Therese Rousseau had warned her. She’d said he was difficult and the driver’s words did nothing to suggest the Professor had been unfair in her description. In fact, if anything, maybe she’d been a trifle flattering.
What exactly happened when the Count was not pleased? What was it that she had to look forward to?
At least the Jeep had managed to scale the cliff. The track was widening and now bordered in rocks she could tell had once been painted white, though now they were chipped and faded, their paint worn from exposure to the salt-laden air.
She shivered—the air was noticeably cooler at this height— and looked up in time to see the sun disappear behind the darkening clouds. And despite knowing in her brain that it meant nothing, that it was purely a meteorological phenomenon she was witnessing and not some kind of omen, even though she fought it with all she knew about the world, still she felt an unwanted and illogical sliver of fear slip down her spine.
The massive iron gates clanging shut behind them as they entered the castle grounds did nothing to assuage her unease. Now tension had her tightly wound, but she kept her breathing light as her driver crunched the gears while circling a tiered fountain featuring water nymphs and dolphins—a fountain that was as dry and neglected as the border of leggy, unkempt rosemary bushes that surrounded it.
Everywhere, it seemed, was shrouded in neglect, as if nothing had been touched for years.
And she wondered how anything as fragile as a book had survived in this place for the centuries it was reputed to have.
A miracle?
Or a curse?
This time the tremor seemed to chill her very bones. Great, she thought, doing her utmost to shake off the irrational sense of impending danger. So much for priding herself on being a logical scientist.
The Jeep jerked to a halt and the driver jumped out. ‘Come,’ he instructed, not bothering with her duffel this time, but leaving it to her to retrieve as he pushed open giant timber doors that stretched at least twelve feet high and yet still looked minuscule when compared to the mountainous castle walls that dwarfed them.
And then they were inside and the temperature dropped again. Her footsteps over the massive flagstones echoed in the vast, empty entry hall. Or maybe that was just her heartbeat racing fast and loud …
For a thickset man, her guide moved fast, his short legs carrying him surprisingly quickly up a flight of stairs that looked as if they’d come straight from Sleeping Beauty’s castle. ‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked from the bottom of the stairs, but he gave no answer, and she didn’t need it to know there was no hope of him taking her directly to the documents she’d come to examine.
The Count, she knew. The same Count who she’d been warned repeatedly would not be pleased. She sighed and started up the stairs behind him, lugging both her briefcase and her duffel. Might as well get the unpleasantries over and done with in that case. Maybe then she could get to work.
She followed him along a long passageway. The walls were dressed with rich burgundy drapes, between which hung portraits of, she assumed, counts long gone. Superiority shone from their steely eyes, along with a sense of entitlement for the world and all its riches. The Counts of Volta, she surmised, were not of modest, unassuming stock. But then why should they be modest, with potent looks that were as masculinely beautiful as they were darkly dangerous?
Slight differences distinguished one from another—a slight tilt of nose, an angle of jaw—and yet all of them in that long, seemingly endless row bore the same dark eyes and brows, topped by the same distinct hairline that intruded onto their temples in sharp points, almost like a shadow cast from … She stopped herself, refusing the link she’d made in her mind. They so did not resemble horns! She was being ridiculous even thinking it.
Besides, she’d researched the latest Count Volta late last night, after the Professor had called with her news, when both the excitement of the task ahead and the cryptic ‘You’ll be fine’ had banished any thoughts of sleep. And she’d remembered then why his name had seemed vaguely familiar, remembered hearing around her eighteenth birthday news reports of the party boat explosion off the Costa Smerelda. Last night she’d read again of the shocking death toll and of the miracle survivor