A Dark & Stormy Night

by Anne Stuart

  He really did bring out the absolute worst of her red-haired temper. She made it a moral tenet never to hit anyone, never to lash out physically in anger, but the supercilious, far-too-beautiful O'Neal was eroding those principles rapidly.

  "It's not my fault if teenage girls and dirty old men decide to visit me," she said, mustering her dignity. "I must simply be more sensitive than you are. Which should come as no surprise, given your consistently rude behavior."

  "You're thinking I'm insensitive?"

  "I think you're a pigheaded boor," she said recklessly.

  "And I think you're a prying, neurotic, hormonal chatterbox without the least sense of delicacy."

  "You told me I could explore!" she snapped.

  "I didn't expect you to make yourself at home in my bedroom and then start making up more ghosts to give yourself an excuse for being where you shouldn't be."

  She was so mad she couldn't speak, so she simply glared up at him in impotent fury.

  "You see," he added with a fatal tinge of smugness, "you can't even come up with a suitable excuse."

  She hit him. It was a shameful rupture of her Irish temper, and she knew she should be sickened instead of gleeful as her fist barreled into his stomach. He let out a whoosh of pain, doubling over, and with difficulty she resisted the impulse to hit him again.

  "Good for you, lass. He's more than deserving." The voice crowed in her ear.

  "Shut up, Da," she muttered underneath her breath.

  O'Neal jerked his head up, staring at her in the murky, watery light. Odd that those clear green eyes would still be beautiful when they were looking frankly murderous.

  "What did you call me?" There was no mistaking the fury in his voice.

  "I wasn't talking to you," she said. Repentance was beginning to set in. "I'm sorry I hit you, but you can be so annoying…"

  He ignored her apology. "If you weren't talking to me then who were you talking to?"

  She sighed. She supposed she couldn't blame him for not believing her, but at times the man was so thick. "The ghost," she said patiently. "The second one."

  He stared at her for a moment, "There are any number of nice safe rooms we can put you in," he said finally. "You'll be well taken care of, until we can get you to a doctor."

  "I'm not crazy."

  "There are no ghosts, Katie."

  "Then why have I seen two already?"

  "Why stop at two? Maybe a whole bunch of them will march in and have a party. You can play bridge with them, or gossip about me."

  "Trust me, you're not that interesting," she drawled, quite proud of herself. It was a complete and total lie. They both knew it, but she still managed to sound wonderfully blasé.

  "Go away," he growled. "Go back to your room and leave me in peace. If there are any ghosts around the place they certainly aren't hanging out in my room."

  "Actually the old man was watching from the balcony," she told him with more honesty than tact. "That's why I opened the door…"

  "Go away," he said again, his voice dangerous.

  Katie went.

  There were no locks on the doors of the upper rooms of the old house—O'Neal had never had any reason to lock anyone out. The only people who had ever stayed there were Mrs. Marvel and her son, and they kept to their own quarters. Besides, he had no secrets, no priceless possessions that he had to protect with lock and key. Whatever treasures he found he could replace easily enough.

  He had secrets, of course, but no one was going to discover them, not unless they stood out on the cliffs and watched as he dove into the icy water. Even then they'd be unlikely to see anything, or if they did, they wouldn't believe their eyes. His secret was safe, simply because it was so absurd.

  And his priceless possessions meant little to him. Booty he'd rescued off the ocean floor, archaeological treasures, Spanish doubloons, gold and silver and fine gems. He no longer bothered to retrieve them when he came across them, and those he had lay piled in a dark storeroom. If he occasionally had need of ready cash he would find something and send it off to a New York dealer who handled such things for him, no questions asked. Not that there was any question about the authenticity or the legality of the booty. The danger lay in people who insisted on knowing who had recovered such treasures, and how.

  But the unexpected, unwanted arrival of Katie Flynn had changed everything. He'd been a fool to tell her she could explore—next thing he knew he'd find her down in the storeroom, bedecked in Spanish Conquistador gold and black pearls from the Orient.

  He'd have Willie put a bolt on his bedroom door, something that Miss Nosy couldn't get past. Either that or he'd make sure Katie was never out of sight of one of his servants.

