Edge of Danger (16 page)

 
What was the bastard using on her? Hypnosis? Drugs? She’d drunk at least half a glass of whiskey and a cup of tea. She felt physically fine, better than fine actually. She was filled with energy and clarity of thought. And was acutely aware of him no matter how far apart they were.

 
She’d never noticed a man’s butt before, but his was prime, and did excellent things for those jeans.

 
He had an interesting loose-limbed walk, light on his bare feet. Her heels sank into the thick carpet as they walked, and she had to do a little two-step to catch up. As soon as she got closer, he seemed to speed up.

 
Eden spotted what could very well be a Fabergé egg, or an excellent replica, on a table beneath a gruesome painting of a guy in a kilt killing a boar. The artist had used an excessive amount of red paint. She paused to look more closely at the jeweled egg caught in the sunlight streaming through the window.

 
Would anyone display the real thing this casually? Probably not. Still, it was very pretty.

 
“You have some beautiful things in your home.” And if they weren’t walking at warp speed she might have liked to look at some of the artifacts and paintings on their safari.

 
She had dozens of questions that had nothing to do with the freaking decor, but he’d have dozens of slippery replies, so why bother? The authorities could interrogate him—torture him for all she cared. After she was gone.

 
“It’s home.” There was pride in the simple words.

 
“When was it built?” she asked curiously, before reminding herself that she wasn’t a guest. “More to the point, how long did it take to build?”

 
Sunlight, in dusty motes, streamed through the arched, leaded-glass windows on their right in a striped pattern down the entire length of the corridor. She walked through a shadow, then back through sunlight.

 
“It was built in the Highlands of Scotland in 1321. Edridge Castle was the original seat of my family. Edridges have lived in it for eight hundred years.”

 
She frowned. “I thought your name was Edge?” Boy, was
that
a name that personified the man. Hard. Sharp. Cutting.

 
“Changed from Edridge to Edge by a distant relative in the mid sixteen hundreds.”

 
“One step ahead of the law, was he?”

 
“Magnus was cursed.”

 
She knew the feeling. Her own marriage had been cursed too. Cursed by her own naïveté and stupidity. She’d actually convinced herself that she’d learned and grown from the experience. That she’d left those insecurities behind with the divorce. Apparently not.

 
She walked faster to catch up, intrigued in spite of herself. The man must have eyes in the back of his head, because he sped up just enough to keep the distance between them exactly the same at all times. “Why was he cursed?”

 
“Because he fell in love with the wrong woman.”

 
“Was she married?”

 
“No.”

 
Eden sped up. Not that it made a jot of difference. The man must have a built-in radar. “Too young? Too old?”

 
“No and no.”

 
“Too pretty, too ugly? What? If she was single, then she would have been appropriate marriage material, right?”

 
“He was betrothed.”

 
“Betrothed?” Eden cut in with a smile she couldn’t help. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone use that word.”

 
He glanced over his shoulder. “Engaged. Happy now?”

 
“Sure,” Eden replied somberly. “Who was he engaged to?”

 
“The chieftain’s oldest daughter.”

 
“I would’ve cursed him too,” Eden told his back. He sounded just somber enough to give the story verisimilitude, which surprised her. She would never have pegged him as a storyteller. He seemed too prosaic. Too intense and serious.

 
Live and learn.

 
“So he was fooling around on
both
women.” She would’ve preferred a husband who had a girlfriend rather than the one who stole her inventions and patented them under his own name. But that was water under the bridge.

 
Like her ex, this guy’s ancestor would have wanted to make the most advantageous alliance. In her case, she’d been the chieftain’s daughter and her credentials had been the village girl he’d loved. He hadn’t married her for herself. Adam had married her just to advance his career.

 
Dr. Adam Burnett was a competent scientist who wanted to be brilliant. Once he’d realized that he’d reached his full, mediocre potential, he’d married her and set about taking credit for her early ideas and work.

 
“Did he marry the chieftain’s daughter and dump the girlfriend?”

 
“Nairne—the village girl—was pregnant. She was also a witch. She showed up at the kirk on his wedding day.”

 
“Ouch. Both women probably cursed him.”

 
“One curse was enough for a lifetime. Several lifetimes, in fact.”

 
“True. Must’ve been a pretty powerful curse to last—what? four hundred years?”

 
“Five hundred.”

 
“Really?” Eden said to his broad back, fascinated by that kind of unbroken history, and intrigued that this man, who appeared to be capable of kidnapping and all manner of other unsavory deeds, sounded as though he actually believed in witches and that said witch had put a curse on the entire family. She wondered how she could play into that to make her escape.

