Caught

by Kristin Hardy

  “I thought someone said that security was bound to come by and let us out.”

  “Did someone say that?” He stuck his tongue in his cheek. “Someone may have been wrong.”

  That was one thing she’d always appreciated about Alex—his relative lack of ego. Or insecurities, rather. Ego he had, in abundance. He was about the cockiest guy she’d ever met, but he wasn’t one of those like Edward, who got angry and terse anytime he was questioned. Maybe Alex could be that way precisely because of his ego—because his sense of self was strong enough that admitting he was wrong wasn’t the end of the earth.

  “Do I pass inspection?” He watched her in amusement. “Or are you just fighting your undeniable attraction for me? Not to mention the fact that despite your best efforts, we’re going to be sleeping together.”

  “Sleeping in the same room,” she corrected. “Possibly.”

  “Our thief was a matchmaker. We’ll have to invite him to the wedding.”

  “The one we’ll be having in the mental institution where they put you for delusions?”

  “Aha,” he pounced. “You’ve admitted that we’re going to have one. You’re falling under my spell, hour by hour.”

  She snorted. “Yeah, right. Why don’t you take your giant ego out to the main lab, assuming you can get your head through the door, and let me work?”

  “No way. It’s just getting good. Besides, you’re going to need all the help you can get now. No more indexed newspapers to help out. Now it’s getting trickier, like how did our Aubrey get his mitts on the White Star?”

  “Assuming we’re correct in thinking it was included when Lillian scooped his family jewels.”

  “Let’s not get into her ugly physical retaliation,” Alex said.

  Julia rolled her eyes. “The real family jewels. Let’s say, for a minute, that the ‘Egyptian amulet’ is actually the White Star. We have to assume it was a family heirloom.”

  “All the way from B.C.? That’s some family.” Alex studied the picture of Aubrey Fitz-Lewis they’d dug up. “He doesn’t look Egyptian.”

  “It’s not Egyptian, remember? We know it came from somewhere around there because it exhibits certain similarities in materials and workmanship and style, but it’s not Egyptian.”

  “God, you get me hot when you talk dirty.”

  Her cheeks tinted. “You’re making fun of me.”

  “No.” His face was serious. “I mean it. There’s nothing sexier than a smart woman.”

  It gave her a little flutter of pleasure inside. Edward had loved her intelligence, but only when it didn’t show up his own. She’d always figured Alex for the type who’d rather hang out with a woman who didn’t challenge him, who was undemanding. Maybe—clearly, she admitted to herself—she’d underestimated him.

  On the other hand, he charmed people for a living. Maybe he was just saying what he thought she wanted to hear. First rule of sales—figure out what I want and show me how the deal gives it to me.

  “So don’t stop. It shares certain similarities….” Alex prompted.

  “Uh, yes, it does. And all reports have it coming from ancient times, plus…”

  “What?”

  She flushed. “It’ll sound silly.”

  “No. Tell me.”

  “It felt old. Something about it felt like it was from another time.”

  He didn’t laugh, as she’d feared. Instead, his expression was sober. “I felt it, too.”

  “You didn’t,” she said, but she knew somehow that he was telling the truth.

  “When I touched it. There was something.” His gaze locked on hers.

  The snap of connection was sudden and shocking, as it had been when he’d touched the amulet. For a moment, it was as though he were staring into her soul and she into his, and what she saw was far more complex than she’d ever imagined.

  “What brought you here?” she blurted.

  He gave her a puzzled look. “What?”

  “Why did you come here?”

  “The museum or New York?” he responded, bemused.

  “The museum. Why did you come to work here?” She’d never asked. It hadn’t been a part of the world they’d created for themselves. And suddenly she was eager to know.

  Alex shrugged. “After I got my undergrad degrees, I knocked around for a couple of years. Chicago, mostly. That’s where I’m from. I tried brokering, did some low-level management. None of it was really my thing, so I went back for an MBA.”

