Teresa Medeiros (39 page)

The Reverend Linnet gazed down upon her, his smile as beatific as an angel’s, his sparkling dark eyes malicious twins of her own. “Hello, my child.”

“Hello, Papa,” she snarled before driving her fist straight into his smirking lips.

A hand was tenderly stroking her curls. Beguiled by the soothing touch, Arian snuggled deeper into the familiar satin sheets. “Oh, Tristan, I had such a grim dream,” she murmured.

“Poor lamb,” he crooned. “Tell Papa all about it.”

Arian shot straight up in the bed, shaking off a shroud of drowsiness. She slowly turned her head to discover she wasn’t having a dream, but living a nightmare. ’Twas not Tristan who sat on the edge of her bed, but the Reverend Linnet.

“Ah, Sleeping Beauty stirs,” he said, smothering a yawn behind one flawlessly manicured hand. “How wonderful for a man to wake up each morning with such a pliant creature in his bed! Tristan always did have all the luck.”

“And all the charm,” she snapped, scooting as far away from him as the sumptuous bed would allow.

Linnet’s sly smile warned her she had revealed too much. Her head felt as if it were stuffed with more feathers than the mattress. Massaging her leaden limbs, she slid toward the edge of the bed. The scratchy homespun of her night rail snagged on the sheets. A quartet of gilt cherubs leered down at her from the massive canopy.

“A bit decadent for a Puritan preacher, don’t you think?” she asked.

Linnet shrugged. “Charity Burke found it quite delightful. In our little interlude here, I’d say she was moved by the spirit as never before.”

Arian shuddered, sickened anew by the notion that she could be the daughter of such a loathsome creature. God only knew how many other innocent young women of Gloucester he had debauched in this secret attic. A narrow skylight was nestled beneath the sloping eaves, revealing a thin belt of slate-gray sky. The stifling silence was broken by the gentle sputter of a costly wax candle that perfumed the air with the scent of lilacs.

As Arian dragged herself to her feet, Linnet followed suit, studying her every move with his glittering dark eyes.

She gripped one of the gaudy bedposts for support. “I demand to see my stepfather. Marcus deserves to know the truth.”

“And which version of the truth would that be? That you spent the past two days in a drugged stupor dreaming of mysterious towers and your golden-haired incubus of a lover? Or that you traveled to the future and spent the past month in New York City screwing my former business partner?”

Arian flushed hot, then cold. “How did you …?”

He slung one arm around the opposite bedpost. “Oh, I know all about your little adventures in wonderland. You have an endearing tendency to chatter like a magpie while under the influence of laudanum.”

Arian quailed at the thought of her most tender and
intimate secrets being prey to his lascivious scrutiny. “How dare you drug me!”

“I had no choice but to sedate you after your vicious attack on me.” He gingerly fingered his lower lip. Arian noted with no small amount of satisfaction that it was puffed up to twice its normal size. “At least a hundred witnesses saw you try to strangle me after I so benevolently rescued you from the pond.”

“I wish to God I’d succeeded,” she spat.

“Why, daughter, you wound me! Are you truly so eager to be an orphan?” He shuddered in mock fear. “Why don’t you just cast one of your clever little spells on me?”

Arian reached for the amulet, prepared to do just that. But Linnet’s snide smile reminded her of what she would find. The amulet was as out of her reach as Tristan—three hundred and seven years in the future.

She forced herself to meet his mocking gaze with cool aplomb. “I may not have Warlock any more, Papa, dear. But neither does your bumbling father. And neither do you.”

Linnet’s smile slowly faded. Arian suppressed a genuine shudder at the utter absence of expression that replaced it.

“I suppose you still think it was your ridiculous little spell that sent you careening into the twentieth century. Haven’t you figured out that I’d already programmed the chip to send
me
there as soon as I’d settled things with you? Your incessant babbling must have activated the program. If that wretched crone hadn’t stolen the amulet and dropped it in the water, I’d have been rid of Tristan by now.”

