“Great. So Étienne was a looter.”
“It was going around.”
“Maybe that’s why his wife joined the nunnery—to pray for the good of his soul.”
“A lifetime of celibacy? Now, that’s love.” Alex took a drink of water. “Okay, back to the abbess. Étienne went off to the Crusades to loot and pillage, Marie-Thérèse kept the home fires burning. ‘Four years passed, during which she prayed morning and night for her husband’s safe return, four years with only the fearful tales from Constantinople for comfort. Then one afternoon, even as she settled down for her evening prayers, there was a shout by the front gates. Her Étienne had returned. He was a changed man, though, grim of face and drawn, and so racked with fever he could barely reach his bed.
“‘A day passed, then another, and he lingered nigh unto death, saying nothing. And at that final hour, before the arrival of the priest, he pressed upon her an object, the amulet found upon her person.
“‘It sits now on my desk and I cannot help but feel a warmth from it. I know it is pagan, but there is a strange beauty to it. It feels not of the devil but of love. Of course, we could not let it remain in the keeping of Soeur Marie-Thérèse, for the good of her soul, but I am curiously reluctant to destroy it. I shall bring it to Frère Michel to do with as he sees fit.’”
Julia turned to Alex. “He brought her the White Star.”
“All the way home from Constantinople. A gift from the knight to his lady fair.”
“Ironic that he brought back a symbol of purity, considering what the experience had to have done to him. ‘Grim of face and drawn.’ What do you do when the mob mentality evaporates and you have to live with yourself?” she murmured. “When you have to look into the eyes of the person you love and tell her what you’ve done?”
“Maybe that was why he didn’t.”
Julia gave a humorless laugh. “She knew. Why else would she join the convent? She knew and she feared. And when she lost him, she threw the rest of her life into trying to redeem him. It wasn’t fair,” she burst out. “He owed it to her to be better than that.”
Alex gave her a puzzled look. “Owed? You think that’s what marriage is about—owing?”
“No, I think marriage—or any relationship—is about trying to bring the best of yourself to the other person,” Julia countered. “Trying to always live up to the best within you. Being in love should make you want to do more, be more. And when you’re riding in to slaughter and rob innocents, it should be the thing that makes you stop, if nothing else does.” The anger evaporated as quickly as it had arrived and she let out a breath. “Sorry, I’m just…” She waved her hands vaguely in the air.
“Don’t be sorry,” he said, studying her. “I’m learning a lot about you this weekend. I never realized that you felt so strongly about this stuff.”
“I’m just talking hypothetically,” she said and moved to push her chair back.
“Wait.” Alex reached out and with his fingertips turned her to face him. Heat rocketed through her. “So tell me this,” he asked. “With all of these very strong ideas about relationships, how is it that you’ve spent the last six months in a relationship that was almost strictly about sex?”
Because all it took was a look from him to snatch her breath, a brush of his hand to destroy all common sense. Because like Étienne and his Crusade, when Alex Spencer touched her, all her high-minded ideals went by the wayside and she found herself dragged into the rush and heat of something so deeply carnal that she had no control over it. Julia moistened her lips. “I told you, it was a phase. And it’s done.”
“‘Live up to the best within you,’ I believe you said?”
Her cheeks heated. “That was just foolish talk.” And she needed to stop talking. She needed to focus on the research, focus on the work. Use your head. Don’t think about your heart. “Okay, we know how the amulet got to the monastery. How do you think it got to the manor house?”
Alex let out a breath. “A land purchase. Or a gift in exchange for protection, maybe. France was in a fair amount of civil turmoil in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Trouble could have landed on the abbey, again.”
“It must have been a trade for protection if the manor family held on to it for so long. They had to have done something good to get it.”
He gave her an amused look. “Karma, again? Do you really believe that?”
“You’ve got to admit, it’s a pretty interesting series of coincidences,” she said, unwilling to be drawn into any more revelations.
