AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“To change my clothes and reassure my roommate that I am still alive.”
“Don’t be too long, bouche,” he murmured, pulling a pillow over his head to shut out the light. In muffled accents, he added, “And get back here before dark. Another girl was murdered two nights ago.”
I made my way along the familiar streets, finding them altered now by new emotions. It was then that I realised I didn’t even know his name. It didn’t matter. He was destined to forever remain a beloved, anonymous memory, and the reason my heart belonged to Paris.
Chapter Six
Meeting Cad again shook me to the very core of my being. I felt restless and alive in a way I had not felt for a long time. Not, if I was honest, since I had left him satiated and dozing in his apartment all those months ago. Sleep was a million lifetimes away, and I prowled my room in the restless candlelight. Everything looked different now because of him.
You fool! I looked pityingly at my reflection in the mirror. You stupid, reckless fool. I had been unable to resist allowing myself the luxury of that one night, and look what it had brought me. This burning, aching longing bordered on madness. Everything I had heard about Cad Jago screamed at me that he was dangerous. Everything I already knew of him confirmed that fact. Yet I wanted him with a frenzy that had nothing to do with reason. It came from the depths of my soul, and it terrified me.
I threw the windows wide and stepped onto the balcony, breathing in the harsh scent of the ocean and letting the salt breeze sting my cheeks. I wondered if he was doing the same thing on the other side of the house. Because I knew, beyond any shadow of doubt, that, despite his animosity, seeing me again had affected him just as profoundly. When I stepped back into my room at last, I was shivering with a combination of despair and excitement.
I was just about to climb into bed when a sound from the balcony made me pause. There it was again. A soft, persistent scratching on the glass. My mind was still on Cad. Could it be him? Would he be so bold? A laugh trembled on my lips. Of course he would.
I threw back the heavy curtains and then recoiled in surprise. A woman stood on the balcony, shaking with cold or fear, I knew not which. She was staggeringly beautiful with high, sharp cheekbones, midnight-black hair and eyes that were unmistakably Jago-gold. Her old-fashioned gown of ruby velvet was opulently styled with full skirts and a bodice cut low to display the swell of her breasts and the creamy smoothness of her shoulders. She regarded me steadily through the glass, and I knew a sudden compulsion to let her in. I hesitated with my fingertips trembling in the act of reaching for the handle.
Then I saw the knife in her hand, gleaming silver and dripping crimson. As I gasped in horror, her eyes blazed with the fires of hell itself. Her lips drew back to show even white teeth in a demonic snarl. “You shall not have him.” Her low monotone penetrated the glass. “He is mine. He was always mine.” Then she was gone.
I shook my head in an attempt to clear the fog of fear that gripped my mind with cold, loathsome fingers. What had I seen? Or imagined? My rational self clung steadfastly to the latter. My overwrought mind was creating monsters where none existed. With shaking hands, I drew the curtains closed and spent long, trembling minutes ensuring that no chink of moonlight could slyly penetrate their folds.
* * *
“They have found the young girl who disappeared. She’s dead,” Eleanor said, her face registering shock. “Her body was discovered in an outbuilding down in the village.”
“How awful.” Lucy indicated a chair, and Eleanor flopped shakily down onto it. “Do they know how she died?”
Eleanor nodded. “They are saying in the village that she must have been murdered.”
Lucy’s hand flew to cover her mouth. “Dear God.” Her eyes flew to Tynan’s face.
He was grimly frowning. “Are you sure?”
Eleanor nodded, her eyes huge in her porcelain face. “Mrs Webster told me. She had been to see her sister, the one who has the haberdashery, and she said that the police arrived this morning. It was the smell that made people suspicious. Is that not quite horrible? That a person should be the cause of a bad smell? Mrs Webster’s sister made the police officers tea, and one of them, a new young constable, said he had never known anything like it. The sergeant had to send him away because he couldn’t stop, you know…” She pretended to put a finger down her throat and mimed a vomiting motion.
