Emerald Embrace (24 page)

S
he’d been in a nightmare, Martise thought, awaking slowly. A horrible nightmare in which white-shrouded ghosts misted through the halls, touching her hair with decaying, ethereal fingers, following behind her as she ran and ran and ran …

Until she came to the long dark corridor, and the hall lengthened and darkened even as she stood there. She moved forward slowly, and then quickly, and then she was staring down into the face she had come to know so well. The face of Creeghan. A lock of dark hair over the forehead. The sharp angles and rugged planes of the face … except that this face was cloaked in death.

Her eyes opened, and she saw the hand-painted dragon on the armoire. Her fingers moved over the black velvet spread with the red dragon emblazoned upon it.

She saw his eyes. Creeghan’s eyes. Eyes of fire, gleaming brightly in the candlelight as he studied her pensively, and she wondered if she had lost her mind or if, when the corpse in the crypt below opened its eyes, the same fire did not blaze.

A scream welled in her throat. She braced herself up in the bed in a panic. She was here, she was back with him, in his own room. Enwrapped in the sheet that slipped from her shoulders. Laid upon his bed.

“Nay, don’t scream!” he commanded, and the burr in his voice was very strong. He was by her side, hand clamping over her mouth. And he was close against her, clad in his smoking jacket. She could feel the rich texture of it against her flesh, could feel the heat emanating from him, and she knew that this man, at least, was very much alive.

Even now, the passion was in his eyes and in his touch. She began to tremble, and she heard his long soft sigh. “If I meant to harm you, milady, I’d have done so by now.”

His hand eased from her lips. She spun to face him, clasping the sheet tightly. “Who was that? What in God’s name is going on here? Who are you?”

She wasn’t going to scream, he determined. He stood, leaving her on the bed, a disturbing and desirable distraction with the sheet leaving her shoulders bare and the wild tangle of her hair curling over it. He knew now all that lay beneath that sheet, and the desire had not been sated; indeed, it had grown and flourished.

He clenched his teeth hard and paced toward the door, then turned around and stared at her, a crooked, wry, and humorless smile curving his lips. “Milady, I am, indeed, the Laird of Creeghan.”

Her lips trembled. She was fighting for courage, well he knew. Her delicate face remained pale, her eyes wide and luminous. “You cannot be. Lord Creeghan must lie in the coffin. But how—?”

“I am laird of Creeghan,” he repeated. Then he added softly, “’Tis my brother, Bruce, who lies in the coffin.”

“Bruce!” she murmured. “But—”

“We were twins, Martise. Quite identical in looks, though different in personality, so my mother often said. Bruce was the elder by three minutes, I believe. And so he was the laird of Creeghan. But with his death, I am laird.”

Martise sat silent for a moment, staring at him. That he and his brother were twins, she did not doubt. Even when one lay in death, the resemblance was uncanny.

That he had cared for his brother, she could not doubt either. Emotion tore his voice ragged when he spoke. But as to what was going on, she still couldn’t begin to fathom.

Her throat went dry. She was in love with him, she had known that, and that love had now been consummated, but the circumstances in which they were entangled made her ever more afraid. She wanted the truth, she feared the truth.

Perhaps he had not murdered Mary. But perhaps he had murdered his own brother. No, surely not. Please, God, surely not.

His smile, caustic and bitter, deepened. “Believe me, milady, were I a beast, I’d have taken the opportunity to brick you into a wall below, when you were, for once, silent.”

Color flooded to her cheeks. “You’ve not explained anything at all!” she snapped.

“I am Bryan Creeghan, laird in truth. I am not so much the imposter. But madam, I am fully aware, as I have been since you arrived, that you are not Lady St. James.”

Her color deepened and she bit her lip.

“Who are you!” he thundered with a sudden, ruthless vehemence. He strode toward her and she cried out as he sat before her, fingers tangling into her hair.

“I am Martise St. James!” she said.

“Margaret is dead, I know that,” he told her bluntly. “So who is Martise?”

“Her cousin-in-law!” Martise said. His fingers were still so taut, his eyes ablaze. “I swear it!” she gasped out, and she reached for his hands, that she might free herself from his touch.

