About his neck was a collar or choker of ancient design, a double tier of filigree in the shape of fat connected beads, again made to look like real gold. And he wore his light brown hair long, a bit beyond shoulder-length, which was likely why he’d been picked for the part. He personified an ancient warrior, a Saxon or…a Viking…
Another shiver passed down her spine. The coincidence was uncanny, that minutes before she had been holding an authentic Viking sword, and here was a drama student in what could definitely be a Viking costume.
And then his head slowly lowered and he was looking straight at her, likely with spots before his eyes, after staring at the light so long. But Roseleen felt something other than unease now. He had a face that was handsome in a harsh way, but that for some reason she found nearly mesmerizing. His brows were almost straight, and thickest toward the ends. His eyes were deep-set and a lovely shade of clear blue. Strong cheekbones surrounded a straight nose. His lips were on the thin side, and he possessed a very masculine, what could be called aggressive, square jaw.
He had the makings of dimples if he could manage a smile. It didn’t look as if one would be forthcoming to soften his rather intimidating expression. He was not a happy man. That really had been annoyance or anger she’d heard in his tone.
The silence had gone on too long as they stared at each other. Roseleen was just about to repeat her earlier question when his eyes started a slow path down the length of her body, rested a bit too long on her exposed calves, then just as slowly traveled back up.
Her blush was instantaneous because men didn’t do that to her. She downplayed her looks, a habit she had developed in high school when boys had started showing an interest in her. She had preferred not to be bothered then. She definitely didn’t want to be bothered now. The way she dressed said so in capital letters.
The glasses she wore were made of ordinary glass; she didn’t really need them. She rarely used makeup, and certainly never on campus. Her dresses and skirts she wore an exact inch below her knees, and she favored loose designs, either straight or belted below the waist, not just for unrestricted comfort, but so her curves wouldn’t attract roving eyes. Two inches was the maximum she chose for her high heels, and always in plain, square-toed pumps that were as far from sexy as one could get.
She even wore her straight, auburn hair in an old-fashioned bun at her nape. Barry had once said he loved the natural, deep red tints in her hair. After they’d broken up, she had seriously considered dyeing it black.
She had just managed to recover from her blush when her visitor spoke again. “You should have waited until you were properly dressed to call me, lady.”
Back came the blush, because he actually sounded…offended. She even glanced down at herself to see if one of the buttons on her blouse had come undone, if she had lost her belt without realizing it, or if one of her stockings was slipping. But no, she looked as neat and nondescript as she always did in her wrinkle-free polyester.
Her glasses had slid down her nose when she looked down. She jammed them back into place now and put on her sternest teacher-is-displeased expression.
“I’m not here so you can rehearse your script. The drama class is four doors down the hall if you missed it.”
She marched back to her desk and sat down, picked up the top paper on the stack in front of her, and pretended to read through it. But she wasn’t reading it. She was waiting to hear the man leave. But she didn’t hear him cross the room, didn’t hear the door open and close. She was starting to feel uneasy again.
She gave up ignoring him and glanced back. He was still there, but at least those disturbingly penetrating eyes weren’t on her now. He was staring about her room with something that looked like fascination, as if he’d never seen classroom desks and black-boards before, let alone large maps of the world and flashy posters of medieval knights.
His eyes stopped on one of those posters and seemed to light up in recognition. “Who has such talent, to create such a likeness of Lord William?”
In his questionable surprise, she detected a distinct foreign accent that she couldn’t quite place. She followed his gaze to a poster of a man photographed in the long robes of the tenth century. “Lord who?”
Those blue eyes came back to her. “William the Bastard,” he said, his tone implying now that she shouldn’t have had to ask.
There was only one William the Bastard who was renowned, the one who had changed the history of England, known also as William the Conquerer. How could anyone see a likeness between William as he had been depicted in the few tapestries that had survived from the eleventh century and that young poster hunk whose only resemblance was possibly in the brawn of his body…?
Her brows snapped together. He was pulling her leg. Either that or trying out new lines that supported his character. She didn’t appreciate either.
“Look, Mr.…?”
He didn’t overlook the question in her tone this time. “I am named Thorn.”
Roseleen stiffened. How many times had she heard the puns, “Your bush could use a few thorns, Rosie,” or “I’d like to be the thorn in your bush, Rose,” the crude, sexy innuendos of young boys that she’d thought she’d heard the last of after her college days.
It occurred to her then that this man wasn’t a lost drama student. Someone had more than likely set him up to play a joke on her, and the only instigator that came to mind was Barry Horton. Perhaps it was his way of rubbing it in that he’d earned his professorship. And it made sense. The accent—Barry did associate with the few foreign teachers at Westerley and their friends. It probably made him feel sophisticated.
The anger she’d felt in the dean’s office earlier returned in full force. That thief, that liar, that piece of—her father would be turning in his grave if he could read her thoughts. She squelched them, knowing that name-calling was beneath her. She couldn’t help the glare, however, that she turned on Barry’s idea of a joke.
