Stardust of Yesterday

  “My lord,” he squeaked, “where are you?”

  “Where do you think I am, dolt?” Kendrick said curtly. “By St. George’s throat, man, have you gone daft?”

  “Forgive me, my lord,” Bryan said quickly. Tempting as it was to hang up on the man and be done with it, that wouldn’t do. Who knew what sort of undeadly minions de Piaget was capable of commanding. “How may I serve you?” The very words were dragged from his mouth by force.

  “I want you to keep your mouth shut about what transpired to get Miss Buchanan to England.”

  “Ah, you mean calling her clients?” Bryan said, puzzled. “But, my lord, what could that possibly matter—”

  “It matters because I wish it to remain strictly between you and me,” Kendrick cut in. “I’ve transferred a substantial bonus to your account, McShane. Should you prove to be trustworthy, I might see fit to do it again in the future. But,” he said, and his voice dropped to a menacing rumble, “should you prove false, rest assured that there isn’t a stone large enough for you to hide under. You would regret mightily having abused my good will.”

  Substantial? Bryan’s mind was reeling. De Piaget might have had his faults, but understatement and stinginess weren’t among them.

  “Of course, my lord!” he exclaimed. “I won’t say a word, I promise you!”

  “Good,” Kendrick grunted. “See that you don’t. Worthington, hang up the bloody phone for me.”

  The line went dead. Bryan replaced the receiver in the cradle and slumped back against the wall, sweat pouring down his face. He didn’t bother with a handkerchief. He dragged his sleeve across his forehead and started toward the bedroom to fetch his luggage. Bobby wouldn’t mind a side trip to the bank.

  Just as he set his suitcases down, a knock sounded on the door. Thank heavens his old chum had arrived on time! Bryan flung open the door in relief.

  Maledica stood there, his dark blond hair combed neatly, his expensive Italian suit immaculate. Good lord, the man was huge. A pity Maledica would never stir himself to travel to Seakirk. He and de Piaget would have been fitting matches for each other. Now, that was the kind of standoff Bryan would have liked to see. Unfortunately, he probably wouldn’t live that long.

  Maledica came into the flat and closed the door. It sealed with an ominous click.

  “I’ve missed you at the office, McShane.”

  “Ah, er, sir, I was, ah—arrgh!”

  Bryan couldn’t breathe. Probably because Maledica had him by the shirtfront, hoisted half a foot off the ground.

  “Sir, I can explain—”

  “Silence. I see you’re prepared for travel. Back to Seakirk, I assume?”

  Bryan nodded as vigorously as he could.

  “I daresay you’ve packed garments for a long stay. I don’t wish it to be a long stay, McShane. Surely you don’t want to disappoint me again, do you?”

  “No, sir,” Bryan gasped.

  Maledica didn’t release him. “You’ve failed again, haven’t you?”

  “I tried, sir, but de Piaget—”

  “I don’t want excuses!” Maledica thundered. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Hear me, little woman, and hear me well. ‘Tis past time the keep was mine. I grow weary of waiting. You will attempt the feat again and this time you will not falter. Understood?”

  “Aye,” Bryan squeaked.

  “Do whatever you must. I find the idea of a kidnapping rather appealing, but that is simply my opinion. I suggest, however, that my opinion become your opinion. Surely you see the wisdom of it.”

  “I think he’s holding her prisoner,” Bryan managed, struggling to suck in air.

  “Merde,” Maledica said, with a snort. “He’s a ghost, for pity’s sake.” He gave Bryan a shake. “Have you lost your wits, man? She will leave the keep soon enough, for one reason or another. Lie in wait for her. Saints, must I do the deed for you?”

  “No, sir!”

  Maledica set Bryan on his feet. Bryan tried not to flinch as his employer straightened the jacket, shirt and tie his fists had rumpled. Bryan could only stare up into Maledica’s eyes and shudder at the cold, icy anger there. The man’s gaze was made all the more frightening by the different color of his eyes, one brown, one blue. Bryan preferred to stare into the brown one. The blue made him think of something unearthly, evil, demonic. God help him should he ever truly cross this man!

