The Reef (21 page)

“Why's easy. He saw you had potential, and he could use it.” He recognized the look on her face and gave her a quick shake. “He wouldn't have opened a door if he hadn't been sure you could have done it for yourself. He doesn't do favors, Red. You got where you are because you're smart and went after what you wanted.”

“Maybe. But that doesn't change the fact that he's been there, behind the scenes.”

“No, it doesn't.” His grip had gentled. He hadn't forgotten he was holding her. It crossed his mind that she was upset enough that she might not freeze if he drew her to him. Instead, he ran his hands from her shoulders to her wrists. And let her go. “There's something else to consider.”

“What?” Distracted, she fought off a shiver. That small, careless gesture had been so familiar.

“If he knew you were aboard the
Nomad,
he knows you left. By now, he knows you've teamed up with me again, and where we're going.”

She was cold now, icily so. “What are we going to do about it?”

“We're going to beat him.”

“How?” She turned away again, clamped her hands on the wet rail. “He has the resources, the contacts, the means.” And he would, she realized as her insides quaked, use her to get to Matthew. “Our best hope is to throw him off track. If I left, went back to the
Nomad,
or someplace, anyplace else, he might follow my trail. I could even leak something about your talking my parents into a wild-goose chase toward Anguilla, or Martinique.” She spun back. “I could lead him away.”

“No. We stick together.”

“It only makes sense, Matthew. If he respects me professionally, wouldn't he believe that if I had no interest in this hunt, there wasn't anything to it? He'd be more likely to leave you alone.”

“We stick together,” he repeated. “And we beat him together. Face it, Tate, we need each other.” He took her arm and pulled her with him.

“Where are you going?”

“We're going to the bridge. There's something I want to show you.”

“We need to tell the others about this. I should have told them before.” She clattered up the short flight of stairs. “Everyone has a right to input, to the decision.”

“The decision's made.”

“You're not in charge here, Lassiter.”

He kicked the door shut behind him, grabbed a jacket off a hook. “If you think anyone's going to vote that you go off on your own, you're not as smart as you look. Put this on.” He tossed the jacket at her. “You're shivering.”

“I'm angry,” she corrected, but jammed her arms into the windbreaker. “I'm not going to let VanDyke use me to hurt you.”

He stopped in the process of pouring the brandy he'd taken from a cupboard. “I wouldn't think that would bother you.”

She angled her chin. “I don't mind seeing you hurt, but I'd prefer doing it myself, not as someone's tool.”

His lips curved. He brought her a stubby glass with two fingers of brandy. “You know, Red, you always did look
terrific wet, especially when you were indignant on top of it. The way you are now.” He clinked his glass to hers. “I know you'd like to slice me up and use me for chum. Just like I know you'll wait until the job's done.”

“I wouldn't use you for chum, Lassiter.” With a smile, she sipped the brandy. “I have too much respect for fish.”

He laughed, and threw her off balance by giving her wet braid a quick, friendly tug. “You know what you have, Tate, besides a good brain, a fierce sense of loyalty and a stubborn chin?”

She moved her shoulders and walked over to stand at the wheel and watch the rain.

“Integrity,” he murmured. “It flatters you.”

Closing her eyes, she fought off a wave of emotion. He still had a way of sneaking past any defense and seducing the heart of her. “It sounds as though you're flattering me, Matthew.” Steadying, she turned to face him again. “Why?”

“Just calling it as I see it, Tate. And wondering if, with all those other fine virtues, you've managed to hang on to that shining sense of curiosity and empathy that made you special.”

“I was never special to you.”

“Yes, you were.” He shrugged again to cover the painful truth. “If you hadn't been, you wouldn't have left Saint Kitts a virgin.”

Color rose in her cheeks like flags of war. “Why, you arrogant, conceited bastard.”

