They made love in the jeep like giddy teenagers, high on exhaustion and wine. The moon was white, the night still. There was music from night birds, insects, and frogs. With the jeep pulled deep into the bush they feasted on caviar and one another while the forest sang around them. Whitney laughed as they struggled to have more of each other on the small, uncooperative front seat of the jeep.
With her clothes half on, half off, her mind light, and her hunger satisfied, Whitney rolled on top of him and grinned. “I haven’t had a date like this since I was sixteen.”
“Oh yeah?” He ran a hand up her thigh to her hip. Her eyes were dark, glazed with a combination of weariness, wine, and passion. Doug promised himself he’d see them like that again, when they were in some cozy hotel on the other side of the world. “So a guy could get you into the back seat with a little wine and caviar?”
“Actually it was crackers and beer.” She sucked beluga from her finger. “And I ended up punching him in the stomach.”
“You’re a fun date, Whitney.”
She tipped the last drops from the bottle into her mouth. Around them, the forest was full of insects rubbing their wings and singing. “I am, and have always been, selective.”
“Selective, huh?” He shifted so that she lay across him as he supported himself against the door of the jeep. “What the hell’re you doing here with me then?”
She’d asked herself the same question and the simplicity of the answer left her uneasy. She wanted to be. For a moment she was silent, nestling her head against his shoulder. It felt right there, and though it was foolish, safe. “I suppose I fell for your charm.”
“They all do.”
Whitney tilted her head, smiled, then sunk her teeth, not so gently, into his bottom lip.
“Hey!” While she laughed, he pinned her arms to her side. “So, she wants to play rough.”
“You don’t scare me, Lord.”
“No?” Enjoying himself, he gripped both her wrists in one hand and circled her neck with the other. Her eyes never flickered. “Maybe I’ve been too easy on you so far.”
“Go ahead,” she challenged. “Do your worst.”
She looked up at him with that cool half smile, her whiskey eyes dark and sleepy. Doug did what he’d avoided all his life, what he’d avoided more cleverly, more carefully than small-town sheriffs and big-city cops. He fell in love.
“Jesus, you’re beautiful.”
There was something in the tone of his voice. Before she could analyze it, or the look that had come into his eyes, his mouth was on hers. They both fell into passion.
It was as the first time. He hadn’t expected it to be. The feelings, the needs that swam through him were just as intense, just as overwhelming. He was just as helpless.
Under his hands, her skin flowed like water. Under his mouth, her lips were strong, more potent than sweet. The light-headed weariness passed into a light-headed power. With her, he could do and have anything.
The night was hot, the air moist and heavy with the scent of dozens of heat-soaked flowers. Night-feeding insects rubbed their wings and whined. He wanted candlelight for her, and a soft, cool feather bed with silk-covered pillows. He wanted to give, something new for a man who, while generous, always took first.
Her body was so delicate. It captivated him in a way all the others—the flamboyant, the obvious, the professional—never had. Her curves were subtle, her bones long and elegant. Her skin was soft in a way that spoke of daily pampering. He told himself there’d be a time when he’d have the luxury of exploring every inch of her, slowly, thoroughly, until he knew her like no other man ever had, like no other man ever would.
There was something different about him. He was no less passionate, but she knew there was something …
Her senses were tangled, layered one on top of the other so that she was caught in a delicious mass of sensation. She could feel, but what she felt came from him. The stroke of a fingertip, the brush of lips. She could taste, but it was his flavor which filled her, warm, male, exciting. She heard him murmur to her, and her own whispered answer floated on the air. His scent reached her, muskier, more intoxicating than the hothouse that surrounded them. Until now, she hadn’t understood what it meant to be steeped in someone. Until now, she hadn’t wanted to.
She opened. He filled. He gave. She absorbed.
From the beginning, they’d raced together. This was no different. Heart pounding against heart, bodies close, they crossed the line all lovers seek.
They slept lightly, only an hour, but it was a luxury they took greedily, curled together on the seat of the jeep. The moon was lower now. Doug watched its position through the trees before he nudged her.
“We’ve got to move.” Remo might still be scrambling for transportation; then again, he might already be on the road behind them. Either way, he wouldn’t be cheerful.
Whitney sighed and stretched. “How much farther?”
“I don’t know—another hundred, maybe hundred and twenty miles.”
“Okay.” Yawning, she began to dress. “I’ll drive.”
He snorted as he pulled on his jeans. “The hell you will. I’ve driven with you before, remember?”
“I certainly do.” After a brief inspection, Whitney decided the wrinkles in her clothes were permanent. She wondered if there was any chance of finding a dry cleaner. “Just as I remember I saved your life then, too.”
