Come to Castlemoor (14 page)

“You've only answered one of my questions,” I told him.

“How will I make you leave? Let's say I have means.”

“Are you
really
insane, Mr. Rodd?”

“No, but it's insane to oppose me.”

“I don't believe a word of this,” I said. “This is—why, it's
Alice in Wonderland
. I expect to see a turtle waddle up and tell me the story of his life. You can't be for real, Mr. Rodd. Surely you're—you're pulling my leg.”

He arched a brow. My blush started burning again. I cursed silently at my unfortunate choice of words.

“I assure you I'm quite real,” he said.

“I don't believe it,” I said stubbornly.

“What would you have me do to convince you?” he asked in a tone that again made me want to slap his face.

I stared up at that seamed, ravaged face, so ugly and yet so fascinating. There were weary lines about his eyes and mouth and deep creases in his cheeks. The grin mocked me, his whole manner was mocking, but there was a hard, cold look in his eyes that told me he was quite serious. I felt a sudden chill, and I stepped back, appalled.

“I—I refuse to continue with this insane conversation,” I retorted. “It's—preposterous.”

I turned away from him and started walking toward the arches. I heard him behind me, and then he was beside me, striding along casually, as though we were taking a Sunday stroll. I stopped dead still. He stopped too. I gave him an icy, disdainful look. He nodded his head and smiled. I continued on under the arches. Burton Rodd whistled softly, kicking rocks with the toe of his shoe as he moved beside me.

I stopped in front of the circle of stones.

“This has gone far enough,” I said. “I—I have things to do. I have no intention of matching wills with you at the moment. You are without question the most loathsome man I've ever encountered.”

“Without question,” he agreed.

“And—and furthermore, your idiotic pose of villainy belongs to the Spanish Inquisition. This—this is the age of Enlightenment. Victoria is on the throne, and we're—quite modern. Just because you live in a castle and have a stranglehold on one little village doesn't mean—”

“Enough,” he said amiably. “We don't have to fight just yet. You're on edge.”

“I am
not
on edge!”

I hurled the words violently. Burton Rodd jumped back, threw his hand out, and pretended to be on the verge of flight. Laughter welled up inside of him, and he had difficulty restraining it. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, drawing on reserves of sanity which were fast deserting me.

I managed to speak in a calm, level voice. “I am not a hysterical woman, Mr. Rodd,” I said, enunciating each word carefully. “I am, at the moment, extremely irritated, and I wish you had the common decency to leave me in peace.”

“Truce,” he said.

I turned to go into the circle of stones.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“I am going to eat my lunch,” I said nastily.

The horse was still inside the circle, reins dragging loose, wet-sable coat gleaming in the sunlight. I walked over to the altar stone, sat down on it, and started taking my lunch out of the sack. I studiedly ignored Burton Rodd, who stroked the horse's neck and then came over to pick up my sketchbook and examine the sketches I had done earlier.

“These are quite good,” he remarked.

I made no reply. I started unwrapping a sandwich.

“Of course, you know what they symbolize,” he said.

“I assure you, I know, and I assure you I'm not at all shocked. I intend to write a book about the ruins and the ancient rites, and I have none of the maidenly sensibilities that might hinder some other woman.”

“You blush prettily.”

“I'm not blushing!”

“You really intend to write a book?”

“I most certainly do.”

“You think it's possible?”

“Mr. Rodd—”

“So you
are
one of those?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“One of those ‘liberated females' so popular with the press.”

“You don't think women should be liberated?”

“On the contrary, I think they should be kept in chains. Women were created for one thing, and one thing only.”

“And what is that, dare I ask?”

“To serve men,” he said simply.

“Fiddlesticks!”

“Such language!” he mocked.

“I know a few stronger expressions, and believe me I'm tempted to use some of them now!”