  “When in doubt, go to school?”

  “Watch what you say there. My parents are teachers.”

  “No kidding?”

  “Yeah. My mom teaches English at a prep school and my dad’s a philosophy prof at Northwestern.”

  It was the first time he’d ever talked about his background, she realized. He’d known about hers from the beginning. Not that she’d ever told him, but word got around about that sort of thing, especially when her family—and occasionally, embarrassingly, she—showed up in the social pages.

  “Do you like them?” she asked without thinking.

  “Yeah, I do. And they gave me a good example—the more you know, the more choices you have. One thing leads to another. During my MBA, I interned at the Art Institute of Chicago. Did a thesis on new fund-raising structures for nonprofits. The Institute liked it so much they hired me for real.”

  “Did you like living in Chicago?”

  “I grew up in Evanston, which was okay. I loved living in the city, though. The music scene is just amazing.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  He didn’t answer right away but turned a roll of microfilm over and over in his hands. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “After a while I felt like I was just going through the motions, you know? Everything was too easy. I wanted something that…challenged me, I guess. If that doesn’t sound pretentious.”

  That stopped her. It wasn’t the Alex she knew, the guy who made a big show of skating along, of bobbling through life like a bit of bark floating in a river. “I thought you liked easy.”

  Frustration flared in his eyes. “God, I am so sick of hearing that. I worked my ass off to get here and I bring in a lot of money for this museum. You want to tell me why everybody thinks I’m some kind of slacker who never gets anything done?”

  “Hey, relax,” she said, taken aback. “I wasn’t trying to insult you. It’s just that, I don’t know, you always sort of seem like you’re just coasting along. Like it’s all a big joke.”

  “So I’m not allowed to have a good time while I’m getting the job done?”

  She took a breath. “That’s not what I mean,” she said carefully. “But the reality is, if you act like you don’t take anything seriously, people are going to believe it. That’s not a statement on your competence, it’s just the way it is.”

  “Even you?”

  Now it was her turn for impatience. “Alex, think about how we’ve spent our time before now. You seemed like the guy out for a good time, which was okay because I was, too. I just figured that was all there was to it—and to you.”

  “And now?” His gaze was steady on hers.

  She shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know. The jury’s still out.”

  “Scratch below the surface, Julia,” he said softly.

  “I know.” The moment stretched out, and before she realized she was going to do it, she found herself reaching out for his hand. She caught herself in time, though, and instead rubbed at a speck of imaginary dust on the computer screen. “Anyway, we’ve got a job to do. We need to figure out how the amulet got from the desert to the UK.”

  Alex relaxed, letting the discussion go. For the time being. She had an uncomfortable feeling it was going to come back up again before they were through. And she didn’t know what her answer was going to be.

  “Right,” he said. “Colonial acquisition? You know those Brits, they packed up half of Egypt when they were first over there. They could have scooped up the amulet and taken it
home. Maybe one of Fitz-Lewis’s ancestors was an explorer, or an officer in the army.”

  “Could be, but it doesn’t feel right.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She rolled her shoulders. “I don’t know. I’ve just got a feeling that it made its way one step at a time, and if we track it, we’ll find out how.”

  “You’ve got a feeling? My very proper, academic Julia?”

  “Scratch beneath the surface, Alex.”

  He pursed his lips. “Hoist on my own petard.”

  “Damned right,” she agreed.

  “You’ve got to admit, it’s a fetching petard, though.”

  Her lips twitched. “So let’s track the Fitz-Lewises, see if we can find out more about them. Maybe the Earl of Ashbroke has some secrets.” Julia glanced at him, and did a double take, noticing his frown. “What?”

  “That name. Something about it rings a bell.”

  “Fitz-Lewis?”

  “Ashbroke.”

  “You mean in a historic sense?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I just saw a mention of the modern-day earl somewhere. It could be just the name of a hotel or a town, for that matter. I wish we had access to the Internet.”

  “You and me both,” she said ruefully.

