King of the Castle

by Heather Graham

  He nodded and hurried to catch up with her. She slipped an arm around his shoulders as they walked.

  “You’ve got to promise to stay away from the edge,” she said lightly, just like any mother warning her child to be careful.

  His answer came with a little sigh—any child’s response to a parent who seemed to think that being a child meant you had no intelligence.

  Mike pulled up the hood of his jacket. “It’s windy here,” he said.

  “Yes, it is,” Kit agreed. She glanced at the sky. She could see the clouds moving, seeming to consume the open sky. It would be dark much sooner than she had expected. The clouds were definitely the warning of a coming storm.

  “Can we go into the cottage?” Mike asked curiously.

  “No. I’m sure it’s locked.”

  “Oh,” Mike said. She didn’t know if he was disappointed or not.

  They walked past it, and then everything seemed to be exactly as it had been eight years earlier. Because she could see the tall silhouette of a man standing on the grassy section of the hill that led to the treacherous rise of rock.

  Her heart skipped a beat; her footsteps paused for a fraction of a second. But then she kept walking, because she realized that she had almost been expecting him to be there, that she would have been disappointed if he hadn’t been.

  “It’s the man from the cemetery,” Michael murmured excitedly.

  “I know,” Kit said.

  Justin turned then, aware that they were coming. His feet were planted firmly apart; he was a man who had long known the cliffs and the wind, and who challenged them with little thought. His dark hair was slashed across his forehead by the wind, and his hands, too, were shoved into his pockets. He stood very still, watching her approach. The woolen scarf he had wrapped around his neck drifted about him, floating on the wind, then falling again to lie against his mauve sweater.

  His eyes were on Kit as she neared him, his gaze unabashed and offering no apology. Only when she stood practically in front of him did his gaze flicker and fall to Mike.

  “Hello, Mr. Michael Patrick McHennessy. Have you come to see our cliffs, then?”

  Mike nodded eagerly.

  Justin’s eyes rose to Kit’s once again. There was a questioning look in them, and a certain patient amusement. “Mind if I walk along with you?” Though he dropped his gaze and asked the question of Mike, Kit knew it was directed to her.

  “Mind? No!” Mike said.

  Justin placed a hand on Mike’s shoulder, and the two of them started walking ahead of her. She followed, staying about three feet behind.

  She heard Justin tell Mike that the rocks were the very type known to house the “little people,” or leprechauns.

  “Have you always lived here?” Mike asked Justin.

  “Not always, but mostly.”

  A few minutes later they were at the edge of the cliff. They could see the water below, rushing and swirling, battering and lashing rocks, receding and leaving little pools that sparkled in the weak sunlight passing through the clouds.

  Kit was glad to see that Justin had positioned Mike several feet from the edge at a section where the rock sloped gently, instead of dropping off abruptly. He warned Michael that the rocks were known as the Devil’s Teeth.

  “I know,” Mike said solemnly. “They killed my father.”

  Justin didn’t reply. Kit backed uneasily away from the two of them, her eyes on the ground, but she felt Justin watching her. She didn’t need to see him to know that he was staring at her.

  Justin bent and collected a handful of pebbles. He tossed one over the edge. It fell and was lost in the tumult below. Then he handed the pebbles to Mike.

  Mike grinned with sheer pleasure, and Justin stepped back to stand beside her. He looked at her, and she thought she saw a hint of tenderness in his eyes. She knew that he was searching for the changes that the years had wrought. Curiously, she didn’t mind; she felt as if she was coming to know him again, as if the time that had changed them and made them strangers was fading until it was gone.

  “I’ve been here half the day, waiting,” he told her.

  She tried to shrug casually. “If you wanted to see me, you could have just called.”

  “I did. You were out.”

  “I went into Cork.” Kit hesitated, and when she spoke her voice was both defiant and reproachful. “I am writing a book.”

  He grinned and deep creases etched themselves around his eyes and mouth. “I believe you.”

