Secrets of the Lost Summer (37 page)

Olivia knelt on the opposite side of the well, wishing she’d brought work gloves. She dug in, and in a matter of minutes, she and Dylan had uncovered the top section of the well’s stone-lined interior.

He looked across the opening at her. “I suppose you don’t want to stick your hand in there, either?”

“Nope. You’re the son of the treasure hunter. You go right ahead.”

With a grimace, he reached into the well, leaning forward as he lowered his arm past his elbow, deep into the dark muck.

“It’s a long shot that the jewels are still there,” Olivia said, suddenly wanting to dip her hand in there after all and see what she could find.

Thirty seconds later, Dylan lifted out a dented, rusted, filthy tin box. “It was embedded in the stones about ten inches into the well. I didn’t have to stick my arm in so damn deep.”

He took a breath and set the tin on the ground, then shook off some of the mud that had collected on his arm. Not that it did much good. Mud had splattered on his face and soaked into his jeans. Olivia knew she wasn’t in much better shape.

“It’s a biscuit tin,” she said, staying focused on their discovery. “British.”

Dylan managed to open the tin’s stiff, creaky lid.

Inside was a small package wrapped in dark oilskin. He lifted it out of the tin and set it on a path of dry ground, carefully unrolling the oilskin, exposing the remains of a royal-red velvet drawstring bag.

He handed the bag to Olivia. “You open it.”

“Dylan—”

“Go ahead. You’ve known Grace all your life.”

Olivia loosened the frayed gold drawstrings and emptied the contents onto the oilcloth.

Three rings and a necklace, perfect, caught the afternoon sun gleaming through the trees.

She sat back on her heels. “Grace knew the biscuit tin was in the well. Did she hide the jewels herself?”

“I imagine she did,” Dylan said.

“With Philip gone, with their baby gone, with no way to prove how she came by the jewels, with no way to clear Philip’s name, she left them here and never came back.” Olivia held back tears. “All these years, Dylan. She kept these secrets....”

“They were her secrets to keep. No one else’s.” He frowned down at the tin, his eyes narrowed. “Hold on.”

With the pads of two fingers, he lifted out a tiny metal replica of a sword that might have belonged to Porthos, Aramis or Athos, or one of the other swashbucklers on Grace’s bookshelves.

Dylan laughed. “I’ll be damned.”

Olivia shook her head in amazement. “Your father got here before we did.”

“Leave it to Duncan McCaffrey, treasure hunter.”

“Grace suspected he’d sneaked a copy of her book.”

Dylan held up the sword to the sunlight. “He must have done a little late-night reading about her life and times. Even if she doesn’t say she hid the jewels in the well, it’s the only intact structure out here. He’d have figured it out.”

Olivia carefully returned the jewels to the worn bag, then rolled them back up in the oilcloth and handed them back to Dylan. He placed them in the tin with the toy sword and got to his feet.

She brushed mud off her hands and stood. “You’re not going to put the tin back in the well, are you?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he started back through the woods with the tin. After a moment, Olivia followed him, found him standing on the rock where they’d found Grace with her copy of
The Scarlet Pimpernel.

More than seventy years ago, a teenage Grace Webster had come upon a swashbuckler of her own, out here on Carriage Hill Pond.

Olivia stood with her toes almost in the still, clear water. “You know what you have to do.”

He nodded. “Yeah. I do.”

She smiled past the twist of anxiety in her gut. “Nothing like having a private jet at your disposal if you’re smuggling a fortune in stolen jewels.”

He winked at her, and they walked back through the woods to the Quabbin gate. Olivia watched him climb into his expensive rented car. First Duncan McCaffrey, then Dylan McCaffrey. Their presence in Knights Bridge had changed her little hometown forever.

And me, too,
she thought, climbing into her beat-up Subaru.

She brushed mud off her hands and noticed a mosquito had followed her inside. She rolled down her window and ushered it back into the wilderness. She blew Dylan a kiss as she rolled up her window again.

The man she loved blew her a kiss back, then grinned and drove up their quiet one-lane road, off to finish the mission his grandfather had started so long ago.

Thirty

“I’
m not that wild about Beverly Hills,” Randy Frost told his older daughter; it was his first call to her since he and his wife of thirty-plus years had left for the airport. “We drove past where they filmed the opening to the
Beverly Hillbillies.
I feel a little like Jed Clampett myself. Next we’re having brunch at the Polo Lounge.”

“Sounds fun,” Olivia said as she put down her paintbrush in the back room, the last of her collection of cast-off tables and chairs almost finished. “How’s Mom?”

“Wondering why she didn’t run away from home at eighteen.”

Olivia laughed. “It’s like a second honeymoon.”

“It’s like a first honeymoon. We went to Cape Cod for the weekend for our first honeymoon. How are you, kid?”

“I’m on my way to England.” Olivia liked the confidence she heard in her voice. “Don’t tell Mom. I don’t want her to worry.”

