“Simon Griffin was also taken before the Earl in the same matter, but he said that Adam’s foreign wife had stolen the ruby and run away. A search was made, neither she nor the stone was found. The Earl never forgave Simon Griffin for the loss of the ruby, and years later falsely accused him of embezzling tax moneys and had him executed.
“No one knows what became of the foreign woman, Adam Griffin’s widow. The stone itself returned, somehow, to the hands of the Griffins (if indeed it had ever truly left, for no Griffin since has managed to get rid of the cursed thing even knowing its evil reputation). The Griffins’ repossession of the stone was kept secret from the Earl and from all the outside world, but within the family it has long been said that Simon had killed his brother’s widow and hidden the ruby himself, so it had never left Griffin hands at all.
“True to Alice Griggs’ curse, calamities fell upon the Griffin sons ever after, one sorry doom after another, as the red stone passed down among them. My father says that in the reign of Queen Anne, William Griffin claimed to have seen a strange dark-haired woman in a vision, and then he went away to London to lose himself among its citizens, as he had been told by his father that this vision of a woman on horseback was the first sign of the approach of the Griffin doom.
“The second sign was his meeting with a stranger from abroad, a strong, stern, foreign man whose name no one but William ever knew. This foreigner accosted William by night in a street in London outside a tavern and gave him a token: a brooch in the shape of a claw, empty where a stone should be set in its grip.
“This stranger said to him, ‘This brooch is mine, but the stone that was once set in is in your possession, although it belongs by right to me. I have come to claim my property, and with it I will take your life. For this purpose I have prolonged my own mortal days by a hellish bargain, the terms of which protect me from any threat or wrath of yours.’
“Then he disappeared.
“William straightway returned to Griffin Hall and had all his retainers keep sharp watch for the foreign man in league with the Devil, or the strange pale woman on horseback. No one later claimed to have seen either one. Yet within a fortnight William died, knocked from a bridge over the River Ban in what was recorded as ‘a drunken brawl with persons unknown’. The stone passed to his son, who was great-great grandfather to my father, with these fateful encounters and an early death following soon after.
“Frightfullest of all, the stranger is always the same, not just to look at, but the same man entire, his back unbowed by age and his face no more lined than when it was last seen. His Devilish bargain has bought him an endless life in which to pursue the prize the Griffins hold as the very foundation of our family’s wealth and progress. Since the great ruby came into our possession, the Griffin fortunes have increased. The thing has been privately carried to holy places to be blessed three times, to no effect; but no Griffin could bring himself to part with the stone, despite tales of curses and evil proceeding from the jewel itself, for fear of causing the family to fall into poverty and ruin.
“This cursed stone, red as the heart of Hell itself, was brought by my father, Jeremy Griffin, across the ocean at the end of the last century, and wrought its magic to establish his family in prosperity from the first year they were here.
“I myself wish the object had been left behind or stolen, perhaps, on the journey from Bristol Harbor, but that did not happen. Although I planned to be done with the stone, at the last moment all my other goods were lost in a fire, and I had to borrow against the stone to begin again. These loans I successfully repaid, redeeming the red gem, after a hard, long time; for without the stone the Griffin luck truly did desert me.
“Now I have seen the woman, and a fine ring was slipped into the pocket of my coat while I was taking my ease in Andrew Mull’s tavern; so the foreign man himself, the Griffin demon, has made his challenge. My time is short.
“For those of the Griffin blood who come after, know this: the grip of his hand is stronger than iron, and he casts a very slight shadow at any hour. He will meet you at dusk or in darkness rather than in the brightness of day. But though he will steal your life in the end, use your wits till then to preserve the ruby from his grasp and ensure the continuing fortune of our house and our blood. If we cannot escape this thing, let us at least profit from the necessary keeping of it. Life need not be long, if you are full of decision and the courage of your heritage. You can make your mark on the world and gather increase for our posterity.
