By Desire Bound Read online

  Spices. The thought flowed away from him like a stream.

  The last he remembered, they were in the tower.

  And the clock. Bong, bong, bong, bong. . . . . . The longest journey of his life . . . plotting, planning, digging . . . disappointments. Thieves. Lies. Loss. Pursuit. Scenes speeding past him like a train gone out of control. And then into a tunnel, a dark dank dungeon, crashing into the wall. Dead and gone, as if he never existed.

  Bong, bong, bong, bong. . .

  Another clock, a lighter more musical sound now, and some­where below. But there was no below; he was below, deep deep deep in a hole that only God could find . . .

  No! He wasn 't going to think about the hole . . . and the putrid food they threw at him as if he were a dog . . .

  Animal; he'd become an animal. Everything he remembered,

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  everything he was, he subjugated to the rage to survive and escape.

  Bong, bong, bong, bong, bong. . . He jerked awake again, his arms flailing. "Con?" Her voice was soft as rain. "Where are we?" It seemed like he was always asking that question.

  "Far away from Goole."

  He swung his long legs over the bed, and rubbed his face. He felt as scruffy as a chimney sweep, and his mouth was thick with an unholy thirst.

  He looked focused, Darcie thought, he looked . . . there, and she felt a huge swing of hope. It wasn 't over. "There's food," she said. "It's cold, but it's edible. There's some wine. There's water to drink and in the basin. It's cold, but it'll do for a quick wash. What do you want to do first?" "Damned if I know."

  She poured him some water. He drank it greedily and gestured for more. Then she helped him wash up, and set what was left of dinner in front of him.

  He tackled it with a gusty appetite that was heartening to see. She studied him carefully as he ate, trying to discern what was different. He was alert and fully awake now, and she thought there was an attentiveness about him that there hadn't been before. "Con?"

  He looked up sharply, and her heart leaped. He had answered to his name again. It wasn't over. . . She cleared her throat. "We're going to Portsmouth." "Why is that, Miss Darcie?"

  "It makes sense. It's away from London, and we can get anything we need there. And I don't think Lavinia will think of looking for us there. She'd more likely try Dover."

  "It sounds like we're going someplace," he mur­mured. "Where would that be?"

  "Wherever the diamond is," Darcie said sharply, "whenever you remember."

  "Ah, the diamond . . ." The diamond . . . the minute the word struck his consciousness, he felt himself fall­ing. The diamond—not meant for man to find . . . he'd held it in his hands, the weight of it almost insupportable . . . he saw himself lifting it, marveling at it... the myth, the story, the tale of a thousand years—and then somewhere outside of it, alone, on the ground as if he had been blasted from its very presence . . . He'd dreamt it. He knew he'd dreamt it. And then they put him down the hole . . .

  He shook himself, pulling himself out of the black­ness, and away from the splendor. He sensed her watch­ing him.

  "An eye for an eye," she said softly.

  "I remember." His voice was rough with frustration.

  "What else do you remember, Con? I know you're starting to remember."

  He didn't answer. He didn't want to remember. Who was this Darcie Boulton who was forcing him to remem­ber? Roger's wife. The perfidious Roger's wife. The dead Roger's wife, who was carrying his child. How could he trust her? All he could trust was his sense that she was in love with him. No, with Con Pengellis, the man in the portrait.

  And that wasn't him. He was a shell of the man he'd been. A husk, hollowed out by forces out of his control. Blinded by greed, youth, fame, and the need to always be in the spotlight. Arrogant Con Pengellis, setting off on a quest that was worthy of the Arabian Nights.

  A legend in his own time. The story read well, though it didn't quite go the way he had planned. What did that matter? Con Pengellis had died for a madman's

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  dream. It was only fitting that he should be brought back to life by a madwoman in love with that dream.

  How much of what she told him was real? Even he couldn't define the line because he didn't know what was real and what was the dream. All he could see was the darkness. And now, imprinted in his memory, in his touch, the weight of the jewel he'd died for; the taste of the greed that had saved him.