I finished unwrapping the sandwich. Burton Rodd took it out of my hand and began to eat it, leaning on the altar stone, casual, unperturbed, infuriating. I pulled out the other sandwich, started to unwrap it, and found I had lost all appetite. I cast back in my mind, trying to remember another time when I had been as infuriated as I was right now, but I could think of none. Rodd finished the sandwich, said it was delicious, and asked what else I had in the sack. I took out the apple and handed it to him, livid. He examined it as though it were some curious object, then bit into it. I sat very still, trying to control my rage.

He ate the apple, ignoring me completely. He might have been alone in the ruined city. He seemed to be lost in thought. Occasionally he would glance up at the hard blue sky, a thoughtful look in his eyes, but he never once glanced at me. This bothered me even more than his brash impudence. I wondered why. Seething with rage, wishing he would vanish from the face of the earth, I slowly realized that these reactions were only a part of my response to him. The anger was real, but so was the thrill, the stimulation his very presence caused me to feel.

I tried to deny it. He was a horrible man, loathsome, yet there was something hypnotic about him, something that any woman would respond to. I blanched as I realized I was responding too, despite myself. This made my anger all the more potent.

“So you're interested in ancient history?” he said. “This is where it all started. Do you know what would have happened to a girl like you in a place like this several centuries ago? The stone you're sitting on was—”

I slid off the stone as though it had started burning. Rodd laughed. I stood rather shakily, knees weak. I started gathering up my notebooks. He took another bite of the apple, chewed, tossed the core to the horse. Now that he had finished eating my lunch, he gave his full attention to me. He leaned back against the stone, and his eyes examined me as they had the first time he saw me.

“You know, it's rather a shame we have to fight,” he said. “Under other circumstances there could have been something—mmm—quite pleasant between us.”

“There could never be anything between us, Mr. Rodd,” I said stiffly. “Let me assure you of that.”

“You're mistaken,” he replied. “No woman has ever resisted me, or even tried to, for that matter.”

“I'm sure the kind of women
you
consort with—”

“There've been all kinds. A duchess once tried to commit suicide when I refused to elope with her, and the wife of an ambassador—”

“I'm not at all interested in your—your dallyings, fictional or otherwise, and your—your preposterous conceit knows no bounds.”

“You're fascinated,” he said. “You'd like to hear all about them, and in detail.” He smiled, and his eyelids drooped sleepily over those hypnotic brown eyes. “If I were of a mind to have it that way,” he continued, “you'd be in my arms by sundown, willingly. I'd place money on it.”

“You'd lose your wager,” I snapped.

I wasn't so sure of it, and I was horrified with myself when I realized it. I dropped the notebook, retrieved it, felt completely at a loss. I might have been an awkward schoolgirl, all thumbs, instead of an intelligent, self-possessed young woman. Burton Rodd sensed my confusion, and it delighted him. He was fully aware of his power, and he exercised it with malice. Even as he taunted me, there was something cold and disinterested about him, as though this were a slightly boring game that would pass the time until something more challenging came along.

“You really are as vile as they say you are,” I said, my voice barely audible.

“You're right,” he answered.

“And—and you're proud of it.”

“The world is full of placid sheep and pinch-mouthed hypocrites,” Burton Rodd said. “Fools and knaves without the guts to be true to their instincts. I'm honest. I don't pretend to be a gentleman. I don't set out to charm and deceive. An honest man is a rarity in this age.”

“You needn't try to justify yourself for my sake,” I retorted.

He frowned. “I wasn't trying to justify anything. I'm merely saying I'd rather be honest—and be called a cad—than to play the hypocrite and court the world while secretly despising it, like my cousin Edward, for example. I understand he's become quite attentive to you.”

“That's no concern of yours,” I said icily.

“He's very good at that. The ladies love him—young and old alike. My mother adores him, even while he sponges off her, eats her food, uses her home as a hotel, borrows money from her to finance his so-called ‘research,' and secretly mocks her for her indulgences. But Edward's charming, very, so witty and warm and amiable. He's quite gallant, and gallantry always wins the ladies, all of whom are notoriously gullible.”

