скачать книгу бесплатно
“I didn’t know you were still with him.”
“Thought I’d better spend the night here. With a bump on the head like that, there’s always the chance of a concussion, you see. Have to be watchful for that. I expect you came in to check on him yourself.”
“Yes,” Jennifer lied, “I was worried about him.”
“Mind you, he’s not out of the woods,” Brother Timothy said, bending over the bed, “but he’ll come around yet, stout lad like him.”
“That’s good.”
“Grumbled about his ribs being sore when I examined him. I’m of a mind he’s just bruised there, nothing broken, but I taped him up. Can’t be certain that it isn’t a cracked rib. No trouble breathing, anyway.”
“And he is sleeping.”
“Sleep is the ticket all right, and I gave him something to be sure he did just that.” Brother Timothy chuckled. “But he’s been fighting it. Not a man who likes to be helpless, I’m thinking.”
Scratching the fringe of graying hair below his tonsure, the monk gazed at her, as if wondering whether she had anything further she wanted to know.
There was a great deal that Jennifer did want to know about Leo McKenzie, but Brother Timothy wouldn’t be able to provide that information. Nor, while the monk remained here keeping his vigil, could she attempt to learn it on her own. She would have to wait for her answers.
“Well, since he’s in such good hands…”
Wishing Brother Timothy a good night, Jennifer retreated to her room.
Tomorrow, she promised herself as she closed the connecting door behind her.
IT WASN’T DAYLIGHT, however, that awakened her some hours later. Nor was it the desire for those answers. This was something else. And though Jennifer initially resisted the summons as she drifted back to consciousness, in the end she could no longer ignore its urgency.
She needed a bathroom.
You might as well give in, because it’s not going to go away.
“Fine,” she muttered, fully awake now as she emerged from the covers under which she was burrowed.
But, of course, it wasn’t fine at all. Not when it was the middle of the night. The blackness at her window told her that even before she peered at her watch, after almost upsetting the lamp when she fumbled for the switch. And the room was frigid.
When her feet hit the icy floor, she couldn’t slide them into her slippers fast enough. She reached for her robe and bundled into it, snugging the belt around her waist.
Better, but a hotel accommodation equipped with its own bathroom would have been better still. This was not a hotel, she reminded herself. It was Warley Castle, and private bathrooms were nonexistent.
There was a single bathroom reserved for guests. That is, if she could remember how to get to it. One of the brothers had conducted her to the facility shortly after her arrival. Jennifer had hoped not to have to visit it again before morning, but the call of nature wasn’t going to be denied.
The wind continued to snarl outside, muffled by the thick walls. She could barely hear it in the passageway that stretched away in front of her, cold and gloomy in the dim light.
Warley Castle was a big place. Its stone-vaulted corridors seemed to meander in every direction from level to level, so medieval in character that flickering torches mounted on its walls would have been more appropriate than the electric lights that were located at inadequate intervals.
It was either by chance, or because her memory was served by necessity, that Jennifer found the bathroom. But once she had used the primitive plumbing and was on her way back to her room, that memory failed her.
She realized after several minutes of wandering that she must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. There was nothing familiar now about the route. She was lost. Coming to a stop beneath one of the weak lanterns high on the wall, she tried to get her bearings.
Jennifer thought of herself as a realist and not easily unnerved, even about things she couldn’t readily explain. So maybe what happened next was simply because of the setting. The absolute stillness of this dim passage was certainly eerie enough to activate the imagination, making her suddenly aware of her aloneness here.
Except she wasn’t alone, because without warning a figure appeared down at the end of the corridor that stretched away into the shadows, moving toward her. His long, pale robe identified him as one of the monks. Help at last!
“I can’t seem to find my way back to my room,” she called out to him. “Can you direct me, please?”
He must have heard her, but he didn’t answer her. Didn’t so much as pause as he continued to glide along the passage.
“Hello,” she called again.
Still no response. How could he not be conscious of her presence? And his gait…there was something not right about his gait. It was so slow and smooth, as if he weren’t walking but floating. Like a wraith.
Jennifer was no longer relieved by his arrival. In fact, she was far less than that when he turned and suddenly disappeared, as if he’d passed through a solid wall. Alone again, she shivered.
Not a ghost, she told herself firmly. There had to be an explanation, probably a cross passage down which he had vanished. But she was in no mood to investigate that likelihood. All she wanted was to get away from here and back to her room.
Swinging around with the intention of retracing her route, Jennifer slammed into a wall. It was a barrier composed not of stone or timber but of hard flesh.
Uttering a little cry of alarm, she threw up her hands in a gesture of self-defense. Her palms came into searing contact with a warm, naked chest. Although he had managed to sneak up behind her without a sound, there was no question of any apparition this time. He was very real.
