Claire Delacroix Read Online Free

world be boring if every place was the same?”
    “Hardly.” Julian snorted. “We’d eat better, at least.”
    Baird decided to offer Julian a choice morsel of news. “If it makes you feel any better, Sebastien’s coming to manage the restaurant here.”
    “Sebastien? Here?” Julian looked incredulous. “You’ve convinced Sebastien to leave Manhattan? To come here?” The lawyer glanced about himself in amazement, as though he had been magically transported somewhere other than the Orkney Islands, then scrutinized his employer. “How did you manage that?”
    “He thinks it’s ‘elemental’.” Baird watched Julian struggled to come to terms with the concept.
    It was obviously an uphill battle.
    “Well, maybe it could be, with Sebastien cooking,” he conceded reluctantly, then closed his eyes in rapturous recollection. “The things that man can do with portobello mushrooms!”
    Julian sighed, then fixed Baird with a bright glance. “When is he coming?”
    Baird shrugged. “A couple of weeks.”
    Julian groaned. “It’s like an endurance test,” he muttered, then snapped his fingers in recollection. “Oh, hey, Darlene called. That’s why I came looking for you.”
    “Again?” Baird was glad he had missed another worried call from his secretary.
    “She wanted to know when you’d be back in head office.”
    “Soon,” Baird said, emphasizing the word with a decisive snip of the clippers. “Very soon.”
    “Great.” Julian’s tone implied that the news was far from that.
    “I thought you hated it here.”
    “I do! But now we’ll be gone by the time Sebastien gets here.” Julian scuffed his toe. “It’s just not fair.”
    Julian pulled a determined branch away from his face and frowned at it. “These thorns are unbelievable. Look at this thing!” Baird obediently looked at the thorn offered for his perusal, a thorn not unlike the hundreds of others that had already made a grab at him today. “It must be three inches long!”
    “And probably too tough to sauté in unsalted butter.”
    “Very funny.” Julian let the branch go with a snap and peered into the shadows below for the first time. “Where does this staircase go?”
    “That’s what I’m trying to find out.” They had to be a dozen feet below the surface of the ground, the skyward view tangled with healthy briars. Baird grunted as he cut back a final tough curtain of branches.
    The two men froze and stared at the heavy stone portal that was revealed.
    The doorway was made of three massive rough-cut stones, two standing on end to support the weight of the third. The darkness within was complete, though cold air wafted towards them. It smelled like wet stone.
    “Where does it go?” Julian whispered.
    “Let’s find out.” Baird stepped through the doorway. Julian glanced about himself, then tentatively followed suit.
    The sound of dripping water echoed loudly in the small space they entered. It was bone-chillingly cold here, the smell of the dampness and the silence emanating from the stone making Baird feel as though he had entered a strange, maybe enchanted, world far from the one he knew.
    Julian shook the rainwater out of his Burberry trench coat and looked around the dim, roughly rectangular room. His words revealed that his mind had not taken the same fanciful turn as Baird’s.
    “Doesn’t look like much. Are you going to put the sauna down here, or something? It could be expensive for heating. And you’d have to run some sort of covered walkway for guests who didn’t want to go out in the rain...”
    Baird switched on the flashlight he had brought.
    Hotelier and lawyer gasped aloud simultaneously. A slab of stone, as tall as Baird and covered with fantastic carving, filled the wall directly before them. They gawked silently at the treasure that just a moment before had been hidden in secretive shadows.
    The slab was made of the same local gray stone as the rest of the castle ruins. At the top was a massive