The sheet slipped and suddenly his gaze was upon her breast again, and all the fires that they had so recently sated seemed to come alive in his eyes once more and he stared upon the creamy mound with its quickly hardening coral peak. She swept the sheet back up, and he rose, turning away, filled with a simmering, explosive tension.

“So it is your name,” he said dryly. “Who is the real Lady St. James, then?”

“I—I believe that my father’s brother’s wife, somewhere in England, now holds the title,” she murmured. “But my name is Martise St. James. And—” She broke off.

“And what?” he demanded.

“I loved Mary very much. She was my very good friend. As was Margaret.”

Something seemed to have eased a little about him. He leaned against the double doors and watched her, arms crossed idly over his chest. “Well, then, we are both just half imposters. Your name is real, your title is not. I am indeed Laird Creeghan, but I am not Bruce. Well, well, what else shall we learn?”

“You seem to know everything!” she cried passionately, kneeling up on the bed to face him. “By God, I don’t understand—”

“I saw Margaret in the States,” he told her. His eyes fell over her. Up on her knees, in the swirl of bedclothing, hair radiating all around her, impassioned and demanding, she was so tempting that he wanted to forget all that lay between them and sweep her hard into his arms, ignoring any protest, knowing that she was made for him to love. Even had he known that she was innocent, he could not have changed anything that had passed between them.

He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. He hadn’t wanted her here. There was a murderer about, and he had to discover who. Creeghan was his now, but it was in Bruce’s memory that he had vowed to find the killer.

But she was here, and she was involved. She had cast herself into the fire. It seemed he had no choice now but to try to explain it all.

“I knew your cousin well, though I knew others better,” he told her. “I went to school in the States, and I spent a great deal of time in Virginia. I was there, thinking about a purchase of land, when Virginia voted to secede from the Union. I wasn’t alone. Elaina’s fiancé, Niall MacNeill, was with me. And in the wild scramble of everything that was going on, I promised certain friends I would stay and fight. I was able to recruit a cavalry unit, and we joined up beneath Jeb Stuart. I didn’t expect to be gone so long,” he said.

“No one expected the war to go on so long,” Martise murmured. She had sat back on her haunches, lashes swept low over her cheeks. And for that one moment, it seemed they had each rested their hostilities and found a plateau of peace. For a moment he held silent.

“It was a long, long war,” he said at last. “Much longer than any of us intended. And being in the midst of it, following Stuart, from Manassas to Antietam to Gettysburg, I didn’t receive letters very often, but I did receive them. I knew my sister-in-law well, and she tried to write often. Cheerful letters usually, sometimes letters telling me that I should come home, and sometimes letters that were just genuinely happy.” He hesitated. “She and Bruce were very much in love. She thought he was the sun, and she was everything in life to him. But then the letters started to change.”

Martise inhaled sharply. So it had been with her.

“She was worried,” Bryan continued. “She was vague at first, but there was something in the letters, something between the lines. And when I’d hear from Elaina, she’d tell me that nothing was the same, and that she wanted Niall and me to come home. I didn’t know how to tell her that, even as a foreigner, I couldn’t just walk away from the war. Even when we knew that it was lost, we couldn’t walk away. We’d seen too many men die.”

He paused, and then Martise realized he wasn’t looking at her anymore. It was as if she weren’t even in the room, as if he spoke to himself. “Then I heard from Bruce. You should have known my brother. His honor, his people, his responsibilities toward bettering their lives … they were all the things that governed his life. He was diligent, and fine, as fine a man as I could have ever hoped to claim as a brother. And he was afraid of nothing.

“But in his last letters to me, he, too, had changed. He was frantic, telling me that he thought he was losing his mind. That there were ghosts at Creeghan. Lights in the middle of the night. Movements in the corridors, sounds from the crypts. And he searched, but he could never find anything. I wrote back that he should hold on, and never doubt his own sanity. Petersburg was falling, Stuart was dead, Jackson was dead, and more than half of my own men were dead. Then Lee surrendered, and I came home as quickly as I could.