“Char, you don’t have to go,” Jack said. “I will.”
Charlotte jumped up. “No, you won’t. I’ll never see you again. You’re too impulsive, Jack. You do things without considering the repercussions. History will change because you’re there snooping around. I won’t let you go.” She paced the room. “What I don’t understand is why we have identical brooches. Are there others?”
“There’s one more,” Elliott said. “An emerald.”
Jack’s face tensed with excitement. “How do you know?”
“When Meredith and I met, we discovered my great-great-great-great-great—”
“I read your story in a magazine article last night,” Jack said.
“So it makes you the last MacKlenna, even though you carry another name,” Charlotte added.
Elliott smiled. “Not anymore. Our son, James Cullen, is the last.”
“To answer your question, the MacKlenna family has one of the brooches. The Mallorys have another. Do we have a family connection?” Jack asked.
“I don’t know,” Elliott said. “Mallory is Irish, not Scottish.”
“We’re Ulster Scots,” Jack said.
“From the lowlands. The MacKlennas are from the Highlands. Meredith is the genealogist in the family, and her cursory research last night didn’t unearth a connection. If there is one, she’ll find it, though. Where did yer brooch come from?”
“It was mailed from a law firm in Edinburgh,” Charlotte said. “I haven’t contacted them.”
“If ye’ll give me the address, we’ll check it out when we go to Scotland for the holidays. I have a feeling our lines will connect at some point.”
“Find the other one and destroy them all,” Charlotte demanded. “They’re dangerous. I wish I’d never opened my mail.”
Jack put his arm around her shoulders. “It’s okay, sis. We’ll find a solution.”
“Let’s go home.” Her voice sounded thick to her own ears.
Elliott handed Jack a business card. “Send me the address and any other questions ye have.”
“I’m not sure I trust the topic to email.”
“Ye have a secure system and so do we,” Elliott said. “David made sure of it.”
Jack’s face pinched with clear irritation. “How do you know?”
“As I explained earlier, we investigated Braham’s story. Ye were part of the investigation.”
Jack’s face relaxed. “I would have done the same. Is there anything else we need to know?”
Meredith and Elliott exchanged significant glances. He squeezed her arm affectionately. “No. Nothing else.”
They escorted Jack and Charlotte to the front door. “Yer vehicle should be parked in front of yer house by the time ye get home. When we learned ye had chartered a jet, we took the liberty of having it delivered. If ye decide to go after Braham, please let us know.”
“We’re not going,” Charlotte repeated, shaking her head.
Jack shook Elliott’s hand. “We’ll keep in touch.”
Charlotte and Jack drove away, both lost in their own thoughts. Not a word was uttered between them during the drive back to the airport. Jack returned the rental car, and they walked over to the private plane terminal and boarded their plane, which was already standing by.
About a half hour into the flight, Jack said, “We have to go, Charlotte.”
“No, we don’t,” she said. “The stone is dangerous, and so many things could go wrong. We don’t know how it works, or why, or where it could take us next. I don’t trust it, and you shouldn’t either.”
“I do trust it, and I’ll go by myself.”
“That. Will. Never. Happen.”
Something flickered deep in Jack’s eyes, and he shook his head slowly. “Then you’re responsible for whatever happens to Lincoln and the history of disenfranchised people in the United States.”
She glared at him, struggling to find words necessary for a coherent rebuttal, but none came, and she gave up. “You can’t blame that all on me.” She punched down on the arm of the seat. “You’re brilliant, successful, drop-dead gorgeous, but you’re impulsive and spontaneous. You act on whims, and, while it makes for great fiction, in real life, actions can have unintended and disastrous consequences.”
She tapped her chest with her fingertip repeatedly, and swallowed against tears. “You’re unaware of the stress and consequences you cause me, or the impact your thoughtless choices have on my life. On me.”
Charlotte turned to stare out the window at the beauty and calm of the blue sky while she tried to breathe through her urge to either sob or scream.
When her breathing returned to normal, she continued. “I thought the monastery would help you learn to see more than one step ahead. Instead, all it did was provide coping skills to deal with regret and remorse when you finally realize you messed up. Again. Like two days ago.” She turned in her seat and faced him squarely. “Braham needed a buddy. I’m not his buddy. I’m his doctor. You two were getting on famously. But you were focused on your new book proposal. I ended up with him in Washington when you bailed, and it was an upsetting day for him. You let him down, Jack. You let me down.
“I have a very inflexible schedule. I couldn’t be there twenty-four/seven, because I work at a job where I have no control over when I’m needed. I was counting on you to help acclimate Braham to this time, to technology. I wanted you to make him want to stay. And what did you do? You left him by himself and now he’s gone.”
Jack’s face was a billboard of remorse. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”
“You’re full of regret now. But if you had taken the time to think about the impact of your actions on anyone else…” She threw up her hands and swallowed hard again. “Forget it. Some day you might learn to base your decisions on logical thought, not emotion.”
Jack slammed the cover to his iPad and tossed the device on the seat in front of him. “You’re not without blame, Charlotte. I screwed up. I accept it, but can you? You never should have brought him here.”
