The Perfect Gift Read online

  “I told you not to come,” Nicholas said tensely. “There have been too many problems down here. I don’t want you and Genevieve hurt.”

  “Your daughter is fine, ensconced on a chair in the kitchen with Marston, singing raucous ballads and eating fresh peanut butter cookies.” Her words faded on a sigh as he kissed her thoroughly.

  When Kacey could breathe properly, she leaned back and tilted her head. “Is Faith right to be worried about Maggie?”

  “Maggie couldn’t be in better hands than Jared’s.”

  Kacey looked toward the conservatory. “Literally, it would appear.”

  “They’re adults, Kacey. They’ve both been hurt, but it’s time they came back to join the living.” After a last glance outside, he took his wife’s hand and led her to the door. “Let’s rescue Marston before Genevieve talks him out of our best champagne and all his life’s savings. Then you two are heading back to London within the hour.”

  “Genevieve can be dreadfully persuasive,” Kacey said thoughtfully. “What poor male will be able to keep up with her?”

  “We have at least two decades for me to get used to the idea of her growing up. With any luck, nunneries will be back in style by then.”

  TEXTURES, MAGGIE THOUGHT DREAMILY.

  Color and shimmering heat. Metals that melted and flowed beneath her fingers.

  Jared was all of that to her.

  She realized then exactly how deep she’d fallen for this man of quiet strength and granite honor. There would never be another to show her such worlds, such pleasures, Maggie knew. Sighing, she closed her eyes, her forehead to his chest while she accepted the reality of all he’d come to mean to her.

  Planned or not, safe or not, her heart was given. She took a slow breath, wondering if he could read all those thoughts too.

  Her eyes opened. “Were you…reading me?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Every second.”

  “Irritating man.” She smiled slowly and filled her mind, her hands rising to his broad shoulders.

  Jared tensed as the images spilled through him in hot, graphic detail.

  Her hands on his naked back. Her body as she shed the last of her clothes and eased around him, taking him completely into her heat. No regrets. No limits.

  Their lips met, hungry and searching. “See Maggie,” she said breathlessly. “See Maggie tear off the man’s nice shirt. Even that luscious kilt he’s wearing so well.” Then she pulled him down for a kiss that had Jared tottering between laughter and curses.

  “Oh. Lord, I forgot about Nicholas. He wanted to see you.” She eased away and ran a shaky hand through her hair. “One look at me and he’ll know everything.”

  “He probably knows already. It’s one of his more annoying traits. What he hasn’t guessed already, Marston will have told him.” Jared cradled her face. “I’ll go deal with Nicholas. Why don’t you find Marston and track down the champagne and strawberries I asked him for? I’m starved and you must be, too. Then we’ll go down to the Witch’s Pool.”

  Nicholas was pacing in the foyer, his hands deep in his pockets.

  “Sorry, I was delayed.” Jared’s smile faded as he took in Nicholas’s tension. “It must be important if you came down from London.”

  “Marston just had two phone calls from a Dr. Mac-Namara in London. She was looking for you.”

  Jared shrugged. “She was one of my medical debriefing team. An unpleasant woman.”

  “Odd that she’d phone now. Still, we have bigger problems. I had a long visit this morning from a contact in Whitehall. The consensus is that Maggie should be brought in for questioning. All to be done most informally, of course,” he added in a tone of bitterness.

  Jared’s fists opened and closed. He wouldn’t let them get their claws into Maggie. He knew too well what they were capable of, and she had been hurt enough. “What set them off?”

  “My contact doesn’t have any details, and no one will talk to me in an official capacity. Apparently, I’ve angered the wrong people by refusing to cancel this exhibition.”

  “Maggie could fight this,” Jared said angrily. “Go public. And with experienced legal advice she could hold off proceedings for weeks.”

