Claire Delacroix (19 page)

“You can’t do that. They take it from your pay before it’s given to you.”

Niall was appalled. “What manner of dishonesty runs amok in this land that none are trusted to pay their tithes and taxes?”

“It’s just the way they do things here.” Viviane shrugged. “You’ll have to get used to it.”

“I shall never become accustomed to having my purse raided.” Niall fixed her with a skeptical glance. “One would think that
Avalon
would be spared the drudgery of labor, coin and taxes. It has always seemed to me that those were the inventions of kings of men.”

Viviane looked surprised. “I never thought of it that way.”

“There is no other way to think of it,” Niall said sternly. “You had best return to your labor this day, for you will have need of the coin.”

Viviane straightened, that hurt flashing through her eyes once again. “I thought we would spend the day together.”

“I have matters to tend,” Niall said gruffly, staring at the table instead of into those wondrous eyes. Indeed, he did not dare risk too much of the lady’s companionship, for he knew already how she could make him forget his sworn word.

“I see,” Viviane said frostily. She put her cup firmly only the table, pushed to her feet and left, without a backward glance.

Niall watched her walk away through the rain and felt a nigh overwhelming sense of failure. It seemed he had done little to ease the fact that she was vexed with him. ’Twas a conundrum to not be able to lie to the lady, yet at the same time to seek her favor.

Niall sighed and sipped from his cup. Aye, he knew that confessing that he was the one dispatched to retrieve her would do little to improve Viviane’s current opinion of him.

But she was a witch. And she had enchanted him. And the guilt he felt was not only magically induced but kept him from fulfilling his duty.

When Niall thought of matters that way - without the distraction of a lady’s lovely face - all made good sense.

Even if it made his innards writhe to know that Viviane would be the one to suffer the price. Niall determinedly finished his pastry, being certain to consume every single crumb.

Sooner begun, sooner finished, he concluded and pushed to his feet with purpose. Niall’s lips tightened to a grim line.

First, the moneychangers.

* * *

Chapter Nine

Derek moseyed into the bank that Monday morning to do his weekly cash run and was surprised to find Viviane’s friend there. Niall seemed to be in the midst of an argument with the teller at the service counter, but Derek deliberately minded his business.

He’d better not mention this to Paula, he reasoned as he counted his bills again at the teller’s counter. She’d kill him for not eavesdropping on the details.

Derek had no sooner had that thought than there was no choice but to eavesdrop.

“You would cheat me!” Niall roared.

Everyone in the bank turned to look and the reedy man behind the counter turned red to the tips of his ears. He tried to apologize, but Niall gave him no choice.

In fact, the man in Derek’s clothes shook a finger at the clerk. “This ploy of taking my coin for appraisal is an old one, indeed. I know well enough that you have an accomplice who will trade the gold for some folly that deceives the eye yet holds no value. Nay! My coin remains in mine own hand until you offer the coin of the realm in exchange.”

The clerk looked a bit desperate. “But sir! I’m sorry, sir, but...”

“Maybe I can help,” Derek suggested, his smooth tone designed to even tempers and ease attention away from the exchange. He had practiced it to perfection, but was still delighted every time it worked.

As it did right now.

The clerk nearly fell on him in gratitude, just for the intervention. “It’s a procedural thing, sir, really. We can’t evaluate gold coins here, so we have to send them to the city...”

“To the city!” Niall snorted. “Even better - your accomplice is a
foreigner
. Do you think me witless enough to wait days for your response, while my coin travels farther and farther afield?”

“Sir! We issue a receipt...”

“A receipt for what? For theft of my coin? And will you grant me another equal coin in exchange?”

“Well, well,” the clerk’s gaze strayed agitatedly to the gold coin laying on the counter between them. “That would be hard to do, sir.”

“Aha! ’Tis a trick, I knew it well.” Niall stood back and folded his arms across his chest with the satisfaction of a man who had proven his point. “I would suggest,” he said silkily, “that you exchange this coin for the coin of your realm with all haste.”

The clerk’s mouth opened and closed, he appealed to Derek with a glance.

