Always and Forever (40 page)

"So if the doctor is willing to falsify records perhaps he got some monetary compensation. Earl or not, we're still talking about murder," Quinn deduced which had Cole immediately following that thought with one of his own.

"Money exchanged hands, makes sense, so how eager was our doctor for extra cash? Did he only write up the false report or was he involved in the murder somehow?"

"Well, Byron may have wanted, and even planned, to kill Morgan but I don't think he would have killed her himself. He was the Earl, willing to kill Morgan because she was a commoner and beneath his family, so he's unlikely to dirty his own hands with her murder for the same reason," Nick said.

"Yeah, and who better to get close to the distraught woman then the man tending her husband?" Gabriel added.

"Son of a bitch," Nick cursed.

"Makes sense though," Charles finished.

"Yeah, but it doesn't answer why Quinn in the future? The doctor has no more motive to come for Quinn than Bryon," Gabriel interjected.

"What is Derek's involvement then? Is he really just looking for the treasure?" Charles asked as he lifted his pint.

"Well, for someone who's stayed off the radar for as long as he has, he certainly isn't being very stealthy now in his movements," Cole offered which had a few heads turning to him before Quinn added, "That's actually a really good point. Regardless of how he's obtained the information to dig where he is, he's being unusually public with his movements which is so not like him."

Gabriel and Cole regarded each other from across the table before Gabriel said, "Unless he
wants
to get our attention."

Quinn turned to Gabriel, "Meaning?"

"He's been to the Foundation a few times, each time he's requested a meeting with me, but I've blown him off. At first, I wasn't entirely sure I could be alone with him and not kill him but clearly he has something on his mind."

Nick lifted his scotch to his lips before he grinned, "Only one way to find out what that something is."

Later in the day, they all retired to Whispering Winds but made plans in the morning to head to London. Gabriel was with Nick, Cole and Charles in Nick's solar making arrangements but Quinn wanted a break from it all so decided to walk around the castle. Nick had shown her many of the treasures that Archer, Nickie and Thaddeus had left for her, wooden figures, notes, hand-drawn pictures. He gave them to her, had them stored in an acid-free box. She intended to display them in her home so she could look upon them whenever she wanted to feel closer to Archer and the others. She would always have that link to the past, to them, and that made her very happy.

Charles' comment was still floating in the back of Quinn's mind because she too believed that Archer and Gabriel were the link: the reason for both Morgan and her own death but why? That kind of personal attack suggested one of passion so, if Archer and Gabriel really were the targets, it further supported the assumption that Bryon and the doctor were not the common link. Jenkins, why did that name sound familiar to her? She knew she had heard it before but she was drawing a blank as to where.

She moved through the castle and made her way up to the circular stone room, the room she had yet to enter since she returned to her time. As soon as she stepped over the threshold, she felt Archer everywhere. Tears sprang to her eyes as she thought of the life he was forced to live, the one without her, the one with no hopes of ever finding her again. How he managed to survive it, she didn't know, didn't think she could have in his place. Of course, he did have Nickie and loving and caring for him would have helped to ease his broken heart. Unlike Gabriel who was forced to watch not only her death but that of their unborn child.

She walked over to the shutters and pushed them open to see the bustling town in the distance, the view was so different from the one she remembered, but it was a testament to the man and his family that the area was now thriving and not the nearly forgotten place it had been. It was while looking out at the landscape that she noticed the culvert that was directing the river away from the now expanded town. How long ago had that been built? With the way the river was being forced to flow it was heading in the direction of where the graveyard had once been. Curious about that, she made her way to Nick's solar and knocked before entering. The men were all sitting near the fire but turned to her and stood when she entered.

"Sorry to interrupt."

"You're not at all. What do you need?" Nick asked helpfully.

"The culvert, how long has that been there?"

"Early 1900s, why?"

"The river now flows toward where I believe Morgan's grave had been but when I was there I didn't see the river."

Nick was silent a minute before he walked over to his desk and pulled open a drawer.

"No, when the culvert was built it created a sort of subterranean river and that whole section of land can't be built on since the river now flows under it which is why the sheep graze there. If there were graves there, they would have had to move them to the graveyard on the other side of town but I've been to that graveyard and Morgan's grave is not there."

He sat at his desk as he scanned through a large black journal until he found what he was looking for. He looked up at Quinn.

"I think I found her."

The graveyard consisted of three graves and was tucked in the woods in the place where Quinn and Archer had kissed for the very first time. The iron fence that surrounded the headstones was ornate and very old. Morgan's grave was there but it was the other two graves that had Quinn falling to her knees. Archer's stone was worn from the ages but she could still read it, saw his date of death and felt the sob that clogged her throat. Her fingers reached out and traced his name as tears rolled down her cheeks. He died almost fifty years after she had left: had spent half a century living without her. She lowered her head as her tears fell harder.