“Saved it?” Doug turned to see her rooting out her brush. “You nearly got us both killed.”
Whitney flicked the brush through her hair. “I beg your pardon. Through my superior skill and maneuvering, I not only saved your ass, but detained Remo and his band of merry men.”
Doug turned on the ignition. “I guess it’s all a matter of perspective. Anyway, I’ll drive. You’ve had too much to drink.”
Whitney cast him a long, withering look. “The MacAllisters never lose their wits.” She grabbed the door handle as they bumped through the brush and onto the road.
“All that ice cream,” Doug decided as he set a steady speed. “It coats the stomach so the booze neutralizes.”
“Very droll.” She released the door handle, propped her feet on the dash, and watched the night whiz by. “It occurs to me that you’re quite aware of my family history and background. What about yours?”
“Which story do you want?” he asked lightly. “I keep a variety, depending on the occasion.”
“Everything from the destitute orphan to the misplaced aristocrat, I’m sure.” Whitney studied his profile. Who was he? she wondered. And why did she care? She didn’t have the first answer, but the time had passed when she could pretend she didn’t have the second. “What about the real one, just for variety?”
He could have lied. It would have been a simple matter for him to have given her the story of a homeless little boy sleeping in alleys and running from a vicious stepfather. And he could have made her believe it. Settling back, Doug did what he did rarely. He told the unvarnished truth.
“I grew up in Brooklyn, a nice, quiet neighborhood. Blue-collar, plain, and settled. My mother kept house and my father fixed drains. Both my sisters were cheerleaders. We had a dog named Checkers.”
“It sounds very normal.”
“Yeah, it was.” And sometimes, rarely, he could bring it back in focus and enjoy it. “My father belonged to the Moose and my mom made the best blueberry pie you ever tasted. They both still do.”
“And what about young Douglas Lord?”
“Because I was, ah, clever with my hands, my father thought I’d make a good plumber. It just didn’t seem like my idea of a good time.”
“The hourly rate of a union plumber’s quite impressive.”
“Yeah, well I’ve never been into working by the hour.”
“So instead you decided to—how do you term it—freelance?”
“A vocation’s a vocation. I had this uncle, the family always kept kind of quiet about him.”
“A black sheep?” she asked, interested.
“I guess you wouldn’t have called him lily white. Seems he’d done some time. Anyway, to keep it short, he came to live with us for a while and worked for my dad.” He shot Whitney a quick, appealing grin. “He was good with his hands, too.”
“I see. So you came by your talent, dare I say, honestly.”
“Jack was good. He was real good except he had a weakness for the bottle. When he gave in to it he got sloppy. Get sloppy, you get caught. One of the first things he taught me was never to drink on the job.”
“I don’t imagine you’re referring to unstopping pipes.”
“No. Jack was a second-rate plumber, but he was a first-class thief. I was fourteen when he taught me to pick a lock. Never been real sure why he took to me. One thing was I liked to read and he liked to hear stories. He wasn’t much on sitting down with a book, but he’d sit there for hours if you’d tell him the story of The Man in the Iron Mask or Don Quixote.”
She’d been aware from the beginning of a sharp intellect and a varied kind of taste. “So young Douglas liked to read.”
“Yeah.” He moved his shoulders and negotiated a curve. “First thing I stole was a book. We weren’t poor, really, but we couldn’t afford to stock the kind of library I wanted.” Needed, he corrected. He needed the books, the escape from the everyday the same way he’d needed food. No one had understood.
“Anyway, Jack liked hearing stories. I remember what I read.”
“Authors hope readers do.”
“No, I mean I remember almost line for line. It’s just the way it is. Got me through school.”
She thought about the ease with which he’d spouted off facts and figures from the guidebook. “You mean you have a photographic memory?”
“I don’t see it in pictures, I just don’t forget, that’s all.” He grinned, thinking. “It got me a scholarship to Princeton.”
Whitney sat up straight. “You went to Princeton?”
His grin widened at her reaction. Until then, he’d never considered the truth more interesting than fiction. “No. I decided rather than college I wanted on-the-job training.”
“You’re telling me you turned down a Princeton scholarship?”
“Yeah. Pre-law seemed pretty cut and dried.”
“Pre-law,” she murmured and had to laugh. “So, you might’ve been a lawyer. Ivy League at that.”
“I’d’ve hated it just as much as I’d’ve hated unstopping johns. There was Uncle Jack. He always said he didn’t have any kids and wanted to pass on his trade.”
“Ah, a traditionalist.”
