A Season of Miracles

CHAPTER 3

He was bending over her, his head slightly turned as he calmly ordered everyone to move back, give her some room.

Then his eyes fell on her again.

They were blue. Navy. The closest thing to black she’d ever seen that still carried the touch of a hue. And she wasn’t in pain anymore. Not in physical pain.

But she was in mental agony. Total humiliation.

What in God’s name had seized her?

She had been kept from falling by someone and transported to the Victorian sofa that sat just inside the main entry to the pub. Connie was on one side of her, Joe on the other. Her new friend Tip, the cop, was hovering somewhere nearby; she could hear him talking. But it was Robert Marston who was right in front of her, barking out orders, touching her forehead and her throat—checking for a pulse, she assumed.

She wished she could crawl under the couch.

She sat up, an act easier planned than managed. Marston was so close that she crashed right into him, forehead to forehead. He smiled as their heads cracked, while she paled all over again.

“I knew I wasn’t exactly welcomed by everyone in the company, but I never thought I could cause fainting spells,” he joked.

She shook her head quickly. “You had nothing to do with it. I didn’t even know who you were. I—”

“Are you all right?” he enquired more seriously.

“I—I—of course,” she stammered.

Then she was aware of Connie’s gaze. “Jillian, are you sure? My God, you were white as a ghost. We were so worried.”

“I’m…I’m fine,” she protested. “Thanks, really. I’m just embarrassed and—”

“Maybe we should get you to the hospital, get you checked out,” Marston suggested, interrupting her with a note of authority.

She stared at him, wishing she could crawl away.

What in the world had caused this?

She hadn’t felt threatened by his hiring, had she? Wary, but not threatened. She hadn’t really talked to him yet, because there hadn’t really been the opportunity. A simple, normal opportunity. But she hadn’t been worried about it. She was in design, he wasn’t. In all honesty, she wasn’t sure why Douglas had suddenly brought him in, but she had neither felt threatened nor overly impressed.

But at this particular moment, he seemed extremely imposing. The man was very tall, even down on one knee the way he was now. His shoulders were broad, though he seemed as sleek and agile as a man more slimly built.

“A hospital couldn’t hurt, other than the hours you’re likely to spend in the emergency room,” he told her.

She realized that she hadn’t responded to his earlier comment; she had just been staring at him. “No, I don’t want to go to the hospital. Really, I’m fine,” she protested. “Please, I just—” She broke off, aware that a sea of faces seemed to be looking on.

In the distance, she even saw the face of the tarot reader. The woman was watching her gravely, as if she weren’t at all surprised by this turn of events.

For some reason the sight of the woman was disturbing. Jillian felt uneasy again, as if something was wrong but she just couldn’t put her finger on it. It was as if the tarot card reader knew something she didn’t.

Something that she should know.

The woman turned away, and Jillian’s uneasiness dissipated. She felt simply and completely like an idiot.

“What?” Marston asked quietly, seeming to sense her unease.

“I just need to get out of here,” she said. Her voice was soft. Raspy. “I could really go for some air.”

A second later, she regretted her words, as Marston lifted her into his arms, striding from the pub. “Excuse us, the lady needs air.”

She wasn’t white anymore. Her cheeks were flushed with mortification.

Outside, she found herself seated on the hood of a silver sports car. She heard Connie’s heels hitting the pavement as she and Joe hurried out to join them, followed by Tip, still in his Carmen Miranda getup.

“Is that better?” Those uncannily dark blue eyes were on hers.

And her hands were on his arms, she realized; she had gripped him to steady herself. She snatched her hands back and grasped for some dignity. “Look, Mr. Marston, I appreciate your concern, but I’m fine now. I just—”

“Had too much to drink?” he suggested.

She straightened in indignation. “I never have too much to drink.”

“No?” A spark of humor touched his eyes.

“I don’t believe your job description includes anything about picking me up from barroom floors, though I do appreciate the concern. However, I really am fine.”

“She does seem to be okay,” Tip said.

Marston turned around, his eyes widening at the sight of the big cop in drag. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you two were together,” he said briefly.