"I love you," she whispered for only Archer to hear before she looked to the other stone that rested next to his, Nickie. He, too, lived to be an old man. What had his life been like? She knew she was ready now, looking upon the markers of their deaths, to read about how they had lived.

"Quinn?" Gabriel's soft voice pulled her from her sorrow. He was standing there, leaning against a shovel, watching her with overly bright eyes.

"Would you like me?" he gestured to Morgan's grave.

She stood and looked at the three graves, the family that had been torn apart, resting forever in peace side by side. "No. Let's leave it. A piece of me is with them, resting forever in this magical place. I don't need the proof that it was real. In my heart, I know that it was."

Gabriel held out his hand to her and, with one last look at Archer's grave, she reached for it and walked silently away.

Later, as they sat together for dinner, Nick watched Quinn from across the table. "After you left earlier, I read through some of their journals. There is a marker in the family crypt for Archer but he was very specific about where he wanted his body to be buried. Nickie, at the time of his death, requested to be buried with his father. His time as Earl saw a lot of prosperity so Nickie stipulated that should a time arise when the graveyard where Morgan was buried should ever need to be moved, that she should be buried with Archer and him."

Quinn's voice was very soft when she replied, "Nickie, didn't know about the treasure, didn't know that I would have sought it out but seeing them together, in that place, it's right." She wiped the tears from her cheeks as she rose from the table. "Excuse me."

She left the room and headed to the library where she located the book she had seen before,
Scarcliff, the legacy
, and took it to the circular room to read. Very little was written about his father Bryon, the bastard, but when she flipped the page there he was, Archer Scarcliff. She studied his face for almost an hour while losing herself in her memories and then she began to read. It detailed what she already knew of his life, his birth, his parents, his schooling, his marriage to Morgan O'Cuinn -- who later died in childbirth -- his son Nicholas Archer Scarcliff who was born in 1699. It mentioned Thaddeus Cornwell and how the two were renaissance men and invested their money when it was considered so very bourgeois to do so and how Archer's unorthodox, but financially sound, investments turned his already impressive total worth into that of one of the richest men in England. His sisters had each married in 1706, had both found love matches. Nickie attended University and later, during a London Season, met and married a Duke's daughter, Lady Sofia Bartholomew. They had three children, two boys and a girl, and lived happily into their seventies. Tears were falling down Quinn's face for though she was so happy that Nickie had a wonderful life, the idea that the little boy she had known was gone and had been for so very long, was very painful. It was one particular paragraph that Quinn found herself reading over and over again.

Not much is known about Lord Archer Scarcliff's wife, Morgan O'Cuinn. After she died he never remarried and it's
said he carried a miniature of her his whole life. When he died, at the age of 82, it is rumored that her name,
Quinn, was the last word to pass his lips.

Quinn closed the book and held it to her heart as she remembered and mourned.

The following morning the group piled into Nick's Mercedes SUV and made their way to London. Quinn was thankful that the others were with them since she wasn't in the mood to chat.

Her heart was still very tender after yesterday, after coming to terms with the fact that the man she fell in love with not even a year ago was gone, had lived out the rest of his life alone and in death it was her name he spoke with his dying breath. God, she missed him and she knew he would always be with her now, but knowing that he had suffered so much and would again, that in the future he would lose her again, was enough to enrage her.

As she thought of this, she remembered Maude from the woods. Who exactly was she and how the hell had she sent Quinn back to Archer and Gabriel back to her? They really needed to find her.

"Nick?" she called from her spot in the back.

"Yes."

"Have you had any luck locating Maude?"

"Not yet, no."

Quinn turned her attention to Gabriel who was watching her from his seat next to Nick. She knew he had chosen shotgun to give her time to think and grieve. She held his gaze and mouthed, "I love you."

His smile in response, the one that affected every one of his features, would stay with her always.

Derek's flat was located in a very posh high rise, so posh that the doorman was going to bar their entrance until he saw Nick and Gabriel pulling up the rear and quickly escorted them to the front desk located in the lofty foyer of marble and crystal.

"How may I help you?" A man dressed in a gray uniform asked from his spot behind the marble desk.

"We're here to see Derek Blake," Nick said in a smooth voice.

"Let me check to see if Mr. Blake is available."

Nick leaned forward and all pretense of civility faded from his tone. "He's here. Tell him we aren't leaving until we speak to him."