“Facts are facts,” he countered, pleased that he'd distracted her from her worry over VanDyke. Setting his brandy aside, he crouched to open a storage compartment under a padded bench. “Stay put,” he said mildly when she headed for the door. “You'll want to see this. And believe me . . .” Still crouched, he glanced over his shoulder at her. “I'm not interested in seducing you. At least not right now.”

Tate's fingers tightened on the glass she'd neglected to set down. It was a pity, she thought, that there were only a few drops left in it. Not enough to make an impression if she poured them over his head.

“Lassiter, you've got as much chance of seducing me as a rabid skunk does of becoming my favored pet. And there's nothing you could have that I want to see.”

“A few pages of Angelique Maunoir's diary.”

It stopped her in her tracks, her hand on the door. “Angelique Maunoir. Angelique's Curse.”

“VanDyke has the original diary. He tracked it down almost twenty years ago and had it translated.” Matthew took a small metal box from the compartment and straightened. “I heard him tell my father he traced the descendants of Angelique's maid. Most of them were in Brittany. That's where the legend started. It was VanDyke's father who told him about it. Import-export, shipping, lots of tales and legends get passed around in those types of industries. And they had a personal interest as they were supposed to be some distant relations to Angelique's father-in-law. That's why VanDyke considers the amulet his.”

Though he realized she was staring at the box, Matthew sat, set it in his lap. “VanDyke liked the idea of being descended from a count, even one, or maybe especially one, with an unsavory reputation. The way VanDyke told it, the count got the amulet back. He had to kill the maid to do it, but she was only a maid. He still had it when he died, quite miserably, I imagine, of syphilis a year later.”

Tate moistened her lips. She didn't want to be fascinated. “If you knew all this, why didn't you tell us before?”

“Some I knew, some I didn't. My father talked to Buck, and Buck kept most of it to himself. He kept most of my father's papers to himself, too. I didn't come across them until a couple of years ago when he was in rehab and I was shoveling out the trailer. The whole business spooked him.”

Matthew watched her as he tapped a finger on the box. “See the problem was VanDyke told my father too much. Arrogance made him careless. I imagine he thought he was close to finding the amulet, and he wanted to gloat. He told my father how he'd traced the amulet through the count's family. Several of whom died young and violently.
Those who lived suffered poverty. The amulet was sold, began its journey and developed its reputation.”

“How did your father copy pages of the diary?”

“According to his journal, he was worried about VanDyke. He suspected a double-cross, or worse, and decided to do some research on his own. He had a chance when winter set in and they had to take a break from diving. He used the time to work on his own. That's when he must have come across the
Isabella.
His notes were cryptic after that. Maybe he was worried VanDyke would find them.”

The old frustration came back, rough around his heart. “It's mostly speculation, Tate. I was a kid, there was a lot he didn't tell me. Shit, he didn't tell me anything. Putting it together is like trying to put him together. And I'm not even sure I knew who he was.”

“Matthew.” Her voice was gentle now. Drawn, she went to sit beside him, lay a hand over his. “You were only a boy. You can't blame yourself for not having a clear picture.”

He stared at their hands, hers narrow and white, his beneath it big, scarred and rough. That, he supposed, illustrated the difference between them as well as anything could.

“I didn't know what he was planning. I guess I knew something was going on. I know I didn't want him to go down with VanDyke that day. I'd heard them going at each other the night before. I asked him not to dive, or at least to let me go with him. He just laughed it off.”

He shook off the memory. “But that doesn't answer your question. The best I can piece together is that my father got into VanDyke's cabin and searched it. He found the diary and copied down the relevant pages. It couldn't have been long before he died, because that's part of what they were arguing about. The diary, the amulet.”

“Why are you telling me this, Matthew? Why go back over something so painful that can't be changed?”

“Because I know you won't stay because I tell you to.”

She withdrew her hand. “So it's a play on my sympathies.”

“It's background. Scientists need background, facts and theories, right? I know you don't believe we'll find the
Isabella.”
His gaze held hers, measuring. “You're not convinced we'll ever find the amulet, or, if we do, that it's anything but an interesting and valuable piece of antique jewelry.”

