by Nora Roberts
“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 himse
lf 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.”
“It’s priceless.”
“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.”