  “Not even God can help you if you do,” Maledica growled. He turned and strode from the room. The door shut with a bang.

  Bryan dashed for the bathroom. After losing his breakfast, he rinsed his mouth out and stared at himself in the mirror. His hair was disheveled, his eyes red, his mouth tight with strain.

  Too much stress.

  It was going to kill him one of these days.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Genevieve trailed her fingers idly over the wood of her chair, remembering the last time she had sat there. It had been the night she had decided she and Kendrick would talk, the night he had shown up with a real knife instead of a pretend one. How he had frightened her.

  But now Kendrick was sprawled in the chair facing hers, his head turned toward the fire in the hearth. He looked as harmless as a sleepy cat. His long, jean-clad legs were stretched out in front of him, far enough for him to tuck his feet under the front of her chair. He wore a white oxford shirt, unbuttoned a bit—for her benefit no doubt. His hair was tied in a queue, and both hair and black ribbon fell over one shoulder. He would have looked like a preppie pirate if he’d had a gold hoop in his ear.

  The firelight flickered softly over his features, highlighting the beautiful sculpting of his cheeks and jaw and the relaxed line of his full lips. She was staring at his mouth when she felt his eyes on her. A blush stained her cheeks before she even met his glance. He winked and she blushed some more.

  “Stop it,” she said.

  His smile deepened into a grin. “Why?”

  “Because it’s not nice to tease.”

  “I like to watch you blush.”

  She didn’t have a good comeback for that one. Kendrick had been teasing her like that for days, as often as he could—and that was plenty often. Since the night she had found the receipt they had been inseparable during the daytime. Genevieve was still waiting for him to get bored, but it didn’t seem to be happening. If she wasn’t up early enough to suit him, he woke her. If she wanted to go to bed early, he made enough noise for sleep to be an impossibility. Heaven forbid she should want to read during the day. Kendrick was at his most obnoxious when being ignored. She made sure to chew him out often for being such a pest but secretly she treasured every grumble, every medieval drinking song bellowed in her ear at dawn, every moment he spent vying for her attentions.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  She leaned her head back and smiled. “Absolutely nothing.”

  “It isn’t nice to lie.”

  “You wouldn’t want to know.”

  “Shall we wager?”

  She shook her head. “Just idle thoughts.”

  “Then you won’t mind if I read them—”

  “Don’t you dare!”

  He grinned. “You make it very tempting, Genevieve.”

  Distraction. She was fast discovering the best way to get Kendrick off an uncomfortable subject was to distract him.

  “Do I look like Matilda?” she blurted out without thinking. Then she gasped. Good grief, what a poor choice of topics!

  Kendrick was only momentarily taken aback, then he shook his head and gave a short bark of a laugh. “Merciful saints, nay. She was tall and slender, like you, but she possessed an abundance of mousy-blonde hair and blue eyes that could freeze a man at twenty paces. She was, on the whole, an impossible woman to endure. How Richard managed it all those years is beyond me.”

  “Richard?”

  “Her lover.”

  “Oh,” Genevieve said. “Did you know him previously?”

  He smiled. “You want the entire tale
, do you?”

  She squirmed. Want the tale? She was dying for it! “If it wouldn’t bother you.”

  “A month ago I couldn’t bring myself to speak of it. Now I find it holds little bitterness for me. And to answer your question, nay, I did not know Richard before I saw him in Matilda’s great hall that fateful day.”

  “What happened?”

  Kendrick looked into the fire, his expression sober, as if he were witnessing the events again. “I had come to tell Matilda that the king had awarded me Seakirk for my valor in the Crusade and that, in return for her hand in marriage, I had paid off her creditors. I had assumed, arrogantly I suppose, that she would be overcome with gratitude.”

  Genevieve waited while he paused. There was nothing she could say to comfort him and she didn’t want to push him to go on. She’d opened the can of worms but it was entirely his decision to pull them out.

