The Long-Lost Jules

by Jane Elizabeth Hughes

  I nodded.

  “The letter was written to Catherine in France in the late 1550s, where she had fled with her second husband under Queen Mary’s reign.”

  “And?”

  “It said . . .” He glanced at me. “Well, it’s in old English, but the gist of it is that the girl she was inquiring about ‘was well and Godly, and mayhap would be promised to her cousin, a lad of the Seymour name.’” He glanced at me again. “Baby Mary would have been about ten years old at the time, ripe for a betrothal.”

  “Huh.” It didn’t seem like much to me. “And Jules?”

  “Sudeley Castle itself recently passed into the hands of a twentysomething distant cousin of the Dent family.”

  “Okay,” I said, wondering where he was taking this.

  “The Dents were marvelous stewards of the castle and opened it to the public, as you just saw.”

  I nodded.

  “But the Dents’ only daughter died without leaving any heirs, so it passed to young Thomas Harwood. And young Thomas Harwood saw the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”

  “Speak English, would you please?” I asked.

  “He plans to sell off the castle and its lands to a developer. They will close the castle to visitors, of course; distribute its artifacts to the highest bidders; and turn the building into a high-end condominium complex.” His tone dripped outrage and something more—something close to grief, I thought.

  “And the lands?”

  “Multimillion-pound McMansions, a pool and tennis club to rival Wimbledon, and a resort hotel on the edge of an artificial lake. They plan to turn Katherine Parr’s home into a tacky playland for the nouveaux riches!”

  It was grief.

  “I’m sorry,” I said inadequately.

  He dipped his head in acknowledgment.

  “But aren’t there regulations? Isn’t the castle part of the historical trust or something?”

  “Oh, yes, it’s a listed building, but they can do whatever they want with the interior. And the lands, of course.”

  I thought back to the charming, lush grounds with their greenery and gardens, the tame and friendly deer, and the strutting peacocks and obscenely fat squirrels. “But what will happen to all the animals?” I asked foolishly.

  “Oh, I forgot to mention. There’s going to be a hunting preserve too.”

  I shuddered.

  “The only person who can stop this atrocity,” Leo continued, “is a living descendant of Queen Katherine Parr and Thomas Seymour. And, as it happens, I have found that living descendant: Juliette Mary Seymour.” He stopped short of adding “you,” but I caught his drift.

  “I’m not Jules,” I said wearily. He had never explained how or why he had connected me to her, and I was cautious about seeming too curious.

  I heard Kali stir in the back seat. But she subsided, and I twisted my hair around my fingers. “I wish I could help you,” I went on, quite sincerely. “But I can’t.”

  Silence.

  “I’m so sorry,” I added.

  More silence.

  I twisted more hair. “Who’s going to buy it?” I asked. “Who’s the developer? Maybe you can scare them off somehow.”

  Leo laughed bitterly. “Oh, yes, that’s likely.”

  “Why? I mean, why not?”

  “My dear girl, the buyer is a Russian billionaire who has been buying up parcels of Cotswold land for years. God knows why,” he added.

  “Russian oligarchs love to invest in land,” I told him.

  “Really? Well, now they’re planning to develop this land. And they’re more likely to disappear me for interfering than to be ‘scared off’ by anything I can do.”

  “All right, well, I’m sure they need all sorts of permission and stuff. Surely the government won’t let them—”

  “The government is letting them,” he interrupted. “For all its touristy facade, the Cotswolds is desperately in need of jobs. A massive housing-and-resort development is worth much more than a few moldy old artifacts and a minor tourist attraction.”

  “So, then . . . ?”

  “So, then my only hope of stopping this development is to find Juliette Seymour.”

  “Jules.”

  “Yes. Jules.”

  “Well, why don’t you just buy the land yourself?” I asked reasonably. “You’re rich, aren’t you?”

  He gripped the gearshift so tightly that his knuckles turned white. “My family has money, but we’re not the bloody mint! We’re talking about hundreds of millions of pounds of parkland!”

