By Desire Bound Page 4

  It was noticeable instantly. He stepped down into the dank cold air, five steps down, ten. And then there was grit and water beneath his feet, wet, icy cold, and their footsteps echoing faintly against the moist walls of the tunnel. And the sound of hinges squeaking, his foot hitting a stone step, and her band carefully guiding him up and into warmth and sanity.

  A long long moment while she listened for other voices. There was only a dead stark silence and then the scrape of a match as she lit the candle.

  "Come." He heard her unlatch another door and then she took his hand and pulled him forward.

  And then she stopped.

  "Where are we?"

  "In the reception hall," she whispered barely above a breath. "I'm looking at the portrait. It's you. "

  He stood as tight and still as if he were paralyzed. Something about this place was familiar. He had a sense of soaring space, and a scent that pricked his conscious­ness—but he had felt that about the tower too.

  He couldn't trust his senses. Darcie wanted him to be Con Pengellis too badly and it would be so easy to fall into that trap.

  Bong. . . the clock struck the half hour and he shud­dered.

  He knew that sound.

  No . . . !

  She propelled him forward, into the parlor.

  Here ... here—soft deep carpets, he knew them. The edge of a sofa, deeply carved and curved. He knew it The stones of the massive fireplace. Familiar.

  And always, always, the scent in the air, lurking in some hidden place, waiting for him to identity what it was, what he remembered.

  The dining room was next, and it was the same, just that spiralling feeling of something familiar but uniden­tifiable, something pushing the edges of his conscious­ness, waiting for one particular connection. Like turning up the flame on a gas fixture, and illuminating every­thing that had been in the dark.

  But no matter if he remembered, he would still be in the dark . . .

  A door slammed.

  "Oh my God," she breathed. "Lavinia's home." She doused the candle, and pushed him behind the thick dining room draperies. "Stay here."

  And she was gone. He grasped the thick damask cur­tains just to have something to hang onto. He knew these curtains; and the scent that was so familiar seemed to be caught in the folds.

  As he was caught in Darcie's fantasy. There wasn't a sane man alive, blind or sighted, who would have fallen for her story the way he had.

  Or had he just fallen for her?

  He gripped the curtains as he heard footsteps. And then the voice:

  "Salit!"

  Her voice.

  Whose voice?

  "Mem?" The liquid tones of her butler at the door of the dining room.

  "I trust all is quiet."

  "Just as you would wish."

  "She has not returned?"

  A flash in his mind: obsidian eyes . . . glittering, greedy,

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  her hands holding a large unprepossessing stone—she says it's not that one, not the one she wants . . . and he doesn 't care— "We watch and wait, mem."

  . . . he is dressed in white and always wears a turban . . . "See that you do."

  . . . she slaps a quirt against her thigh . . . always impa­tient, always filled with dark dreams . . . no, that one is not

  her . . .

  "She has not come." The voice of Salit, gently empha­sizing her well placed trust.

  Salit—•

  That was why . . .

  He understood now . . . he almost had it . . . and then, and then—everything went dark and slipped out of his grasp.

  "Shhh . . ."

  He was on the floor; somehow he had slipped down on the floor and Darcie was beside him, behind the curtain which was suffocating him with its scent.

  He almost had it, the scent, the voices, everything . . . and all he remembered was Darcie and her leaving him behind the curtain, and it was as if that curtain had closed off his mind entirely.

  "Come. We have to go."

  He crawled to his feet, and let her lead him.

  "We have to chance it—one more room. I don't think they'll come back again yet. She went up to her room."

  She. Yes. The voice. And something else he had remembered that now had slipped away.

  He followed, edging after her as best he could in a fog of disorienting feelings.

  "In here." She opened another door and guided him into another room.

  He knew this room.

  A different scent this time. Leather. Parchment. Some­thing else.

  He didn't resist when she took his hand and brushed it over the thick tufted chairs; the leather desktop; the glass inkwell; the leather-bound books, the ladder that ran on a brass track around the room.

  He knew it—and he didn't.

  And maybe she wasn't hoping for any epiphanies to­night. It was too dangerous to linger with that woman in the house.

  "We have to go."

  A nightmare passage back to the tower, as they edged their way back to the tunnel in the dark, desperately try­ing not to make a sound.

  We watch and wait, mem.

  Where? Where were they waiting? Who?

  He had a bad feeling about her going back to the house again.

  . . . Salit . . . bowing his turbaned head—he could see it, and then the picture was gone.

  "Stay here. I'm not done. We need food and clothes, and whatever I can find that we can sell."

  "We'll find some other way to do it." . . .we ... he had said it without thinking.

  "There is no other way. How else can I get food and money? I'll do that now, while they sleep. But you—you have to remember. I think you did, a little."

  "I don't know ... I think I recognize something, and then the thingjust slides away from me. The whole thing is too crazy, Darcie. It's too chancey for you to go back to the house."

  "I'll be back soon. Just. . .just don't do anything but think about what you felt, what was familiar. You are Con Pengellis. You just have to find the thing that will trigger your memory."

