Enchantment & Bridge of Dreams

by Christina Skye

  Dominic was uninterested in legends, living or dead. “What you’re saying is that things are going to get even rockier, is that it?”

  “I’m afraid so. With this kind of interest the ante has just shot up in one enormous leap. Be careful, Dominic. Be certain that Cathlin is careful, too.”

  Dominic frowned. He decided not to mention Cathlin’s sleepwalking and the poisoned wine. Until he had answers, there was no use discussing his suspicions. “Anything new with Kacey’s search of the church records?”

  “Nothing yet. I’ll let you know if we find anything though.”

  Dominic looked down and sighed as the lights flickered. “I’d better run. Problems with that backup generator already. Are you sure this place isn’t truly haunted?”

  Silence.

  “Nicholas? Are you there?”

  “Tell Harcliffe to send another one down from London.”

  “Oh, he’s promised to help, but you know how the man is. Something might arrive tomorrow or next year.”

  “Blast him! Is he supporting this project or opposing it?”

  “He plays his own game, as always. He has a rare, Machiavellian mind.”

  Nicholas said a few curt words that expressed exactly what he thought of James Harcliffe’s mind, leaving Dominic laughing as he hung up.

  BUT DOMINIC WASN’T laughing ten minutes later. He had just finished reading the last of the fifteen-year-old files Harcliffe had left him. Between the flat lines of cold, scientific details he saw the blood and bones of a wounded mind and a horror that no child should have to bear.

  Maybe it was better if Cathlin never remembered, he thought. And maybe bringing her to Draycott had been more dangerous than he’d realized.

  When the phone rang again, he answered with only half his attention, the rest still caught in that chilling day fifteen years before, a day that still held too many unanswered questions.

  “Slept well, did you?”

  Harcliffe. Dominic frowned. “Perfectly. But I’m sure this isn’t a social call.”

  “Quite right. Two things. I’ve found a mention of this Geneva Russell of yours. According to the data our people uncovered, she was the daughter of a rich Suffolk East India Company merchant. It appears that she died in 1794. Interestingly enough, the nasty event appears to have taken place at Draycott Abbey.”

  Chills gathered along Dominic’s neck. “How did it happen?”

  “Unclear, I’m afraid. The whole affair seems to have been hushed up. Except for an odd village bookseller and an obscure researcher who has spend the last twenty-five years researching the unexplained deaths of women over twenty in the southern counties of England, we’d never have found anything.”

  Dominic cut him off coldly. “What about that cork I sent you last night?”

  “We looked into the fragments. It’s poison all right. Amazon curare alkaloids with an admixture of pepper to hasten blood absorption rate. A damned sophisticated mix.”

  “Did you check any deliveries made to Richard Severance’s London town house?”

  “Our people found a bill of sale for that particular vintage. Severance received the bottles yesterday, but there’s still no way we can prove a connection. Frankly, I think the whole idea is preposterous.”

  “Try the delivery company. They keep records. With a little pressure someone’s bound to talk.”

  “It’s going to be damned hard. Luckily, Severance is in Brighton for the day. When he hears what we’ve done, he’ll have a whole regiment of legal experts down on us. The man’s got an impeccable reputation and all the lawyers that a million pounds can buy. I still don’t understand what makes you think he’s involved.”

  “Instinct,” Dominic said flatly.

  “Really, Dominic, without ironclad proof, this is going to result in one nasty scandal.”

  “It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it, Harcliffe. And get me those generator parts I ordered yesterday. You are interested in seeing that the government and royal family are entirely satisfied with the handling of this affair, aren’t you?” Especially since there might be a knighthood in it for you.

  “I suppose it can be arranged. But—”

  Dominic hung up, tired of hearing protests and more bad news.

  So there had been another, much earlier death at Draycott Abbey. He frowned, unable to get the thought out of his mind.

