Maddie swallowed hard.
She had never trusted anyone—not since she was fourteen. She wasn’t sure how to start. But she couldn’t look away from this man’s honesty and when he held out his hand, she took it without hesitation. In the link of their fingers she felt safe. Maddie did not understand why or how, but this truth she knew.
Somehow they were already connected.
And in the deep awareness between them, she felt the moment his attention turned and he looked out across the abbey grounds.
“Lyon, what is it?”
With their fingers still linked, he pulled her back inside. He opened the dresser drawer and held out her phone. “Call your friend. You have a duty to discharge, and I will not stand in your way.” His eyes were grave. “But while you wait for him, we must work. There is much to teach you and very little time. We will talk about…the rest of what Aeryx said after that.”
“You promise that?”
Lyon looked down at their linked hands, watching Maddie’s silver circles restlessly. “I do. But see how your marks grow more powerful already. We must not delay. We will start upstairs in the Long Gallery. There is a painting you must see.”
“Art? What’s important about a few blobs of ink on a canvas?”
Lyon smiled faintly. “I am desolated to contradict you, but this painting is one that you will find most interesting.”
“Not likely.” Maddie frowned, still wondering about these things she had to learn from him. “Want to make a small wager?”
Lyon’s eyebrow rose. “Intriguing. What is it that you will give me when I win?”
“If you win.” Maddie tilted her head, studying him intently. “Let’s make it something easy. If I win, you explain everything about those marks on your arms. And if you win—though that’s not going to happen—I promise to pay attention and learn whatever you need to teach me. No complaining. But remember—I have to finish my work for Izzy. I made a promise.”
Lyon nodded. “I would expect nothing less. And I may occasionally provide you a little help in that area. I have resources that you do not.”
Maddie had no doubt about that.
“Deal.” She nodded and held out her hand. “But I still don’t have a clue how I’m going to explain you or Aeryx or any of this to Izzy Teague.”
On her way out, Maddie grabbed her cell phone and returned a call to Izzy, who was worried and also angry. When Maddie assured him that she was safe, he seemed to back off a little and assured her he would be at the abbey in about an hour.
“What is this mission that you have been given?” Lyon studied her curiously. “It seems important, yet you give me no details.”
“Because I have no details.” Maddie studied the beautiful winding staircase lined with paintings that even her untrained eye could tell were priceless. She had seen pictures of private houses like this one. They had dazzled her like a guilty pleasure. But Maddie had never expected to set foot inside one herself, so she was soaking up the experience.
“What have you been told? This man called Teague must have given you some details.”
“They were looking for something at the British Museum. You know that much because you were there. I noticed they were in the early British Galleries. At least that’s where their tracking devices went. But I don’t know what they were searching for or whether they found it. We’ll have to wait until Izzy gets here.”
“So this man Izzy—he arrested you?”
Maddie nodded slowly. She wasn’t proud of that part of her past, but she wouldn’t lie about it either. “I was fourteen. I got in with a weird group. Two of them were older and happened to be hackers.”
Lyon frowned at her. “I do not know this word.”
“People who break into secure computer systems. We weren’t doing it for money. We simply wanted to see if we could. Lame, I know.”
“Ah.” Lyon nodded slowly. “You were young and reckless. Lame, as you call it?”
Maddie shrugged.
“Two of the others knew what they were doing. They’d done that kind of thing before, I found out later. They were getting paid too. But bad luck for me. My computer was the first one that triggered an alarm during the hacking. Izzy Teague tracked it and they fingered me for the ringleader. One of the others was the son of a local politician. Another came from a wealthy family.” Maddie shrugged. “That’s life.”
“It was gravely unfair,” Lyon said harshly. “And you had no one to speak on your behalf?”
Maddie looked away. She thought about the mother who was usually lost in a drug-induced fog and the father who had bailed on his family when Maddie was just ten. “Nope. No one to put in a good word. I went to jail, juvenile facility, for nine months. I guess it could have been worse, since we happened to break into the secure Pentagon data system in Virginia.” She didn’t smile the way she once would have done. She had no sense of glory or pride about what they had done. Too many people had been hurt that day—herself included. “Izzy was the one who caught me. Turns out he had been watching my computer for six months. To be fair, I think he was shocked when he found out I was only fourteen.”
“You did this thing—this hacking thing—when you were fourteen? You broke into highly protected government equipment when you were so young?” Lyon looked at Maddie in disbelief. “Where did you get the skill—and equipment? I believed that you were without money for things like that.
“I was. But I’m a fast learner. And my friends—the people who I thought were my friends—had all the computers and equipment they needed. When they gave me some books to study, I caught on fast.” Maddie ran a hand through her hair. “I wish I hadn’t, frankly. Because it was all a rush. I was good at something and for the first time in my life I had friends—or so I thought. Then I was caught. And there was no one to be there for me. The wheels were in motion. I was taken into custody. After that…it only got worse.”
“I would like to hear the rest. I would like to understand all of your life, Maddie.”