  She slipped away from him again. Holding onto her

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  was like trying to grasp the wind. She was so determined, and it worried him that the whole of her plan depended so heavily on his memory.

  No, Con Pengellis's memory.

  But. . . but—something flashed in his mind and spi­ralled away. The scent. The scent.. , he felt himself reach­ing for the idea of the scent. That was something real and tangible, something that connected somewhere in­side him.

  And all those pinpricks of recognition. Suggestion be­cause Darcie wanted it so much?

  . . . The clock . . .

  Faintly, in the distance, the sonorous gong—once, twice . . .

  . . . leather-topped desk, his hands pressing down, facing the back of the leather chair. .. I'm going—you 're crazy, but I won't stop you; we want it, if you find it, you 'II bring it back—you won't have it. . . obligation to the company—our money—my money, I made it—I made the company . . . bong, bong, bong— late late late so mother wouldn 't hear. . . between him and his conscience and—and . . . and . . . turn the chair around— speaking to who who— Who ? Scent of. . . what, permeating the room? Inhale, think—/ know that smell. . . I can just just just—taste it. . .

  Taste it. . . bong bong bong bong argument endless . . . he's eating—that's what. . . white turban—arguing. . . company the company all the time the company . . . And the smell . . . What is that smell?

  He shifted, rolling this way and that on the narrow bed, enclosed by the silence and the dark. It was all around him now, the scent, immersed in a dream.

  It was a dream, he thought from somewhere in the depths of it, but it was someone else's dream. And some­how he had to find a way to make it his own.

  Four

  Bong. . .

  "Hurry . . ." Someone shaking him,
whispering in

  his ear. "Shhh . . ."

  Dark, dark, dark ... he emerged from the dark sud­denly, violently, utterly disoriented, groping for the lo­cation of the voice. The voice . . . but it was a woman's voice ... a different voice—the clock . . . the voice, the smells, he was eating. He remembered that much—in the dream, some­one had been eating.

  "Con—" her voice, not the other one, barely above

  a breath.

  . . . watching and waiting . . .

  "We have to go." She grasped his arm and he shook her off. Not that voice, the one in the dream. Another voice, a different dream. . . . the company, always the com­pany . . .

  "Con . . ,"

  "What?" he answered ferociously, full voice.

  She winced. Dear God, if he failed them now . . . but he had answered to his name . . . ! "We have to get out of here—then we'll talk."

  "Who are you?"

  "I'm Darcie, remember?" Her patience was running out. This was a bad idea. He'd obviously had a dream,

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  and he had no idea who he was or the danger of the situation. "Please come."

  "Is she coming?"

  She managed to maneuver him to his feet. He sounded, he acted almost as if he were inebriated.

  "No. But she will. We have to get away from here."

  "Good idea," he muttered, and swayed against her containing arm around his waist.

  "Quick now; don't think. Be quiet. They're watching and waiting ..."

  . . . watching and waiting . . . the turban had said that to the voice. . . yes, this voice was right—they had to get away from her . . . even he knew that—

  The scent followed them, and the incessant bong of the clock.

  Bong, bong, bong, bong, bong. . . "It's almost dawn," she whispered as they stumbled down the tower steps.

  The scent was everywhere, in his consciousness, in his pores. He was eating . . . no, the other one was eating. And the company, he had made the company—yes— The image faded; the scent remained. "Quick ..." She thrust open the door and shoved him into the cold night air.

  He hated the dark, God, he hated it. Like he was swimming, drowning, pushing up up up for air, and there was no air, only the numbing reality of the dark, and death.

  She pushed him forward and he collided with a wheel.

  "I stole a cart and a horse. Hurry."

  He fumbled for the step, feeling her hands guiding him, cursing his inadequacies. The horse was restive, dancing, moving, he couldn't get purchase to hoist him­self up and into it.

  And he was so confused, so bewildered. Everything

  was fuzzy, indistinct; he didn't understand about the cart, the horse, her.

  But the scent was gone, and the ominous bong of the clock . . .

  She pushed him and heaved him up, face first, into the cart, and clambered up and over him. He heard the snap of the reins and the cart lurched forward, and he pitched backward onto a pile of things. And then he lay very still.

  She glanced back at him quickly, but she didn't have time to tend to him. She didn't have time for anything but getting as far into the woods and out of sight of the Abbey as possible. And she had chosen the oldest, the calmest of horses, the one who wouldn't get spooked, unruly, or disturbed by a blind man fumbling all around it. One that would stand still, and respond to her unfa­miliar commands.

  But it was the slowest animal on God's earth, and it plodded at a sedate pace that was as nerve-racking as watching a child's first steps as the first light of dawn rimmed the horizon.

  Her heart pounded like a sledgehammer. Dear God, what had she done? Made things worse was what. And now he was in a stupor, and so disoriented, her every plan was shot to hell.

  It took too much time to reach the shadow of the trees, and she grit her teeth as she pulled hard on the reins and brought the cart to a stop. There was no shel­ter here. She twisted around to check on Con; he was sprawled across the bag of clothes and food that she had appropriated, and he looked either unconscious or asleep.

