Claire Delacroix Read Online Free Page B

survey the door. “Look, the sooner we get this open, the sooner you can have your brandy.”
    It was troubling to feel so strongly about something he knew nothing about, especially when he made it his business to feel as little as possible in the course of life. Feelings got a man into trouble. They were unpredictable, unreliable.
    They made a man hope for things that could never be.
    But still Baird couldn’t even consider walking away from this door before it was opened. This was the root of his fascination with Dunhelm. Baird knew it. He couldn’t turn away and leave the job half done.
    He had to solve this puzzle now.
    When Baird said nothing more, Julian did not hesitate to warm to his theme. “Baird, this is about more than brandy! You can’t simply barge in and do whatever you want here. We’re in a foreign country, after all, and it won’t pay to step on any toes.”
    “It won’t hurt to look, if we can even get the door open,” Baird corrected with growing impatience. “And if there isn’t anything there, summoning anyone would have been wasting their time, as well as our own.”
    “We shouldn’t do it.”
    Baird’s lips set in a tight line. “Look, Julian, I don’t have to tell you that we’re way behind on this restoration, mostly thanks to bureaucrats. And I am not going to spend another six months in government offices getting the right to open a door on an estate when the title to that estate is in my pocket and the bill for the property taxes lands on my desk, especially when there’s probably nothing in it!”
    “Well!” Julian’s nostrils flared. “I don’t know what you pay me for, if you aren’t going to listen to what I have to say!” The lawyer smacked the wall to punctuate his frustration.
    Julian swore, Baird turned to argue, then a low rumble stole away anything either man might have said. They pivoted to find the carved stone sliding slowly to the left, revealing a dark space.
    Baird glanced back to find Julian nursing the back of his hand, his eyes round. “What did you do?”
    “I hit that thing.” Julian pointed to a gargoyle grimacing on the wall beside him. It was the only decorative detail in the small space at the foot of the stairs and Baird only now noticed the oddity of that.
    Baird shone the flashlight on the gargoyle. He touched its outstretched tongue and discovered that it was actually a lever. When he carefully depressed it, the door slid closed with a grating of stone on stone. Baird repeated the move and the door opened once more.
    “Well, we have to look now,” Baird said with a smile that he hoped hid his burgeoning anticipation.
    Julian took a tentative step forward, as though fighting his own legal instincts, and peered over Baird’s shoulder into the shadows. “I can’t believe that you were right,” he breathed. “It is a door.”
    “I told you to trust me.” Baird ducked through the portal and flicked his flashlight around the revealed chamber.
    A woman, garbed precisely as the one on the door itself, was sleeping on a slab on the opposite side of the room.
    Baird stopped so fast that Julian bumped right into his back. The glow from the flashlight bounced off the walls and seemed to illuminate the entire chamber.
    But Baird had eyes only for the woman.
    Her long golden hair spilled over her shoulders and the stone, a garment that had once been richly embroidered clung tenuously to her curves. Baird’s mouth went dry and he nearly dropped the light.
    “How in the hell did she get in here?” Julian muttered, but Baird wasn’t interested in anything his friend had to say.
    Because the jolt of recognition Baird had felt upon seeing Dunhelm was nothing compared to this.
    He found himself halting beside the stone slab without any recollection of deciding to cross the chamber. Baird stared down at the woman, astonished at the turmoil of emotion let loose within him.
    How did he know her?
    Her heart-shaped face was delightfully feminine, her