In the night, in the darkness, in the fury of passion, I had surrendered. Not to Adam, however tempting that was and had been from the very beginning. Instead, I’d stopped fighting all the conflicts that had been tearing me apart--who I should be, how I should feel, what I should do--and accepted what I really felt and needed.

  After all the months--years really, if I was honest--of self-doubt and insecurity, I had finally decided to trust myself.

  I had lived for so long in the grip of intense emotions--shock and fear, dread and anger, desire and guilt. Like so many strings pulled taut and constantly strummed, creating a cacophony inside me that I couldn’t escape. Gazing at him, I realized that was gone, as though a great storm had swept through, leaving an even vaster calm in its wake.

  The relief was so profound that a gasp escaped me.

  I had managed to creep from the bed, pull on clothes and begin surveying the damage all without waking Adam. But at that small sound, he stirred.

  He sat up, instantly alert. At once, his gaze locked on mine. “What are you doing?”

  Unable to look away, I gestured at the mess in the center of the room. “Trying to figure out how to clean this up.”

  He frowned. “The servants will do that.”

  “I’d rather they didn’t have to.”

  I stopped, uncertain how to explain why I felt as I did. To be a Delaney meant, among other things, indulging the pretense that all people were equal and worthy of respect regardless of their lot in life. For my father, uncle, and others, that was nothing more than a sick joke that they laughed over in private. But some of us--Patrick, myself, even Todd notwithstanding his ambition--wanted it to be real. Whether as an act of adolescent rebellion or something more, we had rejected the corruption of our elders and tried to find our own path.

  Patrick was gone and Todd might yet give himself up completely to the darker impulses that were the Delaney curse. As for myself…I had no idea if I would even survive the confrontation with my family that I knew was coming. But I still had to live by my own understanding of what was right and decent. That included something as simple as not expecting other people to clean up my messes.

  Adam studied me for a long moment. Whatever he saw must have decided him. He tossed back the sheet and stood, unselfconscious in his nakedness, a powerful, confident man who gave every impression of being thoroughly at home in his own skin. That was misleading, of course. The truth was far more complex, as I was still just beginning to grasp.

  “All right,” he said. “Give me a minute and I’ll see what we can do.”

  I stared after him with mingled surprise and relief as he vanished into the bathroom, returning to pull on black sweat pants and a black T-shirt. Once dressed, he opened a door I hadn’t noticed before, so perfectly fitted was it into a wall of the master suite. Behind it, I glimpsed a hallway with white walls and bright fluorescent lights. Its modern appearance contrasted sharply with the Old World luxury of the master suite and the rest of the castle, at least so far as I had seen.

  “Wait here,” Adam said. “I’ll be right back.”

  True to his word, he reappeared almost no time later with a broom, dustpan, and a stack of black plastic garbage bags.

  The sight of him with such mundane objects was so incongruous that I blurted, “How did you find those?”

  He shrugged as though the explanation was obvious. “I went downstairs to housekeeping.”

  It dawned on me then how the servants could come and go unobserved. “Are there passageways like that all through the castle?” I asked.

  Stepping back into the room, he nodded. “Wouldn’t do to be dragging vacuum cleaners and buckets of soapy water through the drawing rooms, would it?”

  “I suppose not but still, I’m surprised that your ancestors thought of anything so ordinary when they were building this place.”

  A brow arched in amusement. “They didn’t. The passageways were intended to provide an escape route from the castle, should it ever be needed.”

  As he spoke, he lifted the shattered table, snapped off the dangling leg and put the remains in a black garbage bag. He showed no hint of anger or resentment, neither at what I had done or at my insistence on sparing the servants the task of cleaning up.

  Rather than wonder why he was being so forbearing, I asked, “Were they ever used for escape?”

  I couldn’t imagine the castle being assaulted successfully but trouble could have come from the inside. This might not be the first Falzon generation torn by competing ambition and betrayal.

  “Not to my knowledge. But they did prove convenient whenever someone wanted to come or go unseen. Eventually, some were upgraded for use by the staff.”

  “And the others?”

  His eyes narrowed, shards of blue-gray ice sweeping over me. “Don’t get any ideas. They’ve all been sealed off farther down the mountain.”

  It hadn’t occurred to me that there might be a way to escape the castle after all. At the reminder that I was, once again, a captive, my mood darkened. Until then, I’d managed to hold at bay all thoughts of what had happened between us on the terrace and afterward but now they threatened to overwhelm me.

  “Grace…” I heard the note of regret in his voice. When I didn’t reply, he sighed. “”Let’s finish up here and then I think we should talk.”

  Rather than answer, I kneeled down and began putting the broken pieces of dishes in a bag. My hair fell across my face. I left it there, feeling too bared to him to expose myself any further.

  The last piece of what had been a lovely blue-and-white porcelain plate, a century or two old, was joining the rest of the wreckage when my stomach rumbled. Loudly. Embarrassed, I tried to ignore it but Adam wouldn’t let me.

  He grabbed all the bags, opened the hidden door again and stood aside for me to precede him. “That’s it. Come on.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked even as I went with him. He dropped the bags down a chute just beyond the door. They landed with muted thuds somewhere far below.