Her chest tightened and anxiety ambushed her. “I couldn’t let him—”
The astonished look on his face instantly changed to total disbelief. “Did someone name you God and then fail to send the message to the rest of the world telling us you were in charge?”
“We’re not talking about me.”
“Then maybe we should. You didn’t think about the consequences of your actions either, so don’t give me grief about my inadequacies.”
She adjusted her seat, leaned back, and closed her eyes. “We’re done talking.”
“We have to go after him. You have a responsibility to clean up this mess.”
“A mess I didn’t make,” Charlotte said in a dismissive voice, refusing to acknowledge there was any truth in what Jack had said.
He sat rigid in his seat. “Listen to yourself. Sometimes you’re off-the-wall crazy.”
She had learned long ago to be careful, to edit what she said to him. After all, he was a lawyer and a wordsmith. When it came to their discussions, she couldn’t compete with him. He always spotted holes in her arguments and threw them back at her with a blazing, fastball pitch.
But he was right. She had messed up. Braham should have died in Chimborazo, and now she had a responsibility to clean up her mistakes. But she adamantly refused to go back in time to make it happen. There had to be another way. She was an intelligent person and could solve this dilemma without putting her life in danger again.
25
Mallory Plantation, Richmond, Virginia, Present Day
Charlotte had always seen herself as a pragmatist, quick to make surgical decisions and expedient by nature, but personal decisions required time, thought, analysis, and more thought.
At the hospital, she remained a hundred percent focused, but she struggled with the dilemma of what to do about Braham and the assassination. She had gotten home after a thirteen-mile run, yet her head was as jumbled as it had been when she set out two hours
earlier.
The situation had to be resolved somehow before she went nuts. Going nuts, though, was preferable to going back in time and dodging bullets and threats.
If she was ever going to find a solution, she first had to patch things up with Jack. She hadn’t spoken to him since the flight home from Kentucky days earlier, and she missed him terribly.
Since she had the night off, it was time to have a chat with her brother. Should she apologize? For what? Jack was the one who skipped out and left Braham to his own devices.
If she didn’t intend to apologize, then she needed to forgive him and move on. But move on to what? Braham was still an issue. The problem wasn’t only about forgiving Jack. It was about going back in time and keeping Braham from changing history.
This was another red-light moment in her life. She had taken a chance, ripped through the last one, and look what happened. She had created a mess. She might as well run another one. It couldn’t get any worse.
Wait a minute. The consequences could be a lot worse. She could get shot. She could be thrown into prison. She could…
Yes, she could even die, but she could also die in the next five minutes sitting in her living room. Her mother had suffered a fatal attack and died in her chair at work. A tight tug in Charlotte’s gut caused a constriction around her heart. The loss of their mother had been traumatic, which was probably why she and Jack clung so tightly to each other.
Whew. Forty degrees outside and she was burning up. She grabbed a bottle of cold water, went out onto her screened-in porch, and looked over her garden. Everything had been cut back to enhance next season’s growth. She loved the beauty of Richmond in the spring. If she and Jack went back in time now, they might be spending next spring in Washington in the year 1865, long before the cherry blossom trees had arrived from Japan.
She rolled her cold-water bottle along her forehead from one side to the other. Was she really considering going back? Yep, she was. There was no other way. Braham had to be stopped.
Okay, then. Let’s do it.
Two hours later, she marched into Jack’s office at the mansion. He didn’t bother to stop typing or turn away from his dual monitors. “Hey, sis. What’s up?”
She plopped down in a chair on the other side of the desk. “I’ve made a decision.”
“About what?” To be annoying, he continued typing. “A date Friday night? What you’re going to do this afternoon? How many miles you’re going to run this weekend?” He sat back in his chair and swiveled around to face her. He let the silence lengthen before saying, “Tell me your decision. I’m all ears.”
She drummed her fingers on the edge of the desk. “You’re also a butthead. But you know it already, don’t you? And you also know exactly what I’m talking about.”
He was pissed and hurt, and she was confused and scared. They would dance around each other until they found their way again.
He came around to the front of the desk, leaned against it, and crossed both his ankles and his arms. There was a glint in his eye and a half smile he couldn’t contain. He knew damn good and well what she was going to say, but he wasn’t going to let her do it easily.
There was an uneasy rumble in her stomach. “Stop smirking. This isn’t funny.”
He held up his hands in a mock dramatic gesture. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Sometimes she wanted to haul off and smack him. It was a darn shame they had outgrown wrestling matches. “You were wrong to go off and leave Braham alone, but I forgive you. I want you to go with me to…” The next part snagged on a logjam in her throat. She grabbed a bottle of water off the desk, took several sips, and then tried again. “I want you to go with me to…to stop Braham.”
He bit his lip, seeming to concentrate, then nodded as if he’d come to a decision. It was all for show, and she wanted to smack him, but it was part of the game.
“When do you want to leave?” he said finally, with a twinkle.
“As soon as I can arrange time off. I don’t know how much I’ll need. Maybe the rest of the year. Maybe more. It will be a setback for my career, but right now my sanity is a bigger concern.”
He hauled her into a bear hug. “You’re making the right decision.”
