Gift of Fire (14 page)

“Good idea. And in the meantime…” Verity stopped, peering intently out the window. “Jonas, he’s gone.”

“Who’s gone?” He followed her gaze down to the dark fountain. “You mean Spencer? Maybe the man had enough sense to come in out of the rain, after all.”

“He could have come back here, Jonas. He had enough time to get back into this room and pull the chair out of the passage doorway. Maybe that’s why the door closed on us.”

Jonas considered that, his eyes darkening. “I locked the bedroom door. How could he have gotten in?”

“Who knows? There may be plenty of keys floating around. The locks on the doors here in the south wing appear to be relatively new.”

Jonas gave her another small, affectionate shake. “I don’t think it’s very likely. He couldn’t have known about the corridor, and he wouldn’t have dared try to come back into this room knowing I’d be in here with you. Besides, the man was falling-down drunk; he was just about unconscious by the time I dumped him in that fountain.”

“Well, he recovered sufficiently to get himself out of the pool,” Verity pointed out.

Jonas studied the shadowed garden. “You’re right, he did. I guess I didn’t hit him hard enough.”

“I just want you to know that if he sues, you’re the one who’s going to have to explain everything to the insurance investigator.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll come up with something,” Jonas said, not the least concerned. His mind was definitely on something else now. He put his arms around Verity’s slender waist and drew her back against his thighs. His jeans were drawn taut across his burgeoning manhood. “In fact,” he murmured into her ear, “something is already coming up.”

“You can’t possibly be thinking of…of sex when there’s a body lying not more than fifteen feet away.”

“Don’t look so shocked. You’re such a little prude, you know that? I keep telling you, that body’s already been there for a couple of years. It won’t bother us.” He unzipped his jeans with one hand, keeping his other arm around her middle. His rigid shaft sprang free. Jonas eased Verity back again so that she could feel him through her quilted robe.

“Jonas, I’m shocked. I really think you should show a little more respect in a situation like this.”

“Don’t tell me you’re not as excited as I am. Going into that psychic corridor always has this effect on both of us.” He grabbed a fistful of robe and raised it up above her waist. His hands closed lovingly over the soft, firm flesh of her derriere. “Lean forward, honey,” he whispered against her nape. “Brace your hands on the window ledge.”

“Jonas, this is embarrassing. Someone might see us through the window.”

“No one will see us. Everyone’s in this wing. You’d have to be in another wing of the villa to see into this window.” He remembered belatedly how he himself had been in another wing earlier that evening and had had a perfectly good view of this bedroom. He reached out and turned off the bedside light. “Better?”

“No.”

“Come on, honey, stop arguing. You know you want this as much as I do. Damn, you feel good.” He urged her to bend forward until she was forced to grip the window ledge. Her rounded buttocks tilted upward invitingly, exposing her warm, womanly channel to access from behind.

“Honestly, Jonas, there’s a perfectly good bed right over there that we can use if you insist on this. I don’t see why you have to…Wait a minute. What are you doing? I think this might come under the heading of kinky. If you think I’m going to let you…Oh,
Jonas.
”

He gripped her thighs and held her firmly in position while he probed the silken sheath. He felt her tighten in reaction to his penetration and he pushed harder, sliding heavily into her damp heat. He groaned as the dewy folds closed around him, and moved one hand to the front of her thighs to find the sensitive bud hidden in the tight red curls. Verity shivered in his arms and her head tipped back. “You feel so wonderful, sweetheart. So good.”

“Jonas.” She sighed passionately. Her hair cascaded down her back. Her lips were parted and her eyes were closed.

She gave herself to him in hot, welcoming, passionate surrender, the way she always did. At least when he was making love to her, she was fully aware of him, Jonas thought. He lost himself in the pulsing ecstasy of the moment, aware on some level that somewhere along the line Verity Ames had become as necessary to him as breathing. He could not imagine life without her.

It had become very important that she feel the same way about him, he realized. He would use sex or anything else he could to keep that withdrawn, introspective look out of her eyes. He couldn’t let her leave him, mentally or physically. He needed her.

Jonas had learned over the past few months that when he was with Verity, he was home.