  “Did you call my publisher?” She couldn’t keep herself from asking the question, but she couldn’t keep herself from smiling, either.

  He didn’t answer her right away. Instead he sat down in the long grass, plucking a piece and chewing it idly. With a little sigh of exasperation, Kit sank down beside him.

  She felt her heart contract with pain. He had told her to go home, yet he had also told her that they needed to talk. Did he suspect the truth? She felt as if he were some sort of predator—and she his only half-suspecting prey.

  “Did you?” she repeated irritably.

  “Well, now, I don’t know who your publisher is, do I?”

  “I am doing a book on Ireland!”

  “I’m sure you are.”

  “About ancient superstitions that linger to the present day!” she snapped.

  He was still smiling as the wind ran riot about them and began its banshee moan. “Well, then, All Hallows’ Eve should interest you. You can attend the…pagan rites.”

  “Stop it, Justin!”

  He frowned. “What’s the matter with you? I was merely teasing. It’s simply a party.”

  “Is it?”

  “Of course.”

  “Oh, Justin…” She sighed impatiently. “Don’t you see?”

  “What am I supposed to see?”

  “Justin, you said yourself that the tea was drugged—”

  “Aye, it was, Kit. But I don’t see any evil in it.”

  She sprang to her feet. “You don’t? Well, you weren’t the one with such a horrible thing on your conscience.”

  “It bloody well was on my conscience!” he retorted, and then he was standing, too, facing her in anger. His smile tightened as his blazing eyes narrowed. “And there was nothing horrible about it. The moral issue aside, I had a damn good time!”

  “What are you arguing about?”

  Mike’s voice broke through Kit’s anger, and she spun around, stunned that she could have forgotten how close he was. “Nothing,” she assured him quickly.

  “And everything!” Justin said laughing. He ducked down to Mike and grabbed his shoulders.

  “How would you like to go to a castle for dinner?”

  “Oh, boy!” Mike said excitedly.

  “We’re not going!” Kit snapped.

  “Oh, but you are,” Justin told her. Mike turned around to stare at her hopefully, and Justin kept his gaze steadily on her. His hands were still resting on Mike’s shoulders—as if he had the power to take the boy away from her.

  I should tell him to jump in a lake! Kit thought furiously. But she hesitated, her throat dry. “You might have asked me first,” she finally said coldly.

  “We can go! Oh, boy! Oh, boy!” Delighted, Mike started running through the high grass.

  Justin shrugged, undaunted by her reproach. “Molly wants to see you. She’s staying for dinner herself.” He hesitated for a moment, then said softly, “You have to come, Kit.”

  She lowered her eyes, her palms damp, her heart beating too quickly. There was a power here. A power that had drawn her back after eight years. The power of the hills and the cliffs. The power of the wind, whistling, crying, whispering in soft tones that she should stay…

  The answers were here…and Justin was here.

  She looked into his eyes. They were very dark and had taken on the cast of the gray-clouded sky. Like the forests around her, they compelled her with their secret depths. And he knew exactly what she was thinking. The curl of his lip
betrayed his amusement.

  “I’ve been wanting to see Molly,” she said with an exaggerated sigh of resignation. “And I suppose we have to eat dinner somewhere.”

  Justin laughed. “Is that a yes? Well, thank you so much, Mrs. McHennessy. How gracious.”

  He turned and started walking. Swearing under her breath, Kit followed him.

  Justin caught up with Mike, and as they walked he asked about the airplane ride, and he listened intently when Mike told him proudly that he had already spent a day in an Irish school.

  Justin stopped when they reached the cottage. He stuck a hand into his pocket, then took Kit’s hand and pressed something into her palm.

  She stared into her hand. He had given her a key.

  “It’s to the cottage,” he told her. She met his eyes again. He was staring at her intently, and an inner chill gripped her. Then something hot and mercurial seemed to quiver along her limbs. He had told her to go, yet he was trying to get her to stay….

  “The cottage?” she mumbled stupidly.

  “Yes,” he said flatly. “I own it, you know.”