  “I’d come with only a few men. It never occurred to me to bring more. After all, I was coming to see my betrothed. What need had I for men to guard me?”

  “Kendrick,” she interrupted, “maybe talking about this wasn’t such a great idea.”

  “You’ve a right to know, Genevieve. For curiosity’s sake, if nothing else.” He turned back to his contemplation of the flames. “Royce, Nazir and I were standing in the great hall with a handful of my personal guardsmen.”

  “Royce?”

  “My captain.” He smiled at her apologetically. “I’m sorry I haven’t introduced you to him yet. He can’t stay anywhere longer than a few hours so he tends to appear infrequently. I’ll present him to you the next time he comes.”

  She nodded and waited for him to go on.

  “I stood in the great hall and waited for Matilda to come down to greet me. Instead, her men-at-arms swarmed into the hall. They cut down all but Nazir, Royce and me. I hardly had the wits to react, I was so astonished. We were hopelessly outnumbered, but the three of us had been in like situations before. Nazir killed a score of men before he was overcome. Royce’s tally was at least a dozen before he was disarmed. I have no idea how many I killed but the bodies were in piles six-deep around me.”

  “Downstairs?” she whispered.

  He nodded.

  “And it doesn’t bother you?” She quickly shook her head. “Sorry, that was a stupid question.” What could he do about it? It wasn’t as if he could leave Seakirk to find somewhere else to live. But surely seeing the site of such a terrible tragedy had to bother him.

  “For better or worse, Seakirk is my home,” he said simply. “I daresay I wouldn’t go anywhere else even if I had the choice. After we were subdued,” he continued, “we were taken downstairs and chained to the walls in the cellar. Richard came down and thanked me kindly for all I’d done for him, which included bringing a few bags of gold along with me. He then let loose arrows into Royce and Nazir, then me. Once he was finished with his part in it, Matilda came down.” He grimaced. “She smiled as she whispered her black words over the three of us. I stood there in the spirit and listened to her weave her black spell.”

  The hair on the back of Genevieve’s neck stood up. “She was a witch?”

  “If I believed in witches, I would have to say aye.”

  Genevieve shivered. She didn’t believe in witches either, but she had a vivid mental picture of a medievally garbed woman standing over three dying men and muttering her black incantations. Whether she had used witchcraft or not was debatable. Whatever the case, she had certainly caused a far-reaching tragedy.

  “But why did they do it?”

  “For the money, I suppose. My family was enormously wealthy.” He trailed his finger over the small scar on his cheek. “I had my share of enemies.”

  “Who gave you that scar?” she asked quietly.

  Kendrick smiled grimly. “An honorless whoreson from Sedgwick named William. He surely hated me enough to want revenge, but I daresay he wasn’t clever or brave enough to have thought of murder. Nay, it was for the gold, and Matilda was the one to see it done.”

  A life ruined, simply for money. Genevieve wished she could get her hands around Matilda’s neck. The greedy witch.

  “And how old were you when you,” she took a deep breath, “when Richard…”

  “When he killed me? A score and twelve.”

  “Thirty-two? And you were just getting married? Wasn’t that pretty old to still be single in those days?”

  “I had my reasons, I suppose.” He met her eyes and smiled innocently, all grimness gone from his expression. “Having my pick of hundreds of women who were all begging to spend a night in my bed made marriage seem a bit too confining for my taste.”

  Genevieve wanted to slug him. “You were quite the Don Juan then,” she said shortly.

  “Aye,” he grinned. “I am very skilled between the sheets.”

  “You son of a bitch.”

  He laughed. “You’ve nothing to be jealous of. They’re all dead now.”

  “I’m not jealous. I’m just appalled at your promiscuousness.”

  “And how many lovers have you had?” he teased. “Come, Genevieve, you’re thirty years old. You can’t tell me you’re still a virgin.”

  Genevieve was on her feet and out the door before the thought of moving had even taken shape in her mind. She ran down the hall and up the stairs to the roof. Not even the shock of the cold November air cooled the fiery heat of her cheeks. She leaned against the wall and blinked back embarrassed tears. There was nothing wrong with being a virgin, damn it! And damn Kendrick for making fun of her because of it!

