But it was her misfortune to know they probably did exist, and just one look at Hazard’s unsmiling face made it plain he wasn’t joking. He never smiled much, but there was something different about him at that moment; he didn’t look merely serious, he looked haunted.

“I’m not sure I understand,” she said. “What kind of curse are you talking about? And what does it have to do with the pendant?”

He dragged his hand through his long dark hair, sweeping it away from his face except for one slightly shorter lock that insisted on falling alongside his eye. “I’m afraid it’s a long story . . . and somewhat complicated.”

“I promise to stay awake . . . and to refrain from singing,” she added, offering a small smile of encouragement.

He didn’t smile back, so she took a sip of brandy and waited.

“It happened a long time ago,” he began. “I was younger . . . much younger. I suppose you could say it started with an altercation between me and another man, a sorcerer as it turned out, although I didn’t know that at the time. And back then, if anyone had tried to tell me what he was, or that magic was as real as the wind or tides or the blood pumping through your veins, I would have laughed in his face and offered to buy him another drink.”

So there was a time when Hazard didn’t believe real magic existed. That fit with his claim that he had no power of his own, but it didn’t solve the mystery that was Gabriel Hazard. There were still unanswered questions, and the prospect of getting some of those answers had her leaning forward in anticipation.

“What kind of altercation?” she asked him.

“The over-a-woman kind.” He said it with a shrug. “It was all pretty straightforward. He thought the woman in question should marry him, I disagreed, and so I took her from him.”

“Did anyone bother to ask the woman what she thought?”

The question seemed to take him by surprise.

“No,” he said after a few seconds. “No one did. He didn’t care and I didn’t have time.”

“You didn’t have time?” she challenged, irritated on the woman’s behalf.

“It’s the truth,” Hazard insisted. “When I arrived at the church, the ceremony had already begun. I couldn’t risk waiting around to ask for permission.”

“Ceremony?”

He nodded. “The wedding ceremony. Did I mention that I stole her from the altar on their wedding day?”

If anyone but Hazard had said it, Eve would have laughed and doubted their veracity. Instead, she took a deep breath, trying to picture it. “You just walked into a church and . . . what? Announced she couldn’t marry him because you loved her more?”

“No. I didn’t love her more. I didn’t love her at all, in fact. At least not then,” he added with a quiet note of regret. “And I didn’t walk in; I rode in . . . just as they were about to exchange vows. And I didn’t say anything. I swept her off her feet—literally—and galloped off with her.”

“Did you say galloped? As in galloping on horseback?”

“Exactly.”

As bizarre as it sounded, she believed it. She believed it because . . . because Hazard was Hazard. And she had no trouble conjuring a mental image of it happening: she saw Hazard dressed in something suitably swashbuckling, charging down a flower-decked aisle astride a black stallion, the winsome young bride melting in his arms.

Suddenly concerned, she looked hard at him. “I’m assuming she went willingly?”

“Very willingly.”

No surprise there, thought Eve with a wistfulness she told herself was silly but entirely natural. What woman hadn’t fantasized about being rescued by a knight in shining armor and carried off in his arms? And handsome, charming, chivalrous Hazard was born to play the part.

“So she was in love with you even though you weren’t in love with her?” she asked.

“She wasn’t in love with me either. We were strangers at the time. I happened to be passing through the village where she lived, and she was so relieved to be rescued from marrying a man old enough to be her grandfather it didn’t matter to her who did the rescuing.”

“At least not then,” she ventured, echoing his earlier words.

“Not then.”

“And afterwards?”

“Afterwards . . . things changed,” he acknowledged. “But that has nothing to do with what happened.”

Eve resisted the urge to press for details. “So the reason you were cursed by this guy who turned out to be a sorcerer is because you rode into town, treated the local church like a stable and galloped off into the sunset with his bride. No offense, Hazard, but what did you expect him to do? Present you with the key to the village?”

“I didn’t expect anything; I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. Actually, I wasn’t thinking at all.” His mouth twisted in a self-deprecating smile. “Did I mention I was bloody drenched at the time?”

“Drenched?”

“Drunk,” he translated. “Bloody, staggering drunk.”

Eve rolled her eyes. So much for the shining armor. “No, but I should have guessed. Suddenly it all makes perfect sense.”