  “To the kitchens.” Seeing my surprise, he smiled again. “My culinary talents don’t extend very far but I’m not completely helpless.”

  He was going to cook or at least do something involving preparing food? I didn’t even try to hide my astonishment.

  Quietly, he said, “I thought you might be more comfortable if I gave the staff the day off. Except for security, of course. They’re at their posts and Rolf is around somewhere. Otherwise, we’re alone.”

  He must have done that when he’d gone downstairs. My throat tightened. I wasn’t used to such consideration. Hesitantly, I said, “Thank you.”

  That earned me a stern look. “You can thank me by eating.”

  Stubbornly, I said, “After stuffing myself at dinner last night, I’m not sure that I can.”

  But the truth was that I was ravenous. From the angle of the sun, I guessed that it was early afternoon. We had slept the morning away, hardly surprising given our exertions.

  “Your stomach just said otherwise.” He bent down and addressed my midriff directly. “How about it, want to find out if I can cook?”

  The rumble that came in response was too loud and clear even for me to ignore. Apparently, I had no control over any of my appetites where Adam was concerned.

  Straightening, he grinned. “Are you feeling brave?”

  This charming, even playful side of him undid me. I knew when I was beaten but I still wasn’t going down without a fight.

  “That depends. Do you have a microwave?” Maybe the staff had a stockpile of frozen goodies ready to go.

  “That would be a rectangular metal box designed to emit microwave radiation in short, controlled bursts?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I don’t suppose there’s any place around here that delivers?”

  He laughed and reached for my hand. I hesitated briefly before I gave it. The moment I did, a sense of contentment washed over me. It was fragile but I held fast to it all the same.

  We continued on along the passageway and down several flights of stairs until we came to a kitchen large enough to feed several hundred people. Stainless steel cabinetry and appliances were paired with a warm, red-tiled floor surrounded by white-washed brick walls and lit by hanging industrial lamps. Arches ran the length of the high ceiling, dividing the space into different functional areas. In one, most of the work surfaces were marble. Desserts, I thought. Another area was equipped with a dozen or more woks set in water basins. Apparently, Adam liked Asian food.

  He went directly to a large stainless steel refrigerator. Opening one of the four doors, he peered inside.

  “Looks like we’re in luck,” he said.

  The charcuterie platter he pulled out contained chilled pinwheel slices of chicken-and-pâté roulade, bite-sized terrines of venison flavored with cranberries and pistachios, and ruby red slices of dry-cured Spanish ham. To it, he added a crusty loaf of bread that smelled fresh baked and set both on the counter in front of me.

  I could only shake my head in wonder at the foresight of his staff.

  “You know this isn’t really cooking?” I asked.

  Glancing at the impromptu meal, he said, “It’s more like hunting and gathering. Venison, boar, the wild baguette.”

  I laughed at the absurdity of that. He did the same as our eyes met. We shared a moment of simple enjoyment before I glanced away. The intimacy of the setting stirred emotions that I wasn’t ready to confront.

  “Wine?” Adam asked, gesturing toward a pantry-sized chiller that looked as though it contained several hundred bottles.

  Tempted though I was, I shook my head. “Not for me.”

  He nodded and fetched a bottle of sparkling water from the refrigerator. We ate in silence. The food was superb, if very rich. It wasn’t long before I was full.

  I was taking another sip of water when Adam said, “There are things I’d really like to say to you but right now, I think it’s more important that I listen.”

  His candor took me by surprise. Hope blossomed in me that in the dark passion of the night, something new truly had been forged between us. The possibility made my heart ache, so desperately did I want it to be true.

  As I stared at him, uncertain how to reply, he prompted, “Earlier, you said that feeling the way you do about me threatens your survival.”

  The muscles in his jaw flexed, letting me know how affected he was by that. Yet he kept his voice calm and controlled, even gentle. “I’d like to understand why that is.”

  I hesitated, torn between longing to unburden myself and the wrenching fear of what doing so would mean. Adam knew firsthand how far above the law my family was and how dangerous that made them. Rather than let me go, he was perfectly capable of locking me up somewhere even more secure than the castle and going after them himself.

  I couldn’t let that happen. I was the Delaney, not him. The burden of what that meant fell on me. I had to deal with it.

  The silence drew out between us until he grimaced, as though he was quite literally in pain. Quietly, he said, “Please, Grace…

  I didn’t mistake what a huge concession that was for him, this man who was so accustomed to commanding obedience. The tightness in my chest eased a little.

  Slowly, I said, “There’s a…situation involving my family that I have to make right. Doing that is going to take everything I have. I can’t afford to be weak or--”

  I looked at him again, seeing not just his sheer physical beauty but the strength beneath it, sometimes violent to be sure but built on a foundation of honor and duty that the modern world was badly in need of.

  Aware that he was still waiting, I cleared my throat and tried again. “I can’t afford to be distracted.”

  He frowned. “You’re not talking about what happened with your uncle?”

  “No, I’m not. That’s over and done with, at least as far as I’m concerned.”