“Yeah, well, in his way, he was. I caught on quick. I had a hell of a lot more fun tripping a lock than I did conjugating verbs, but Jack had this thing about education. He wouldn’t take me on a real job until I had my high-school diploma. And a little math and science come in handy when you’re dealing with security systems.”
With his talent, she imagined Doug could’ve been one of the top engineers in the business. She let it pass. “Very sensible.”
“We went on the road. Did pretty well for ourselves for about five years. Small, clean jobs. Hotels mostly. One memorable night we picked up ten thousand at the Waldorf.” He smiled, reminiscently. “We went to Vegas and dropped most of it, but it was a hell of a time.”
“Easy come, easy go?”
“If you can’t have fun with it, there’s no use taking it.”
She had to smile at that. Her father was fond of saying if you couldn’t have fun with it, there was no use making it. She supposed he’d appreciate Doug’s slight variation on the theme.
“Jack had this idea about hitting this jewelry store. Would’ve set us up for years. We only had a few details to work out.”
“What happened?”
“Jack fell off the wagon. He tried to pull the job on his own, what you might call an ego thing. I was getting better, and he was slipping a bit. I guess it was hard to take. Anyway, he got sloppy. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t broken the rules and taken a gun with him.” Doug swung his arm back on the seat and shook his head. “That little flourish cost him ten good years.”
“So Uncle Jack went up the river. And you?”
“Up the river,” he murmured, amused. “I hit the streets. I was twenty-three and a hell of a lot greener than I thought I was. But I learned fast enough.”
He’d given up a Princeton scholarship to climb in second-story windows. The education might have bought him some of the luxury he seemed to crave. And yet … And yet, Whitney couldn’t see him choosing the well-trod road.
“What about your parents?”
“They tell the neighbors I work for General Motors. My mother keeps hoping I’ll get married and settle down. Maybe become a locksmith. By the way,” he added as one thought led to another, “who’s Tad Carlyse IV?”
“Tad?” Whitney noticed that the sky in the east was beginning to lighten. She might’ve closed her eyes and slept if her eyelids hadn’t felt filled with grit. “We were sort of engaged for a time.”
He immediately and completely detested Tad Carlyse IV. “Sort of engaged?”
“Well, let’s say Tad and my father considered us engaged. I considered it a matter for debate. They were both rather annoyed when I opted out.”
“Tad.” Doug visualized a blond with a weak jaw in a blue blazer, white deck shoes, and no socks. “What does he do?”
“Do?” Whitney fluttered her lashes. “Why I suppose you’d say Tad delegates. He’s the heir to Carlyse and Fitz, they manufacture everything from aspirin to rocket fuel.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard of them.” More megamillions, he thought and hit the next three ruts rather violently. The kind of people who stepped on an ordinary man without ever noticing the bump. “So why aren’t you Mrs. Tad Carlyse IV?”
“Probably for the same reason you didn’t become a plumber. It didn’t seem like a great deal of fun.” She crossed her feet at the ankles. “You might want to back up, Douglas. I believe you missed that last pothole.”
It was full morning when they stood on the rise of a mountain overlooking Diégo-Suarez. From that distance, the water in the bay was achingly blue. But the pirates who’d once roamed there wouldn’t have recognized it. The ships that dotted the water were gray and sturdy. There were no sleek sails billowing, no wooden hulls rolling.
The bay that had once been a pirate’s dream and an immigrant’s hope was now a major French naval base. The town that had once been the pride of buccaneers was a tidy modern city of some fifty thousand Malagasy, French, Indian, Oriental, British, and American. Where there had once been thatched huts stood steel and concrete buildings.
“Well, here we are.” Whitney linked her arm with his. “Why don’t we go down, book into a hotel, and have a hot bath?”
“We’re here,” he murmured. He thought he could feel the papers growing warm in his pocket. “First we find it.”
“Doug.” Whitney turned so that she faced him, her hands on his shoulders. “I understand this is important to you. I want to find it, too. But look at us.” She glanced down at herself. “We’re filthy. We’re exhausted. Even if it didn’t matter to us, people are bound to notice.”
“We aren’t going to socialize.” He looked over her head to the town below. To the end of the rainbow. “We’ll start with the churches.”
He went back to the jeep. Resigned, Whitney followed.
Fifty miles behind, jolting along the northern road in a ’68 Renault with a bad exhaust, were Remo and Barns. Because he needed to think, Remo let Barns drive. The little molelike man gripped the wheel with both hands and grinned straight ahead. He liked to drive, almost as much as he liked to run over whatever furry little thing might dash out on the road.
“When we catch ’em, I get the woman, right?”
