She threw the door open. In the darkness she could just barely make out Rex Morrow’s starkly handsome features. She nearly pitched herself against him, but then she remembered that the man was basically a hostile stranger, even though she knew Gene held him in the highest regard—and even though she had already clung to him once before.
She stepped back.
“Why did you scream?”
“The lights went out and—”
“I thought you were a whiz with electricity.”
“I lied—but that’s not why I screamed. Someone came running down the stairway.”
“What?”
He looked at her so sharply that even in the darkness she felt his probing stare. Did he think that she was lying—or did he believe her all too easily?
“I told you—”
“Come on.”
He took her hand, his fingers twining tightly around hers, and, with the ease of a cat in the dark, strode toward the parlor. He found the flashlight and cast its beam around. No intruder was there.
“Where did the…footsteps go?” he whispered huskily.
“I—I don’t know. I screamed and… I don’t know.”
He brought her back into the hallway and stopped dead. Alexi crashed into his back, banging her nose. She rubbed it, thinking that the man had a nice scent. She remembered it; she would have known him anywhere by it. It was not so much that of an after-shave as that of the simple cleanliness of soap and the sea and the air. He might be hostile, but at least he was clean.
There was only so much one could expect from neighbors, she decided nervously.
He walked through the hall to the stairway, paused, then went into the kitchen. The rear door was still tightly locked.
“Well, your intruder didn’t leave that way, and he didn’t exit by the front door,” Rex said. His tone was bland, but she could read his thoughts. He had decided that she was a neurotic who imagined things.
“I tell you—” she began irately.
“Right. You heard footsteps. We’ll check the house.”
“You think he’s still in the house?”
“No, but we’ll check.”
Alexi knew he didn’t believe anyone had been there to begin with. “Rex—”
“All right, all right. I said we’ll search. If anyone is here, we’ll find him. Or her. Or it.”
He released her hand. Alexi didn’t know how nervous she was until she realized that her fingers were still clinging to his. She flushed and turned away from him.
“Why did the lights go, then?” she demanded.
“Probably a fuse. Here, hold the flashlight and hang on a second.”
She turned back around to take the flashlight from him. He went straight to the small drawer by the refrigerator, then went toward the pantry.
“I need more light.”
Alexi followed him and let the beam play on the fuse box. A moment later, the kitchen light came on.
He looked at her. “Stay here. I’ll check out the library and the ballroom and upstairs.”
“Wait a minute!” Alexi protested, shivering.
“What?”
Impatiently he stopped at the kitchen door, his hand resting casually against the frame.
She swallowed and straightened with dignity and tried to walk slowly over to join him.
“I do read your books,” she admitted. “And it’s always the hapless idiot left alone while the other goes off to search who winds up…winds up with her throat slit!”
“Alexi…” he murmured slowly.
“Don’t patronize me!” she commanded him.
He sighed, looked at her for a moment with a certain incredulity and then started to laugh.
“Okay. We’ll search together. And I’m sorry. I’m not patronizing you. It’s just usually so quiet out here that it’s hard to imagine…” His voice trailed away, and he shrugged again. “Come on, then.”
Smiling, he offered her his hand. She hesitated, then took it.
They returned to the hallway. Alexi nervously played the flashlight beam up the stairway. Rex grinned again and went to the wall, flicking a switch that lit the entire stairway.
“Gene did have a few things done,” he told her.
There were only two other rooms on the ground floor—except for the little powder room beneath the stairway, which proved to be empty. To the right, behind the parlor, was the library, filled with ancient volumes and wall shelves and even an old running oak ladder reaching to the top shelves. Upon a dais with a wonderful old Persian carpet was a massive desk with a few overstuffed Eastleg chairs around it. Apart from that, the room was empty.
They crossed behind the stairway to the last room—the “ballroom,” as Rex called it. It was big, with a dining set at one end with beautiful old hutches flanking it, and a baby grand across the room, toward the rear wall. Two huge paintings hung above the fireplace, one of a handsome blond man in full Confederate dress uniform, the other of a lovely woman in radiant white antebellum costume.
Forgetting the intruder for a moment, Alexi dropped Rex’s hand and walked toward the paintings for a better look.
“Lieutenant General P. T. Brandywine and Eugenia,” Rex said quietly.
“Yes, I know,” Alexi murmured. She felt a bit awed; she hadn’t been in the house since she’d been a small child, but she remembered the paintings, and she felt again the little thrill of looking at people from another day who were her direct antecedents.
“They say that he’s the one who buried the Confederate treasure.”
“What?” Alexi, forgetting her distant relatives, turned around and frowned at Rex.
He laughed. “You mean you never heard the story?”
She shook her head. “No. I mean, I’ve heard of Pierre and Eugenia. Pierre built the house. But I never heard anything about his treasure.”
He smiled, locking his hands behind his back and casually sauntering into the room to look at the paintings.
“This area went back and forth during the Civil War like a Ping-Pong ball. The rebels held it one month; the Yankees took it the next. Pierre was one hell of a rebel—but it seems the last time he came home, he knew he wasn’t going to make it back again. Somewhere in the house he buried a treasure. He was killed at Gettysburg in ’63, and Eugenia never did return here. She went back to her father’s house in Baltimore, and her children didn’t come back here until the 1880s. Local legend has it that Pierre haunts the place to guard his stash, and the locals on the mainland all swear that it does exist.”