She hugged him back. “Then why don’t I feel better?” She pulled out of the embrace. “I’m going to the hospital tomorrow to talk to my colleagues. See if I can work out a schedule.”
“I’ll do the same. My agent will need to reschedule a few book signings. She’s expecting an outline for my next book, so I’ll have to promise to have one ready as soon as I get back.” He picked up a legal pad and pen and jotted down a few notes. “No big deal, though.”
“What about the plantation and your cat?” she asked, petting the animal curled up on top of the desk.
He continued writing. “We do have a farm manager, even though he doesn’t have much to manage right now.”
Her phone beeped, and she checked the message. Ken was coming to Richmond and wanted to meet for dinner. She texted back a simple yes. “I’m on call tomorrow night, but on Sunday let’s have dinner and talk about what we need to do.”
He tossed the notepad on the desk. “I’ll add it to my calendar, but do you mind if we eat early? I might have something going on later.”
She rolled her eyes. Her brother had more ex-girlfriends in Richmond than all his single buddies combined. “Who is it this week? Susan? Laurie? Jennifer?”
He smirked. “Susan was last year. Laurie went back to her ex-boyfriend, and Jennifer was hinting about a ring for Christmas, and that was the end of that. This is someone new. I met her at Starbucks yesterday.”
She stared at him for a long three-count. “Whatever.” She shook her head, puzzled, but he was as puzzled by her opposite position on dating. “Okay, we have a date Sunday night, six thirty. Text me where to meet, and I’ll be sure we get through early enough so you can hook up with”—Charlotte threw up her hands—“whoever.”
When Jack couldn’t contain his excitement any longer and started slapping high-fives with a poster of himself, she escaped the house, wondering if she was about to make another big mistake in her life.
Underestimating Braham was the first, trusting Jack was the second.
26
MacKlenna Farm, Lexington, Kentucky, December 1864
When the fog lifted, Braham found himself on MacKlenna Mansion’s front portico. He leaned against the porch railing, waiting for a wave of nausea and dizziness to pass. He had no memory of his first passage through time, but this trip had been exactly as Kit had described—twisting and tumbling inside an enveloping, peat-scented fog.
He stared into the glow from the sidelights bracketing the door, much as he had years earlier when he had journeyed to the farm. Last time he’d been anxious in anticipation of a reunion of sorts. This time all he felt was a prevailing sense of dread—not about seeing Sean MacKlenna again, but about being pulled back in an atmosphere of uncertainty and violence—and the dread kept him nailed in place.
He glanced out over the surrounding fields. The colors of late fall were gone, and naked branches swayed and rustled in the breeze. Although the grounds were pristine, Braham’s appreciation had been diminished by the beauty and refinement of the twenty-first century farm’s manicured lawn, concrete driveway, and freshly painted white plank fences.
He had also been tainted by being behind the wheel of a car, and how the slightest pressure of his foot against the pedal increased the vehicle’s speed to a heart-stopping fifty miles an hour. For the rest of his life he would covet the sensation of high speeds and the accompanying rush.
Would he now view his proper world through soured lenses? Would his short time in the twenty-first century affect his life in the present? Of course, it would. He intended to use what he had learned to change the future.
Still stiff from days of inactivity, he moved slowly toward the door, where he paused, his fist inches from the sturdy oak door. It’s w
asn’t too late. He could still go back, but once he passed through the door…
No, he wasn’t going back. He intended to save the president and would allow nothing to stop him.
The MacKlennas’ longtime servant, Joe, answered the door. “Mistah McCabe, been a long time since you be here last.” Joe ducked his head and opened the door wider. “Come in.”
Braham handed over his slouch hat. “Afternoon, Joe. Is Mister MacKlenna in today?”
“Yes, suh. ’Spec he be happy to see you. You’n wait in a parlor.”
The foyer spilled into the parlor, where the walls were painted a dark blue and matched the loch in the painting of Eilean Donan over the fireplace.
Braham glanced around the room to see what new pieces Sean had acquired since his last visit. Braham had used his memories of Sean’s home for inspiration while furnishing his Washington townhouse. The house in Georgetown had been fully furnished, but the townhouse, across the street from the White House, hadn’t included so much as a stick of kindling for the front room fireplace.
Braham turned toward the clomping of bootheels.
“Abraham McCabe.” A grin split Sean MacKlenna’s face, and he pulled Braham into a backslapping hug. “What are ye doing here? Why aren’t ye in Washington?”
Braham opened his hand to reveal the ruby brooch.
Sean’s jaw dropped. “Kit’s brooch? How’d ye get it?”
“It’s a long story,” Braham said.
“Then we need whisky.” He threw his arm across Braham’s shoulders and directed him out of the room. “I heard birthing the last bairn was difficult for Kit. Heard she told Cullen to stay away from her or she was going home.”
Braham laughed. “I doubt she held to the threat for very long.”
As the two men walked down the hall, Braham glanced up the stairs, remembering the glorious weeks he spent here in 1852, and then again in 1858. “Where’s Lyle Anne?”
“Resting. She’ll be happy to see ye again.” He turned to Joe. “Tell Sukey we’ve company for dinner.”
The Sapphire Brooch Page 18