Jo Goodman (35 page)

Grey nodded once, then watched her go. For a moment he had half expected that she would ask him to accompany her. Foolish, he told himself now. She hadn't let her guard slip all this long week, if indeed she had been guarded at all. It may have been that she simply didn't love him.

"I'll take that drink now, Sam," Grey said, turning back to the bar. "In fact, just slide the bottle this way."

* * *

Nat stepped outside with a bucket of scraps from the kitchen. Annie Jack's voice carried to him even after the door closed. "Take them all the way to the alley," she yelled. "Annie don't want the dogs nosin' around her kitchen." Dutifully, Nat hopped off the porch and marched across the yard. He was on the point of letting the scraps fly when the bucket was yanked out of his hand and he was hauled upward by the scruff of his neck.

"This way," a voice said close to his ear. "I believe you have some explaining to do."

Berkeley was passing through the kitchen on her way upstairs when Annie flung open the back door and called to Nat to take a second bucket. "That boy," she said to no one in particular. "He can't make it from A to B without losin' his way. Now where'd he go?"

"Can I help you?" Berkeley asked.

Annie eyed Berkeley's ivory gown and her matching kid boots skeptically. "That'd be somethin' to see, you traipsin' across the yard in
that
dress with
these
scraps."

Berkeley took the bucket right out of Annie's hand. "That would be something to see," she said politely. Squeezing past the cook's ample form, Berkeley went as far as the lip of the porch. "Nat! You forgot this other—" She fell silent when she heard some scuffling and a muffled cry from the direction of the stable. She cocked her head. "Nat! Is something wrong? Is there someone with you?"

"I'm coming!" he called.

Behind her, Annie began to say something, but Berkeley waved at her to be quiet. She squinted in the darkness, trying to make out the deeper shadows against the side of the stable. She was preparing to step off the porch when one part of the shadow separated itself from the rest. Her eyes shifted to Nat's small form as he came running toward her. When she looked back toward the stable there was nothing left for her to see.

Nat held out his hand for the bucket. "I'll take it, Miss Shaw."

Berkeley shook her head. "Annie can find someone else. You're coming with me." To be certain he obeyed, she took his outstretched hand. "Now," she said.

* * *

Grey saw light seeping from under the door as he approached his room. He couldn't remember leaving a lamp burning, but he supposed he must have. It didn't occur to him that he would find his suite occupied. Berkeley was curled in the large chair next to the fireplace. She had a shawl around her shoulders, and her boots were tucked neatly under the chair. Nat was lying on the sofa, one stockinged foot dangling awkwardly over the side, the other over the arm. Both of them were asleep.

He wondered which one of them had picked the lock, then decided it had been a joint effort, or at least that's the story they would tell. Neither one of them was likely to let the other take full responsibility. Shaking his head, wryly amused, Grey hunkered beside Berkeley's chair and placed one hand over her knee. He whispered her name several times before she finally responded.

"Oh," she said softly. "You're back."

She had a perfectly lovely, drowsy smile to welcome him, and for a moment he was transfixed. He didn't want to ask the obvious question. It came out anyway. "What are you doing here?"

Her sleepy eyes strayed to Nat's prostrate form. "Will you take him to his room? He wanted to wait up for you, to tell you himself, but he's too tired." She pressed back her own yawn by knuckling her mouth. "You won't make much sense of it now. I'll explain everything." She intercepted his skeptical glance. "I promise you'll understand."

"All right. Come with me. You can open his door."

Grey fished Nat's key out of his pocket and gave it to Berkeley. He scooped the boy up in his arms. Nat would have cringed if he had known he was being carried like a young child, but he slept through the walk down the hall and didn't wake even when he was stripped down to his drawers and tucked into bed. Grey watched Berkeley stroke Nat's fair head. She bent and kissed him, then turned back the lamp.

"You're like a mother to him," Grey said when they had stepped out of the room. "He calls you Miss Shaw, but he thinks of you as his mother."

