Where Sleeping Dragons Lie (Skeleton Key)

by Cristina Rayne

  Willing herself not to show just how flustered she was feeling, Briana released the stranglehold she had on her shoulder bag strap and accepted his hand for a shake with a professional smile. “Briana Wright. It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Hildebrand.”

  “Just ‘Taron’ is fine.”

  Flashing her another smile, he stepped back a few paces, allowing her to step more fully into the shop and close the door. “Briana, as in the character from The Faerie Queene?”

  “Only the spelling, thank goodness,” she replied with a shrug. “Briana was such a shallow, terrible character. My mother wasn’t into reading the classics.”

  Although she could guess exactly why he wanted to meet with her, Briana decided not to humor him, client or no client. Especially not when she was dying to tell Carol—and later Joseph—about what she had discovered in the book just this morning.

  “You said you wanted to meet with me,” she continued before he could even open his mouth to speak. “I’m sorry for the misunderstanding, but I’m not an employee here. Like you, I’m just a patron and friend of the shop owner.”

  Those uncanny, sunset eyes bored into her without blinking. “Yes, but the book I saw you examining yesterday is owned by you, correct?” Taron said.

  “It’s still not for sale, no matter how much you offer me,” Briana countered quickly, putting a bit of apology in her tone.

  “It’s slightly more complicated than that, I’m afraid,” he said, the intensity of his stare not waning a bit, making her want to squirm in discomfort.

  “Mr. Hildebrand believes the book is an old family heirloom his family has been searching for since it went missing in the early nineteenth century,” Carol sudden spoke up, making Briana jump.

  She had completely forgotten her friend and the older, unknown man that had likely accompanied Hildebrand were also in the shop while she and this intimidating man talked. “An heirloom?” she echoed incredulously.

  Taron nodded eagerly. “Although I would have to examine it more meticulously to be sure, the blackened color of the leather on the book’s upper, right-hand corner suggesting that it had once been singed, as well as the absence of any writing or etchings on the outside cover, even along the spine, fits the description my ancestors left of it in diaries and letters. Also, to a lesser extent, an image of a book just as I’ve described makes an appearance in a few family paintings that have been passed down through the generations. I, of course, have brought photos of both the letters and the paintings.” He gestured towards the silent stranger at the counter. “I’ve also brought along an appraiser I have worked with for many years while living in New York.”

  Briana felt her heart once again speed up, but this time in rising excitement instead of trepidation. Could she possibly be on the brink of solving the book’s mystery so early in the game? Did she dare hope?

  The appraiser approached them and offered her his hand. “Harold Brown. I am the owner of the Brown Auction House in New York City and an expert in rare books and ancient manuscripts.”

  She gave his hand a firm shake. “It’s nice to meet you, too.”

  “Perhaps everyone would like to continue this conversation in the privacy of my office?” Carol offered, looking questionably at Briana rather than the two men.

  Not wanting to give away her mounting excitement, Briana focused her attention on Taron and said with a touch of hesitation, “Before I agree to allow you to examine my book Mr.—excuse me—Taron, may I ask you a couple of questions about your heirloom book?”

  His gaze sharpened. “Ask me anything.”

  “Describe its interior—was a printing press used or was it handwritten? What language did the author use, and were there any illustrations included?”

  He grinned slowly, and suddenly a shudder of unease inundated her body as this new expression made her inexplicably feel as though he was presenting her with a show of weapons rather than something as benign as a smile. What the hell was wrong with her? Or him?

  Yes, his eyes were a little bit creepy, and he was gorgeous enough to fluster her. Yet, other than startling her yesterday with his sheer excitement over Granny Ruth’s book, he had really done nothing that explained why being in his presence, alone, put her so much on edge.

  Maybe she should’ve declined his request for a meeting from the get-go and waited for Joseph to arrive, after all…

  “Oh, it was very much handwritten—given that it was written using an alphabet I really doubt more than a handful of people have seen over the ages, much less know how to read,” Taron answered. “As for illustrations, there was only one, located about a third of the book in and drawn by someone with what were probably only rudimentary artistic skills. A key.”

  Briana could feel the heat of her excitement rise in her cheeks as Taron held out his hand to his appraiser. His description was a bit too on the nose for her to discount. She watched with curiosity and an eagerness she could no longer hide as Mr. Brown opened up the leather briefcase he was carrying and pulled out a set of 4x6 photos which he handed to Taron.

  He quickly shuffled through them before selecting one and then holding it out to her. “This key.”

  The picture was of what looked like a charcoal sketch of a double-bitted key with a skeleton head on a yellowing piece of stained canvas. A tiny gasp escaped her lips. It looked remarkably similar to the very drawing she had discovered in the book only this morning, down to the shape of the two teeth and the style of the skull. That picture was the reason she had rushed over to the book shop at the crack of dawn today.

  Before she could comment, Taron handed her two more photos. The first shot was a small oil painting of a close-up of four dark-haired women with similar features and of varying ages. They stood in a parlor room, the youngest handing a very familiar-looking leather-bound book with a darkened corner on the front cover to the oldest of the other three.

