by Nora Roberts
“Max checked out the books.” Lilah shook her head. “Maybe he found the information in the papers he stole from us.”
“It's possible.” Amanda noted it down. “But he's had the papers for weeks. When did he break into the cottage?”
“A couple weeks ago, but I don't think he made the connection that way. I think he got it from us.”
There was an instant argument. Suzanna stood, throwing up both hands to cut it off. “Listen, we're agreed that none of us have discussed this outside of the house. And we're agreed that the men are trying to keep us from finding out they're checking out the crews. Which means –”
“Which means,” Amanda interrupted and shut her eyes. “The bastard's working for us. Like a fly on the wall, so he can pick up little pieces of information, poke around the house. We're so used to seeing guys hauling lumber, we wouldn't give him a second look.”
“I think Holt already came to that conclusion.” Suzanna lifted her hands again. “The question is, what do we do about it?”
“We give the construction boys a thrill tomorrow, and visit the west wing.” Lilah straightened from the window seat. “I don't care what he's made himself look like this time, I'll know him if I get close enough.” With that settled, she sat back. “Now, Suzanna, why don't you tell us when bad boy Bradford asked you to marry him?”
Suzanna grinned. “How did you know?”
“For an ex – cop, he's got great taste in jewelry.” She took Suzanna's hand to show off the ring to her other sisters.
“Last night,” she said as she was hugged and kissed and wept over. “We told the kids this morning.”
“Aunt Coco's going to go through the roof.” C.C. gave Suzanna another squeeze. “All four of us in a matter of months. She'll be in matchmaker heaven.”
“All we need now is to get that creep behind bars and find the emeralds.” Amanda dashed a tear away. “Oh, no! Do you realize what this means?”
“It means you have to organize another wedding,” Suzanna answered.
“Not just that. It means we're going to be stuck with Aunt Colleen at least until the last handful of rice gets tossed.”
Holt returned to The Towers in a foul mood. They'd found the house. Empty. They had no doubt that Livingston was living there. Bending the law more than a little, he had broken in and given the place as meticulous a search as Livingston had given his cottage. They'd found the stolen Calhoun papers, the lists the thief had made and a copy of the original blueprints of The Towers.
They'd also found a typed copy of each woman's weekly schedule, along with handwritten comments that left no doubt as to the fact that Livingston had followed and observed each one of them. There was a well – ordered inventory of the rooms he had searched and the items he'd felt valuable enough to steal.
They had waited an hour for his return, then uneasy about leaving the women alone, had phoned in the information to Koogar. While the police staked out the rented house on Bar Island, Holt and his companions returned to The Towers.
It was only a matter of waiting now. That was something he had learned to do well in his years on the force. But now it wasn't a job, and every moment grated.
“Oh, my dear, dear boy.” Coco flew at him the moment he stepped into the house. He caught her by her sturdy hips as she covered his face with kisses.
“Hey,” was all he could manage as she wept against his shoulder. Her hair, he noted, was no longer gleaming black but fire – engine red. “What'd you do to your hair?”
“Oh, it was time for a change.” She drew back to blow her nose into her hankie, then fell into his arms again. Helpless, he patted her back and looked at the grinning men around him for assistance.
“It looks okay,” he assured her, wondering if that was what she was weeping about. “Really.”
“You like it?” She pulled back again, fluffing at it. “I thought I needed a bit of dash, and red's so cheerful.” She buried her face in the soggy hankie. “I'm so happy,” she sobbed. “So very happy. I had hoped, you see. And the tea leaves indicated that it would all work out, but I couldn't help but worry. She's had such a dreadful time, and her sweet little babies, too. Now everything's going to be all right. I'd thought it might be Trent, but he and C.C. were so perfect. Then Sloan and Amanda. Then almost before I could blink, our dear Max and Lilah. Is it any wonder I'm overwhelmed?”
“I guess not.”
“To think, all those years ago when you'd bring lobsters to the back door. And that time you changed a tire for me and were too proud to even let me thank you. And now, now, you're going to marry my baby.”