  A fairy tale, without the ending; her kiss would not turn him into a prince.

  "Some of it," be said finally. "Some of it's coming back."

  "Then you know you are Con Pengellis."

  "I'm someone named Con Pengellis," he corrected. "I'm not the man in the portrait."

  But he was, she thought. He was. Only older and more dangerous, especially as be honed his senses against his frustration with his blindness. She had to bring him back on course, make him understand that the threat from Lavinia was real, and that he could not renege on the bargain. Nothing could get in the way of that. Nothing.

  "You're the man who knows where to find a legend­ary diamond," she said pointedly. "And that's close enough for me."

  "We're going to sell the horse and cart, and hire a coach to take us to Whitechapel," she announced after he had finished eating and she'd called for a pot of tea. "It would take us a week to get there otherwise."

  "That's rather profligate," he commented.

  She shrugged. "It's Lavinia's money. And I don't think you are taking her threat seriously. You under­stand, if you turn up alive, you are a hero. You can claim

  everything Roger took from you, and you'll still know where to find the diamond. Do you think for one mo­ment that Lavinia will stand for that, if she and Roger kept you incarcerated all those years because you wouldn't reveal its location? Do you think she'll let you live now that she's running the company? Or that you'll die this time without telling her?"

  Lavinia. The other voice locked in his memory. He shook his head as if he were trying to grasp something. Some­thing about the voice . . .

  "Lavinia wants the baby," she whispered. "We have to protect the baby."

  . . . the baby . . . yes, she'd said something about a baby— and it was all jumbled up with the voice, and his flooding memories . . .

  "I saved your life. I want my share of the diamond."

  Always the diamond, always the greed and the desire for power... he hadn't been immune himself, he thought, but Darcie Boulton was something else again. And what was the diamond? He knew that now: it was something to balance out the fates, exactly as nature intended.

  All the pieces tumbling around in his mind like dice. Luck and the throw of the dice—he'd played Hazard and gone down the hole, just like Alice, into a dark upside down world where nothing made sense. And now, the Queen of Hearts was after him, and he was years too late. And anyway, the thing probably wasn't even there . . .

  There—where"? That was the question . . . and the price that had bought his life. And now he was fully aware that Darcie was waiting to collect.

  "I have no memory of that," he said into the dark­ness. God, he cursed the darkness. He needed to see her eyes, her face. He couldn't sense a thing except her stillness.

  "But you will," she said finally. "And we'll go there,

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  and you'll think about it, and you'll remember. We'll wait in Portsmouth until then."

  It would take a day to get to Portsmouth by coach and by train; he stared unseeingly into the darkness as their carriage careened down the connecting roads from Savernake to Whitechurch, and a tide of memo­ries careened through his mind.

  Think . . . he'd had enough of that for a lifetime. How many years in a dungeon, with the rats and his ferocious de
termi­nation not to lose his mind and keep his secret? All they wanted was the location of the diamond. The biggest, most valuable uncut octahedron ever discovered. A legend no one believed existed except him, and from the moment he believed, others did too.

  He'd known he was being followed as he made preparations for his journey. Roger, certainly, because Roger had been en­raged that his quest was not all for the company. Roger had been a company man, and insanely jealous of him. He had known Roger would usurp everything when he was gone.

  But Roger wouldn 't appropriate the diamond. The diamond was his, if he could find it, if he could claim it. If, if, if. . .

  He closed his eyes against the crushing memories that were as real as if they were happening right before his eyes.

  They'd caught him in Delhi, on one of his sojourns into the city for supplies. And they had no mercy. They wanted The Eye of God, and nothing less would appease them. And he refused to tell.

  They thought isolation and imprisonment would loosen his tongue. They thought the beatings, the torture, the moldy food would debilitate him, and instead he became more determined more indomitable, able to withstand the most heinous cruelties, ready to die rather than divulge the location of the diamond.

