The Sapphire Brooch (The Celtic Brooch Trilogy Book 2) (67 page)

What would Elliott and Meredith think of
this
story? She should call them. There wasn’t anyone else she could talk to about Jack. Maybe they could help her figure out what to do next.

She had Ken, but he still had reservations about time travel, and right now she couldn’t bear to expose herself to doubters.

Could she go back again and undo what Jack had done? Braham had tried to change history, and he had failed, but Jack had altered what happened at the conspiracy trial and afterwards. Surely she could reverse what he had done. To do it, though, she needed a brooch. Elliott had given the ruby to Braham because he didn’t belong in the twenty-first century. Would he let her use the ruby to save her brother’s life?

What if Elliott hadn’t gotten the brooch back after Braham used it?

She ran into her office to call Meredith. Dashing through the foyer, she banged her shin on the table, knocking over a stack of mail and a pottery candlestick. Flyers and magazines scattered across the oriental runner with its clutter of shoes and socks. The beeswax candle rolled across the floor. She swooped up the mail, kicked aside the shoes, and hurried to the office where she tossed the junk on top of a round oak pedestal table. One of these days, she’d throw out the accumulated crap covering the top and finally have room to eat there.

Now where was her purse? She dug under the mail and found the black clutch and her keys and phone. The phone showed one missed call. Her heart thumped with surprise and then raced with hopeful expectation.

But it wasn’t from Jack, and her heart dropped sickeningly. The missed call was from Ken. She sat with her head bent, propped on one hand, and her fingers splayed through her hair. Frustrated, she swept the junk mail across the table with her forearm and most of it fell to the floor.

A first-class letter addressed to her from someone in Maryland teetered on the edge of the table. She didn’t know anyone in Maryland. She stared at the letter, wishing it would fall off, too, so she wouldn’t have to deal with it.

The sender had written her name in black block lettering—very precise—to get her attention. What kind of person wrote like that? An architect or engineer or even an artist. Written under her name was:
please forward.
She had just discovered her brother was dead, and some stranger wanted her to read his letter. She swiped it off the table.

She scrolled through her list of contacts and found Meredith’s number, but before she pushed the call button, she stopped to consider what to say. The best strategy was not to say anything about Jack over the phone. First, she had to find out where Meredith was jet-setting today, the winery in California or the farm in Kentucky. She might even be in Scotland. God forbid. Charlotte didn’t have time to fly to Europe. She pushed the send button and said hello to her friend.

“You’re back. I can’t wait to hear about your adventure.” Meredith’s voice swelled with excitement.

“We got back several days ago. Sorry I haven’t called before now. I’d like to come for a quick visit. Are you free tomorrow or Sunday afternoon? Some things shouldn’t be discussed over the phone.”

“We’re in Kentucky, and we’re not doing anything this weekend. Fly up, and while you’re here, we’ll make plans for Derby. We want you and Jack to be our guests.”

“I’ll fly out in the morning. As soon as I have an arrival time, I’ll send you a text.”

“I’ll pick you up at the airport. We’ll have a girl’s lunch in Lexington and shop for Derby hats before going to the farm.”

When Charlotte disconnected, she picked the mail up off the floor and drank the rest of her water. There was no way she would be able to bring herself to have a girl’s lunch or shop for a Derby hat right now. She’d have to tell Meredith that Jack had disappeared when she picked her up.

A fresh surge of tears trickled down her face, tempting her to curl up on the floor and weep some more. She glanced down at the table, drawing patterns in the dust with a forefinger. The letter from Maryland caught her eye again. The damn thing kept popping up. She ripped open the sealed flap, and removed two sheets of paper.

Dear Dr. Mallory,

For the past several years, I have been doing research at the Surratt House and Museum on the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln and the trial of the conspirators. I came across a letter which appears to be an original written by one of the conspirators, Jack Mallory. I have not found another reference to this letter. It is possible Mr. Mallory’s attorney put the correspondence in his case file and never delivered it. Mallory addressed the letter to his sister, Charlotte.

I, along with thousands of other researchers, have done extensive research on the Mallory families living at the time of the war, and have found no reference to Jack. The experts believe Mallory was an alias. Whoever he was and wherever he came from are among those mysteries lost to time.

However, I did discover a few things which might interest you, and which I offer as thanks in advance for any assistance you can give me.

I traced your family tree back to Major Carlton Jackson Mallory, who served valiantly in the Army of Virginia during the Civil War. He had a son Carlton Jackson, Jr., who was only a child at the time. Major Mallory owned a plantation outside Richmond. Vigilantes burned the mansion within weeks of General Johnson’s surrender to General Sherman on April 26, 1865. The family eventually sold the acreage to pay back taxes. Today the property is the home of The Lane Winery and Bed & Breakfast.

I have enclosed a copy of the letter I discovered. I have read it dozens of time, and it makes no sense. In addition, there was no reference to a Charlotte Mallory found in the Mallory family tree until you. It’s probably why it was never delivered. If you have any information about Jack and Charlotte Mallory in your family archives, I would appreciate hearing from you. I’m sure if there ever was any information it would have circulated long before now, but I would be remiss as a researcher if I failed to follow up on this lead.

Thank you for your time and attention. I look forward to hearing from you.

Her hands dropped to her lap, shaking. “Oh, God, Jack. History has gotten so screwed up.” From the very beginning, her goal had been to keep history intact, but now…

She read the letter again. The family history was correct. Nothing new there. Her ancestors had moved to Richmond after the plantation burned, and Major Mallory had practiced medicine until he died. His son taught school, as did the next four Carlton Jackson Mallorys, although the last two were college professors. Jack broke the mold when he went to law school and ended up becoming a writer.

