Severance rubbed his neck and cursed.
At that moment there was a tap at the door and a uniformed man brought in a paper cup. Dominic noticed he was a different guard from before. “Where did the other officer go?” he asked.
“Off duty,” came the bored answer, coupled with a shrug.
Severance turned the cup nervously in his hands and took a quick drink. “Help me, Montserrat. That wine was just to scare Cathlin. When I saw her with you in the car I went a little crazy, I admit it. But I never meant to kill her. There wasn’t supposed to be enough poison for that.”
“Says you.”
Severance stared into the steaming coffee, as if looking for hidden answers. “My God, you still don’t understand!” He took another swallow and rubbed his throat. “It was all planned. All of it, don’t you understand? Someone knew.” His fingers tightened on the coffee, which sloshed over his wrists.
There was another tap at the door. The uniformed guard beckoned to Dominic. “Mr. Severance’s lawyers are upstairs,” he explained softly. “He is to be released in fifteen minutes. Mr. Harcliffe wanted you to know.”
Dominic bit back a curse. Did Harcliffe expect him to get answers before Severance walked? He turned back, his face expressionless. “If there was someone involved, tell me how. Then maybe I can help you.”
“That’s just it, I never found out. And I should have been able to find out. Whoever buried Cathlin’s records had access to the very highest levels. He also had the power to keep his involvement totally hidden.” His eyes widened, desperate. “But I did learn one thing, Montserrat. The palace was never interested in that wine you’re shepherding down at Draycott Abbey.”
“What wine?” Dominic’s tone was cool.
“That Château d’Yquem 1792, you fool! I told you, information’s my business. When I found out, naturally I was interested as a collector. But no one at the palace was showing any interest and that bothered me, since it could mean the wine was a fake. When I looked into it, I found out the palace was told discreetly that the wine is only a modern copy.”
Dominic’s palms began to sweat as he felt a noose of betrayal slipping around him. “Why should I believe you’re telling me the truth?”
“Because I need you too much to lie.” Severance’s fingers were trembling and his voice was agitated. “That man you caught the day before yesterday at the abbey was my man. I sent him for pictures of the wine. I wanted verification. Of course, he wasn’t as good as you, Montserrat. He barely made it out, bleeding badly.”
“Tell me about the palace. Where did you get this information? No one on their staff leaks information for long.”
“You’re right. But this time an old associate there called me. It seems a member of the royal family was searching for a fine wine to give as a family birthday gift. He knew I occasionally obtain unusual vintages and can be counted on to be discreet. I can assure you, he had no idea that the wine in the abbey’s cellar was authentic. Which means, Montserrat, that someone is double-crossing you.” Sweat covered Severance’s brow and his face had gone pale. “So now will you help me?”
Dominic tried to hide his fury. Severance couldn’t be lying, not when so many of his facts were correct. And that meant someone had betrayed him. Harcliffe? Or someone even higher? “What about the car that tried to run Cathlin off the road? Were you behind that, too?”
“Car?” Severance ran a hand clumsily over his brow. “I don’t know anything about a car. The poison was just to scare Cathlin and make her leave the abbey. Something’s wrong there, don’t you believe that now?”
He did believe it, Dominic thought grimly. But who was the person who stayed one step ahead of him?
“Did you send Cathlin the letter with the scrap of plaid?”
“What plaid?”
Another dead end. Dominic rubbed his shoulder idly, feeling it burn. “Maybe you can be useful to me, Severance. When you’re released from here, I want you to do something for me.”
“Anything. Just get me out.”
“I want you to start asking questions again. Pull in all your old debts and make it clear that answers will be well rewarded.”
“You want me to be the bait, is that it? To make my interest clear and see who comes looking for me?” He nodded slowly. “Risky, but I’ll do it. Just give me your assurance that in return, you’ll—” His hands lurched. A shudder ran through him.
“What’s wrong?”