“Perhaps one day a Griffin heir will live in times more advanced than a mere demon can command, and our enemy’s hold on our future generations will be broken and he himself cast down into the flames his master lives in. If not, let us still be brave.”
There was no signature on the original.
So here it all was. Nick had seen the harbinger, a woman pale as marble with hair and garments like flowing black ink, on a spectrally white horse.
And a token had been delivered—not to him, but to Jess: the delicate brooch of Berlin iron, metal blackened like painted metal palings around a graveyard. When Walter had clandestinely borrowed the thing and shown it to him, Nick hadn’t been able to bring himself to touch the thing. He’d known at once what it was—a gauntlet, jeeringly thrown down not at his feet but into the innocent keeping of his life’s love.
Flooded with hot anger, he sat at the table with the transcript in his hands. He was terrified, too, for himself and for Jess. But it was still too soon for him to take action, especially now that he had all this new information to absorb and integrate. He had little enough hope as it was, and if there were any way of increasing it, he couldn’t pass up an opportunity to find out about it. He must meet the monster armed with all the weapons he could lay his hands on.
He thought of offering to buy the original document and the transcription both from the clearly cash-strapped Burch collection, but he hesitated. Maybe it would be better to let the story stay here, safely out of the way, for someone else to ferret out in the future. If nothing else, it could be shown to Jess to help explain the deadly trap he’d found himself in.
He asked the curator to accompany him to someplace where the bailiff’s story could be copied. The Burch Collection’s copying machine was broken.
“I need to copy this, Mr. Pease,” he said. “And I think you can expect a hefty donation from me in the near future. You might want to start looking for a new copier.”
Closed Rehearsal
“Then there is no past?” Eva said incredulously, turning from the mirror to confront her antagonist. “You mean that the past is dead from the moment that time moves onward—unless it’s a story that you need to justify yourself!”
“Is that such a bad idea?” Marko demanded. Jess knew that from the audience the pleading gesture of Sinclair’s right hand (that was blocked from her own sight) would be visible, signaling Marko’s underlying appeal for understanding and consent.
“Not for thieves and criminals,” Eva retorted.
“Are you so spotless yourself?” Marko demanded. “You love any pack of ragged foreigners better than your own flesh and blood. Your virtues are our shame, Eva!”
“And what about my shame?” she cried, and dried on the rest of the line. Holding her position, she raised her voice: “Line?”
From his place at the back of the theater Walter fed her the words. She repeated them, and then they all backed up and did the scene all over again.
Damn! Another flub.
All afternoon she’d had a feeling of being watched, not in the professional way she expected and needed from colleagues like Walter, but with an intensity that she felt like an electrical current stirring her hair. Could it be Nick?
Maybe he was out there in the house now, quietly dropping in to get a glimpse of how things were going with “The Jewel.”
No, that was foolish. He hadn’t come before, and he wouldn’t come now. No matter how uneasy she felt, her insecurity was more about being observe
d than about who might be observing her.
“Marko,” Walter said from out in the empty hall, “what would happen if you turned a little when you said that line, so that you’re looking both at Eva and at her reflection in the mirror when you deliver the kicker? Does that feel right to you?”
Anthony grimaced in mock despair which only Jess could see, but for Walter’s benefit he drawled pleasantly, “There’s an easy way to find out.”
They ran through the confrontation scene one more time, ignoring the sounds of hammering from backstage. The set crew was reconstructing the “stone” steps that had collapsed under Jessamyn in the first hour of the rehearsal period today. Her bruised shoulder was beginning to throb now. She wasn’t still shaking with shock, but she was tired, and she felt her concentration draining away.
Anthony noticed—his light blue eyes, hooded and watchful, caught every signal she sent and some she didn’t, which was what made working with him so amazing. Going through the scene again, he visibly cranked down his own energy to match hers.
Walter knew better than to beat a dead horse. He stopped the scene, thanked them, and ended the session.