Her gaze collided with his, and for a long moment she found herself trapped by a pair of whiskey-colored eyes that burned into hers with a disarming intensity. She wasn’t sure at what point she realized it wasn’t only his gaze that held her. A pair of strong hands grasped her by the elbows, locking her against him.
Her palms, still flat against that tantalizing chest, seemed to sizzle. She removed them with a breathless “Let me go.”
But he didn’t release her. He went on staring at her with a harsh expression in his eyes. Then, in a slow, gruff voice, he warned her, “It won’t do you any good to run. Wherever you go, I’ll find you.”
There was something about the way he said it, something in his entire manner that—
It struck her then. Leo McKenzie didn’t know what he was saying, probably didn’t know how he had managed to slip away from Brother Timothy and catch her here. He was disoriented. Was it the result of whatever kind of sedative the monk had given him, or—
Disassociated fugue.
A condition caused by a trauma, like a blow to the head. It could leave the victim confused, not responsible for his actions or his words, even rob him of any memory of his behavior afterwards. Leo McKenzie had suffered such a blow in the accident.
Was he dangerous like this? Maybe not, but the situation was far too intimate for comfort. She was suddenly conscious of things she hadn’t noticed before. Unsettling things, like the stubble on his jaw and the tattoo of a salamander that wrapped itself halfway around his right bicep. They made him look tough.
And, admit it, sexy.
Uh-uh, much as she longed for the answers, this was definitely not the time to ask him how and why he had pursued her to Yorkshire. Even if she wasn’t afraid of him, and that was not a certainty, he was in no state for any rational conversation.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she promised him as gently as possible, “so you don’t need to hang onto me any longer.”
Those hypnotic, whiskey-colored eyes continued to search her own eyes, narrowing now as if he were wondering whether he could trust her.
“Please,” she added softly.
For a moment she wondered whether he understood her plea. Then his hands on her elbows slowly relaxed. Taking a deep breath, Jennifer removed herself from his grip and put several safe feet between them.
He looked so suddenly bewildered that she felt sorry for him. Especially when, able to look down his full length now, she saw that he wore nothing but a pair of pajama bottoms that Brother Timothy must have dug out of his suitcase.
Jennifer was no expert on what the modern man wore to bed. From her limited experience, guys either slept in the raw or in T-shirts and boxer shorts. But Leo McKenzie’s hard body in those bottoms could have started a whole new craze for pajamas.
“Aren’t you cold?” she asked him, noticing that his feet were bare against the stone-flagged floor.
He didn’t answer her.
“You must be cold. Come on,” she coaxed him, “let me take you back to your room.”
Would he go with her, or would he resist? He hesitated for a few seconds when she started to edge away along the passage, but then he willingly fell into step beside her. Good. Now she had only one other problem. Exactly where were their rooms?
She needn’t have worried. Dazed or not, his sense of direction was better than hers. She ended up following him, and by some instinct she didn’t understand, maybe the same one that had led him to her, he took them straight back to their rooms.
A worried Brother Timothy burst out of Leo’s room when they arrived. “Praise the saints, you found him!” he welcomed Jennifer. “I went and dozed off in that chair, I’m ashamed to say, and when I opened my eyes again he was gone.”
“I ran into him on my way back from a visit to the loo,” Jennifer said, using the British term for a bathroom for the sake of clarity. She didn’t feel the need to offer any further explanation about the whole episode. Brother Timothy looked worried enough.
“He’s all right then, is he?”
“I think so. Just…well, not with it yet.”
“That’d be the medicine.” He turned to his patient. “Come on, matey, you’ve been busy enough for one night. Let’s get you back to bed where you belong.”
Silent and docile now, Leo permitted the monk to take him inside the bedroom. Brother Timothy thanked Jennifer, wished her a good night, and closed the door behind them.
Jennifer entered her own bedroom, threw more peat on the smoking remains of the fire in the grate and crawled into bed. She, too, had had enough for one night.
Her brain refused to shut down, though. It was infuriatingly busy with the image of Leo McKenzie. That encounter with him in the passage had impacted her far more strongly than she cared to admit. Her hands still tingled from their contact with his chest.
Damn. This wasn’t good. Not good at all.
Chapter Three
No more midnight spooks, Jennifer thought with relief, opening her eyes to the first gray light of morning seeping into the room.
Or maybe she wasn’t relieved. A glance in the direction of the window showed her that the snow was still coming down. Just how bad was it?