“May I?” At Niall’s nod, Derek picked up the coin for a closer look. It was gold, or at least it looked like gold to him. Derek had fingered more gold than most men, but still he couldn’t be sure without an appraisal.

But the interesting thing about the coin was that it appeared to be old. Really old. It sure wasn’t Canadian or American currency, although the date on it was a bit tough to read. It could say 1390, but Derek wasn’t sure.

Sure or not, his heart made a little pit-a-pat. 1390! He could be holding a numismatic treasure in his hands.

And if he was, Niall wasn’t going to get anywhere near its real value from a bank. Of course, there weren’t a lot of options on an island like this.

But Derek could solve that. He handed the coin back to Niall and smiled. “You’re right, they won’t give you nearly its value here.”

Niall fired a knowing glance to the clerk.

“Especially if it’s antique, as I think it is.”

Now Niall’s eyes narrowed and he studied Derek again. “Antiquity is long behind us.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, but there are people who collect old coins. Like this one.”

Niall ran his thumb across the gold, his voice low and considering. If Derek didn’t know better, he’d think the guy was trying to drive a better price. “This coin is not so old as that.”

“Well, maybe not to some collectors.” Derek shoved his hands in his pockets and met the taller man’s gaze. “Look, we can go back to the boat and I’ll contact a collector I know. He’s a reputable man - if he wants the coin, he’ll pay a fair price for it.”

Niall nodded. “Referrals are of import in the business of changing money.”

“You better believe it.” Derek flashed a smile at the still-rattled clerk. “I live and die by my reputation every day.”

Niall’s gaze sharpened. “You are a moneychanger?”

“No, no. I’m a financial analyst.” At Niall’s puzzled look, Derek explained. “I’m an independent. I invest people’s money for them, manage their assets, ensure that they make an nice profit or secure their retirement funds.” He shrugged and grinned. “You could say that I’m a numbers guy. I do the math.”

“Ah!” Understanding dawned on the other man’s face. “I also do the math.” He tapped his temple. “’Tis my great gift.”

“You have a gift with numbers? You can do the math in your head?”

“Aye. I had a patron once who found this most useful and consigned me to the counting room.” Niall shrugged and almost smiled. “It saved him much vellum and spared him much cheating, though did little for my own studies.”

“I can imagine.” Derek studied the other man with new eyes. A numbers guy. That was the most interesting thing Derek had heard in quite a while. He was always looking for new talent, someone to follow in his shoes, and lately had been bending Paula’s ear about the sad state of the education system.

“Aye. Though as is the way with most gifts, ’tis honed to a keen edge only by diligent practice.”

Derek liked the sound of this better and better. A numbers guy who wasn’t afraid to work. Now, there was a novel proposition!

“Hey, look, we’ve got to talk. Why don’t you open an account here, just in case this all goes through? Horace is pretty fond of just transferring funds. Saves a lot of trouble.”

“Ah!” Niall’s opinion of the bank seemed much improved. “Is this facility associated with the Templars? They are great facilitators of the transfer of coin between realms.” He shook a finger at the bewildered clerk. “You should have told me this sooner.”

“I don’t think the Templars are involved here,” Derek acknowledged as the clerk dropped a form on the counter.

“Perhaps the Hospitaliers, then,” Niall acknowledged absently, gaze scanning the form. “Either are equally adept, though I profess a fondness for the Templars. ’Tis more manly, in my estimation, to wage battle against the infidel than to bind the wounds of the fallen.”

Fortunately, Derek was spared from responding to that bit of oddness by Niall’s questioning of demands of the form.

He didn’t have a speck of I.D., which complicated things quite a bit. Derek refused to think too much about why, because then he would have had to think about Niall’s odd appearance and all of that was better left unexplored.

There was always a reasonable explanation, for anything worth explaining. The guy must have left it somewhere when he changed into his knight’s gear to stow away on the sailboat. Yeah, he was one of those anachronism types, the ones who dressed up in medieval gear and had fake battles, much like Viviane. Obviously that was how they knew each other.