“I’m not playing that game anymore, Liv. She worries about you so you don’t have to worry about yourself and blah, blah, blah. My head starts to spin. Go to damn London. I assume it’s got something to do with Dylan and those missing British jewels. Have a great time.”

“Where are you and Mom off to next?”

“Leaving Beverly Hills behind and starting our drive up the coastal highway. Your mother has a notebook of things for us to do. We’ll see you when we get back. How long will you be in London?”

“I don’t know,” Olivia said truthfully. She hadn’t thought past finding Dylan. “Jess and Mark say they can hold down the fort here.”

“Good. Your mother and I have flights back home in two weeks, but who knows.”

Randy Frost watched the faint worry in Louise’s eyes dissipate as she smiled from the plush chair in their room at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Noah Kendrick, Dylan’s friend, was taking good care of them. He was different, but Randy liked him. His wife stood and took his hand. “I’m glad I didn’t wait any longer for this trip.”

He grunted. “I wouldn’t have wanted you to make it as a widow.”

What he heard from her next was genuine laughter, not laced with anxiety, not faked just so he wouldn’t feel like a heel. The woman, he thought, was having the time of her life.

“This is all good,” he said. “The hotel, the scenery, everything. You’ve planned a hell of a trip, and we’re having a fine time for ourselves, but there’s only one thing in this world I want, Louise, and that’s to be with you.”

“Randy…”

He slung his arms around her and grinned. “I want to be the last dot on that damn page with you.”

Thirty-One

O
livia went through her carry-on bag twice to make sure she didn’t have any liquids she’d forgotten to put into a clear plastic bag, anything in general that might trigger closer scrutiny. Not that she was hiding anything, like stolen jewels. She just didn’t want to give herself any excuse to turn around and go back home to Knights Bridge. She had to act fast, before she could change her mind. She put her vial of calming herbal drops into a clear plastic bag and threw in some eyedrops and hand cream because she didn’t want it to look as if she might go crazy on the plane, not that the TSA workers would even notice. She made sure any liquids were under the three-ounce limit.

Dylan would come back to Knights Bridge, but it wouldn’t be the same if she didn’t do this. For her sake. On her own.

Jess saw her off, arriving at Carriage Hill in her truck. “You’re flying to London, alone,” she said, clearly keeping her shock at bay.

Olivia tossed her carry-on into the back of her car. “I’ve memorized the airport. I have my route planned. Logan’s big but I’ve been there enough times to pick up and drop off people.”

“I can drive you over there.”

“No. I have to do this myself. Start to finish.”

“You’re sure Dylan’s there and not back in San Diego?”

“Pretending we don’t exist? I’m sure, Jess.”

Her confidence in her own judgment and herself in general was back to full strength. She had time before things got busy at Carriage Hill. She would have to hire a staff. She wanted to take the risk. She wanted the freedom to do things.

To do things with Dylan, she amended.

She climbed in behind the wheel, started the car and waved to her sister.

She’d printed out her boarding pass at home. She arrived at Logan without incident, parked and got through airport security with no issues.

She had chosen a window seat, as close to the front of the plane as possible. She wanted to see the scenery—even if it was just clouds or darkness—and she wanted as quick an exit as she could manage without traveling first-class. She figured she would do what she could to prevent a panic attack.

Settling into her seat, pulling on her seat belt, she debated telling the flight attendant that she hadn’t flown in a while and didn’t like to fly at all, but she opted to keep her situation to herself.

A businessman sat next to her. He was, to her eye, the classic bored, experienced flyer. Perfect, she thought. He yawned and tore open his plastic-encased blanket. “Where you headed?” he asked her.

“To visit a friend just outside London. You?”

“A few days in London and then on to Switzerland.”

“Switzerland. I’d love to go to Switzerland one day.” Olivia thought she sounded like a twelve-year-old. Apparently so did he from the look he gave her. She smiled. “I’ve never flown overseas.”

“Ah.”

“I’ll be fine. I won’t freak out on you or anything.”

He laughed. “That’s good. Where you from?”

“A little town on the edge of the Quabbin Reservoir. Have you heard of Quabbin?”

“That’s where we get our water, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. It was built in the 1930s. Four towns…” She stopped herself. “I won’t talk the whole trip. Promise.”

“It’s okay. I fly so much, I forget what it’s like to be new to it. Nervous?”

“Excited,” she said. She pointed to her eyes. “I have a happy place I go to if I start to get nervous.”

“Where’s your happy place?”

“I’m in the woods, following a rock-strewn stream on a hot summer day. I’m barefoot, jumping from rock to rock.” She didn’t say that Dylan McCaffrey was with her.

“That’s a good happy place.”

“Do you have one?”

“I’ve never thought about it. I don’t think mine would be in the woods. I’d be on the golf course. Yeah, I like that.”

Olivia fell asleep after dinner. She wasn’t interested in movies or reading. She put on eye shades and her iPod, with the range of music she’d chosen to help her relax.

