Verity barely had time to notice the ring before curling tendrils of terrifying color and hideous light began to flow from the image. The ribbons writhed blindly for a moment, as if seeking a target. Then they headed straight for Jonas.
Then, as always, they seemed to sense Verity’s presence.
She held her breath, as usual a little unnerved when the ribbons of mindless emotional energy began to swarm restlessly about her ankles. They didn’t touch her skin, but they swirled violently around her. Jonas was left free to study the vision.
“You okay?” he asked softly.
“I think we’ve seen enough.” Jonas released the old stiletto. It clattered to the floor.
The vision and the psychic corridor vanished instantly, leaving Verity and Jonas alone in the all-too-real tunnel.
Verity looked at Jonas. She could barely see his features. He had the flashlight trained on the part of the wall where Digby Hazelhurst had been scratching when the blade was plunged into him.
“Jonas, Digby didn’t die because he accidentally triggered a hidden mechanism somewhere around here. There was a hand wrapped around the handle of that stiletto.”
“I know, Verity. Now keep quiet for a few minutes,” he added gently. “I have to concentrate.”
Verity bit her lip and watched as Jonas trailed his sensitive fingers along the section of wall Hazelhurst had tried to reach as he died. A moment or two later something shifted deep within the stones.
“Here we go,” Jonas said with soft satisfaction. “I’ve got it. Leave that sword hilt in here. It’ll be safe. No one will see it and ask awkward questions. Leave the stiletto behind, too. I don’t want to have to explain it to anybody yet.”
Verity dropped the tarnished metal hilt on the stone floor as the heavy door swung open. “I don’t mind admitting I’m somewhat relieved. Not that I doubted for a moment that you’d get us out of here, of course,” she added with instinctive loyalty.
“Of course.” Jonas patted the stone door affectionately. “I tell you, there is nothing as refreshing and interesting as the Renaissance mind.”
“You ought to know,” Verity said as she stepped out of the corridor into the safety of the bedroom. “You’ve got one yourself.”
Chapter Seven
Jonas followed Verity out of the stone passageway feeling more relieved than he wanted to admit.
Hazelhurst’s dying clue revealing the location of the door mechanism had been very welcome, to say the least. Jonas knew he could have spent a long time trying to find it on his own.
As he stepped into the relative warmth of the bedroom he thought he could hear echoes again, echoes of ancient laughter. He started to close the stone door.
“What are you doing?” Verity asked.
“What does it look like I’m doing? You want to spend the night staring at old bones?”
“No, of course not, but what about poor Hazelhurst? We have to tell someone we found him.”
“He’s been in there for a couple of years,” Jonas observed as the door groaned shut. “He’ll keep awhile longer.”
Verity’s eyes widened in disbelief. “You’re not going to tell anyone we found him?”
“Not just yet. If we report it now there’ll be an investigation. Things will be disrupted around here for days, maybe weeks. Rumors of the treasure will leak out, and the place will be overrun with reporters, fake psychics, and God knows who else. We’ve only got a week, Verity. I want to spend it getting some answers. Something very important is hidden in that corridor.”
“But someone killed Digby. He didn’t die by accident—murder took place in that corridor.”
“I know. But the murderer has been gone for over two years. Hell, he might even have died in that passageway himself, trying to find a way out. For all we know he’s lying at the other end of the tunnel.” Jonas stopped talking, hoping she hadn’t noticed the rest. He should have known better. The woman had eyes like a hawk.
Verity wandered over to the window. “The hand that held that stiletto had a ring on it. A big ruby ring.”
“I know. I saw it.”
She glanced back at him over her shoulder. “It looked very old, Jonas. In fact, it looked like it could have been part of the jewelry collection in that treasure chest in the vision, or it could even have been one of the rings the man in the image was wearing.”
“There was a certain resemblance,” Jonas agreed carefully. He saw the expression in her eyes and walked over to put an arm around her shoulders. “Hey there,” he said softly, giving her a slight shake. “Don’t let your imagination run away with you.”
“You know what I’m thinking?”
“Yep. You’re wondering if the four-hundred-year-old man in the frozen vision managed to come alive long enough to kill old Hazelhurst. It’s utterly and completely impossible.”
“Jonas, you’ve said yourself that you learn something new every time you explore that psychic corridor. You don’t know everything about how reality works in there. And you’ve admitted there was something very strange about that first vision. What if he figured out a way to survive in the time corridor, and he’s been sitting there all these years protecting his treasure?”
Jonas felt a shudder run through her and he tightened his comforting grip around her shoulders. “Not a chance. Relax, honey. There are no ghosts in that corridor, just small scenes from the past. Postcards caught in time. That’s all.”
“The postcard of that man seated at the Renaissance writing desk didn’t look like it had ‘wish you were here’ written on the back. I got the feeling that guy didn’t want us around.”
“That vision was different from anything we’ve seen before in the corridor, I’ll grant you that. But that doesn’t mean a lot at this point. You’ve got too much imagination for your own peace of mind, honey.” He blew a fiery ringlet away from her temple and kissed her there. She smelled sweet and felt warm. He could feel himself getting hard, not an unusual reaction after a trip into the psychic corridor—not an unusual reaction around Verity at any time, for that matter.