  Alex rose. “I’ve got to go see a man about a dog anyway. I’ll stop in and check what’s-his-face’s—”

  “Paul’s.”

  “Paul’s laptop. Maybe the network is back up.”

  “You were talking about sleep earlier. Are you ready to call it a night? Because you don’t have to keep going. You can stop if you want to.”

  The surprise on his face was genuine. “Do you?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not tired. I’m going to keep chugging away. I just thought you might want to take a break.”

  “Why? We’re just getting somewhere. Hell, what else am I going to do, talk about the Yankee game with Felix? Come on, let’s do it. Do you have some kind of peerage reference here? Burke’s or something?”

  “How do you know about Burke’s?” she asked, surprised.

  He grinned. “With a history degree and a name like Spencer, I have to answer that?”

  “Well. It’s a good idea.”

  “I know.” He gave her a devilish look. “Now about that carnal act…”

  She shooed him out the door. “Go see about your dog. What you do in privacy is your own business.”

  “GOOD LORD,” Julia said, staring at the peerage book. “How many of them were there?”

  “A lot. Some fertile people, those Lewises. Particularly when they added the hyphenate.”

  She skimmed the pages spread open before them. “So I guess we’re not likely to come across anything like a note that one of them was an explorer, or collected art.”

  “You’re cute when you’re optimistic,” Alex said, tweaking her nose. “The kind of stuff you want would be in a family history, and there’s no way you’re going to have something like that in this room. Burke’s Peerage is only going to give you births, deaths, marriages, titles, that sort of thing.”

  “I just wish they had details.”

  “Hey, they’ve got details. Look at this, ‘Lord William Fitz-Lewis, entered military service in 1808 as Ensign, 44th Foot, served in Belgium, 1814.’ Oh, hell, Waterloo,” Alex burst out, snapping his fingers. “That’s where I knew it from. The Earl of Ashbroke. He commanded a regiment at the Battle of Waterloo. Cavalry. He kept a fairly famous journal of the campaign. Any chance you’d have that here?”

  “We might. We have some personal accounts. Let me look.” She brought up the library index and typed in the name. A few seconds ticked by and the information scrolled on screen. “Robert Fitz-Lewis, Earl of Ashbroke,” she read. “It’s shelved in the—”

  “I’ve got it.” He rose. “You turn the lights back up.”

  The journal, when he brought it, proved to be thinner than she’d expected. Alex sat beside her and started paging through it.

  “First printed in 1834, reprinted in 1915 to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of Waterloo. Look, here’s Earl.” Alex pointed to a frontis engraving of an officer on horseback, silver braid chasing across the blue of his tunic, his long, thick sideburns trailing down the side of his face below his tall, black hat.

  “Pretty fancy outfit.”

  “Better than my petard?”

  “Your petard is in a class of its own. So how are we going to do this?”

  “You could hang on me adoringly and read over my shoulder,” Alex suggested.

  “Next?”

  “We could sit side by side and each read one side of the spread at the same time. Look at it as a team-building exercise.”

  Julia flicked a glance at the ceiling and stood. “Maybe I’ll go see if you harmed that dog.”

  “Careful,” Alex said. “He bites.”

  10

  Saturday, 12:30 a.m.

  “ASHBROKE, YOU ROCK.”

  Julia jumped at the sound of Alex’s exclamation in the silence. She’d come back to the repository and begun combing through the previous sources for more images of the amulet, letting Alex read through Ashbroke’s journal. Now, it appeared, he’d found something.

  “Listen to this.” His voice was filled with barely suppressed excitement. “It’s from after the battle, when the army was marching to Paris to stick a fork in old Napoleon. ‘Being somewhat impatient and in high spirits, we chose a road apart from the main army, traveling with some haste, if only to create a breeze to temper the warmth of the day. We passed through a small village known as St. Denis, named for the handsome abbey beyond, so said a young lad of whom I inquired. We passed along peacefully enough until, some few miles farther along, a woman’s shriek pierced the air.