  It was a logical alternative, but he couldn't be comfortable with the notion. Willie was harmless, always had been. There was no reason for O'Neal to feel uneasy at the thought of Willie watching Katie Flynn.

  Reason or not, he didn't like it. No more than he liked finding her in his bedroom. He'd think of her tonight when he went to bed, remember her in his room, the look of her, the scent of her.

  He'd think of her, anyway, whether she'd been there or not, and he knew it. He was getting almost as crazy as she was. He didn't know whether she actually imagined she saw ghosts, or simply wished she did. Either way, she wasn't making her unwanted presence any easier to tolerate.

  He walked back to the glass door, staring out over the rain-lashed parapet. He could see the ocean beyond Seal Point, churning and thrashing with wild abandon. The storm was worsening and it would be unlike anything he had ever seen. He knew it in his bones, in his flesh, in his hide. There would be no escape for any of them before it hit, not for Katie Flynn or the Marvels or, God help him, O'Neal. They would be trapped there, at the mercy of the weather. And only one of the four had the wherewithal to survive.

  He narrowed his eyes, looking for something, anything, that the foolish creature might have mistaken for a ghost. There was nothing, of course, and hadn't been for fifteen years. If there were ghosts haunting the old house, then they would have found him long ago. He'd been waiting for them.

  He pushed the door open, letting the rain and wind beat down on him. The fierceness of the downpour made him blink, but he didn't move, staring into the dark afternoon with stubborn intensity.

  "Da?" he said softly, but the wind caught his voice and whipped it away to the heavens. There was no sign of his father out there in the raging storm. No red-haired old man with too strong a fondness for young ladies and Irish whiskey and tall tales.

  No teenage sister watching over him. They were in their graves, along with his mother, and had been since that terrible night more than fifteen years ago, when his family had drowned, and he had found out just who and what he was.

  He slammed the door shut again, and one of the panes of glass cracked with the force of it. He'd found some dubious sort of peace, until Katie Flynn had come, stirring things up with her talk of Da and Fiona.

  But peace would come again. The storm would pass, sooner or later, and Katie Flynn would leave. And O'Neal would be alone and safe once more, secure in his solitude.

  In the meantime, if things got too bad, he could always take to the sea.

  "Now, then, Willie, what are you doing down there?" Mrs. Marvel called out to her son at the bottom of the dank cellar stairs.

  "Nothin', ma," he called back dutifully.

  Mrs. Marvel raised her flashlight high, peering down the stone steps into the darkness. "I won't have you keeping secrets from me, Willie," she warned. "You don't like it when I have to punish you."

  Willie's shaggy head appeared at he foot of the stairs. "I'm getting ready, Ma. You told me you wanted me to take care of the girl, didn't you?"

  Mrs. Marvel paused. "I was planning on a simple accident. It would be much safer if she just broke her neck falling. The steps are treacherous in this old house, and the lights are forever going out. It wouldn't take much for her to tumble to her death, and fewer questions
asked."

  "But you promised me, ma," he said plaintively.

  "But, Willie, we don't want to have to answer questions, now, do we?"

  "A couple of days in the sea and they won't know what happened to her in the first place," Willie said confidently. "If they even find her. It's just as easy to tumble over a cliff as it is down a flight of stairs."

  Mrs. Marvel smiled at her offspring fondly. "My boy, there are times when it seems you might not be as stupid as I thought you were. But we have to remember, it's the money we're after. That's what we've worked so hard for all these years. We must never lose sight of that."

  Willie ducked his head in embarrassed pleasure at the praise. "I know, Ma. But what about him?" he said. "How long do we have to wait?"

  Mrs. Marvel glanced back into the dimly lit kitchen. The tray of tea sat untouched on the kitchen table—when she'd gone to take it to O'Neal he was nowhere to be seen.

  "Maybe the sea will take care of him, as well," she said. "We should be so lucky."

  "How much longer?" Willie's voice was a soft whine.