She hadn’t spoken of those years to anyone. There wasn’t anyone to help her, so why bother? But now, as she looked into Lyon’s calm eyes, she blurted out the shock, the guilt, the painful transition to incarceration and a total break with any kind of a normal life. Distrust and betrayal had become her whole life after that, along with humiliation and intimidation.
Lyon’s eyes were chips of darkness, yet he listened with the same silent, keen focus that he did everything. When she was done, he didn’t speak. But his hands were locked in tight fists. “You will not suffer so again. I swear this to you. Your life may not be an easy one, but this kind of captivity and humiliation will not be part of your new life,” he said grimly.
His promise made Maddie feel better, though it shouldn’t have. After all, this new world she had fallen into held every sign of being worse than her old world. At least she had understood the rules back in DC on that grimy street she called home. But now…
Soulless creatures from the past. Madness. Death.
She looked down at her hands, with their restless silver light. What about these? What about the legacy that came with them? How was she going to figure everything out before those…creatures showed up on their doorstep.
No point in worrying about it now. You’ll go crazy if you do.
When they reached the top of the stairs. Lyon led her down a long corridor to the back of the house. He studied the wall and then pressed a small button. The room was swept into shimmering light from fixtures scattered over the beautifully painted ceiling.
Wealth could buy you this kind of beauty, Maddie thought. Wealth added to great taste, she corrected herself. She had seen paintings like this in magazines and on her visits to the Smithsonian. But nothing came close to how it felt right now, standing in this room with its living, breathing history. Maddie instantly knew that the figures in the paintings were ancestors of the current owner. She wondered if the man who had argued with Lyon had a portrait here. Something told her
that he did—that he would be the most proud and arrogant of all the lot.
She glanced around slowly, taking in the beautiful paintings and the weight of the cold eyes that looked back from the walls. “What is it I’m supposed to see? Nice jewelry? A lot of very rich aristos and women with seriously weird hairdos?”
Lyon cleared his throat and Maddie was pretty sure he was hiding a laugh. “Look closer. Open your eyes and really see, Maddie. It is time you took control of your life. No longer will others take that choice away from you.”
So there was something important here to see. Maddie looked down the row of elegant paintings, studying each one in turn, trying to figure out what Lyon was trying to teach her. She always hated school, because her teachers were jerks and the other students were bullies.
Maddie frowned and ran a hand through the chaos of her hair, fighting irritation. But the truth was, if she’d had a hunk of a teacher like Lyon, she might have paid a lot more attention in European history classes. And if that teacher had had Lyon’s calm eyes and rugged body—
Well, morality laws might have been broken. If she had her way at least.
The simple truth was, Lyon made a great teacher. He didn’t push, he didn’t argue, he didn’t raise his voice. All he did was wait and let you come to the conclusions you needed to find. There hadn’t been anyone else like that in Maddie’s life.
She looked around her, wanting to succeed, because Lyon had asked it of her.
“How do I start? I mean, I don’t know anything about art. I’m not so great with English history either.”
“Open your eyes. And then open more than your eyes,” Lyon said quietly. “Let this room speak to you and listen to all that it says. Listen to your heart and feel these walls. Don’t just see them.”
Now this was weird talk, even for a man most people would consider a serious psycho. But because it was Lyon and because everything else he’d said had turned out to be true, Maddie did as he advised. She took a deep breath then let it out slowly, opening her eyes and then her mind to the room, letting the beautiful images play through her mind. She studied the colors, let the beauty of the bright silks and painted lace drift through her unconscious mind as she tilted her head back. As she began to relax, she stopped seeing any particular painting and began to see the overall room.
There was a pattern in the colors. One end was all pink and red. The middle of the room was greens. The pieces near the door seemed to be mostly blue. Was that important?
But Maddie didn’t ask for help. She was an expert in reading patterns, after all. Code work and computer hacking were largely about seeing patterns that other people didn’t understand. It was just a gift she had.
Maddie turned, looking from painting to painting, watching the blues merge into the greens and then finally to the shades of red at the far end of the room.
Was it something about the numbers? There were seven pink paintings. Three greens. Nine blues. Nineteen all together.
What else?
Maddie chewed on her nails. The room seemed to breathe in and then breathe out around her, almost alive. As if waiting for her to say something.
For her to understand its secrets.
She forced herself to relax, opening even more to the sense of the room itself, not to the paintings, but the feelings that room gave to her.
There was something off. She focused harder. One of the paintings near the center, the first of the pink paintings. Although very small, it carried the weight of a much bigger painting and seemed to pull at her.
Maddie walked toward it slowly.
It felt…heavy. Dense.
A woman smiled down at a child. Both were dressed in exquisite silk with lace at cuffs and collar. In the far distance Maddie saw the towers of a castle, and she thought Draycott Abbey must have looked like that centuries before.
The woman’s face was kind, she thought. The child radiated joy, lifting arms to his mother.