  They wanted to kill him.

  Some powerful hand stayed his execution. The barbarians

  could not gnaw on his bones, and until his captor possessed his knowledge, he knew he would live. But how he escaped, he couldn't remember. And how he got from where he'd been to a bordello in London was a complete blank in his mind.

  No matter. The important things were still there: the sharp­ness of mind, the decisiveness, the hunger, the memories. He ought to have been grateful he'd only lost one of his senses.

  But if he were planning to go after the diamond, he thought, he might have lost them all. . .

  They had an hour layover before they changed for the train to Portsmouth. They arrived at dusk and Dar-cie stepped out first into the crisp night air and stopped so abruptly that he walked right into her.

  She felt it there, on the platform, that sense of lin­gering evil, suffocating and aware.

  "Oh my God," she whispered, clutching his arm. "Oh my God. We can't stay here, Con. I can't explain it, but it's not safe—/ swear ..."

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  Five

  It was the worst of hotels, but the best she could do with the furies following them. When she finally closed the door of the room, she still felt the pull of amor­phous lurking evil, and that somehow he might be a part of it.

  But how so? She had found him; no one else knew he was alive. And she'd left no clue to their whereabouts at Goole—and yet all around her, she sensed a foulness that didn't bode well. Lavinia could not have known they were coming here, but she couldn't take the chance.

  "We have a lot to do in the morning," she told him briskly. "We're going to France before Lavinia finds us."

  That shocked him. It was too soon. Too fast. And he was deeply suspicious of her desire to move quickly. "You've assured me time and again, Lavinia knows nothing about us."

  "I'm not so sure now."

  He felt a chill. They were on the edge of nowhere because of her certainty about Lavinia. He didn't like this new permutation at all. "The story suddenly changes? How convenient, Darcie."

  "It would be more convenient if you remembered the location of the diamond," she snapped. "That's all

  I care about; that's all the payment I want for saving your miserable life."

  "And if you hadn't, you'd probably be exactly where you are now. Roger's widow and on the run from La­vinia, if your story about the baby is even true. What difference is a chip of a legendary diamond going to make?" he asked venomously.

  "All the difference in my life. And maybe yours." "I'm better off dead," he said brutally, "and the dia­mond left buried."

  "Unless someone else finds it," she retorted. "Some­one else could find it. Roger caught you, so they must have some idea where to look."

  He went completely still, every nerve in his body on alert, cursing his blindness, and his inability to see what should have been obvious before.

  She was either his savior—or his assassin, and she could be his whore. But there was more than one side to this equation, and it was time to dig out more.

  He smiled mirthlessly. "That's right. Roger's men caught me. I remember now."

  He was slipping away suddenly, and she didn't know what to do to contain him. She couldn't tell him about her feelings; he wouldn't understand them, or believe them. She had no leverage at all except his waning grati­tude for her saving him. And right now it sounded as if he wished she hadn't tried.

  "Stop it! You couldn't recall a thing until I took you to Goole. You need me and I need you." "I was probably better off," he muttered. "That diamond is worth a bloody fortune. And you found it. You have to claim it before someone else does."

  "So you can exact your tithe for saving me."

  No use lying. "Exactly," she said. "What's wrong with

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  that? What would have happened to you otherwise? I might still have come to Portsmouth—but you might be dead. And if you survived all those years in captivity, you don't want to die. Or to have your secrets to die with you."

  She was so so clever. Everything she said was designed to galvanize him toward the goal of retrieving the dia­mond. She didn't know what she was asking for. He was staring to remember, piece by piece, bit by bit, all dredged up from that dark place in his soul.

  The darkness was the key to everything. Even a dia­mond could be buried in darkness.

  "If we go to France, there's less of a chance we'll be followed," she said.

  "If anyone is after us at all."

  "Don't do that, Con. The danger is very real. You don't know Lavinia."

  "I'm staying here for the moment," he said obdu­rately. "You can go on without me."

