walked with her across the footbridge to her parked car, hesitating as he offered his hand. “Bye,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll be hearing from you.”
Her fingers closed over his, his eyes registering surprise at the strength of her handclasp.
She smiled. “We’ll keep in touch. Once I have storage space ready, we’ll firm up the consignment.” She dropped his hand and stepped away, fighting the temptation to step closer. He was mortal. She’d visit him, yes, but…“Goodbye!”
“Bye, Antonia,” he replied. “Be careful reversing.”
She drove back down the lane, half of her determined to return and feed and give Michael Langton a night of dreams to remember, while some deep instinct insisted that with this man she was biting off more than she should. Her mouth twisted at the unintentional pun. Sweet Abel! What did it matter? She’d never harm him. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t. But she had no question in her mind. She’d return. Soon.
Michael Langton stood listening until there was no sound of her engine and even the scent of motor oil and petrol had faded.
He should have thrown her out of his pottery at first sight. Yeah, right! He could no more have done that than change his nature. Antonia Stonewright fascinated him. Women were danger, trouble, and traps for the unwary. But about Antonia he sensed something different. True, she’d been all business, but he’d need to be devoid of all five senses not to catch her interest: the glimmer in her eyes, the scent of her skin. Odd, he hadn’t noticed a quickened heartbeat, but her smile and her voice had been enough.
She shared his interest.
The prospect was a recipe for disaster. He hadn’t cultivated the reclusive artist persona to have it breached by a good-looking woman down from Yorkshire.
Pots and bowls—yes, he’d send them on consignment. But never, ever could anything more than business exist between them.
He looked up at the sky. Two, three hours before dark, with moonrise a couple of hours after that.
He returned to the house, rinsed out the mugs they’d used, and walked over to the pottery to check the progress of the new firing. The kiln would be at temperature by dawn, and he’d be back long before then. He wedged several pounds of clay, slicing it with a twisted wire, before dropping each segment on the remainder, turning, cutting, and dropping again, until the clay was smooth and free of air bubbles. Satisfied, he wrapped it in a wet cloth and heavy plastic.
He washed his hands and took off his clay-covered smock and hung it on the hook by the door. Back in the house, he unzipped his jeans and left them, and the rest of his clothes, in the bathroom. He set the security system and closed the door behind him. Naked, he walked out into the moonlight. Standing in the shelter of a cluster of trees, he looked up at the full moon, threw back his head, and let out a deep, feline howl. Minutes later, a large, dark shape ran on all fours toward the open fields.
Chapter 3
James Chadwick stared at the papers spread on the leather-topped satinwood desk. He’d checked three times and scoured every single paper in the deed box. This was all there was. The pile spread out in front of him included his own birth certificate and those of his mother, uncle, and grandparents. Marriage and death certificates for his grandparents and death certificates for his great grandparents. Heck, even a stack of outdated passports and driver’s licenses and his parents’ marriage certificate dated six months before his birth. Interesting! But most interesting was reading his parents’ names: Rachel Stephanie Amy Caughleigh and Roger Alexander Chadwick. Amy, spinster, aged seventeen and Roger, retired solicitor, aged sixty-six. Crap almighty! May and December wasn’t in it. What wouldn’t he give to know the story behind that? A rushed marriage with Sebastian putting leverage on his younger sister? Or was it his grandparents? They had still been alive then. Just. They’d both died in a car crash a year after the shotgun wedding.
James let out a slow whistle. Seems the Caughleighs had a couple of eventful years. His parents’ marriage, his father’s death from heart failure five months after his birth, his grandparents’ accident, and then his own mother’s death.
Except that as punctilious as dear Uncle Sebastian had been about record keeping, Amy Chadwick’s death certificate was missing. Odd. Extremely odd.
James thought back to the little he remembered about his mother. She was fun; she laughed and played with him. Why not? She’d been not yet eighteen when he was born and twenty-four when she’d disappeared, and only a few months after that, he’d been told she was dead, and Uncle Sebastian had left him with old Sarah Wallace when he went off to the funeral in…
Damn! He could not remember. He had to have been told, surely? But at six, he’d scarcely grasped what it meant that his mother was dead. Never to come back. Ever.
Odd, thinking back, but ole Uncle Sebby had never been inclined to speak of his sister. The few times James had asked, he’d been brushed off. Not really surprising. Sebastian always brushed off anything he didn’t want to be bothered about. It had only been a year later that Sebastian had yanked him out of the village school and packed seven-year-old James off to boarding school.
James couldn’t resist a dry chuckle. He’d been so lonely for a few weeks, he’d even missed miserable old Sarah and the moustache that tickled when she kissed him good night. He’d spent half his childhood making up tales of his mother returning. She’d been snatched by fairies, been off visiting the King of Siam, or been captured by pirates and unable to escape.
Wild, childish hopes and dreams.
But why the missing death certificate?
Was she not dead? Had she run off and stayed away? Life with Sebastian had to have been pretty confining for a young woman, but damn it—why leave him behind? He remembered it so clearly. She’d kissed him, tucking a Penguin in his hand as a treat for being a good boy, and promised to be there when he came out of school. Every other day she’d been waiting at the gate. That day she wasn’t. Where the frigging hell had she gone? And why?
James twisted the swivel chair from side to side, frowning to himself. It was enough to send him back to the bottle, but he’d sworn off the stuff a year ago after he’d woken up, on his back, in the middle of a field with no idea how he’d landed there and suffering the worst headache of his life. His sudden temperance earned him a ribbing for a while at the Barley Mow, but hell, that little incident had scared him sober.
And now…What had happened to his mother? Might almost be worth a visit to ole Uncle Sebby, except James knew before he even dismissed the idea that even if Sebastian were in one of his sane moments, he would tell James nothing.
But there were ways of finding out…
He pondered the wisdom of contacting one of the private agencies Sebastian had used from time to time but decided he had better plans for Sebastian’s money now that he had power of attorney, when the phone at his elbow rang.
“James?” He recognized the panicky tones of John Rowan, a member of Uncle’s erstwhile coven. “We need to get together. There’s trouble. These damn women.”
“What damn women?” Given that he’d just decided his mother had abandoned him, the adjective seemed apropos to the entire sex.
“Emily, Ida, and Mildred!” Ah, John was having wife problems again. Stupid man should give her bingo money and shove her on a bus to Leatherhead.
“And
