Jerking his gaze up, I saw Stuart's surprise at finding me there. Either that or he found my going to the Stone Virgins shocking. I would have liked not having him know. He knew too much about me already.

"I think you should report it to Constable Poole," I said.

Stuart shook his head. "I'll handle it."

"No point in bringing the law into it," Bridget said. "Especially if someone is just trying to feed their family off of Killdaren land. Don't need to bring more trouble to folks already having hard times."

I wanted to argue, to ask them what if it was something more sinister afoot, but I had no evidence, and I could just see Constable Poole's mustached smirk. I'd let Stuart handle the problem for now, but asked him to let me know what he found out.

That night, after Bridget fell asleep, I dressed, still unsure what I would do. I couldn't get Sean's parting words out of my head. Had he ventured to the library again? Dare I go there myself? Before I could change my mind, I hurried from my room. Upon reaching the library door, I saw the warm glow of a fire flickering in the hearth. My heart pounded so loudly that I was sure it could be heard echoing through the whole castle.

"I hoped you'd be here." I stepped into the room. The dark-haired man who had his back to me turned from where he sat studying the flames, only then did I realize it was the earl. Fire scorched my cheeks.

"Indeed." He stared hard at me for a moment. "And what do I owe the pleasure of such hopes?"

I coughed as I tried to spit words out of my frozen lungs. "I...well...never had the opportunity to respond to your statement in the garden. Your words disturbed me so much that, well, I couldn't speak at the time."

The earl burst into laughter. "Lass, you lie well. Must be some Irish in your blood. It would seem you've met Sean other than when Rebecca wandered to the bell tower, then. Come have a seat." He motioned to the sofa by the fire and I took a step into the room, drawn to his fatherly demeanor, which reminded me a little of my grandfather. Then I hesitated. I didn't really know this man at all, and his emotions in the garden seemed to have changed as quickly as the wind.

"Don't be afraid, lass." He moved to the far side of the room and sat down in the same leather chair Sean had occupied last night. "You're bonnie enough to have any man be thinking what he shouldn't, but I think you've an eye for my son and I won't be trying to turn your head any other direction. He's entirely too alone in life."

"You'd approve of such an impropriety?" I asked before thinking about who I spoke too. Considering Stuart, this man had had his share of scandal.

He burst into laughter again, this time reaching for a drink I hadn't noticed on the table by the chair. A nearly empty decanter sat next to the glass. He was a bit into his cups again. "I'll let you and my son discuss that matter, I think. Tell me about yourself, lass. From the stiffness to your skirts, I detect a bit of English in with that Irish. Am I right?"

The man was flagrantly improper, but I still found myself warming to him. Enough so to move a little farther into the room and perch on a small chair near the door.

"Maybe more than just of bit of English then," he said.

"Enough to see me through my Irish blood with few mishaps." I found myself laughing when he did. "At least that's what my English grandmother always told me."

"She did, hey. And what did your Irish grandmother tell you?"

"How did you know?"

"Never met either an Irish or an English who didn't have something to say about the other. Mixing the blood lines even stirs up more trouble, but what the bloody hell for, I haven't figured out because they're so muddied this day and age that there isn't a bit of difference between them, just a matter of the tongue these days. And the starch."

"Well, my Irish grandmother would always say that it was a good thing her daughter married into the Andrews family, otherwise the blood would have stopped running in their veins they were so stiff."

"Smart woman."

"You didn't mean what you said in the garden, did you?"

"Don't let a few laughs from a tongue loosened by drink fool you. I meant it. Job was a better man than me."

"But how can you stop loving? It isn't possible."

"Ah, lass. You young women are so alike. Mary would ask me the same question and say the same thing. She couldn't do a thing to save us Killdarens, and I fear you won't be able to, either. Cursed is cursed. You'd be surprised how easy it is to stop loving when you figure out that it's your loving that's killing everything about you."

Suddenly the warm fuzzy feeling, the one similar to what I'd feel listening to my grandfather's stories, froze in my breast.

"You'd best go on now before you're seen with me here, or the curse rubs off on to you."

I stood, half facing the door, unsure of what to do.

"Go on with, you now. I've a mind for quiet."

"I still don't believe you," I told him. "Not about the curse and not about the other, either." Then I left the room, just as unsettled as I had left Sean the night before. What was it with these men? And why in the devil did I let them upset me so with the talk of curses and doom?

Hearing something down the corridor, I glanced up to see what looked like a caped shadow disappear around the corner into the center hall.

Sean.

