The Panther's Rival

by Emilia Hartley

  Stepping from the shadows, James stood before her, looking as handsome as he ever did in his long, brown coat. His dark eyes were so menacing at that moment that they were almost black. He was staring at her as if she were the canary he finally managed to catch. He just stood there; the cat, licking his lips.

  Suddenly, Ellie felt more like Elizabeth than she ever had since coming here. “I am not your wife,” she declared, squaring her shoulders and staring him down. Where she got the nerve to do so, she wasn’t sure. “And quite frankly, I don’t think Elizabeth was either. You may have gotten her to marry you because she was obeying her father, you may have gotten her in your bed because that was her duty, but you tricked her into thinking she wanted all of that.”

  James laughed, and she wondered how she ever could have found the sound pleasant. “My dear, love is a trick. I merely seduced you into believing I was everything you wanted.” Hatred flashed in his eyes, and overhead, thunder pounded across the heavens. “I could have been everything you wanted. I still could. But you’ve always chosen that McKinnon over all the riches and treasures I could ever give you. He is not worthy of you.”

  “You’re wrong.” Her voice was hardly above a whisper, but it was coated in steel. “He is every bit as worthy of me as I am of him. He is a good man, with a kind heart and a keen mind. He cares about more than my body and fortune. He doesn’t need treasures and riches. He is everything I could ever want. It’s you, James, who are not worthy of me. And you never have been.”

  Lighting flashed against the cliff, casting his features in anger in the bright light. The sickeningly sweet smell of roses drifted through the air, and Ellie used her sweater to cover her nose and mouth, determined not to fall for his seduction.

  “I could have given you everything. Fortune, a home, a child. I did give you those things!” he insisted, he voice rising to an unnaturally high octave. Ellie winced. “All I asked for in return was a cooperative wife that would ensure my name did not get dragged into the mud like my idiot father who squandered all of our wealth!”

  Ellie’s eyes widened in surprise. “So, you couldn’t give her your fortune any more than you could give it to me now, could you? I knew it. You wanted her to make you rich, not the other way around. You wanted the power and prestige that came with the Hargrove name, the wealth that came from the brewery. Your vineyard was your legacy, but you had run out of the funds to keep it going, hadn’t you?” When he just stared at her, his mouth gaping like a fish, she actually giggled. “You knew she wouldn’t love you. You knew she would figure out who you were, how dangerous and obsessively deranged you were. You knew she was in love with Matthew.

  “So, you seduced her instead. But what kills me, is that you didn’t even believe you could do that on your own. You tried and failed, didn’t you? Probably even multiple times. So, you turned to black magic instead. What did you use, James? A love potion? Did you diffuse it into a scent as well? I know you were slipping her something to drink, just like I know you put something on the roses you brought me the other day. You used whatever aid you had to get her and me to do your bidding by manipulating us sexually.

  “But you miscalculated, didn’t you? You believed that you could just control someone like that and get away with it, but you were wrong, weren’t you? Elizabeth had already found her soul mate. Matthew McKinnon was her soul mate. And there was no way you could separate the two of them. That kind of love, it has a power all its own. They may not have been able to be together, but that didn’t mean that power was any less potent, or that love was any less strong. And whatever protection those kinds of feelings gave Matthew and Elizabeth that night was violated when you killed him.

  “And she wasn’t about to let you get away with it, was she?” Ellie asked, watching him with a vindictive glee she was positive was not her own. In fact, she felt as if there was more than one version of herself within her mind that night, and it absolutely terrified her. “Elizabeth knew that she was the one thing you wanted above all else,” Ellie continued, staring at James as if she were daring him to disagree. Where had all this assertiveness come from? “And she made sure you could never have it. Didn’t she? She killed herself right over there, just so you would never be able to hurt anyone in the Hargrove line. Whatever dark magic you had been using backfired when she hit those rocks and you have been cursed ever since.