  “Oh,” I said.

  I wished I could help him. I really did. But I couldn’t.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again.

  In the back seat, Kali stirred once more, and I turned quickly to face her. “Still another hour to go,” I told her. “Go back to sleep.”

  She subsided, and I looked at Leo again. “I really am sorry,” I repeated, and he shrugged.

  “Oh, I still have an ace or two up my sleeve. This isn’t over yet, not by a long shot,” he said.

  I wondered what his next move would be.

  Chapter 15

  As it turned out, the next move wasn’t Leo’s at all. One minute we were driving along the narrow country road in the deepening twilight, shadows falling long across Leo’s exasperated face as he negotiated with yet another high-pitched sister on the phone; the next there was a huge roar behind us, and Leo let out a bellow of shock and pain.

  Kali screamed, and I whipped around to see a black van on our heels. Our car swerved wildly as Leo steered away from the van, and with another shock I saw that his right arm, which had been draped on the open window, was dripping blood. Through the growing darkness, I saw the dull gleam of a gun as the driver behind us withdrew his hand to steer his own car.

  “What’s happening?” Kali cried out, her eyes wild with fear.

  “Get down!” I yelled at her. “Cover your head with your arms, and get down!”

  Leo had regained control of the car and accelerated away from the van, but his face was white with pain. “You too,” he said to me. “Get down!” He was trying to shout, but his voice came out a pale whisper.

  “Do you have a gun?” I demanded.

  “Of course I don’t have a bloody gun! I live in Oxford, not the Bronx!”

  Yet I could have sworn that his hand had shot reflexively toward his hip, just as it had in the pub basement.

  “Pull over!” I shouted at him. “Stop the car so I can drive!”

  His face was ashen. “What the fuck?”

  “Pull over!” I screamed. “Just do it!”

  In a daze, he brought the car to a screeching halt. Kali cried out again, and I practically levitated over poor Leo, shoving him into the passenger seat and taking the wheel myself. “Put on your seat belt!” I snapped at him. “And get the fuck down!”

  As I had anticipated, the van had shot past us, taken by surprise by our sudden stop. I hunched over the wheel and waited until the van began to reverse, and then put my foot down, and we flew past it and into the night. Grimly, I drove as my father had taught me. Thank God for Leo’s smart Audi and its supersonic engine.

  The van driver recovered from his surprise and raced after us. I swerved hard to the right and then hard to the left as the gun hand appeared out the window again. Kali was crying in the back seat, but I forced myself to clear my mind and focus.

  Two shots rang out. Fleetingly, I thought of the tires and how disastrous a blowout would be at this speed. Seeing a curve ahead, I slowed slightly and thought furiously. I could probably outrun the van—eventually—but how long could I keep up this speed on this road? Would “eventually” come too late? The burden of my two helpless passengers weighed on me heavily, clouding my thinking.

  But then I remembered the Coke bottle, that old-fashioned glass bottle that they still sold in rural England and that Kali had insisted on keeping for a souvenir.

  “Leo,” I said. “Can you hear me?”

&n
bsp; “Of course,” he snapped. “I’m not bloody dead, am I?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that he had torn up his left sleeve and wrapped it around his right upper arm to stanch the bleeding. With some relief, I realized that he wasn’t helpless at all. We were in this together.

  “The Coke bottle,” I said.

  “Right, then.”

  He straightened up and looked back. One of the bullets had smashed his side-view mirror to smithereens. With an effort, he picked up the Coke bottle with his good hand and weighed it.

  I shut my mind to his pain. That was irrelevant to me right now.

  A bullet smashed into the back windshield, and Kali sobbed. I couldn’t think about her now either.

  Leo said something, but I couldn’t hear him between Kali’s cries and the wind whipping through the open windshield.

  “What?”

  “Slow down and pull right on one!” he shouted at me. “Count it down!”

  “Three!” I screamed. “Two! One!” And, infinitesimally, I lifted my foot off the accelerator and swung the car to the right so fast and hard that I felt its left wheels leave the ground for one terrifying moment.