Severance’s body tensed. He swayed toward the desk. His coffee cup fell to the floor and liquid ran in a brown stain across the dirty tiles.
“The woman,” Severance muttered. “Harcliffe. Might be—” Abruptly his eyes closed and his body twitched convulsively.
And then his head slid back and he did not move again.
DOMINIC’S FACE WAS GRIM as he watched the medical team carry out Richard Severance’s body. “What was it?” he asked the doctor making notes in a small black pad.
“Impossible to say for certain, not until the blood tests and tissue samples are complete.” The man closed his pad with a snap. Dominic thought his eyes looked tired and slightly bitter. “Myself, I suspect a fast-acting alkaloid. Probably something in the curare family, since you say it happened over a matter of minutes.”
“What about the guard?”
The doctor shrugged. “He’s in the clear. Someone phoned down and told him to come upstairs in order to show Severance’s lawyers down here, in preparation for his release. He waited until a relief guard took his place and then he left.”
“And that relief guard who brought the coffee has long since disappeared, no doubt,” Dominic said grimly.
“Right again.”
Dominic looked down at the floor. There were still a few beads of coffee dotting the old, cracked tile. The paper cup had been removed for evidence, of course, but Dominic doubted there would be any found. Whoever was behind this wasn’t the sort to leave any clues.
Slowly he sank onto the table, his hands clenched. Who wanted Severance out of the picture and had the knowledge to see it done so cleanly?
And then Dominic sat forward. Cathlin. Whoever had gotten to Severance could just as easily get to Cathlin. He had to get back to Draycott.
The tired man with the notepad watched him rush from the room, then sighed and went back to his grisly report.
CATHLIN MOVED QUICKLY AS the wine cellar was plunged into darkness. She crouched by the new security system and punched in the code Dominic had programmed to retrigger the alarm. At least its secondary power source was secure for the moment.
Nearby she heard a thump, the kind that came from a body stumbling into something heavy. Tensely, she pinpointed the noise, four yards to her right. If she made her way along the far wall past the champagne racks, she would be in reach of the stairs.
She caught her breath and inched through the darkness. When her fingers met the cool wood of the stair rail, she threw caution to the winds and bolted straight up, calling hoarsely for Marston and the friend of Dominic who was supposed to be on watch by the front door.
But neither the butler nor the other man was anywhere to be seen. The abbey was empty.
“My dear, what’s wrong? You look quite distraught.”
Cathlin spun around, gasping in relief as she saw Joanna Harcliffe’s anxious face. “Where’s Marston? There’s someone down in the cellars and I have to get help.”
“Oh, I assure you no one has gone down there. I’ve been sitting here for at least twenty minutes. Marston said he had to go into town with that nice friend of your husband. I believe they had to pick up some new equipment. Marston seemed quite delighted to be involved, actually.” The older woman touched Cathlin’s arm. “You’re not looking at all well, my dear. Come into the study and sit down while you tell me all about it.”
Perhaps she had been mistaken, Cathlin thought. Lord knows, her nerves were stretched thin these last days. Given her anxiety in the darkness, she might merely have imagined the noise.
She followed the older woman into the study, sank into a chintz armchair, and took the glass of water that Joanna Harcliffe had poured from a nearby carafe.
“I was certain I heard something. Just my imagination, I suppose. I’ve been imagining all sorts of strange things since I came to the abbey.”
“Have another drink.”
Cathlin took the glass, studying the woman’s competent hands. She noted every line and texture, from the square, unpolished nails to the expensive but out-of-date Baume and Mercier wristwatch.
“Just close your eyes. It will help, you know. It will let you forget.”
Cathlin stared at the silver watchband flashing in the sunlight as Joanna’s Harcliffe’s voice murmured on, soft and rhythmic. “Sleep. Sleep now.” Sunlight glinted back and forth across the silver links. It was the kind of expensive and classic watch that would last a lifetime, Cathlin thought dimly.
Then her eyes sank closed. Her breathing grew deep and regular.