“Correlation doesn’t equal causation,” he reminded her.
“Wow, you really did go to college, didn’t you?”
“And so did you.”
“I know. But I felt something in that amulet. I can’t describe it. And you said you felt it, too.” She locked her eyes on his. “Or was that just a line?”
He held her gaze. “No, it wasn’t.”
15
Saturday, 8:00 p.m.
WHAT CREEPED HIM out was the dead guys, Fletcher thought as he walked down the hall. He’d done night shift lots of places. It wasn’t as if the sound of his footsteps in an empty room spooked him. He’d patrolled offices, warehouses, department stores—even Yankee Stadium on one memorable occasion.
But none of them had been filled with dead bodies. Old dead bodies. He was fine with the statues or the sarcophagus things, or even the carved beetles, though why you’d want a three-inch-long jade cockroach he’d never know.
“Christ!” He spun, hand on his stick, heart thudding, scanning the dimly lit room for the face he’d seen. Only to discover one of those spooky-eyed funeral masks staring back at him.
What the hell?
It was all Sherry’s fault. She was the one who’d insisted on renting that mummy movie. She thought it was a real hoot. As if the last thing he needed wasn’t worrying about the damned things coming to life. Not that he really believed in that kind of stuff or anything, but without a gun on his hip, he was maybe a little jumpy. Hell, what was he going to do if a bad guy—or a mummy—came after him? Pepper spray them to death?
“She-it,” he said disgustedly, listening to the echo of his own voice as he stopped at the electronic monitor to punch in his code. At least the next gallery wasn’t so bad. The Babylonians and Assyrians didn’t wrap people up after they were dead. How twisted was that, for chrissakes? The way he figured it, a man died, leave him in peace. Don’t wrap him up and put him on display.
He could just imagine his uncle Louie wrapped up and put on display. Now that would be one big glass case.
He started past the elevator and door to the basement and stopped. Maybe he’d just take a turn around down there, check it out. Nothing wrong with being thorough. He punched the call button to the elevator and with a ping the doors opened.
Hieroglyphs marched around the walls, spacey-looking Egyptian guys in skirts, with that wicked eyeliner. Fashion, he snorted. It had been just as bad then as now. He hit the button for the basement.
The walkie-talkie on his hip buzzed. “Fletcher, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
The elevator began to drop. “Relax, Harry. I’m just getting a change of scenery. What are you doing, getting your jollies watching the elevator cam?”
“I’m not getting my jollies watching you, that’s for sure. I don’t want you walking out the door into that basement.”
“I just wanted to see something different. What’s it to you?” The doors folded back, giving him a view of the corridor wall opposite.
“I’ll tell you what it is to me, you dipstick. Those monitoring stations are set up so you make your route in a certain time. They see you at one, they expect to see you at the next station in a coupla minutes. You show up late, it prints out on a report. It prints out a report, someone gets mad. And I don’t want them smacking me down because I wasn’t watching the new guy. You get your ass back up to the first floor, capisce?”
Fletcher stared out at the base
ment hallway with its branching corridors. No mummies, no weird bug carvings. Just plain, peaceful walls. He sighed. “Capisce.”
JULIA SIGHED AND ROSE. “I need a break before we take this any further. What time is it?” she asked.
Alex gave her an amused look. “You are wearing a watch, you know.”
“I know. I just wanted to be sure it’s keeping correct time.”
“It’s a little before eight,” he said, following her out into the main lab. “Why?”
“No reason.”
But there was a reason, and it became more and more apparent as the minutes passed. She got some water from the tap. She stretched, which made interesting viewing. She took down her hair and ran her fingers through the dark tumble of it, which was also interesting to watch. She put it back up with a practiced swirl.
And she checked her watch. Over and over and over again.
Alex sat backward on a wheeled office chair, his arms resting on the back, watching her. “Are you okay?”