"I know." She glanced at him sideways. "You don't find that objectionable?"

"No. Why?"

"It rather makes him your responsibility as well."

"I accepted that the day you brought him here." Grey opened the door to his room for her and ushered her inside. "He could be our son, you know. His hair. The shape of his face. They're both like yours. He has my eyes, though."

"And your cleverness." She turned on him suddenly, her expression earnest. Her eyes shone, and there was a knot in her throat that gave her voice a vaguely desperate quality. "Can you love him, Grey? As if he were your own? Would you be able to forgive him if he'd done something that could—"

"Berkeley." Grey took her wrists. "What is this? What's wrong? Here, sit down." He drew her over to the sofa. "Do you want something to drink?"

She shook her head as she sat. Her hands slipped out of his, and she stared at them after they came to rest in her lap. "Could you forgive me?"

He touched her chin and raised her face. "I think you'd better explain yourself."

"Nat and I," she began slowly, "we've placed you in danger. Someone's found out about you and Graham Denison." She saw that Grey's features were not cleared in the least by this information. "The man you killed, Grey. Others know now."

Grey's hand dropped away from her face. He slowly let out the breath he'd been holding. Berkeley was quite sincere about what she was saying, but Grey did not accept her alarm. "Who?" he asked calmly. "Who knows?"

"Decker and Colin Thorne."

"I see." Though of course he didn't. "And they would be exactly who?"

Berkeley touched the earring pendant at her throat. She fingered the dangling raindrop of pure gold. "They would be the ones who gave me this earring. They paid for my father and me to come to San Francisco. We were supposed to find Graham Denison for them, but their faith and money was misplaced with us. It was all a hoax on my father's part." Her eyes fell away from his. "No," she said quietly. "That's not entirely true. I was there, helping him carry it out. It was as much my fault that we ended up here as Anderson's."

Grey felt a tightening in his chest. Here were the things she had been unwilling to tell him a week ago and now, on the eve of their wedding, she was revealing them, not because she wanted to, Grey realized, but because she believed she had no choice. "Go on," he heard himself say. It was odd that he should say that, he thought. What he had wanted to do was stop her. "Tell me about the hoax."

"I don't know how my... my father first learned about the Thornes. He was very good at finding people who thought they needed him. He never left much to chance. He knew more about Colin and Decker Thorne than they could possibly have imagined, and he knew all of it before we were ever invited to their home in Boston. That's what we did, you see. Made ourselves useful to people, convinced them we could help with some particular task. My father's special talent was making it seem as if it were entirely their idea. My very special talent was..." Her voice trailed off. She looked away, her smile mocking and sad. "Well, you know what it was even if you don't quite accept it."

"No," Grey said. "I'm not sure that I do." He stood and went to his sideboard. He had a need for a drink even if Berkeley didn't. He poured himself half a tumbler of whiskey. "What exactly is it that you did for people?"

Berkeley's hands turned over helplessly, almost as if she were at a loss to explain it herself. "Find things, I suppose. That's what most of the work was. Lost family treasures. Missing documents. I authenticated antiques and approved the worth of certain pieces of jewelry. Occasionally I was asked to find a person."

"And how often did you rely on your talent?" Grey asked. "And how often was the outcome determined by Anderson's research?"

Berkeley shrugged. "I can't really say. He never completely trusted me, but he was more than a bit afraid not to. It was just as well he left so little to chance. I didn't like helping him, and he knew it. Mother was the one who told him I had the gift, but he didn't know if he could believe her. It was a dying confession. It made him doubt her. Still, she was able to extract a promise from him not to abandon me."

"So he didn't."

"No," she said on a thread of sound. "He kept me very close."

Grey studied her profile. Anxiety had made her complexion pale. When she brushed back a corn silk strand of hair he saw a faint throbbing in her temple. His eyes moved to her jaw. The line of it was rigid as she clenched her teeth. "What else do I need to know, Berkeley?"

