Gift of Gold

her, cutting her off from reality. A new fear washed over her.
    “Jonas, wake up. Do you hear me? Wake up!”
    He tracked her sidling movements with eyes that burned in the darkness. “Verity, touch me. Hold me or I’ll never make it.
Touch me
.
”
    She wanted to run but the desperation in his voice forbade it. Verity got to her feet beside the bed, her nightgown tangling with her legs. She took a deep breath, searching for the words that might bring Jonas out of his delirium.
    He took a step closer to her and she realized that now he was much too close. She was trapped.
    The room finished its bizarre twisting movement and she was back in that terrible corridor she had found herself in the night Jonas had picked up the dueling pistol.
    “
Verity, don
’
t run from me.
”
    She heard the words in her mind, echoing down the tunnel from a great distance. They sent panic through her. She knew now for certain that it was Jonas who was hunting her in that dark, endless corridor. In her mind she tried to flee but her legs would barely move. It was like running through quicksand. She was in a waking nightmare of her own.
    “
Hold me. Hold me or I
’
m lost.
”
    The words were a fierce command and a poignant plea. It was the plea that touched her soul. Verity came to a shaky halt in the corridor and turned helplessly to confront the man who pursued her. She could not run from that desperate demand.
    For a shattering instant she couldn’t see him. The tunnel was dark and yet there was shape and form to it. She was aware of Jonas’s presence, aware of him closing the gap between them, but she could not yet identify him. Something moved in the shadows and once more Verity wanted to flee. Every instinct warned her to turn and run.
    “
No. Don
’
t run from me.
I
need you. Help me.
”
    Verity gasped for air as if she had been running for her life. And then she took a step forward in the bedroom. Simultaneously she was moving again in the corridor; making her way toward the voice that had called out to her. Shadows swirled mistily around her. She was afraid to look at them too closely.
    Lightning crackled again and a fierce, hot whiteness temporarily lit the room. Verity, dazed, saw two realities at once, the room where she had been sleeping and the inside of the dark corridor. Jonas still held the rapier there in the bedroom but he was holding out one hand to Verity. His lightning-lit face was a mask of savage intensity.
    Verity saw the hunger, desperate hope, and violent command in his eyes before the white glare faded. She hesitated no longer. She didn’t know what was wrong but she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jonas needed her.
    She broke free of her paralysis and hurled herself across the room into his arms. She came up against his hard, bare chest with enough impact to send a shudder through him. He brought his left arm around her in a rough, near-violent embrace.
    “
Verity!
”
    In the corridor in her mind, she simultaneously found Jonas in the shadows and reached for him. His outstretched hand touched hers. Ribbons of violent color, black, bloody, some the shade of steel, roared out of the tunnel’s darkness and whirled around her as if drawn to her. She had the impression they wanted to cling to Jonas but were sidetracked by her presence.
    Verity tried to scream and couldn’t.
    “It’s all right,” Jonas said there in the corridor. “They can’t hurt you. You have power over them. You draw them and hold them. You can chain them for me; you’re my anchor.”
    She didn’t understand anything he was saying but in the bedroom the rapier clattered to the floor at her feet and Jonas’s other hand closed convulsively around Verity.
    The curving walls of the corridor vanished.
    Another deep shudder went through Jonas. Verity wrapped her arms around him and held on as if he might somehow slip away from her. She heard the sound of his deep, heaving breaths and felt his face as he buried it in her hair.
    “Verity.
Verity.
” Jonas was holding on to her as if she were his lifeline. His body was hard and fiercely aroused. “You don’t know…you can’t even guess what it means—what you did. You held on to those things and you held me here” His hands moved over her as if he were trying to assure himself that she was real. He dropped a thousand urgent little kisses into her hair, on her temple, down her throat. Hot, equally urgent words poured over her in a mixture of triumph and relief. “If