  “I bet you lost everything. I bet the fact that your family was penniless became the talk of the town, and I bet, no matter how many years you have lived, waiting to reclaim it, that you are still worth next to nothing.” Glaring at him, she smirked. “And I bet you hate it. Well, it serves you right, doesn’t it? Your curse doesn’t just affect you, James, it affects Matt and me as well. And I hope you die knowing it was your own fault that things turned out this way.” Her chest heaving, Ellie stood there, mere steps away from him, and wondered if she had just made the biggest mistake of her life.

  Yet, to her astonishment, James simply began to laugh. “Ah,” he said, gathering himself once more. “There you are, Elizabeth. It’s so nice to finally see you again, after all of these years.”

  “I wish I could say the same.” Ellie clapped a hand to her mouth. The words had been issued from her lips, but it was not her that said them. Could it really be Elizabeth speaking to him like that? Or had she finally lost her mind?

  “Welcome back, my dear,” James crooned, slowly walking towards her. “I have missed you deeply. It has been too long.”

  James reached for her hand, but Ellie instinctively stepped back and his hand dropped away. Thunder echoed behind the house. Was he somehow controlling the storm? Or was it just a coincidence that there was a wild storm, both when Elizabeth took her own life and now?

  “You may think of me as you wish,” he told her, “but you would never have been susceptible to my charms had you not already been attracted to me.”

  Alarmed, Ellie clenched her fist. “That isn’t true.”

  “Oh, but it is, my love. It was always true. You were in love with McKinnon, yes. And somehow, your infatuation with him allowed you to shirk my advances and later break the spell my potion had cast on you. But in your own way, you were attracted to me, too. You were in love with me, too.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. You enjoyed the flirtations. You enjoyed my hands on you. You enjoyed the possibility that maybe, if you let yourself fall a bit, you could have everything you ever wanted. And a part of you wondered if I would be the one to give it to you. I did not force you to marry me, Elizabeth. Your father took care of that. And you married me without issue, not just because it was your duty as a daughter and your contribution to your family, but because somewhere in that flippant little heart of yours, you wanted to know what it was like to be the wife of a wealthy Lord. You wanted to parade me around on your arm like whatever new dress you were sporting that week, and show me off, trying to impress your friends. Part of you had to want me, you see, or my spell would never work.”

  “I didn’t want you then, and I don’t want you now,” Ellie insisted, but she could already feel her resolve beginning to weaken. Could what he was saying be true?

  “The ironic part of it all,” James told her, “was that I truly did love you. And I knew, if we gave it a shot, that one day, you could love me too. You were mine, and you were going to stay mine. One day, you would understand.”

  “Then why force me?”

  “I simply did not have time to wait.” In the moonlight, she could see that his expression was completely unrepentant. “Nor do I have time to wait now.”

  CHAPTER 17

  He started forward, and Ellie took a few more backward steps, until she found her back pressed up against the wall of the house. “That isn’t love,” she said quietly, and James froze on the stone steps. “You say you were in love with me, but that kind of want, that kind of possession, that isn’t love. You didn’t love me. You were obsessed.”

  For a few seconds that seemed to string out into a
n eternity, they stared at one another, neither sure which one of them was going to move first. And then James lunged forward, seizing her around the waist and lifting her off her feet. Though she kicked and struggled, his hold on her only increased, until she could barely breathe within his grip. Unable to break free, Ellie cried out; soft at first, as she tried to catch her breath, then stronger and louder until she saw a light come on upstairs.

  “Matt!” she screamed, hoping he or someone else would hear her. “Matt, it’s James! He’s here! Help me!”

  James roughly turned her over and threw her over his shoulder, his strong, muscular arms, pinning her to him. He made it down the stone steps from the terrace and out into the grass.

  Was he taking her towards the cliffs? Did he believe that if he couldn’t have her, no one could? She knew all her other past lives had ended badly, that both she and Matt were quite possibly going to die tonight, yet somehow, that didn’t scare her nearly as much as the thought of going over those cliffs and down into the ocean that absolutely terrified her. She had already died that way once tonight. She was in absolutely no hurry to do it again.

