by Kay Hooper
She was silent, just looking at him, then swallowed and said softly, “When you found me in the conservatory that night, I was hiding because I’d seen Peter slipping off to his bedroom with a beautiful model. Even then, even after all that time when I’d known he had other women, seeing him do that hurt so much I was sick with it. And then you were there, looking at me as if it mattered to you that I was hurting. And when you touched my scars, so gentle and caring …” She drew a little breath. “Brent, you’ve made me happy. Made me feel things I never thought I could feel. I want you to know that I’ll always be grateful—”
His hands lifted to surround her face, and Brent cut her off with a rough curse. “Stop it. I don’t want your gratitude.”
Her eyes remained fixed on him, almost painfully intent. “Don’t you? But how can I not be grateful? You make me feel like a woman, Brent.”
“You are a woman. A beautiful, sexy, exciting woman I love with everything inside me.”
Her bottom lip quivered and tears shimmered in her eyes. “How lovely that sounds,” she said wistfully.
Brent groaned and rested his forehead against hers for a moment. Then he kissed her without an ounce of gentleness tempering his naked desire, and when he tore his lips from hers they were both shaken. “Listen to me,” he said hoarsely. “I’m twelve years older than you are, Kerry. I’ve had other women, other relationships. I know what I want and I know what I feel. I love you. Believe that. Get used to it. Because I’m going to convince you. And I’m going to marry you.”
“But—”
He kissed her again to cut off the protest. “No. No buts. If you want to be conventional, we’ll wait until spring or summer, but you will marry me.” After that, he didn’t wait for another protest or anything else; he just kissed her one last time and then left her there in the gazebo, dazed and wondering.
It was nearly three in the morning when Kerry finally made her way slowly back to the house, following the path through the gardens with blind familiarity, and she was so preoccupied that she probably wouldn’t have noticed anything strange under the little arched footbridge even if the lights had been bright enough to show her what lay half in and half out of the water.
LAURA WOKE RATHER ABRUPTLY from uneasy dreams and opened her eyes, and for a moment she didn’t know where she was. But only for a moment. Raised on an elbow beside her, Daniel leaned down to kiss her with heart-stopping tenderness.
“Good morning,” he murmured.
She smiled slowly, the nameless anxiety of her dreams fading. “Good morning.”
“I think I could get used to this,” he said, surveying the curtain of her bright hair spread out on his pillows, and her pale shoulders rising from deep green sheets. “Jesus, you’re even beautiful first thing in the morning.”
Laura blinked, then laughed. “Thank you. How long are you going to keep on surprising me?”
“Am I? How was that surprising?”
“Well … I don’t know. It just seems out of character for you to say things like that. I didn’t expect you to.”
He kissed her again, smiling just a little. “You didn’t expect me to tell you that you’re beautiful? That I can’t keep my hands off you?” His hand found her stomach under the covers and slid upward until his long fingers closed around her breast. “That I want you all the time, even when we’ve just made love and I’m so drained I can barely breathe?”
He pushed the sheet and blanket down to her waist and watched his hand caress her, watched her flesh respond instantly to his touch. “You didn’t expect me to say that sometimes I have trouble believing you’re real, that I’m half afraid someone’s going to wake me up and I’ll find it was all a dream?”
He leaned down to her, his mouth toying with one hard nipple while his thumb brushed the other rhythmically. Then he raised his head and smiled at her as his hand slid down over her stomach and under the covers. “You didn’t expect me to say that I love the way you respond to me, especially when I do this?”
Laura made a little sound and reached for him.
“WHY NOT GO ahead and move your things into my room?” Daniel asked as he accompanied her to her room so that she could dress for breakfast. Since they had shared a shower in his room, she was wearing his robe and carrying the clothing she had worn the night before.
Laura sent him a faintly harassed look as they came into her sitting room. “I’m not even supposed to be staying in the house, let alone your room. I meant to go back to my apartment every evening. That was the plan.”
“Make new plans,” he suggested.
Since Laura wasn’t quite ready to burn her bridges to the extent of moving in with him, she merely said, “I’ll just be a minute,” and escaped into her bedroom.
She half expected him to follow her, but he didn’t, and she quickly began getting dressed, choosing casual jeans and an oversized sweater, since church wasn’t on the agenda. Daniel didn’t go to church, he had told her without emphasis or further comment, and the rest of the family wasn’t particularly religious. Since Laura had a somewhat intense aversion to organized religion herself, that suited her.
She was sitting on the bed putting on socks when she glanced up and realized that she could see Daniel’s reflection in the mirror above her dresser. He was standing at the coffee table, gazing down at either her sketchpad or the brass mirror, an odd expression she’d never seen before on his face. It was as though he saw something he both loved and loathed, something that could influence him more than he liked or wanted to admit.
While she watched, he bent and picked up the mirror. Straightening, he held it in both hands, turning it slowly. He seemed lost in thought, and those thoughts were clearly troubled ones. And then he shook his head a little and leaned down to put the mirror back where he’d found it.
Laura waited until he stepped away from the coffee table, then called out lightly, “Nearly ready.”
“Good, I’m starved,” he called back.