Perfectly reasonable. Derek reminded himself that he liked people with a little bit more dimensionality, people with interests outside of their work, no matter how weird those interests were. Medieval dress-up might be strange, but it was harmless.

Come to think of it, Paula had made a couple of comments about how sexy Niall looked in his gear.

Sexy. Hmm.

Derek and the clerk exchanged a glance when Niall professed his lack of drivers’ license, in silent agreement that they not rile the bank’s new customer yet again. Derek suggested they use Viviane’s address as Niall’s, which seemed to only make sense. The clerk was visibly relieved by this suggestion and took over the task of filling in the form for Niall.

He waved off the lack of drivers’ license, saying he had only needed it for the address.

He was, though, not nearly so ready to concede the matter of a social insurance number. Damn government, with their fingers in every pie! Derek couldn’t see what the hell difference it made, since Niall hadn’t a dime to put in the account, but the clerk wasn’t backing down.

Niall looked more than willing to rumble. He easily outweighed the little guy and was clearly all out of patience for bank procedure.

Before he could question his impulse, Derek grabbed the pen and counter-signed for Niall, personally vouching for him as a respected bank customer. Effectively, it was his account, though he insisted on giving Niall signature on it. The clerk ceded on that, though unwillingly and only after checking Derek’s balance on his other accounts.

They made a quick exit, by Derek’s plan. It was definitely time to check out that coin.

Preferably elsewhere.

* * *

There was a little room in the sailing vessel that Niall had not been privileged to see the previous day. Ingenious slatted doors along one wall below the deck hid a desk that had been built right into the wall. A swiveling chair was tucked beneath, the desktop pulled out to make its surface larger. Derek gestured to the gleaming boxes reposing in the hidden space.

“Fax, laptop, laser printer - all the conveniences of home.” One slim box had a hinged lid, which Niall noted when Derek opened it. The bottom of the box was covered with buttons, each labeled with a letter, the top was a big square. Derek pressed a button and Niall jumped at the note that the box sang, his eyes widening in astonishment as the top box lit up with color.

“Yeah, it’s one of the new Mac PowerBooks,” Derek said with a nod more fitting of a proud papa. “Impresses the hell out of me every time I boot it up. Beautiful display.” He recounted what were evidently statistics but his words fell on deaf ears.

For Niall was marveling at the little pictures. Derek steered a little arrow around somehow, his hands moving so fast that Niall had a hard time seeing precisely what did what. In a moment, there was a white box displayed and Derek was hitting the little buttons in succession.

And words appeared in the white box. Niall watched closely and realized that each button Derek struck put the matching character on the white box.

’Twas a marvel, but a machine all the same.

Derek laughed beneath his breath. “Old hunt and peck school, that’s me. You’d think after all these years, I’d learn, but I never have. Drives Paula crazy.” He winked. “Maybe that’s why I haven’t - this way, she does the lion’s share of my typing.”

Niall smiled fleetingly at the older man’s jest, his interest fixed by the words appearing on the screen. ’Twas a letter, as any fool could see. Derek was writing to one Horace Thorogood, asking after his interest in gold coins. This made good sense to Niall, though he acknowledged that ’twould be inconvenient to be without coin until this Horace replied and any transaction could be made.

It could take weeks, even if the Hospitaliers transferred the funds.

But to Niall’s astonishment, when Derek finished the letter, he pointed the tiny arrow at a little box labeled “send”. The cabin filled with a series of tones that made Niall jump and look around.

Derek laughed at his reaction. “Hey, this is
my
ship! All the bells and whistles and modcons. Paula’s comments notwithstanding, I can’t be unconnected for weeks at a time. There’s two phone lines here -” he looked up and Niall was sure he looked suitably impressed “- and a sweet little dish on the mast to get me onto the ’net.” He gestured at the box, which displayed a dizzying array of messages. “Look, there it goes.”

Niall looked.

Message sent. Waiting for Reply.

Niall leaned closer, peeking around the back of the box and finding naught but a few cables. Certainly no boy had scooped up the missive and run with it, for there was no means by which that could have been done without Niall seeing it. “I do not understand how this message was dispatched.”

“Don’t you use e-mail?”