by Kay Hooper
“My God,” Drew breathed.
She looked up quickly and started to cover the hole with her hand as if to hide it from him. Then, in a voice that was trying hard to be light, she said, “He missed, after all. Close only counts in horseshoes.”
Drew threw the menu aside and went to her, pulling her into his arms frantically. She was here, he told himself, safe and unharmed, but the visible evidence of how terribly close that bullet had come to hitting her was like a knife inside him. He had to hold and touch her, to feel the reality of her warm body against his and the fiery, astonishing strength of her passion. As always, she was instantly responsive, her mouth lifting for his, arms wreathing around his neck as she pressed herself even closer.
The bullet-torn sweater fell to the floor and was soon hidden from sight beneath the jumble of clothing that followed it.
“ I ’ M GOING TO get fat if you keep feeding me like this,” Spencer remarked nearly two hours later as she finished the very belated lunch Drew had ordered.
“You barely eat enough to keep a bird alive,” he retorted, smiling at her.
She chuckled, but pushed herself back from the table and wandered over to pick up the fake cross. He turned his chair to watch her, knowing that, despite her contentment with him, the loss of the cross was a painful disappointment. She hadn’t said anything about it, but he knew her well enough by now to be able to read her smoky eyes.
Right now, they were distracted.
“Something’s bothering you about that cross,” he said.
“Yes. And, like the statue, I don’t know what. I keep thinking there’s something I should remember.” She paused, turning the cross slowly in her hands, then said, “Why would anyone hide a fake?”
“They wouldn’t. It doesn’t make sense.” Drew might have said more, but the phone rang and he went to answer it. He spoke absently in German, watching her, then switched to English and said, “She’s right here, Tucker. Is everything all right?”
Spencer went to him quickly, reassured by his smile as he listened to whatever Tucker had to say. He handed her the phone a moment later, and her relief intensified when she heard that her father was fine—stronger, in fact—and that his doctor was cautiously optimistic.
“Your father hasn’t said anything more about it, but I found the journal, Miss Spencer,” Tucker said.
“I suppose it’s in German,” she said dryly.
“No. English.”
She felt tension steal over her. “Whose journal is it, Tucker?”
“A lady by the name of Theresa Garland. The entries cover the years from 1648 to 1650. I’ve had no chance to read it yet, but I can tell you that she lived in Innsbruck, at least during those years.”
Garland. Theresa Garland. It sounded familiar. “Oh—she was Kurt’s sweetheart. And she—” Staring at Drew, Spencer suddenly remembered. “She did that painting of him. Tucker, when you get a moment, start reading the journal, would you, please?”
“What am I looking for?” Tucker asked.
“Anything about the cross. She knew about it, knew Kurt had taken it. She had to. Let me know if you find anything.”
“I will.”
Spencer hung up the phone and then sat down on the couch, frowning. She put the fake cross on the coffee table before her and stared at it. When Drew came to sit beside her, she told him what Tucker had found, repeating her realization that Theresa Garland had been Kurt’s portraitist.
“I’ve never heard of a female artist during that era,” Drew commented slowly.
“I hadn’t, either. I guess that was why it stuck in my mind. She painted his portrait—and she sculpted that statue.”
“Are you sure?”
“That’s what was bothering me. When we were in the cave you said something about different artists interpreting subjects in different ways. What I’d been thinking was that the statue was the image of that painting I’d seen—and it is. Two different artists working in different mediums could never have gotten the statue and painting so precisely alike.”
Drew nodded. “Okay, you’ve sold me. What does it mean?”
Spencer laughed a little. “I was hoping you could tell me.” She thought about it. “Theresa painted the portrait sometime around 1650. The journal Tucker found covers 1648 to 1650. But that was years after Kurt died.”
“And after the Thirty Years’ War,” Drew noted. “Didn’t it end around 1648?”
“Yes.” Spencer brooded, frowning at the fake cross lying before her.