  “It could be done.” Nicholas looked away. “But if she fights them, everything will come out in the press. The media interest would increase even more until they had a frenzy with the story. There would be no hope of the exhibition continuing.” The viscount’s eyes narrowed on the sunny lawn. “We’re proposing direct sponsorship of the Royal family and participation by all the major cultural branches. The British Museum is very interested, especially if we can corral topflight sponsors. That means security is bound to be a question, and quite legitimately so. But the people handling security happen to be the same ones who want Maggie brought in for questioning. If we don’t play, they don’t play.”

  Jared cursed. “I won’t sit by and watch her picked apart. Can’t they get their answers without terrifying a young woman with no blame in the matter?”

  “Apparently not. Though I’m of the clear opinion that this business goes far beyond the theft her father was accused of.”

  “So am I, but I still can’t prove it. There might be some new technology involved, something Kincade was working on when he disappeared. Meanwhile, we both know Maggie’s not up to a tough interrogation, and I doubt they’ll be in any mood for kid gloves.” Jared ran a finger over the framed map above Nicholas’s desk. His gaze fell on the red coves bordering the North Sea. “I’ll have to take her away. We’ll leave today, before they come looking here.”

  “I’m afraid I have to agree.” Nicholas reached across his desk and searched through a stack of papers. “I’ve got some contacts prepared for you.”

  “How long do we have?”

  “Two days, maybe more, but I’d feel better if you were off within the hour. I’ll hold them off as long as possible.” His eyes darkened. “There’s something else you should know. I’ve been looking into that name Maggie used the night she arrived here.”

  Jared had almost forgotten. He frowned. “Gina? Glenda?”

  “Gwynna.” Nicholas gently unfolded a yellowing sheet of paper. “I found this old sketch in the library.” Sunlight danced on an oval face and brilliant eyes. “You remember the necklace we found plastered behind the wall of the wine cellar?” He pulled a box from his desk and gently opened the lid. Sunlight played over tarnished silver and a dozen bright blue diamonds.

  “That’s it?”

  Nicholas nodded. “It will be spectacular when the settings have been properly cleaned and repaired.” He frowned. “But I don’t want Maggie to see it yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the abbey records show it was made by the daughter of the fifth viscount, a supercilious man with great influence at court. He was not a pleasant man, by all descriptions. His chief interests in life were politics and securing more wealth than anyone else in England. It seems that he left his daughter entirely on her own here.”

  “A common enough story.”

  “True, but she appears to have been remarkable for the standards of the time. She traveled to Venice, ostensibly for the Grand Tour, but in fact she found a master craftsman to teach her metalwork. That would have been no easy trick for a woman in those days.”

  Jared felt a hard knot forming at his neck. “What happened to her?”

  “There were few records after her return. She appears to have made a dozen pieces of jeweled plate for the abbey’s household collection and a few items of jewelry for her own use.”

  “You’re not answering my question, Nicholas.”

  “What happened is she died. Right out there by the moat.” Nicholas stared at the restless water. “The records suggest she was harboring a wounded political fugitive at the time. A traitor from north of the Tweed.”

  “A Scotsman?” Jared found he could barely breathe.

  “So it seems. A force was sent from London, but she slipped out an hour
earlier, seeing him off to safety. I’m afraid she wasn’t so lucky herself.” Nicholas turned. “She was shot by an advance guard who’d come looking for her fugitive. There was talk that he had a fortune in jewels meant to be carried to France, to purchase support for the Scottish cause.”

  Each word burned into Jared’s head with searing pain.

  Jewels. Shot.

  “They found her body on the grass beside the stone bridge,” Nicholas said grimly. “It was said that a rose grew up in the exact spot where she fell, its petals streaked with a curious red mark that resembled blood.”

  “What was her name?”

  “It could all be coincidence, you know. Possibly some sort of mistake. Records weren’t always kept so carefully in that era.”

  Jared fought to breathe. “Tell me her name.”

  Nicholas drew a long breath. “Gwynna. Lady Gwynna of Draycotte. And I have every reason to believe that she made this necklace. The same necklace that Maggie was trying to find that night she walked in her sleep.”