“Someone killed Digby,” she reminded him stubbornly.
“Yes. But it was a long time ago. You want my best guess?”
She nodded quickly.
“I think he had a companion helping him in the treasure hunt. Someone he trusted enough to take into that passageway. Maybe someone he even trusted with the crystal.”
“And maybe that someone figured that as long as he knew about the passageway and the crystal, he no longer needed Digby?”
“Makes sense.”
“But where is that person now?” Verity persisted. She leaned her palms against the wide stone window ledge and gazed out into the rainy darkness.
“Who knows? There’s no mention of Hazelhurst discovering the hidden corridor in his diary, which means he must have found it shortly before he was killed. Either he never got the opportunity to write it down or the information is in those missing pages. I haven’t come across any reference to a companion either. Our best bet may be to talk to Maggie Frampton. She might know if Hazelhurst had involved anyone else in the treasure hunt.”
“Good idea. And in the meantime…” Verity stopped, peering intently out the window. “Jonas, he’s gone.”
“Who’s gone?” He followed her gaze down to the dark fountain. “You mean Spencer? Maybe the man had enough sense to come in out of the rain, after all.”
“He could have come back here, Jonas. He had enough time to get back into this room and pull the chair out of the passage doorway. Maybe that’s why the door closed on us.”
Jonas considered that, his eyes darkening. “I locked the bedroom door. How could he have gotten in?”
“Who knows? There may be plenty of keys floating around. The locks on the doors here in the south wing appear to be relatively new.”
Jonas gave her another small, affectionate shake. “I don’t think it’s very likely. He couldn’t have known about the corridor, and he wouldn’t have dared try to come back into this room knowing I’d be in here with you. Besides, the man was falling-down drunk; he was just about unconscious by the time I dumped him in that fountain.”
“Well, he recovered sufficiently to get himself out of the pool,” Verity pointed out.
Jonas studied the shadowed garden. “You’re right, he did. I guess I didn’t hit him hard enough.”
“I just want you to know that if he sues, you’re the one who’s going to have to explain everything to the insurance investigator.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll come up with something,” Jonas said, not the least concerned. His mind was definitely on something else now. He put his arms around Verity’s slender waist and drew her back against his thighs. His jeans were drawn taut across his burgeoning manhood. “In fact,” he murmured into her ear, “something is already coming up.”
“You can’t possibly be thinking of…of sex when there’s a body lying not more than fifteen feet away.”
“Don’t look so shocked. You’re such a little prude, you know that? I keep telling you, that body’s already been there for a couple of years. It won’t bother us.” He unzipped his jeans with one hand, keeping his other arm around her middle. His rigid shaft sprang free. Jonas eased Verity back again so that she could feel him through her quilted robe.
“Jonas, I’m shocked. I really think you should show a little more respect in a situation like this.”
“Don’t tell me you’re not as excited as I am. Going into that psychic corridor always has this effect on both of us.” He grabbed a fistful of robe and raised it up above her waist. His hands closed lovingly over the soft, firm flesh of her derriere. “Lean forward, honey,” he whispered against her nape. “Brace your hands on the window ledge.”
“Jonas, this is embarrassing. Someone might see us through the window.”
“No one will see us. Everyone’s in this wing. You’d have to be in another wing of the villa to see into this window.” He remembered belatedly how he himself had been in another wing earlier that evening and had had a perfectly good view of this bedroom. He reached out and turned off the bedside light. “Better?”
“No.”
“Come on, honey, stop arguing. You know you want this as much as I do. Damn, you feel good.” He urged her to bend forward until she was forced to grip the window ledge. Her rounded buttocks tilted upward invitingly, exposing her warm, womanly channel to access from behind.
“Honestly, Jonas, there’s a perfectly good bed right over there that we can use if you insist on this. I don’t see why you have to…Wait a minute. What are you doing? I think this might come under the heading of kinky. If you think I’m going to let you…Oh, Jonas.”
He gripped her thighs and held her firmly in position while he probed the silken sheath. He felt her tighten in reaction to his penetration and he pushed harder, sliding heavily into her damp heat. He groaned as the dewy folds closed around him, and moved one hand to the front of her thighs to find the sensitive bud hidden in the tight red curls. Verity shivered in his arms and her head tipped back. “You feel so wonderful, sweetheart. So good.”
“Jonas.” She sighed passionately. Her hair cascaded down her back. Her lips were parted and her eyes were closed.
She gave herself to him in hot, welcoming, passionate surrender, the way she always did. At least when he was making love to her, she was fully aware of him, Jonas thought. He lost himself in the pulsing ecstasy of the moment, aware on some level that somewhere along the line Verity Ames had become as necessary to him as breathing. He could not imagine life without her.
It had become very important that she feel the same way about him, he realized. He would use sex or anything else he could to keep that withdrawn, introspective look out of her eyes. He couldn’t let her leave him, mentally or physically. He needed her.
Jonas had learned over the past few months that when he was with Verity, he was home.