  No, she hadn’t known. “Why not? You own everything else,” she muttered. She looked quickly around for Mike. He was already heading toward the car, so she lowered her voice and said vehemently, “But you don’t own me, Justin O’Niall.”

  He caught her arm, pulling her against him when she would have followed her son. “Don’t I, Kit? Don’t I own just a piece of you?”

  The deep, husky whisper was filled with insinuation. Despite herself, Kit was trembling as she jerked herself away.

  She watched Justin join Mike at the car. The two of them had their heads together and were talking animatedly, seemingly unaware of her existence. Kit hugged herself as the wind rushed around her, taking her breath away, seeming to grip her with cold gray fingers.

  She pressed her hands against her cheeks. She had thought she was mature and sophisticated, but she was still no match for Justin O’Niall. Not for his strength, nor his will, nor his determination.

  Nor his appeal to her senses—and her soul.

  CHAPTER 5

  “So,” Justin said at last, a slight smile curving his lips as he leaned back in his chair, striking a match to his cigarette and staring at her over the flame, “what have you been doing for the last eight years?”

  Kit sipped her coffee. He might have been asking her what she had done last week. “Not much,” she murmured, shrugging in response to the cynical hike of his brow. She lowered her eyes, curious that she could be so comfortable here. His home was a castle in the true sense of the word. He’d told her once that it had originally been nothing more than earthworks, then a wooden defense post; then, after the Viking invasions and the Norman conquest of England, the people had rebuilt it in stone. It was small, as castles went, and the arrow slits had been enlarged to make normal windows. The outer walls were nothing but rubble, but the great hall remained, and there were three towers with wonderful old curving stairways. Kit was certain that Justin had spent a small fortune remodeling the place to include all the contemporary comforts: brand-new kitchen, central heating, an intercom system—but then, if Justin was as famous as Robert claimed, he probably had an income that could handle it easily.

  It was a wonderful place, she realized. She had adored it eight years ago, and she felt the same way now. She wondered if Susan Accorn had been enchanted by it.

  The great hall had changed very little. The dining room table, with its carved high-backed chairs, still sat on a low dais looking out over the rest of the room. In front of the fireplace were the same chairs where she had once sat with Doctor Conar, Liam O’Grady, Molly and Justin, when they had told her that she had to decide what to do with Michael’s body.

  Kit trembled and set her cup down. This room brought back memories, but it was nice to be here. The fire in the hearth warmed her, and the whiskey sours Justin had made before dinner had softened the rough edges of her nervous system. Molly was giving Mike a tour of the house, and Kit and Justin were alone, acting curiously like old friends who had been apart for a long time.

  “Kit? Are you with me?”

  “Yes. Yes. The last eight years,” she murmured, leaning back. “I went to college. I graduated. I went to New York. I started writing.”

  “Sounds very simple for eight years,” Justin commented.

  Kit shrugged. “It was a simple life.”

  “You forgot to mention that you had a child,” he reminded her.

  “Oh, yes. Mike. Well, I suppose that’s obvious,” Kit murmured, suddenly fascinated by her coffee cup. She looked up at Justin and smiled. “Mike made my life very simple. I worked, and I took care of him.”

  “You never remarried.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “No.” Kit hesitated. It was her turn to ask questions now. “What about you?” she murmured at last.

  “Oh, I murder someone every few years,” he said dryly.

  “Justin!” Kit snapped. “That’s not amusing!”

  “But that’s what you meant, isn’t it?”

  His accent was growing stronger, a sure sign of simmering anger. Too bad, Kit decided irritably. She wasn’t going to watch every word she said—especially since no one ever received any answers that way.

  “All right,” she said evenly. “Maybe that was what I meant to say. Want to talk about it?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Justin…”

  “I said not particularly. But if you’ve got questions, go ahead and ask them. God knows I’ve answered enough already.”

  “Well, it does seem strange,” Kit said defensively. “Your fiancée has been dead just over a month, but you hardly appear to be grieving.”

