Secrets of the Highwayman (20 page)

“Glamour,” Suzie murmured. “There was a man I knew,” she paused, her gaze far away.

“Go on.”

Suzie shook herself. “It still upsets me when I think of it. I was traveling at the time…”

“With your New Age friends?”

“Yes. This man set himself up as the leader of a group, but I never trusted him. There was weird stuff going on. He seemed to have a hold over them that wasn’t entirely natural, as if they were blinded to what he was really like. Sick stuff, Melanie. I think someone was killed, and then he was arrested. Those left behind still believed he was innocent, that if he hurt them, then that was okay because it was his right. A bit like Charles Manson. Some people are so charismatic they’re able to manipulate their followers like that.”

“Is that glamour, though? Or just plain evil?”

“Could some people use glamour as a cover for evil?” Suzie sat up straighter. “I’ve just had a thought. If Pengorren was alive in the early nineteenth century and we saw him as a flesh-and-blood man when you were nine, who’s to say he hasn’t been around in other time periods as well? What if he really is a sort of faery? A fey being. Theoretically, he could go on living for centuries.”

Melanie’s heartbeat quickened. Pengorren was alive. He’d been alive all this time, hiding in the shadows, changing his identity, slipping in and out of history.
And he was here right now, watching them, laughing at them, waiting for the right moment to put a stop to the queen of the between-worlds’ plans to give Nathaniel another chance…

Nathaniel!

She didn’t realize she said it aloud, or maybe she didn’t. Suzie heard her, though, and now she was looking as if she was deciding how to phrase her next question.

“Nathaniel is in danger,” Melanie said, anticipating her.

“Nathaniel thinks
you’re
in danger.”

“You don’t understand…”

I will live forever. You will help me, Melanie…

“Oh God,” Melanie gasped, turning sharply as Pengorren’s voice whispered in her ear again.

Suzie was staring at her, wide-eyed. “What is it? Melanie?”

Melanie shook her head, locking herself down again, and then wrinkling her brow as a headache began its slow grind.

Suzie looked as if she was going to burst with frustration, and suddenly Melanie gave in. “There’s more I have to tell you,” she said, and immediately felt the relief of opening up. “Just be quiet and listen, and promise, if you do have me committed, it’s somewhere nice.”

Nathaniel looked up as the two women came
toward him. He had gone out to the stable to see to Neptune, leaving Eddie engrossed in Miss Pengorren’s diaries. He’d felt in need of some fresh air, as well as some physical exercise. It seemed sensible to allow Melanie and Suzie some time alone. Maybe they’d be gone when he got back?

But he knew he couldn’t bear that. Painful as it was, he needed to say good-bye.

Pengorren had a lot to answer for. Like a squid, his tentacles reached far. He had to be stopped. Despairingly, he wondered how he was going to complete his impossible task without Melanie at his side.

Then he looked up and all thought left him.

Melanie was glowing again. The sunlight caught in her hair and reflected off her skin, as if she’d been dipped in liquid gold. When her eyes met his they sparkled, more silver than blue. He felt his blood throbbing
through his veins. She was so beautiful, so captivating, and he was completely enraptured. Was this glamour? His heart gave a sickening lurch at the thought that none of what he was feeling was real, that it was Pengorren manipulating them.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and now she was close enough for him to reach out and touch, but he bunched his hands into fists and didn’t. Control, that was the thing. Self-control. He was beginning to enjoy restraining his impulses…well, most of the time.

“Sorry?” Her words finally penetrated. “You’re leaving,” he said bleakly, even though it was what he wanted.

She shook her head, then glanced at Suzie. Her guilty expression told him everything he needed to know. “You’ve told her about me,” he said accusingly.

“I had to.”

It was Melanie who reached out to touch him.

Something zapped between them so strongly that it hurt. He cried out, his head spinning and his body enveloped in heat. He wanted to lean down and kiss her. He could see the shine on her soft lips, he could taste her. He thought for a moment he was lost, that he couldn’t stop himself this time, but somehow he found the strength.

“Close your eyes, Melanie,” he said, hoarsely. “Please.”

She blinked and took a step back. She didn’t close her eyes, but she did look away, presenting him with her perfect profile. “I had to tell Suzie.” Her voice was
quiet, barely audible. “She needed to know, Nathaniel, she’s a blood relation of Pengorren, too.”

But Nathaniel didn’t want to listen any longer. He wanted her out of here and safe. “You have to go back to London. Today. Now.”

She shook her head, staring ahead.

He wanted to shake her, but he couldn’t, he knew he couldn’t touch her again. “You’re in danger, Melanie,” he said angrily, but he was pleading. “Pengorren wants you. He thinks that through you he’s going to live forever.”

“I know.” She shuddered. “He’s here in the present, he’s alive, but he’s grown old and feeble. He needs me so he can be strong again. When he touches me, he feeds off me like some sort of vampire…” She laughed, but it was more like a sob.

