s been a long day and I’m—” Thinking about shadows. Thinking about dreams and a mother I barely had a chance to know. She swallowed. “I’m anxious to see that wine.”
“I quite understand. The stairs to the wine cellars are right over here.” Marston pushed open an oak door that had to be at least six feet tall and flipped on a light.
Cathlin stared in disbelief. A passage of solid granite stretched before her, hacked out along with the abbey’s original foundation hundreds of years before. The structure had been built to w
ithstand the attacks of raiders, invading armies and rival political factions, and it had certainly succeeded.
Cathlin shook her head. “This is some building you’ve got here.”
“So it is,” the butler said proudly, “and if I may say so, you haven’t seen anything yet.”
“HOLY, HOLY HEAVEN.”
Cathlin stood at the bottom of the stone steps and studied the shadowed recess stretching before her. Like everything else about Draycott Abbey, the cellars had been built on a vast scale, in an age when high rank commanded huge amounts of manpower. Cathlin tried to conceive how many men must have been needed to hew these stone walls, but her imagination failed her.
“I suppose you’ve heard how the wine was discovered? About…the body?”
Cathlin nodded, fighting a stab of uneasiness as she looked down and wondered exactly where the remains had been found. “And there’s been no other information? Nothing that explains how Gabriel Montserrat came to be buried behind that wall?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Cathlin thought of a dying man writing his will by candlelight, while shadows closed in around him. As Marston led her past rows of neatly stacked bottles that ran twice her height, she found herself praying she would find an answer here amid the wine that had been his only companion for two centuries.
Assuming this was not some kind of hoax.
Around her lay the treasures collected by proud generations of Draycotts. First growth claret. Château Petrus. Clos du Mesnil champagne, from a walled vineyard in existence since 1698. Neaby ran the old Krugs themselves—the superbly sweet 1928 and the big, textured 1945.
And on and on.
Beyond the champagnes came the clarets, housed in graceful, wide bottles that themselves had become collector’s items. Another long wall held eighty prime vintages of Lafite, the pièce de résistance a commemorative bottle of 1825 with a handmade ground glass stopper. Cathlin could think of two dozen men who would kill to possess that treasure alone.
Perhaps her mother had been right. A person might truly spend a lifetime here and still not understand this vast, beautiful abbey.
“Is something wrong, Ms. O’Neill?” Marston was staring at her oddly.
“I think I’m in shock, Marston.”
“There are several more rooms to the left. But you will wish to see the Château d’Yquem, I imagine.”
“I don’t think I can wait another second,” Cathlin confessed unsteadily.
“Of course. Come right this way.”
As Cathlin followed Marston through the semi-darkness, trying to ignore the priceless wines stretching away on each side of her, she noticed a dozen wires snaking over the old granite to terminate in digital thermometers. She smiled. Though the cellars might look like a medieval set piece, the current viscount had gone to a good deal of expense to upgrade them to current standards. A good thing, too, since he was probably sitting on several million dollars worth of wine down here.
At the end of the room the stone walls narrowed and the ceiling dropped until it was almost within Cathlin’s reach. “How was the hidden room discovered?”
“It was all most extraordinary, miss.” Marston’s voice was low, in unspoken awareness of the body that had been found here. “Recently we’ve had a number of problems with the water pipes that feed the south end of the house. When they were tracked to this segment of the cellars, the viscount called in a specialist.”
“And he got rather more than he bargained for?”
The butler nodded. “As he was working, a section of the wall simply crumbled and he was left staring into darkness—into a grave that had been sealed for nearly two hundred years. I’ve never seen a grown man look more frightened in my life,” Marston said quietly. “He kept talking about feeling as if something were down here with him.” Marston shook his head. “Absurd, of course. Not that there aren’t a host of odd stories about his old place.”
“And no one knows how or why it happened?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Just like my mother, Cathlin thought, suddenly aware of the shadows and the heavy, looming silence of the damp cold walls.
“Watch your step, miss.” They were moving lower now, and much of the floor lay in total darkness. “There’s a particularly bad stretch here where the floor dips. One of the workmen took a nasty tumble here on the day of the discovery.”
But Cathlin seemed to have no trouble negotiating the passage. It was almost as if she could sense where the stone floor would dip in front of her. As if she had been here before.
Crazy, O’Neill. No doubt all old houses affect people this way.
A click. Suddenly light covered the damp stone walls that loomed up out of the shadows. Close to the ground Cathlin saw a jagged opening in the stone. She looked questioningly at Marston. “Here?”
The butler nodded. “The skeleton has been removed, of course. The remains were interred at the Ashton estate near Tunbridge with full church rites.”
