Alex’s hands unclenched. He was glad to hear her anger and her jealousy. “I kissed her just that once, when you were hiding behind the cupboard and saw it. Other than that, I didn’t touch her, and I can assure you that I didn’t sleep with her. Thanks to you, I was able to look past what had attracted me to her and saw the person. She never quit swearing that she didn’t know I was put on trial for her murder, but there’s no way she could not have known. Nate went to that little town in Georgia where she ran to right after what she did to me, and the newspapers there were full of the trial. The editor even had a record that she, under the false name she used there, had subscribed to the paper.” He took a breath. “I could hardly bear to be near a woman who was capable of what she did to me.”
“I know,” Cay said. “Nate wrote us about how much you disliked her. But my brain and my heart don’t seem to be connected. One hears and understands, but the other feels.”
When Cay slid her foot toward him, he touched her ankle, encased in a silk stocking. When she didn’t move away, he put his hand on her foot.
“Did Nate tell you that her husband’s nephew is alive? She hadn’t killed him, just knocked him unconscious. The men in Charleston who’d been searching for her were from her husband. He wanted her back.”
“Nate wrote me everything.” There was emphasis in her voice, letting him know that he, Alex, had never written her even once. But, through Nate, they had communicated. “So she’s back with her husband?”
“Aye, she is.” Alex removed her shoe and began to caress her foot. He knew that Nate had been writing and telling Cay what was going on, but there were some things that Alex had saved to tell her himself. “I talked to her husband in private and told him all that the woman had done to me. I even made Megs tell him the truth about her early life and how she lied to meet him. But he already knew it. She hadn’t told me, but she’d worked in his kitchen when she was a girl, and he remembered her. He knew who she was when she showed up at his house wearing the clothes of his cousin’s daughter. It didn’t take much for him to figure out what had happened.”
“And he forgave her?”
“More than that, he loved her. He told me that he’d married the first time to please his father and he’d hated his rich, aristocratic wife, but the second time he married to please himself.”
“So they’re happy?”
“When Nate and I left, Megs was carrying his child.”
“Nate’s child? Father won’t like that at all!”
For a moment, Alex was confused, then he began to laugh—really laugh. It started inside him, rumbled up like a volcano erupting. He had forgotten her way of constantly making jokes about everything. He’d had a year of nothing but seriousness, of little laughter, as he cleared his name and dealt with judges and lawyers and Megs. He’d soon found that her beauty was a poor replacement for someone who wanted to make him feel good.
His laughter relaxed him, and Alex’d had all he could take of Cay’s refusal to look at him. Her painting of the pond looked like something a color-blind child had drawn, what with its purple ducks with their blue beaks swimming in a pink pond. His hand went up her leg, and in the next second he pulled her down onto the grass beside him, and he began to kiss her face and neck.
“I’ve missed you,” he said. “Every second of every day, I thought about you and wanted to be with you. Nate read me the letters you and your mother wrote to him, about every party and every dance you went to. Your mother even wrote about your damned shoes wearing out from so much dancing.”
“I told her to put that in,” Cay said, her eyes smiling as she looked up at him. Her hands were on his cheeks, feeling the smoothness of his face. She knew she’d probably show him the hundred or so pictures she’d drawn of him from memory in the last year. No matter how many men she met or how handsome they were, all she ever saw was Alex.
“I thought maybe you did, but I told myself, no, that my darling Cay could never be that cruel.”
“Me cruel? You invented cruelty. The Spanish Inquisition could take lessons from you. My horrible brother wrote every word that you two found out about that . . . that woman and her stupid husband. He should have hated her! Are you sure she didn’t murder that girl in the carriage? Maybe she—”
When Alex kissed her, she stopped what she was saying. He moved his lips from hers, and looked at her, his eyes searching her face, memorizing it, as he smoothed her hair back. “I thought of that, too, but her husband knew about the accident. One of his workmen had already seen it, and the husband was on his way there when Megs showed up at his door, saying she was the dead girl. He was amused by her audacity, and it wasn’t long before he was in love with her.” Alex’s voice lowered. “Who can understand love?” He ran his thumbs over her eyebrows, smoothing them. “I agree with your father, and if you had any sense at all, you’d take Armitage up on his offer to marry him. He’s much more your class and—”
“My mother told me the truth.”
He looked at her curiously. They were lying on the ground, and he was half on top of her, but he was too heavy for her to move. “The truth about what?”
“About her and my father.”
“And what truth would that be?” His voice showed his amusement.
Cay pushed at him to get him off of her. “If you’re going to lie to me and act like you didn’t know the true story, you can just go back to wherever you were and stay there! You said, ‘They were the most ill-matched couple in all of Christendom,’ so I know that you know the whole story.”
“How in the world do you remember every word of a sentence that was spoken over a year ago?”
She ignored his question. “I’m not going to be treated like a little girl anymore. Not by you or anyone else!”
Alex began to kiss her neck. “You mean your mother told you about your father being dirt poor and your mother wallowing in gold? That truth?”
“By all that’s holy, but I think you’re already laughing at me. I’d think that you’d at least put that ring you bought on my finger before you began making fun of me.”