She finished putting on her shoes, then went into the sitting room as she was tying a scarf at the nape of her neck to hold back her hair. Mildly she said, “You told Peter to buy the mirror back from me, didn’t you, Daniel?”
Standing by her fireplace, he looked at her with a faint smile. “Yes.”
Laura hadn’t really expected him to admit it, so he had surprised her again. “Why?”
“Let me ask you something.” His voice was casual and yet—not. “You said you were going to have a researcher look into the history of the mirror. Have you done that?”
She nodded slowly. “We’ve gotten as far as the late 1920s. Dena—my researcher—should be reporting again in a few days.”
It was Daniel’s turn to nod. “When you have the complete history of the mirror, then we’ll talk about it. All right?”
“Why wait until then?”
He came to her and put his hands on her shoulders. “Because I’m asking you to.”
Laura let her head fall forward briefly to rest against his chest, then looked up at him with a halfhearted glare. “You’re doing this deliberately, aren’t you? Torturing me. Daniel—”
He put a finger against her lips briefly, his expression intent now, serious. “Please, Laura. It’s … important to me.”
Swayed in spite of herself by his gravity, she finally nodded. But she couldn’t resist saying, “At least you aren’t lying to me and saying it’s just a piece of junk from the attic.”
“I’m sorry about that,” he said, taking her hand as they left the sitting room. “At the time, it seemed the best thing to do.”
She sent him a baffled look. “And I thought I was curious about it before.”
“Not too much longer now, and all your questions will be answered.” He smiled at her. “I promise.”
Laura hesitated, then said, “At least tell me this. Did the mirror have anything—anything at all—to do with Peter’s murder?”
“I don’t see how it could have.”
“Do
es it have anything to do with—”
“Laura. I’m not going to play twenty questions.
“She sighed. “It was worth a shot.”
He chuckled, but when they reached the first floor, asked seriously, “Did you have nightmares last night?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“You were restless. I nearly woke you once because you seemed so distressed. But then you calmed again.”
Laura thought about it, then shrugged. “I have a vague memory of being upset, but I don’t remember why. Sorry if I disturbed you.”
“You didn’t disturb me. I was watching you sleep.”
Laura was rather grateful that they reached the dining room then, because she didn’t quite know what to say to that. She was also grateful, though surprised, to find only Alex and Josie at the table.
“Where is everybody?” she asked as she and Daniel began to help themselves from the buffet on the sideboard.
It was Josie who answered. “Kerry’s sleeping in; she usually does on Sundays. Amelia was awake with the birds as usual and is now up in her room writing letters. Anne’s still among the missing—in fact, I don’t think she came home last night. And I believe Madeline finished breakfast early and went for a walk in the gardens.”
“That’s what I dreamed about last night,” Laura realized. “The gardens.”
“Was it an entertaining dream?” Alex asked politely.
She couldn’t help laughing as she brought her plate to the table and sat down. “Sorry. We were sort of discussing dreams before we came in here, and I couldn’t remember mine. When Josie mentioned the gardens, a bell went off.”
“So what did you dream?” Josie asked, sipping her coffee.
Laura thought about it, and the longer she did, the more uneasy she felt. “It was one of those strange dreams where everything seems distorted. Peculiar shapes, odd angles, off colors. I was lost out in the gardens, because I kept taking dead-end paths. No matter which way I went, I ended up at a wall or a thicket of bushes or some other dead end. And the paths were getting narrower and narrower, and I knew if I didn’t find my way out quickly, they’d disappear altogether.”
“So what happened?” Daniel asked as he joined her at the table.
Laura felt her face warm as she remembered. “Well … somebody called to me, told me which was the right path. And I got out.”
Daniel didn’t say anything, but she thought he knew that it had been his voice she had heard. She also thought that Josie and Alex could guess, judging by their quick exchange of glances and faint smiles, but neither probed.
“I dreamed about mermaids,” Alex said thoughtfully. “I wonder why.”
Laura and Josie looked at each other with identical expressions of rueful understanding, and Alex exclaimed, “It wasn’t that kind of dream!”
“When men dream about mermaids,” Josie told him severely, “it’s always that kind of dream.”
They were still discussing the subject sometime later when Daniel and Laura finished breakfast and left the dining room. By tacit consent, they went back through the house to the conservatory, headed for the gardens.
As they passed the barely begun portrait of Amelia waiting patiently on its easel for Laura’s return, she said, “I’ve got to work on that.”
“Amelia won’t expect you to work on Sunday,” Daniel said.
Laura started to say that it was her own mind rather than Amelia’s wishes that urged her to work on the painting, but in the end said nothing else about it. She didn’t want to have to explain to Daniel how odd she was feeling right now, because she couldn’t explain why, even to herself.
All she knew was that she felt more anxious than she had her first day here, oddly conscious of time passing and inexplicably convinced that there would not be enough of it.
I have to hurry. I have to get the portrait done.
“You’re very quiet,” Daniel observed as they walked across the open yard and took the path that would lead eventually to the maze. He put his arm around her shoulders so that they walked more closely together.
“Am I?” Laura was gazing ahead of them, her eyes tracing the path uneasily.