I ran toward him, skittering into the center hall, trying to look in every direction at once. It was empty. Then heart running almost faster than it could beat. I went to the corridor leading to Sean's wing, but it stood dark and silent. Yet, lingering in the air, I thought I detected a hint of the strange, but luring aroma of spice that clung to Sean and scented his rooms.

Was he there in the shadows? Was it my imagination?

Finally, I turned and went back to my room. If he'd been there and didn't reach out to me, it wouldn't do any good to go chasing down the corridor after him. I went to bed feeling worse than I had the night before. I much preferred Sean's harsh words to his silence.

Other than to comment that hunters used the stones as a cutting board on occasion and that the problem had been taken care of, Stuart didn't say anything else about the blood at the Stone Virgins when I asked him on Monday. I knew that whatever the cause, it wasn't a sight or a feeling I would ever forget.

The week seemed to be passing much too slowly, winding tension around me as tightly as a spider's web. I'd given thought to my sisters' odd behavior on Sunday but had come to the conclusion that if there was anything wrong, Aunt Lavinia would have contacted me. I'd couched my questions about where Mary's sketchbook and paintings might be under the guise of collecting material for the class I planned to teach for the servants. So far I had found no trace of Mary's artwork. Rebecca continued to worry me; I'd only been able to see her once since Friday, and she'd been very quiet, more withdrawn than usual.

Sean had made no contact with me and I didn't venture to the library again, fearing the silence more than whom I might see. Neither had I heard any noises from his round room. A misty fog had blown in from the sea and hovered over the castle, dampening the air, as well as the spirits of those in the castle.

On Wednesday evening I set up my classroom in the kitchens. None of the upper servants appeared, but slowly all those I ate the evening meal with every night came, with the exception of Stuart. He brought Jamie to the class, seated Jamie at the far end of the table from me, then left.

Jamie didn't look at all happy. He sat there glaring at me the entire hour. Between Mr. and Mrs. Murphy's laughs and the Oak sisters' giggles, I managed to set Jamie's antagonism from my mind. The fact that Bridget had already learned enough about reading and writing to be my assistant rather than my pupil impressed everyone. Bridget practically glowed with her growing confidence. The class went so well that I held one on Friday evening as well. Jamie came, but his demeanor hadn't changed. I approached him at the end of class, catching sight of a paper he'd written his name on.

"That's very good work," I said.

Holding the paper in his hand, he studied his name. "J-A-M-I-E." He said the letters out loud.

"Yes," I said softly, touched by his determined effort.

He held the paper out to me. "For you."

Unsure of what to do, I took the paper, trying to decide what to say. I felt compelled to at least bring up the subject of Mary, a thorn in this giant's hand. I'd wanted to speak to him about Mary since arriving at Killdaren's Castle, but feared seeking him out alone. "You are learning your letters quickly. Mary taught you well."

"No!" he shouted. Pulling his paper from my hands, he thrust me aside so hard that I fell back over a chair as he ran out the door.

"Blimey." Bridget rushed over and helping me up. "What happened?"

Mr. and Mrs. Murphy hurried over as well. "Are you all right, lass?"

"Yes." I gathered myself. "It...it was an accident. I tripped moving away from Jamie. He is still upset about Mary."

"He loved her," Mrs. Murphy said. "She treated him with a kindness most folks don't. Spoke to him like he was a normal person, she did."

"It was a sad day for us all when she drowned," Mr. Murphy said. "We loved the lass. Everyone did."

I swallowed, forcing back the emotion crowding over me. Perhaps my search for answers to Mary's death was truly a fruitless one. So why couldn't I seem to let it all go? Why had Mary come to me in a dream about Rebecca? The darkness hovering over me only seemed to grow more and more obscuring, like that of a cloud turning into a violent storm. I didn't think I would try and ask Jamie about Mary again. Had Mary said or done something to upset Jamie? If a mere question could turn him violent, what would he have done if Mary had rejected him in some way? What if Jamie had tried to show his affection for Mary physically? What would have happened then? Could her kindness to the giant have caused her death?

That night after Bridget fell asleep, I dressed and stole downstairs again, but the rooms lay silent and empty. I even ventured to the doors leading to Sean's rooms and pressed my hand to the wood, debating on whether to honor his privacy, or to force him to see how he was throwing his life away by believing what he did. The earl, too. I didn't understand it.

Then as I stood there, in the dark of the night, I found myself considering the impossible. With all of the earl's talk of being cursed and killing everything he loved, and Sean's nocturnal life, could they really be vampires? And dear God, could Mary be in a crypt beneath the black shrouds in the round room? I owed it to her and possibly in some twisted way to Sean, too, to discover the truth. But not tonight. I went back to my room. I didn't write a single word about my new thoughts in my journal, I couldn't-they were too fanciful. But neither could I dismiss them.