Verity was up before Jonas the next morning. She awakened with an instant awareness of what needed to be done.

“We’ll have to talk to Maggie Frampton,” she reminded her sleepy-eyed lover as she urged him out of bed and into the shower. “If we get downstairs early enough, we might have a chance to interview her before any of the others show up for breakfast.”

“The trouble with business managers is that they rarely consider the well-being of the troops. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“Whose fault is that?” she demanded without sympathy. “Hurry up and get dressed.”

They found Maggie Frampton humming to herself in the kitchen. She was whipping up pancake batter and seemed startled to see them. She had on another faded print shirtwaist from her vast collection of housedresses, this one with small dots all over it. The chain around her neck disappeared beneath the prim white collar.

“Well, hello there. You two are up bright and early. Didn’t think any of this crowd were what you’d call early risers. How about some coffee? Got some made over there on the counter. Old Digby always had to have his coffee first thing in the morning. Doctor told him he shouldn’t drink the stuff, but Digby said he needed it to get his heart started. Help yourself.”

“Thanks, Maggie.” Verity poured two cups and handed one to Jonas.

“How’s the big treasure hunt going?” Maggie asked as she lifted a stack of chipped crockery out of a cupboard.

“You know about that?” Jonas asked.

“I hear Little Miss Sunshine wants you to keep an eye out for it while you’re writin’ up the report on the villa. Talk about a waste of time and energy. Digby spent years going through this place and never found a dime.”

Jonas cleared his throat. “As a matter of fact, we wanted to see if you could help us, Maggie. You must have been closer to Hazelhurst than anyone else. You lived here with him for several years, I take it?”

“This villa’s been my home since I moved here twenty-three years ago come June.” Maggie sighed wistfully. “I miss the old coot. Seemed like he was hornier than the devil himself most of the time, but I didn’t mind. Him and me, we got along fine together. After he disappeared, my sister down in Portland kept tellin’ me I should get off this island. But I can’t bring myself to do it. This place is home—I can’t just up and leave. Digby would have wanted me to stay on here, I know it. He used to say so.”

“What exactly did he say, Maggie?” Verity asked gently. She sensed the unhappiness lying just beneath the surface in Maggie Frampton. It was obvious the woman still mourned Digby Hazelhurst.

Maggie rattled a pan and sniffed. She blinked rapidly a few times and then went on in a steadier voice. “Digby said this place was ours—his and mine. He’d have wanted me to keep an eye on it. The villa meant the world to him. He always said I was the only one who never laughed at him, the only one who understood. Claimed if anything ever happened to him, he’d see to it I got to stay here as long as I wanted. But after he disappeared, there wasn’t no will. Digby never got around to writin’ one up. Just like him to put it off until it was too late. In the end, the court and a bunch of lawyers gave it to Doug and Elyssa.”

“Doug and Elyssa will have to sell it,” Verity pointed out gently. “They can’t afford to keep it. How did Digby expect you to be able to pay the taxes and keep the place running?”

“You’ll laugh, but the truth was, Digby always said that when he found the treasure there’d be plenty of money to run this place in style. He had big plans to buy back all the furniture and paintings he had to sell off over the years. He wanted to restore the villa to the way it must have looked back in the sixteenth century. Oh, he had lots of fine plans, Digby did. And I was gonna help him with ‘em. We was a team, him and me.”

“Too bad he never found the treasure he searched for all those years,” Jonas commented, leaning back casually against the counter as he sipped coffee.

“I never did believe in that story about a treasure, though I’ll have to admit findin’ it would have been great,” Maggie said. “But I used to think that for Digby, most of the fun was in the looking, you know?”

Verity found her remark unexpectedly insightful. “I can understand that,” she said quietly. “You and Digby were obviously very close.”

Maggie nodded. “You bet your jeans we were close. He didn’t have no one else. His academic friends abandoned him as the years went by, and as for family, well! You’d have thought he was an orphan.”

“What about Doug and Elyssa?” Jonas asked sharply.