Trying to help her, Drew said, “You thought the journal might be important because Allan seemed to be fretting about it. But Tucker didn’t understand him because he was speaking German.”
Absently, Spencer said, “Yes, and if you talk in your sleep it’ll probably drive me crazy. If Dad’s any example, multilingual people run the gamut of their languages whenever their conscious mind isn’t in control.”
“I don’t talk in my sleep.”
She sent him a glance that was a little amused. “We’ll see, won’t we?”
“Never mind,” Drew murmured, hoping his subconscious could keep its mouth shut. “The point is that Allan must have read the journal. So what could he have found in Theresa Garland’s writings to tell him something about the cross?”
Spencer went very still suddenly. “Wait a minute. Before I left home Dad said something I didn’t understand. I thought he was rambling, so I didn’t really pay attention.”
“What did he say?”
She closed her eyes, concentrating. “It was so disjointed. Something about . . . the cross not being what I thought. Something about them hiding it—like the clock.” Her eyes snapped open, and she looked at Drew.
“The clock? What clock?”
Spencer had the strangest feeling. It was like that song she couldn’t remember, only now the tune was getting louder, and the words were falling gently into place. “That’s what he meant,” she murmured. “Drew, he knew we’d find a fake. He knew it was a deception—just like his trick safe.”
“The real thing was behind the clock,” Drew said, realizing. “A little sleight of hand, to fool would-be thieves. But why would Kurt have gone to all that trouble? The cave alone would have kept the cross secure, certainly long enough for him to go back and retrieve it later.”
“Yes, but . . . what was bothering Dad must have been written in that journal thirty years after Kurt died.” Her mind was working rapidly now, considering possibilities. “Suppose that Kurt did just put the box holding the real cross in the cave, and told Theresa where he’d hidden it.”
“That makes more sense,” Drew agreed, watching her. “Since he planned to get it later, he wouldn’t have bothered with anything fancy.”
“Right. But then the priest was killed, and Kurt died after nursing Theresa. She was the only one left who knew where the cross was hidden.”
Drew nodded slowly. “It wouldn’t have been wise to go and get it since it was stolen property.”
“And she might not have wanted anyone else to know for sure that Kurt had stolen it. Whatever else he was, it seems clear he was devoted to her. She certainly loved him—that comes across in the painting. So she has this worrying knowledge of the cross, just lying there in the cave. It belongs to the Hapsburgs, and it should get back to them—eventually, at least. But she can’t bear to brand Kurt a thief, not while she’s alive and able to see it happen, anyway.”
Drew, who had discovered many such tragic stories while unearthing antiquities over the years, didn’t find it at all far-fetched. He did find it fascinating, and even more so to watch Spencer work it all out. “I wonder who helped her get the statue up there?” he mused. “Allan did say ‘they’ had hidden it, didn’t he?”
Spencer nodded. “I remember that distinctly. It had to be someone she trusted. I’m not sure why she would have thought up the trick, though. To keep casual thieves from getting the cross if they found the cave?”
“That sounds likely. Maybe her
journal will tell us.”
It hit Spencer then. The cross. The elusive relic her father had spent his life in pursuit of—and they’d found it. Together, her father, Drew and herself, each of them supplying bits and pieces of fact and intuition, had located a priceless object nearly five hundred years old.
She held her hands out before her as if holding something on her palms, and murmured, “Behind the clock. Behind the deception.” Slowly, one of her hands turned, and a finger pointed at her middle.
“In the statue,” Drew said softly.
Spencer laughed unsteadily and looked at him with glowing eyes. “We found it. Drew, we found it!”
“You found it,” he said, drawing her into his arms. “You and Allan.” He had no doubt that the cross would be there, where it had waited for centuries.
“Dad did most of the work, but you—if you hadn’t been with me, it never would have happened.” Her delicate face changed, and one hand lifted to touch his cheek. “So much never would have happened. I love you.”