“Too quiet. What’s wrong, Laura?”
“I don’t know. I just feel—” She stopped suddenly as the little arched bridge came into sight.
“Laura?”
She actually took a step back, then forced herself to stop. Looking up at Daniel helplessly, she said, “I can’t. There’s something wrong with that bridge … and I can’t cross it.”
Rather to her surprise, Daniel didn’t even make an attempt to reassure her that there was nothing wrong. Instead his arm tightened briefly around her and then let go, and he said, “Wait here.”
Laura wanted to run, to turn and bolt for the house, but she made herself stand there and watch as he continued along the path to the footbridge. The closer he got, the more anxious she became, and she almost called out to him not to cross the bridge.
But he didn’t cross it. He put one foot on the bridge and held the handrail as he leaned over it a bit to see the concrete supports below. Then he went very still. There was a good thirty feet separating them, but Laura saw his face whiten in shock. He didn’t move for a long moment, then turned away and came back to Laura.
“What?” Her voice was thin, frightened.
Daniel put his hands on her shoulders. His voice stony, he said, “It’s Anne. She’s dead.”
After a long moment, Laura said unsteadily, “I dreamed about dead ends.”
Daniel pulled her into his arms and held her tightly.
“IT WAS AN accident, wasn’t it?” Josie asked Brent Landry. “She just fell. Slipped somehow and—and fell.” Alex, sitting on the arm of her chair, put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it gently.
Brent shook his head slightly. “The handrail of the bridge is too high for her to have fallen over it if she just slipped. She had to have been pushed—with considerable force—to land the way we found her.”
“It still might have been an accident,” Daniel argued. “A quarrel that ended with a shove, not meant to injure. Dew on the bridge, her foot slips …”
“It’s possible,” Brent said. “But I don’t see anyone rushing forward to claim an accident, do you?”
“You aren’t saying it was one of us?” Alex demanded.
They were in the front parlor, everyone except Amelia and Madeline, both of whom had remained in their rooms after Daniel had told them about Anne. Daniel and Laura were sitting on the sofa nearest the window, Kerry was on the other one, and Josie and Alex occupied the chair in which Amelia usually sat. Brent Landry stood by the cold hearth.
It was early afternoon, and Anne’s body had been taken away only minutes before. With it had gone the police officers and technicians who had worked to gather evidence, leaving only Brent behind.
In answer to Alex’s question, Brent said evenly, “We’ll know more after the postmortem, but right now it looks like Anne died yesterday evening sometime between six and midnight. The gardeners had gone for the day, and the only staff inside the house were the cook and one maid. The front gate was closed with a guard on duty. The rear gate was locked, with no sign of forced entry. None of the motion detectors around the fences were disturbed. So you tell me, Alex. Who else could it have been?”
“None of us would have killed Anne,” Kerry said quietly.
Brent glanced at her, then allowed his gaze to sweep the others. “As Daniel said, a quarrel might have gotten out of hand. If the evidence points that way, and whoever was involved comes forward, the DA would most likely consider it an accidental death. Involuntary manslaughter, perhaps.”
He paused, then said, “It’s no secret that Anne’s temper was … explosive. She might even have instigated the argument. Was she upset about anything yesterday? Angry at anyone?”
Josie and Laura exchanged glances, but it was Daniel who answered dryly, “Everyone, I believe, with the exception of Laura. T
here had been a scene at lunch.”
“What kind of scene?” Brent asked.
“The unpleasant kind.” Daniel shrugged.
Brent looked at him, waiting, but when it became obvious that was all Daniel chose to say, he looked at Josie. “Why was Anne angry?”
Josie lifted her hands in a helpless gesture. “I don’t know. She’d been simmering since last week when you exposed her affair with Peter. But she’d also gone out of her way Friday evening and yesterday morning to—oh, make peace with everyone or try to. Then, at lunch … she just exploded.”
“What happened?”
Josie glanced at Daniel questioningly, and it was he who said, “She did her best to insult everyone, that’s all. Par for the course where Anne was concerned.”
Brent drew a breath and let it out slowly. “Daniel, I know you’ll go a long way to protect your family; I respect that. I know that as far as you’re concerned, what happened yesterday at lunch is not my business. But it is. I have to find out how and why Anne Ralston died, something I would think you would also want to know. No matter what the answer is. Because, unlike Peter, Anne didn’t die in an anonymous motel room across town. She died here. Literally in your own backyard. And no one in this house is above suspicion, because someone in this house knows how and why Anne died.”
There was a long silence, and then Daniel looked at Josie and nodded. Quietly, without emphasis, Josie repeated the gist of Anne’s tirade. Then she added, “But none of it was worth fighting about. We all knew Anne, knew how she was. And … once she said what she did, there was no taking it back. Why would any of us have confronted her about it later?”
“Besides which,” Alex said, “we were all fairly occupied during the evening. Drinks in here at six, then your little production, you may remember. Then dinner. Afterward most of us went back to the den, and we played bridge.”
“Most of you?”
“Josie and me, Kerry, and Amelia. Madeline was watching an old movie on TV, I think.”
“How long were you together?”
