Dark Angel (Casteel 2)

It stunned me that he would so willingly drive me away--even before he checked to see who it was. What kind of man was he? Look at me! I wanted to scream. I'm not ugly, even if I am not Jillian! Turn your head and speak, for in a moment run and not care if we ever meet again! It was Logan I loved, not this stranger with his indifferent attitude! Logan who would one day forgive me for something I couldn't have prevented from happening.

A frown put furrows in his forehead. "Please go. Just turn around and don't say a word."

"No, I'm not going until you tell me who you are!" "Who are you to ask?"

"First you tell me who you are."

"Please, you are wasting my time. Go away now and let me finish what I'm doing. These are private quarters, my quarters. Off limits to the servants of Farthinggale Manor. Now scat!" He threw me a quick, surveying glance that didn't linger on any feature or point of my figure that other men stared at, before again I was presented with his back.

He took my breath away! It hurt to be scanned over, then tossed aside as if unworthy of simple good manners. Stupid me and my hillybilly pride! I'd always had too much pride. Pride that had made me suffer unnecessarily many a time, when it would have been so much easier just to let go of something that had no real value. And still that pride rose high and indignant as it always did when someone like him looked down on someone like me! I made myself dislike him. Nothing but a servant, that's what. A hired hand put in a gardener's cottage to repair ancient silverplate! And with the rush of that unlikely conclusion, I spat out in a totally un-Jillian way: "Are you a servant?" I stepped closer to force him to face me and really see me. "The gardener or one of his hired hands?"

His head was bowed to his work. "Please, you are in my home, I am not in yours. I don't have to answer your questions. Who I am is not important to you. Just get out and leave me alone. You are not the first woman to say she's lost her way in the maze, and they all end up here. There is a path that follows outside the maze that will lead you back to where the maze begins. A child could follow it--even in a fog."

"You saw me coming!"

"I heard you coming."

I don't know what made me yell. "I'm not a servant here!" I flared in Pa's and Fanny's loud country way, startling even myself. "Farthinggale Manor is the home of my grand . . . my aunt and uncle, who asked me to come and stay." And all the fears crouching in my mind told me to run, and run fast.

This time when he faced me it was fully, so I saw and felt the full impact of his masculinity as I'd never felt it radiate from any man before. His dark eyes were hidden in shadows as they looked me over, this time slowly taking in my face, my throat, my heaving bosom, waist; hips, legs, then back up again, slowly, slowly. And when his eyes had again reached my face, they paused to gaze at my lips before they looked long and deeply into my eyes. I felt drained before he moved his eyes, which had gone slightly unfocused. Oh! I was affecting him, I could tell; something he'd seen made his lips tighten, his hands clenc

h. Turning from me, he picked up that damned little hammer again, as if to continue on and let nothing interfere with what he was doing! I cried out a second time, my voice Casteel loud, Casteel angry: "Stop! Why can't you be civil to me? This is my first day here and my host and hostess have gone to a dinner party and left me alone with servants to entertain myself, and I don't know what to do with myself. I need someone to talk to--and they didn't tell me that anyone like you lived on the grounds."

"Like me? What do you mean by that?"

"Young like you are. Who are you?"

"I know who you are," he said, as if reluctant to speak at all. "I wish you hadn't come. I didn't plan for us to meet. But it's not too late. Just walk out the door with both hands stretched forward, and in fifty steps you will collide with the hedge. Once you feel it before you, keep your right hand on the hedge, let it trail along as you walk to the left, and in no time at all you will be back at the big house. The library has a nice selection of books, if you like to read. And there's a TV there if you don't. And in the closet there are photograph albums on the third shelf from the bottom. They should amuse you. And if all else fails, the chef in the kitchen is very friendly and loves to talk. His name is Ryse Williams, but we all call him Rye Whiskey."

"Who are you?" I shouted, furious with him.

"I really don't see what difference it makes to you; however, since you keep insisting, my name is Troy Langdon Tatterton. Your 'uncle' is my older brother."

"You have to be lying!" I cried. "They would have told me you were here, if you are who you say you are!"

"I don't find it necessary to lie over trifles such as who I am. Perhaps they don't even know I am here. After all, I am over twenty-one. I don't send them advance notice when I come to my own cottage and workshop. Nor do I tell them when I go."

I floundered. "But . . . but, why don't you live in the big house?"

His smile shone briefly. "I have my reasons for liking it better here. Do I have to explain them to you?"

"But there are so many rooms in that house, and this place is so small," I murmured, quite embarrassed now, so much so I hung my head and felt totally miserable. He was right, of course. I had made a jackass of myself. What right did I have to pry into his reasons?

This time he put his small hammer into a special niche on the wall where other tools were placed in neat order. His deep-set, serious eyes were sad, full of something I didn't understand when they met mine. "What do you know about me?"

My knees folded and I sat automatically on a small sofa before the fire. He sighed when he saw me do this, as if he would have liked for me to walk out his door, but I didn't want to believe he really wanted that. "I know only what your brother has told me. And that's not too much. He said you are brilliant, and graduate from Harvard when you were eighteen."

He got up from the table and came to sprawl in a chair across from mine and waved all that I'd said away as if it were annoying smoke that ruined the atmosphere. "I have done nothing important with my so-called brilliance, so I might as well have been born with an IQ of fifty."

My lips gaped open to hear him say something so totally opposed to what I believed. When you had an education, you had the world by its tail! "But you graduated from one of the world's best universities!"

At last I'd made him smile. "I see that you are impressed. I'm glad. Now my education has gained some value, at least seen through your eyes."

He made me feel young, naive--a fool. "What do you do with your education except hammer on metal like any two-year-old?"

"Touche," he said with a grin that made him twice as appealing, and God knows he already appealed to me enough.

I was ashamed to see how easily my physical side could vanquish my intelligence. My anger flared against him. "Is that all you've got to say?" I stormed. "In my own crude way I just tried to insult you."