Garden of Lies

  “How did you escape?”

  “There were three passageways off of the burial chamber in which I found myself. The walls were covered with spectacular paintings. Each passageway told a different story. One was an epic history of endless wars. The second corridor told a story of vengeance. By luck and intuition, I chose the third legend. It led me into a passage that proved to be a labyrinth, not a maze.”

  “You mean it led to a central point?”

  “Yes,” Slater said. “Another exit, to be precise.”

  “Thank heavens. But when you emerged you discovered that you were alone on the island. You had no way of knowing when another ship would arrive. The loneliness must have been . . . unnerving.”

  He smiled and turned around to face her. “The press got that bit wrong. I was not alone on the island.”

  She was stunned. “There was no mention of that.”

  “No. I certainly never told anyone. As for Torrence and the others on the expedition, they had no way of knowing that there was a small group of people living on the island.”

  “The descendants of the people who built the tombs?”

  “No,” Slater said. “The people I met come from various corners of the world to form a monastery of sorts—a place of refuge and reflection. They called their community the Order of the Three Paths. Some who found their way to Fever Island stayed for only a short span of time. The teachings and the discipline of the Order did not suit them. Others thrived on the instruction and took what they learned back out into the world. Some remained on the island and became teachers.”

  “This is astonishing,” Ursula said. “There has been nothing in the press about a religious order on Fever Island.”

  “It was not a religious order. It could best be described as a philosophical community. The physical and mental exercises would strike most people here as esoteric or exceedingly eccentric.”

  “I see.” She paused. “I assume that you became a vegetarian during your stay on the island?”

  He smiled briefly. “I’m afraid so. In any event, a ship arrived a year after I emerged from the tombs. By then I had become a full initiate of the Order.”

  “Well, it doesn’t sound as if there was a great deal to do on the island except study the ways of this Order.”

  Slater’s eyes gleamed with amusement “True. But I found that the ways of the Order suited me. The teachers told me that I was a natural student.”

  “These teachers—they spoke English?”

  “Some did. As I told you, they came from various parts of the world. The Far East, Europe. There was even an American at the monastery—a ship’s captain who found his way to the island and decided to stay.”

  “But you chose to leave when the opportunity presented itself.”

  “I returned to London long enough to assure my parents that I was alive and well but I discovered that London no longer felt like home. I told my father that I intended to go abroad to find my own true path. He promptly cut me off without a penny.” Slater chuckled. “A perfectly logical parental response under the circumstances.”

  “Perhaps, but it must have put quite a crimp in your archaeological explorations. Financing such expeditions is very expensive.”

  Slater looked out the window. “I found other ways to make my living.”

  “Did you discover this true path that you sought?” she asked. But she had already sensed that the answer would be no.

  Slater smiled faintly and shook his head. “A year into my quest, I returned to Fever Island because I felt the need for more instruction and training. I had questions. But in the time I had been away, the volcano had erupted. The destruction was complete. There was nothing left to indicate that the monastery had ever existed.”

  “So you went back to your search until family obligations summoned you home.”

  “Where I will be obliged to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. Managing my father’s estate is not something that can be done from a distance.”

  “Evidently at some point along the way you and your father reconciled,” Ursula said.

  “I think he developed a grudging respect for the fact that I had chosen to go my own way.”

  “More than a grudging respect, I’d say. According to what I’ve heard he entrusted the entire estate to you.”

  Slater shrugged. “There was no one else.”

  “There are always other ways to handle vast sums of money,” Ursula said. “Your father obviously trusted you.”

  Slater did not respond but he did not argue.

  “Are you going to tell me how you made your living during the years when you were wandering the world without the financial backing of the family fortune?” she asked. “That is why you brought me here today, isn’t it?”

  He glanced at her. “Sometimes you see me too clearly, Ursula.”

  “Does that offend you?”

  “It is unsettling but, no, it does not offend me. Just takes a bit of getting used to, that’s all. In answer to your question, I made a living recovering lost and stolen artifacts.”

  “How . . . unusual. There is a living to be made in that business?”

  “A very good living, as it happens. Collectors are an eccentric, obsessive lot. They will pay almost anything to possess the objects of their desire. The business sent me to the far corners of the Earth. I dealt with some rather difficult people at times.”

  She watched him. “What is your definition of difficult in this case?”

  “Dangerous.”

  She caught her breath. “I see.”

  “Collectors and those who move in the underground world of antiquities often employ violent people to steal the objects of their desire. They employ dangerous people to guard their relics. They build vaults and safes and lock them with complicated mechanisms. Some are willing to commit murder to obtain certain artifacts. In short, my clients were obsessed with chasing legends.”

  “They hired you to chase those legends for them.”