“I couldn’t wait.” He put his leg over her thighs.
She turned to look at him, taking in the sweet familiarity of his face and thinking how very much she loved him—and always would. On the ship home, her mother had told her in detail all that she and Cay’s father had been through before they married. All her life, Cay had been told sweet, perfect stories—lies, actually—about their courtship. But the truth had been very different, and Cay had been shocked to hear about the many similarities between what her mother and she had been through. When her mother told her about shaving Angus and seeing that he was handsome under all that hair, Cay told about throwing shaving water in Alex’s face.
“Just dirty water?” her mother asked. “I shot at your father and nearly killed him.”
Wide-eyed, Cay had listened to every word of her mother’s story.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Alex asked.
She started to tell him what she’d been told, but now was not the time. Instead, she glared at him. “If you think you’re going to use me before marriage, you have another think coming.”
“Use you? I remember a time when—”
With a hard shove, she rolled out from under him and held out her left hand. Her expression told him what she wanted.
With a sigh of defeat, Alex sat up. “What makes you think I have a ring? Ah, yes, Nate. He’d see no reason to keep the fact that I bought you a ring a secret.”
“Of course my brother told me what you were up to, even to your trips to London jewelry stores. And he told me about that woman’s husband giving you horses, and that you purchased the farm from my father. Nate said you wanted to rename it McDowell’s, but it’s going to be called Merlin’s Farm or I’m not going to live there. Did my brother tell you that Uncle T.C. took my paintings from the Florida trip to London to present to the African Association, but they said a female couldn’t have painted
such pictures, much less have traveled into the inner reaches of Florida, so they want nothing to do with my drawings?”
“I know, love,” Alex said softly. “He did tell me. But don’t worry, we’ll figure out something. And you can call the farm anything you want. I brought a dozen horses from England with me, and I got Tarka back.” For all that Nate had seemed to tell “everything,” Alex was well aware that his friend had told no one that in England Nate had met a woman very much like himself. But then, Alex had seen that Nate had no idea how affected he was by her.
“And I hear that your father came to America with you,” Cay said, bringing Alex back to the present.
“Aye, he did, and my prize money from Charleston was returned to me, and I added to it with a few races while I was in England.”
“So now you’re rich,” Cay said, sitting on the grass a few feet from him, her eyes looking as though she meant to devour him.
“Not by the standards of your father, but I can support a wife.” He smiled. “And a child or two.”
“I’m going to have nothing but girls.”
“A wise choice. I’ve met your brothers.”
“What’s wrong with my brothers?” she shot back, but when she realized he was teasing her, she glared at him. “I’m going to get you for that.”
“Please do,” he said, and when he opened his arms to her, just as he’d once imagined, she fell into them.
Enjoy a preview of Jude Deveraux’s
newest novel in the Edilean Series
Scarlet Nights
FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA
I THINK WE’VE FOUND her,” Captain Erickson said. His voice was forced, showing that he was working hard to control his jubilation.
They were sitting at a picnic table at the Hugh Taylor Birch State Park, just off A1A in Fort Lauderdale. It was a September morning, and South Florida was beginning to cool off. By next month the weather would be divine.
“I guess you mean Mitzi,” Mike Newland said, for just yesterday the captain had given him a thick file on the family. Mizelli Vandlo was a woman several police departments, including the fraud squad of Fort Lauderdale, plus the Secret Service—for financial crimes—and the FBI—for violence—had been searching for for years. As far as anyone knew, the only photo of her had been taken in 1973, when she was sixteen and about to marry a fifty-one-year-old man. Even then, she was no beauty and her face was easily remembered for its large nose and lipless mouth.
When the captain didn’t answer, Mike knew that a Big Job was coming and he worked to keep his temper from rising to the surface. He’d just finished an undercover case that had taken three years and for a while there had been contracts out on his life.
Although Mike had never worked on the Vandlo case, he’d heard that a few years ago there had been major arrests in the family, all of it happening on one day, but in several cities. But Mitzi, her son Stefan, and some other family members had somehow been tipped off and had quietly slipped away. Until recently, no one had known where they went.
Mike poured green tea from a thermos into a cup and offered it to the captain.
“No thanks,” the captain said, shaking his head. “I’ll stick with this.” He held up a can of something that was full of additives and caffeine.
“So where is she?” Mike asked, his voice even more raspy than usual. He often had to answer questions about his voice, and his standard half-lie was that it was caused by a childhood accident. Sometimes he even elaborated and made up stories about tricycles or car wrecks, whatever appealed to him that day. No matter what the story, Mike’s voice was as intimidating as his body was when he went into action.
“Ever hear of . . . ?” As the captain fumbled in his shirt pocket for a piece of paper, Mike could tell that he was excited about something other than finding Mitzi. After all, this was at least the sixth time they’d heard she’d been found. “Ah, here it is.” The captain’s eyes were dancing about. “Let’s see if I can pronounce the name of this place.”
“Czechoslovakia no longer exists,” Mike said, deadpan.
“No, no, this town is in the U.S. Somewhere up north.”