She started a little as his voice drew her back to the present. "Colin and Decker Thorne are brothers," she said. "There's also a third brother, the youngest one. Greydon. They were all separated in London as children, after their parents were murdered, when Greydon was a mere infant. The only clue to his identity is an earring almost identical to the one around my neck. This is a replica that Colin commissioned. The real pair date back to Queen Elizabeth's coronation." She saw his skepticism. "It's true. The earrings now are in Boston with Decker's wife. You may have even heard of her. Jonna Remington."

Grey lowered his tumbler. "Remington Shipping? That Remington?"

Berkeley nodded. "She's the one who first contacted my father. She wanted to help her husband and Colin find Greydon. Anderson Shaw had become known to her, but you musn't think it was serendipitous. My father had been looking for a way to California. He really did have it in his mind that he could become a wealthy man out here. What he required was a sponsor."

"The Thornes."

"Exactly. We made a good living from our work. People could be very generous when we were successful in recovering an object or pointing out a fraud. My father, however, had a difficult time holding on to our money. He gambled much of it away."
What he didn't drink. What he didn't give to whores.
"There was never enough to suit him. Certainly not enough to buy two passages to California."

Grey sat in the wing chair. He leaned forward, forearms resting on his knees, and rolled the tumbler between his palms. "So he convinced them to hire you to find Greydon."

"Almost," she said. "The last person known to be in possession of the earring—the real one—was Graham Denison. Decker didn't know about the earring until Graham disappeared. It turned up in the Remington mansion shortly after Graham visited there."

"So Decker and Graham knew each other."

"Yes."

"But Graham's not the brother."

"No one knows. That's what finding Graham would have helped to determine. He could have explained his connection to the earring."

Grey was quiet. He stared at the tumbler of whiskey. The slight trembling in his hands caused a ripple across the surface of the amber liquid. "If you had found him," he said slowly. "If I hadn't killed him."

"Yes." Berkeley stood long enough to cross to Grey's side. She knelt in front of him and carefully lifted the tumbler and set it aside. She folded her hands around his. "I didn't want to come here," she said. "From the beginning I tried to tell Anderson we shouldn't use the Thornes. I knew it before we met them and... and afterward I was certain. They're not the sort of men you can cross and expect nothing to come of it."

"Yet you fell in with your father's plan."

"It wasn't so simple as saying no to him. You don't know how he was. And you don't understand about my gift. I've explained before that I'm not entirely in control of it. When I met the Thornes and realized how dangerous it would be to make enemies of them, I thought I could manage to get us out of it. But the earrings... they were very powerful. Holding them was like wearing Ivory's gown. I couldn't seem to help what I said. I couldn't pretend I didn't feel anything, and I couldn't lie. I told them what I knew: Graham Denison was dead. It was my... it was my father who told them what else I tried to say before I fainted. He's the one who said we would find the proof in San Francisco."

"Then you didn't really expect to find Mr. Denison here."

Berkeley shook her head. "I didn't expect to find him
anywhere.
I certainly didn't expect to find his killer here."

Grey slipped his hands out of hers and leaned back in his chair. He sighed heavily. "I
do
wish you'd stop saying that."

"I wish I had never told you. That's how Nat found out. Not because I said anything to him," she added quickly, "but because he overheard me telling you."

"God," Grey said under his breath. "What a mess." He rubbed the back of his stiffening neck. "You may as well tell me the rest of it."

"I wrote to Decker Thorne quite some time ago and informed him of Mr. Denison's death. Of course I could offer no proof and I didn't want to bring your name into it—"

"Thank you," he said dryly.

"So I simply restated what I knew to be true: the search for Greydon Thorne had reached an impasse. Something about my correspondence, perhaps the brevity of it, must have aroused their suspicions. Apparently they're here looking for the earring. I know it's worth a great deal, but it's not one of the heirloom pieces. Colin Thorne had it made with the intent of exposing me as a fraud. I knew it was a fake as soon as I held it. I thought I'd earned this one."