Remo shot Barns a look of mild disgust. He considered himself a fastidious man. He considered Barns a slug. “You better remember Dimitri wants her. If you mess her up, you might just piss him off.”
“I won’t mess her up.” His eyes gleamed a moment as he remembered the photo. She was so pretty. He liked pretty things. Soft, pretty things. Then he thought of Dimitri.
Unlike the others, he didn’t fear Dimitri. He adored him. The adoration was simple, basic, in much the same way a small ugly dog might adore his master, even after a few good kickings. What few brains Barns had been blessed with had been rattled well over the years. If Dimitri wanted the woman, he’d bring the woman to him. He gave Remo an amiable smile because in his own fashion Barns liked Remo.
“Dimitri wants Lord’s ears,” he said with a giggle. “Want me to cut ’em off for you, Remo?”
“Just drive.”
Dimitri wanted Lord’s ears, but Remo was well aware he might settle for a substitute. If he’d had any hope that he would’ve gotten away with it, he’d have headed the car in the opposite direction. Dimitri would find him because Dimitri believed an employee remained an employee until death. Premature or otherwise. Remo could only pray he still had his own ears after he reported to Dimitri at his temporary headquarters in Diégo-Suarez.
Five churches in two hours, she thought, and they’d found nothing. Their luck had to come in soon, or run out. “What now?” she demanded as they pulled up in front of yet another church. This one was smaller than the others they’d been to. And the roof needed repair.
“We pay our respects.”
The town was built on a promontory, jutting out over the water. Though it was still morning, the air was hot and sticky. Overhead, palm fronds barely moved in the slight breeze. With a little imagination, Doug could picture the town as it had once been, rowdy, simple, protected by mountains on one side and the man-made wall on the other. As he strode away from the jeep, Whitney caught up with him.
“Care to guess how many churches, how many cemeteries there are around here? Better yet, how many there were that’ve been built over?”
“You don’t build over cemeteries. Makes people nervous.” He liked the layout here. The front door was hanging crooked on its hinges, making him think no one used the church with any regularity. Around the side, a bit overgrown and canopied by palms, were groups of headstones. He had to crouch down to read the inscriptions.
“Doug, don’t you feel a bit ghoulish.” Skin chilled, Whitney rubbed her arms and looked over her shoulder.
“No.” The answer was simple as he peered closely at headstone after headstone. “Dead’s dead, Whitney.”
“Don’t you have any thoughts on what happens after?”
He shot her a look. “Whatever I think, what’s buried six feet down doesn’t have any feelings at all. Come on, give me a hand.”
It was pride that had her crouching down with him and tugging vines from headstones. “The dates are good. See—1790, 1793.”
“And the names are French.” The tingle at the back of his neck told him he was closing in. “If we could just—”
“Bonjour.”
Whitney sprang to her feet, poised to run before she saw the old priest step through the trees. She fought to keep guilt off her face as she smiled and answered him in French. “Good morning, Father.” His black cassock was a stark contrast to his pale hair, pale eyes, pale face. His hands, when he folded them, were spotted with age. “I hope we’re not trespassing.”
“Everyone is welcome to God’s house.” He took in their bedraggled appearance. “You’re traveling?”
“Yes, Father.” Doug stood up beside her but said nothing. Whitney knew it was up to her to spin the tale, but she found she couldn’t tell a direct lie to a man in a white collar. “We’ve come a long way, looking for the graves of family who immigrated here during the French Revolution.”
“Many did. Are they your ancestors?”
She looked into the priest’s calm, pale eyes. She thought of the Merina who worshiped the dead. “No. But it’s important we find them.”
“To find what is gone?” His muscles, weary with age, trembled with the simple movement of linking his hands. “Many look, few find. You’ve come a long way?”
His mind, she thought as she struggled with impatience, was as old as his body. “Yes, Father, a long way. We think the family we’re looking for may be buried here.”
He thought, then accepted. “Perhaps I can help you. You have the names?”
“The Lebrun family. Gerald Lebrun.”
“Lebrun.” The priest’s withered face closed in as he thought. “There are no Lebrun in my parish.”
“What’s he talking about?” Doug muttered in her ear but Whitney merely shook her head.
“They immigrated here from France two hundred years ago. They died here.”
“We must all face death in order to have everlasting life.”
Whitney gritted her teeth and tried again. “Yes, Father, but we have an interest in the Lebruns. A historical interest,” she decided, thinking it wasn’t actually a lie.
“You’ve come a long way. You need refreshment. Madame Dubrock will fix tea.” He put his hand on Whitney’s arm as if to lead her down the path. She started to refuse, then felt his arm tremble.
