CHAPTER 5

unpacking. Perhaps Moonie had dragged the pieces out, she mused, there were several of them scattered across the rug

She retrieved the piece she'd kicked and rolled it gin-gerly between her fingers. Waves of emotion flooded her, a sea of shame and disgrace anger and humiliation, capped with a re-lentless fear that she still wasn't safe.

A draft of air kissed the back of her neck and she stiff-ened, clutching the chess piece so tightly that the crown of the black queen dug cruelly into her palm. Logic insisted that the windows behind her were shut she knew they were, still-instinct told her otherwise.

The rational Adrienne knew there was no one in her li-brary but herself and a lightly snoring kitten. The irrational Adrienne teetered on the brink of terror.

Laughing nervously, she berated herself for being so jumpy, then cursed Eberhard for making her this way. She would not succumb to paranoia.

Dropping to her knees without sparing a backward glance, Adrienne scooped the scattered chess pieces into a pile. She didn't really like to touch them. A woman couldn't spend her childhood in New Orleans-much of it at the feet of a Creole storyteller who'd lived behind the orphanage-without becoming a bit superstitious. The set was an-cient, an original Viking set; an old legend claimed it was cursed, and Adrienne's life had been cursed enough. The only reason she'd pilfered the set was in case she needed quick cash. Carved of walrus ivory and ebony, it would command an exorbitant price from a collector. Besides, hadn't she carned it, after all he'd put her through?

Adrienne muttered a colorful invective about beautiful men. It wasn't morally acceptable that someone as evil as Eberhard had been so nice to look at. Poetic justice demanded otherwise shouldn't people's faces reflect their hearts? If Eberhard had been as ugly on the outside as she'd belatedly discovered he was on the inside, she never would have ended up at the wrong end of a gun. Of course, Adrienne had learned the hard way that any end of a gun was the wrong end.

Eberhard Darrow Garrett was a beautiful, womanizing, deceitful man and he'd ruined her life. Clutching the black queen tightly she made herself a firm promise. "I will never go out with a beautiful man again, so long as I live and breathe. I hate beautiful men. Hate them!"

Outside the French doors at 93 Coattail Lane, a man who lacked substance, a creature manmade devices could neither detect nor contain, heard her words and smiled. His choice was made with swift certainty-Adrienne de Simone was definitely the woman he'd been searching for.

ADRIENNE HAD NO IDEA HOW SHE ENDED UP ON THE MAN'S lap. None.

One moment she was perfectly sane-perhaps a bit neu-rotic, but firmly convinced of her sanity nonetheless-and the next moment the ground disappeared beneath her feet and she was sucked down one of Alice's rabbit holes.

Her first thought was that she must be dreaming: a vivid, horrifying subconscious foray into a barbaric nightmare.

But that didn't make any sense; only moments before, she'd been petting Moonshadow or doing...something.. what? She couldn't have just fallen asleep without even knowing it!

Maybe she'd stumbled and struck her head, and this hallucination was the dreamy result of a concussion.

Or maybe not, she worried as she looked around the cav-ernous smoky room filled with oddly dressed people speak-ing a mutilated version of the English tongue.

You've done it now, Adrienne, she mused soberly. You've funally slipped over the edge, heels still kicking. Adrienne struggled to focus her eyes, which felt strangely heavy. The man who clutched her was revolting. He was a belching beast with thick arms and a fat belly, and he smelled.

Only moments ago she'd been in her library, hadn't she? A greasy hand squeezed her breast and she yelped aloud.

Bewilderment was vanquished by embarrassed outrage when his hand deliberately grazed the crest of her nipple through her sweater. Even if this was a dream, she couldn't permit that kind of activity to pass without redress. She opened her mouth to deliver a scathing tongue lashing, but he beat her to the punch. His pink mouth in that tangled mass of hair expanded into a wide O Dear heaven but the man hadn't even finished chewing, and no wonder-his few remaining teeth were stumpy and brown.

It was with revulsion that Adrienne wiped bits of chicken and spittle from her face when he roared, but it was with genuine alarm that she comprehended his words, through his thick brogue.

She was a gift from the angels.

She was a godsend, he proclaimed to the room at large.

She would be married on the morrow.

Adrienne fainted. Her unconscious body spasmed once, then went limp. The black queen slipped from her hand, hit the floor, and was kicked under a table by a scuffed leather boot.

When Adrienne awoke, she lay still, her eyes squeezed tightly shut. Beneath her back she felt the lurnpy down ticks piled thickly. It could be her own bed. She had purchased antique ticks and had them restitched to plump atop hot

waist-high Queen Anne bed. She was in love with old things, no dithering about it.

She sniffed cautiously. No odd scents from the banquet she'd dreamt. No hum of that thick brogue she'd imagined carlier

But no traffic either.

She strained her ears, listening mightily. Had she ever heard such silence?

Adrienne drew a ragged breath and willed her heart to slow.

She tossed on the lumpy tick. Was this how insanity occurred? Started with a vague inkling of unease, a dread-ful sense of being watched, then escalated rapidly into full blown madness, only to culminate in a nightmare where a smelly, hairy beast announced her impending nuptials?

Adrienne squeezed her eyes even more tightly shut, will-ing her return to sanity. The silhouette of a chess set loomed in her mind, battle-ready rooks and bitter queens etched in stark relief against the insides of her eyelids, and it seemed that there was something urgent she needed to remember What had she been doing?

Her head hurt. It was a dull kind of ache, accompanied by the bitter taste of old pennies in the back of her throat. For a moment she struggled against it, but the throbbing in-tensified. The chess set danced elusively in shades of black and white, then dissolved into a distant nagging detail. It couldn't have been too important.

Adrienne had more pressing things to worry about-where in the blue blazes was she?

She kept her eyes closed and waited. A few moments more and she would hear the purr of a BMW tooling sleekly down Coattail Lane or her phone would peal angrily.

A rooster did not just crow.

Another minute and she'd hear Moonie's questioning mer-ooow, and feel her tail swish past her face as she leapt up on the bed.

She did not hear the grate of squeaky hinges, the scrape of a door cut too long against a stone threshold.

"Milady, I know you're awake."

Her eyes sprang open to find a portly woman with silver-brown hair and rosy cheeks, wringing her hands as she stood at the foot of the bed. "Who are you?" Adrienne asked warily, refusing to look at any more of the room than the immediate spot that contained this latest apparition.

"Bah! Who am / she asks? The lass who pops out of no-where, lickety-split, like a witch if you please, is wishing to know who I am? Hmmph!"

With that, the woman placed a platter of peculiar-smelling food on a nearby table, and forced Adrienne up by plumping the pillows behind her back.

"I'm Talia. I've been sent to see to your care. Eat up. You'll never be strong enough to face wedding him if you doona be eating," she chided.

With those words and a full glimpse of the stone walls hung with vividly colored tapestries depicting hunts and orgies, Adrienne fainted again-this time, with relish.