Brimstone Bride. Barbara J. Hancock
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fingers shook when she placed the keys back in the box and put the box back on the shelf. Tears pricked her eyes and shame colored her cheeks. She shouldn’t be here. She might as well have desecrated a tomb. How horrible to outlive the family you loved by decades and more to come. They might be the only people who ever understood his dark secrets. Turov’s mother had loved him as she loved Michael. And Victoria had disturbed the room where he came to sit with long-dead memories.
Briefly, she’d even considered taking the keys.
She should. If one fit her cottage door, the others would unlock other places, maybe even the secret prison she sought. But she couldn’t. Not now. It was too intrusive to contemplate.
Instead, she looked long and hard at the whole room. She adjusted the book on the card table to more closely assimilate its previous position. She couldn’t help the disturbed dust. Best to leave it as it had been found. A place for a son who’d been left behind to grieve.
* * *
The middle-aged manager introduced himself as Gideon. His friendly sun-crinkled eyes and informative banter eased her disappointment after a fruitless day. She’d seen or heard nothing to indicate a clue about where Turov might be holding crazed monks for the devil. His house was cool and shadowed and overwhelmingly empty.
Except for the firebird keys.
Of course, she hadn’t ventured into his private apartment. There were many places she wasn’t free to explore. But the whole dark house had made her feel guilty for her snooping. Especially his mother’s sitting room.
“Please, climb aboard, miss. I’ll drive you over to the hilltop,” Gideon said.
The vehicle was an ATV designed like a miniature pickup truck. It had large tires with deep tread and two rows of side-by-side seats. The small aluminum truck bed currently held a cooler and what seemed to be gardening equipment—rakes, gloves, shears and buckets.
“I’m sorry to add to your chores,” Victoria said. She was glad she’d changed out of her dress into practical clothes. Gideon’s coveralls were belted neatly but she could tell he’d put in a long day.
“I’ve overseen the thinning for years, but I don’t often get to drive such pleasant visitors through the rows. Happy to do it,” Gideon said. He grinned and Victoria couldn’t help smiling back.
“You must have known Mr. Turov for a long time?” Victoria asked as the ATV bumped along. Gideon was explaining that the cover crops grown to fight erosion between rows had been recently mowed. The rainy season was over. Drier weather and approaching summer meant moisture needed to be directed toward the grapevines instead.
“No. No one knows Mr. Turov. He’s a private man. But he’s a good man. I haven’t always been a grower. My life before I came to Nightingale Vineyards was a very different sort of life,” Gideon said as he cut the wheel so that they were bumping over different terrain. “I owe Mr. Turov a great debt. I’m honored to repay it every day in these rows. He gave me the sun. I give him my hands and my back in return.”
He spoke so warmly of Turov that Vic was taken aback. She tried to absorb what he said and what he’d left unsaid. How had Turov given him the sun?
They left the gentle roll of the main vineyard behind in order to curve up and around a rise. The sun was low on the horizon. It painted everything it touched in a gold wash of color. Other crews were finishing for the day. She could see them piling into other ATVs and tractors in the distance.
“You’ll ride back with Mr. Turov. He has his own vehicle. There he is now,” Gideon said.
She could see the tall outline of Turov’s form silhouetted by the glow of the sun.
“Most of the maintenance on the hilltop is done by hand. There isn’t room for equipment. Mr. Turov oversees much of it himself. This was his mother’s parcel. The Firebird is named after her,” Gideon explained. “From her favorite Russian tale.”
He stopped at the base of an even steeper slope. The vineyard rows extended up in diagonal alleys from the path where he parked beside another ATV long enough for her to exit. Turov didn’t come to meet them. After raising his hand to salute his foreman, he bent to continue his work. Victoria climbed from the mini truck and thanked Gideon.
“Please, take the cooler. Cook sent some refreshment. Mr. Turov never rests as he should. He’s a driven man. These grapes are his obsession,” Gideon said.
Victoria didn’t argue. She suspected Turov had much darker obsessions, ones that would shock Gideon and Cook.
“Good night and thank you,” she said. Gideon waved as he drove away.
Victoria stood for a few moments as she noticed several large windmills spinning on steel posts. There didn’t seem to be enough wind to make the red blades move. The air was rapidly cooling and still. She placed the cooler in the last remaining ATV and climbed the hill toward where Turov was working. He didn’t look her way. He continued to tend to the vines with flying fingers.
That’s what she noticed. Deft manipulation of small pruning shears had leaves raining down at his feet.
She’d seen a Japanese bonsai trimmed once at a garden show. This reminded her of that meticulous attention to detail on a grander scale. The vines seemed perfect to her. Not a stem out of place. And yet tendril by tendril across hundreds of acres would be carefully groomed to maximize and perfect this year’s harvest.
“You can see the flowerings. Those will be our grapes. I’m making sure each bunch will receive optimal filtered light. There was a rainfall and a heavy mist this morning and temperatures will fall tonight.” He paused and glanced at her, his nimble fingers stopping their work. “I saw you looking at the fans. They’ll dry the moisture to ensure it doesn’t freeze.”
“I thought they were spinning too quickly to be windmills,” Victoria said.
“Windmills would need to be taller to catch the breeze. These fans are motorized and low enough to optimally dry the vines. We’ve made it almost to the end of the rains. That’s always a relief. You probably noticed Gideon was happy. We didn’t lose any crop this year,” Turov said.
How could this man so proud of his vines be in league with daemons? Had his passion for grapes come before or after he sold his soul?
Unlike Gideon, Adam Turov wasn’t dressed in coveralls, but he wasn’t in a suit or tuxedo either. He wore a flannel button-down shirt that he’d rolled at the sleeves. If possible, his chest looked broader and his bare arms were as muscular as she’d suspected from the athletic grace of his movements. A ring of keys attached to his belt rattled as he worked. They looked solid, worn and timeless, like the man they belonged to. They were much simpler than the firebird keys she’d seen when she was exploring the house, but she suspected the two sets unlocked many of the same doors around the estate.
The keys drew her attention again and again. Her instincts were much better at espionage than she was.
She’d watched him kill a man, pour wine and swirl a crystal glass, and now she watched him coaxing abundance from a growing thing. Would the real Adam Turov please raise his hand? Her chest tightened because it didn’t matter. She was uncomfortable lying to all three.
“Would you like to try?” he asked.
He’d paused again. Victoria took the pruning shears he offered. He watched her mimic his movements on the next section of vine. More tentative, but she’d watched what he did and he nodded when she did well.
Snip-snip-snip.
He was right beside her.
The soft wind from the fans blew his scent to her face—soap, sunshine, clean sweat and a hint of wood smoke. The hair that waved at the nape of his neck was damp.
“My mother tended this parcel. It was hers. She preferred the low yield of the hilltop. The hand manipulation. She was from a simpler time. To do a job right, you must feel it. Get your hands dirty. There’s a density