“That would be lovely, Father.” She braced herself against his weight.
“What’s going on?”
“We’re having tea,” Whitney told Doug and smiled at the priest. “Try to remember where you are.”
“Jesus.”
“Exactly.” She helped the aging priest up the narrow path to the tiny rectory. Before she could reach for the door it was opened by a woman in a cotton housedress whose face sagged with wrinkles. The smell of age was like old paper, thin and dusty.
“Father.” Madame Dubrock took his other arm and helped him inside. “Did you have a pleasant walk?”
“I brought travelers. They must have tea.”
“Of course, of course.” The old woman led the priest down a dim little hall and into a cramped parlor. A black-bound Bible with yellowed pages was opened to the Book of David. Candles burned low were set on each table and on an old upright piano that looked as though it had been dropped more than once. There was a statue of the Virgin, chipped and faded and somehow lovely in its place by the window. Madame Dubrock murmured and fussed with the priest as she settled him in a chair.
Doug looked at the crucifix on the wall, pitted with age, stained with the blood of redemption. He dragged a hand through his hair. He always felt a bit uneasy in church, and this was worse. “Whitney, we haven’t got time for this.”
“Ssh! Madame Dubrock,” she began.
“Please sit, I will bring tea.”
Compassion and impatience warred as Whitney looked back at the priest. “Father—”
“You’re young.” He sighed and worried his rosary. “I have said Mass in the Church of Our Lord for more years than you have lived. But so few come.”
Again, Whitney was drawn to the pale eyes, the pale voice. “Numbers don’t matter, do they, Father?” She sat in the chair beside him. “One is enough.”
He smiled, closed his eyes, and dozed.
“Poor old man,” she murmured.
“And I’d like to live just as long,” Doug put in. “Sugar, while we’re waiting to have tea, Remo’s making his merry way into town. He’s probably a little annoyed that we stole his jeep.”
“What was I supposed to do? Tell him to back off, we have a hired gun at our backs?” He saw the look in her eyes when she flared at him, the look that meant her heart was attached.
“Okay, okay.” Twinges of pity had been working on him as well and he didn’t care for it. “We did our good deed and now he’s having a nap. Let’s do what we came for.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and felt like a ghoul. “Listen, maybe there are records, ledgers we could look through rather than …” She broke off and glanced toward the cemetery. “You know.”
He rubbed his knuckles over her cheek. “Why don’t you stay here and I’ll have a look?”
Wanting to agree made her feel like a coward. “No, we’re in this together. If Magdaline or Gerald Lebrun are out there, we’ll find them together.”
“There was a Magdaline Lebrun who died in childbirth, and her daughter, Danielle, who succumbed to fever.” Madame Dubrock shuffled back into the room with a tray of tea and hard biscuits.
“Yes.” Whitney turned to Doug and took his hand. “Yes.”
The old woman smiled as she saw Doug watch her suspiciously. “I have many hours in the evening to myself. It’s my hobby to read and study church records. The church itself is three centuries old. It’s withstood war and hurricane.”
“You remember reading of the Lebruns?”
“I’m old.” When Doug took the tray from her she gave a little sigh of relief. “But my memory is good.” She cast a look at the slumbering priest. “That too will go.” But she said it with a kind of pride. Or perhaps, Whitney thought, a kind of faith. “Many came here to escape the Revolution, many died. I remember reading of the Lebruns.”
“Thank you, Madame.” Whitney dug in her wallet and pulled out half of the bills she had left. “For your church.” She looked over at the priest and added more bills. “For his church, in the name of the Lebrun family.”
Madame Dubrock took the money with a quiet dignity. “If God wills it, you’ll find what you seek. If you need refreshment, come back to the rectory. You’ll be welcomed.”
“Thank you, Madame.” On impulse Whitney stepped forward. “There are men looking for us.”
She looked Whitney straight in the eye, patient. “Yes, my child?”
“They’re dangerous.”
The priest shifted in his chair and looked at Doug. So was this man dangerous, he thought, but he felt at peace. The priest nodded to Whitney. “God protects.” He closed his eyes again and slept.
“They never asked any questions,” Whitney murmured as they walked back outside.
Doug looked over his shoulder. “Some people have all the answers they need.” He wasn’t one of them. “Let’s find what we came for.”
Because of the undergrowth, the vines, and the age of the headstones, it took them an hour to work their way through half the cemetery. The sun rose high so that shadows were thin and short. Even with the distance, Whitney could smell the sea. Tired and discouraged, she sat on the ground and watched Doug work.
“We should come back tomorrow and do the rest. I can barely focus on the names at this point.”