  Suddenly, the door from the house crashed open and light streamed out from around the frame. Matt came charging down the steps in nothing but his sweatpants and a pair of slippers like a running bull. He hit James in the small of his back, sending the other man plummeting forward. He dropped Ellie unceremoniously to the ground with a loud thud.

  She landed on her side, her arm twisting at an odd angle beneath her, her head smacking into a round rock half buried in the earth. Ellie felt as if she was watching the world move in slow motion. Time itself seemed to be cracking, and her past and present lives collided in a blurred movie behind her eyes. The effect was disorienting.

  How many times had some version of this happened? How many times had the soul of Elizabeth Hargrove had to watch her enemy murder the man she loved? The endless cycle repeated on a loop with every reincarnation, and from where she lay, Ellie was helpless to stop it.

  Matt charged James again, hitting him hard in the stomach, and the two of them went splaying out across the grass, perilously close to the edge of the cliff. Fists pounded into flesh, the sound of impact echoing into the night, followed by a ridiculously loud clap of thunder and a bright flash of lightning.

  She couldn’t tell who was winning. She was desperate for it to be Matt, but she knew in her heart of hearts that his living through this night—that either she or him living through this night—was a long shot. Lord James Dabney had cast his curse well. Ellie trembled with fear.

  It wasn’t fair, she thought, watching as both men clambered to their feet. This curse was the by-product of an obsessive greed, of the need to own and possess a woman, while still calling it love. It wasn’t right. And it had to stop.

  As carefully as she could, Ellie shifted her weight so she was supporting herself on her elbow. She cried out in pain, wondering if she had cracked it, but her cry went unheard by both men as they continued to pummel each other at every chance they got.

  James’s right arm shot out so quickly, catching Matt upside his jaw that Matt flew backwards, landing in the grass. He didn’t move.

  Ellie managed to get both hands on the ground and heave her body upward into a push-up position. Her head was spinning. Hot, thick, blood trickled down her skin, obscuring the vision in her right eye. With her luck, she had a concussion. And, judging by the way things kept swimming in and out of blackness, she was fairly certain it was a bad one. Still she fought to right herself.

  A few yards away, James stood over Matt’s unconscious form, glaring down at him with hatred blazing across his face. Lightning flashed again, striking just beside the edge of the cliff. She could see the outline of Dover Castle in the distance, the stronghold looming in the darkness like an omen of doom. She had to keep it together. James knelt with his knees on either side of Matt and placed his hands around the other man’s neck.

  The boom of thunder sounded almost gleeful.

  How was he doing it? She wondered. She knew he was controlling the weather somehow. Was it part of his curse? Did he have more powers than seduction and immortality? Was that even possible? And, if it was, could she find a way to use it against him?

  Beneath Dabney’s grip, Matt’s skin was turning purple, and Ellie knew time was running out. Still unsteady, she climbed slowly to her feet, ignoring the way her knees shook, as if they were threatening to let her fall.

  “Help me, Elizabeth,” she murmured into the wind, feeling utterly foolish. She had to be crazy to believe in all of this, but there was no denying it was happening. Crazier still, she suddenly felt strengthened, the symptoms of her concussion disappearing.

  Ellie let out a war cry as she launched herself at James. She hit him square on, her small arms wrapping around his muscular waist, her momentum propelling them both forward. They tumbled over the hard, rocky soil, away from Matt, finally stopping in a tangled heap near the cliff.

  Ellie didn’t realize her mistake until it was too late. All she had been thinking about was getting James away from Matt; she hadn’t even considered what James would do to her once she had. His long, strong hands closed around her throat, and Ellie’s vision began to blur once more as he cut off all the air to her lungs.

  She clawed violently at his hands, her fingernails ripping into his skin, leaving deep, bloody gouges in their wake. His grip only tightened. Ellie bucked as hard as she could with her hips, pitching him forward and forcing him to catch himself. She used his momentary distraction and his loosening fingers to twist her body to the side. He was still straddling her, but at least she was no longer making it easy.