  Looking down, he saw the opened files, page after page of sterile details that provided absolutely no answers to his thousand, burning questions about Cathlin. He sighed and rubbed his shoulder, which was throbbing from his tussle in the cellars. But he decided hard physical work was just what he needed to clear his head.

  First he’d take a look at the malfunctioning generator, and then he’d have a look at the new alarm system. After that he’d fill in the three men he’d asked to help him out with the abbey’s security.

  And then, if Cathlin still wasn’t down, he’d think of an unusual way of waking her.

  THE MOAT WAS SHIMMERING in the sunlight as Cathlin stood by the tall window overlooking the abbey’s roses, dreams that were far too real for dreams chasing through her head. Her pulse raced as she thought of memories, heated memories. And then the brush of shadows.

  She reached into her pocket and traced the corner of the crumpled card she had shoved there. There was no point in waiting. The intimate encounter she had shared with Dominic had pushed her beyond her normal defenses, leaving her prey to feelings and half-seen memories that threatened to tear her apart. She knew now that her questions would not go away. If she were truly going mad, then she wanted to know it now.

  As she turned to make her way to the study, she saw an envelope shoved beneath the hall door. It bore her name and a London postmark, but no return address. She opened it slowly, then froze. Plaid. Amber plaid, the pattern that had been her mother’s favorite. The same fabric that she had worn when she died.

  Or when she had been murdered.

  Fingers trembling, Cathlin pulled a sheet of paper from the envelope. It bore only one word, in bold block letters.

  Remember?

  CATHLIN’S HEART WAS RACING as she dialed the number on Joanna Harcliffe’s card. A pleasant female voice answered.

  “I’m afraid that Dr. Harcliffe is not available right now. Shall I have her phone you?”

  Cathlin swallowed. “Of course.” She left the abbey’s number, frowning. “Do you know when she will be back?”

  “Not long. Forgive me, but…is it an emergency? You sound rather upset.”

  Cathlin thought of her restless dreams. She thought of the memories jabbing at the edge of her consciousness. And now there was the unexplained scrap of plaid and its cruel message. Was the killer in the abbey right now, planning another deadly attack?

  “Just have her call me,” she said tightly.

  Dominic had to be told next. Cathlin tried his room and the cellars, where a new laser security grid gleamed in the darkness. But Dominic wasn’t there, either. No doubt he was in Nicholas’s beautiful study making more of his covert calls.

  But the study was empty. Only a pile of files and an old book lay on the rosewood desk, with a gilt bookmark in the center. Cathlin opened the book idly and then froze.

  A tall woman in blue satin stared back at her. Nearby stood a young girl, her eyes a blaze of happiness.

  The caption was most specific: EVANGELINE RUSSELL AND DAUGHTER GENEVA. INDIA, 1782.

  Cathlin felt the blood rush from her face as she stared down at those two happy faces, wondering how everything had gone wrong. Then a piece of paper caught her eye. A paper that held her own name.

  Frowning, she slid the sheet free.

  It was dated fifteen years before, a neatly typed transcription of some sorts of interviews. As Cathlin read further, her eyes widened. First came confusion, then shock, then pure, blazing fury.

  Muttering, she pulled out sheet after sheet from the files that Dominic must have been reading. All of them held her name. All o
f them held the fragments of her past, recorded in dry, clinical sentences that speculated about trauma depth and recovery time and psychological prognosis.

  Damn them! Damn them all!

  She dropped the papers as if burned, hating to see herself pinned there like some dying insect caught beneath the scientist’s knife.

  What right did they have to dissect a child’s mind this way? And what right did Dominic have to this kind of painfully private information, information even she had never seen!

  She shoved the papers off the desk and watched them scatter in an angry cloud. Something about the sight made her think of fog and darkness and a danger that stalked her still. In her head, the slow ache became a savage drumming. Suddenly Cathlin felt stifled, choked.

  Terrified.

  Remember? the note had said. Was it her mother’s killer watching her even now?

  She turned, white-faced, desperate to escape from this strange old house, which held too much pain and too many secrets.