“No, no, they’re not together,” Joe said quickly, explaining. “Tip is a friend of mine.”

Jillian could have knocked him silly. She offered him a scathing glance, but he didn’t notice.

“I think I should get off this car before the owner sues for damages,” she said, starting to move.

“Give yourself another second.”

His hands were on her shoulders. Long fingered, clean, neat, powerful. She glanced down at his touch and felt a strange, warm tremor. Barely remembered. Not welcomed now.

“I’m on someone’s Mercedes.”

“It’s mine,” he said.

Naturally. The Mercedes said everything there was to say about him. Smooth, cool. Sporty but mature. Handsome, powerful, sleek.

“Maybe you should take Jillian home, Mr. Marston,” Connie said, concerned. She looked from one to the other. “We haven’t actually met,” she said to him. “I’m Connie Murphy.”

“Joe’s wife. I know,” Marston said. He smiled and took her hand, and his eyes met Joe’s. “Your husband and I have already worked together.”

“Yes, of course.” Connie looked flushed. It had been one thing for her to tease Jillian about company gossip, but now that she was actually meeting Robert Marston, she seemed a little awed herself. He did make an impression.

Was that why Douglas had brought him in? Connie wondered. She answered her own silent question quickly and defensively. No. Daniel, full of confidence, ability, authority and composure made quite an impression himself. Theo was equally presentable. Eileen was pure elegance and assurance. And Griff…

Griff excelled at being Griff.

“Office meeting over,” Jillian murmured with false cheer. She tried to slide off the car, but Marston stopped her.

She looked at his hand, then met his eyes. “I told you I’m all right.”

“If you won’t go to the hospital, at least let me take you home.”

“I’m fine. Tip can see me home. He may look like Carmen Miranda, but in real life, he’s one of New York’s finest.”

“So you’re a cop. Nice to meet you.”

“Ditto,” Tip told him, as the two men shook hands.

“Did you drive, Tip?” Marston enquired, those dark eyes settling on the cop.

“No, ’fraid not,” Tip told Jillian apologetically.

“I don’t need a ride,” Jillian protested.

“Jillian, you passed out cold,” Connie said.

“Thanks, Connie,” she murmured.

“You might have hurt yourself.”

“But I didn’t!”

“You were leaving, anyway,” Marston reminded her. “So let me take you home.”

“You just got here, so I’m sure you don’t want to leave. Go on in and have a good time.”

“And what would I tell Douglas in the morning?” he asked, a half smile curving his lips.

“That his granddaughter is pigheaded?” Joe supplied.

“Joe…” his wife said warningly.

“I really don’t think that watching me is part of the job,” Jillian began.

“I wouldn’t want to bet on that,” Joe said.

“Okay, okay. I’ll go home with Marston,” she said, aggravated.

“You can call me Robert, Bob, Rob, or even Bobby. Most of the time, when people call me Marston, they put a ‘mister’ in front of it,” he said, his tone conversational but with a slight edge, his dark eyes on her.

She eased off the car, meeting that gaze. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Marston.”

He smiled. An honest smile. She looked away, biting her lip.

“’Night, then,” Connie said.

“Good night.” Jillian hugged Connie, kissed Joe and then Tip on a cheek, and walked around to the passenger side of the car. He was already there, opening the door for her.

Call me, Connie mouthed.

She would call her, all right.

A moment later, they were in traffic.

He drove competently, assertively, but not recklessly. He was playing a Celtic CD; a woman was singing about a highwayman. Partiers filled the sidewalks, all laughing, some loaded, some simply happy. Taxis veered in and out; horns blared.

“I live at—” she began.

“I know where you live,” he told her.

Fine.

A few minutes later, they pulled up to the house on Manhattan’s upper east side. It was one of the few old mansions that remained. Among a sea of skyscrapers, it stood three stories tall. A brick wall with wrought-iron gates separated it from its neighbors.

Here, away from the throngs, the streets were quiet. Marston didn’t opt to enter the driveway but slid into an impossible spot on the street.

Before the engine had died, Jillian was reaching for the door handle.