When the phone rang, the older woman reached out and unplugged it. “There’s no need for us to be disturbed,” she said gently. “Just sleep, Cathlin, my dearest. Close your eyes and sleep. Exactly the way your mother did.”
JAMES HARCLIFFE KNOCKED at the door of his wife’s study, then pushed it open. He did not go into this room as a rule. Medical confidentiality had to be strictly preserved, as his wife had repeatedly explained to him. Because Harcliffe had his own office at home, this had never bothered him before. But lately Joanna was spending more and more time in here, and he feared she was overworking.
But today she was not at her office and she should have been home hours ago.
He looked down, surprised to see a torn sheet of paper crumpled on her desk. Nearby a little crystal jar with paper clips lay overturned.
Harcliffe frowned. His wife was usually the soul of neatness, entirely a creature of habit. It annoyed her when something was not in its place. This was not at all like her. He picked up the paper and studied the single word that ran across it, written in his wife’s neat handwriting.
Cathlin.
Beneath he saw a file and skimmed the first sheet. His frown grew as he turned sheet after sheet. When he finally snapped the file shut and sank down in the chair at his wife’s desk, his face was grim.
He grabbed the phone and punched the number for Draycott Abbey. A mechanical voice came on the line, informing him that there was a circuit malfunction and would he please try his call again later.
Cursing softly, Harcliffe broke the connection, studying the unbelievable information he held in his hands. For the first time in twenty years there was fear in his eyes.
THE SUN BURNED AWAY OVER the hills, leaving Draycott’s windows a blaze of crimson. The air was still and silence covered the sweeping hills like a veil.
Out of that veil came a shimmering wave of light that worked into black satin and white lace, into a face with brooding eyes and hard jaw. Adrian Draycott stood on the rise overlooking his beloved abbey, a gray cat at his feet.
His hands clenched to fists. They had no right to be here, severing the peace of this place, threatening those who had come back to heal a long-forgotten wound. He had tried to warn Cathlin and her stubborn husband, stirring their sleeping minds with fragments of their bitter past. He had hoped that with his warning, they might be better prepared for the dangers to come.
But the evil that had waited for two hundred years had only grown stronger. Now the dark past was about to be repeated and in spite of every shred of will and ghostly inclination, Adrian Draycott feared he would not be allowed to interfere.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“YES, SHE WAS VERY beautiful, your mother.”
Joanna Harcliffe sat beside Cathlin, her voice friendly. She spoke with the detached calm of a professional, but her eyes were expressionless and flat. It was nearly dark now, and she liked the dark best. It was the perfect time to make plans. “She had every man at Oxford dogging her steps, even those who didn’t care for women. Everything was wonderful then. We were two privileged women with the grandest of prospects before us. Then Elizabeth grew immersed in her art studies and I found myself with a new set, people who had different ideas. I began to see the larger world and all the weaknesses of England. And I came to see that increasing those weaknesses was the key to making a better world for all of us.” She carefully unsnapped her silver watch, then held it before Cathlin’s eyes, moving it slowly. “Yes, you’re sleeping deeply now, my dear. Just as you were all those years ago when we had our discussions. You remember now, don’t you?”
Cathlin frowned, her fingers tensing.
“Answer me, Cathlin.”
“Y-yes. I’m sleepy now, very sleepy.”
“Excellent. We’ve gone through all this before, of course, all about your memories of that day here at the abbey. And we discovered a different set of memories in our sessions, didn’t we? Memories of a woman named Geneva Russell.”
Cathlin’s fingers moved restlessly over the chair arm, but she did not speak.
“Tell me, Cathlin.” There was an iron undercurrent in the older woman’s voice now.
“Yes. I remember. Geneva. Geneva Russell.”
“Excellent. And do you know how she died?”