  She could hear the wind howling outside. "It's a fierce storm, Willie," she mused. "Bigger than any we've had in years. I think O'Neal and his young friend aren't going to survive this hurricane. It will be a sad, sad thing, but what can you expect when you live so far out, away from civilization?"

  Willie frowned, confused. "You mean we have to wait and see if the storm kills him, ma?"

  "No, dear," she said sweetly. "We'll kill him ourselves. Soon, dearest. Very soon."

  Chapter Seven

  « ^ »

  Katie had gone straight back to her room, crawled into bed and pulled the covers over her head, still fuming about the impossible O'Neal. Punching her soft, feather pillow wasn't nearly as satisfying as punching O'Neal's flat stomach, but at least she didn't need to feel guilty about letting her temper get out of hand. As long as she kept her rage in the confines of her room she'd be just fine.

  "Ghosts," she muttered to herself. "He's right, I am crazy."

  "You're not, darlin'," came the voice. "Don't let him bamboozle you."

  "Be quiet!" Katie snapped out loud, closing her eyes determinedly. The raucous ghost obeyed.

  When she woke the air was curiously quiet. It was late afternoon, but the constant downpour seemed to have stopped, though Katie had little hope it was a permanent break in the weather. The light was strange—an eerie bluish calm spreading out over the angry ocean. Even the wind had stilled—there were no tree branches scraping at her window, no ghostly debris flapping past in the breeze.

  She could see the cliff quite clearly for the first time since she'd arrived. The house was sitting out on a narrow spit of land, with the ocean all around, and the windswept coastline looked fierce and rocky.

  There was no telling whether the storm was truly at an end or was merely taking a rest. Katie hadn't heard a weather report since she'd left the hotel yesterday morning, and back then no one had been certain of how extensive Hurricane Margo would be—whether it would hit the mainland at all or simply blow out to sea. For all Katie knew, it could have been downgraded to a tropical storm and be in the midst of petering out. Somehow she didn't think so.

  There were no radios in the house, but there might be one in the Range Rover. She needed some kind of information, some sense of how long she was going to be trapped here. With any luck she'd find the hurricane had run its course and she'd be free to go. With any luck. It didn't matter that some strange, irrational part of her wanted to stay. She was used to resisting self-destructive and dangerous impulses.

  There was no one in sight when she reached the kitchen—Mrs. Marvel and her hulking son must have been busy elsewhere. She found an oversize pair of rubber boots and shoved her feet into them, grabbed an old raincoat from the peg beside the door, and headed out into the hallway leading to the yard, half expecting someone to stop her.

  The vehicles were kept in an old stable to the right of the building. At some point Willie must have fetched the Volvo—it stood in one bay, its hood crushed, windshield smashed, fender bent sideways. The Range Rover sat next to it, but there was no sign of anyone around. Katie cast a nervous glance over her shoulder. If Willie were to be anywhere close, the garage seemed a likely spot, but the place seemed thankfully deserted.

  There was no key in the ignition of the Range Rover, and the radio didn't work without it. The Volvo was a different matter. Since the bashed-in vehicle was scarcely drivable, the key still hung in the ignition, and Katie slid behind the wheel, turned it, and flicked on the radio, desperate for any word of the outside world.

  All she got for her trouble was static, the same crackling noise she'd gotten on her own car radio. The place must be in some strange sort of atmospheric hollow, she thought, searching vainly for any kind of clear reception. There was nothing, only a loud, buzzing noise.

  She climbed back out of the car, taking another look at the damage with the vain hope that it might be drivable after all. Both front tires were flat, and one wheel was bent and twisted. If she were going to get out of here, back to civilization, the Volvo wasn't going to be the way to get her there.

  She glanced out toward the deceptively still, late-afternoon air. There was always the possibility that she could walk for help. Right now, with the wind only an intermittent problem and the skies temporarily free from rain, walking looked like a perfectly reasonable alternative to being stuck in a chilly mausoleum with a man who obviously wanted her elsewhere.

  But reason didn't seem to have anything to do with the ghosts who kept cropping up at various intervals. At least they weren't particularly frightening. They surprised her more than anything else.