 
“So, what kind of curse was it? Damned for all time or run-of-the-mill turned into a frog?”

 
“The sons have to choose duty over love for all time.”

 
“Payback for all eternity for being jilted? That’s pretty intense. Do you believe it?”

 
“I don’t have to believe. It just is.”

 
Uh huh.
“Is that so? Who el—”

 
“Subject closed.”

 
In effect, door slammed in her face. Intriguing. Eden backed off, but saved the knowledge that he was superstitious for later when she could figure out how to use it against him.

 
The irony was, for all her scientific background, she was a little superstitious as well. She never walked under ladders, and crossed the street if she saw a black cat.

 
And even though she knew it didn’t have any basis in actual fact, she truly believed that wearing her Grandma Rose’s ring on her toe had brought her luck for most of her life.

 
“Tell me about this place,” she said easily, glancing at the portraits as she passed them. All of the women were surrounded by varying size groups of boy and girl children. They all looked uncomfortable, no matter what period clothing they wore. Each woman wore the same three pieces of heart-shaped jewelry. A silver necklace, bracelet, and ring. Not particularly attractive or valuable. Must be something handed down to each new wife, Eden guessed. “What did you do? Have the original castle dismantled in Scotland, and brought here? Did you know Robert McCulloch bought London Bridge in 1962, dismantled it, and had it rebuilt in Lake Havasu City, Arizona? That engineering project took three years. But this…this must’ve taken three times that at least.” She imagined every stone with a number on it. One giant Erector set. She’d love to get her hands on the blueprint…

 
“It didn’t take that long,” Gabriel told her dismissively.

 
“Why Montana? Seems an odd place to stick a medieval castle.”

 
“My mother’s folks had a ranch on this land, it was hers to do with as she pleased. She wanted to have the castle here. Enough personal questions.”

 
Conversation closed, apparently.

 
“Do you have a large family? People who’ll chip in to pay your bail when they arrest you for my kidnapping?”

 
“No.”

 
She stopped dead, and shot a glare, which of course he couldn’t see, at his back. “Give me a break here. I’m the prisoner, remember? I’m sure the Geneva Convention allows for polite conversation.”

 
“It doesn’t, actually.”

 
Behind his back Eden rolled her eyes before speeding up, trying to catch up with him.

 
No go.

 
As she walked she glanced at the portraits of men and women, all dressed in stiff, formal clothing, that lined the walls.

 
“Are all these portraits your ancestors, or are they actors hired by your decorator?” Eden asked mildly, pretty damn sure that Gabriel Edge hadn’t hired a decorator for his castle, but she was not opposed to needling him. Just because she could.

 
If he didn’t like it he could always take her back to Tempe.

 
Gabriel nodded toward a portrait as he passed. “The first is Magnus’s mother, Finola. He’s the kid on the right. And the portrait to the left is Magnus’s bride, Janet.”

 
Curious, Eden stopped while he, of course, moved a little farther down the hall before he stopped too.

 
She went to stand under the portrait of a dour-faced woman holding a little white dog with bulging black eyes. Both woman and dog wore matching powder-blue satin dresses. Nestled in the many folds of the woman’s skirts sat three stair-stepped little boys with black hair, midnight dark blue eyes, and Stepford expressions.

 
“Triplets?”

 
“Nine months apart.”

 
Eden rubbed a sudden chill from her upper arms. “No wonder she doesn’t look like a happy camper.” She glanced at the other portrait. A horse-faced girl clutching a pearl-studded fan in a death grip, also with three young boys clustered around her. This new bride wore no jewelry. Her neck, wrist, and fingers looked conspicuously bare without the twists of silver. “Doesn’t look as though Magnus made either his mother
or
his wife happy.”

 
“Apparently not.”

 
“Well, hopefully Janet’s children fulfilled her. Didn’t they have dozens of kids in those days?” Eden couldn’t imagine how hard life had been in medieval times. Particularly for the women.

 
“Only the three sons shown in the portrait. All Edge couples have three sons.”

 
She had no idea why the closer he got, the harder her heart thumped. Eden turned to look at him. He was standing at least fifteen feet away. It was as though her body had a Gabriel antenna to let her know when he was approaching.

 
“Really?” Improbable, but she’d let it pass for the moment.

 
When she got back home she’d pull the research on pheromones to see if the antenna thing was documented, or if, instead, she was already suffering some form of Stockholm syndrome. She didn’t need to place two fingers on a pulse point to know it was going wild.