She was right, it was the only thing that made sense.

“That’s why you have to leave,” he told her. “He’s going to kill you, Melanie.”

Her chin lifted stubbornly. “And why is he trying to be strong again, Nathaniel?
So he can destroy you!
He knows you’re here, he knows you’ve come for him, and there’s only one thing he can do to stop you. I’m not going to leave you here to face him alone.”

“You can’t help—”

“I can. How do you know he won’t follow me, anyway? How do you know that?”

“Miss Pengorren went to London, and he didn’t follow her,” Nathaniel said levelly. “I think that’s why she went, to get away from him and to stop him from using
her strength to keep himself alive. You’re right, he feeds off people, he drains the life from them.”

Melanie shook her head. “I won’t go,” she said stubbornly. “I’m not leaving you here to face Pengorren alone.”

“Melanie…” Frustration made him want to shake her. Didn’t she realize that her being safe was more important to him than anything else?

Suzie, who had been glancing between them like a spectator at a tennis match, put her hand on Nathaniel’s arm. He frowned at her, not wanting her to interrupt, but she faced up to him. “I’m sorry, Nathaniel, but I think Melanie’s right. Pengorren is still around, still alive, and he wants to get rid of you just like he did the last time. You need help if you’re going to defeat him.”

“I won’t let him get rid of me this time,” he said coolly. “I’m prepared. I know what to expect from him.”

“But he’s not a man, is he? He’s something more.”

“You need me,” Melanie insisted, and she looked him in the eye, knowing how hard it would be for them both but needing to see his face and understand what he was thinking.

He sucked in his breath as desire enveloped them. “You know what you’re doing to me, Melanie,” he said on a groan.

“I know, but I’m Pengorren’s flesh and blood. I see him, I talk with him, I am part of him, and he’s part of me. He needs me, and we can use that to draw him into a trap.” Melanie felt herself go cold at the idea of it, but she’d given it a lot of thought. If this was her reason for
being at Ravenswood, then she must play her part.

Nathaniel knew she was right. His mind told him so, even while his heart was telling him to bundle her up in his arms and toss her into her car and send her on her way. He didn’t want Melanie to be yet another sacrifice to Pengorren.

“Nathaniel?” she whispered, pleading for understanding. “I have to stay. You know I have to.”

“You’ve made your decision, haven’t you?”

She nodded.

He wasn’t happy. “It seems as if I have no choice.”

“I’ll help you, too,” Suzie piped up.

They both turned on her. “No!”

“I’m not leaving you to face this alone. Don’t you dare try and get rid of me. This is the adventure of a lifetime…sorry, I know it’s more serious than that, but I’m not going to leave you. I mean it.”

“Yes, you will,” Melanie retorted, unimpressed. “First sign that Pengorren has transferred his interest to you, and you’re out of here. You have two sons who love you and need you. Promise me, Suzie!”

Suzie’s mouth went mulish, but she gave a grudging, “Okay.”

It was the best Melanie could get out of her.

Nathaniel was looking down at Melanie, at her mouth, and he was no longer smiling.

Suzie cleared her throat. “Well, I think I might go back and see what Eddie’s up to.” She waited, but no one answered her. With a sigh, she turned to go.

“Stay close to the house,” Nathaniel called after her. It was an order.

Suzie turned and gave a smart salute, clicking her heels together, but no one was watching her.

“Stay close to the house,”
Suzie muttered. “Who does he think he is? The lord of the manor?” And then she chuckled, because that was exactly what he was.

After Suzie was gone, Melanie told Nathaniel what she had seen Pengorren do to Dorrie, the words sour on her tongue. “You know, when we were in the ballroom upstairs I thought there was something familiar about Suzie. Now I realize what it was. I could see something of Dorrie in her. God, I hate him! I can feel his inheritance inside me—the cruelty, the violence. I’m afraid I’ll end up like him. Unless he kills me first.”

“It won’t happen,” Nathaniel said quietly. “We have to get the key from him, Melanie. Once we have that, he won’t be able to travel through time. He’ll be trapped here, where his physical body is. He’s still old and weak. We can destroy him.”

“If we knew where he was hiding.”

“It can’t be too far.”

“No, he needs to be close to me. I’m the bait, remember.”

He shifted uncomfortably. “How could I forget?”

She reached out and brushed her fingers against his cheek, and they both felt the extreme flash of emotion mixed with sexual hunger. She gazed into his eyes, unable to tear herself away. “I feel as if you’re a part of me, every fiber of my being aches for you. It hurts, Nathaniel.”

“I know,” he whispered.

“Is it real? Or is it all a lie?”

“I think the glamour has a lot to do with it…” His voice trailed off.

“But you wish it was real,” she finished, with a sad smile. “Me, too. Everyone dreams of love like this, all-consuming, all-satisfying. I want so much for it to be true.”

“We should enjoy it while it lasts. Who knows, once we’ve dealt with Pengorren, we might hate the sight of each other.”