  Smash! Leo threw the Coke bottle right into the path of the oncoming van, and I heard a sickening crunch as its tires connected with the deadly shards, then the satisfying pop of one blowout, then another. The driver let off a volley of frustrated gunshots as we sped away, leaving the crippled van by the side of the road and slowing to a sedate pace as we approached the village of Westerly.

  At a safe distance past the village, I pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the car. Delayed reaction was setting in. I brushed sweat off my face and for the first time allowed myself to look at Kali.

  “Are you all right?”

  She was crying so hard she couldn’t speak.

  “Shock,” Leo said to me.

  I nodded. “Kali!” I said sharply. “Take your hands from your face and look at me!”

  She obeyed. Her eyes darted wildly, and her face was deadly pale.

  Leo fumbled in the compartment under the seat and came up with a can of liquid. “Fizzy, sweet stuff,” he said. “Full of sugar.”

  I opened the can and handed it to Kali. “Drink,” I said.

  Then I turned back to Leo. “How about you?” I asked him.

  “A clean shot. The bullet went through.” The color was returning to his face, though his lips were still white with pain.

  I eyed him cautiously. “Do you want to go to—”

  “Any hospital will recognize this immediately as a bullet wound and call the police.” Just as cautiously, he eyed me. “Do you want that?”

  “No,” I admitted. “Do you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then. I’ve got some antibiotics at home. I can doctor myself up. How about Kali? Did the glass cut her?”

  Glittering shards from the broken windshield were all over the back seat, but Kali, still huddled on the floor with her arms over her head, seemed to be unhurt.

  Leo was still staring at me. “You’re the one, aren’t you?” he said. “It’s you. You’re the one they’re shooting at. You’re the one they attacked in the pub.”

  “Don’t be crazy,” I said.

  “Then who the fuck are you? Time to put your cards on the table, Jules. Or Amy, or whatever you’re calling yourself.”

  Kali had stopped crying and was listening to our low, heated words.

  “You’re the one,” I said, just as sharply, my faint suspicions transformed into sudden realization. “You’re Mossad, aren’t you? Military intelligence . . . What bullshit. You’re a fucking spy. You’re the one they’re after, not me.”

  Leo was speechless.

  I started the engine again and put the car in gear. “Whatever you are, you’re dangerous,” I said to him. “Kali, I’m taking you home.”

  But of course, neither of us knew what “home” meant. Despite my anger and self-recriminations—how could I not have foreseen this?—I couldn’t bring myself to just drop Leo off at home and leave him alone and injured. So we all went to Leo’s.

  “You have to send her back to her parents,” Leo said in his kitchen. He was preparing to inject himself with a very business-like-looking syringe of antibiotics. I winced and looked away.

  I didn’t want to talk about Kali yet. I still felt too guilty. After a restorative dose of brandy, she was off exploring Leo’s impressive house while I helped patch him up, and I couldn’t blame her for her curiosity. A comfortable, family-size home in uppity Holland Park, where house prices started in the low seven figures, it was nothing like I might have expected for a bachelor. The kitchen took up the entire first floor, opening up to flow into a large sitting area with squishy-looking, pale lemony couches; a quiet, book-filled reading nook with more comfortable chairs and good lamps; and a conversation area around the massive, American-style TV. The kitchen itself was a cook’s delight, centered on a huge, gleaming island and leading into what would be, in the daytime, a sun-splashed breakfast nook.

  I was no domestic goddess, but I coveted that kitchen.

  I turned my attention back to Leo. “I suppose you learned how to do this in the military,” I said, indicating the syringe and bandages.

  “Mais bien sûr. Basic field medical training. And you?”

  Kali came back from her tour, saving me from an answer, and settled deep into one of the couches with a little sigh. Swathed in warm blankets and loaded up with so much sugar and brandy that she wouldn’t sleep for weeks, she was watching us with bright, unblinking eyes.

  I remembered one French phrase that my parents had used—first, jokingly; later, not so much.

