Sylvie Kurtz - Blackmailed Bride

His memory drifted to the real Alana and their last night together. How sweet the taste of her final breath in his mouth! He tugged the cuff of his shirt over the faint scar of scratches on his wrists. The bitch. She deserved what she got. They all did.

Perhaps he could use this resemblance to his advantage. Use her to put the final screw in his revenge when he exposed her treachery. Then he’d set his trap and watch Jonas’s world fall apart. Watch Jonas lose all claims to the trust fund, to his research, to his future. Watch Jonas as he realized he was doomed to die the same horrid death his father had died—painful, destructive.

Yes, he could make this work to his advantage. He would watch and manipulate. He would stir the pot of suspicion. The lies would be exposed. Then he’d have his revenge…and more.

CATHLYNN FOLLOWED Valentin up and down the meandering, dimly lit corridors to a set of stairs carved straight out of the gray stone. The cool, damp air chilled her to the bone. She tried to shake the uneasiness licking at her heels, then shifted her concentration to memorizing the path they followed, but one colorless stone wall pretty much looked like the next, and she lost count of the multitude of shadowed arched doors with black iron locks they passed.

“The place doesn’t look this big from the outside,” Cathlynn said, trying to dispel the gloomy silence between them.

“Non, madame.”

“Do you ever get lost?” Cathlynn asked with a forced chuckle. The eerie clipping of her footsteps behind the butler’s silent ones on the stone stairs reminded her irrationally of a prisoner being led to his execution.

“Non, madame.”

Valentin, it seemed, was not a man of many words. Between Jonas’s glowering silences and Valentin’s sparse conversation, this could prove to be a very long two weeks.

“It must be hard to keep up with the housework.”

“Most of the house is closed, and in the summer we hire staff to keep up appearances for the weekend guided tours. Curiosity about the monks’ legend brings them in.”

“I’m not familiar with the legend.”

“The curse of the Holy Cross Brotherhood.”

“Ah.” Cathlynn couldn’t think of anything else to say as she followed Valentin’s ramrod-stiff penguin gait.

When they turned into an upstairs hallway, the walls’ wraithlike shadows reached out for her again. Their cold, clammy fingers snatched at her hair, prickling the base of her neck with a feeling of coming doom. She quickly reached back to brush the uncomfortable feeling away, half expecting her fingers to twine into the sticky ectoplasm of a ghost. Instead, they met only empty space.

Beware.

The whisper echoed eerily inside her head, erupting a series of shivers down her spine.

“Does anyone besides you and Jonas live here?” she asked, sure a logical conclusion could be found for her auditory hallucination.

“No one, madame.” He paused for an instant. “Except perhaps the ghosts.”

“Ghosts?” Cathlynn had a feeling Valentin wanted to scare her deliberately. Why? Whatever the reason, his tactic was definitely working. Cathlynn couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this spooked about anything, and wondered again at the wisdom of her decision to stay. I’m safe, she repeated to herself like a mantra. The joy she’d bring her grandmother with the Aidan Heart was worth a few nights in a scary house. It couldn’t be worse than the sleepless nights she’d spent after listening to some of her brother’s ghost stories.

“The monks, madame. They lived and died here for a century before disappearing.”

“What happened to them?”

“Their secret was discovered.”

“Their secret?” She almost wished Valentin had stuck to one-word answers. The old geezer was giving her a bad case of the creeps.

He shook his head. “Too unspeakable to mention.” He stopped by a door and clinked keys from a large brass ring until he found the right one. Probably enjoying the macabre echo they created as the noise bounced off the stone walls, Cathlynn thought. “Their legacy lives on.”

His answer left her imagination to run rampant with dastardly possibilities. Fourteen more days of this. She’d scare herself to death before she could take the Aidan Heart home.

Valentin unlocked the door and handed her the key before he stepped inside the room and flicked on the lights. “This was Madame Alana’s room.”

The house’s stony coldness extended to this room. Cathlynn felt out of place in the large room’s opulence. Not that she didn’t appreciate the fineries of life, but this room, despite its picture-perfect decor, lacked something. Her own house in Nashua might be small, but each room radiated a feeling of warmth, a feeling of life. She found this room’s rigid formality depressing.

Yards of sheer material draped the large bed’s canopy. A rich coverlet of emerald and gold, decorated with a dozen pillows in all shapes and sizes, lay over the mattress. Valentin snapped open the heavy emerald brocade curtains trimmed with gold, covering the single window. The darkening gray sky didn’t allow in much light. If anything, it heightened the caged feeling, increasing Cathlynn’s uneasiness.

A huge English walnut wardrobe crowded the back wall. Valentin opened the double doors. “I doubt many of these clothes fit you, but…”

Cathlynn stuck her tongue out at the butler’s back. Not that she’d want to fit in them, anyway. From what she could see, Alana’s taste in clothes might be expensive, but it lacked subtlety. “I’ll get some of my own stuff tomorrow.”

“As you wish, madame.”

Cathlynn walked to the small vanity and trailed a finger along the dust on the old wood. This house with all its empty rooms and cavernlike corridors would dampen her natural optimism if she let it. Was that why Alana had left? Had the incredible sadness of the house finally overcome her?

“What was she like—Alana?” Cathlynn asked as she picked up a silver brush scrolled with a fancy S from the tray on the vanity.

“It is not my place to answer your questions.” Valentin bustled about at amazing speed for someone so frail-looking. He heaped the decorative pillows onto the carved trunk at the end of the bed, turned down the coverlet, then opened the heavy wood door next to the vanity. “The bathroom is through here. There are fresh towels behind the door.”

“You don’t approve, do you?” Cathlynn asked as she replaced the brush in its exact position, then turned to face the stern butler.

“It is not my place to pass judgment.”

“I’m not trying to replace her.”

“As I said, madame, it is not my place to say. But…”

“But what?”

Valentin’s balding pate, beaked nose and loose jowl skin reminded her of an aging eagle. He searched her face with a narrowed gaze, then as if changing his mind, he shrugged. “Madame Alana’s disappearance has saddened us all.”

“I’m sure it has…” Cathlynn felt sure he’d wanted to say something else.

He bowed and backed out the door. “If you need anything, madame, the intercom is by the door. Ring the service button and someone will answer.”

He made it sound as if the house teemed with servants. “Thank you, Valentin.”

“Soyez prudente,” Valentin mumbled as he left.

What had he said? Before Cathlynn could ask for an explanation, Valentin shut the door with a resounding boom that echoed down the empty corridor like a small explosion. She looked at the ancient key in her hand. At least he hadn’t locked her in. She could leave at any time. With a sigh she went to the window. Maybe she should leave.

The snow fell in fat weighted flakes that stuck to the glass with the wind’s force. Shapeless white blanketed the cobbled courtyard. The last of the auction goers were leaving, their headlights cutting bright arcs across the darkening sky. Only her own Volvo remained—a white mound in the flat yard.