“Jacksonville is ‘up north.’”
“Found it,” the captain said. “Eddy something. Eddy . . . Lean.”
“Eddy Lean is a person’s name, not a place.”
“Maybe I’m saying it wrong. Say it faster.”
A muscle worked in Mike’s jaw. He didn’t like whatever game the captain was trying to play. “Eddy-lean. Never heard of it. So where—?” Halting, Mike took in a breath. “Ed-uh-lean,” he said softly, his voice so low the captain could hardly hear him. “Edilean.”
“That’s it.” The captain put the paper back into his pocket. “Ever hear of the place?”
Mike’s hands began to shake so much he couldn’t lift his cup. He willed them to be still while he tried to relax his face so his panic wouldn’t show. He’d told only one man about Edilean and that had been a long time ago. If that man was involved, there was danger. “I’m sure you’ve found out that my sister lives there,” Mike said quietly.
The captain’s face lost its smile. He’d meant to tease Mike, but he didn’t like seeing such raw emotion in one of the men under his command. “So I was told, but this case has nothing to do with her. And before you ask, no one but me and the attorney general know about her being there.”
Mike worked on controlling his heart rate. Many times before he’d been in situations where he’d had to make people believe he was who he wasn’t, so he’d learned to keep calm at all costs. But in those times, it had been his own life in danger. If there was something going on in tiny Edilean, Virginia, then the life of the only person who mattered to him, his sister Tess, was in jeopardy.
“Mike!” the captain said loudly, then lowered his voice. “Come back to earth. No one knows about you or your hometown or your sister, and she’s perfectly safe.” He hesitated. “I take it you two are close?”
Mike gave a one-shoulder shrug. Experience had taught him to reveal as little about himself as possible.
“Okay, so don’t tell me anything. But you do know the place, right?”
“Never been there in my life.” Mike forced a grin. He was back to being himself and was glad to see the frown that ran across the captain’s face. Mike liked to be the one in charge of a situation. “You want to tell me what this is about? I can’t imagine that anything bad has happened in little Edilean.” Not since 1941, he thought as about a hundred images ran through his mind—and not one of them was good. While it was true that he’d never actually been to Edilean, the town and its inhabitants had ruled his childhood. He couldn’t help it as he put his hand to his throat and remembered that day and his angry, hate-filled grandmother.
“Nothing has happened, at least not yet,” the captain said, “but we do know that Stefan is there.”
“In Edilean? What’s he after?”
“We don’t know, but he’s about to marry some hometown girl.” The captain took a drink of his cola. “Poor thing. She grew up in a place that sells tractors, then Stefan comes along with his big-city razzle-dazzle and sweeps her off her feet. She never had a chance.”
Mike bent his head to hide a smile. The captain was a native of South Florida where there were stores on every corner. He felt sorry for anyone who’d ever had to shovel snow.
“Her name’s Susie. Or something with an S.” He picked up a file folder from beside him on the bench. “It’s Sara—”
“Shaw,” Mike said. “She’s to marry Greg Anders. Although I take it Greg Anders is actually Mitzi’s son, Stefan?”
“You sure know a lot about the place for someone who’s never been there.” The captain paused, giving Mike room to explain himself, but he said nothing. “Yeah, he’s Stefan, and we have reason to believe that Mitzi is also living in that town.”
“And no one would pay attention to a middle-aged woman.”
“Right.” The captain slid the folder across the t
able to Mike. “We don’t know what’s going on or why two major criminals are there, so we need someone to find out. Since you have a connection to the place, you’re the winner.”
“And here I’d never considered myself a lucky man.” When Mike opened the folder, he saw that the first page was from the Decatur, Illinois, police department. He looked at the captain questioningly.
“It’s all in there about how Stefan was found. An off-duty cop was on vacation in Richmond, Virginia, with his wife, and he saw Stefan and the girl in a dress shop. The cop found out where they lived. As for you, a guy you worked with a long time ago knew about Edilean and your sister.” When Mike frowned at that, the captain couldn’t help grinning. Mike’s secrecy—or “privacy” as he called it—could be maddening. Everybody in the fraud squad would go out for a few beers and afterward the captain would know whose wife had walked out, who was getting it on with a “badge bunny,” and who was having trouble with a case. But not Mike. He’d talk as much as the other guys as he told about his training sessions, his food, and even about his car. It seemed like he’d told a lot about himself, but the next day the captain would realize that he’d learned absolutely nothing personal about Mike.
When the Assistant U.S. Attorney General for the Southern District of Florida called and said they thought one of the most notorious criminals in the U.S. might be in Edilean, Virginia, and that Mike Newland’s sister lived there, the captain nearly choked on his coffee. He would have put money on it that Mike didn’t have a relative in the world. In fact, the captain wasn’t sure Mike had ever had a girlfriend outside a case. He never brought one to the squad functions, and as far as the captain knew, Mike had never invited anyone to his apartment—which changed every six months. But then, Mike was the best undercover cop they’d ever had. After every assignment, he’d had to hide until all of the people he’d exposed were in prison.
Mike closed the folder. “When do I go and what do I do?”