Crystal Gardens (17 page)

Evangeline turned back to Stone. “You hope to find Sharpy Hobson’s two former partners, don’t you?”

“Yes, miss,” Stone said.

“Why? What good will that do?”

Stone looked at Lucas, who answered the question.

“According to the rumors Stone picked up, Hobson recently accepted a commission for a job that required him to buy a train ticket. Someone asked him why he was leaving London. Hobson said that he was going to do a well-paid favor for one of his old partners.”

Excitement splashed through Evangeline. She smiled at Stone. “Brilliant work, Mr. Stone. If your inquiry agent can find Hobson’s old partner, we will have the man who hired him to kill me.”

Stone turned a dull red. “We’ll find him, Miss Ames.”

She smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Stone. I am very grateful for your efforts.”

Stone ducked his head and left the room with his usual cat-footed grace, closing the door quietly behind himself.

Lucas smiled. “I do believe you made Stone blush.”

“Yes, well, I didn’t mean to embarrass him. He really did do excellent work in London. At last we have a lead.”

“So it seems. What was it you wanted to see me about?”

Evangeline straightened her shoulders. “I realize it is none of my
affair, but I feel you were somewhat curt, to say the least, with your aunt and your sister. They have both gone to considerable trouble to rush here to Little Dixby to accommodate you. The least you could do is be polite to them.”

“Having my sister show up as well as my aunt was not part of the plan. I am trying to conduct an investigation here, not host a house party.”

“I understand. But that is no excuse for rudeness.”

He groaned. “You don’t know my family, Evangeline. Trust me when I tell you that my relations must be managed with a firm hand.”

She lowered herself onto a chair. “And you are the one who manages them?”

“For my sins, yes.” Lucas unfolded his arms, went behind the desk and sat down. “After my father died my grandfather saddled me with the task. It wasn’t as if he had a great deal of choice. Tony was too young and my grandfather didn’t much care for any of his nephews.”

A whisper of knowing flitted through her. “But given a choice in the matter, you would have preferred to pursue another path in life.”

“Few of us have a choice when it comes to our responsibilities. They are what they are.”

“Yes,” Evangeline said, “but not everyone accepts that.”

“I do not live in a fantasy world, Evangeline. And as it happens, I am very good at making money.”

She smiled. “I do not doubt that for a moment.”

“It turns out that making sound investments has a great deal in common with hunting killers. Similar skills and talents are required.”

“What skills and talents?” she asked.

He met her eyes. “The ability to find and predict patterns, a streak of ruthlessness and a strong will to survive.”

“I will remember that in the event that I ever have enough money to invest.”

T
he gardens glowed faintly in the night. The luminous light came from the vegetation and the darkly shimmering surfaces of the ponds.

Evangeline stood at the window of the bedroom, clad in her wrapper and slippers, and looked out over the eerie scene. The vines and creepers that draped the lower walls of the old house did not grow so thickly on the upper floors. It was as if the higher it climbed away from the source of its paranormal nourishment, the less the strange foliage flourished. She could not see the whole expanse of the gardens from her bedroom, but a far greater portion of the grounds was visible from her window than from any of the ground-floor windows.

A short time earlier she had sensed, rather that heard, Lucas moving past her door. She knew that he had gone downstairs and was no doubt going out into the gardens to start his investigations.

She had not been able to sleep in spite of the clean room and the
fresh linens. The kiss in the library that afternoon had thrown her off balance. Once she found herself alone in her room she had not been able to stop thinking about it. The memory of it sent another shiver of icy-hot energy through her. It was not as if she had never been kissed, she reminded herself. But with Lucas everything was different.

A glary light appeared down below in the gardens. Lucas walked out of the house and onto the terrace. He was carrying a lantern and he was alone. Stone was also out there somewhere in the night, patrolling the great wall that surrounded the gardens. Earlier in the evening she had heard Lucas talking quietly to him, telling him to keep watch on the sleeping household.
To keep watch over me
, she thought.

Lucas paused on the terrace steps. The fiery illumination of the lantern briefly revealed the hard, determined cast of his face. In that moment the steel in the man was clearly marked. Evangeline caught her breath. This was a man who would do whatever he felt was necessary to fulfill what he considered to be his responsibilities. Now he was preparing to enter the dangerous green Hades that was the Night Garden to find the truth about his uncle’s death.

She watched him go down the steps, circle the obsidian-dark pond and enter the gleaming, vine-draped gazebo. He stepped off the stone floor on the far side and disappeared almost immediately into the thick, luminous foliage.

She knew that he was going toward the entrance of the maze. For a moment or two she was able to track his progress by the occasional flashes of lantern light that sparked deep inside the greenery.

Abruptly the last sliver of light winked out. She suspected that Lucas had turned down the lamp, preferring to rely on his para-senses to navigate the darkest regions of the grounds.

She turned away from the window long enough to seize hold of the small dressing table chair. She carried the chair back to the window
and settled down to wait for Lucas to emerge from his midnight quest. She knew that she would not sleep until he was safely back inside the house.

A weak flicker of light at the corner of her eye made her glance toward the Day Garden. She expected to see Stone making his rounds. The glow of a lantern turned down very low flickered into view near the high wall. The man who held the light was no more than a dark silhouette in the moonlight, but she could see at once that he was not nearly large enough to be Stone.

An intruder had entered the grounds.

She jumped to her feet and gripped the window ledge, waiting tensely for Stone to appear and confront the newcomer.