“Are you afraid of me?” he asked her. She could hear his amusement.

“No, of course not.” Her fingers fell from the handle.

“Do you resent my being hired?”

He was blunt. “No. Why should I?”

“Want to hear all the rumors?” he queried.

She shook her head. “No. Do you want to hear the truth?”

“Sure.”

“I like design. I enjoy what I do. I especially like jewelry, but make occasional forays into fashion, as well. I don’t want my grandfather’s kingdom. I don’t even think my grandfather wants all his kingdom anymore. So why should I resent you being hired?”

He smiled, looking not at her, but straight ahead at the road, at the night. “Because in a kingdom, you always have to have a king. Or a queen.”

“Well, if we have a king, it’s Daniel. Are you planning to push him from the throne?”

“I’ve been given shares in the company and a very satisfactory title. Part of the package when I came over. Daniel has his own role.”

“Then, we all ought to be just peachy-keen,” she murmured. She looked at him. “Thanks for the ride. I’m sorry to have troubled you.” She fumbled with the door. He reached over her and opened the door easily.

“Thanks,” she muttered.

“I would feel better if I walked you in.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“But you don’t resent me?” he queried lightly. He stepped out of the car as she did.

“Okay, walk me in.”

“You did have quite a reaction to seeing me walk through the door tonight.”

“I wasn’t reacting to you,” she said, her heart pounding. What had she reacted to?

The pain. The pain had been unbearable, and the world had gone black.

“Then?” he pressed.

“The tarot card reader,” she said.

“What?”

“There was a woman reading tarot cards. She started screaming, rolling her eyes—and calling me a witch. She wouldn’t stop. She was pretending to be in a trance or something, and we decided to get out. I just needed air,” she said, finishing rather lamely.

“I had nothing to do with it?”

She met his gaze again, black in the shadows. She still felt…wary of him. But curiously drawn, as well. She had to admit he was being polite, and he seemed to have a sense of humor.

She shook her head. “No,” she lied, then smiled. “Honestly, I don’t resent you. I think you’ve got great credentials, and I really don’t want to run the company.”

“If that’s a welcome, thanks, I’ll take it.”

“Sure. It’s a welcome. In fact, please come in, if you’d like. Have a drink here, since you never got your chance at Hennessey’s.”

“Despite the much-appreciated-but-debatable sincerity of that offer, I’m afraid I have to refuse.”

“Ah, a date,” she murmured, lashes flicking downward. She was definitely losing her mind. She hadn’t wanted him to take her home, and had tried very hard to shake him. And now…

She was disappointed. And curious.

Jealous? She wondered who he was meeting.

“An appointment,” he said lightly. “You’re sure you’re all right?”

“I’ve never felt better. Honestly.”

“All right, then.”

But he stood there, watching her.

“Well?”

“I need to see you in.”

“Oh.” She slid her computer key into the lock. The gate swung open; she stepped through, closing it behind her.

He nodded, then turned away, starting back toward his car.

“Mars—uh, Mr. Marston?”

He turned back.

“It was nice to meet you. And thanks for your concern.”

“Of course.”

He walked to his car, and she watched him drive away. Though it was cold, the bars of the gate suddenly seemed to burn against her hands.

She released them quickly.

Strange, strange night.

Robert returned to Hennessey’s.

Parking the car in the street—easy enough, with most of the evening’s revelers Halloween-ed out and headed home—he left the driver’s seat and checked his watch.

Too late for his original appointment, but he’d wanted to come back here, anyway.

He’d never seen anything like the way Jillian Llewellyn had looked at him. He hadn’t expected to be welcomed into the company with pure joy and enthusiasm, but he’d never imagined anything like what he’d encountered.

She had looked at him with…hatred? Horror?

Maybe pure blind terror. Or something else. He didn’t know quite what. A combination of all those emotions.

He had felt shaken. For a moment a chill had settled over him, like something cold and horrible beyond words, and then…

Then she had started to fall, and the feeling had slipped away, and now he couldn’t even recall exactly what it had been. Maybe he’d imagined it. And yet…

At the bar, he ordered a beer. They’d dyed the beer with food coloring. Black beer. Interesting.