Julia paused in her pacing to glance at him. “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“No reason in particular, except that you’ve been fidgeting for the past hour. You’re going to wear a hole in that floor if you don’t watch it.”
She reddened. “You play soccer with a taped-up clump of paper, I pace. To each their own.”
“Just a guess, but are you maybe a little freaked out at missing your mom’s party?”
She snapped her head around to stare at him. “Don’t be silly.” She resumed walking. “She’ll have lots more to worry about than me. It’s no big deal.”
“Then why are you freaked out?”
“I’m not freaked out, I just—”
“You just what?”
“You don’t understand how it is in my family.”
“I know when you’re a socialite, this kind of thing matters.”
“I’m not a socialite,” she snapped. “I’m a curator of ancient Egyptian objects.”
“And that’s part of the problem,” he said quietly.
She scowled. “There is no problem. Everything’s fine.”
“If everything’s fine, then why are you logging enough miles for a marathon?” Rising, Alex walked over to stand in front of her, blocking her path. She stopped abruptly, like a startled horse. He’d watched her over the past hours as she’d spun herself up into a minor frenzy over a situation she was powerless to control. He’d watched, staying out of it, saying nothing because he knew she wouldn’t want it.
He couldn’t sit and watch her anymore. Taking her hands, he raised them to his lips to kiss the knuckles. “Talk to me,” he said softly. Julia stared at him, eyes dark. He drew her over to the wooden table to sit. “It’s just you and me and Felix in here. Felix won’t tell anyone and I won’t either,” he said, holding on to her hand. “Talk to me?”
She was silent for a long time. “What’s your family like?” she asked finally.
“Mine?” The question stopped him for a moment. “I don’t know, same as any other, I guess.”
“You know there’s no such thing.”
He’d never really analyzed his family before; they’d simply always been there, solid and dependable. And so he groped for the words. “They’re good people. We’re there for one another no matter what. If something happened to any one of us tomorrow, the rest of us would show no matter where we had to go, whether we had to get on a bus, a plane, a packet steamer.” He smiled crookedly. “Assuming I wasn’t locked up here, of course.”
“Assuming that. What are your parents like? I know you said they were teachers.”
“They’re the best,” he said simply. “They always wanted us to do well. Not like the pressure to get straight A’s and go to Harvard, but somehow the way they encouraged us made us all want to do our best.” To live up to the best within you. The memory of her words stopped him for a moment. He cleared his throat and went on. “My sister’s a lawyer here in New York. She’s why I’m here, actually. I wanted to take a chance, take on something more challenging instead of just doing what was easy. Manhattan sounded like a pretty cool place to live, from what she said, so I came here and started from scratch.”
“And you’ve done fabulously, of course.”
He shook his head. “You’re amazing.”
“At what, flattery?”
“No, avoiding talking about yourself.” He made an impatient noise. “You do it so smoothly that I don’t even notice sometimes.”
She tried to tug her hand away, but he held it securely. “Are you saying I’m evasive?”
“I’m saying you’re guarded. You’re very good at changing the subject, at making plans to go somewhere, at doing almost anything but letting the discussion become personal.”
Her cheeks tinted. “So?”
“You’re upset about something and you can’t do anything about it, which is making you crazy. Why don’t you talk to me? Tell me what’s going on. I’m not going to be able to change anything, but maybe it will help just to get it out.” He gave her a crooked grin. “I told you about my family.”
“Mine isn’t as warm and fuzzy as yours.”
“I’ll let that go because I know it’s just another way of changing the subject.” His gaze was steady on hers. “Come on.”
Julia let out a sigh. “The Covingtons have been part of the New York social register for over a hundred and sixty years. There’s money, I think you know that, but there are also expectations.”
“From your family?”
“From everyone. Maintaining social standing is hard work. There are constant obligations—the parties, the lunches, the committee meetings, the galas. And it bores me silly. I know they raise money, they actually do good works as well as flutter around in couture giving air kisses. I know that I owe my job in part to the fact that I’m on a social basis with a number of our donors.”