“Today.” He spoke half to himself as he bent over another grave. “It has to be today, I can feel it.”
“All I can feel is a pain in the lower back.”
“We’re close. I know it. Your palms get damp. And there’s this feeling in your gut that everything’s just about to slide into place. It’s like cracking a safe. You don’t even have to hear the last click to know it. You just know it. The sonofabitch is here.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and stretched his back. “I’ll find it if it takes the next ten years.”
Whitney looked over at him and, with a sigh, shifted to stand. She propped one hand on a headstone for balance as her foot caught on a vine. Swearing, she bent over to free herself. Feeling her heart jolt, she looked down again and read the name on the stone. She heard the last tumbler click. “It’s not going to take that long.”
“What?”
“It’s not going to take that long.” She grinned and the sheer brilliance of it made him straighten. “We found Danielle.” She blinked back tears as she cleared the stone. “Danielle Lebrun,” she read. “1779–1795. Poor child, so far from home.”
“Her mother’s here.” Doug’s voice was soft, without the excited lilt. He slipped his hand into Whitney’s. “She died young.”
“She’d have worn her hair powdered, with feathers in it. And her dresses would have come low on the shoulders and swept the floor.” Whitney rested her head against his arm. “Then she learned to plant a garden and keep her husband’s secret.”
“But where is he?” Doug crouched down again. “Why isn’t he buried beside her?”
“He should—” A thought occurred to her then and she spun away, biting off an oath. “He killed himself. He wouldn’t have been buried here, this is consecrated ground. Doug, he’s not in the cemetery.”
He stared at her. “What?”
“Suicide.” She dragged a hand through her hair. “He died in sin, so he couldn’t be buried in the church grounds.” She glanced around, hopelessly. “I don’t even know where to look.”
“They had to bury him somewhere.” He began to pace between the gravestones. “What did they usually do with the ones they wouldn’t let in?”
She frowned a bit and tried to think. “It would depend, I suppose. If the priest was compassionate, I’d think he’d be buried close by.”
Doug looked down. “They’re here,” he muttered. “And my palms are still sweating.” Taking her hand, he walked over to the low fence that bordered the cemetery. “We start there.”
Another hour passed while they walked and searched through the brush. The first snake Whitney saw nearly sent her back to the jeep, but Doug handed her a stick and no sympathy. Straightening her spine, she stuck with it. When Doug tripped, stumbled, and cursed, she paid no attention to him.
“Holy shit!”
Whitney lifted her stick, ready to strike. “Snake!”
“Forget the snakes.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her down on the ground with him. “I found it.”
The marker was small and plain, nearly buried itself. It read simply GERALD LEBRUN. Whitney laid a hand on it, wondering if there’d been anyone to mourn for him.
“And bingo.” Doug tore a vine as thick as his thumb, riddled with trumpet-shaped flowers, from another stone. It read only MARIE.
“Marie,” she murmured. “It could be another suicide.”
“No.” He took Whitney’s shoulders so that they faced each other across the stones. “He’d guarded the treasure just as he’d promised. He died still guarding it. He must have buried it here before he wrote that last letter. He might have written down a request to be buried in this spot. They couldn’t bury him in there with his family, but there wasn’t any reason not to give him a last wish.”
“All right, it makes sense.” But her mouth was dry. “What now?”
“Now, I’m going to go steal a shovel.”
“Doug—”
“No time for sensibilities now.”
She swallowed again. “Okay, but make it fast.”
“You could hold your breath.” He gave her a quick kiss before he was up and gone.
Whitney sat between the two stones, her knees drawn up and her heart thudding. Were they really so close, so close to the finish at last? She looked down at the flat, neglected plot of ground beneath her hand. Had Gerald, queen’s confidant, kept the treasure at his side for two centuries?
And if they found it? Whitney plucked the grass with her fingers. For now she’d only remember that if they found it, Dimitri hadn’t. She’d be satisfied with that for the moment.
Doug came back without rustling the grass. Whitney heard him only when he murmured her name. She swore and scrambled forward on her knees. “Do you have to do that?”
“I’d rather not advertise our little afternoon job.” He held a dented, short-handled shovel in his hand. “Best I could do on short notice.”
For a moment, he just stared down at the dirt under his feet. He wanted to savor the sensation of standing over the gateway to easy street.
Whitney saw his thoughts in his eyes. Again she felt twin sensations of acceptance and disappointment. Then she put her hand over his on the shovel and gave him a long kiss. “Good luck.”