  Upstairs Maggie turned slowly in the sunlight.

  She ran a hand through her hair and straightened her simple black chemise beneath a choker of hammered platinum.

  Strange to be so happy after so long.

  Stranger still to feel at ease here.

  She turned slowly, studying her face in a small gilt mirror. Would anyone else notice the faint glow of her cheeks? Was her happiness visible? Somehow the abbey no longer seemed to oppress her with its stillness and shadows. Or perhaps she was simply too distracted to notice.

  She caught up her tool case and swept a last glance over the Constable landscapes and mahogany end tables. They were things now, only things. There was no more menace in their beauty.

  She laughed as a black shape shot around the open door and launched its stubby body at her feet. “So now you remember me. Max. Just like a man to be so fickle.”

  Marston panted down the hall and caught the puppy in gentle fingers. “He got away from me twice, the rascal. I was just going to take him out for a walk when the telephone rang downstairs. The call is for you, a curator from the British Museum.”

  Though business was the last thing Maggie wanted to think about, she picked up the phone, while Marston closed the door softly behind her.

  “This is Maggie Kincade.” There was only a soft electric hum. “Hello?” she repeated.

  She heard a slow indrawn breath, then a soft voice. Perhaps a voice masked behind a cloth.

  “You are Maggie Kincade?”

  Something stirred the tiny hairs behind her neck. “Yes, that’s right. Who is this?”

  “Are you alone?” The softness slid away, replaced by tension. “Completely alone?”

  Maggie hesitated. “Who are you?”

  In the background a car door slammed and traffic roared past. He must be at an outdoor phone box. Her hands tightened on the phone. “Are you still there?”

  “I’m here. I’ve been here for too long, Maggie, my love.” Something rustled across the line, the sound of stiff cloth being pulled free. “Perhaps this sounds clearer.”

  Maggie stiffened. That soft, rolling voice. The flattened vowels of a Boston boyhood.

  But the man who’d spoken that way had died somewhere in a Sumatran jungle, and she had the blackened passport to prove it.

  Sweat covered her palms as she gripped the phone tighter. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “To protect you, Maggie. I’ve always tried to protect you, you must believe that.”

  She closed her mind, refusing to listen. ‘No. “

  “I know it’s painful. I didn’t want the news to come this way, little peach.”

  Not that name. Not the name that only Daniel Kincade had used.

  “I truly wish there was some better way to break this to you, but there isn’t. You’re in danger, Maggie. It’s far bigger than you or I know. Otherwise I would have let them go on thinking I was dead,” he said harshly. “No matter how much it hurt.”

  What about me? she wanted to scream. How could you let me believe that you were gone?

  She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. He had her father’s voice, her father’s mannerisms, but was this another trick? “Tell me what you were wearing the day you left,” she whispered, trying not to hope.

  “Testing me, are you? Good girl. You always were sharp.”

  “Tell me.”

  “The gray trousers. They were your mother’s favorite, God rest her soul. And along with them the Fair Isle sweater that was your gift. And my ugliest old shoes. The ones with the broken laces.”

  Anyone could have known, she told herself. Whoever had seen him leave or had been with him on that final flight. But her heart began a noisy, painful pounding. “Then why—”

  “I’ve no more time for questions.” Behind him Maggie heard the low moan of a siren. “You’ve got to hide, Maggie. I’m onto two of them, and soon I’ll have the whole dirty network. I’ll contact you when it’s all over. Until then, go somewhere lonely. Use a different name and spend only cash. No credit cards that can be traced.”

  “But when—”

  “Just listen,” the voice said angrily. All the easygoing charm was gone now, stripped away from a voice of steel. “Do as I say. That Scotsman of yours ought to know someplace safe.”

  He knew that, too? “How did you know—”

  “No time, little peach. There never was, was there? I was always coming or going. All my fault.”

  A thousand questions. A thousand things she had to ask. “Why did you go? Why did they say you stole those jewels?” She hated her voice, soft and broken, the words of a confused child instead of the adult she had become.

