Gift of Gold

  “Can you sense things about contemporary objects?” Verity asked, deeply curious despite her doubts.

  “The eighteenth century is about my limit. I’ve never had any particular sensations from modem objects. Thank God.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Just think of how many objects there are lying around today that I’m liable to run into that might trigger the talent. Guns, knives, cars that had been in accidents, you name it. The list is endless. The object has to have been associated with violence, but that limitation still covers a lot of territory.

  “Yes, I can see that.”

  “The testing got more dangerous. More and more often it seemed that every time I picked up an object that carried a load of old, violent emotion, I was carving out an access route, making it stronger and more defined. For a long while I was arrogant enough to think I could control it and whatever tried to come through it. But gradually I realized I was in danger of being completely overwhelmed. And if that happened…” He broke off abruptly. “One day it did happen.”

  Verity watched him for a moment. Whatever the reality of the situation, there was no doubt that Jonas believed everything he was telling her. Something had gone very wrong back at Vincent College; something that had shaped the past five years of his life.

  “You say you were in danger of being overwhelmed. What would that mean to you?” she asked quietly. Unwillingly she remembered the corridor in her mind. “Did it feel as if something or someone was trying to suck you back into the past?”

  Jonas closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the arm he had braced on the edge of the window. “No. It wasn’t like that. It was as if the forces I tapped in to in the past were trying to use me as a conduit into the present. I had the feeling that if I lost control, I would be lost, too; swamped by the emotions associated with whatever object I happened to be holding at the moment. It would be like being possessed or something. Maybe like losing my soul. Dammit, I told you this was going to be hard to explain.”

  “I’m listening, Jonas.”

  “Sure. But you’re not believing any of it, are you? Thinking of having me fitted for a straitjacket?”

  “At the moment, I’m reserving judgment. One of the many things I learned at my father’s knee was not to jump to intellectual conclusions about things I don’t understand. Tell me how you responded when you realized you might be losing control over your psychometric ability.”

  He lifted his head and stared at her, his gaze hard and steady. “I started testing myself, touching objects that had the most powerful attraction for me, pushing myself and whatever was trying to get through me into the present. I fought back whenever I felt in danger of being overwhelmed. I made some progress, but that progress turned out to be a two-edged sword. I got to the point where I could control the talent when dealing with things that weren’t too saturated with violence. But if I picked up something soaked in old blood or hate or anger, the emotions generated around the object seemed stronger than ever. I finally realized that I might be able to fight back but the cost was high. Sooner or later the battle would cost me my life or, worse, my sanity. Then one day I nearly killed a lab technician.”

  “Oh, my God, Jonas.” Verity’s fingers tightened around the sheet. “You almost killed someone during a test?”

  He nodded, saying nothing.

  “Tell me about it,” she pressed.

  He exhaled slowly. “I had started doing work for some museums and private collectors. Word had spread from Vincent that I had the touch, as everyone called it. What’s more, there was a rapidly accumulating pile of laboratory proof to back up the claim that I could verify the authenticity of a variety of old objects. People who worried about that kind of thing started checking with me for a second opinion when they had doubts about an item in their collection or about something they were considering for purchase. Then one day someone set up an experiment with a fifteenth century Italian sword. The researchers had a theory.”

  “What kind of theory?”

  “One of them thought that if the present was made to resemble a scene from the past—a context that suited the sword in this case—the connection between me and the past might be more direct. With a little help from the drama department, some whiz fixed up a setting that resembled a street in a Renaissance town. It wasn’t hard to do. They just used some stuff borrowed from a production of Romeo and Juliet.”

  “What happened?”

  “I stepped onto the set, picked up the sword, and before I could take another breath I was swamped with the emotions of someone else.”

  “Who?”

  “All I know was that he lived in Florence during the time of Lorenzo de’ Medici and his name was Giovanni. I only got a glimpse of him. Sometimes there are…pictures, images in the corridor. He was in a street fight. Not an uncommon occurrence in those days. He was in the act of killing a man. I could feel all the emotions he must have been generating a few hundred years ago when he fought for his life with the sword I was holding.”

  “You could sense all this?” Verity questioned.

  “I was literally awash with everything he had felt in those minutes when he thought he was probably going to die. All the fury and the desperation and the adrenaline poured through me as if I were the one caught in the fight. I was holding the sword he had held. I looked around the set and saw a dark, rainy street in Florence. In my mind the lab techs around me were converted into a bunch of would-be assassins and they were closing in on me. I reacted instinctively when one of them came at me with a hypodermic needle. I saw it as poison about to be delivered on the tip of a sword.”

  “You went for one of the lab techs thinking he was a fifteenth-century assassin,” Verity concluded softly. She was awed by the realization that Jonas believed every word he was saying. Whatever had happened in that lab at Vincent College, one thing was certain: Jonas really had tried to kill someone. “Good lord, Jonas. Did you hurt him?”

