Jude Deveraux (31 page)

For a
moment Jared looked as though he was going to get angry, then he grinned. 'Just
so we understand each other,' he said. He started to say more, but his cell
phone rang.

Eden
grimaced. Was it his mother or his boss? Either way, it wouldn't be good for
her.

As
Jared listened to the person on the other end, his face changed. His eyes
widened and the color drained from his face. From the way he wouldn't look at
Eden, she knew that it was something bad and that it concerned her.

'Okay,'
he said into the phone. 'I'll do what I can.' He closed the case then took a
step toward her. 'Eden,' he said softly, and his tone scared her.

Before
he could reach her, she knew that whatever was wrong concerned her daughter.
She stood up and put her hands in front of her face, as though to ward off an
attack. 'No,' she whispered, backing up.

Jared
took her hands in his. The candle had burned out, but there was enough light in
the little building that she could see his face. Whatever he was about to tell
her, she didn't want to hear. 'Eden,' he whispered, holding her hands tightly.
'We'll solve this. I promise. On my life, I swear that we'll solve this.'

She
backed away from him until she was against the wall. She tried to pull her
hands from his, but couldn't. 'No, no, no' was all she could say.

In the
next second, Jared unlocked the door. A man was silhouetted in the daylight,
and he didn't see Eden in the dark interior. 'McBride! Did  
you   hear?  They   took   the  
whining   brat. Palmer's   pregnant  
daughter   has   been   kidnapped!'

In the
next second, Eden fainted and Jared caught her.

Braddon
Granville rolled out of the luxurious bed and pulled on his trousers. A
beautifully manicured hand touched his shoulder.

'Don't
leave yet, darling,' said a soft, sultry voice. 'I'd like some more, please.'

'Sorry,'
Brad said, 'but I'm afraid that's all I have today. Age does that to a man.'

Katlyn
fell back against sheets of 1600-count cotton. 'Age? What do
you
know
about age? Now, Charley, he knows about age.'

'You
married him, dear,' Brad said matter-of-factly.

'Please,
no morality lectures today. It's been weeks since I saw you, so I don't want to
fight. What have you been doing? Other than the pretty heiress who just moved
into town, that is.'

'You do
keep up, don't you?'

'With
my hometown? Of course. Hate always makes one curious.'

Brad
rolled his eyes as he picked up his shirt. 'Okay, so Arundel snubbed you. What
can I say? You were born with the wrong name and in the wrong house. You
weren't invited to
the
parties when you were growing up there. And, no,
your beauty wasn't enough to get you inside, but you've made up the deficit,
haven't you?'

Katlyn
laughed as she reached for a cigarette from the gold box on the bedside table.
She knew that Brad  hated  for her  to  smoke,  but
today she didn't care. She knew that she was losing him, and even though she
pretended that it didn't hurt, it did. She had met him three years ago, when he
was in New York for some convention in one of her husband's hotels. She'd been
married to Charley Dunkirk for seven years, and she'd never been unfaithful to
him. She didn't want Charley's greedy children to have any reason to try to
take away the money after Charley died. And she didn't want to give her husband
any reason not to leave her masses of it. He'd already lived five years longer
than any doctor predicted when she saw Brad in a crowd of conventioning
lawyers.

Instantly,
she'd known who he was. He was a lot older than she was — well, less 'lot' than
Katlyn admitted to — and she'd seen him often in Arundel, where she'd grown up.
But he'd been one of
those
people, the privileged families, 'founding
families' they liked to call themselves. Whatever the name, they were the ones
who owned the town, and they were as impenetrable as a lead box. It hadn't
mattered that little Susie Edwards had been the prettiest girl that town had
produced in a century. She won every beauty contest there was — except Miss
Arundel, of course. For that you had to have a pedigree, something that Susie
didn't have. She didn't know her ancestors past her parents, and based on them,
she didn't want to know them.

When
she was eighteen, filled with anger and a deep sense of betrayal, she left
Arundel and went to L.A., and then to New York. She got a job as a secretary to
a man who was in an office two floors below Charley Dunkirk, an old and
immensely wealthy man who was on his fourth wife. It had taken some doing and
she suspected that Charley had seen through all her machinations, but she got
him to notice her. But when he did, she would have nothing to do with him. She
refused to have sex with him unless he married her. To a man used to having
everything he wanted, Susie — by now renamed Katlyn — was a novelty.
Eventually, he divorced his wife and married her, and Katlyn had kept her end
of the bargain by being faithful to an old man who was nearly impotent.

But
then she'd seen Brad across a room and knew that she had to have him. Not
because she wanted him, but because he was from Arundel, and she'd always
wanted what she couldn't have. Since Brad was a widower, it had been easy to
seduce him. Afterward, when he'd called her 'Susie' and let her know he knew
who she was, she had laughed so hard she'd fallen off the bed. After that
they'd remained lovers and had become friends.

Out of
curiosity, and to protect herself, Katlyn supported the lazy son of the people
who still lived next door to her father in Arundel. He looked after her father
after her mother died, and, sporadically, he sent a badly written, misspelled
report to Katlyn, telling her all the gossip around town. She'd read a lot
about the woman who'd returned to town and had Braddon Granville chasing after
her.

Katlyn
had been surprised at how much jealousy she'd felt to think that Brad had
fallen for someone else. Not that Katlyn was in love with him, but she rather
liked to think that Brad was mad for her.

'All
right, so I'm jealous,' Katlyn said, inhaling deeply on the cigarette. Charley
expected her to be an ornament, and smoking was the only way she could keep
reed-thin. At least that was her excuse. 'Are you planning to marry her?'