“Jess, go home and take a hot bath,” he told her in a falsely casual tone. “If that arm stiffens up on you, give me a call. My masseuse is a wizard with sore muscles.”
She insisted that she was fine, and he seemed satisfied.
“It’s not so simple,” Anthony muttered. “It can really rattle you, having a fall like that.”
He vaulted off the front of the stage and began gathering his cold weather gear from the front row. He might call himself an old man, but he was never averse to showing how fit he was.
“Honestly, are we sailing under a curse?” he added lightly. “I’d consider skipping out myself, if I didn’t need the paycheck. It’s almost as if we had a malicious spirit haunting us.”
“Oh, baloney,” Jess said. “Quit trying to scare me, Anthony. Life is tough enough.”
Sinclair shrugged. “Accidents happen. Did I ever tell you about the time I split my scalp doing a warm-up exercise right before the opening of ‘Ghosts’ in Sacramento? Blood all over the place, you wouldn’t believe it! Head wounds bleed like all hell.”
She’d heard the story twice since starting rehearsals for “The Jewel,” complete with the dash to the emergency room, the sympathetic nurse who loved theater and so rushed Sinclair to the head of the line to avoid delaying the performance, and the opening night performed with a six-inch gash stapled shut along the crown of the actor’s head.
Sinclair always swore that he wouldn’t have even a tiny start of a bald spot if not for the scar. He regularly and roundly vilified whatever fool had moved the prop table on the stage from its accustomed place, so that it was right behind where he was sitting when he had tipped backward for a nice, spine-loosening flop onto the stage.
“Of course I’ve heard it, but you tell the story so well—”
“Old windbag that I am,” he sighed, looking mournful. “Why doesn’t anybody ever shut me up in time to save my reputation, such as it is?”
“We cherish our windbags around here, even if their hair is falling out!” Anita MacNeil chimed in, reaching up to ruffle his hair as she hurried past. Petite and as beautiful as a model, Anita had a playful streak that Anthony always responded to.
Now he clapped both hands to his head and loped away up the side aisle of the small theater, bellowing that she was trying to sabotage his career by pulling out even more of his thinning hair. She stalked out after him protesting her innocence and pulling on her down coat.
“Actors!” Walter said, rolling his eyes with affectionate exasperation; and he went off to talk to the publicity people in the theater office.
“The Jewel” was a serious piece. Anthony and Anita fell easily to cutting capers in order to bleed off some of the emotional tension accumulated during rehearsal. Jess wished she could join in, but she’d felt depressed and depleted.
She lingered, looking for a stray glove. Fun and games or not, she felt wrung out.
As a newcomer to serious drama, she got a lot of support from her fellow players, but she sometimes felt left out of their easy camaraderie. They entertained each other by endlessly and brilliantly telling stories of theatrical disasters, feuds, and last-minute saves. Being out of circulation had withered her store of gossip and her own ready humor, so she didn’t have much to contribute.
Tonight she could have used some extra attention. She was beginning to feel scared. The fall through the loosened board was a step beyond marbles on her dressing room floor, and might have caused worse than bumps and bruises not just to her but to others in the company using the stage.
On the other hand, nothing terrible had actually happened.
Yet. That was the problem—as well as the lost glove, damn it.
The lighting people began flicking the spots off, sinking more and more of the stage and the rows of seating into gloom. Time to go out into the winter cold. Her apartment would be warm enough for a soak with bath salts for her shoulder. She winced, trying to work her sore arm into the sleeve of her coat.
Then the sleeve drew easily on, as if moving on its own, over her awkwardly extended arm. Startled, she turned to find someone standing right behind her, smoothing her sleeve with the lightest touch of his hand.
“Who the hell—?” she yelped.
It wasn’t a good time for surprises.
“Forgive me, please,” he said in an accented voice she knew. “I didn’t mean to startle you, but I saw that you had some trouble.”