  “I almost gutted him. You could do that with a broadsword, you know. It’s not like a rapier, where all the attack is done with the point. Fifteenth-century swords made bigger messes than sixteenth-century rapiers.”

  “Jonas, stop it. Did you kill him?”

  Jonas hesitated. “No.”

  “He got out of the way in time?”

  “No. He got hurt. Badly hurt. But before I could finish him off someone got close enough to jab me with another needle. I turned on him and nearly got him before the drug took effect. When I came to, I was tied to a hospital bed and everyone was looking at me with a kind of excited horror. I’ll never forget those expressions. I was completely out of it for nearly two days, they told me later. They don’t know how far out of it I really was. Only I knew I had nearly lost my mind in the struggle to control whatever had reached from Giovanni to me. I had the feeling that if I’d actually killed that lab tech, whatever was invading me would have taken over completely. When I recovered I knew I couldn’t take any more chances. I also knew those damn scientists couldn’t wait to get me back into the lab.”

  “So you walked away from everything connected with the experience at Vincent.”

  “I didn’t just walk. Verity. I ran. For my life. For five long years.”

  “What do I have to do with all this, Jonas?” It took courage to ask the question. She realized she was frightened of his answer.

  He looked her, his face harsh. “Don’t you understand? You’re the reason I’ve stopped running.”

  “Me?” She stared at him in confusion.

  “I knew the night I found your earring in that alley down in Mexico that you were some kind of key for me. You were connected to me somehow. There was a possibility that you were the only means to control things in that corridor that I was ever likely to get in this lifetime. Until I met you, I wasn’t even sure there was such a thing as controlling what happened inside. B
ut with you, I think I can start exploring that corridor again.”

  Verity sat perfectly still, mesmerized by the intensity of his expression. “Jonas, what are you saying?”

  “That with you I have a chance of dealing with this curse that’s been laid on me. You’re the lifeline that I can hang on to when the past tries to rip through me into the present. With you I think I can control my psychometric ability.”

  Chapter Ten

  Verity was subdued and thoughtful the next morning as she descended the steel staircase to meet her hostess for breakfast. She was also feeling washed out and tense, an unsettling combination. The events of the night had kept her awake until nearly four in the morning and it was only seven now.

  Jonas had not spent the remainder of the night in her room. He certainly would have done so, given the slightest encouragement, but Verity had not encouraged him. She needed time to think. His lovemaking seemed to have that effect on her, she acknowledged wryly.

  It was beginning to look as if every time she made love with Jonas, she needed time and space afterward in which to recover. Why couldn’t the man have been a normal, sex-crazed male looking for an easy, no-strings-attached affair? Things would have been much simpler in that event. She’d had some practice keeping such men at bay.

  Jonas had left the rapier behind in her bedroom, though. He had told her bluntly that if he picked it up he would be in the same situation as he had been in last night when he charged through her door.

  “I’m sure you don’t want that,” he had said dryly, taking his dismissal with bad grace.

  “No,” Verity had agreed with alacrity, “I don’t want that. We’ll put it back where it belongs tomorrow.”

  “You can hang it back up on the wall,” he had told her without much interest, “or throw it over a cliff. Hell, I don’t care what you do with it. I won’t be spending another night here, so it doesn’t matter where the rapier winds up.”

  He had stood for a moment in the doorway of her bedroom as she prepared to close it in his face. His gaze was brooding and watchful as he looked down at her.

  “I see a pattern developing here. I’m not sure I like it. Are you always going to kick me out after I’ve made love to you?”

  “Are you always going to spring a surprise on me after we’ve gone to bed together?” she had countered aggressively. “Last time it was that earring in your pocket. This time you liven things up by admitting you’re only interested in me because you think I’m some kind of anchor for whatever it is that happens to you when you pick up old swords.”

  “Don’t put words in my mouth, Verity.” He reached for her, his hands closing around her shoulders. “I wanted you the first time I saw you standing in that cantina doorway. The light was in your hair and you had on one of those breezy little Mexican dresses and you looked sweet and sexy as hell. I followed you initially because I wondered what a fire-haired little gringa with jeweled eyes was doing going from cantina to cantina. I figured if you were just looking for some fun on the wild side of Mexico, you might as well have it with me. Considering what Pedro had in mind for you, you’re damn lucky I was attracted enough to follow you that night.”

  “Maybe any woman who attracts you physically can act as the key you say you need,” Verity said seriously. She wondered if he was telling the truth about his initial attraction. It wasn’t much consolation, but it was better than nothing, she supposed.

  He shook his head impatiently at her suggestion. “That’s not so. I just wish it were that easy. If it were true, I would have found out by now. Verity, listen to me. I know this has all come as a shock. We need to talk some more. I need to explain some things to you.”

  She softened then, touching his hard jaw with her fingertips. “Jonas,” she said earnestly, “I believe you when you say you’ve got a problem. I’m not sure I believe in your psychometric ability, but I know you believe it and I accept that. But for some reason you’ve fixated on me as a solution to your problem. I’m not sure what that means, but it might be dangerous for both of us. Perhaps you should seek professional help.”

