She recovered quickly, but the man beside her murmured solicitously, ‘Not very far now, madam,’ and indicated another large, solid door, clearly built to repel any invaders foolish enough to attack.
Or keep prisoners well and truly incarcerated, she thought with an inward qualm, irritated with herself for letting her imagination run wild. The American who owned this castle had been totally un-sinister, a perfectly groomed, modern woman who just wanted three bedrooms turned into welcoming, elegant havens for her guests.
The heavy wooden door, armoured with an impressive medieval lock, opened onto a large stone-flagged hall.
The manservant gave her a polite smile. ‘Please come in. I hope you had a pleasant journey.’
‘Very, thank you,’ Sara said automatically, following him into the castle.
And of course it wasn’t chilly and dank inside—cool, but she’d expected that; very old furniture and artefacts suffered from central heating.
The place was immaculate. No spider webs hung from rafters, nothing gibbered in a corner…
The butler led her across the hall towards yet another forbidding door. Grim, superbly crafted suits of armour lined the walls, their hard, masculine ambience barely tempered by flowers in great urns and bowls. At the other end of the hall a banner was draped from on high. Although muted by age and wear, Sara’s wondering eyes discerned the outline of a wolf.
Her skin tightened. What the hell was she doing here? Her expertise lay in houses, not this kind of architecture, with its overt statement of power and ruthlessness. She’d decorated apartments in London and the South of France, but never anything as old as a castle.
Well, it would be a challenge, and it would look damned good on her CV.
The butler held open another door and led her along a stone passage that had probably served as part of the defensive structure.
To break the oppressive silence, she said brightly, ‘Does the castle have a name?’
‘Why, yes, Miss Milton. The Castle of the Wolf—or, as the locals call it, the Wolf’s Lair.’
Too much! ‘Then the banner in the great hall must be the crest of the original owners?’
‘Indeed it is,’ he said, opening a small door that led into a lift.
She smiled ironically as she followed him into it. Of course the castle had a lift, which its sophisticated American owner would call an elevator. Sara hoped it wasn’t the only concession to the twenty-first century!
Several floors up, the manservant showed her into a room where painted panelling overpowered a four-poster bed, its head- and footboard carved in a delicate tracery of flowers and vines. With restoration it would be charming.
Not so the rest of the room, all gilt and heavy crimson and stark white, the furniture second-rate reproductions. No wonder Mrs Abbot Armitage wanted the rooms redecorated! Whoever had perpetrated this shoddy travesty should be prevented from going anywhere near a room again, Sara thought vigorously.
Still, at least there was no sign of any wolf here. Perhaps Mrs Abbot Armitage didn’t care for wolves in the bedroom.
Sara could only agree.
The manservant indicated a door in the panelling. ‘Your bathroom is through there,’ he told her. ‘If you would like to rest for an hour or so I will return to escort you down to the drawing room for a drink before dinner.’
‘Oh.’ When he looked at her with an expression of mild enquiry she elaborated. ‘I didn’t think there was anyone here.’ She stopped, because that sounded stupid. ‘In residence,’ she amended.
‘Oh, yes,’ was all he said, putting her bag down on a chair before he left.
Frowning, Sara stared at the door as it closed behind him, and decided there must have been more warmth behind the American heiress’s patrician face than she’d suspected. At least she wasn’t to be given a meal to eat in her room, like a Victorian governess!
But, kindness or not, Sara reminded herself that her future depended on delivering a plan for the rooms that would outdo those submitted by other decorators.
A cool shiver of foreboding tightened her skin. She looked around and noticed a casement open to the evening air.
‘Stop dramatising everything!’ she ordered herself sternly, and leaned out.
It was still light; even now, ten years after she’d left Fala’isi, she found the slow twilights of Europe enchanting. The tropical nights of the Pacific had crashed down like a pall, snuffing out the hot, brilliant colours of the island within minutes.
The air was pure, scented with a ripeness that hinted at harvest and full barns. Because the room was above the ramparts, she could look out across the valley. Small dim clusters of lights marked villages, and high on the bulk of the surrounding mountains the few pinpricks must be from isolated farmsteads.
Craning, she saw several windows glowing in one of the castle towers; as she watched, someone walked across them, pulling the curtains closed.
Some primal instinct made her cringe back. Eyes wide and strained, she watched the unknown man—probably the uncommunicative manservant—extinguish the squares of golden light.
Above her glittered stars, the constellations alien. Growing up, she’d learned every star—and had known almost every palm tree and person on the island, she thought wistfully.
Homesickness and something more painful washed over her. However much she loved Fala’isi, there was nothing there for her now, and this was her last chance to retrieve the career that Gabe had ruthlessly derailed.
Her mouth twisted into a grimace. Not that she could trace the swift extinction of her career directly to him—he was far too subtle. But although the nouveau riche might have flocked to patronise a woman who’d been engaged to such a powerful man, any hint that she was a thief would have sent them fleeing.
And hint there must have been. The theft of the necklace, the famous Queen’s Blood, had never reached the media, but her employer had sacked her the moment Gabe had broken their engagement.
The necklace had blighted everything she’d worked for, everything she’d loved. The most precious heirloom of Gabe’s family for a thousand years. For her, she thought starkly, it was cursed.
The only time she’d worn it, at the very grand wedding of a cousin of Gabe’s, a superstitious shudder had iced her spine.
Gabe had put it on her himself, and even the touch of his hands on her shoulders hadn’t been able to warm her. She’d asked too quickly, ‘Who made it?’
‘No one knows. Some experts say it originated from a Scythian hoard,’ Gabe had said, eyes narrowed and intent as he’d settled the heavy chain on her shoulders. ‘They were a nomadic people from the steppes, noted for their cruelty and their magnificent work in gold. The rubies are definitely from Burma.’
She’d watched herself in the mirror, half entranced by the necklace’s beauty, half repelled by its bloody history. It had a presence, an aura made up of much more than the fact
