her and freedom, wondering if he would chase her if she ran. Wondering what he might do if do if he caught her. ‘No.’ This time she said it with more certainty, even though her heart was still pumping furiously and her breathing too shallow. Once again she sought to regain control. ‘I’m not afraid of you, Count Volta.’
He drew back momentarily on an intake of air, his lips curling to bare his teeth, before he exhaled in a rush as he came closer again. ‘Then you should be, Dr Hunter. You should be.’
He was too close. She could feel the heat from his face and his breath against her skin. But, while her heart was thumping loudly, she realised it wasn’t fear that was making her blood pound and her heart race.
It was the man himself.
And in spite of herself, in spite of his implicit threat, she felt herself drawn towards him, her skin prickling with awareness, her breasts strangely, achingly full.
And from somewhere deep inside her, some dark, dangerous place she hadn’t known existed, she managed to summon a smile. ‘If you want to frighten me, you’ll have to do better than that.’
The torchlight flickered gold in his dark eyes, until she could almost imagine it dancing with the devil within—the devil that made him grind his teeth together as if he was battling with himself even as he leaned still closer. So close that his face was scant millimetres from hers. So close that his lips were a mere breath away.
CHAPTER FOUR
SHE heard his growl of frustration as he swung away, leaving her with only heated air scented by his musky scent and wondering shakily why she was trying to bait him, what she was trying to achieve. What was happening to her?
‘Do you want to see these papers or not?’ he said, already heading deeper into the secret cellar, and she thanked her lucky stars that one of them was thinking straight. For what had she been thinking? That he was going to kiss her? A man she’d met barely an hour ago? A man who had made it plain she was not welcome here, who had objected to her presence and then set out to make her uncomfortable in his?
Difficult? The description didn’t come close. The sooner she was finished with her assessment and away from the Isola de Volta, and its scarred Count, the better.
Tentatively she followed him into a smaller cavern, the doorway rammed firm with beams the size of tree trunks. The room was sparsely furnished, with an old table and two chairs. There was a well-thumbed pack of cards in one corner, and what looked like a bunch of old ledgers on a shelf nearby.
‘Over there,’ he said, indicating towards the shelf. ‘Do you see it?’
Her hopes took a dive. Surely she hadn’t been brought all the way out here—surely she wasn’t being subjected to all this—for a bunch of mouldy old records? But then to one side she saw something else—what looked like some kind of cleft in the rock-face, almost invisible except for the shadow cast by the torch he’d shoved into a ring set into the wall. Intrigued, she took a step closer. Could that be what he meant?
He was already there—impatient to be rid of her, she guessed—his hand seemingly disappearing into the rock-face before it re-emerged, this time holding a flat parcel.
In the flicker and spit of torchlight she held her breath, excitement fizzing in her veins as he brought the package to the table, depositing it more gently there than she could imagine someone his size doing anything. And then he stood abruptly. ‘This is what you want so desperately to see?’
He was angry with her, but right now his bad mood rolled off her. Her eyes, her senses, her full attention were all focused on the parcel on the table. She licked her lips, her mouth dry with anticipation, her eyes assessing. A quick estimation told her the size was about right for something containing the long-lost pages, but that didn’t mean this was it.
She took a step closer, and then another, the man beside the table and his disturbing presence all but forgotten now as her eyes drank in the details of the worn pouch that looked as if it was made from some kind of animal skin, of the rough clasp that had been fashioned to keep the parcel together.
A pin of ivory, she guessed, stained yellow by the passage of time.
‘May I?’ she said, with no more than a glance in his direction, unwilling to take her eyes from this precious discovery for more than a second lest it disappear in a puff of smoke. She should wait until they’d brought the package back to the castle and she had the right lighting and the right conditions. She should wait until she had her tools by her side.
She should wait.
Except that she couldn’t.
Adrenaline coursed through her. She had to look. She had to see. So she slipped her arms from her backpack and pulled a new pair of gloves from the pocket where she kept them and drew them on, fingers almost shaking with excitement. Calm down. She heard the Professor’s voice in her head, heeded it, and willed herself to slow down. To breathe.
She knew what she was looking for. She’d studied what little remained of the Salus Totus. She knew the language and the artwork. She knew what inks the artists had used and how they’d been sourced, and she knew what animal’s skin had gone to make the parchment. And nothing on this earth—nothing—was more important to her than the thrill of seeing what could be those missing pages and seeing them now.
With gloved hands she gently prised the clasp open and pulled back the leather wrapping, folded like an envelope around the treasure within.
A blank page met her hungry eyes, but the bubble of disappointment was happily pricked in the knowledge that, whatever their purpose, whoever had taken these pages had realised they needed some form of protection.
She took a steadying breath. A big one. Gingerly, she lifted the cover sheet and moved it to one side.
And what little breath she had left was knocked clear out of her lungs.
Colour leapt from the page—vivid reds, intense blues, yellows that ranged from freshly picked corn to burnished gold. And even in the flicker of torchlight the quill strokes of another age stood out clear and bold, the Latin text as fresh as the day it had been written, although it was clear the parchment itself was old, despite being in amazing condition.
Her eyes drank in the details. The similarities to the remnants of the Salus Totus were unmistakable. And tears sprang to her eyes. Whether authentic or a cleverly crafted fraud, it was a thing of beauty.
‘Well? Do you think it’s what you’re looking for?’
She jumped and swiped at her eyes, suddenly embarrassed at the unexpected display of emotion. She’d been so absorbed she’d forgotten completely there was anyone else present.
And the last thing she wanted was for this man to see her shed tears. So she turned away and delved through her backpack again, pulling out one of the acid-free boxes she’d packed, thankful for the excuse to have something to do so that she didn’t have to look at him.
‘I don’t know. I have to get it back to the castle. Do you have somewhere I can use as a study?’ Reluctantly she replaced the protective cover over the page and refolded the bundle before slipping it into the slim box. She had to get it back before she was tempted to look at the next page, and then the next. She could prove nothing down here but her insatiable