  HIS HANDS BLACK WITH grease, Dominic turned away from the moat.

  His eyes narrowed as he heard the sound of running feet.

  A premonition of fear hit him as he saw Cathlin’s slender form disappear into the dark boxwood copse to the north.

  Her face had been bleak with pain.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THE FOG SEEMED TO COME from nowhere, drifting in little pools that hung in the hollows near the river. Cathlin ran blindly, uncaring where she stepped as the white layers grew thicker.

  All the while, the cold words of the medical report danced before her eyes, along with the bold letters of the anonymous note.

  Remember?

  The river was below her now, a shining trail of green that ran along sloping banks of moss, streaked now with fog.

  Fog.

  Darkness.

  The river…

  She shook her head, shoving her hair from her face, trying to separate now from then. Mud clung to her shoes and branches scraped at her arms and face as she plunged blindly forward into the fog.

  “Cathlin! Stop, damn it!”

  It was Dominic’s voice, but to Cathlin it was somehow unfamiliar, like the voice of a stranger. Wildly, she pushed through the thick bank of flowers, her pulse ragged in her ears.

  “Cathlin, wait!”

  She shoved past the lilacs, past ferns and anemones, until she came to a sheltered grove in the lee of a granite cliff. Roses danced crimson on stems that coiled all the way up the bank.

  Her breath caught. Memories again—a lifetime of memories. Too many to hold inside her throbbing head.

  Hard fingers gripped her shoulders. “Damn it, don’t run from me, Cathlin!” She was shoved around, caught against a man’s chest.

  Her eyes were hazy, unfocused. Suddenly she was a thousand miles away. Or two hundred years away…

  THE SHARP WHISTLE OF THEwind woke him.

  He blinked, feeling a strange bed of straw beneath him. Memory dawned. He smiled, sated, happy. “Geneva?”

  No answer. No welcoming warmth.

  He sat up, frowning at the first gray light filtering through the mill’s narrow windows.

  She was gone.

  GABRIEL FOUND HER TRACKSjust beyond the bank, set into the soft mud. Grim-faced, vowing the worst of retribution, he stalked her past ferns and mossy stones and thickets still white with drifting fog.

  The sun was just visible, burning red over the horizon as he strode over the hill, his eyes locked on the prints that showed her haste.

  How could the woman think she could escape him?

  Then Gabriel stopped. Here the prints were joined by a second pair.

  Devere!

  He muttered a curse and ran.

  At the top of the next turning in the path he ran her down and pulled her around to face him. “Where is he?”

  Her face was pale, determined. “I—I hid from him in the fog. They made their way on toward Stevington Ford. Devere was only wounded.”

  “You could have been killed!”

  Her face was blurred with tears. “Let me go!”

  “Damned if I will. Now answer me. Tell me why you ran away.”

  “Because I won’t see you hurt. Devere will never give up. He’ll send a dozen men after me if that’s what it takes. He wants you, Gabriel, and your love for me is your only vulnerability. I must go!” Her voice was raw with desperation.

  “You’re not going anywhere.”

  She shoved at him, her lilac scent intoxicating. “You don’t understand. He’ll never give up.”

  “When we’re married, he will,” Gabriel said grimly.

  “But—” She swallowed, shook her head. “I cannot.”

  “You are married already?”

  “No.”

  “Then you can,” he said flatly, already decided. “And you will. I will see you safe from Devere.”

  “No! You must let me go!” She pulled away and ran into a bower heavy with roses, her hair whipping out around her. “I’ll never be safe—nor will anyone who harbors me, not as long as Devere lives. He has killed men and now will exact his revenge against my sister, through his many friends in France who owe him favors.”

  “I will help her to safety and see that you are safe from that madman forever. I give you my promise, Geneva.”

  “And in the process I will only bring you more pain, you have known so much already!” She turned and ran, her skirts trapping her as they caught in the rose briars. “I cannot. I will not!” Gabriel pulled her against him, even as she rained angry fists across his chest. Her cheeks were streaked with tears, her eyes haunted.