  “Pas devant les enfants,” I said. Not in front of the children.

  “Mais bien sûr,” Leo said again.

  Kali said to me, “Where’d you learn to drive like that?”

  “My father taught me.”

  “And who the hell was your father, then?” Leo asked, possibly made waspish by the pain of arranging bandages over his ugly wound. “Evel Knievel?”

  “Please don’t fight,” Kali begged from her couch, and I felt a pang, remembering how my parents had argued until my mother left.

  “I spent a lot of time in war zones,” I said briefly. “You learn things.”

  Leo grunted. Then he asked, “So, why is someone trying to kill you?”

  “No one is trying to kill me. At least, if they were, they’re pretty incompetent.”

  He nodded, conceding the point. “Then why is someone trying to scare you? I had almost decided that you changed your name to get away from an abusive boyfriend, but that just doesn’t fit. What are you running away from?”

  Once again, Kali opened her mouth. Once again, I quelled her with a sharp glance.

  I scowled at Leo. “How do you know the attack wasn’t about you?” I demanded. “Are you Mossad? What do you have to do with Sheikh Abdullah or his sons?”

  He seemed genuinely taken aback. “Who?”

  “My clients. Sheikh Abdullah bin Saud bin Arabiyya and his sons, Kareem and Nasir.” Irrelevantly, I added, “He calls his eldest son Abu Bakr—father of Bakr—even though he has several daughters too, but of course it’s only the son that matters.” Stop babbling, I told myself. Get a grip.

  He was silent, and we eyed each other warily, the instinctive teamwork of the car having given way to mutual suspicion. I said, “I don’t know who you are, but you’re dangerous and you’re a bloody liar. Kali, let’s go.”

  She protested, “I’m not going home to my parents. You can’t make me.”

  “Oh, yes, I can.”

  “No, you can’t. I’ll just run away, and then you’ll never find me.”

  I thought that might be true and exchanged glances with Leo. I could see that he thought so too.

  Once again, the tide of resentment swelled up and threatened to engulf me. How could it be that at such a critical time, I had saddled myself with not one but two bur
dens?

  Kali looked at Leo. “Can’t I stay here with you?”

  “No!” I snapped.

  “This is the family’s home,” Leo said slowly. “We all use it when we’re in London. In fact . . .” He looked as if a new and interesting thought had just occurred to him, and he gazed assessingly at Kali.

  “How quickly can you get that hardware out of your face? By tomorrow night?”

  “Why?” she asked.

  He looked back at me. “I have some calls to make, but I’ll call you later. And, Amy . . .”

  “What?”

  “Please, please be careful.”

  Leo called the next night to explain that his sister Élodie would be arriving in London the next day with her four children. Would Kali like to come stay at his house while they were there and help care for the children?

  Would she?

  “Four children?” Kali screeched at me. “Four?”

  “It’ll be fun,” I said briskly.

  “But I’ve never done any babysitting,” she protested. “Kids are just squirmy little snot factories.” She was dabbing bacitracin on the empty holes where her piercings had been and flinching with every dab.

  “Take it or leave it,” I advised. “You can’t stay with me anymore.”

  “You can’t trust me with children,” she said. “I told you, I’m a screw-up. I wouldn’t know how to keep them from drowning or choking. Or whatever.”

  “It’s hard to drown in Holland Park,” I said dryly. “And Leo tells me there’s a nanny. You’d just be helping her.” I paused and then added, “Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

  She sniffled a little. “You don’t know the half of what I’ve done. I stole someone’s homework and tried to pass it off as my own. I drank so much they had to pump my stomach. I sold pot to my friends, and now I’ll never go to college—not that I wanted to go anyway. I hate school.”

  I regarded her thoughtfully. “What do you want to do, then?”

  “I want to do what you do: live in London and travel a lot and have cool friends, like Leo.”

  No one had ever wanted to be me before.

  But I steeled myself. “Kali, you have no choice. You’re going to Holland Park tomorrow, and you’re going to help take care of Élodie’s children, and that’s that.”