  The sky was beginning to grow darker again, and faint drops of rain came spitting from the sky. Katie peered out into the gathering gloom. She ought to go inside, find herself a cup of coffee and something non-Dickensian to read, and settle in for the evening. With luck she could eat in the cozy safety of the kitchen, instead of having O'Neal glower at her. Of course, Willie would be in the kitchen, as well, and Katie wasn't sure who she found more unsettling, the brooding master of this gothic mansion or his faintly sinister servant.

  She ought to be ashamed of herself, she thought. There was absolutely nothing sinister about Willie Marvel. It was hardly his fault he was as he was. If it weren't for his strength she would have fallen into the sea, trapped in her Subaru, before O'Neal had a chance to drag her out.

  She gave herself a little shake. Crazy or not, she was more frightened of harmless Willie Marvel than a bevy of ghostly apparitions, and no amount of sensible rationalizations could change her mind.

  She glanced out over the steep cliffs, taking stock of her surroundings with a fresh eye.

  It wasn't nearly as gloomy a place as it had seemed beneath the incessant rain. To be sure, the old stone mansion was like something out of a thirties' horror movie, but the land surrounding the place was stark and beautiful. Back on the mainland she could see the shuttered building that Mrs. Marvel had referred to as the guest house. Even though it was quite large, it was dwarfed by the old mansion that housed O'Neal and his servants, and it was much more appealing, with its weathered gray shingles, its haphazard porches, its rambling lines and shuttered windows.

  Really, if O'Neal had any sense at all he'd move out of that mausoleum and into the smaller house, get himself some more reliable electricity, a cellular phone and maybe one of those minisatellite dishes so he could watch TV. It wouldn't go very well with his brooding-master-of-the-house moods, but Katie was growing rapidly tired of them, anyway, and if she was forced to stay here much longer she had every intention of telling him so the next time she saw him.

  And then he'd probably throw her over the cliff, she thought with a faint grin. She set out across the muddy drive in the direction of the guest house. There must be a reason why it was deserted when the far less practical mansion housed its tiny population. Maybe the place was just too homey and cheerful
for the likes of O'Neal. If she squinted she could almost imagine a serene Irish housewife standing on one of the upper porches, looking down over the sea with her practical arms crossed over her sturdy bosom.

  Katie stopped and blinked. The late afternoon was clear and still—there were no scudding clouds, no bits of leaves or debris whipped in the air to cloud her vision. Granted, the light was strange, eerie, shadowed with the approaching twilight and the looming storm. But that was no shadow on the upper porch, staring down at her. It was a woman.

  "Hey!" she called out. "Hey, you." It lacked imagination or any particular courtesy, but it was the only way Katie could think to get her attention.

  It didn't work. The woman kept looking out to the sea, and as Katie drew closer she could see her face more clearly, the beautiful care-worn lines of a woman aging gracefully, the gentle mouth, the troubled eyes.

  A gust of wind picked up, swirling past Katie, tossing her hair into her eyes and moving on toward the house. She shoved her hair back, opening her mouth to call out again, when she realized that the woman was unaffected by the wind. Her hair didn't move, her clothes didn't ruffle.

  And then she turned to Katie, and their eyes met. Ghost eyes, full and sad. She turned again to watch the cliffs, the roiling ocean, and Katie followed her gaze, looking for something.

  "Help him," the woman said, her Irish voice echoing inside Katie's head. "You're the only one who can."

  And then she simply vanished.

  Ooooo-kay, Katie thought, letting out her breath with a whoosh of air. Clearly her imagination had gone completely haywire. O'Neal had suggested she play bridge with her ghosts. So far it seemed there were three of them—just the right amount for a foursome. Even if Da looked like the kind of man who would cheat.

  In the distance she could hear a faint rumble of thunder, as if the fates were warning her she wasn't about to escape, not yet, at least. The temperature was dropping rapidly, and she huddled in the oversize raincoat, shivering. The notion of taking a casual stroll down to the edge of the cliff and trying to see what the ghost had been staring at was both unappealing and irresistible. Not that there were any such things as ghosts. She looked back at the guest house, but there was no sign of anyone on the upper porch. No ghost voices whispering in her ear.