“I suppose it would be truer to say I was bloody, staggering hungover. Drunk is what I was the night before; that’s when I stopped at the local pub and heard all the talk about what a shoddy deal this poor young beauty was getting. It turned out I’d seen the woman in passing the day before,” he revealed, “when I’d stopped at the same roadside inn as she and the aunt who was traveling with her. She’d been called home from London without being told what awaited her.”

Eve’s brow furrowed with surprise. “You mean she didn’t know she was getting married?”

“She had no idea. Her father was in heavy debt to the rancid old windbag who owned most of the village, and everything else for miles around it, and he intended to use her to settle up.”

“That’s disgusting,” Eve exclaimed. “Not to mention illegal.”

He shrugged. “More to the point, it was a particular irritation of mine. I have a dangerously low tolerance for randy old men who prey on women because they can afford to, who use them up and toss them aside like yesterday’s news pages.” The icy black glitter in his eyes underscored his use of the word “dangerously.” There was no doubt in Eve’s mind he was talking about something more serious than your average pet peeve.

“A few pints into the evening I made up my mind someone ought to do something to stop what was happening to the girl,” he continued. “In the morning I woke up on the floor of the pub with that same notion still rattling around inside my pounding skull. And before I knew it that someone turned out to be me.”

Eve couldn’t help being impressed. He was talking about standing up for someone whose own family had sold her out, someone who was a total stranger to him. Who did something like that? She couldn’t think of a single person she knew who—drunk or sober—would dare to pull such a foolhardy, reckless, overbearing, but somehow sweetly noble stunt. Hazard was one of a kind; she was convinced of that. She just wasn’t sure what kind.

“That’s an amazing story,” she told him. “And what you did was very brave. Impulsive, but brave. All in all, I’d say you’re lucky he cursed you instead of shooting you in the back as you rode away.”

“Would that he had,” he muttered, mostly to himself. “I didn’t give him time to do anything. The curse didn’t happen until a week later, when I went back to apologize.”

“God, Hazard, you know there is such a thing as being too damn polite for your own good. Couldn’t you have just called to say you were sorry and kept on running?”

He tensed, his eyes narrowing.

“I did not run,” he said coldly, emphatically.

“Fine, you didn’t run. I still say you should have just phoned in an apology or sent a fruit basket or something else not so salt-in-the-wound, in-your-face confrontational.”

“This had to be done face-to-face,” he countered stubbornly. “The man was too powerful and too ruthless to allow himself to be publicly bested and not retaliate. Jane’s family still lived in the village, and they were still indebted to him. That debt had to be settled. I met with him to appease him, so he wouldn’t punish them for my actions. He thought he’d been cheated out of what was rightfully his, and so I offered him cash in lieu of the bride he thought was his due.”

“Let me guess, he still wanted the bride on the silver platter.”

He shook his head. “No, he knew it was too late for that. Jane and I were already married.”

“Married?” It burst out more loudly than she intended, making her especially glad they were sitting away from other diners. “After one close call, I’d have thought she . . . Jane . . . would want to get to know her next groom before taking the plunge.”

“It wasn’t a matter of choice,” he said matter-of-factly. “I hadn’t thought about where I would go or what I would do with her after I rescued her. We were alone together for over a day; her reputation was compromised. We had to marry.”

They had to marry? She had trouble processing that.

She understood there were people whose attitudes about such things were stricter than her own, but marrying to protect a woman’s reputation seemed excessive and outdated . . . something out of the Amish Guide to Dating or a Regency romance.

Of course, he did say it had happened a long time ago. And that he was much younger. He still looked young at first glance, with his long dark hair and air of barely leashed energy. But all you had to do was observe his manner for a short while to detect a degree of effortless polish and absolute confidence that can only be developed with time. And then there was that grim and ravaged look she’d caught a glimpse of, a dark shadow falling across his lean face. At those moments he looked much older than his age, which Eve guessed was thirty at most.

If this happened when he was in his teens or early twenties, he wouldn’t have been as polished, or as haunted. She imagined he would have been impetuous and quite gallant. Then there was the fact that his dashing rescue had occurred in a rural area, where things, including social mores, can move a lot slower than in places considered more urbane. A young and idealistic Hazard might very well deem it his duty to step up and save the girl’s reputation by marrying her, just as he later returned to the scene of the crime and tried to set things right with the man he’d offended.