  “I would have spared you that, Maggie, but they left me no choice. They were too close and I had to disappear. When I did, they saw to it that the jewels vanished too. That marked me as a criminal and they were certain they could run me to ground. But they were wrong. I saw to that. I died instead. It was the only way to protect you, Maggie.” He bit off an oath. “Now go away. Go today, as soon as you put down this phone. I haven’t much time, and they might be closer than I thought.” Somewhere came a tapping sound, like the muted crack of gravel on a window. “Damned thugs.”

  “Daddy?” It hurt to say the word. It hurt even more to believe it could be true.

  “God help us if they trace this call.” His voice was muffled from pressing tight against the phone. “Listen, just listen, little peach. Do you still have my ring? Anders said he gave it to you.”

  “I have it.”

  “Good. Now here’s exactly what you must do. It’s the only way you and that Scotsman of yours will stay alive.”

  Past the framed portraits.

  Past the polished silver armor.

  Maggie walked blindly, aware that all the questions she’d tried to ignore would not be silenced any longer. What was her father up to? Why had he allowed her to think he was dead all these months?

  The memories came then. Her mother at Christmas, crying with shock and pleasure at a necklace of pink pearls that Daniel had made. Her father performing his only magic trick, laughing while he made a cabochon emerald disappear into his fist, then emerge from Maggie’s ear.

  Don’t go, Daddy.

  Not long, little peach. Not long at all this time.

  Voices came from the corridor, low and tense. Jared and Nicholas, she realized.

  “There you are, Maggie. Nicholas was just telling me something, and you ought to hear it too.”

  Dimly she heard Jared’s voice, felt his hand at her shoulder. “He called,” she whispered. “He said we were in danger.”

  “Who called?”

  Go away, Maggie. Go today, as soon as you put down this phone.

  “My father. At least he said he was my father.” Her hands were shaking and her throat felt tight. “God help me, I believe him.”

  She felt the wall behind her, the cold wood of the desk beneath one hand. Suddenly there were differe
nt sounds.

  Horses, Maggie thought. Black horses with long manes tossed back in the wind. She heard their angry gait, and she might even have heard the thunder that roared above them.

  Or was it the lash of muskets?

  Then gray bled over her vision, and she was falling toward the floor.

  North they had taken her, north where treeless hills rolled down to meet a leaden sea.

  At a thatched roof cottage above the loneliest hill they halted. Their leader freed her hands carefully and helped her down.

  “What cause have you for care or comfort now?” she demanded as soon as her mouth was freed. “Your courtesies come too late after the battering I’ve had for two days.”

  “’Twas never meant to harm you, my lady. Only to see you brought here safely.”

  “Pray forgive me if I have my doubts. “She tried for the icy hauteur her titled father had taught her well, despite the bits of grass and twigs clinging to her hair. “A fine establishment. No doubt I shall be delightfully comfortable here.”

  Something played in the man’s eyes. Humor, she thought.

  “I await you, my lady.” He gestured her forward.

  She caught her cloak about her and moved forward, stumbling after so long on horseback. Then the door was thrown open before her. A single candle burned behind, outlining a tall shape.

  The candle rose, casting golden light on high cheeks and chiseled nose.

  Her heart twisted and pitched in her chest. “No,” she whispered.

  “You knew me full well last year in Venice, my lady.” His voice bore the soft, rolling lilt of the Gaelic Isles, but his eyes were filled with wickedness itself.

  “It can’t be.” She stood, wavering, her vision blurred with tears. “ I do not believe what I see.”

  “Believe,” he said huskily.

  Then she was caught up in hands that were infinitely gentle.

  “Do not look away from me. The vows we made in Venice before God are not to be so easily broken, my sweet Gwynn a.”

  “But how did you find me? When my father came to take me home there was no time. He swept me away before I could send you any word.

  “I have my ears,” he said. “And many eyes in England.