He began to dig. For minute after minute, there was no sound but the steady rhythm of metal cutting earth. No breeze blew in from the sea, so that sweat drained off his face like rain. The heat and quiet pressed down on them both. As the hole grew deeper, each remembered the stages of the journey that had brought them this close.
A mad chase through the streets of Manhattan, a frantic leg race in D.C. A leap from a moving train and an endless hike over barren, rolling hills. The Merina village. Cyndi Lauper along the Canal des Pangalanes. Passion and caviar in a stolen jeep. Death and love, both unexpected.
Doug felt the tip of the shovel hit something solid. The muffled sound echoed through the brush as his eyes met Whitney’s. On their hands and knees, they began to push the dirt aside with their fingers. Not daring to breathe, they lifted it out.
“Oh God,” she said in a whisper. “It’s real.”
It was no more than a foot long, and not quite as wide. The case itself was moldy with dirt and damp. It was as Danielle had described, very plain. Even so, Whitney knew that the small chest would be worth a small fortune to a collector or a museum. The centuries made gold out of brass.
“Don’t break the lock,” Whitney told him when Doug started to pry it.
Though impatient, he took the extra minute to open it as smoothly as if he’d held the key. When he drew back the lid, neither of them could do anything but stare.
She couldn’t have said what she’d been expecting. Half of the time, she’d looked on the entire venture as a whim. Even when she’d caught Doug’s enthusiasm, pieces of his dream, she’d never believed they’d find anything like this.
She saw the flash of diamonds, the glint of gold. Breathless, she dipped her hand into them.
The diamond necklace that dripped from her hand was as bright and cold and exquisite as moonlight in winter.
Could it have been the one? Whitney wondered. Was there any chance at all that what she held in her hand had been the necklace used in treachery against Marie Antoinette in the last days before the Revolution? Had she worn it, even once, in defiance, watching how the stones turned ice and fire against her skin? Had greed and power taken over the young woman who loved pretty things, or had she simply been oblivious to the suffering going on outside her palace walls?
Those were questions for historians, Whitney thought, though she could be certain that Marie had inspired loyalty. Gerald had indeed guarded the jewels for his queen and his country.
Doug held emeralds in his hands, five tiers of them in a necklace so heavy it might have strained the neck. He’d seen it in the book. The name—a woman’s. Maria, Louise, he wasn’t sure. But as Whitney had once thought, jewels meant more in three dimensions. What glinted in his hand hadn’t seen light for two centuries.
There was more. Enough for greed, for passion and lust. The little chest all but spilled over with gems. And history. Gingerly, Whitney reached down and picked up the small miniature.
She’d seen portraits of the queen consort many times. But she’d never held a masterpiece of art in her hand before. Marie Antoinette, frivolous, imprudent, and extravagant smiled back at her as though she were still in full reign. The miniature was no more than six inches, oval-shaped, and framed in gold. She couldn’t see the artist’s name, and the portrait was badly in need of treatment, but she knew its value. And the moral.
“Doug—”
“Holy Christ.” No matter how high he’d allowed his dreams to swing, he’d never believed there’d be such sweetness at the end. He had fortune at his fingertips, the ultimate success. He held a perfect teardrop diamond in one hand and a bracelet winking with rubies in the other. He’d just won the game. Hardly realizing he did so, he slipped the diamond into his pocket.
“Look at it. Whitney, we’ve got the whole world right here. The whole goddamn world. God bless the queen.” Laughing, he dropped a string of diamonds and emeralds over her head.
“Doug, look at this.”
“Yeah, what?” He was more interested in the glitters tumbling out of the box than a small dulled painting. “Frame’s worth a few bucks,” he said idly as he dug out a heavy, ornate necklace fashioned with sapphires as big as quarters.
“It’s a portrait of Marie.”
“It’s valuable.”
“Oh yeah?” Interested, he gave the portrait his attention.
“Doug, this miniature’s two hundred years old. No one alive’s seen it before. No one even knows it exists.”
“So, it’ll bring a good price.”
“Don’t you understand?” Impatient, she took it back from him. “It belongs in a museum. This isn’t something you take to a fence. It’s art. Doug—” She held up the diamond necklace. “Look at this. It’s not just a bunch of pretty stones that have a high market value. Look at the craftsmanship, the style. It’s art, it’s history. If it’s the necklace of the Diamond Affair, it could throw a whole new light on accepted theories.”
“It’s my way out,” he corrected and set the necklace back in the case.
“Doug, these jewels belonged to a woman who lived two centuries ago. Two hundred years. You can’t take her necklace, her bracelet to a pawnshop and have them cut it up. It’s immoral.”
“Let’s talk about morals later.”