It still niggled at her that there was something a little off about the story . . . that is to say, something beyond the overall wackiness of it. And the fact that he was a married man. The fact that he was married really shouldn’t make any difference to her, especially since it apparently didn’t make any difference to him. It wasn’t as if she harbored visions of dinner leading to bigger and better things.

“So. You’re married,” she said. “Your wife must be very open-minded. Or doesn’t she know you take other women to dinner at restaurants on Zagat’s list of Most Romantic?”

“I was married,” he countered. “It was only for a very short time. A year and a half after we married, Jane became ill with pneumonia and died. She and our daughter, both within a day.”

“Oh, Gabriel, I’m so sorry. How awful for you.” She used his first name without thinking, the same way she reached out to touch his hand, briefly covering it with her own. “It’s bad enough to lose someone you love, but to suddenly have both of them taken from you . . . I know how hard that must have been for you . . . how hard it must be still.”

“Thank you. For a long time life was . . . unbearable. And then I became numb.” His mouth crooked. “Numb is easier.”

The sadness of that statement made her heart hurt. Numbness did seem easier than soul-searing grief; the problem was it didn’t last. You could go floating along in your little bubble of numbness for weeks or months or years, and then one day you glimpsed or heard or brushed against something so familiar it might as well be encoded in your DNA, and the bubble bursts and your heart lifts, because you’re certain it’s her silky brown hair you saw, or his smooth laugh you heard, or the fox fur trim on her hood that you felt, the fur that always tickled your cheek when she bent down to kiss you, but of course it’s not, and you remember why, you remember why those things will never be again, and the fresh pain is enough to take your breath away.

The silence continued; Hazard seemed lost somewhere far away.

“Tell me more about the curse,” she urged. She knew that even when you believe you’re numb, distractions can be a blessing. “Did he refuse to accept your apology and curse you instead?”

“No, he accepted my apology, grudgingly. And my money, with slightly more enthusiasm,” he recalled dryly. “And then as I was leaving he had his men jump me. Three of them. We fought, I lost. It was . . . a very long night.” There was no mistaking the bitterness that whipped into his voice. It kept her from asking for a more detailed account of what transpired during that very long night. The faraway burn in his eyes and the unyielding set of his jaw made it clear that whatever happened had been painful, and not pretty. “By the time he got around to the curse I was barely conscious; my memories of what happened are hazy.”

“Please don’t take this the wrong way, but are you sure something did happen? Maybe it was a threat . . . he might have said he was going to curse you for effect, to frighten you and even the score a little.”

His laughter was short and harsh, really not a laugh at all. “It happened. I’m sure of it.”

“What kind of curse was it?” she asked.

The moment of truth, thought Hazard. Either that or the moment of untruth. Which was it going to be? He’d been struggling with that question since deciding on his strategy for this evening.

He didn’t want to lie to Eve any more than he wanted to steal from her. But there was a chance that if she knew the whole truth, she would be reluctant to help him. She might refuse to let him use the pendant. That would only prolong his stay, and the longer he was around her, the more danger she was in. If tonight proved anything, it was that. Even more than he didn’t want to lie to her, he didn’t want to hurt her. He’d hurt women before without meaning to, and if he wasn’t careful it would happen to Eve. Lying to her might be the kindest thing he could do.

“It’s nothing fancy as curses go,” he told her, his tone offhand. “Just your standard bad-luck curse.”

“And it worked?”

He nodded. “It’s like living with a black cat always in my path and with every day being Friday the thirteenth. Nothing I do turns out right. You saw what happened at the auction.” He clenched his jaw and stared across the room, striking a mood between anger and despair.

“You wanted to know why I’m so desperate to get my hands on the pendant, desperate enough to fight off warlocks and pay a king’s bloody ransom. Now you do.” He shifted his gaze to her face. “I’m cursed, and the pendant is the only thing that can break that curse.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because the pendant is what he used to cast it,” he replied.