“Mr. Thorn—”
“Nay, Thorn is my given name. Thorn Blooddrinker. Only you English put a mister before an honest name.”
My God, he’d heard her talking to the sword and was using it to further his joke. Her embarrassment was now complete, because he’d likely be repeating what had happened here, word for word, to her ex-fiancé.
“We Americans can settle for just mister, which I’m about to do. You can leave now, mister, and tell Mr. Horton that his little joke is as immature as he is.”
“Thank you, lady. You are wise to send me back. Wiser still would be not to call me again.”
She snorted to herself. She wasn’t even going to try to decipher those peculiar statements. She’d dismissed him. She proceeded to ignore him again, returning her gaze to the exam paper she was still holding. But she would be calling for campus security if he wasn’t gone in the next two minutes.
And then she started again when another crack of thunder sounded in the distance. Recalling what had happened before, she quickly closed her eyes this time, but it only helped a little. The flash of lightning filled her classroom again, and was still quite bright through her closed eyelids.
There weren’t quite as many spots before her eyes, however, so when she opened them, she was able to see outside her windows the campus beyond, which was still undisturbed by wind or rain. She frowned. The stillness meant nothing, of course. Within seconds, a downpour could occur. Damn weatherman. Was it too much to ask for an accurate forecast with today’s technology? Apparently the vagaries of Mother Nature refused to cooperate.
But at least a glance around the classroom showed her that her unwelcome visitor had departed. She got back to work, blocking out the picture of Barry Horton laughing when he learned how well his little joke had worked. She was still as gullible as when he’d first met her, when she’d believed all his lies and professions of love.
Her only consolation from that debacle was that she’d stuck to the morals her father had imparted to her. Barry Horton might have gotten a
ring on her finger, he might have stolen two years’ worth of her research, but he hadn’t managed to get into her bed. Perhaps she’d known, on a subconscious level, that he wasn’t sincere. Or perhaps her heart hadn’t been involved as much as she’d thought. But at least she did have that one fact to be grateful for. Small consolation, considering what she’d lost, but better than nothing.
3
“Well, are you going to show it to me or not?”
Roseleen grinned as she joined Gail at the foot of the bed where the long wooden case had been laid on top of a bedding chest. She had arrived so late at her friend’s house last night that there had been no time for them to talk. They’d just finished breakfast now, and she’d told Gail that the long-awaited antique had finally arrived, that she even had it with her. Gail knew all about the sword, but then Gail knew everything about Roseleen.
They had grown up together in the same small town in Maine, attended the same schools, even the same college. For as far back as Roseleen could remember, Gail had been a part of her life and her very best friend. No one knew her better than Gail, not even David, because she didn’t share all confidences with him, whereas she did with Gail.
They weren’t at all alike. Roseleen was auburn-haired, with chocolate-brown eyes. Gail was blond and blue-eyed. Roseleen was tall, bookish, and basically shy, while Gail was short, had been chubby all her life, and was afraid of nothing. They complemented each other, because what one lacked in personality, the other possessed.
Neither had dated much in high school, Gail not for lack of trying. She’d just had a little problem with rejection that had come too often because she hadn’t been remotely pretty in her teen years, retaliating with deadly insults that had kept any boys who might have been interested away.
Roseleen, on the other hand, just hadn’t had time for boys. She’d known what she wanted to do with her life, and getting the best grades was part of it. Unfortunately, her intelligence wasn’t on the remarkable side, so she’d had to study much harder than everyone else to get the grades she wanted. She was where she was today because she had worked toward it all her life. But all that studying hadn’t allowed for an active social life.
Gail had grown into a little beauty, still on the chubby side, but she was now comfortable with that, and it showed. She had dropped out of college to get married after her second year. It had been the third marriage proposal she’d received.
Roseleen would never have considered doing such a thing, even if she’d had some offers. She didn’t have any. Boys came to her to help them study. The few she had dated found out quickly enough that she was all for having a good time—if it didn’t include groping in a backseat. Since they’d rather be groping, they found other girls to date.
The first man she had ever taken a real interest in had been Barry Horton. Gail had feigned a collapse when she’d been told, screaming, “Finally!” because Roseleen was twenty-six at the time. He’d started teaching at Westerley the year after she did, and she was drawn to him because of their common interest in history.
Westerley, along with a number of other prestigious schools, had courted her during her last year of college, because of her outstanding grades. She had chosen Westerley because it was in a small town, which she preferred, because it was only a three-hour drive from where Gail had moved to, and because she’d been promised tenure within her first year there—if she fulfilled all expectations, which she did.
When she began dating Barry not long after he joined the staff, she found out that not all men were interested in groping first, conversation second. Barry wooed her intellectually, which was why she’d liked him so much, and why it hadn’t taken her long to think she was in love with him.