“Congratulations.” Trent grinned and slapped Holt on the back while Max dug out a fresh handkerchief for Coco.
“Welcome to the family.” Sloan offered a hand. “I guess you know what you're getting into.”
Holt studied the weeping Coco. “I'm getting the picture.”
“Stop all that caterwauling.” Colleen clumped down the stairs. “I could hear you wailing all the way up in my room. For heaven's sake, take that mess into the kitchen.” She gestured with her cane. “Pour some tea into her until she pulls herself together. Out, all of you,” she added. “I want to talk to this boy here.”
Like rats deserting a sinking ship, Holt thought as they left him alone. Gesturing for him to follow, Colleen strode into the parlor.
“So, you think you're going to marry my grand – niece.” “No. I am going to marry her.”
She sniffed. Damned if she didn't like the boy. “I'll tell you this, if you don't do better by her than that scum she had before, you'll answer to me.” She settled into a chair. “What are your prospects?”
“My what?”
“Your prospects,” she said impatiently. “Don't think you're going to latch on to my money when you latch on to her.”
His eyes narrowed, pleasing her. “You can take your money and –”
“Very good,” she said with an approving nod. “How do you intend to keep her?”
“She doesn't need to be kept.” He whirled around the room. “And she doesn't need you or anyone else poking into her business. She's managed just fine on her own, better than tine. She came out of hell and managed to put her life together, take care of the kids and start a business. The only thing that's going to change is that she's going to stop working herself into the ground, and the kids'll have someone who wants to be their father. Maybe I won't be able to give her diamonds and take her to fancy dinner parties, but I'll make her happy.”
Colleen tapped her fingers on the head of her cane. “You'll do. If your grandfather was anything like you, it's no wonder my mother loved him. So...” She started to rise, then saw the portrait over the mantel. Where her father's stern face had been was her mother's lovely one. “What's that doing there?”
Holt dipped his hands into his pockets. “It seemed to me that was where it belonged. That's where my grandfather would have wanted it.”
Colleen eased herself back into the chair. “Thank you.” Her voice was strained, but her eyes remained fierce. “Now go away. I want to be alone.”
He left her, amazed that he was growing fond of her. Though he didn't look forward to another scene, he started toward the kitchen to ask Coco where he could find Suzanna.
But he found her himself, following the music that drifted down the hall. She was sitting at a piano, playing some rich, haunting melody he didn't recognize. Though the music was sad, there was a smile on her lips and one in her eyes. When she looked up, her fingers stilled, but the smile remained.
“I didn't know you played.”
“We all had lessons. I was the only one they stuck with.” She reached out a hand for his. “I was hoping we'd have a minute alone, so I could tell you how wonderful you were with the kids this morning.”
With his fingers meshed with hers, he studied the ring he'd given her. “I was nervous.” He laughed a little. “I didn't know how they'd take it. When Jenny asked if she could call me Daddy...it's funn
y how fast you can fall in love. Suzanna.” He kept toying with her hands, studying the ring. “I think I understand now what a parent would feel, what he'd go through to make sure his kids were safe. I'd like to have more. I know you'd need to think about it, and I don't want you to feel that I would care less about Alex and Jenny.”
“I don't have to think about it.” She pressed a kiss to his cheek. “I've always wanted a big family.”
He drew her close so her head rested on his shoulder. “Suzanna, do you know where the nursery was when Bianca lived here?”
“On the third floor of the east wing. It's been used as a storeroom as long as I can remember.” She straightened. “You think she hid the necklace there?”
“I think she hid them somewhere Fergus wouldn't look, and I can't see him spending a lot of time in the nursery.”
“No, but you'd think someone would have come across them. I don't know why I say that,” she corrected. “The place is filled with boxes and old furniture. The Tower's version of a garage sale.”
“Show me.”