  “And things sometimes became violent.” Slater turned around. His fierce eyes locked with hers. “The reason I brought you here today, Ursula, is to explain that, for a time in my life, I found the unwholesome excitement of my work, even the occasional violence, gratifying. There is no other word for it. And that is the truth about my eccentric nature.”

  “Am I supposed to be shocked?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Not nearly as shocked as I probably ought to be. But here’s the thing, Slater. My life has taken a few odd twists and turns and I find that the experience has made me more tolerant of the odd twists and turns in other people’s lives.”

  “That is a very broad-minded point of view,” he said rather dryly.

  “Do you believe that Lord Torrence deliberately triggered the trap so that he could escape alone with the Jeweled Bird?”

  “No. What I believe is that removing the Bird from the pedestal is what triggered the trap. But because the mechanism was so ancient it was not in good working order. It moved slowly and ponderously. That is why Torrence and the others had time to get to the entrance.”

  She thought about the expression she had seen on Lady Torrence’s face. “Perhaps you should make it clear to Lord Torrence that you do not blame him.”

  Slater was grimly amused. “I think he knows how I feel about the matter. He is not interested in having a personal conversation about Fever Island.”

  “Why not?”

  “I think it is very likely that he suspects that I know what really became of the Jeweled Bird.”

  “What are you talking about? It was stolen.”

  “I was in the business of searching for lost and stolen artifacts, remember?”

  A small shock of understanding struck her. “Good heavens. Yes, of course. You must have heard about the theft at the time.”
br />   “It was a sensation throughout the world of collectors and museums. A number of clients offered to pay me handsomely to find it. But I went looking for it on my own.”

  “You found it, didn’t you?”

  There was a short silence.

  “I know what happened to it,” Slater admitted.

  “According to the press, the Jeweled Bird has become a legend. They say it is the source of the animosity between you and Lord Torrence.”

  Slater watched her very steadily. “I don’t give a damn about the Jeweled Bird.”

  She studied him for a moment. He was telling her the truth, she decided.

  “Yes, I can see that the fate of the Bird doesn’t matter to you,” she said. “Your experience on the island is more important to you than the treasure.”

  “My time at the monastery changed me, Ursula.”

  “What are you trying to tell me, Slater?”

  He walked slowly, deliberately toward her and came to a halt in front of her, inches away.

  “I’m trying to tell you that meeting you changed me yet again. I do not feel as if I am watching you from offstage. When I am close to you as I am now, I feel you in every fiber of my being.”

  She was speechless. Her mouth opened but she could not find words.

  “There is something I must ask you,” he continued.

  She went very still, half afraid that he would ask her for the truth about her past. The thrilling heat of the moment was instantly transmuted into an icy dread. She could not imagine that he had guessed her secret but she had to acknowledge that someone—the blackmailer—certainly had. There was no knowing now who else might be aware of her past.

  “The question I must ask you has been keeping me awake nights ever since I met you,” Slater said.

  She braced herself. “What is it?”

  “You wear deep mourning. But I have been told that your husband died a few years ago. Do you think it will be possible to move past your state of grief and find it within yourself to form an attachment to another man?”

  She was so stunned that for a moment she could only stare at him in shocked silence. Something dark and haunted moved in his eyes, drawing her out of her trance.

  “Good heavens, Slater, I’m not locked in deep mourning,” she said, the words sharpened with relief. “Quite the opposite. I was married for less than two years. By the time my husband broke his neck falling down a staircase at a brothel, he had destroyed any love that I had once felt for him. I know I should be ashamed to admit it but frankly, even after discovering that he had gambled away every penny we possessed, I was relieved to have him out of my life. Does that answer your question?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I believe it does.”

  She could see the heat in his eyes. It robbed her of breath. Her pulse skittered and she was oddly shaky. She raised her gloved fingertips to touch the edge of his mouth.

  He framed her face with his powerful hands and drew her closer.

  His mouth closed over hers and everything she thought she knew of passion went out the window.

  Matty’s words of warning floated through her mind. “They say he practices exotic sexual rites upon unsuspecting females.”

  Evidently not all of the legends about Slater Roxton were false.

  FIFTEEN

  Her mouth was incredibly warm, soft and sensual. It was the stuff of a lonely man’s dreams. He was half afraid that he would awake to discover that he was hallucinating. But her response acted like a catalyst, ripping him out of the remote dimension from where he watched the world. It plunged him into the hot storms of passion.

  He heard a harsh, reverberating groan and realized with a sense of shock that it came from somewhere deep inside him. Kissing Ursula was like opening a door in a maze, like walking out of a dark place into the sunlight. He was alive. He was free. Sensations cascaded through him so quickly and so intensely that he could hardly catch his breath. His blood roared in his veins.