“Why then? Why nineteen ninety-six?”

“Why not? Ten years should have been ample time for Tristan to amass his fortune. All I would have had to do was arrange a nasty accident, conjure up the necessary paperwork, reveal myself as his silent partner, step in, and take over.”

“Why bother with all that when you could just conjure up a fortune for yourself?”

Linnet’s sneer revealed the ugly depths of his envy. “Ah, but it wouldn’t have been
his
fortune.”

“He was your friend!” Arian cried. “How many times are you going to betray him?”

“As many times as necessary. Friends are expendable. As are rebellious offspring.”

Arian relinquished the bedpost, each of Linnet’s well-timed blows only making her more determined to stand on her own two feet. “I cannot conceive how any man, however detestable, can speak so casually of murdering his own daughter.”

“His bastard, you mean?”

Arian tried not to flinch, but failed. This was hardly the loving reunion she had once fantasized about. “Better to be a bastard by birth, sir, than by disposition.”

He sketched a mocking bow. “Touché. If your mother had been possessed of such wit, I might not have bored of her after only one night. Unfortunately, Lily was only tolerable with her legs open and her mouth shut. I trust Tristan discovered the same thing about you.”

“Tristan loved me!” The words spilled from her raw throat before she could bite them back.

Linnet’s laughter sent chills down her spine. “Everyone in the twentieth century
loves
everyone else. On good days, they love someone of the opposite sex and the same species. On bad days, well …” He lifted his shoulders in a flawless Gallic shrug that betrayed the number of years he’d spent searching for her in France.

“Don’t apply your impoverished moral standards to an entire century,” Arian snapped.

“Then don’t apply your childish sentimentality to Tristan. While under the spell of the laudanum, you babbled something about him believing you betrayed him. As I’m sure you’ve already learned, Tristan is not a forgiving man.”

Arian was haunted by the memory of that night of
passion they’d shared in the penthouse. She might never know now if Tristan had been motivated by love or revenge. ’Twas almost as if he’d sought to punish her with pleasure. To rob her of both her will and her soul with a dark and sensual sorcery that rivaled any warlock’s enchantment.

She lowered her eyes, but not before they could betray a flicker of doubt.

Linnet pounced on it with unerring precision. “The game’s not over yet, my dear. Nor is it too late to change sides. If I was as eager to be rid of you as you seem to think I am, I would have snatched Warlock from your careless little paw the night I saw you fly. Or fled this provincial hell the minute I had it in my hands. Instead, I offered you shelter and gave you every opportunity to swear your allegiance to me.”

“You had me thrown in jail! You manipulated my stepfather and the mob, turning them against me until you believed I’d have no choice but to come begging to you.”

Linnet’s buckled shoes whispered across the hardwood floor as he closed the distance between them. “Ah, but my brave, beautiful Arian wasn’t going to beg, was she? Not even when I had her cast into the water. I really believed you’d come up gasping for air and sputtering some pathetic plea.” He touched a tapered finger to his swollen lip, shaking his head with reluctant admiration. “But not my daughter.”

“Your bastard,” she reminded him, refusing to succumb to his ruse of charm.

His eyes hardened. “Why should you give Tristan your loyalty when I’m the one who searched for you for twenty years?”

“You weren’t searching for me. You were searching for Warlock, for a way back to the twentieth century.”

“Oh, seventeenth-century Paris had its charms in the beginning—a dizzying array of sensual delights, eager women, an unregulated opium trade.”

“French pox, wig lice, the plague,” Arian countered sweetly.

“If you’re implying the dubious charms of this century have begun to pale, then you’re more perceptive than I realized.” He bit off each word with increasing antagonism, his European drawl giving way to a clipped New York cadence. “I want to soak in a steaming Jacuzzi, sip Grand Marnier, and smoke a big, fat Cuban cigar. I want to brunch at the Four Seasons with dear old dad, then watch the Giants beat the Raiders on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I want to smell the scent of shampoo in a woman’s hair instead of woodsmoke.” His upper lip curled in a snarl as he shoved his face next to hers.
“I want Warlock.”