It was worse than he'd imagined. Even overlooking the cobwebs and dust, it was a mess. Boxes, crates, rolled – up rugs, broken tables, shadeless lamps stood, sat or reclined over every inch of space. Speechless, he turned to Suzanna who offered a sheepish grin.
“A lot of stuff collects in eighty – odd years,” she told him. “Most of what's valuable's been culled out, and a lot of that was sold when we were – well, when things were difficult. This floor's been closed off for a long time, since we couldn't afford to heat it. We had to concentrate on keeping up the living space. Once we got everything under some kind of control, we were going to kind of attack the other sections a room at a time.”
“You need a bulldozer.”
“No, just time and elbow grease. We had plenty of the latter, but not nearly enough of the former. Over the last couple of months, we've gone through a lot of the old rooms, inch by inch, but it's a slow process.”
“Then we might as well get started.”
They worked for two grueling and dirty hours. They found a tattered parasol, an amazing collection of nineteenth – century erotica, a trunk full of musty clothes from the twenties and a box of warped phonograph records. There was also a crate filled with toys, a miniature locomotive, a sad, faded rag doll, assorted yo-yos and tops. Among them were a set of lovely old fairy – tale prints that Suzanna set aside.
“For our nursery,” she told him. “Look.” She held up a yellow christening gown. “It might have been my grandfather's.”
“You'd have thought this stuff would have been packed up with more care.”
“I don't think Fergus ran a very tidy household after Bianca died. If any of this stuff belonged to his children, I'd wager the nanny bundled it away. He wouldn't have cared enough.”
“No.” He pulled a cobweb out of her hair. “Listen, why don't you take a break?”
“I'm fine.”
It was useless to remind her that she'd been working all day, so he used another tactic. “I could use a drink. You think Coco's got anything cold in the refrigerator – maybe a sandwich to go with it?”
“Sure. I'll go check.”
He knew that her aunt would insist on putting the quick meal together, and Suzanna would get that much time to sit and do nothing. “Two sandwiches,” he added, and kissed her.
“Right.” She rose, stretching her back. “It's sad to think about those three children, lying in here at night knowing their mother wasn't going to come and tuck them in again. Speaking of which, I'd better tuck in my own before I come back.”
“Take your time.” He was already headfirst in another crate.
She started out, thinking wistfully of Bianca's babies. Little Sean, who'd barely have been toddling, Ethan, who would grow up to father her father, Colleen, who was even now downstairs surely rinding fault with something Coco had done. How the woman had ever been a sweet little girl...
A little girl, Suzanna thought, stopping on the second – floor landing. The oldest girl who would have been five or six when her mother died. Suzanna detoured and knocked on her great – aunt's door.
“Come in, damn it. I'm not getting up.”
“Aunt Colleen.” She stepped, amused to see the old woman was engrossed in a romance novel. “I'm sorry to disturb you.”
“Why? No one else is.”
Suzanna bit the tip of her tongue. “I was just wondering, the summer...that last summer, were you still in the nursery with your brothers?”
“I wasn't a baby, no need for a nursery.”
“So you had your own room,” Suzanna prompted, struggling to contain the excitement. “Near the nursery?”
“At the other end of the east wing. There was the nursery, then Nanny's room, the children's bath, and the three rooms kept for children of guests. I had the corner room at the top of the stairs.” She frowned down at her book. “The next summer, I moved into one of the guest rooms. I didn't want to sleep in the room my mother had decorated for me, knowing she wouldn't come back to it.”
“I'm sorry. When Bianca told you that you were going away, did she come to your room?”
“Yes. She let me pick out a few of my favorite dresses, then she packed them herself.”
“Then after – I suppose they were unpacked again.”
“I never wore those dresses again. I never wanted to. Shoved the trunk under my bed.”
“I see.” So there was hope. “Thank you.”
“Moth – eaten by now,” Colleen grumbled as Suzanna went out again. She thought of her favorite white muslin with its blue satin sash and with a sigh got up to walk to the terrace.