As he sipped, he eased back and surveyed the room. Nearly midnight. The band was playing ballads. The bar was still full, but the customers at the tables were beginning to head out. When people moved, he saw the fortune-teller.

Tarot card reader. Whatever. It was all just fun and bull.

As he looked at her, she suddenly stared up at him. Her eyes were golden. Amber, glimmering. She was an arresting woman, metallic in color. Even her skin was copper. She was both stunning and disturbing.

As she looked at him, she suddenly leaned back in her chair, gripping the table. She didn’t seem to be doing anything else, certainly nothing threatening, but the couple who had been having their cards read suddenly pushed their chairs away.

He wasn’t sure why, but he rose, walking over to her. She straightened, pointing at him.

But she didn’t see him. He knew that, her eyes had rolled back into her head.

“Betrayer,” she whispered. She began to croon and moan, weaving in her chair.

He felt the cold again. Like ice. Fear unlike anything he could remember. Yet he wasn’t afraid for himself. He just knew that…

His head hurt. Pounded. He leaned forward, putting his hands on the table. “Stop it,” he snapped. “Stop it.”

She jerked forward; her eyes rolled into place. “You shouldn’t have come,” she told him, visibly shaken.

“I shouldn’t have come to the bar?” he asked.

“To Llewellyn,” she answered.

He eased down into the chair, staring at her. “Who put you up to this?” he demanded. After all, this was Hennessey’s. A favorite hangout of Daniel’s, Theo’s, and probably Griff’s, as well.

The name Llewellyn was Welsh. But Robert knew from his long conversations with Douglas that the family had been in Ireland for hundreds of years before he had picked up and made his way to the States.

“Madame Zena,” he said firmly, looking around the pub again for some sight of any one of the Llewellyns, “who put you up to this?”

“No one,” she told him.

“Well, then, listen to me,” he said, leaning forward. “I didn’t come to Llewellyn to hurt anyone. As a matter of fact, I intend to protect certain people, even though they may not trust me. Protect them, and their interests. So you can call off the mind games. I—”

“You know nothing,” she said softly. “You are dangerous. More dangerous than you can ever imagine. You’re so powerful and arrogant.” She leaned toward him, suddenly angry, but very still and quiet as she spoke. “You know nothing. And you do not care to learn.”

“Excuse me, Madame Zena,” he interrupted, puzzled and angry, and not knowing why he felt he needed to defend himself to a fortune-teller. “Look, I’m a decent human being, responsible, concerned, intelligent—”

She didn’t seem to hear him. “You may be all that, but it’s not enough. Fear is a good thing, young man. Fear can create a quest for knowledge, because no man is so strong he can defy God, Heaven and Hell, and all the Fates. Get out of here. And don’t come to me again unless your mind is open.”

She stood and, with a flourish, spun away from him, then rushed from the bar.

Startled, he sat back in the chair.

“Wow, that was…scary!”

He turned around and saw that the girl who had been in his chair just moments earlier had spoken. A pretty young brunette, she was clinging to her lanky escort, eyes wide, cheeks pale.

“Well,” he said with a shrug, “it’s Halloween, after all.”

One of the bartenders—a freckled redhead wearing bobbing bug antennae—came walking over, wiping a glass as he looked out the door. “She didn’t even get her money,” he said, then shrugged fatalistically. “Oh well, I imagine she’ll be back.”

He returned to his position behind the bar.

“Look at the card that’s turned over now,” the brunette said. She grabbed her boyfriend’s lapel. “That wasn’t my card.” She stared at Robert, scared again, shaking her head. “It’s your card. It has to be your card.”

“So? I don’t believe in prophecy. Fate is what we make it,” he said firmly.

“It’s…it’s still your card,” she whispered, then turned, heading out.

“Women,” the man said. “You know the old saying. Can’t live with ’em, can’t shoot ’em, either.”

He hurried after the brunette.

Robert looked at the card on the table. He didn’t know much about tarot cards, and he certainly didn’t believe in their ability to foretell the future.