Small waves of pointless panic seized her. There was no way anyone could connect Jack to her ancestors. Even if her name was discovered on Lincoln’s second inaugural dinner invitation list or medical records as an attending physician, she couldn’t be linked. She was the first and only Charlotte in a long line of Mallorys dating back to the seventeenth century. Thinking back now over the last few months, she realized she had saved the old house from the torch in the fall of 1864, only to ensure it burned in the spring of 1865.

A strange ripple—like when someone tosses a stone into the water—went through her, and the breath hitched in her dry throat, with a faint rasp. Her actions and Jack’s actions had a rippling effect on the future. She didn’t yet know how far out the ripple extended, but it was there nonetheless.

She gulped, painfully, when she peered at the second page, recognizing Jack’s eloquent script. The uneven writing, dark where he had dipped the quill, faded slowly through each line until he dipped the nib again.

Dear Charlotte,

I am sorry for the pain my death will cause you. When the police came to arrest me, there was a fight, and I lost your beautiful sapphire eyes in the place of our last goodbye. After an exhaustive search, no one could locate them, so I was unable to travel again. I pray no one finds them now, for I fear they will never understand their uniqueness, and the consequences could be catastrophic. I hope one day you will claim my body and bury me in the family cemetery at the homeplace close to the river I love.

Tears dropped on the page, puckering the paper in her cold hands.

She didn’t know what he was talking about. They had no homeplace. No family cemetery. And what happened to the brooch? Did someone find it? Oh, God, what a mess.

She read his letter again, then again, becoming more confused with each reading. No wonder his attorney never delivered it, and who was his attorney anyway? Surely Braham had represented him. A very uncharitable thought occurred to her. His lawyering skills might be on the same level as his spying skills.

Yes, it was very uncharitable. Braham and Jack loved each other dearly. Braham would have moved heaven and earth, and even hell to clear Jack’s name. Which meant someone had planted irrefutable evidence against Jack, but who would have done it…and why? It would all be in the record. She would have to dig through the trial transcript, witness list, and find the evidence used against him. The thought of him languishing in prison, wearing the ghastly hood, and being horribly tortured, made her sick at her stomach. She gagged, leaned over the trashcan, and threw up the little bit of food in her stomach.

No amount of struggling helped her control her emotions. She rolled into a fetal position on the rug and sobbed until her fists were sore from pounding the floor and she had no more tears to shed.

74

Richmond, Virginia, Present Day

W
hen Charlotte woke
on the floor of her office, it took only seconds for her to plummet from conscious awareness into profound sorrow.

She made a strangled noise and froze, paralyzed by stiffness and pain. She drew her knees tightly up to her chest, sobbing. “I’ll get you back. I’ll undo this mess. I promise.”

She staggered to her feet. What time was it? Her eyes were dry and scratchy, and she couldn’t read the small numbers on her phone. She blinked and blinked until finally the numbers one-two-one-three came into focus. Just after midnight. Her stomach complained, reminding her she hadn’t eaten in more than twelve hours. First, though, she had to schedule a flight to Kentucky. Then she’d go to the all-night market. She scrolled through her contacts and found the number for the private airline she had used before. Jack wouldn’t be around to pay the bill for this trip, but she’d get the money out of savings. It didn’t matter what it cost. She was fairly sure they would accommodate her travel plans. Which they did. She had an itinerary confirmed within minutes, with an early departure time of seven a.m. She sent Meredith a text of her arrival time.

After a trip to the market, she chowed down on a late supper of chicken and a spinach salad with sliced almonds, cranberries and chopped eggs. With a full stomach, she set about making plans. She had four months of sabbatical left, and the accountant was still paying her bills. For this trip, she wouldn’t need a Confederate uniform, and since she’d left all her dresses at Braham’s house, she didn’t need to pack any clothes. Assuming the brooch would take her to Kentucky as it had taken Braham, she would have the same two-day trip to Washington. Traveling unaccompanied, she’d be safer dressed as a man, and arriving in the city incognito would give her time to investigate whether or not the government suspected her of participating in the conspiracy, using guilt by association reasoning. She would need to order men’s clothing or possibly buy trousers and shirts off the rack in a costume store.

Suddenly, she gasped at an ah-ha moment. Maybe she’d even arrive before Jack’s arrest. Which would be perfect. But then she shivered, not only from fear of what she’d find when she arrived in Washington, but from fear of going through the dizzying fog again. Each trip had made her life in the present worse.

Her eyes darted as her mind wrestled desperately to see through the maddening maze which had become her life, and Jack’s, too. The irony was they had become characters in the story he was writing.

With a plan for rescuing Jack percolating, she sat at her desk and spent the next several hours reading the transcript of the conspiracy trial. When her eyes began to glaze over, she showered and packed an overnight bag. At six-thirty she drove to the airport. Flying private, she avoided a long check-in line and possible delay at the gate. The plane soared into a dark sky within minutes of boarding, leaving the twinkling lights of Richmond behind, and made a smooth landing in Lexington an hour after sunrise.

Parked outside the TAC Air Terminal at Blue Grass Airport were two limos and a Mercedes, all with tinted windows. The driver’s door of the Mercedes opened and Meredith emerged looking as if she had just walked off a photo shoot for the cover of Vogue—dark hair blowing in a gentle breeze, black leather jacket, skinny jeans, Kentucky blue turtleneck, and boots. Her face brightened when she saw Charlotte and her pink mouth turned up in a brilliant smile.

How could anyone look so beautiful this early in the morning?