Brad
paused in tucking his shirt in. 'I was thinking about it. When I first saw her
. . . ' Pausing, he went to look out the window at Park Avenue. 'It wasn't love
at first sight, but it was a sense that I'd found someone who was like me.'

'This
is the girl who was raped and had a bastard when she was a kid?' Katlyn asked.

'Get
your claws in. You got what you wanted.'

'No, I
wanted to marry into one of your families and give dinner parties that old Mrs.
Farrington attended.'

Brad
snorted. 'That's what you think you wanted, but you would have died under the
load of charity meetings and dinner parties with cantankerous old women. No,
you're much better off doing the nothing that you do now. Spending the days
doing your nails. Eden has dirt under her nails most of the time. She doesn't
know it, but it's there.'

'She
sounds delightful. Does she wear overalls?'

'No.
Cotton. Ever hear of it?'

'It
used to grow right up to my back door, remember?'

Brad
didn't answer her but sat down to put on his shoes and socks.

Katlyn
put out her cigarette., then stretched across the bed in what she knew was an
alluring pose. 'I do hope you aren't going to tell me that you're never going
to see me again.'

'Last
week I would have said that I was going to send you a note to say that it was
over.'

She sat
up. 'This is beginning to sound interesting. You aren't going to tell me that
this paragon of virtue has turned you down, are you?'

'Not
yet.'

'Is
there another man? A Camden maybe?'

'He's not
from Arundel.'

This so
startled Katlyn that she couldn't say anything.

Standing,
Brad adjusted his pant cuffs, then looked at her. 'I thought she and I were . .
. ' He grimaced. 'Actually, I thought we were a done deal. I guess I was like
the old maid who goes on a first date then picks out her wedding china.'

'She
didn't call you back?'

'Yes,
she did.' He took a breath. 'We spent quite a bit of time together, and I
thought there was nothing between her and the other man. I thought she didn't
like him in that way, but I saw them laughing together.'

'Ah,'
Katlyn said. She could understand that. She'd shared a few laughs with Brad,
but none with her husband. 'You think she's going to choose the other man?' she
asked softly.

'Maybe.
I don't think she knows what she wants. Right now, I think Ms. Eden Palmer
could go either way.'

'Palmer?'
Katlyn said. She would have frowned   if   her  
forehead   weren't   so   full   of
chemicals. 'Eden Palmer. Where have I heard that name before?'

'Weren't
you living in Arundel when she was? Or are you now too young to remember her?'

'My
last surgeon says I now look young enough to be my own daughter,' Katlyn said
distractedly, then her face lit up. 'The book!'

'Book?
Yes, Eden was an editor here in New York for a while, and — '

Katlyn
jumped off the bed, paying no attention to the fact that she was naked. She
spent enough hours with a personal trainer to know she looked good with nothing
on. She opened a little French cabinet and pulled out a paperback book with a
plain blue cover.
To Die For,
the title read, by Eden Palmer.

'I
didn't know Eden had written a book,' he said, taking it and flipping through
the pages. 'When did it come out?'

'It
hasn't yet,' she said as she put on a silk robe. 'It's an advance copy. Charley
has things sent to me, and he asks my opinion sometimes, you know, for his
movie studio.' She shrugged, as though embarrassed by this confidence. 'Anyway,
this was sent to me. It's good. I told Charley the story had great potential.'

'I had
no idea you were a major force in the movie industry,' he said, teasing her,
and she looked as though she might blush. 'What's it about?'

'Generations
of a family in an old house,' she said. 'She takes them from the time they
settled in America in the 1600s to the present. It's an old theme, but she does
it well. There's a story of a duchess escaping the French Revolution and a — '

'Sapphire
necklace,' Brad said quietly.

'Yeah,
right. A real whopper of a thing that leads to murder and lots of feuds.'

Brad
sat down on a chair and said, 'I want you to tell me everything that's in the
book.'

'You
can read it. It — '

'I
don't have time to read it. Tell me everything. Are there any other mysteries
in the book besides the necklace?'

'Who
said the necklace was a mystery? The man who stole the necklace and then killed
the mistress of the house died. Mystery solved.'

'Right,'
Brad said quickly. 'What
else
is in the book?'

Katlyn
looked at him hard. 'If you know about the necklace but don't know about the
book, then is the story
true?'
Her eyes widened. 'The Farringtons!
Wasn't there some story about missing sapphires when I was a kid?'

He
narrowed his eyes at her. In a second he went from lover to lawyer. 'Tell me,'
he ordered.

'I can't
think of any other mystery,' she said, annoyed. 'Oh! Wait! What about the
riddle?'

'There's
a riddle?' Brad asked softly.

Katlyn
took the book from him, flipped the pages, then handed it back to him.

Five by
five and three by three.

Worth
more than gold and married to thee.

Ten
times ten and legends of me.

Look
not where thou canst find me.

He
looked at her in question. 'What does it say about this riddle in the book?'

'That
it was always believed to be bad poetry written by someone in the family, but
no one knew who. The main character, a woman from this generation, found it
carved into the back of a door in the attic. She was told it was probably
written by a kid and that it had no meaning, but she believed it was a riddle.
She never found out anything about it, though.'

'"Worth
more than gold",' Brad whispered. '"Legends of me." "Look
not where thou canst find me."' He looked at Katlyn. 'There's only one
person in the Farrington family who had an ego like that.'

'Old
Mrs. Farrington?'

'Not by
a longshot.' Brad grabbed his coat. 'Mind if I keep this?' he asked, holding up
the book.

'Sure,
but — ' She caught his arm. 'Why do I feel like I'm never going to see you
again?'

He
frowned. 'I don't have time for this right now. I have to get home. I think I
have an idea of what they're after.'

'Who is
after what?'

Brad
didn't answer her. He ran out of the room and didn't look back.