Dominic hadn’t mentioned that. Somehow the news didn’t make Cathlin feel any better. The shadows felt oppressive, and a nearby palpable sadness brushed at her neck. A sound beside her made her turn. “Yes, Marston?”
“I’m afraid I did not say anything, miss.”
“No?” Cathlin frowned. She had heard something. It had come in that moment while she’d studied the jagged hole at the far end of the cellar. And it had been a single word.
Gabriel.
She took a steadying breath. Time to stop dodging ghosts and get to work. “May I?” She pointed to Marston’s flashlight.
“Of course.”
“Is there an alarm working?” She balanced one leg on the stone ledge, flashlight in hand.
“Only a simple electronic affair.” Marston moved off to the wall and flicked a switch on a matte gray box.
Cathlin moved deeper into the shadows, shining light over the uneven stones. Dust skittered around her feet as she bent close to the cold granite floor.
And there she froze, her body rigid.
Rising from the shadows was a mold-and dust-encrusted wooden case filled with eight bottles cushioned lovingly in a nest of straw.
She was staring down at Gabriel Montserrat’s legacy.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CATHLIN’S PALMS BEGAN TO sweat.
Château d’Yquem 1792. She knew it instantly. Her heart told her all that her scientific analysis would take days to resolve.
The wine was real; she could feel it in every screaming pore of her body.
She raised the flashlight, forcing her mind to its work. The wine looked authentic enough. The glass was of the proper texture and weight for that period. The bottle lips were full, another sign of authenticity. Her heart hammered, loud in her ears. Had Gabriel Montserrat truly died to bring this case here two hundred years before? And if so, how was her own ancestor involved in the mystery?
Chewing on her lip, she crouched over the priceless find. If the wine was indeed authentic, as all her senses screamed, then the demanding work of conservation would begin. She would have to check the bottles for hairline cracks, pitting and corrosion before moving to a delicate scrutiny of the corks. Even in the cool damp air of the abbey cellars the corks would have turned brittle. Old wines needed to be recorked every quarter century as standard practice, and these had had no such care.
Yes it would be the greatest challenge of her career.
If she stayed, of course.
Cathlin ran her finger carefully over the case, touching the dust that had accumulated for decades, probably for centuries. How could she possibly leave until she’d had a chance to verify scientifically that the wine was genuine? And how could she ignore the tragic mystery of Gabriel Montserrat’s death in this place of cold shadows?
Dominic was right. It was too rare an opportunity for her to turn her back. There was no doubt that the intensely sweet white wines of the Garonne had been prized for centuries, and no less a figure than Thomas Jefferson had visited
the area and sung their praises. She recalled a letter she had once seen. “I have persuaded our president, George Washington, to try a sample. He asks for thirty dozen [bottles], sir, and I ask you for ten dozen for myself.” Cathlin knew that there was no record of either American receiving his shipment that year. Was it just possible that this case came from the order commissioned long ago by Jefferson?
Trying to control her excitement, she pulled out a fine brush and cleaned the dust from the closest bottle. As her fingers touched the cold glass, a tiny, electric jolt ran through her. Heaviness seemed to gather at her heart, like the French valleys she had seen filling up with mist. She shivered, fingering the cameo at her neck, which had grown suddenly cold.
Nonsense, Cathlin told herself sharply. It was just a hidden tunnel that sent cold air slashing against her face.
But she was intensely aware of the shadows pressing around her. And she found herself wondering which shadows belonged to her and which were Draycott’s.
HE WATCHED HER FROM THE shadows. Even in the dim half-light of the narrow tunnel, her hair had a glow of vitality. As she bent protectively over the old wine, using a fine brush to remove two centuries of dust, Dominic Montserrat understood just how vast was Cathlin O’Neill’s love of fine wine.
Yes, this was the perfect opportunity for her, if only she could be persuaded to take it. Suddenly Dominic found himself praying that the case was authentic, because he wanted to see the excitement blaze in Cathlin’s eyes when she astounded the wine world with her discovery. She deserved that joy. The abbey owed her that much, after taking her mother from her.
Without warning, tension stirred along Dominic’s neck. Crouching low, he spun about, prepared for an attack.
But none came. There was no movement around him, nor sound of any sort. He was alone here beneath the damp stones, ringed by shadows. And something about those gray walls with their leaden darkness made sweat touch his face.
Something was wrong.
Habits too deeply ingrained to deny screamed out that he was not alone, that someone was watching him. Only his imagination, Dominic tried to tell himself as he eased upright.
Enchantment & Bridge of Dreams Page 29