But even he recognized the Grim Reaper.

The dream came suddenly.

She smelled smoke. And then there was the rustling sound of dry kindling as it caught fire. The acrid smell of something burning…

Flesh.

Pain, a searing pain…

She awoke with a violent start and jumped out of bed, screaming, “Fire! Henry, get Grandfather!”

With her eyes open, she saw that there was no fire. She stood dead still. No smoke, no fire, no scent of burning flesh.

Her door suddenly burst open.

There was Henry, Grandfather’s assistant.

Henry was seventy, a spring chicken compared to Douglas Llewellyn. He stood in her doorway in his proper pajamas and robe, snow-white hair beneath a bed cap, as if he were a character right out of a Dickens novel.

“Jillian?” he cried, looking frantically around.

Embarrassment filled her. She’d been dreaming.

“Oh, Henry, I’m so sorry. I had a nightmare, I…I guess.”

He exhaled a vastly relieved sigh. “Oh, my dear girl,” he said.

She walked to the doorway, setting a hand on his shoulder. “Henry, are you all right? My God, I can’t believe I was screaming like that. I wouldn’t have worried you for the world. How ridiculous. I guess it happened because it’s Halloween.”

He smiled. “Why, Miss Jillian, you’ve never been afraid of Halloween, or the dark, or things that go bump in the night.”

She lifted a hand. “I’m at a loss myself. But I’m sorry.” She set her palm on his chest. His heart rate was slowing.

“I’m fine, Miss Jillian. Just fine. The old ticker is pumping just as it should. Shall I fix you a drink? A hot toddy?”

“No, no more alcohol,” she said.

He arched a brow.

“I had a few Guinness Stouts,” she told him.

“Well, then, what say we share some hot chocolate?”

She smiled. “Sounds good.”

As she had since she’d been a little girl, after her mother died, she slipped her hand into his. They walked out to the second floor landing and down to the kitchen together.

As they chatted, memories of the awful vividness of the nightmare faded.

She didn’t tell him much about her Halloween evening at Hennessey’s, though. And she didn’t say a word about the tarot card reader, or the arrival of Robert Marston.

Eventually, warm and relaxed, she yawned, thanked Henry and headed up to bed.

She tried to sleep, but she couldn’t. Suddenly, after all these years, she hated the dark.

She rose. The main light would be too bright. Even the reading light by her bed would be too much. She turned on the bathroom light, then left the door open a crack and lay back down in bed.

Better, but still…

She’d never been afraid before. Of the darkness, of the night. If there were ghosts in her life, they were good ghosts. People who had loved her. Her mother. Her father.

Milo.

Her eyes fell on the snow globe that sat on her nightstand between the lamp and the silver-framed picture of Milo and herself. Always smiling. No matter what pain had plagued him. He had loved art and music, dance, theater, the world. An eternal optimist. The pain was okay, because he was living, still with her, still seeing the world. Death would be okay, too, because then the pain would be gone, and there was a better world.

He had given her the snow globe. It played a beautiful, if somewhat sad, tune, though the title was a mystery. It held a wilderness scene, with horses and riders racing through a winter landscape. She shook it and watched the snow fall.

“I wish you were with me, old friend,” she said softly.

A few minutes later, she felt an odd sense of peace settling over her.

Finally she slept. And the dream didn’t come again.

Connie was the first to enter Jillian’s office in the morning. She stepped in humming, then came to a dead halt. A scream escaped her, and she clamped her hand over her mouth to stop it.

Someone rushed in behind her, and she spun around. Daniel Llewellyn.

Like her, he stood dead still. Staring. At the cat.

“Jeeves is…dead,” she said.

“Sure looks like it,” Daniel said.

“Hey, what’s all the commotion?” Griff demanded, walking in behind them.

They both looked at Griff with almost as much surprise as they had stared at the cat.

“You’re early,” Connie said.

“Keeping on my toes,” Griff said lightly, then saw the cat. “Whoa, what happened to him?”

“Connie?” Joe rushed in, looking anxiously at his wife. “I heard you screaming. What—”