“You think they ever bothered to visit Digby much before he died? Not on your life. Oh, Doug did come out here once or twice a few years back, but that was about it. Little Miss Sunshine never showed any interest in the villa till after she and Doug inherited it. Now all she can talk about is finding the treasure. Fat chance,” Maggie concluded in satisfaction. “If Digby couldn’t find it, she sure as heck won’t be able to.” She glanced quickly at Jonas. “And neither will you. Not unless you’re a lot smarter than Digby, which ain’t very likely.”

Jonas nodded soberly. “You’re probably right. Digby was quite smart, even brilliant in some ways. I read some of his early investigations into the nature of Renaissance science. They were first-class. Hazelhurst was a scholar in the old-fashioned sense. I still remember how much I learned about the Renaissance mind from a piece he wrote on sixteenth-century anatomy studies. He understood those men, knew how they thought.”

A reminiscent gleam appeared in Maggie’s eyes. “Anatomy was one of Digby’s favorite subjects, all right. Whenever I think about some of those nights the two of us spent studying it down in that torture chamber I just kinda melt inside.” The gleam faded and was replaced by a hint of moisture. Maggie wiped the back of her hand across her eyes.

Verity choked on her coffee. When Jonas reached over to pound her between the shoulders, she saw the laughter in his gold eyes.

“Maggie, did Hazelhurst ever tell anyone besides Doug and Elyssa about the treasure? Did he ever ask anyone else to help him hunt for it?” Jonas inquired.

Maggie opened the refrigerator and removed a tub of butter. “Sure. A few. Not many, though. Couldn’t trust most folks. And he damn sure didn’t want no one but historians hearing about the treasure. Real insistent on that, he was. But every so often he’d think he was making real progress, and he’d get excited and invite some old pal from his teaching days to stay here for a while. He’d tell ‘em about the legend and swear ‘em to secrecy. Sometimes they’d get curious enough to help him look for a while. None of ‘em ever stayed interested for too long. It always hurt Digby real bad that none of his pals from the university believed him.”

“Did he try to get anyone else to believe him?” Jonas asked. “Someone from outside the academic world?”

Maggie shook her head. “Not really. He only told men he considered real scholars. Never invited nobody but scholars here, said they were the only ones who could appreciate it. Except for Doug, that is. He did tell Doug. Said his nephew was kin and deserved to know about the legend, even if he didn’t have time to help him look for it.”

“Those are the only people he might have told about the legend?” Jonas prodded. “A few friends from his teaching days and Doug?”

Maggie’s forehead wrinkled for a moment in concentration. “Well, there was one other. A young hotshot grad student who showed up claiming he’d heard about the legend from a professor. The kid claimed he was getting a degree in history, with a specialization in Renaissance art. Said he was curious about the villa and the legend, and wondered if Digby would let him help look for the treasure. He said it would be the chance of a lifetime to work with a scholar of Digby’s reputation and all that malarkey. Said if they found the treasure, he’d write up the find in a fancy journal, and Digby would get all the credit.”

“Did Mr. Hazelhurst let him help with the search?” Verity asked.

“For a while. Digby was gettin’ a bit past it by then, if you know what I mean.” Maggie tapped her temple with a forefinger. “For a time I think he was just glad someone from the academic world was interested enough to help him search again. But he sent the kid packing soon enough. Said the kid was just a two-bit treasure hunter, not a real scholar, and it would be a cold day in hell before he ever got a Ph.D. after his name.”

“Did anyone else ever get out here to the island?” Jonas asked.

“Over the years a couple of cheap treasure-hunter types contacted Digby saying they’d heard about the legend, but Digby never gave ‘em the time of day. Never let ‘em come to the island. Claimed he’d never turn this place over to a real treasure hunter because that type wouldn’t have any understanding or appreciation of the history locked up here.”

“What about you, Maggie?” Verity asked. “Did you ever help Digby look for the treasure? You must have known a lot about the progress he was making.”

Maggie concentrated intently on her breakfast preparations. “Sure, I helped out when I could. Held the ladder for him when he went inch by inch over the ceiling, that sort of thing.”

“Did you ever believe the treasure might exist?” Verity asked gently.

Maggie paused in her work and stood gazing out the window into the weedy courtyard. “I had a few hopes during those first years after I came to live here, but that was about it. I stayed on account of Digby, not because of the treasure. Lord, I miss that man.”