“You owe your job to the fact that you’re good,” he countered.
“And the fact that I know people. It still bores me out of my mind. It has from the time I was a kid.”
“And they made you go do it all anyway?”
She blew out a breath. “It’s not that cut-and-dried. Remember what you said about your parents never forcing you but encouraging you? My mother—Lily—was a little less subtle. The expectation was that I’d do certain things. Lily was deb of the year in 1964. She’s headed up the Performing Arts Institute gala for each of the last ten years.” Julia turned to him. “That probably doesn’t sound like much, but trust me, it’s a big deal.”
“It’s a lot of work, I know.”
“I went to cotillion, I had my coming out, and the whole time it all made me crazy.”
“What about your aunt Stella? She sounded like she was on your side.”
“Stella was great. She thought my mother and aunts were a bunch of ninnies.” Julia laughed, the shadows easing for a moment. “She used to say that, literally. ‘What is that bunch of ninnies up to now?’ She showed me that maybe there was another path.”
“Not popular, I take it?”
She furrowed her brow. “I think it confused them more than anything. They didn’t understand what I wanted to do and why I wanted to work so hard. That’s what Lily always says. ‘Why do you want to work so hard?’ She’s never understood that it’s the parties that are the hard work for me.”
“Boring?”
“Partly.” Julia hesitated. “And partly I’m just shy.”
It was a response he’d never have expected. “You, shy?”
“Incredibly.”
“But you always look so together, the way you stand there and talk to people. And you’ve always got a comeback.”
She smiled faintly. “Self-defense. If you’re shy, that’s what you do, find a way to make people laugh.”
“But you can think rings around people. I don’t get it.”
“That’s because you’re a people person,” she said simply. “I’m not. It’s an effort for me. And someho
w I always wind up carrying the conversation, with everyone looking to me to say something.”
She always seemed so cool and confident and in charge when he saw her at museum functions. It was incomprehensible. “So you couldn’t tell your mother it wasn’t your thing?”
“I tried. Stella helped. She helped me tell Lily I wasn’t going to Sarah Lawrence. And when Stella put her foot down, it stayed there.” A grin flickered over her face, quick and private. “She might have weighed a hundred pounds dripping wet, but she didn’t take back talk from anyone, especially from the daughter of her ninny of a little sister.”
“What’s the deal with Sarah Lawrence?”
Julia blew out a breath. “It’s the family school. All of them went there, Lily and my aunt Bitsy, my grandmother. Even Stella went there, at least until she ran off with the artist. It was the tradition. It was what a nicely brought up young lady did, and yes, I come from the kind of family where they still use that kind of language. Not even my getting into Harvard entirely made it better.”
That made him angry on her behalf. “How could they not be proud of that?”
“You don’t understand. I was supposed to go to Sarah Lawrence and marry the brother of one of my classmates.”
It was a different world, one he’d heard about but never believed in. He hesitated. “I notice you don’t really talk about your dad in all of this.”
“Gerald?” Julia snorted. “Gerald ran off with a Dutch model when I was still in grade school. That was when Lily changed our name back to Covington.”
“She never remarried?”
Julia shook her head. “I think that’s why she’s so obsessed with the committee work. It gives her something to fill her life with, especially since my brother and I grew up. That’s what’s so hard about this. On one hand, I’m totally relieved. I’d much rather be trapped here with you, trading candy bars, than sitting in a swank hall eating a Todd English meal and bidding on couture or whatever they’re hawking.”
“Thanks. I think.”
Amusement flickered for an instant in her eyes, before the unhappiness returned. “But this is her night, her big night. And maybe I think it’s criminal that they’ll spend three-quarters of what they raise on paying for the party, when they could just write a check straight to the cause, but it doesn’t matter. She honestly believes she’s doing a good thing. She lives for this.”
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