  “Christ, don’t tell me to get counseling. I don’t need therapy! I gave that a whirl back at Vincent when I first began to think I might go crazy. It was useless. I’m not suffering from delusions or psychoses. I’m suffering from an excess of reality, past and present. You haven’t understood a word I’ve said tonight, have you?” He dropped his hands and gave her a small push back into her room. “Go ahead and go back to your lonely bed. I hope you enjoy your solitude. But I’m willing to bet it won’t be nearly as satisfying as the way I made you feel a while ago when you were shivering in my arms.”

  “Getting a little egotistical, aren’t we?”

  “You’ve had a taste of the real thing now, lady, and you’re going to want more. You are one hot little number. You’ve been locked away ice all these years but I’ve melted that ice. The next time you want to feel as good as you did when I was inside you, just remember I’m the man who can make it happen. You need me for that, if nothing else. Sweet dreams, your majesty.”

  He had turned and stalked off down the corridor, leaving Verity more confused and wary than she had ever been before in her life.

  No one really believed in psychometry.

  And no one except the most sheltered and naïve of innocents believed in finding true love with a man who was wrong for her on every count.

  On her way downstairs Verity reminded herself forcefully that she never had been sheltered, nor was she naïve. She had no excuses for the daydreams she hadn’t even begun to acknowledge until recently. Whatever she had with Jonas amounted to nothing more than an affair that probably wouldn’t last through the winter.

  The odds were that Jonas would grow restless and hit the road long before spring. Or she would lose her temper with him one time too many and wind up kicking him out for good. Either way, once he was gone she would never see him again.

  A sobering thought. The man might be difficult, crazy, and haunted by ghosts, but he was her first lover. It was depressing to think she had waited all these years for a wacko to sweep her off her feet and into bed. That probably said something about her own flawed judgment, Verity decided gloomily.

  At least now she knew the source of the ghosts in his eyes.

  As she entered the gray-on-gray dining room she found Caitlin waiting for her at the far end of the granite table. Verity decided she did not care for the table. With its unrelenting near-black surface and its wide, heavy base, the thing reminded her entirely too much of someone’s idea of a witch’s altar.

  Caitlin was pouring coffee from a silver pot when Verity walked into the room. She turned her scarred face to look at her guest, her eyes searching for answers to questions that remained unasked.

  “Good morning, Verity. I hope you slept well. Did the storm disturb you? We get some violent ones this time of year.”

  “Storms don’t bother me.” That much was true. “That coffee looks good.”

  “Help yourself. Tavi is busy in the kitchen. I take it Jonas is not up and about yet?”

  Verity concentrated on pouring her coffee. “I didn’t stop by his room to see if he was in motion.”

  “I see.” There was silence for a moment and then Caitlin said quietly, “It was kind of you to come for a visit, Verity. I want you to know how much I appreciate your company. I feel that in a short time we have become rather close. Is that presumptuous of me?”

  Verity’s head carne up sharply at the diffident tone in Caitlin’s voice. “Not in the least. I feel exactly the same way. I’ve enjoyed the visit thoroughly and I hope you’ll be able to come back to Sequence Springs soon. I don’t have a second bedroom, but Laura can always make room at the spa.”

  “That would be nice,” Caitlin started to say something else but broke off, her eyes going to the doorway behind Verity. “There you are, Jonas. I wa
s wondering if you would want to sleep in.”

  Verity turned to glance at Jonas, who strolled into the room with his usual negligent grace. He always looked so calm and at ease on the mornings after. It wasn’t fair. He took the seat beside Verity and reached for the coffeepot. She thought she saw some evidence of exhaustion around his eyes but she couldn’t be certain. Probably wishful thinking on her part.

  “Good morning, Verity,” he said politely.

  “Good morning, Jonas.”

  They might have been the most casual and polite of acquaintances, Verity thought in annoyance.

  “I was just about to tell Verity about some plans I’ve made regarding the sale of Bloodlust,” Caitlin said smoothly as Tavi walked into the room carrying a platter of eggs and fruit.

  “Is that right?” Jonas did not appear overly interested. He was concentrating on his coffee, treating it as if it were an expensive drug.

  Verity tried to cover up Jonas’s lack of social grace. “What plans, Caitlin?”

  “I believe I mentioned that I will be conducting a bidding session for the painting.”

  Verity nodded. “I remember. You said you were going to handle the auction yourself.”

  “That’s right. This is a very special sale for me, you see. Bloodlust is the last painting I plan to do.”

  “The last one?” Verity was shocked. “Caitlin, you can’t stop painting. It’s your life. You have a great talent and you’re in your prime. Why on earth would you want to stop?”

  Caitlin smiled fleetingly but her eyes were on Jonas. He was watching her speculatively. “I have my reasons.”

  “Like instantly driving up the prices of all your works by making it clear there will be no more?” Jonas asked sardonically. “Not a bad move, Caitlin. It would cause a flurry of interest in the art world.”