Melanie couldn’t imagine it. This sort of love was the stuff of epic poems and romance novels—Tristan and Isolde, Lancelot and Guinevere. Sensual and all-consuming and achingly sweet.

It was a pity that with it came the darker emotions. Cruelty and violence and pleasure from pain.

“I wish you could hold me and take the demons away,” she said. “But we can’t even do that.”

Suzie got on with Eddie like a house afire. They seemed to be able to guess what the other was going to say, which was a little scary. Suzie hadn’t laughed so much for ages, and she felt somewhat guilty about that, considering what Melanie was going through. She should, she supposed, have been wringing her hands, but she’d never been the hand-wringing type.

Eddie told her about Miss Pengorren, and she could tell he’d been fond of the old woman. They examined the portrait of the major, with his missing face, which Suzie found creepy beyond belief. “So that hung on the
wall for all those years? Yuk. No wonder she took it down in the end.”

“I don’t think that was the reason,” Eddie said. “She knew Pengorren had done Nathaniel Raven out of his inheritance, and she wanted to make a statement. She had decided opinions, and she wasn’t afraid to say them aloud, but you couldn’t help but like her for it.”

Miss Pengorren was also a descendant of Major Pengorren, and she must have inherited a little of the glamour, even if it wasn’t enough to be noticeable to most people.
Like mine
, thought Suzie with a sigh.

“The Pengorren’s were a tragic family,”
Eddie quoted. “Where’s
The Raven’s Curse
?” he muttered, and went to find it against the wall, where he told her Nathaniel had thrown it in disgust. When he flipped to the back, there was a family tree, abbreviated of course, but there were still an awful lot of early deaths in each generation. Far more than seemed normal despite the harsh times.

Suzie perched on the arm of Eddie’s armchair, feeling very comfortable. “They can’t have been a very healthy family,” she said, running her finger down the list. “Look, in the end there was only Miss Pengorren left. She had two brothers…they both died before they reached adulthood.”

“During the war she was a nurse for a time. When she came back there was talk of her marrying a man she’d met overseas, but it fizzled out. I don’t know why. She never told me. But I don’t think she regretted not having a family. Maybe she’d seen too much sorrow in her own.”

“Was hers one of those wartime romances that went horribly wrong? Brave and handsome officer turns out to be a right cad.”

“Women always go for the handsome ones,” Eddie said, with a stoic look.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Suzie retorted.

She wondered what Eddie saw in her face, because he blushed. Romance blossomed in the strangest places, she reminded herself.

A phone began to ring, and Suzie saw that it was Melanie’s cell phone, on the corner of the desk. She picked it up. “Hello? Melanie Jones’s phone.”

There was a pause. “Ms. Jones?” The voice was old.

“I’m sorry, she’s not here at the moment, can I take a message?”

“Forgive me, but you sound very like her.”

Suzie laughed. “Well, I am her sister. Who is this?”

“I’m sorry. This is Mr. Trewartha. I’m an antiques dealer. Your sister asked me to come to Ravenswood to help her catalog the items in the house. I’ve been trying to arrange some transport, but I’m afraid I haven’t been able to manage it. I wondered, if it wasn’t too much of an imposition, whether someone could pick me up from Launceston? She did mention her firm would be willing to meet my expenses…?”

“Oh. Hang on a sec, will you?” She turned to Eddie and covered the mouthpiece. “Mr. Trewartha? He wants a lift out here.”

“Say yes,” Eddie said.

Suzie went back to the call. “Hello, are you there?
That would be okay. I’ll have to check with Melanie, of course, but if there’s a problem she can get back to you.”

“Good. Shall we say eight then? I can’t manage it any earlier. I’m at Number Six, The Close, Launceston. It’s a new estate, on your side of the town, so you won’t have to come far.”

“Eight it is.”

Suzie ended the call and rolled her eyes at Eddie. “I hope I’ve done the right thing. Evidently Melanie has been ringing him about cataloging Ravenswood’s contents.”

“Yes, the infamous Mr. Trewartha,” Eddie teased.

“Huh?”

“Sorry. He’s an antiques dealer, but he’s also an author. He wrote this book.” He held up
The Raven’s Curse.
“His coming here could be tricky, but that’s not our problem. Your sister will have to deal with it. So, don’t worry, you did the right thing.”

“I hope so. I can always go and get him. After all, I’m on holiday.”

“I could come with you, give you directions,” Eddie said airily. “Easy to get lost on these country lanes.”

“There, then,” Suzie smiled, “it’s settled.” Her smile slipped, and a crease wrinkled the skin between her eyebrows. “This probably sounds crazy, Eddie, but there was something about Mr. Trewartha’s voice…I felt as if I knew him.”

“Maybe he reminds you of your granddad.” Eddie laughed.

Suzie’s frown smoothed out. “Yeah, that’s probably it. Anyway, I don’t care what you say, he was a sweetheart, so old-fashioned and polite. A real old gentleman.”