“You're incapable of understanding a man like Edward Clark,” I said.

“I understand him all too well. His beautiful manners amuse me.”

“He could give you a few lessons,” I replied.

He looked at me and shook his head slowly from side to side, as though I were a mere child incapable of forming any real judgments of my own. “We won't argue the point,” he said lightly, his voice expressing total boredom. “It's been pleasant, Miss Hunt. We'll meet again, soon.” His dark eyes studied my face for a moment, interested, amused, and then they went flat. I seemed suddenly no longer to exist so far as he was concerned. He turned away, hands thrust in pockets again, and started strolling toward the entrance columns. His head held down, he was studying the ground just as he had been doing when I first saw him.

His nonchalance, his obliviousness to me, was much harder to take than his antagonism had been. I frowned, furious. I called to him, in spite of myself. “Mr. Rodd!”

He turned, bored.

“Yes?” The word was a weary sigh.

“When I first saw you, you were—looking for something, weren't you?”

“As a matter of fact, I was.”

“Would you mind telling me what you hoped to find?”

“I don't think that need concern you,” he replied, slightly irritated now, as though a child dismissed for the evening had returned to plague an impatient parent.

“Could it be this?” I asked.

I pulled the amulet out of my pocket, holding it in the palm of my hand without looking down at it.

Burton Rodd lifted his bony shoulders, dropped them wearily, came back toward me, his brow creased, his lips curving down at the corners with impatience. He glanced at the object in my palm, and when he saw what it was, his whole manner changed. He stiffened. His face turned ashen. It looked even more ravaged, more deeply lined. He didn't say anything for at least a full minute. The expression on his face frightened me.

“Where did you get that?” he asked. He stressed each word, as though each had been slashed off with a sharp blade.

“I—I found it.”

“Give it to me.”

I didn't dare disobey. He stood in front of me, tall, thin, as hard as steel, as cold as ice. At that moment he looked truly menacing, capable of seizing my throat with those long, bony hands if I refused. He took the amulet and dropped it into his pocket without even glancing at it, his eyes piercing mine. I couldn't look away.

“You found it?”

I nodded, unable to speak.

“Where?”

I lifted my hand in an ineffectual gesture. My throat felt dry.

“Answer me!”

“I—as I came up to the ruins—I stepped on it. I—I almost fell. It was there—on the ground.…”

His eyes never left mine. “You know what it is?”

“Of course I do!”

“What does it mean to you?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me!”

“Nothing!”

“What do you know?”

“I know the leather's new! It should be withered.”

“Are you—”

“I don't know anything else!”

Almost hysterical, I turned away from him. I leaned against the altar stone, staring down at my notebooks and the empty sack. My back was to him, but I could feel him behind me. The sky wavered, very blue. The sun was warm, a yellow pool on the brown-stained stone. The horse walked over the crusty ground, its hooves tapping pleasantly. These details registered sharply, yet seemed unreal. Burton Rodd laid his hand on my shoulder and turned me around to face him.

“You're telling the truth?” he asked. His voice was soft now, rasping, almost gentle.

“Why should I lie?”

“Why indeed?” he mused.

He studied my face, but without the ferocity of before. He seemed to be committing each feature to memory. His fingers still gripped my shoulder. He released me and stepped back. The wind ruffled his grizzled locks. He looked older, strangely vulnerable. At that instant a curious affinity seemed to join us together, and I felt closer to him than I had ever been to anyone in my life. It lasted only a moment, yet when it passed I realized there was much more to Burton Rodd than he revealed on the surface. He was enigmatic, a man of many levels, and I wondered if anyone really knew him completely.

“You'll have to leave Castlemoor,” he said in a thoughtful voice. “I will see to it that the departure is profitable to you—quite profitable.” His eyes looked sad.

“I told you before, Mr. Rodd: I have no intentions of leaving.”