Arian forced herself not to recoil from the cloying sweetness of his cologne. “Warlock doesn’t belong to you. You didn’t invent it. Tristan did.”

“But he wasn’t man enough to use it. I am. As you’ll soon discover.” His glower was vanquished by a sanctimonious smile as he turned away.

Linnet’s words chilled her anew, but Arian could not stop her heart from thundering with a hope so farfetched she hadn’t even dared to contemplate it.

She rushed forward to grab his sleeve. “What are you saying?”

He disengaged his sleeve from her grasp with insulting gentleness. “You’ll find one of Charity’s dresses in the armoire. We have a date with the magistrates in one hour.” He reached down to stroke her throat, his fingers tightening with each mocking caress. “Don’t overestimate my devotion to hearth and family. If you say one word to expose me, I’ll hand you over to the man with the nearest noose.”

Arian didn’t even dare breathe again until he’d slid open a hidden panel in the far wall to reveal a staircase winding down into darkness. She hated to trust her sweetest dream and darkest fear to words, but the hoarse whisper escaped her anyway. “If you truly believe
Tristan despises me, then what makes you think he’ll come after me?”

Linnet cast her a pitying look. “Don’t flatter yourself, child. Tristan wants revenge as badly as I do. He won’t come for you. He’ll come for me.”

Arian awaited her summons in a ladder-backed chair, her dry-eyed gaze fixed on the brooding slice of sky visible through the skylight. She had confined the unruly tumble of her hair in an austere bun. Her hands lay folded against the black homespun of her skirt. Just as the first raindrops splashed on the skylight, the panel slid open and Linnet crooked a finger at her. Arian rose and followed him down the steep, narrow stairs.

She groaned inwardly as Constable Ingersoll’s booming voice floated out of the parlor. “How can anyone deny we are righteous men beset by demons? Our charter was torn away from us. Pirates plunder our coasts. Even the French have turned against us. Mark my words—’tis demons and witches seeking to drive us out of the land the Good Lord gave us.”

As Linnet and Arian entered the parlor, the two black-garbed men sitting with Ingersoll rose.

Linnet took her elbow. “Miss Whitewood, these two gentlemen are John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin, two of our Boston magistrates.”

Arian inclined her head. Mr. Hathorne cleared his throat, blinking pink-rimmed eyes like a nervous rabbit while the portly Mr. Corwin compressed his thin lips to a disapproving line.

A fourth man stood at the window with hands in pockets, watching the night sky spill the rain that had weighted the day with gloom.

“Father Marcus!” Arian cried.

She twisted out of Linnet’s grasp and ran to her stepfather. He looked older than she remembered. His eyelids drooped with fatigue and his shoulders slumped as if encumbered by a ponderous weight. As she stood on tiptoe to press her lips to his grizzled cheek, she realized for the first time how much she had missed this simple man. Now that she’d been forced to relinquish her childhood dream of a loving papa, she realized what a fine father Marcus had always tried to be to her.

But it seemed her appreciation had come too late. Marcus stood stiffly in her embrace. When Arian’s arms fell away, he turned back to the window without a word.

“Miss Whitewood,” Linnet prodded with obvious relish. “You may return to the fire and take a seat.”

Arian obeyed, dropping into the chair Linnet indicated, her lips pursed in sullen rebellion.

Linnet leaned his chair back on two legs, a study in careless elegance. Arian could still see traces of the fop in his white shirt with its brass studs and frilled cuffs.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “we all know why we are gathered here tonight. You’ve already heard the evidence presented against Miss Whitewood. I’ve told you how my timely intervention saved her from the mob’s misguided wrath.”

Arian crossed her legs at the ankles to keep from kicking his chair out from under him.

“Hang her,” Constable Ingersoll snapped. “ ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ ”

Mr. Hathorne’s nose twitched as he leaned forward.
“There does seem to be a respectable body of evidence against the young lady.”