Saturday dawned and with it a sense of expectation that something would happen, a feeling I had little affinity for, given anything likely to happen wouldn't be good. But I'd had no warning dream, so I faced the day on edge.

Bridget and I were given the task of dusting the two rooms of eclectic art I'd discovered when looking for Rebecca a couple of weeks ago. We started with the statue room. After dusting off twenty nude figures then coming to a couple, nude and intimately entwined, I had to sit back and rest. Bridget had done as many statues as I, and we weren't finished yet.

I thought I would scream if I had to wipe another man's privates. At least these statues followed the miniscule precepts of the great masters when it came to such matters, but for whatever sophomoric reason, I couldn't seem to dismiss the anatomy from my mind. Having to dust so many kept me thinking about Zeus in the garden and Sean. And the entwined couple now had me thinking many things I shouldn't. "My word, but this is a bit much to take."

"Makes a person's arms ache, it does." Bridget swiped her sleeve across her forehead.

"Someone surely had an obsession with naked statues. It's almost obscene to have so many."

Bridget laughed. "Is that what you're so flustered and huffing about this morning? Ack, Cassie, don't you realize that all over the world males are male and females are female? Just like horses and pigs and cows and bulls and dogs. We got the same parts and are wanting to do the same thing. It's what God gave us the parts for. Nothing to be ashamed of."

"I'm not ashamed." Horses and pigs? Bulls and dogs? The same? Good Lord, I hoped not.

"If you're not ashamed, then you aren't very comfortable with the notion."

"Well, such things are not proper material for thought or discussion."

"If you can't think about it, and you can't talk about it, and you can't do it, then you might as well end the world tomorrow 'cause there won't be nobody around to be living in it. Now does that make any sense at all?"

I sat back and sighed. "No."

"My mum says it's what keeps the world going."

I nodded, thinking that Bridget and I truly had come from two different worlds. My mother would faint before saying something like that, and I think my sisters and I would have fainted to hear it. But in all honesty, Bridget was right, except for one thing. When it came to Sean, he didn't make the world go around. He stopped it in its tracks.

We finished the statue room and I went back to the kitchens to get more rags and lemon wax to tackle the next room, while Bridget made a head start.

Clutching clean clothes in my hands as I left the laundry, I heard voices coming from the second kitchen and moved closer to hear. Mrs. Murphy and Mrs. Frye were talking.

"Stuart says the Killdaren left for the village an hour ago. He hasn't been there in eight years. This is big trouble. I wonder if it has something to do with Mary's drowning. I didn't know the Killdaren was so well acquainted with her until the magistrate questioned everyone and he mentioned they'd had a number of conversations." Mrs. Frye sounded almost fearful, which puzzled me, until I realized that if Sean, Jamie or Stuart had had anything to do with Mary's disappearance and she knew about it, then she would be afraid.

"Whatever gave you that idea that he was seeing the magistrate again, Clara? I'm hoping that it's a lass that has him about. Something needs to change around here. The way the Killdaren and the viscount are wastin' their lives is what ain't right."

My mind had latched on to one fact: Sean had spent time with Mary and he was presently out of the castle. Now might be the only chance for me to see what secrets he kept in the round room. And if, God forbid, my thoughts after midnight were true and Mary did lie in a vampire's crypt, well, maybe I would find that out, too.

"Bridget," I called, dashing into the art room. "Hurry. Take these and dust as fast as you can. I've got something to do that can't wait, and I don't want anyone to know that I'm not in here with you, all right?"

"Blimey, Cassie. What is it?"

"I can't talk now. I'll tell you later." I quit the room before she could ask any more questions. Looking carefully over my shoulder and taking a moment to make sure no one was about, I went directly to Sean's private door, grasped the dragon handle and ducked inside. In moments I was in the round room with my heart pounding and my palms perspiring. The books surrounding the room passed in a blur as I went right to the blinding swathe of sunshine centered on the huge, shrouded mass sitting in the middle of the room.

Once there, I froze a moment, almost fearful to know what lay beneath. Slowly, I reached out and set my fingers upon the black cloth. Heat radiated into my fingers and I snatched my hand back, remembering what had happened to the woman in the vampire book when she touched the crypt.

"Cassie, you fool. There are no such things as vampires." The whisper of my voice echoed upward, drawing my gaze in that direction. Through the grated iron floor above and the huge center hole, I could see the sky as if I lay upon a sunny hill on a picnic. Clouds drifted overhead and the graceful swoop of a raven passing over the glass dome left his shadow dancing over me. It was amazing. I knew as high as the round room went that if I were to climb the stairs to the top and walk the rim, I'd most likely be able to look out at the sea and the forest and be able to see almost everything for miles around. The only thing that could keep me from that view was still sitting unknown before me.