“All right, that's true. Nothing you've told me convinces me otherwise. I understand why you need to believe, but it doesn't change the facts.”

“But we're not hunting facts, Tate.” He opened the box and handed her papers covered with cramped, hurried writing. “I don't think you've forgotten that. If you have, maybe this will remind you.”

October 9, 1553

In the morning they will kill me. I have only one night left on earth, and spend it alone. They have taken even my dear Colette from me. Though she went weeping, it is for the best. Not even her prayers, as pure and selfless as they are, can aid me now, and she would have suffered needlessly in this cell, waiting for dawn. Companionship. I have already learned to live without it. With Etienne's death six long weeks ago, I lost not only my dearest companion, my love, my joy, but also my protector.

They say I poisoned him, plying him with one of my witch brews. What fools they are. I would have given my life for his. Indeed, I am doing so. His illness was deep within, and beyond my powers to cure. So quickly it came on him, so violently, the fever, the pain. No potion, no prayer I devised could halt his death. And I as his wife am condemned. I, who once treated the ills and suffering of the village, am reviled as a murderess. And a witch. Those whose fevers I cooled, whose pains I eased have turned against me, shouting for my death like beasts howling at the moon.

It is the count who leads them. Etienne's father who hates and desires me. Does he watch from his castle window as they build the pyre that will be my
deathbed? I'm sure he does with his greedy eyes glinting and his thin, wicked fingers twisted in prayer. Though I will burn tomorrow, he will burn for eternity. A small but useful revenge.

If I had succumbed to him, if I had betrayed my love even after his death and gone to the bed of Etienne's father, perhaps I would live. So he promised me. I have faced the tortures of this damnable Christian court with more joy than that.

I hear my jailers laughing. They are drunk with the excitement of tomorrow. But they do not laugh when they come into my cell. Their eyes are wide and frightened as they fork their fingers in the sign against witchcraft. Such fools to believe that such a small, pitiful gesture could stop true power.

They have cut my hair. Etienne often called it his angel fire and ran his fingers through its length. It was my vanity, and even that is stripped from me. My flesh is wasting on my bones from sickness, scarred from their relentless tortures. For this one night, they will leave me in peace. That is their mistake.

However weak my body now, my heart grows stronger. I will be with Etienne soon. And that is comfort. I no longer weep at the thought of leaving a world that has become cruel, that uses God's name to torture and condemn and murder. I will face the flames, and I swear on Etienne's soul that I will not cry out for mercy from the merciless or call out to the God they use to destroy me.

Colette has smuggled the amulet to me. They will find it and steal it, of course. But for tonight I wear it around my neck, the heavy gold chain, its bright tear-shaped ruby framed in more gold and etched with Etienne's name and mine, studded with more rubies and diamonds. Blood and tears. I close my hand around it and feel Etienne close to me, see his face.

And with it, I curse the fates that killed us, that will kill the child only I and Colette know stirs
within me. A child who will never know life, with its pleasures and its pains.

For Etienne and our child I gather what strength I have, I call on whatever forces listen, loose whatever power I hold. May those who condemn me suffer as we have suffered. May those who would take from me all that I value never know joy. I curse whoever wrests this amulet from me, this last earthly link between myself and my love. I pray to all the forces of heaven and hell that he who takes this, Etienne's last gift to me, know strife and pain and tragedy. He who seeks to profit will only lose what is most precious, most dear. My legacy to my murderers and those who follow them is generations of grief.

Tomorrow they burn me as a witch. I pray they are right, and my powers, like my love, are enduring.

Angelique Maunoir

Tate couldn't speak for a moment. She handed Matthew back the papers and rose to go to the window. The rain had slowed, nearly stopped without her being aware.

“She was so alone,” Tate murmured. “How cruel for her to be in that cell knowing she would die so horribly in the morning. Still grieving for the man she loved, not being able to feel joy for the child she carried. No wonder she prayed for retribution.”