“Doug—”
Annoyed, he closed the lid on the box and stood. “Look, you want to give the painting to a museum, maybe a couple of the glitters, okay. We’ll talk about it. I risked my life for this box, and dammit, yours too. I’m not giving up the one chance I have to pull myself out and be somebody so people can gawk at stones in a museum.”
She gave him a look he didn’t understand as she rose to stand in front of him. “You are somebody,” she said softly.
It moved something in him, but he shook his head. “Not good enough, sugar. People like me need what we weren’t born with. I’m tired of playing the game. This takes me over the finish line.”
“Doug—”
“Look, whatever happens to the stuff, first we’ve got to get it out of here.”
She started to argue further, then subsided. “All right, but we will discuss this.”
“All you want.” He gave her the charming smile she’d learned never to trust. “What do you say we take the baby home?”
With a shake of her head, Whitney returned the smile. “We’ve come this far. Maybe we’ll get away with it.”
They stood, but when he turned to push through the brush, she held back. Pulling blooms from vines, she laid them on Gerald’s grave. “You did all you could.” Turning, she followed Doug to the jeep. With another quick glance around, Doug settled the chest in the back and tossed a blanket over it.
“Okay, now we find a hotel.”
“That’s the best news I’ve had all day.”
When he found one that looked stylish and expensive enough for his taste, Doug pulled up at the curb. “Look, you go check in. I’m going to go see about getting us out of the country on the first plane in the morning.”
“What about our luggage in Antananarivo?”
“We’ll send for it. Where do you want to go?”
“Paris,” she said instantly. “I have a feeling I won’t be bored this time.”
“You got it. Now how about parting with a little of that cash so I can take care of things.”
“Of course.” As if she’d never denied him a cent, Whitney took out her wallet. “You’d better take some plastic instead,” she decided and pulled out a credit card. “First class, Douglas, if you please.”
“Nothing else. Get the best room in the house, sugar. Tonight we start living in style.”
She smiled, but leaned over the back seat and retrieved the blanket-covered chest along with her pack. “I’ll just take this along with me.”
“I wouldn’t say that. Exactly.” Hopping out, she blew him a kiss. In dirt-smeared slacks and a torn blouse, she walked into the hotel like a reigning princess.
Doug watched three men scramble to open the door for her. Class, he thought again. She reeked with it. He remembered she’d once asked him for a blue silk dress. With a grin, he pulled away from the curb. He was going to bring her back a few surprises.
She approved of the room and told the bellboy so with a generous tip. Alone, she uncovered the chest and opened it again.
She’d never considered herself a conservationist, an art buff, or a prude. Looking down at the gems, jewels, and coins of another age, she knew she’d never be able to turn them into something so ordinary as cash. People had died for what she held in her hand. Some had died for greed, some for principle, some for nothing more than timing. If they were only jewels, the deaths would mean nothing. She thought of Juan, and of Jacques. No, they were more, much more than jewels.
What was here, at her fingertips, wasn’t hers or Doug’s. The trick would be in convincing him of it.
Letting the lid close, she walked into the bath and turned the water on full. It brought back the memory of the little inn on the coast and Jacques.
He was dead, but perhaps when the miniature and the treasure were in their rightful place, he’d be remembered. A small plaque with his name on it in a museum in New York. Yes. It made her smile. Jacques would appreciate that.
She let the water run as she walked to the window to look at the view. She liked seeing the bay spreading out and the busy little town below her. She’d like to walk along the boulevard and absorb the texture of the seaport. Ships, men of ships. There would be shops crowded with goods, the sort a woman in her profession searched for. A pity she couldn’t go back to New York with a few crates of Malagasy wares.
As her mind wandered, a figure on the sidewalk caught her eye and made her strain forward. A white panama hat. But that was ridiculous, she told herself. Lots of men wore panamas in the tropics. It couldn’t be … Yet as she looked, she was almost certain it was the man she’d seen before. She waited, breathlessly, for the man to turn so that she could be sure. When the hat disappeared into a doorway, she let out a frustrated breath. She was just jumpy. How could anyone have followed the zigzagging trail they’d taken to Diégo-Suarez? Doug better get back soon, she thought. She wanted to bathe, change, eat, and hop a plane.
Paris, she thought and closed her eyes. A week of doing nothing but relaxing. Making love and drinking champagne. After what they’d been through, it was no less than what they both deserved. After Paris … She sighed and walked back to the bath. That was another question.
She turned off the taps, straightened, and reached down to unbutton her blouse. As she did, her eyes met Remo’s in the mirror over the sink.
“Ms. MacAllister.” He smiled, lightly touching the scar on his cheek. “It’s a pleasure.”