To The Rescue. Jean Barrett
A SHOWER AND A SHAVE had Leo feeling halfway human again. Getting the meal inside him that Brother Timothy had promised them would be even better.
Not that breakfast was the most important thing on his mind, he thought, eyeing the closed door to the room that adjoined his as he tucked the tail of a fresh shirt inside the waistband of his jeans. She was on the other side of that door, waiting for the monk to come back and conduct them to the dining parlor.
Yeah, she was on his mind all right. More than he wanted her to be, and that worried him.
Jennifer Rowan was not what Barbara had led him to expect. The treacherous seductress who had stolen her husband. Oh, maybe she did physically fit the image, with that shoulder-length hair the color of rich mahogany, a pair of jade-green eyes and a body that a man would eagerly welcome into his bed.
He could see why Guy had been captivated by her. He was susceptible to that allure himself, and if he didn’t watch himself…
The thing of it was, though, nothing else about Jennifer smacked of a conniving woman. She struck Leo as being intelligent, independent, not lacking spirit and scared. Scared with good reason, considering the circumstances.
Okay, maybe all that vulnerability, the kind that made a man want to be protective of such a woman, was nothing more than an illusion. Her face alone could be responsible for that. He remembered that his ex-wife had angelic features like that.
But there had been no angel underneath, he sourly reminded himself, dragging a sweater over his head.
Leo hadn’t trusted a sweet face and a hot body since then.
Anyway, he knew from his work that what people were on the outside seldom matched what they were inside. Look at how he had caught her going through his things. Maybe just an act of desperation. Or maybe she was guilty of something. Because if she were so damn innocent, why had she run? He kept coming back to that.
Sliding his feet into a pair of loafers, he looked at the closed door again.
He could swear Jennifer had been relieved by Brother Timothy’s interruption, and afterwards she couldn’t escape into her own room fast enough. Why? Had she been panicked by Leo’s demand to hear her version of her involvement with Guy and the explanation for her flight from London the morning after his murder? Had she needed to get away from Leo long enough to put together a convincing story?
He wasn’t certain of anything at this point except his frustration. As hungry as he was, breakfast meant a delay, and he wanted to hear Jennifer Rowan’s story. Needed to hear it.
Only that wasn’t completely true. There was one other certainty. He couldn’t stop thinking of that enticing mouth of hers and how they were stranded here together.
Hell, none of this was going to be easy.
“YOU’RE SURE of it now, are you?” Brother Timothy asked as he escorted them along the corridor.
“I’m sure, friar,” Leo answered, trying to be patient with the monk’s excessive concern. “No headache and no chest pains. Just a little tenderness around the ribs.” He didn’t add that he was relieved to be rid of the tape in that area, which he had removed before his shower. Brother Timothy might not be happy with him if he knew about that.
“You’ll do then.”
The monk played guide as they continued along the route to the dining parlor, pointing out things and telling them there were many areas in the castle that the monastery rarely used. Leo could believe it. The place was immense, and probably rooms like the great hall would be impossible to keep comfortable in weather like this.
Jennifer beside him was quiet, offering no comment. She was close enough to him that he could catch whiffs of her fragrance, something subtle but seductive. Damn. It was bad enough that he had to be aware of everything else about her that was desirable.
She didn’t look at him, but Leo sensed that she was equally aware of him. And nervous about it.
“Turned real nasty again, it has,” Brother Timothy observed as they paused at an embrasure where a window in the stone wall looked down into a courtyard. There was a snow-covered sundial in its center surrounded by a formal arrangement of elevated beds framed by clipped hedges.
Or at least that’s what Leo thought he was seeing. It was hard to tell through the curtain of driven snow that had resumed after a brief lull in the storm. Even in this enclosed place the wind had the force of a gale. Not the kind of weather you’d choose to be out in, and yet there was a solitary figure down there pacing the paths. Head bent inside his cowl, he seemed oblivious to the conditions. Strange.
Leo noticed that Jennifer was intently watching the small, stoop-shouldered figure, whose habit identified him as one of the monks. “He doesn’t seem to be minding the cold,” she murmured.
“Not even noticing it, I’m thinking,” Brother Timothy said. “Our Brother Anthony has a deal on his mind these days. Only permits himself to leave his cell to exercise a bit in the cloister yard there or to pray in the chapel on the other side.”
“That is Brother Anthony then?”
“It is.”
Jennifer obviously knew about this Brother Anthony and was interested in him, though Leo couldn’t imagine how or why. And it didn’t look as though either she or Brother Timothy was going to bother to explain it to him.
So just what was that all about? Leo wondered as the three of them moved on along the passage.
He was to ask himself the same thing a moment later about another mystery when, pausing as they arrived at the top of a spiral stairway, Jennifer turned to the monk with a sober “Brother Timothy, I have another question for you.”
“If it’s about my days in the ring…”
“No, nothing like that.” She hesitated before asking what was clearly a self-conscious “Have there…well, ever been any tales about Warley Castle being haunted?”
Leo stared at her. Hell, was she serious?
The monk looked amused. “A ghost at Warley? Never heard of any ghost being sighted here. But if one was to turn up, I don’t see our Abbot Stephen tolerating him. Mind the stairs now. They’re a bit steep.”
There had been her interest in Brother Anthony, Leo thought as they descended the coiling flight. And now she was worried about a ghost? She seemed too levelheaded for that one, but something was up.
Okay, this made two more questions, among all the rest, that he intended to put to her when they were alone again. He just wished that, breakfast or not, he didn’t have to wait to ask them.
When they reached a landing less than halfway down the flight, Brother Timothy opened a door on the right and led them through a stone archway into the guests’ dining parlor. Leo could see why it was named that. There was a sitting area at the far end of the long room. It was furnished with easy chairs and a sofa.
The seven people who occupied the room were all gathered at this end, which served as the dining area. Some of them were busy helping themselves from a breakfast buffet laid out on a sideboard while others were already seated with their plates at a long trestle table.
Leo was surprised. Considering the weather, he hadn’t expected to find these number of guests at the castle. Or maybe it was just because of the weather that they were here. He could feel glances of curiosity directed at Jennifer and him.
“No need to go and worry about names,” Brother Timothy assured Jennifer and Leo. “Time for that when you’re settled with your plates.”
Of all the company, only one of them hovering near the sideboard wore a habit. Leo noticed, however, that he lacked a monk’s tonsure. Brother Timothy asked the young man to join them.
“Here now, this is our Geoffrey,” he said. “A novice, Geoffrey is, who has yet to take his final vows.”
Which