Verity was up before Jonas the next morning. She awakened with an instant awareness of what needed to be done.
“We’ll have to talk to Maggie Frampton,” she reminded her sleepy-eyed lover as she urged him out of bed and into the shower. “If we get downstairs early enough, we might have a chance to interview her before any of the others show up for breakfast.”
“The trouble with business managers is that they rarely consider the well-being of the troops. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“Whose fault is that?” she demanded without sympathy. “Hurry up and get dressed.”
They found Maggie Frampton humming to herself in the kitchen. She was whipping up pancake batter and seemed startled to see them. She had on another faded print shirtwaist from her vast collection of housedresses, this one with small dots all over it. The chain around her neck disappeared beneath the prim white collar.
“Well, hello there. You two are up bright and early. Didn’t think any of this crowd were what you’d call early risers. How about some coffee? Got some made over there on the counter. Old Digby always had to have his coffee first thing in the morning. Doctor told him he shouldn’t drink the stuff, but Digby said he needed it to get his heart started. Help yourself.”
“Thanks, Maggie.” Verity poured two cups and handed one to Jonas.
“How’s the big treasure hunt going?” Maggie asked as she lifted a stack of chipped crockery out of a cupboard.
“You know about that?” Jonas asked.
“I hear Little Miss Sunshine wants you to keep an eye out for it while you’re writin’ up the report on the villa. Talk about a waste of time and energy. Digby spent years going through this place and never found a dime.”
Jonas cleared his throat. “As a matter of fact, we wanted to see if you could help us, Maggie. You must have been closer to Hazelhurst than anyone else. You lived here with him for several years, I take it?”
“This villa’s been my home since I moved here twenty-three years ago come June.” Maggie sighed wistfully. “I miss the old coot. Seemed like he was hornier than the devil himself most of the time, but I didn’t mind. Him and me, we got along fine together. After he disappeared, my sister down in Portland kept tellin’ me I should get off this island. But I can’t bring myself to do it. This place is home—I can’t just up and leave. Digby would have wanted me to stay on here, I know it. He used to say so.”
“What exactly did he say, Maggie?” Verity asked gently. She sensed the unhappiness lying just beneath the surface in Maggie Frampton. It was obvious the woman still mourned Digby Hazelhurst.
Maggie rattled a pan and sniffed. She blinked rapidly a few times and then went on in a steadier voice. “Digby said this place was ours—his and mine. He’d have wanted me to keep an eye on it. The villa meant the world to him. He always said I was the only one who never laughed at him, the only one who understood. Claimed if anything ever happened to him, he’d see to it I got to stay here as long as I wanted. But after he disappeared, there wasn’t no will. Digby never got around to writin’ one up. Just like him to put it off until it was too late. In the end, the court and a bunch of lawyers gave it to Doug and Elyssa.”
“Doug and Elyssa will have to sell it,” Verity pointed out gently. “They can’t afford to keep it. How did Digby expect you to be able to pay the taxes and keep the place running?”
“You’ll laugh, but the truth was, Digby always said that when he found the treasure there’d be plenty of money to run this place in style. He had big plans to buy back all the furniture and paintings he had to sell off over the years. He wanted to restore the villa to the way it must have looked back in the sixteenth century. Oh, he had lots of fine plans, Digby did. And I was gonna help him with ‘em. We was a team, him and me.”
“Too bad he never found the
treasure he searched for all those years,” Jonas commented, leaning back casually against the counter as he sipped coffee.
“I never did believe in that story about a treasure, though I’ll have to admit findin’ it would have been great,” Maggie said. “But I used to think that for Digby, most of the fun was in the looking, you know?”
Verity found her remark unexpectedly insightful. “I can understand that,” she said quietly. “You and Digby were obviously very close.”
Maggie nodded. “You bet your jeans we were close. He didn’t have no one else. His academic friends abandoned him as the years went by, and as for family, well! You’d have thought he was an orphan.”
“What about Doug and Elyssa?” Jonas asked sharply.
“You think they ever bothered to visit Digby much before he died? Not on your life. Oh, Doug did come out here once or twice a few years back, but that was about it. Little Miss Sunshine never showed any interest in the villa till after she and Doug inherited it. Now all she can talk about is finding the treasure. Fat chance,” Maggie concluded in satisfaction. “If Digby couldn’t find it, she sure as heck won’t be able to.” She glanced quickly at Jonas. “And neither will you. Not unless you’re a lot smarter than Digby, which ain’t very likely.”
Jonas nodded soberly. “You’re probably right. Digby was quite smart, even brilliant in some ways. I read some of his early investigations into the nature of Renaissance science. They were first-class. Hazelhurst was a scholar in the old-fashioned sense. I still remember how much I learned about the Renaissance mind from a piece he wrote on sixteenth-century anatomy studies. He understood those men, knew how they thought.”
A reminiscent gleam appeared in Maggie’s eyes. “Anatomy was one of Digby’s favorite subjects, all right. Whenever I think about some of those nights the two of us spent studying it down in that torture chamber I just kinda melt inside.” The gleam faded and was replaced by a hint of moisture. Maggie wiped the back of her hand across her eyes.