  “Stop fighting me, woman.”

  But she was wild, lost to his words.

  And the storm of her brought an answer in him. He seized her twisting body and pinned her against the trunk of a towering oak. She was beyond words, beyond reason, gripped by fear and a terrible remorse for a betrayal she could never forget.

  Words failed, reason lost, Gabriel touched her the only way he could, with a need that was as fierce as her regret. Satin pulled free and linen fell in a heap. Geneva fought him like currents in a spring flood, pummeling his chest and twisting until he buried his hands in her hair and ground his body against hers.

  Heat met heat. Wild hunger called to its match.

  “No. I won’t have you hurt. I won’t!”

  “Hurt me,” Gabriel said hoarsely. “Rip out my very heart. For you I would give it gladly, don’t you see? Perhaps I already have.” He shoved away her gown; she had dressed in haste and wore nothing beneath. Her body was flushed, the thrust of her breasts testimony to the desire that already gripped her.

  He groaned, found the pulse that beat at her neck, stroked the silken skin that hid her heat. He did not stop until he heard her cry out and wrap her hands around him.

  “Don’t hold me, my love. Let me go.”

  “I must,” he said hoarsely. “All my life. Perhaps far longer than this mortal life.” As he spoke Gabriel felt a sharp chill at his neck. But he had no time for chills or warnings, not with Geneva in his arms. “And I’ll set my brand on you to prove it, a brand of love that carries all the joy you’ve given me.”

  She stared at him, a universe of love in her eyes as he bent his head and measured the pulse at her neck, then caught the soft skin to his lips.

  With a low moan she curved toward him, impossibly lost, feeling the hot brand of desire that would mark her as his forever.

  And then they were thigh to thigh, sliding to the damp, dark earth. Both tugged at her tangled satin skirts; together they shredded his shirt and then pushed away his breeches.

  He took her there, bowered by roses, cushioned by soft moss and spring ferns with the murmur of the river to lull them and the fog to veil their nakedness. She met him with wild delight, driven by a desire that followed his in equal measure. Control was beyond him and regret beyond her where they lay among the roses, among the fingers of drifting fog.

  “Together,” he
swore hoarsely, driving home to heaven.

  “Forever,” she answered, following him there.

  It was a promise whispered, shared and sealed with their joined bodies as they met in mad abandon. And if sheer force of will and human need could forge a bridge of time, then their promise would pass beyond the bounds of death itself.

  “CATHLIN?” CALLUSED fingers traced the tears on Cathlin’s cheeks. She shuddered, her mind on fire, her thoughts a tangled blur, past and present no longer separate.

  “Sweet God, love, what’s happened to you?”

  Gabriel. How very much he had loved her. And the remembering made it far, far worse.

  “Talk to me, Cathlin.”

  “Let me go!”

  “No.” Dominic’s hands—Gabriel’s hands—dug into her waist. “Not until you tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Don’t try to stop me. Not again, Gabriel.” Then the sharp gasp, the horror of realization, the gray pain from deep in the mind that was somehow both Cathlin and Geneva. “No, I didn’t mean—”

  His eyes were grim. The jaw so hard, so beloved. She had to make him go.

  “You’re here now, here in the twentieth century, Cathlin. You’re no eighteenth century heiress fleeing from a madman,” Dominic growled.

  She caught a wild breath, shoving at fragments of memory, fighting to hold apart the two worlds still crazily superimposed. “They’re both here, caught inside my head.”

  “Fight it, Cathlin. Come back. I need you too much to lose you now,” he said hoarsely.

  Sweet words. Dangerous words.

  “Why, so you can dissect my mind for that monster Harcliffe you work for?” She choked back a sob, hammering at his chest. “You knew all about me. About the bridge and how my mother died. Damn you for knowing what even I couldn’t see clearly.”