‘And who were they?’
He gave a single, bitter laugh. ‘Why, my family, of course. We thought it was broken, the curse, those who believed in it in the first place. But lately my great-aunt changed her mind. Through talking to Simon, I suppose. And because of his death.’
Rafael stepped in closer to her and she didn’t move. His voice transfixed her, rising and falling like music, his accent enchanting, his dark eyes drawing her in.
‘Why?’ she asked.
‘The men in my family die young. We are taken by the sea, just as Dahut promised all those years ago. We have our own version of the stories, written in that book. The city of Ys was beautiful, yes, but it was also a blight on the land here. It drained all wealth into it, took our people as slaves, exploited our natural resources, like a voracious monster feeding off this whole region. My ancestor was the one to seduce her, according to the book, to steal the key to the sea gates and open them to welcome the storm. Looked at another way, he rescued all of Cap Sizun from the tyranny of Ys. And she cursed him and all our line to die unless we saved Ys. But how can anyone save something that was lost so long ago?’
‘An ancient curse, really?’ She turned away, fed up with this. Everyone tried to spin an ancient curse into their history, especially when it came to archaeology. The Curse of Tutankhamun was probably the most famous, but it was by no means the first, or the last. Logic said it was just a way of making people feel important or to explain away horrible coincidences. A kind of dark wish fulfilment.
Rafael caught her hand before she could leave. He didn’t use force. His touch was incredibly gentle, but he stopped her all the same. Just that contact, the warmth of his skin on hers, the inadvertent caress, and she couldn’t have moved to save her life. The pad of his thumb brushed the sensitive skin of her wrist and shivers ran through her.
‘My father drowned when I was a child. He was thirty-five. Only my grandfather seems to have escaped it. But he died in a car crash when he was in his thirties, so who knows? Not one of them was older than thirty-five. It goes back to time out of mind. All the men in my line, and those associated with us. We die young. We die in water.’
Like Simon. Just like Simon.
God, this wasn’t happening, couldn’t be happening. Was that what Rafael had been doing the other day? Trying to give himself up to the inevitable? Trying to drown?
She asked the question she really didn’t want to ask. But she couldn’t help herself.
‘What age are you, Rafael?’
His grip tightened for just a moment, a squeeze, and then he released her as if she burned him. When he didn’t say anything, she reached out, her fingers brushing his jawline and she felt it tighten beneath the intimate touch. He closed his eyes as if he was in pain.
When he opened them again, they were dark and endless, the deep brown she had admired now looked like the black of the deepest ocean, the darkness of places that had never seen the light.
‘Rafael?’ she prompted cautiously. This was the reason for Madame du Lac’s insistence that the excavation take place now, for the excitement over the mask, over any discovery at all. It wasn’t just the whim of an elderly lady who felt her own time was running out, or that her mind was slipping. There was method and urgency in this madness. Ari knew it.
Rafael took a moment before he answered, reluctant perhaps to say it out loud, but she knew he’d tell her. He couldn’t help it.
‘Next month I will be thirty-five.’
CHAPTERNINE
Just saying it out loud left him shaken to the core. Saying it to someone who didn’t know the whole sorry history felt beyond strange, and curiously liberating. Like shining a light on a shadow.
Ari’s touch on his face trembled, but she didn’t retreat. She was so close. He could smell her perfume, feel the warmth of her body, and the urge to reach out and pull her against him, to kiss her, was strong indeed. The image of doing just that raced through his mind and he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, just in case he gave in to impulse and acted on it.
This was insane. He didn’t even know her. He’d only just met her and she had already entered his dreams and his waking mind. As if it was part of this enchantment, part of the curse, his only salvation…
He had never allowed himself to get too deeply involved in any relationship. Why would he? Life was too short. And most of the women he met were like Jacqueline. Money mattered above all else. It was his most attractive quality to them. That made trust hard to come by.
But why her? Why Ari Walker? Why did he want to tell her everything and have her believe everything? His crazy dreams, all his secrets. It seemed so desperately important. Even if he didn’t really believe it himself.
‘Rafael,’ she whispered solemnly, the voice of reason, and her words made his heart stutter inside his chest with regret. He knew what was coming. He was an idiot. ‘No one is going to drown you. No evil mermaids exacting an age-old revenge… It’s just…just a string of bad coincidences. And old stories. And—’
Disappointment slammed into him like a blow to the stomach. He lurched back from her, tearing himself free. It wasn’t condescension, not quite. But it felt that way. Like he was a child again, telling his ghost stories. But never quite believed.
He’d seen the Ankou stalking around the house, waiting for a death. He’d seen the white ladies walking the clifftops, calling out to the lost, he’d seen themari-morgenswimming in the waters beneath. He’d even seen thegroac’h, like a princess of legends, waiting for him on the rocks in the sea. Dreams, he told himself. Childhood fancies.
His mother had been dismissive in the extreme. Nonsense, she called it. Laure still laughed at him about it.
Mémé didn’t though. She’d promised that the house was protected. She’d given him… He breathed in, realising he’d seen the little linen pouches throughout his life, tucked away, never spoken about. And that each low tide, she collected seaweed from the shore and plaited it into fantastical shapes to hang on the doors. All his life.
‘I know that. Logically I know that. And yet, this is my life, Ari. It is very hard to deny. I’m a rational person, I assure you. I deal with international finance, and multimillion-euro deals on a daily basis. There is no place for superstition in that world. But my great-aunt does not live in that world. Not anymore. She lives here and she is afraid. There are no other du Lac sons. Not now. Just me.’ A white lie perhaps. But he couldn’t say more. Not yet. He barely knew her and some secrets were too precious. He’d learned that the hard way. ‘Mémé wants to find the source of the curse and put a stop to it. She makes amulets and charms, thinking they will help. She has worked for this all my life, ever since my father died. She’s afraid she’s running out of time. On both our counts.’
Ari hadn’t moved. She stood as if rooted to the spot, staring at him.