  “Is it true?”

  His deep voice washed over her like a warm wave.

  “Go to hell,” she said, brushing the tears away from her cheeks.

  Kendrick’s hands came to rest on the wall, flanking her body. “Sweet Gen, I didn’t mean to grieve you.”

  Genevieve folded her arms over her chest and blinked furiously.

  “I never dated, damn it.”

  “Gen—”

  “How was I supposed to sleep with anyone when I never dated?”

  “Genevieve—”

  “I wasn’t just going to go out and do it just to do it! I don’t care what you think of me, either.”

  “But, I think—”

  “I’m not a prude. I’m just choosy. Good grief, I’m picky about chocolate chips. Why wouldn’t I be picky about this too?”

  She stood there and fumed. Go ahead and say something insulting. I’m ready for you.

  Kendrick was silent for several minutes.

  “Have you finished, my love?”

  My love? Genevieve frowned. Just what did he intend by that? She set her jaw and nodded. Let him take his best shot. She could handle it.

  “ ’Tis a wondrous thing. I would never make sport of it.”

  Genevieve felt some of the tension inside her ease. “Well, you shouldn’t. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

  “Nay, there is not.” He paused. When he spoke again, his voice was hushed. “It pleases me that I would have been the first.”

  Genevieve couldn’t help but smile a little. He was certainly sure of himself.

  He was silent for a few moments. “You waited because you never found someone to your liking, aye?”

  She nodded.

  “Never? Not even recently?”

  She shook her head, then froze. What was that supposed to mean? No, Kendrick wouldn’t have looked at her twice if she hadn’t been the only woman for miles around. She sighed.

  “I suppose I was waiting for a dream.” She watched the moon spill its light onto the surface of the ocean, watched the way the light shimmered and shifted with the swells and eddies of the water. The motion soothed her, stole her inhibitions so fully that she found herself putting into words the beautiful, haunting fantasies she’d entertained over the course of her life.

  “From the time I was small, I dreamed of castles and knights,” she whispered. “I pretended I had a castle of my own, a place where I was
safe, where I was loved. It was a beautiful place, like I had always pictured Camelot to be, only this was real and it was mine.” She smiled to herself. “The older I got, the more specific I became in my dreaming. My castle was medieval in design and filled with all the trappings. I spent my imaginary days roaming in my garden or walking along the battlements, enjoying the feel of the sea breeze on my face and the sun on my back. And when the winter chill set in, I retreated to my solar with its enormous fireplace and walls lined with bookcases and there I passed my time with my favorite characters from other worlds and other realms.”

  She fell silent, caught up in the memories and in the sound of the sea against the shore.

  “And were you alone there?”

  “What is a castle without a handsome knight to defend it against dragons?”

  “Of course,” he murmured.

  Genevieve closed her eyes. “He was someone who thought I was beautiful,” she whispered. “Someone who understood what I’d saved for him. He didn’t care that I couldn’t flirt, that I wasn’t very good at relationships, or that I would probably embarrass him at parties. And it didn’t matter to him how many dragons he had to go through to win me. They would seem like nothing.”

  “Tell me what he looks like.”

  His voice was so soft, Genevieve hardly heard him. “Tall,” she said, just as softly. “And strong, strong enough to frighten his enemies, yet he would never hurt me with that strength. His hair would be long and dark. I’m sure it would be something he would like brushed, but he would never admit as much to me.”

  “What color are his eyes?”

  “Green,” she answered without thinking, then she bit her lip and woke completely from whatever had induced her to babble like a brook. Good grief, what had she said?

  “Dark green?”

  She hesitated. Then she bit her lip some more. Well, what had she got to lose? Her pride? No, that was already gone. She looked down at her hands, hands that were resting on the wall between other hands; Kendrick’s wide, strong hands.

  “No,” she said quietly.

  “Perhaps…the color of sage?”

  She nodded, mute. Lord, please don’t let him be teasing me now!