Seconds passed. A second man joined the first. The lantern winked out but there was enough moonlight to allow Evangeline to watch the two dark shadows. They were moving toward the gazebo and the entrance to the Night Garden.

There was no sign of Stone. Something was very wrong. Her intuition flared, sending her already jangled senses into a frenzy of alarm.

She struck a light and lit the bedside taper. Candlestick in hand, she went out into the hall and down the stairs. At the foot of the staircase she hurried toward the rooms near the kitchen that Stone had claimed. Perhaps he was not outside after all, she thought. Perhaps he was still asleep.

She rapped sharply on the door. There was no response.

“Mr. Stone,” she called softly. “Mr. Stone, are you in there?”

Silence reverberated.

She wrapped one hand around the doorknob and twisted tentatively. The door opened easily. She hesitated. Both she and Stone would be equally horrified and dreadfully embarrassed if it transpired that he was still in bed.

There was nothing for it. She could not waste another moment. Holding the candlestick, she peeked around the edge of the door. The flickering light of the flame revealed the empty, still-made-up bed. Stone was gone.

Her first reaction was relief. He was outside in the garden after all. He would surely spot the intruders. He and Lucas were more than capable of taking care of themselves.

But what if Stone didn’t realize that the two men were on the grounds?

The feeling that something very bad was about to happen out in the gardens got stronger and more disturbing.

She closed the door to Stone’s room and went swiftly along the hall to the kitchen. Blowing out the candle, she opened the door and moved outside onto the terrace. The cool night air flirted with the hem of her wrapper.

The luminous gazebo loomed in the moonlight. She looked around for Stone and saw no sign of him. Searching for him would take precious time, but he was her best hope. Stone would know how to protect Lucas.

There was no alternative. She was very good at finding that which was lost. Tonight Stone had gone missing. She summoned up her psychical impressions of the man and focused her senses on the search.

When she looked down she saw a faint fog of energy stirring at her feet. She knew in a way she could not explain that this was what she was searching for, Stone’s psychical trail.

Senses raised, she circled the pond, taking care not to look directly into the moonlight-silvered water. The disturbing energy tugged at her but she suppressed the urge to walk to the edge and look down into the depths.

She hurried along the path between two towering hedges, ignoring the massive night-blooming flowers that glowed on the green walls.

She exited the hedge path and rounded a wildly overgrown rosebush. The flowers radiated an iridescent light. She was in the Day Garden, not the more dangerous Night Garden, but her intuition told her it would be unwise to brush up against the small thorns or pause to inhale the scent.

She was concentrating so hard on staying well clear of the roses that she did not notice the pulsing energy currents on the ground until her slipper-clad foot collided with a large, immovable object. She tumbled and went down, landing hard on her hands and knees. Jolted, she gasped for breath. It took her a second or two to realize what she had tripped over.

“Stone.”

She crouched and studied Stone’s too-quiet form with all of her senses. The strong, steady currents of energy around him assured her that he was alive, but the subdued heat in some of the key wavelengths indicated that he was deeply, unnaturally asleep. Her fingers shook a little. Stone would never fall asleep on patrol and certainly not so profoundly.

She struggled to her knees and searched his body for signs of a wound. To her relief there were none, but something traumatic had happened to Stone. He lay face up in the moonlight, eyes closed. He did not stir.

“Mr. Stone,” she whispered.

Gingerly she shook one massive shoulder. When she got no response, she pressed her fingertips to his throat. Relief surged through her when she discovered that his pulse was steady and strong. It was clear, however, that he was not going to be of any use to Lucas tonight.

There was no point wasting time going back into the house to summon Florence and Beth. Neither of them could go more than a few steps into the gardens at night without becoming disoriented.

She went back along the hedge path, past the rim of the pond, and
pushed through a curtain of orchids and creepers to enter the gazebo. Her senses were flung wide, focusing on the new search. She had to find Lucas.

She had no difficulty detecting the cold, fiery energy of his prints on the glowing stone floor.

She stepped off the far edge of the gazebo and followed the trail of prints to the entrance of the maze. The iron gate stood open. The interior of the maze was lit with dark energy.

She moved cautiously into the luminous passageway formed by the living walls of plants. In her heightened state of perception she could have sworn that she heard the foliage breathing and whispering around her. She knew it was impossible but she could not shake the sensation that the maze was somehow aware of her presence.

She paused just inside the entrance, listening for footsteps or voices. But she heard nothing. The atmosphere was oddly hushed, as if the paranormal foliage absorbed and muffled normal sound.

The floor of the maze was composed of a carpet of oddly shaped green leaves. The ceiling and walls were formed by thick foliage that bristled with red-tipped thorns and blooms that resembled gaping mouths.

No moonlight penetrated the maze, but the paranormal luminescence of the leaves and the ominous flowers that studded the walls provided enough light to allow her to see where she was going.

She followed Lucas’s hotly seething prints deeper into the labyrinth, following the trail through an impossibly complicated pattern of twists and turns. There was no sign of the intruders.

A short time later she arrived at yet another intersection and saw that Lucas had gone left. She followed, hurrying more quickly now. Her slippers made no sound on the green carpet.

She rounded the corner and crashed into Lucas. He clamped an
arm around her waist and put a hand over her mouth before she could cry out in surprise.

“What the devil do you think you’re doing?” he said into her ear.

At least she could hear him now that he was so close. She tried to respond but that proved impossible with his palm covering her lips.

“Mmmph,”
she said.