CHAPTER 16

The house was quiet. Almost eerily so. Usually, even when most of the staff were sleeping, there was somebody lurking around the halls for one reason or another. Tonight, however, she found the long, lavishly decorated corridors completely deserted.

Retrieving her coat, Ellie walked out onto the terrace and stared at the ocean. A cold wind whipped around her, sending her red hair cascading out around her shoulders. She loved the English coastline at night. It was almost magical, the way the waves crashed against the cliffs, and the white rocks of the cliff face gleamed in the moonlight. She could stand there staring at it for hours. She only wished she could do so without worrying whether she was going to make it through the night.

Walking out a bit further, Ellie clinched her coat tighter around her neck and leaned against the stone ledge of the terrace.

“Are you waiting for me?” a deep voice asked from out of the darkness.

Ellie jumped violently. She squinted into the night, trying to decipher where the voice was coming from, but she was unable to see so much as an outline of a body. “Who’s there?”

The man laughed coldly, and a tremble of fear played down Ellie’s spine. “Why, I’m insulted you don’t know, Elizabeth,” he said. She was certain he was getting closer. “After all, you are my wife.”

Stepping from the shadows, James stood before her, looking as handsome as he ever did in his long, brown coat. His dark eyes were so menacing at that moment that they were almost black. He was staring at her as if she were the canary he finally managed to catch. He just stood there; the cat, licking his lips.

Suddenly, Ellie felt more like Elizabeth than she ever had since coming here. “I am not your wife,” she declared, squaring her shoulders and staring him down. Where she got the nerve to do so, she wasn’t sure. “And quite frankly, I don’t think Elizabeth was either. You may have gotten her to marry you because she was obeying her father, you may have gotten her in your bed because that was her duty, but you tricked her into thinking she wanted all of that.”

James laughed, and she wondered how she ever could have found the sound pleasant. “My dear, love is a trick. I merely seduced you into believing I was everything you wanted.” Hatred flashed in his eyes, and overhead, thunder pounded across the heavens. “I could have been everything you wanted. I still could. But you’ve always chosen that McKinnon over all the riches and treasures I could ever give you. He is not worthy of you.”

“You’re wrong.” Her voice was hardly above a whisper, but it was coated in steel. “He is every bit as worthy of me as I am of him. He is a good man, with a kind heart and a keen mind. He cares about more than my body and fortune. He doesn’t need treasures and riches. He is everything I could ever want. It’s you, James, who are not worthy of me. And you never have been.”

Lighting flashed against the cliff, casting his features in anger in the bright light. The sickeningly sweet smell of roses drifted through the air, and Ellie used her sweater to cover her nose and mouth, determined not to fall for his seduction.

“I could have given you everything. Fortune, a home, a child. I did give you those things!” he insisted, he voice rising to an unnaturally high octave. Ellie winced. “All I asked for in return was a cooperative wife that would ensure my name did not get dragged into the mud like my idiot father who squandered all of our wealth!”

Ellie’s eyes widened in surprise. “So, you couldn’t give her your fortune any more than you could give it to me now, could you? I knew it. You wanted her to make you rich, not the other way around. You wanted the power and prestige that came with the Hargrove name, the wealth that came from the brewery. Your vineyard was your legacy, but you had run out of the funds to keep it going, hadn’t you?” When he just stared at her, his mouth gaping like a fish, she actually giggled. “You knew she wouldn’t love you. You knew she would figure out who you were, how dangerous and obsessively deranged you were. You knew she was in love with Matthew.

“So, you seduced her instead. But what kills me, is that you didn’t even believe you could do that on your own. You tried and failed, didn’t you? Probably even multiple times. So, you turned to black magic instead. What did you use, James? A love potion? Did you diffuse it into a scent as well? I know you were slipping her something to drink, just like I know you put something on the roses you brought me the other day. You used whatever aid you had to get her and me to do your bidding by manipulating us sexually.

“But you miscalculated, didn’t you? You believed that you could just control someone like that and get away with it, but you were wrong, weren’t you? Elizabeth had already found her soul mate. Matthew McKinnon was her soul mate. And there was no way you could separate the two of them. That kind of love, it has a power all its own. They may not have been able to be together, but that didn’t mean that power was any less potent, or that love was any less strong. And whatever protection those kinds of feelings gave Matthew and Elizabeth that night was violated when you killed him.

“And she wasn’t about to let you get away with it, was she?” Ellie asked, watching him with a vindictive glee she was positive was not her own. In fact, she felt as if there was more than one version of herself within her mind that night, and it absolutely terrified her. “Elizabeth knew that she was the one thing you wanted above all else,” Ellie continued, staring at James as if she were daring him to disagree. Where had all this assertiveness come from? “And she made sure you could never have it. Didn’t she? She killed herself right over there, just so you would never be able to hurt anyone in the Hargrove line. Whatever dark magic you had been using backfired when she hit those rocks and you have been cursed ever since.

“I bet you lost everything. I bet the fact that your family was penniless became the talk of the town, and I bet, no matter how many years you have lived, waiting to reclaim it, that you are still worth next to nothing.” Glaring at him, she smirked. “And I bet you hate it. Well, it serves you right, doesn’t it? Your curse doesn’t just affect you, James, it affects Matt and me as well. And I hope you die knowing it was your own fault that things turned out this way.” Her chest heaving, Ellie stood there, mere steps away from him, and wondered if she had just made the biggest mistake of her life.

Yet, to her astonishment, James simply began to laugh. “Ah,” he said, gathering himself once more. “There you are, Elizabeth. It’s so nice to finally see you again, after all of these years.”

“I wish I could say the same.” Ellie clapped a hand to her mouth. The words had been issued from her lips, but it was not her that said them. Could it really be Elizabeth speaking to him like that? Or had she finally lost her mind?

“Welcome back, my dear,” James crooned, slowly walking towards her. “I have missed you deeply. It has been too long.”

James reached for her hand, but Ellie instinctively stepped back and his hand dropped away. Thunder echoed behind the house. Was he somehow controlling the storm? Or was it just a coincidence that there was a wild storm, both when Elizabeth took her own life and now?

“You may think of me as you wish,” he told her, “but you would never have been susceptible to my charms had you not already been attracted to me.”

Alarmed, Ellie clenched her fist. “That isn’t true.”

“Oh, but it is, my love. It was always true. You were in love with McKinnon, yes. And somehow, your infatuation with him allowed you to shirk my advances and later break the spell my potion had cast on you. But in your own way, you were attracted to me, too. You were in love with me, too.”

“No.”

“Yes. You enjoyed the flirtations. You enjoyed my hands on you. You enjoyed the possibility that maybe, if you let yourself fall a bit, you could have everything you ever wanted. And a part of you wondered if I would be the one to give it to you. I did not force you to marry me, Elizabeth. Your father took care of that. And you married me without issue, not just because it was your duty as a daughter and your contribution to your family, but because somewhere in that flippant little heart of yours, you wanted to know what it was like to be the wife of a wealthy Lord. You wanted to parade me around on your arm like whatever new dress you were sporting that week, and show me off, trying to impress your friends. Part of you had to want me, you see, or my spell would never work.”

“I didn’t want you then, and I don’t want you now,” Ellie insisted, but she could already feel her resolve beginning to weaken. Could what he was saying be true?

“The ironic part of it all,” James told her, “was that I truly did love you. And I knew, if we gave it a shot, that one day, you could love me too. You were mine, and you were going to stay mine. One day, you would understand.”

“Then why force me?”

“I simply did not have time to wait.” In the moonlight, she could see that his expression was completely unrepentant. “Nor do I have time to wait now.”