Gift of Gold

She was awed by the realization that Jonas believed every word he was saying. Whatever had happened in that lab at Vincent College, one thing was certain: Jonas really had tried to kill someone. “Good lord, Jonas. Did you hurt him?”
    “I almost gutted him. You could do that with a broadsword, you know. It’s not like a rapier, where all the attack is done with the point. Fifteenth-century swords made bigger messes than sixteenth-century rapiers.”
    “Jonas, stop it. Did you kill him?”
    Jonas hesitated. “No.”
    “He got out of the way in time?”
    “No. He got hurt. Badly hurt. But before I could finish him off someone got close enough to jab me with another needle. I turned on him and nearly got him before the drug took effect. When I came to, I was tied to a hospital bed and everyone was looking at me with a kind of excited horror. I’ll never forget those expressions. I was completely out of it for nearly two days, they told me later. They don’t know how far out of it I really was. Only I knew I had nearly lost my mind in the struggle to control whatever had reached from Giovanni to me. I had the feeling that if I’d actually killed that lab tech, whatever was invading me would have taken over completely. When I recovered I knew I couldn’t take any more chances. I also knew those damn scientists couldn’t wait to get me back into the lab.”
    “So you walked away from everything connected with the experience at Vincent.”
    “I didn’t just walk. Verity. I ran. For my life. For five long years.”
    “What do I have to do with all this, Jonas?” It took courage to ask the question. She realized she was frightened of his answer.
    He looked her, his face harsh. “Don’t you understand? You’re the reason I’ve stopped running.”
    “Me?” She stared at him in confusion.
    “I knew the night I found your earring in that alley down in Mexico that you were some kind of key for me. You were connected to me somehow. There was a possibility that you were the only means to control things in that corridor that I was ever likely to get in this lifetime. Until I met you, I wasn’t even sure there was such a thing as controlling what happened inside. But with you, I think I can start exploring that corridor again.”
    Verity sat perfectly still, mesmerized by the intensity of his expression. “Jonas, what are you saying?”
    “That with you I have a chance of dealing with this curse that’s been laid on me. You’re the lifeline that I can hang on to when the past tries to rip through me into the present. With you I think I can control my psychometric ability.”

 
    Chapter Ten
     
    Verity was subdued and thoughtful the next morning as she descended the steel staircase to meet her hostess for breakfast. She was also feeling washed out and tense, an unsettling combination. The events of the night had kept her awake until nearly four in the morning and it was only seven now.
    Jonas had not spent the remainder of the night in her room. He certainly would have done so, given the slightest encouragement, but Verity had not encouraged him. She needed time to think. His lovemaking seemed to have that effect on her, she acknowledged wryly.
    It was beginning to look as if every time she made love with Jonas, she needed time and space afterward in which to recover. Why couldn’t the man have been a normal, sex-crazed male looking for an easy, no-strings-attached affair? Things would have been much simpler in that event. She’d had some practice keeping such men at bay.
    Jonas had left the rapier behind in her bedroom, though. He had told her bluntly that if he picked it up he would be in the same situation as he had been in last night when he charged through her door.
    “I’m sure you don’t want that,” he had said dryly, taking his dismissal with bad grace.
    “No,” Verity had agreed with alacrity, “I don’t want that. We’ll put it back where it belongs tomorrow.”
    “You can hang it back up on the wall,” he had told her without much interest, “or throw it over a cliff. Hell, I don’t care what you do with it. I won’t be spending another night here, so it doesn’t matter where the rapier winds up.”
    He had stood for a moment in the doorway of her bedroom as she prepared to close it in his face. His gaze was brooding and watchful as he looked down at her.
    “I see a pattern developing here. I’m not sure I like it. Are you always going to kick me out after I’ve made love