Cathlin frowned. “No, I—I can’t remember. Only pieces. Painful even now…”
Harcliffe moved the watch rhythmically, her voice like a smooth wave. “Then I’ll tell you. Listen well. She jumped from the abbey roof, distraught at her lover’s death. Such a sad conclusion to the tale, just like your own past. How unfortunate that you and your mother saw me that day in London, speaking with a man I shouldn’t be speaking with and giving him a file I most certainly shouldn’t have been giving him. What a bad bit of luck for you that you were there by the duck pond in Regent’s Park when your mother saw me. It all had to end, of course,” she said softly. “I’d put far too much time into the government position I’d secured as a confidante and medical adviser to cabinet-level ministers—even to several members of the royal family. The secrets I held were of incredible value to those determined to see change brought about here in England. Nothing—nothing at all—could be allowed to interfere with that process. You do understand, don’t you, Cathlin?”
No answer.
“Tell me, Cathlin.”
“Yes, I…understand.” It was the soft voice of a child of ten.
“And you do remember seeing me that day. It’s coming back to you, isn’t it? You remember the ducks, dirty and clamorous, while you tossed in the bread your mother had crumbled up for you.”
Cathlin’s face softened and she nodded. “I liked the ducks. I slipped and got mud on my new shoes, but she told me it didn’t matter. We’d have them like new before my father saw them. She seemed worried, though. And she didn’t want me to know.”
“Yes, Elizabeth was quite the perfect mother. That’s why I had to come up with a very special way to dispose of her.” Joanna Harcliffe’s eyes moved over the room, detached, analytical. “One of my new compatriots volunteered to take on the assignment. He was careful to lay all the clues to suggest it was the work of one of your father’s enemies. Yes, it was a most satisfying conclusion to a nasty little problem and no breath of suspicion ever fell upon me.”
Cathlin’s fingers moved restlessly as the hypnotic words continued.
Abruptly the woman beside her frowned. “What are you holding there in your hand?”
Cathlin’s fingers opened, revealing a small piece of silver.
“My God, you found it, after all those years. I broke my watch down there that day and had no time to find all the pieces. You didn’t see me, but you heard my voice, didn’t you?” Joanna Harcliffe laughed softly. “You were such a clever little girl.”
Cathlin’s eyes went very wide. Pain flared through their unfocused depths. After a moment she nodded jerkily.
“But I saw to that too. During our little sessions, I blocked out those memories and gave you a differen
t set, didn’t I?”
Cathlin nodded. “You—you told me I was responsible. You said if I hadn’t insisted on stopping to feed the ducks that day, my mother would still be alive. You said it was all my fault.”
Harcliffe sat back with a small hiss of triumph. “Excellent. A perfect textbook case of deep conditioning that has held up perfectly all these years. Guilt made you the perfect block for your memories, right up until I gave you the code to change it. You do remember the code, don’t you, my dear? We went over it so many times.”
Cathlin frowned, looking out into empty space, struggling with burning memories and painful images that threatened to shred her sanity.
,!“There is a dove on my mother’s hill,
By oak and ash and bonny doe;
And though to me she sings full sweet,
No one else can know, oh,
No one else can know.”
She spoke the words flatly, mechanically.
“Well done. And in the wake of those words, all the memories began coming back, didn’t they?”
Cathlin nodded, her fingers tight on the piece of silver she’d found in the dust, her connection to the buried secrets of her past.
“Unfortunately, Richard Severance was also interested in what had happened to you, and he had access to information at very high levels. I soon found that he could be a formidable opponent. He had to die, of course, since he’d become a nuisance. But I had to keep you silent, too, until I was ready to clear the slate, and the best way was by keeping you offbalance, by making you question your sanity.”
She looked at the watch, her face hard. “And now, my dear, we’re going down into the cellars to look at that wine everyone is so interested in. It is authentic, isn’t it?”
Cathlin’s fingers tightened with strain. She fought the seductive force of that low voice.
“Come, now, tell me everything. I must insist.”
Cathlin caught a jerky breath. She shuddered, then nodded slowly. “Real. Priceless…” She swallowed, her voice trailing away.
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