  The second photo was a portrait of a different woman in a different style of dress that was sitting before a fireplace in a room lit only by the oil lamp on a small table next to her chair. On the table next to the lamp was the same leather-bound book, blank spine facing the viewer.

  “Okay, you definitely piqued my interest,” Briana admitted with a small smile.

  “Briana, go ahead and escort these gentlemen to my office. I’ll prepare some tea for our guests.”

  The thought of being alone with Taron Hildebrand without Carol acting as a buffer didn’t really sit well with her, but she nodded anyway. What was a little discomfort when there were some answers to be had?

  “If it’s all right with you, Carol,” Briana said, “we can skip the office discussion and go straight back to the examining room.” She patted the side of her shoulder bag, drawing the two men’s eyes to it. “I already have the book in question here.”

  Taron looked as though he had just won the lottery. The fact that his ecstatic expression made him even more attractive—and her cheeks heat up—made Briana seriously wonder if she had ever had control of the conversation at all.

  At Carol’s nod, she beckoned the two men after her, all the while feeling what were probably Taron’s eyes boring into the back of her head, making the hair at the back of her neck stand on end. Once again, Briana clutched her shoulder bag strap more tightly. She would have to be more careful in the next hour than she had ever had to be in her life.

  She would be damned before she would allow a sexy smile and an intimidating demeanor bully her into giving up such a treasure without a legit reason.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Taron’s eyes tracked Briana’s every movement as keenly as a cat stalking a bird within grasp on the front lawn as she carefully pulled the book from its protective slipcase and placed it gently onto the examining table. It disturbed her to realize just how much his stare made her feel like that metaphorical bird.

  Instead of studying the book last night, she should have spent the time looking up Taron Hildebrand on the internet. She was kicking herself that sh
e hadn’t thought until now to have Carol, at the very least, investigate whether or not Taron’s appraiser really did own an auction company in New York before she had brought them to the back room. They could be a pair of con artists, for all she knew. It wouldn’t be the first time someone used their good looks as a weapon…

  Yeah, and maybe you just read too many thrillers, she thought sardonically.

  However, there was no denying the man’s rising excitement from the moment the book had first been revealed. If his story about the book being a family heirloom was true, she wondered just how long and hard he had searched, how much money he had spent, to find it.

  “You hinted earlier that this book was written in an obscure alphabet,” Briana said abruptly, breaking the loaded silence that had fallen between them. “Before I open this, can you tell me about the writing?”

  He laughed. “Very obscure, yes, given that it’s an alphabet created by my ancestors.”

  “Then—it was written in code?” she pressed.

  “You could say that.”

  When it became apparent that no further explanation would be forthcoming, Briana decided to back off to something more innocuous in the hopes that he would relax and open up a bit more. She had seen this type of reluctance in the past with a few of Carol’s older clients, the determination to reveal nothing but what was absolutely necessary. Some families with ties back to various European nobility could be incredibly skittish about revealing too much history about the books—whether about the books themselves or a client’s particular ties to it—because they feared Carol would jack up the initial price.

  “Sorry for the twenty questions,” Briana apologized with faux sheepishness. “I’m a history major, so you must understand that finding a book as apparently old and intriguing as this one isn’t one I’m eager to let go without a very good reason. Even then, at the very least, I would like to have my own curiosity sated.”

  Taron nodded, his eyes softening a bit. “I have a Ph.D. in history, myself, so I can well understand your reluctance to part with it, as well as your caution.”

  Briana leaned forward with both interest and suspicion. “Oh?”

  “The Hildebrand family has been searching for generations for this book. Seeing my father and grandfather’s frustration over the years as once promising leads turned cold over and over made me determined to be the one to find it. It also fanned the flames of my interest in the history of the times surrounding it.”

  He reached out a hand that quivered in either uncontainable excitement or fear of being wrong and stopped short of touching the front cover before Briana could yell at him about not touching it without gloves or at least a thorough washing.

  “To finally, finally have it possibly within my grasp—it’s indescribable.”

  “Did your studies include learning how to read it?” Briana found herself asking, unable to contain her excitement any longer despite her earlier determination to be as suspicious and cautious of the probable Englishman as possible.

  His lips quirked up as he drew his hand back to his side. “Of course.”

  She picked up a new pair of white cotton gloves from the table and offered them to him. “Then I would very much like to hear you read the first page—if this is indeed your family’s missing book, of course.”

  Taron eyed the gloves with a moue of distaste before he sighed and accepted them. “You know those aren’t really necessary as long as you thoroughly wash and dry your hands with a fresh towel before handling the books, don’t you?”

  “I’ve heard,” Briana retorted. “However, both Carol and I feel better using them if you don’t mind.”

  “As you wish.”

  Carol came in with a tray containing three steaming tea cups just as Taron reached for the book, but she might as well have been a ghost for all either Taron or Mr. Brown paid any attention to her arrival. Without a word, the older woman headed for the small alcove in a back corner of the room that contained a circle of overstuffed chairs and a compact, wooden coffee table in the center and set the tray down. Briana had many fond memories sitting with Granny Ruth and Carol or regular patrons of the shop and friends sipping a cappuccino and discussing a new discovery or simply the latest bestseller.