I set my hand back upon the shroud, this time pressing down and feeling something very hard and warm beneath it. Fisting my fingers in the cloth, I pulled, but the material caught upon something underneath. Before I could tug hard, thick arms suddenly wrapped around me and a heavy hand covered mine. Sean. I could feel, smell and taste him immediately.

"Remember what I said I would do if I found you in my rooms again without an invitation? What price should you pay for your insatiable curiosity today?" He whispered softly into my ear as he pressed his hard body firmly against my bottom and into every curve and dip from my calves to the nape of my neck. Heat erupted everywhere as my pulse raced as fast as my mind ran through and from the consequences he intimated.

"Oh God," I whispered, dropping the cloth. "I'm sorry. They said you went to the village."

"And so I did. But I'm back and just in time, it would seem."

"Uh, perhaps a few minutes early. Do you think you could leave and come back in just a moment?"

"I don't think so."

"Would you shut your eyes and count to ten, then?"

"Not a chance, my wandering rose. You made a choice. Are you brave enough to see it through?"

I swallowed hard and squeezed my eyes shut. "Do your worst, and let's be done with it."

His chest heaved as his laughter rumbled. "Do you think that's how it's done, lass? Vampires have a much better way."

Embarrassment that he'd clearly heard my whispered comment moments ago added more flame to the fire raging inside of me. "There are no such things as vampires."

"Aren't there?" he whispered. "You make me think differently. There are many places I'd love to put my mouth on you, Cassie. I'm feeling very hungry for your flesh and the heat of your blood." His lips, then his teeth, brushed the side of my neck and gave a little nip to my skin. I shivered all the way to my toes.

I tried to ignore what he said, tried to ignore how he made me feel. Surely, practical logic would see me through this blunder. "No. There are no vampires. I said that because of the heat. When I touched the shroud it was hot just like the crypt in the book and I, well, it gave me pause."

"Book? Crypt?" He stepped away and swung me around to face him. I could tell he'd been out riding. His dark hair was windblown, issuing an invitation to touch and tame in much the same way the pain I'd seen and heard in him had urged me to soothe. But there was no soothing the fire that glittered in his green eyes, least none that a gentle hand could accomplish. "You're reading Powerful Vampires and Their Lovers?" He spoke very slowly and distinctly, making the deed sound so risque that I couldn't own up to it alone.

"Certainly not. I'm teaching Bridget to read, and that's the book she chose."

"Indeed." He flashed a devilish smile and cocked a querying brow as he advanced toward me. Good Lord, my heart took flight at the predatory look in his eyes as my stomach fell into a bottomless pit, wrenching everything in between. "So, it was of little interest to you when Armand lured his woman to his crypt?"

Reaching out, he tugged off my cap then slid his finger down the side of my neck, spreading fire to places inside of me that I didn't even know existed. My breasts seemed to swell and grow heavy and wanting. My breath caught when he skimmed along my collarbone to the center of my chest and stopped at the buttons of my dress.

He deftly unbuttoned the top two. "You read how Armand wanted to feast upon his love as Solomon feasted, and you thought or felt...nothing?" A third button fell swiftly beneath his determined advanced.

I was sure that I would faint at any moment, or erupt in flames as he undid two more buttons. It seemed I was tied to a stake and burning. I couldn't breathe and I couldn't move. My dress gaped, leaving only my gossamer chemise to cover my heated breasts like a whisper of mist trying to hide the sun. I wavered on my feet.

"Breathe, Cassie. I'll not let you off so easily." He pulled the edges of my dress further apart. Grasping my hips, he drew me to him, looking down at what he'd uncovered. I sucked in air, desperate for it, and winced as I felt the silk of my chemise stretch tightly over the sensitive tips of my breasts.

"You make me hungrier than I have ever been." He stared deeply into my eyes.

Whatever fears this man generated, whatever doubts he fostered, disappeared as my desire coalesced into a dark, almost obsessive need for his kiss. My lips parted. He bent his head and I felt the fire of his mouth upon mine. The power of his want consumed me as each kiss went deeper, demanded more, and gave more. Then he left my lips, kissing his way down my throat and bending me over his arm. Stepping impossibly closer, he pressed the bulk of his leg between mine, holding me captive as his mouth closed over the tip of my breast through the silk of my chemise.

"Oh, God," I groaned, falling more into his arms as my knees gave way. Leaving one breast, he claimed the other, groaning deeply as he suckled until my breath rasped and my body shuddered with the need for more. Then suddenly he pulled back.