  Maybe this was better. He could only be a hindrance in his present condition, and she had a half-dozen de­cisions she needed to make right now. For both of them.

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  He was hers now for real, she thought, though her dream of acquiring The Eye of God was beginning to seem like the fairy tale he thought it was.

  What if she had damaged him with her precipitate return to Goole? What if he never remembered any­thing more than he knew now? She'd have to come to terms with it. She'd lost the gamble. She let the words sink in slowly. She'd lost. Only she didn't feel as if it were over. Something told her it wasn't over.

  But if Lavinia or Salit had seen them ... it would be over.

  Fear shot through her. She jumped down from her perch and edged out toward the open field, trying to quell her panic. Thank God, he was still as limp as the morning laundry; that was a blessing right now. She needed to concentrate, to think logically and to see if she could sense anything.

  She took a deep cleansing breath. Reasonably, it was too early for anyone at the Abbey to have found the horse and cart missing. But she had to get moving. Day­light was creeping over the horizon, and the stable-hands would be about soon. And when the thefts were discovered, Lavinia would know she was the culprit.

  Lavinia wouldn't give up looking for her. Lavinia wanted the child.

  She flattened her hands against her belly. The danger wasn't over yet. She felt that as clearly as if it were a spoken thought.

  But at this point, it didn't matter where they went, but maybe it made sense to go as far from London as possible. Maybe toward Portsmouth, she thought, where there would be places to sell the items she'd stolen and obtain papers if they should need them.

  Yes, Portsmouth. It felt right in her bones, and she always listened to those feelings. The threat she sensed

  was still beyond—and far away. She would not be able to outrun it. All she could do was find a place of safety and security and consider what next to do.

  He slept. Through the whole horrible excruciating journey, he slept and she worried, about the stamina of the horse, about Lavinia following them, about his memory, the course she'd chosen, and she berated her­self for her folly, her gambler's nature, her feckless soul.

  She sat in a slipper rocker beside his bed in a small inn at Savernake, and rocked gently back and forth, feeling for the moment safe. And guilty for telling the innkeeper a storehouse of lies.

  Con was her brother, she told him. They had driven out to the country for a picnic. He'd fallen. He was conscious, but he had fallen asleep, and she couldn't travel with him in this condition.

  They needed a doctor, and "a doctor was duly sum­moned to lend credence to the lie, even though it cost her a precious couple of pounds. It was worth it, to maintain the fiction.

  And Con had slept, through the bouncing and jounc­ing of the cart all those long miles, through the awkward lifting of him into the inn, through the doctor's per­functory examination, and now, as her demons receded into the darkness, he slept through the night.

  An owl screeched outside the window and she jerked awake. She'd slept. What a fine thing, to find a moment in the midst of her turmoil to sleep. She'd thought she would never sleep again.

  She leaned over and checked on Con. He looked so peaceful, as if nothing had disturbed him in the past twenty-four hours. She wished she could penetrate his mind and unlock his memories. All it would take was

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  one connection, one detail recognized, and she would have the key to a fortune.

  All she could do was keep trying, she thought. But that was her nature. She had learned long ago how to keep moving and chase the dream.

  They had to keep moving, she amende
d her thought, even with a lumberous horse and a rickety cart, and she had to believe his memory would return.

  I'm funding this myself, he told them. This has nothing to do with the company. You'll have no claim on it. You won't get a piece of it—

  If it exists. Roger, skeptical, petulant.

  It's my risk. And it will be my gain.

  Roger hadn 't liked that. Roger was too eager to take over the Company and everything else. But even having control of Pengellis-Becarre in South Africa was not enough for him.

  It would have to be enough. He had decided that long ago, when he had first decided to undertake the quest. It would be all his, something apart from Lavinia and Roger and all the Pengellises before them.

  Bong, bong, bong. The clock tolled the hours of their secret meeting.

  A knock on the door—Lavinia, barging in, followed by Salit carrying a tray. Always there, Lavinia, never leaving a soul in peace. Playing the mother when she really wanted to play God.

  And food was the excuse.

  Salit set the tray down on the leather-covered desk and un­covered the plates. The scent of cumin wafted up from the tray—

  . . . the scent. . . the scent—

  He bolted upright, his heart pounding. The scent, Spices. Spices. He swallowed, almost as if he could taste

  them. Spices, always a part of the meal. The cooks La­vinia had imported on the advice of Salit to recreate the food of her childhood.

  Spices. Oh my God.

  But he remembered nothing else about the dream except the spices.

  Maybe it was enough. One tenuous thread linking him to the fantastic tales of Scheherazade.

  He groped his way around the bed. The scent was different, the sense of his surroundings. The bed and its coverings. The wall—smooth and plastered. This was a new and different place, and he couldn't remember how he'd gotten there.

  Where is she?

  He slipped to the edge of the bed, and reached out a hand, blind, blind, blind. She was there, in a chair beside the bed, her skin warm to his touch.

  Reassured, he eased back against the pillow and closed his eyes.