Very bad, she decided when, leaving her bed with her robe clutched around her, she went to the glass and looked out. Or tried to look out. The snow was so thick that she could barely glimpse the savage, white landscape. Father Stephen hadn’t exaggerated when he’d told her the storm would leave them isolated, perhaps for several days.
Jennifer was tempted to climb back into bed and bury herself again under the warm blankets. Except…
Turning her head, she gazed at the closed door to the room that connected with hers. If this should turn out to be the opportunity she’d been hoping for, she couldn’t afford to waste it.
Crossing the room, she listened at the door. She could hear nothing but the eternal moan of the wind. The hour was very early. Chances were the occupants of that room were asleep. It was worth the risk. But this time she wouldn’t make the mistake of sneaking in there and getting caught by an alert Brother Timothy, who might not regard a second visit as innocent.
Jennifer’s rap on the door was soft enough not to rouse anyone but loud enough to be heard if one of them was awake. There was no response.
Turning the iron ring that served as a handle, she inched the door open and peered around its edge. Like her own, the room was murky with shadows. But the light from the window, feeble though it was, revealed that Brother Timothy had departed. He must have determined that his patient no longer needed his presence.
Leo McKenzie was not restless this morning. His tall figure stretched out on the bed never stirred as Jennifer crept across the room. Reaching the chair at his bedside, she looked down at him, wanting to be sure he was as deeply, peacefully asleep as he appeared to be.
That was evident with a glance. There was no reason for her gaze to linger on his face, to be interested in those square-jawed, craggy features softened by a wide, sensual mouth. She hadn’t noticed it before, but there was a small, crescent-shaped, white scar high on his left cheek. A result of what? she wondered.
What was she doing? This man could be her enemy, probably was, and here she stood being susceptible again to his masculinity while wondering about a scar on his cheek. What difference did it make how he had come to have the scar?
Just get on with it.
Crouching down beside the chair, she considered the collection of his personal belongings spread out on the seat. A handful of coins, a comb, a belt, a set of keys, sunglasses tucked into a case, his passport and his wallet.
The wallet seemed the likeliest prospect. Jennifer started to reach for it, and then hesitated. She hated this. Hated the necessity of having to mine someone’s privacy, to dig out whatever secrets he might be concealing. But that was the whole point, wasn’t it? It was necessary.
Smothering her guilt, she snatched up the wallet and opened it. It was a bulky thing that carried his American driver’s license along with the usual credit cards. Folded among them were two kinds of currency, American bills mixed in with British pound notes of various denominations.
But what was this?
Tucked between the bills were several identical business cards, probably ignored by Brother Timothy who must have looked no further after satisfying himself with the information provided by the passport and the driver’s license. Jennifer removed one of the cards and read the bold print.
Leo McKenzie, Private Investigator.
Apprehensive now, her gaze flashed from the face of the card to the face of the man asleep on the bed beside her.
Leo McKenzie was a P.I.? But what was an American P.I. doing over here in England? More to the point, why should he be after her?
She supposed she could have waited until he was awake and then demanded an explanation from him. Assuming, that is, he would be in any state today to make sense. Or that he would be willing to tell her.
But she was in no mood to wait. She had waited long enough. She wanted answers now. Still hoping that the wallet could give them to her, she turned her attention back to its contents.
There was a series of plastic windows, the kind that displayed insurance cards and photographs. Jennifer rapidly flipped through them, passed the only photograph they contained and then, seized by something familiar, came immediately back to the solitary picture.
The once clear plastic was clouded from long use, blurring the photo. Removing it from the sleeve for a better look, she stared at it. It was a snapshot of two young men still in their teens, their arms draped over each other’s shoulders as they gazed into the lens of the camera.
The taller of the two wore a cocky grin. Jennifer judged that nearly two decades must have passed since he’d posed for that snapshot, but she was able to recognize him. It was Leo McKenzie. And the other one…
She sucked in her breath and then released it slowly.
Oh, yes, she was able to identify him, too. Guy Spalding, the man whose murder back in London she feared that sooner or later she could be charged with.
Leo and Guy. This was the connection. They’d known each other. But how could Leo McKenzie have—
“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She’d been so intent on examining the snapshot that she’d forgotten to be cautious. Had failed to be aware that the man on the bed had awakened and discovered her investigating his wallet.
Alarmed, her gaze shifted from the young face in the photograph to its mature, coldly angry counterpart.
“If you’re through snooping,” he said, his voice early-morning husky, “then I’d like to have those back.”
His hand shot out, plucking the wallet and the snapshot from her fingers. With both of them back in his possession, he shoved himself up against the headboard, those mesmerizing, whiskey-colored eyes wearing a challenge as they glowered at her.
“Satisfied yourself, have you?”
