Gift of Gold

kill a man five years ago.”
    Tavi frowned. “If you say so, Caitlin. If you’re right and the rapier has a strong effect on him, what’s to keep him from going crazy the way he did the last time? He might kill us all in our beds.”
    Caitlin shook her head. “No, we’ll be safe enough as long as the present time context is considerably different from the historical context in which the rapier was used. The lab reports are clear on that score.”
    “What do you expect him to do tonight?”
    “He’ll probably try touching the rapier for a moment or two because his curiosity will get the better of him. He’ll drop it quickly when it becomes too much for him. That was the way he dealt with objects during the testing sessions I observed at Vincent.” Caitlin stared at the television screen. “I wonder what goes on in his mind when he touches an old object and senses its past vibrations. I wonder what he actually sees.”
    Tavi shivered and said nothing as she began to massage Caitlin’s weak leg. She wasn’t sure what to believe, but she knew that there was little chance of changing her dear, tormented friend’s mind. Caitlin had to have her vengeance. On the television screen the black and white image remained unchanged.
     
    Jonas glanced at his watch and tossed aside the book he had been reading. It was a collection of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s poems, which he had borrowed from Emerson Ames’s library. Jonas had brought the book along on the trip with some vague notion of brushing up his own love poetry. He had decided to take lessons from a master.
    Lorenzo had been a true Renaissance man: a connoisseur of art, an astute banker, a politician, scholar, and poet. In addition, he could handle a sword, as he had proven the day he fought his way to safety after an assassination attempt in a church.
    The man had also had a bawdy sense of humor. Jonas savored one of the light carnival songs Lorenzo had penned for a holiday procession. It was a paean to Bacchus, desire, and dance. Wine, women, and song. But underneath the bright lyrics was a subtle warning that life was short and it was foolish to postpone pleasure and happiness. Lorenzo must have had a few premonitions. He had died at the age of forty-three.
    Jonas reflected briefly on the sobering thought of just how close he himself was getting to forty-three. He had wasted a lot of years running from something he still didn’t understand, let alone know how to control. Some would say he had taken Lorenza’s advice and opted for life’s pleasures during the past five years, but he knew better.
    He got up out of the steel and gray-leather armchair and walked to the window. He had taken off his shirt and boots earlier and now wore only his jeans. He had planned to go straight to bed but that had proved impossible. The room was filled with a disturbing influence that made him restless and uneasy.
    Jonas didn’t like the room, the house, or the whole situation. Its sense of wrongness was stronger than ever. Everything about Caitlin Evanger set off his internal alarm signals. He only wished he could make Verity understand his feelings, but she was hell-bent on being Caitlin’s friend. He stared out into the darkness and wondered again how much that woman knew about his past.
    The damn room was really getting to him. It didn’t take any great intuition to guess the immediate source of his problem tonight. Jonas had known what the trouble was right from the start. It was that rapier hanging on the wall. The thing was packed with resonance. He had been trying to ignore the weapon for the past hour.
    At the window, he focused his thoughts on himself. He had put off his future long enough. Now that he had found Verity he knew he was on the brink of coming to terms with that future as well as with his past.
    The storm that had been gathering out at sea all afternoon had just struck an hour ago and was now in full regalia. Rain hammered the bulbous windows and the wind screamed as it lashed the cliffs. Jonas thought fleetingly about Caitlin’s story of the death of the house’s previous owner. Then he wondered if Verity was lying awake in bed listening to the storm and thinking about Sandquist’s ghost.
    There were times when she would look at Jonas in a certain way that gave him the eerie feeling that she saw more than he intended her to see.
    His mind leaped from that disquieting thought to the memory of the night he had made love to her. He had been so