  “You always were a stupid bitch,” he spat, and lightning struck a foot to their left. The ground shook with the impact, and several clumps of dirt broke away and tumbled into the sea.

  Ellie used both her knees as weapons, systematically driving them into his stomach, using his body as a springboard to wriggle out from beneath him. Just as she felt she had started to make some headway, Matt was there, his closed fist connecting with James’s face, sending his flying backwards.

  Covered in blood, Matt reached down and helped Ellie up, his hands tracing over every inch of her he could find, making sure she was okay.

  James landed on the precarious ground at the cliff’s edge and hastily got to his feet. But, just as he started forward, the ground already weakened by the lightning strike started to give way. James wobbled back and forth, searching for balance, but there was nothing he could do. Fear registered in his eyes for the first time, and then the ground fell from beneath him and he disappeared from sight.

  “No!” Rushing forward, Ellie threw herself at the edge and peered down at the jagged rocks below. She searched the waves for James’s body, but it was too dark to see into the depths of the ocean.

  “Elizabeth,” James croaked. Ellie turned sharply. Somehow, he had managed to grab hold of an exposed root as the ground gave way, but it wouldn’t support him forever. In fact, as she watched, horrified, the tenuous fibers began to break. Instinctively, she reached for his hand, feeling more relief than fear when she felt his fingers wrap around her wrist.

  “Matt!” she cried, clinging to James with both hands. “Help me! I’m starting to slip!” She felt her body inch forward in the grass as she took James’s weight. Then Matt was there, pulling her back.

  But it was no use. It felt as if cold, hard fingers were prying James from her grip. She could feel her hold weaken, and something inside of her cried out to save him. For a moment, she thought she saw a look of triumph in his eyes, but before she could register it for what it was, his hand had slipped from hers, and he was falling onto the sharp rocks below.

  Immediately, the storm ceased, and all that could be heard was the loud crash of waves against rock and Ellie’s bone-racking sobs.

  Matt gathered her up in his arms, cradling her against his bare chest. They were both covered in blood and dirt, but neither of
them seemed to notice.

  “I couldn’t just let him go,” she sobbed, hoping he would understand. “I know he was horrible, that he would have killed us both, but I couldn’t just stand there and watch him die. I tried, Matt. I tried to save him. But I…I just couldn’t.” Unable to speak, she dissolved into tears once more.

  Matt ran soothing fingers through her hair, rocking her gently, back and forth. “I know,” he told her, his voice calm and collected, though his entire body was shaking. “I know you did. And it was more than he deserved. But I think…” Trailing off, Matt stared at the air above the cliff. “Ellie, look.”

  Obliging, she turned and stared in wonder at Elizabeth Hargrove and her Matthew, standing arm in arm in midair. She could see the white rock of the cliffs through their transparent forms, but both figures appeared to be smiling.

  Something settled deep within her heart, and suddenly, Ellie felt whole again. With one last nod, the figures disappeared, and Ellie wiped the tears from her eyes. “We did it, Matt,” she beamed, still staring at the place where their past selves had just been. “We broke the cycle.”

  Matt grinned down at her, holding her close. “They—I mean we—can finally rest in peace.” Slightly confused, he shook his head. “My brain hurts.”

  Ellie chuckled lightly. “You and me both. I’m pretty sure I have a concussion.”

  Concern filled his eyes, and he kissed her softly. “But you’re alive,” he whispered against her lips, his arms tightening around her. “And you’re mine.”

  Smiling brightly, she kissed him back. “For as long as you’ll have me.”

  EPILOGUE

  The mood around Hargrove House was inexplicably brighter over the next few days. All the paperwork had been signed with Ellie’s lawyer, officially making her the new owner of the estate. And she planned to stay. Preparations were being made to make over the main suite of rooms for her and Matt to stay in. As wild as it had been to relive all her past lives, Ellie had no desire whatsoever to remain in Elizabeth’s rooms.