Eve was about to say that was impossible because the pendant had been lost for years . . . centuries according to Grand; then she remembered it had been lost only to them for all that time. The hull of the Unity was located and her cargo recovered in 1971, but the pendant hadn’t come into Dorothy Dowling’s possession until 1998. According to the provenience provided by the historical society, there had been a private sale following its recovery and then it turned up years later at an auction conducted by Sotheby’s in Dublin. That time frame certainly allowed for what Hazard said happened.

“You’re sure it was the pendant?” she asked. “You did say your memory of that night is hazy.”

“It is,” Hazard admitted. “All I actually remember is that he had something gold in his hand. I’m not relying on my memory. I’m relying on Taggart, or rather on his sixth sense for these things.”

“Who’s Taggart?” Eve asked.

“Taggart is . . . an associate of mine. I hate magic . . . for obvious reasons. But I knew if I was going to break the curse I would have to fight fire with fire. And since I don’t have any power of my own, I had to find someone willing to share his . . . for a price.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’s more than willing to share if the price is anything like what you offered me.” She tilted her head, her eyes narrowing with curiosity. “And speaking of . . . you sure have a lot of walking-around money for someone cursed with bad luck.”

“It’s old money.” He dropped his gaze and used one finger to trace the rim of the saucer beneath the cup of coffee he hadn’t touched. “I have . . . afflictions that aren’t readily visible or understood. It’s not an easy thing for me to talk about.”

“You don’t have to,” she said, as he’d hoped she would.

She had a caring heart. Everything he’d observed of her and everything he’d learned about her surreptitiously told him that. And if his back wasn’t to the wall, or if he were a better man, he wouldn’t stoop to using that against her. But he wasn’t a better man, and he was going to use her kindness, and her own distaste for magic, to get her to do what he needed her to do.

“Tell me how Taggart figured out that it was the pendant you were looking for,” she said.

“He has a wide range of contacts in the otherworld,” he explained, referring to the world of magic interwoven with this one. “And he has a talent for locating things that are impossible to find . . . that sixth sense I mentioned. It took a while, and there were a lot of dead ends, but he eventually got a strong sense that what we were looking for was in Providence. Once we were here, he zeroed in on the house on Sycamore Street. The fact that it was for sale was simply a lucky break “

“So it wasn’t purely by chance that you bought the house.” There was a subtle note of accusation in her voice.

“I never said it was chance. I said it had nothing to do with you, and that at the time I bought it I knew nothing about you. That’s the truth. And I said the location being well suited to magic was a deciding factor—also true.”

She acknowledged that with a slight nod.

“It was only after we arrived here that Taggart honed in on the auction,” he explained, “and as soon as I saw the photograph of the pendant in the preview catalogue, I knew he was right . . . that it was what Pavane had in his hand when he cursed me.”

She looked at him with surprise. “The sorcerer’s name was Pavane?”

“That’s right. Phineas Pavane.” He saw her chest lift with a sudden deep breath and sensed her excitement. “Do you recognize the name?”

She nodded eagerly. “If my grandmother is right—and she usually is about these things—Phineas Pavane is the man responsible for our long-lost family talisman being long lost in the first place ... and for worse things. Not the same Phineas Pavane who cursed you,” she added and then rolled her eyes at herself. “Obviously.”

“Obviously,” he murmured, captivated by the sudden guileless sparkle of her in a way he had no right to be.

“This rural, horse-loving village you were talking about . . . was it by any chance in Ireland? A place called Gleng—”

“Glengara,” he said at the same time she did. “Near the west coast. That’s the place.”

“That’s where my family is from . . . originally, I mean. Grand was born there.”

She tossed her hair back, making the bells on her ears dance against the pale skin he longed to touch. It was an effort to focus instead on what she was saying.

“I don’t know if this is a coincidence,” she told him, “and if it’s not, I have no idea what it means, but if there was a Pavane involved, I’m sure he played dirty. You can use the pendant. And I don’t want any money, or papers drawn up. A handshake is good enough for me.”

She offered her hand; he hesitated.

“Do you trust me that much?” he asked.

“I’m not sure how much I trust you,” she admitted. “But I’m willing to give it a try. We’ll keep it simple: I’ll let you use the pendant to break the curse, and you promise to return it to me afterwards, safe and sound. No exceptions. No excuses.”