“I love you, too, sweetheart,” he said, holding her next to his heart where she belonged.
THE AUSTRIAN AUTHORITIES were delighted the following afternoon when Spencer and Drew returned from a final trip into the mountains with a solid-gold cross studded with rubies and diamonds. The Hapsburg Cross.
Since Spencer already had permission to take the cross to the States for her father to see, and since she and Drew asked nothing more than that, they were able to leave Innsbruck the next day. The authorities had decided not to announce the find publicly just yet, so that Spencer and Drew could transport the cross quietly without being bothered by collectors or the media.
One week to the day after Spencer had flown away from D.C. strained, miserable, lonely and afraid, she quietly entered her father’s bedroom. Drew was behind her, and in her hands she carried a heavy wooden box.
“Daddy?” she said softly. “We have something to show you.”
SHE LEANED AGAINST the parapet and looked out on the lush green Welsh countryside, taking advantage of the bright sunlight and still-warm breeze. The weather could change, Drew had warned her, and probably would since it was early fall. They’d feel the chill of stone walls then, he had said wryly.
Spencer was rather looking forward to that, even though unobtrusive central heating would no doubt preserve only the illusion of the hardships of an earlier age. In any case, her surroundings suited her very well.
It had been two months since she and Drew had left Innsbruck, and six weeks since their quiet wedding. Her father had been present—in a wheelchair. Holding his dream in his hands had done more for his health than any amount of medical care, and though he was still frail, his doctors were confident.
So was Spencer. Allan Wyatt had stood off the grim reaper long enough to see the cross, and he’d continue to battle, she believed, in order to hold his first grandchild. In fact, if she had anything to say about it, he might well hang on a good many years yet, if only to see how many grandchildren he eventually ended up with.
Spencer wanted four children, at least. Drew had suggested two and Allan, chuckling, had advised them to split the difference. But Spencer was determined. She had discovered just how determined she could be—and so had Drew. Not that he appeared to mind her stubbornness.
Strong arms closed around her from behind, and warm lips briefly kissed the nape of her neck. “Here you are,” Drew said in a chiding tone. “I’ve been looking for you nearly an hour.”
She leaned back against him, smiling. “You should have tried here first,” she told him.
“I should have—especially since I specifically told you not to come here alone because half these stones are crumbling.”
“I was careful,” she said serenely. “Besides, I needed some fresh air.”
Drew hugged her, then slid one hand down over her still-flat belly. “How’s she doing?”
Though morning sickness hadn’t troubled Spencer very much, there were occasional bouts of nausea—and a tendency to get sleepy, which was another reason Drew worried about her being up here alone.
Spencer tilted her head back and looked up at him, amused. “She? You’re convinced this one’s a girl, aren’t you?”
“Absolutely positive,” he said.
“What makes you so sure?”
He smiled. “Just a feeling.”
“Umm. Well, then, she is doing just fine. In fact, she’s very impressed at being in a real castle. With a real moat and drawbridge. She’s already spoiled rotten.”
Drew laughed.
“I’m serious,” Spencer said severely, trying not to laugh. “How on earth is any other man ever going to be able to live up to her father? Talk about a Cinderella complex!”
“Princess?” Drew was still smiling. “I thought I’d cured you of that nonsense, sweetheart.”
She turned in his arms and reached up to touch his face, her eyes suddenly tender. “It isn’t nonsense. The problem is that girls get silly ideas of what a prince is. But if they’re lucky—very, very lucky—they grow up and find the real thing.”
Drew kissed her, then kept an arm around her as he led her back into the castle. He wasn’t a prince, but he no longer minded if Spencer thought he was. With a woman like her by his side, loving and loved, being a man was all that counted.
author’s note
TO MY KNOWLEDGE, there exists no Hapsburg Cross. All historical characters mentioned in connection with this mythical object are either figments of my imagination or else—like Maximilian I—merely recognizable names with which I wove the threads of my story.