His proposal had come much later, but not long after she’d agreed to marry him, he’d stolen her research notes on the book she was writing about the Middle Ages. She hadn’t even known it, had been devastated to think that two years’ worth of work had been accidentally tossed out in the trash as he’d suggested, until her book was published a year later, under Barry’s name.
He’d done his best to get her to marry him before the publication date. But she’d put it off for one reason or another—if she were fanciful, she’d think a fairy godmother had been guiding her in those days, to keep her from making an even bigger mistake.
She’d taken Barry to court, of course, and had nearly lost her job because of it, because the dean had recommended she drop the case and she’d refused. She’d lost the case, but only after it was implied that she was the bitter, deserted lover, a vindictive woman merely trying to get even. Lies, all of it, except maybe for the bitter part, but she’d been unable to prove otherwise. Barry got to reap the rewards of her work, but she’d learned a valuable lesson from him. He’d taught her never to trust a man again.
That had been six months ago. Since then, she had seriously been considering giving up her tenure at Westerley College and moving elsewhere. She didn’t even want to be in the same state as Barry Horton anymore, let alone the same campus, where it was inevitable that she would run into him frequently—and he could get away with tasteless little jokes like the one he’d pulled yesterday.
She would make her decision this summer, when she visited Cavenaugh Cottage in England, her one legacy from her great-grandmother. She had been going there each summer ever since it had become hers five years ago. It was there that she did most of her research. It was there that she’d first heard about Blooddrinker’s Curse.
Now, as she opened the box that contained the sword, she was experiencing the same anticipation and excitement that she had felt last night. But she felt something else too, that prompted her to tell her friend, “Look, but don’t touch.”
Gail laughed. “You sound like you’re talking about a man, Rosie.”
Roseleen snorted. “You know me better than that.”
But Roseleen couldn’t imagine why she’d said what she did. It had just come out automatically—and it smacked of possessiveness, something she’d never experienced before. She was proud of her collection, yes, but she didn’t guard it jealously.
But instead of amending her statement, she offered instead, “This one is so old, I worry about it even being exposed to the air, let alone the oil in our hands. Silly, I know; it’s survived this long. But I won’t stop worrying until I get it safely behind glass.”
“I don’t blame you. A deadly thing like that definitely needs your protection.” Gail said it straight-faced, but after a second, they were both laughing. “It is beautiful, though, isn’t it? It almost compels you to want to touch it—hurry up and close the box before I can’t resist.”
Gail was teasing, but Roseleen did close the box and lock it. If anyone was under a compulsion, it was she, for the urge had been there again, to lift the sword in her hands—the same powerful urge she’d felt last night. She decided she was being fanciful again. There was no other explanation.
“Now, speaking of ‘knowing you better than that,’” Gail said, “trouble is, I do. You’ve got the antique sword you’ve been after for nearly four years now, your career is just where you want it, so when are you going to do something about your nonexistent social life?”
Roseleen flinched mentally, having known this subject would pop up eventually while she was there. “I tried that, remember?”
“Come on, Rosie, not every man you meet is going to be a jerk like Barry. And you tried an intellectual. Now how about a sportsman or even a laborer, a man who works with his muscles instead of his brain, someone who won’t give a hoot about the book you’re writing—so you won’t have to worry about that again—and will toss you into bed on a regular basis, emphasis on toss, by the way.”
Roseleen had to smile. Gail did like her macho men. But she hedged. “It hasn’t been long enough since I ended things with Barry—”
“It’s been too long—”
“I’ve been looking—” Roseleen began to lie.
Gail’s snort cut in this time
. “Where? On campus? You don’t go anywhere else. And look at you. You’re working too hard, Rosie. You’ve got bags under your eyes, for crying out loud. All work and no play—”
“Oh, stop. I’m sure you’re going to mother me to death this weekend, and force me to sleep half the time I’m here.”
“Are you kidding? I’m going to be dragging you to every social event I can think of. One of us is going to find you a man. You can catch up on your sleep when you go home. And you better. Next time you visit, I don’t want to see you looking like you’re about ready to keel over.”
Roseleen sighed. “Maybe I have been putting in a few too many hours on my book lately, on top of the schoolwork I bring home. But the semester is almost over. I’ll get all the rest I need in England this summer.”
“Oh sure,” Gail said skeptically, knowing Roseleen too well. “Between hunting down new antiques over there and doing your research, you’ll be running yourself ragged as usual. When does that leave time for a social life, let alone some needed rest?”
“I’ll get the rest, I promise. As for the social life…I’m still not ready to take that risk again, Gail. Maybe when I get back from England.”
“And what if you come across the ideal man in England? Don’t go putting this on a time schedule like you do everything else.”
“Okay—I’ll keep an open mind about it,” Roseleen said, just to end the subject. “If I bump into Mr. Wonderful, I won’t ignore him.”
“You promise?”
Roseleen nodded grudgingly, not that it would matter. The few men she had been really attracted to over the years had barely noticed her. And besides, she just wasn’t ready for another relationship, not when it would involve trust, because Barry had depleted all the trust she had to spare. Maybe someday…