They shook on it. And even though the light was low, designed to hide flaws and soften what’s real, he saw Eve clearly for the woman she truly was. The woman he needed her to be.

Caring. Trusting. Gullible.

He really was a bastard.

So sayeth the witches in Macbeth, and their words had been running through Eve’s head all day, as impossible to shake as the refrain of a popular and God-awful song you hear on your way to work and find yourself humming all day. They struck her as timely; she only hoped they weren’t a bad omen. Tonight was the night she was going to Hazard’s, talisman in hand, for what she’d come to think of as—for want of a catchier term—the Great Decursing.

It had been two days since their dinner at Settimio’s. She’d offered to get together to do the deed as soon as possible, but Hazard had things to take care of first, and so they’d agreed on this evening. It was a good thing he hadn’t needed more time, because thinking about it was really interfering with her work. Flubbing lines, daydreaming during meetings and having to double- and triple-check appointment times was all very unlike her.

She was accustomed to work being her consuming passion, the thing that drove and excited her; work was the first thing she thought of in the morning and the last thing at night, and it was unsettling to have something else kick it from first place to a very distant second. She told herself that her curiosity and anticipation were natural; after all, it wasn’t everyday she got to witness someone use a magical talisman to break a bad-luck curse. Whatever excitement she felt had less to do with Hazard the man than Hazard the victim.

In fact, it might not even be excitement she felt; it could be . . . compassion. It could be wild, intense compassion waking her up in the middle of the night and making her pulse race, suddenly and at odd and sometimes inconvenient moments.

There was no denying that compassion was at least part of her feelings toward Hazard. His story had touched her deeply, probably because she understood it like few others could. She had the misfortune of knowing firsthand what it was to get caught in the backwash of a power far greater than yourself, a boundless, unaccountable power willing and able to pluck you from the fabric of reality as you knew it, spin you around and toss you back into a world radically different from the one you knew, leaving you to find your way as best you could.

Some would say they had both brought it on themselves by opening the door to the mysterious power of magic without knowing where it would lead. That was probably true . . . but with one major difference between them. She had been warned of the danger and had chosen to cast the Winter Rose Spell anyway. Hazard was never warned and had no way of knowing the potential consequences of his actions; he hadn’t even known magic was real, for pity’s sake. It was a stretch to think of the Hazard who’d bulldozed his way into her life as an innocent, but that’s what he’d once been.

There was also another important difference between them. What she did, she did for herself; she’d cast the spell in hopes of seeing what love and happiness might be in her future. Hazard had been thinking of someone else’s future happiness. He had unselfishly put himself at risk for the sake of a stranger. Neither of them deserved what happened to them, but the balancing scales in Eve’s heart decreed that he deserved it less.

For that reason alone she was willing to help him any way she could. It would be a bonus if she could also even the score a little with the iniquitous Pavane, both the man who had cursed Hazard and the earlier one who had caused her own family so much pain and trouble.

Phineas Pavane had stolen more than the talisman from them, he’d stolen possibilities. Generations of them. There was no way of knowing exactly how many, but Eve was convinced the number was staggering. He’d stolen the possibility of love and joy and contentment from so many women who shared her blood, and, maybe worse, he’d stolen the possibility of all the good they could have done with the power meant to be theirs and theirs alone.

She understood bad luck because she’d seen her share of it, and she knew the return of the talisman brought the possibility that T’airna luck could change. She resisted thinking about it because the potential for disappointment was too great. But gradually those thoughts began slipping through cracks in the wall she’d put up, more frequently since her dinner with Hazard. She wondered if that was because he represented another new possibility . . . the possibility of a man she could be completely open and honest with. A man she could dare to love.

Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it, she told herself. She wasn’t even sure Hazard was a man she could love. She was drawn to him in a way that confused her, but she really knew very little about him. The other night had filled in some of the blanks, and hopefully more of her questions would be answered tonight. She would also get to meet the mysterious Taggart, who would be in charge of the decursing. And she would find out if he was right about the pendant having the power to break the curse and set Hazard free. Maybe luck was about to change for both of them.

Provided she didn’t miss the witching hour, she thought, noticing the time. She took off her glasses and began to pack up to go. The script she’d been working on, the one that should have taken no more than an hour to write but that was still unfinished after several, would have to wait until tomorrow.