Leo said calmly, “Shall I continue?” and the crowd roared again.
“I have here,” he said, flourishing the papers we had prepared so carefully the night before, “a partial genealogy that traces the ownership of this property from Queen Katherine Parr to the current-day Baroness Sudeley.”
We had doctored the genealogy to present enough information to prove that there was indeed a living descendant but omitted enough that it would be impossible for anyone else to find Jules Seymour. And, to be doubly sure, we’d had Rosie scrub clean the obscure records Leo had used in his original research to track me down.
“The baroness is shy and fears publicity,” Leo continued, with just the slightest hint of a sparkle in his eyes.
Amy, I thought, with an inward smile. Amy and Jules, united at last.
“She cannot come forward in person at this time. But she is the nineteenth-generation ancestor of Queen Katherine Parr and Thomas Seymour, and thus the rightful owner of this property. She plans to keep Sudeley Castle open to the public and to create a museum on this site to showcase the lives of the Tudor queens. This museum and research center will create more permanent jobs than the housing development would have done.”
Everyone shouted again, and Leo stepped away from the podium.
He was mobbed as soon as he jumped down into the crowd again, and I watched from a distance as he parried questions and accepted congratulations. At last the crowd dispersed, and Leo and I, holding hands, walked together through the massive stone archway into the great castle.
Sudeley, where it all began.
“Hey, Leo,” I said.
“What?”
“I think they’re going to let me escape from Atlantic Bank and go out into the field again.”
He held me away from him, frowning slightly. “Where to?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“But you know I’ll figure it out.”
I shrugged.
“Hey, Jules,” he said.
“What?”
“We can go on adventures too, motek. We can ski and hike and go whitewater rafting. But we’re not going to risk our lives doing it.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were scared that day on the yacht. And I bet you were terrified in Chechnya too. And on Everest. And all those other ‘adventures’ your father took you on.”
My father scorned nothing more than fear, and I had been ashamed of my fear when Kali and I were attacked in that London loo. But, like a healthy shoot poking through damp spring ground, I was starting to think new thoughts: What was wrong with being afraid? Was it possible that my father was a bully? Did I really need to take so many risks in my job? Why shouldn’t a young girl be frightened at the thought of climbing Mount Everest, for God’s sake? Would I let Kali do that?
No. In a million years, no.
“When we ski,” he continued, “we will go up in safety-inspected lifts, we will not ski off-piste, and we will never drop from helicopters onto an ungroomed slope. Understood?”
I nodded. Maybe there was something of Amy in me after all.
“So, you really can’t tell me where they’ll send you?” he asked again.
“Nope.”
“Hey, Jules,” he said.
“What?”
“I’ll always find you.”
Acknowledgments
It takes a village! I would like to express my deep gratitude to the SparkPress team: Brooke Warner, Shannon Green, Crystal Patriarche, Tabitha Bailey, Paige Herbert, and Maggie Ruf. Your vision of an independent publisher that is by women and for women is truly inspirational. I am so fortunate to be part of the SparkPress family.
Another big shout-out goes to my long-suffering and ever-patient agent, Marcy Posner. You’ve always got my back! And more thanks to the world’s best early reader team: Kim, Melissa, Laurie—you’re really the midwives to my book, and I owe you lots and lots of Four Seas ice cream.
A big thanks as well to my patient and long-suffering family: Jerry, Alex, Anna, Zack, Cayla, Caroline, Benjamin, and Jilly—you put up with a lot, and I really appreciate it!
Best of all, thanks to Naomi, Liora, Maya, Gabe, Eden, Ellie, Cassie, and Lev for bringing me unbridled love and joy, forever and always.
About the Author
Courtesy of Benjamin Gruenbaum
Jane Elizabeth Hughes is an obsessive reader with two fully-loaded Kindles; she buys so many books that Amazon sends her a gift every year for the holidays. Unfortunately, reading novels all day is not an easy career path, so Jane has a day job as professor of international finance at Simmons College School of Business in Boston. She has also consulted with multinational corporations and governments for nearly three decades, including the Rockefeller Foundation, Inter-American Development Bank, and Asian Development Bank. An engaging and accomplished public speaker, Professor Hughes has written and lectured widely about international finance throughout the world. She published her first novel, Nannyland, with Simon & Schuster Pocket Star Books in 2016. A mother of four and granny of eight (the eldest is only seven, so she’s a very busy granny), she is fortunate enough to live on beautiful Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
SELECTED TITLES FROM SPARKPRESS
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Indelible: A Sean McPherson Novel, Book 1, Laurie Buchanan, $16.95, 9781684630714. Murder at a writing retreat in the Pacific Northwest, but this one isn’t imaginary. Authors only kill with words. Or do they?
Enemy Queen: A Novel, Robert Steven Goldstein, $16.95, 978-1-68463-026-4. A woman initiates passionate sexual encounters with two articulate but bumbling and crass middle-aged men, but what she demands in return soon becomes untenable. A short time later she goes missing, prompting the county sheriff to open a murder investigation.
Firewall: A Novel, Eugenia Lovett West. $16.95, 978-1-68463-010-3. When Emma Streat’s rich, socialite godmother is threatened with blackmail, Emma becomes immersed in the dark world of cybercrime—and mounting dangers take her to exclusive places in Europe and contacts with the elite in financial and art collecting circles. Through passion and heartbreak, Emma must fight to save herself and bring a vicious criminal to justice.
Peccadillo at the Palace: An Annie Oakley Mystery, Kari Bovée. $16.95, 978-1-943006-90-8. In this second book in the Annie Oakley Mystery series, Annie and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show are invited to Queen Victoria’s Jubilee celebration in England, but when a murder and a suspicious illness lead Annie to suspect an assassination attempt on the queen, she sets out to discover the truth.
Pursuits Unknown: An Amy and Lars Novel, Ellen Clary. $16.95, 978-1-943006-86-1. Search-and-rescue agent Amy and her telepathic dog, Lars, locate a missing scientist who is reported to have an Alzheimer’s-like disease—only to discover that someone wants to steal his research for potentially ominous purposes.
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The Long-Lost Jules Page 29