  He released her face and slid his hands down her elegant, tightly laced rib cage to the gentle curve of her hip. Layers of fabric and the stiff stays of the gown’s bodice kept him from the intimate contact he longed for but he was nevertheless thrilled just to know that he was so close, just to know that he was touching her, holding her at last—thrilled to know that she seemed to want him.

  He was afraid of pushing too far, too fast but when she put her hands around his neck he got a little light-headed.

  The next thing he knew she was up against a bookcase and he had one booted foot between her legs. The ankle-length skirts and petticoats of her dress rode up over his knee.

  He caged her there, his hands planted on either side of her head, and wrenched his mouth away from hers with an effort. She gripped his shoulders as though afraid she might collapse beneath the onslaught. He found the sweet, silken skin of her throat. Her womanly scent aroused his senses and tightened every muscle. He was so hard he ached.

  “Slater.” Ursula spoke into his ear, her voice softer and huskier than ever. “I was not expecting this.”

  “Is that so?” He raised his head and looked into her sultry, rather dazed eyes. “How odd. I have been waiting for this to happen since the day I met you.”

  “I understand.” She was breathless and flustered.

  “Do you?”

  “You said that during your time on Fever Island you lived a monastic existence and if the gossip is correct you have not formed a romantic liaison with anyone here in London. That is not a normal condition for a man of your obviously virile nature.”

  Reality washed over him in an icy wave.

  “Let me be sure I comprehend you,” he said evenly. “You think this is happening because I’ve been without a woman for too long?”

  She flinched, obviously alarmed, and tried to retreat but she was already up against the barrier of the bookcase.

  “It is just that I want you to be certain that your feelings for me are not inspired by your somewhat extended periods of, uh, celibacy.”

  He stared at her for a long moment, unable to tell if she was joking.

  “You’re forgetting the exotic sexual rituals in the forbidden chamber,” he said finally. “The rites I practice on unsuspecting females.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You’re teasing me.”

  “Am I?”

  She made a visible effort to compose herself. “I don’t place any credence in those outlandish stories in the press.”

  “Perhaps you should,” he said, making his tone deliberately ominous.

  “Nonsense.”

  Her stylish little black cap had fallen down over one eye. He took his hands away from the wall, freeing her. Straightening, he angled the cap into its proper position. The process gave him a chance to touch her coppery hair.

  She nipped smartly away from the bookcase and turned to face him.

  “I am not rebuffing your advances,” she said quickly.

  “Thank you for clarifying the matter. So, as a matter of curiosity, how do you act when you actually do rebuff a man’s advances?”

  “That is not amusing. I am trying to explain things here.”

  “Excellent,” he said. “While we’re on the subject, please do me the courtesy of telling me whether or not you will welcome further advances of an intimate nature from me. Because if you are not interested in that sort of connection I’d rather know now.”

  “I am not entirely averse to the possibility of a romantic connection with you, sir,” she said.

  He was starting to become amused by her flustered condition and her contradictory statements. He was still as frustrated as hell, nevertheless, there was something rather charming about Ursula Unnerved.

  “You give me hope,” he said gravely.

  “It is just that I want both of us to be very sure of what we are about,?
?? Ursula said, more earnest than ever.

  He held up one hand, palm out. “Don’t say another word, I beg you. You’ll ruin the moment. Small as it was, I wish to treasure it.”

  She angled her chin. “You call that embrace we just shared a small moment, sir?”

  “I’m assuming you want the truth?”

  “Of course.”

  “Very well, then, that kiss was not nearly enough to satisfy me, madam. Indeed, it merely whetted my appetite. But apparently it will have to suffice for now.”

  “I see.” She looked as if she wanted to say something more but could not summon the words.

  “Your turn, Ursula,” he said quietly. “Will a few stolen kisses be enough for you or do you think you will want more at some point in the future?”

  To his astonishment her air of alarm increased dramatically.

  “Mr. Roxton,” she sputtered. “Must you be so . . . so direct?”

  “Forgive me. I believe I explained that in my time away from London I lost some of my conversational skills.”

  “I doubt that you forgot anything at all, sir,” she shot back. “You are simply impatient with the polite ways of Society.”

  He nodded soberly. “Very true. The thing is, Ursula, you were a married woman. I assumed you understood the nature of intimate relations between two people.”

  “Of course I do,” she snapped. “I understand that sort of thing very well. But you are obviously a man of strong passions, sir. If you are sincerely interested in an intimate connection with me—”

  “Oh, I am,” he said softly. “I am most definitely interested.”

  She cleared her throat. “Then you deserve to know that my own temperament does not run to the extremes.”

  He went blank. “The extremes?”

  She waved one hand. “I refer to the sort of extreme passions that your mother writes about in her plays.”

  “Nobody in his or her right mind acts the way the characters do in my mother’s melodramas. I’m afraid you have gone too deeply into the weeds of polite euphemisms. I am lost. I have no idea what you are talking about.”