Dusk was coming early, she thought. Storm brewing. She could smell it in the wind, see it in the bad – tempered clouds already blocking the sun.
Suzanna raced up the stairs again. The sandwiches would have to wait. She pushed open the door of Colleen's old room. It too had been consigned to storage, but being smaller than the nursery wasn't as cramped. The wallpaper, perhaps the same that Bianca had picked for her daughter, was faded and spotted, but Suzanna could still see the delicate pattern of rosebuds and violets.
She didn't bother with the cases or boxes, but dragged or pushed them aside. She was looking for a traveling trunk, suitable for a young girl. What better place? she thought as she pushed aside a crate marked Winter Draperies. Fergus hadn't cared for his daughter. He would hardly have bothered to look through a trunk of dresses, particularly when that trunk had been shoved out of sight by a traumatized young girl.
It had no doubt been opened in later years. Perhaps someone – Suzanna's own mother? – had shaken out a dress or two, then finding them quaint but useless, had designated them to storage.
It could be anywhere, of course, she mused. But what better place to start than the source?
Her heart pounded dully as she stumbled across an old leather – strapped truck. Pulling it open, she found bolts of material carefully folded in tissue. But no little girl's dresses. And no emeralds.
Because the light was growing dim, she rose and started toward the door. She would get Holt, and a flashlight, before continuing. In the gloom, she rapped her shin sharply. Swearing, she looked down and saw the small trunk.
It had once been a glistening white, but now it was dull with age and dust. It had been shoved to the side, piled with other boxes and nearly hidden by them and a faded tapestry. Kneeling in the half – light, Suzanna uncovered it. She flexed her unsteady fingers then opened the lid.
There was a smell of lavender, sealed inside perhaps for decades. She lifted the first dress, a frilly white muslin, going ivory with time and banded by a faded blue satin sash. Suzanna set it carefully aside and drew out another. There were leggings and ribbons, pretty bows and a lacy nightie. And there, at the bottom, beside a small stuffed bear, a box and a book.
Suzanna put a trembling hand to her lips, then slowly reached down to lift the book.
Her journal, she tho
ught as tears misted her eyes. Bianca's journal. Hardly daring to breathe, she turned the first page.
Bar Harbor June 12, 1912
I saw him on the cliffs, overlooking Frenchman Bay
Suzanna let out an unsteady breath and laid the book in her lap. This was not for her to read alone. It would wait for her family. Heart pounding, she reached down to take the box from the trunk. She knew before she opened it. She could feel the change in the room, the trembling of the air. As the first tear slid down her cheek, she opened the lid and uncovered Bianca's emeralds.
They pulsed like green suns, throbbing with life and passion. She lifted the necklace, the glorious three tiers, and felt the heat on her hands. Hidden eighty years before, in hope and desperation, they were now free. The gloom that filled the room was no match for them.
As she knelt, the necklace dripping from her fingers, she reached into the box and took out the matching earrings. Strange, she thought. She'd all but forgotten them. They were lovely, exquisite, but the necklace dominated. It was made to dominate.
Stunned, she stared down at the power in her hands. They weren't just gems, she realized. They were far from being simply beautiful stones. They were Bianca's passions and hopes and dreams. From the time she had placed them in the box until now, when they had been lifted out by her descendant, they had waited to see the light again.
“Oh, Bianca.”
“A charming sight.”
Her head jerked up at the voice. He stood in the doorway, hardly more than a shadow. When he stepped into the room, she saw the glint of the gun in his hand.
“Patience pays off,” Livingston said. “I watched you and the cop go into the room down the hall. I've been losing quite a bit of sleep wandering these rooms at night.”
As he came closer, she stared at him. He didn't look like the man she remembered. His coloring was wrong, even the shape of his face. She rose very slowly, clutching the book and earrings in one hand, the necklace in the other.
“You don't recognize me. But I know you. I know all of you. You're Suzanna, just one of the Calhouns who owes me quite a bit.” “I don't know what you're talking about.”