  “‘Launching into full gallop, we topped a rise and came upon a scene of fearful confusion. Below lay a modest manor house and farm, flames blazing from the thatch of the barn, while the blood of a fresh-killed swine ran in the dirt of the yard. All round rode the members of a company of Prussian soldiers, those devils bent on punishing all France for their treatment at Bonaparte’s hands. Some were gathering up chickens and tying them across their saddles. An old man and three children stood fearfully against a wall, whilst some of the villains trained muskets on them, bent upon grave mischief. The other soldiers held a woman among them. It was she who was screaming.

  “‘I can scarce describe the fury that the sight ignited in me. That they were allies mattered not. I would not dignify such scoundrels with the name. I discharged my pistol into the air to capture their attention and we rode into their midst with dispatch. It was the work of but moments to take into custody the officers of the group and the soldiers, for such men are cowards when faced with any but the weak. In truth, I found myself sorely tempted to hang them all, but instead asked for them to be properly guarded for delivery to the authorities when we should arrive in Paris. In the meantime, I set my men to extinguish the fire and bring such order as they could to the scene.

  “‘We searched the Prussians, and not gently, and upon their captain I discovered a broach and some rings and other booty, all wrapped in a handkerchief. He had been looting alongside his men, I understood, taking such valuables as the family owned before burning the farm to the ground.

  “‘I approached the woman, who was giving comfort to her boys. She was dark-eyed and young, in the gravest of distress, clearly, and yet meeting my eye with a self-possession remarkable in the face of all that had transpired. Her English was passable, far exceeding my French. Her husband was gone to battle, she said, and the Prussians had come upon them and laid waste all ’round. It was then that I espied the bruise upon her cheek and the rents in her skirts. I fear I lost my temper then and pistol-whipped the Prussian captain quite bloody.

  “‘When I had finished, I made to apologize to the woman for all she had suffered, though it seemed far inadequate on the face of it. On the contrary, she said, we had delivered them of an evil fate.
She was the daughter of the lord of these lands in the years prior to the revolution, after which their fortunes had suffered. The jewels meant much to her, for they were a reminder of better days and some small insurance of comfort in the event of ill times. She bade me take something for my pains and would hear none of my protests but pressed an object upon me.

  “‘And so I looked at it and felt a curious stillness come over me. It was not, as I had feared, a jewel but an amulet of ivory, with points all round. It had been a charm of good fortune to their family for more than two hundred years, she said, and had been blessed by men of God. It had not come from France; indeed, I sensed it had not come from Europe at all, but from some land of mysterious tongues and foreign winds, far, far from here.

  “‘It rests now in front of me as I sit here, writing. It is not a beautiful object to place alongside the jewels I drape about my lady’s throat, and yet there is something about it that compels me, something I cannot name. There is a grace to it, a presence; more, I cannot say. I should not have taken it from the young woman.

  “‘But I know I will keep this thing, old and cracked though it may be.’”

  “Oh, my God, the crack.” Julia snatched up the folder of drawings and photographs of the amulet she’d brought in, flipping through it frantically. “Look, here.” She pointed to the hairline crack in her sketch. “You can’t see it in the photograph, but it’s right there on the back. It’s the same amulet. She gave him the White Star. And he held on to it for a while. Assuming it was the White Star to begin with.”

  “Boy, you’re tough to convince. Let’s see if he says anything else about it.” Alex skimmed through the pages.

  “Alex,” Julia said thoughtfully, “have you noticed that when the good guys get the White Star, they keep it, but when the bad guys get it, they seem to die not too soon after? I mean, Page owned it for forty years. Ashbroke’s family held it for nearly a hundred.”

  “That’s because he was pure of heart. Not to mention good at kicking Prussian butt. And the French woman said that her family had had the amulet for two hundred years.”

  “So?” Alex asked.

  “So if her family held it for two hundred years, maybe they got it honorably.”