  Her eyes turned back to Taron. She regarded him speculatively as he carefully opened the book to what she thought was the title page while his appraiser moved in for a closer look. Maybe Taron wouldn’t be averse to doing the same after examining the book.

  Then Briana felt an inexplicable burst of adrenaline shoot through her system as Taron just—stilled. If the universe ever paused to take a breath, she would swear that cosmic moment between action and inaction would have exactly matched what she had just witnessed. It was almost as though she could feel the weight of that stillness down to her very soul, and if it weren’t for the fact that she couldn’t seem to move, couldn’t seem to breathe, Briana would have stumbled away from him.

  “Mr. Hildebrand? Is everything all right?”

  Taron blinked at the sound of Carol’s concerned voice, and that preternatural stillness instantly shattered. Suddenly freed from her strange paralysis, Briana had to lean hard against the edge of the table to keep legs that were now as wobbly as wet noodles from crumbling to the ground.

  “…Forgive me,” Taron murmured. He closed his eyes briefly before he turned to address Carol. “Although seeing the cover once again convinced me that I had indeed found the right book, seeing this…” He tapped the first line of strange symbols on the page lightly with his index finger. “…proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt, and I was overcome with emotions I was ill-prepared for.”

  You’re not the only one, Briana thought shakily as she tried to pull herself together before Carol or either of their two guests noticed something was amiss with her.

  What the hell had just happened? Sure she had always been more sensitive to others’ emotions than the average person, but she had never been affected like this. She had almost freaking collapsed, for God’s sake!

  Carol smiled kindly at him. “This sort of reaction happens more than you would think. Where some see books as dusty old collections of pages, others see a priceless treasure.”

  Taron smiled wryly. “Or a precious heirloom in my case.” His gaze lowered to the title page once again. “’Herein lies the account of Beatrice Hildebrand regarding the happenings on the Ides of March.’” His eyes lifted, and Briana suddenly found her eyes captured in an intense, sunset-colored stare. “That’s what this first page says—in somewhat modern terms, at least. This book is a narrative diary, penned by Beatrice’s own hand about an incident that, to this day, has sparked many a passionate argument among my family about whether or not it actually occurred.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Briana was so focused on Taron that it was a few seconds before she realized that she had heard the chiming of the shop’s entrance door bells in the distance. Her eyes darted over to Carol, and her friend mouthed “I’ll be right back” before heading back out into the main sales room of the shop.

  “Would you—would you be willing to talk about that ‘incident’?” she asked hopefully.

  Taron’s smile was suddenly all teeth. “Now that depends, Miss Wright,” he said, his tone almost teasing.

  “Right, of course,” Briana replied with a wry quirk of her lips. “You’re thinking about my refusal to sell you the book yesterday. Right now, I’m about ninety-eight percent convinced that the book truly belongs to you. If you can convince me about that final two percent, then I will be happy to just return the book to you.”

  He blinked, his features crinkling with blatant confusion. “You don’t want any payment? Even considering that the book rightfully belongs to my family, I still wish to compensate you. I offered you five hundred thousand dollars yesterday. That offer still stands today.”

  It was Briana’s turn to be utterly taken aback. “I found this book in my late grandmother’s collection. I have yet to find any acquirin
g documents for it. My grandmother was a well-known rare books collector in this area. For all I know, it was donated to her. I know for a fact that she would’ve been ecstatic to be able to return an heirloom to you that you so obviously treasure. Taking your money just seems so—I don’t know—crass.”

  “I see.” Taron tilted his head and regarded her slightly for a few long seconds before exchanging a brief, unreadable glance with his appraiser.

  Then, without another word, he reached a gloved hand over to the book and began to purposely, though still carefully, turn the yellowed pages until he came to the full-page drawing of the skeleton key she had been so excited to discover. There was no writing on the page, no annotations, just the drawing of the skeleton key, itself.

  “According to my ancestor, Beatrice, this key was at the center of that incident. To finally be able to read a first-hand account of it is worth my family’s entire fortune to me.”

  Briana abruptly gasped as a momentous thought suddenly occurred to her. “You have it, don’t you? The key!”

  That shark-like grin once again appeared. “Come have dinner with me tonight at my hotel, and we shall see if that’s true.”

  To say that Briana was blindsided by the invitation was the understatement of the century. She could feel the muscles in her face freeze in shock. Then in the next second, she mentally berated herself in disgust, and it was all she could do to keep her cheeks from heating up in embarrassment.

  Idiot! There’s no way someone who looks like a Greek god would be interested in you romantically. It was clear from the moment he first saw the book yesterday that getting his hands on it was his only goal. But still—

  What was the harm of going? If accepting his invitation meant that she got to spend an evening eating good food, maybe drink a little wine, all while getting to ogle a gorgeous man, there was certainly nothing to complain about. Plus, as an added bonus, he might really have the key in the drawing and be willing to show it to her, to tell her the story that was allegedly in the book that he had teased so well, damn him.