The big adventurer, she thought with a smile.

The flight was smooth and not as interminable as she’d expected, and soon the lights were on, orange juice, tea and scones were being served and then they were landing.

She’d figured out money and a taxi. She wasn’t going to rent a car and try to drive herself. She’d arranged to arrive early at a small hotel in the Mayfair section of London and checked in. She showered, changed and had breakfast, then walked to an address she had found in her own research on Philip Rankin.

She came to a small shop owned by a young clothing designer, Alexandra Rankin Hunt. Alexandra was at a frosted-glass counter. She was a slim, angular, attractive woman in her late twenties, the great-granddaughter of Lady Helena Ashworth and Philip Rankin, Grace Webster’s jewel thief.

Alexandra greeted Olivia with a warm smile. “You’re Olivia Frost.” She noted Olivia’s surprise. “Dylan McCaffrey was here earlier. He’s gone to see my mother and my grandmother. I’ll take you.”

“I don’t want to inconvenience you.”

“You aren’t. Dylan said to expect you, and I offered. Please. No arguing. I’m delighted to meet you.”

Dylan said to expect her? The man did have his nerve, Olivia thought, amused and, she admitted, pleased. He’d known she’d get on a plane and come to London. No one had told him.

She drove with Alexandra out a twisting, scenic road to a graceful brick house in the green and scenic countryside. Alexandra—the granddaughter of Duncan McCaffrey’s half-sister—led the way to the back of the house and a flower garden, one of the most beautiful gardens Olivia had ever seen. Dylan was there with two older women, Philippa Rankin Hunt and her daughter, Elizabeth.

Philippa remembered her father as a fighter pilot and hero. When the war started, she went to live with the Ashworths, her mother’s family, although she never got along well with her uncle Charles. Olivia couldn’t guess what Philip Rankin had planned for, hoped for all those years ago, but he must have wondered if he’d die in the war. Had he dreamed of bringing Grace to England? Of moving with his small daughter to New England?

“I was only three, but I can remember my father coming home from America. My aunt always said he was a different man. I realize now that he wasn’t sad.” Philippa smiled, tears shining in her deep blue eyes. “He was in love.”

Olivia saw Dylan withdraw a new, red velvet bag from his jacket and set it on a small table on the veranda, next to a silver tea service. Lady Helena had inherited the Ashworth jewels from her grandmother. They were meant for her daughter. Philip had known that, and in whatever grip of grief and anger he’d been in that September of 1938, he’d done what he could to make it happen.

The rest was for Philippa Rankin Hunt and her daughter and granddaughter to sort out.

After tea and a pleasant visit, Dylan walked around to the front of the house with Olivia. He, of course, had rented a shiny, expensive car. He grinned at her. “I see, despite all your careful planning, you don’t have a way back to London.”

“I figured I’d wing it and call a cab if it came to it.”

“It’d cost you a fortune. Where are you staying?”

“A little hotel. It’s charming. I read reviews on the internet.”

“Of course you did.”

“Where are you staying, Buckingham Palace?”

“That’s Noah. I don’t have a place for tonight. I didn’t plan that far ahead.”

“I didn’t plan past tomorrow.” She grinned at him. “I figure I’m due for an adventure.”

“Good. Let’s see what happens.”

The next morning Dylan spirited Olivia away to a cottage on the Cornish coast that Noah had found for them. “It’s perfect,” she said, her eyes shining with excitement.

“Olivia…” Dylan looked at her, amazed at how much his life had changed. “We’re going to have such a life together.”

Her breath caught. He thought she said his name but couldn’t be sure.

“Noah’s fine. He knows he doesn’t need me all the time anymore, and he knows I’ll slay any dragons he needs me to slay. We’ve got some venture capital projects in mind. In the meantime, I want to paint old furniture, make basil soap, coach small-town hockey and try my hand at adventure travel.”

“You’d be happy in Knights Bridge?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Yes. I’ve started talking to Mark about how you and I could combine our two properties—” He stopped, angling her a look as he noticed her smile. “What?”

“I’ve talked to Mark, too.”

“Imagine that. I figure Knights Bridge has been waiting for the better part of a century for me to show up and just didn’t know it.”

“Dylan…I’d move to San Diego or England or anywhere else to be with you.”

“I know you would.”

“That confident, are you?” She took his hand. “When I saw you standing in the freezing rain with Buster that night…”

“I thought he was going to chew my leg off. Where is Buster?”

“He’s staying with Jess. Dylan—”

He squeezed her hand. “Me first. I love you, Olivia. I love you for who you are, and I belong with you, wherever you are.”

“That’s what I was going to say.” She smiled. “I’m a little jet-lagged, but let me try. I love you, Dylan. I love you for who you are, and I belong with you, wherever you are.”

He lifted her off her feet. “Do you know where you are now?”

“England.”

“Olivia…”

She threw back her head, laughing, teasing him. “I’m in your arms, right where I’ll always want to be.”