“Deadly.” She pushed, her grief throbbing through her. “How would it look for a priest of your stature to admit to an affair, to fathering a child?”

“Not good, but—”

“You’d lose everything. Stripped of your priesthood. Probably excommunicated, right? Tossed out on the street like so much garbage!”

Anger flashed in his pitch-dark eyes, and the warmth of the garden seemed to drop ten degrees. “I didn’t murder her,” he said again, his teeth set, his blade-thin lips barely moving. Rage flushed his skin, and to her surprise, he grabbed her arm and leaned close to whisper, “I loved her. I swear to you and to the Holy Father, I would never hurt her. Never!” His sincerity was nearly convincing. Nearly. “On my life, Valerie, I’m telling you I would never have hurt her or the child.” His gaze was intense. Fervid. The hand gripping her forearm clenching. “I loved her.”

“Like you love Sister Asteria?”

“What?” His jaw slackened. “You think that I—”

“Truthfully, I don’t know what to think, but my sister was in love with you and now she’s dead. Another woman, Sister Lea, left because of you.”

He drew in a long breath. Color began to return to his face.

“And just now I saw how that other girl was looking up at you, idolizing you, as if you couldn’t possibly do her any harm.”

“No. Sister Asteria and I . . .” He dropped her arm and closed his eyes for a second, slowly shaking his head. “I am so sorry,” he said. “So very, very sorry.”

“So am I.”

When he opened his eyes again, he touched her gently on the shoulder. “It’s not what you think, Valerie,” he said enigmatically. “Not at all.”

“You don’t know what I think.” She felt it again, that eerie sensation that she was being observed, that secretive, hidden eyes were watching her every move.

Surreptitiously, Val glanced up to the bell tower. Was someone lurking there? Or straining to see through the translucent panels in the stained glass of the chapel? Or hiding in the deep recesses of the archways opening to this private garden?

A warning breeze toyed with the hairs on the back of her neck, and for a split second, the image in her nightmares flashed before her eyes.

Dark.

Deadly.

“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice low.

No. She would never be all right.

“I–I’m fine.”

Did she really think this man could have killed the woman he swore so fervently to love? Was he telling the truth? Or was she, like so many foolish women before her, beginning to trust this very mortal man dressed in priest’s robes?

Slowly, she pulled her shoulder from his grip, but the action only awakened more remorse from him. Again he swore to her, “Trust me, Valerie, I would never harm Camille. Never.”

“If not you, Father, then who?”

“I don’t know.”