The beauty of the place was suddenly so dense, so physical, that Maddie could almost touch the warm silence of the summer afternoon and feel the sun against her shoulders.
So why was she frozen, rooted to the floor? What was it about this one piece of art that broke the pattern of the room, since none of the other paintings were having the slightest effect on Maddie?
“This one,” she said softly. She couldn’t take her eyes from the image. “This one feels more important than the rest. Heavier. And in some crazy way it’s familiar.” Maddie cleared her throat. “Or something.”
Lyon moved closer. “Familiar in what way, Maddie?”
“I don’t have a clue, damn it. Why do you keep asking me these things? I’m just—just telling you the crazy thoughts in my head. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
She shoved her hands in her pockets feeling angry and confused, suddenly overwhelmed by the beautiful house with all its priceless art and exquisite taste. Maddie knew then that she didn’t belong here. Probably she would never belong anywhere.
She tried to turn. She wanted to get away—but Lyon caught her hand and gripped it hard.
“Don’t run, Maddie. Whatever is stirring to life inside you—it must be important.” He tilted his head until his lips brushed her hair. “Tell me what you saw. What is it about this painting?”
Maddie stood stiff, beneath his gentle touch. “I felt something. This one is different. It feels wrong. That’s the only way I can describe it, okay? It breaks the pattern.”
“You see a pattern in the room?” She heard the slow release of his breath. “You feel that? You are very good, Maddie.”
She didn’t ask him to explain. She didn’t ask him to reveal more. This was her lesson and her test, and she was determined to get it right. “I can feel something. This one is small, but it seems bigger than the others. More powerful. Dense.”
She looked at Lyon, but he betrayed nothing. A very good teacher, she thought. Irritating, but effective.
“If it was a question of them being fakes, I would say the others were fake and this one was real. But in a house like this, every painting would be real. So it’s something else…”
Maddie moved closer. The exquisite scene perfectly captured the pink-gold light of a late summer afternoon. It wasn’t just about the artist’s skill. There was plenty of that, but every painting in the room showed a master’s hand. Maddie decided it had to do with feeling.
The feeling in this painting was so strong that she could almost reach out and touch it.
Unconsciously, she lifted her hand.
She had no idea what she planned to do next, but something about the painting or its energy pushed her away, almost as if it had a force and will of its own.
“I don’t understand. I keep trying to figure it out, but I can’t.”
“For once, Maddie, do not think. The world is yours to control. But before you can control the outside, you must control yourself. That means using all of your mind, not just the small part that analyzes through addition, subtraction and comparison. You have to feel the world before you can control it.” Lyon’s eyes darkened. He knelt before her. “I want to show you something.”
Maddie caught a little breath as his hands gripped her leg and tugged her boot free. His strong fingers curved over the sole of her foot and then pulled off her sock. She felt a little hot wave of desire as his fingers curved over the sensitive sole of her foot and then along her calf.
“You have to stop thinking. Feel instead. Feel how your foot meets this wooden floor. These planks are at least five hundred years old. They came from an estate to the north, where they were hand carved and hand polished. There is a message in this wood and in the labor of these skillful people who made this floor. But you can’t think it or analyze it. You have to use your senses to understand it.”
Maddie took a deep breath. This was getting seriously strange. But he had been right in so many other things…
“So what do I do next?”
“Take off your other sh
oe for start.” Lyon tugged off her other boot, dispensed with her sock and massaged her insole before setting that foot on the cool wooden floor. “Close your eyes—and feel the veins of the wood. Feel the age of the trees that they came from. Feel the tired, strong hands that polished this floor. Feel it all. Force yourself deep until you can see every vein and burr.”
Maddie bit her lip and did as he ordered. As she drove her attention down, where the skin of her toes pressed against the cool floor, she had a flash of workmen with old wooden saws and string, marking the floor. She could hear the sounds of their tools ringing out.
“So you have seen it. Now make that image part of you. Hold it close. You can only control that which is part of you.”
Maddie didn’t move. Around her the house seemed to creak slightly and she had the sudden sense that it was listening. Waiting.
A dust mote danced through a bar of sunlight to her right. At the far end of the Long Gallery, the curtains seemed to flare out, though Maddie felt no breeze.
She looked down. The gleaming circles had closed tightly around her wrists, like braided silver coils that moved with sinuous energy.
The house seemed to be waiting for a response. Her own marks seemed to be waiting right along with everything else.
But waiting for what? There was still so much that she didn’t understand. Yet for Lyon’s sake, she had to get this right.
She tilted her head, letting the images unfold through her mind like a movie in grainy film. She saw the slow change of the sunlight coming through brand new windows, touching walls that had been freshly painted.
As the weight of that image from the past grew stronger, she felt her body relax, drawn into that world so deeply that her legs slumped. She would have fallen if she hadn’t braced a hand on Lyon’s back. Her fingers opened, sliding through his dark hair. And desire struck her again.
Lyon flinched. She felt his muscles lock as if he had read her thoughts.
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