  He watched her for a long moment, his features expressionless. Then his eyes narrowed slightly. “I remember a certain time, Mrs. McHennessy, when your husband hadn’t been dead all that long, but you certainly weren’t behaving like a woman in mourning.”

  The blood rushed to her face, and her palm itched to slap the patrician arrogance from his features. “You knew damn well that I was grieving!”

  He shrugged, lifting a hand absently. “Well, it was a long time ago, wasn’t it?”

  She should have said something dismissive, should have shrugged off the incident. Instead, her words carried a defensive tone.

  “I was drugged, and you’ve admitted that you know it. I’d never have—”

  He was suddenly leaning across the table, his eyes dark and probing. “Wouldn’t you?” he asked in a harsh whisper.

  “I—” Her voice broke, and her face flamed. She felt as if he could look through her, as if he sensed the devastating sensual effect he had on women. On her. “No!” she snapped.

  It might have been the best joke Justin O’Niall had heard in ages. His laughter rang out loud and true, and the smile that remained to light his eyes was open and honest.

  “I don’t know who you think you are,” she told him flatly, lowering her voice as she remembered that her son was somewhere around, possibly within earshot.

  Justin brought his sparkling eyes close to hers. “Don’t you?” he asked musingly. “Imagine. You ran away, and I let you go. I should have scoured the earth for you.”

  She didn’t like his whimsical tone; she couldn’t tell if he was mocking her or not. “I was very young, and very hurt,” Kit told him, trying very hard to keep her voice low and her temper in check. “You were older, experienced, and well aware that something wasn’t right. You—”

  She broke off, because he was laughing again. She had never seen such genuine amusement.

  “Kit! When you find a very attractive woman smiling away in a bubble bath, as naked as the day she was born, it’s difficult to ignore the situation. But I did. Until…” He shrugged. “Still, I was above reproach for a laudable amount of time. Then you threw your arms around me. You dragged me down. You insisted.”

  “But…” she said weakly.

  “I t
hink it’s rather like hypnotism, don’t you? If it wasn’t something you wanted to do…”

  “Justin!”

  “Well, there won’t be any drugs this time, will there?”

  The question was soft, but there was still a trace of laughter in his voice, and Kit still had no idea if he was serious or not.

  “There won’t be a next time.”

  “I think there will—and so do you.”

  Her throat felt suddenly dry. She lowered her eyes, afraid that he would see that she was protesting too much. Protesting the truth.

  “Justin,” she said softy, sitting very still, “listen to me, please. I don’t deny that I felt an attraction to you.” God help me, she added in silence, I still do. “But I loved Michael very much. I wouldn’t have betrayed his memory like that—and I think you know it. And that’s why I ran, Justin. I was too young, too confused—too everything—to deal with the situation. I’m still confused. Why would someone do such a thing? Why would someone drug my tea?”

  He reached across the table, and his fingers played gently over her palm. “Kit, I’m sure no one meant to harm you.”

  “Molly gave me the tea.”

  He nodded, obviously not surprised. Molly had treated Kit like a daughter all during that sad time, and had greeted her tonight with tears. “Molly would never hurt you. She adored you.”

  “I know that. But maybe there was something in the tea meant just to relax me.”

  “I thought of that. I even asked her about it, but she said she knew nothing.”

  “And you let it rest?”

  “Aye, Kit, I did. No one meant you harm. Someone meant only to ease your spirit.”

  “Oh, Justin, you’re so blind!”

  He hesitated, then stared at her so piercingly that she felt a cowardly quivering begin to take root deep in her abdomen. “No, I’m not, Kit. I keep telling you that.”

  “Justin, you should be concerned—”

  “I am concerned.”

  “About the murders!”

  “I’m hardly involved, am I?”

  “Justin, what happened with your fiancée? I’ve heard that you had a terrible fight just before she was murdered.”

  He wasn’t looking at her anymore. He was gazing across the hall at the fire. He answered distractedly. “Aye, that we did.”