It was the man from the terrace, that night at Whitely’s party.
The backstage hammering continued, lights came on again as the lighting staff worked through a cue sequence—nothing could have been more comfortable and familiar than business as usual in the Edwardian Theater late on a rehearsal afternoon.
But Jess could scarcely breathe. What was affecting her, she realized, was the nearness, and the stillness, of this stunning young man whose thick and beautifully cut hair shone like polished bronze and whose skin was as pale and smooth as fresh, rich cream.
He had a strong face with a touch of the exotic about the high cheekbones and broad forehead. Lines already framed his sculpted lips, signs of a deeply lived life. His eyes, with a tilt at the outer corners suggesting an Asian influence, were very steady of gaze, smokily dark, and thickly lashed.
He was only an inch or two over her own height, but he stood solidly planted as if nothing could move him without his consent, and his carriage—chin slightly raised, shoulders thrown back—read as a cool challenge so natural as to need no other statement. She couldn’t tell his age; probably still in his early twenties, but his poise gave him an air of maturity.
With a start, she realized that she was staring like a bird fascinated by a snake; he seemed to accept this as merely his due, his mouth curled in a slight smile.
Annoyed, she said rather curtly, “Thanks. Have you been in the theater long today? I didn’t know anyone was watching the rehearsal.”
“I came a little while ago,” he said. He seemed oblivious to the fact that he was standing nearer than people ordinarily stand for casual conversation. Jess was damned if she would give ground like a timid girl.
“Then you didn’t see me almost break my neck on those stairs earlier,” she said. “I took all my weight on my left arm and shoulder. It’s time I went home and put some ice on it.”
“If you’re hurt, your colleagues shouldn’t have left you,” he said critically. “If you permit me, I will escort you.”
“No thanks,” she said (Who does he think he is and who let him in? He’s not even supposed to be in here).
Yet she felt reluctant to just walk away. He was—interesting looking. He had that faint swagger to his well-tailored frame that she thought of as belonging to European men of a certain level of privilege, but hardly ever seen in Americans. This guy would look perfectly natural with his overcoat slung dashingly
from his shoulders, like a character in an old war movie.
“Are you an actor, mister—ah—?”
He smiled, just a quirk of the lips.
“I have performed different roles in my life,” he said. “But am I an actor like your colleagues here—?” A graceful turn of his square-palmed, muscular hand indicated the empty aisle up which Sinclair and Anita had laughingly gone moments before. “No, I can’t claim so much.”
Like hell, Jess thought, drawing back a little now with a sense of regaining balance, solidity, and common sense. If you’re no actor, mister, you’re missing the best bet of your life! Aspiring actors would kill for this man’s bearing, his striking looks, his light, expressive tenor. Actors went to classes all their lives trying to acquire presence like this.
And of course he knew it. He was using it all on her right now. People who had this quality—it ranged from light charm to compelling animal magnetism—did that. They couldn’t help it. This was one reason (among others) that Jessamyn didn’t look for a life partner among professional performers. You could never be sure you’d connected with the true inner man, or whether there even was one.
And, she noticed, he hadn’t given his name either. Was it too grand a name for the mere hoi polloi?
Oh no, I’ve stumbled into “Pride and Prejudice”!
She turned away to hide a grin he certainly didn’t deserve and began poking around at the side aisle seats, still looking for her glove. “These are closed rehearsals. How did you get in?”
“I came at the request of Miss Lily Anderson,” he replied, following her.
Well, that was a surprise.
Lily Anderson was the production designer, a very private woman; it was odd to think of her in connection with this rather glamorous man.
He answered her unspoken question. “At Mr. Whitely’s party, Ms. Anderson saw some fine examples of jewelry that I found for one of his collections. She contacted me later to consult on some details of this production’s design that she isn’t satisfied with. We agreed to confer about it, but when I came here today, as arranged, I couldn’t find her.”