  It never would be for Grandmother. She would go to any lengths imaginable to avenge her “baby boy”. But how much more wildly dangerous would she and the others be if Patrick truly had found evidence of my family’s vast corruption? No one would be safe.

  As much as I feared for Will, Todd, and myself, I dreaded the innocent people who would end up as collateral damage. A servant, an assistant, a journalist who happened to stumble across something they shouldn’t. When paranoia turned deadly, everyone was at risk.

  Including Adam.

  I took a breath, let it out slowly, and braced myself for the storm that I was certain was about to break over my head.

  “The truth is that I don’t want to tell you anything more because I don’t want you to be involved.”

  Chapter Ten

  Adam

  What the hell?

  Grace actually believed that I’d let her deal with her venomous family on her own? How could a woman who was so intelligent and so brave be so damned wrong?

  I didn’t know whether to be angry or…angrier.

  For a moment, I thought of the high tower on Malta where more than one of my ancestors had secluded a jewel of a woman kept for his pleasure…and hers. Warriors that the Falzons were but we had a few other skills as well.

  Damned if something deep down in my limbic system didn’t default to the old ways every time I was up against it with Grace. The urges to protect and possess--not to mention fuck--ran right over each other, creating a firestorm that burned away anything resembling reason or sense.

  The problem was that approach didn’t work with Grace. At least not for longer than it took her to recover from a cascade of orgasms. If I could just keep her in that state, delirious with pleasure, hot and wet for me, begging--

  It was an enticing picture that had me hard just contemplating it but I needed to focus on the reality in front of me.

  What had she said on the terrace about us talking like two people who inhabited the twenty-first century? I wasn’t clear on how exactly that fit with her hurtling a table at me but that didn’t matter. The truth was I deserved what she’d done and then some. Even more, I was proud of her for doing it.

  But right then I had to think fast. Run straight at the challenge she presented and I’d be beaten before I started. Fortunately, I knew a thing or two about strategy.

  I stood, cleared away the remains of our late lunch and held out a hand to her. “Let’s take a walk. I want to show you something.”

  Clear green eyes blinked in surprise. However she’d expected me to react when she threw down the gauntlet, this wasn’t it. Good. The more off-balance I could keep her for now, the better.

  Slowly, she stood and--to my great relief--gave me her hand. The soft warmth of her skin soothed me. I managed a faint smile while all the rest of me--body and soul--went on thrumming with need for her.

  We left the kitchen through its wide swinging doors leading to the castle’s main dining room. At the center of that room was a gleaming mahogany Sheraton table large enough to seat sixty. I could remember using it as a boy to construct forts on rainy days.

  The room had always had a particular fascination for me due in large measure to the choice of art. Gold-and-crystal chandeliers illuminated works by the bloodier of the Old Masters--Carracci, Altdorfer, and Goya, among others--all over-sized depictions of battles. Guests enjoyed the finest food and wines under the gazes of men having their limbs sliced off and entrails ripped out. Trust my family to make a display of ruthlessness on even the most genteel occasions.

  I hurried Grace through there and out into another of the galleries that ran along the perimeter of the castle. High windows looked out over the mountains. Between them hung life-sized plaster casts made from the effigies on the oldest family tombs on Malta. Medieval men and women stared across at the framed portraits of their descendants hanging on the opposite wall.

  Grace’s startled gaze swept over them all. Softly, she said, “I’ve never seen anything like this. How did Rolf miss bringing me here?”

  I accepted that the man I trusted above all others had taken it upon himself to show her around the castle but I was glad that he’d left it to me to reveal this part of it.

  “Almost no one comes here,” I said. “It’s exclusively for Falzons.”

  She turned, flushing slightly, and looked at me. “But I’m not--”

  Quickly, I said, “That doesn’t matter. You have a problem with your family that you don’t want to talk about. I understand that.” I didn’t accept it, not for a moment, but I was playing a long game and I’d be as patient as I had to be in order to win.

  “I thought that my own family might offer some perspective.” Gesturing at the portraits, I added, “These are the people who were trusted to lead, not because they were the most virtuous or even the smartest but because they were the best at dealing with challenges. They knew how to assess risk, plot strategy, devise solutions. Most importantly, they knew how to survive.”

  I could see that I had her attention when she nodded slowly. Looking around at the portraits, Grace said, “Survival would be good.”

  The wistful note in her voice tore at me. I couldn’t bear that she knew she might not outlive whatever she was confronting and, worse yet, that she accepted that.

  Taking her arm--I desperately needed to touch her--I drew her over to one of the plaster effigies. The man it represented wore chainmail and a helmet. Tall, about my own height, and well built, he had died in his sixties, old for his era. Even in death, his features remained powerful and resolute. A sword rested at his side but he wasn’t reaching for it. Instead, his hand stretched out toward something that, in this setting, wasn’t immediately obvious.

  “This is Guillaume Falzon,” I said. “The first of us. He established the family on Malta, siring four sons and two daughters. Despite a lifetime of fighting, he managed to die in the arms of his wife.”

  Grace slanted me a glance. “Was she one of those women you told me about, spoils of war?”

 

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