  "What will you use for money? How will you get around? Are you insane?"

  "Hell, I probably got from Portsmouth to London by myself. I'll just do it again."

  "You'll be killed before you leave Hants. Why are you doing this?"

  He was amused he ever thought she would abandon him. "Just trying to get a fix on who you are, Darcie Boulton. And how much I can trust you."

  "You can trust me," she whispered, her voice break­ing.

  It was an excellent touch, so sincere. A man could melt under the throbbing emotion in that voice. He hardened himself against it, against her. She was a gam­bler, playing the odds and taking the risk that he was

  only testing her. And she was good, very very good to have gotten him with her this far.

  And she was smart enough to know when to stop pushing.

  Who was Darcie Boulton, really? He had only one card to play, and he decided right then and there that they weren't going to France until he found out.

  How did everything get so out of control? She didn't like it that suddenly everything seemed out of her grasp. But she knew why: he was remembering more and more, he thought she was a liar, and she had to make him trust her again.

  How stupid of her to say anything when they got off the train. That had only aroused his suspicions about her motives. She shuddered to think what this layover would cost them. But she would work around that. She always did when she was confronted by an obstacle.

  "All right," she said finally, "we'll stay in Portsmouth for a while. We have a lot to do anyway."

  That roused him. "Really? Do let me hear."

  "I have to sell the—" she broke off.

  "Sell what, Darcie—the jewelry you stole from La­vinia?"

  "How did you know?"

  "Deduction—what else is small, portable and valu­able enough to pawn? And why isn't a diamond neck­lace enough for you, Darcie Boulton? You could have taken a fortune in jewels from Lavinia any time in the last five years.
Why does it have to be The Eye of God?"

  How could he understand? She had been born seek­ing castles in the air, weaned on the sacred quest for El Dorado. She didn't know anything else. And this one was for her father as well.

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  "It's the next big strike," she whispered fiercely, "and I want it."

  He wasn't shocked; she saw it in his all-seeing eyes. He comprehended it perfectly, because he had wanted it too. And he had almost died for it.

  He sifted through the impact of her words. They were too alike, he thought mordantly. She had thrown him completely off-balance by giving him something he completely understood and making it sound real. She'd found the one thing he might respond to, the craving and the greed.

  "And you're starting to remember more and more," she added, "and you don't want anyone else to have that diamond but you."

  He didn't respond to that; what he remembered, what he wanted were his only leverage right now. "What did you take from Lavinia?"

  She recognized a distraction when she heard it. She had made her point, and now she had to convince him to continue on. "Nothing too obvious. A couple of dia­mond rings, a diamond bracelet, three necklaces, a choker. I'm sure you know what's in her jewel box better than she does. She'd buried these at the bottom. If I had to guess, I'd say she hadn't seen them in years."

  "Likely not," he agreed, but he wished he could see them. He could tell her their worth, their price. He felt the frustration rise again, and then shift. He could tell her ...ifhe could goddamn see, he could—he could—remem­ber ... "Give them to me. Let me see if I can figure out what you took."

  He heard rummaging sounds, and then he felt her take his hand and place something cool into it. A brace­let, by the feel, all edges, sixteen stones, flat-planed and faceted, with gold-pronged settings and clasp.

  He could just picture it, and then, in a wash of mem-

  ory, his mother at dinner, and his father handing the narrow velvet box across the table. Mother's long clever fingers opening it, her mouth rounding into an "oh," as she saw what was within. Father coming around the table and fastening it to her wrist. That bracelet. That warm wonderful time before he was old enough to be­come greedy and saturated with the day-to-day running of the Company and the lack of adventure in his life. That bracelet in the hands of a charlatan ... he crushed it in his hand, feeling the prongs prick his palm. "Don't take less than fifty pounds for it," he said, keeping his voice neutral. "Those diamonds are per­fectly matched, and set in a custom design. A gift from my father. Probably everything you took was one of my father's many gifts to her.'" "Lavinia?"