Jude Deveraux (13 page)

Eden
squinted at him. 'Why do I get the impression that you're glad that the two of
us are locked in here together? I can't imagine that you did it for some
sex-thing, so what is it that you want?'

He kept
looking at the jar of beets, but Eden could see a tiny smile play at the corners
of his mouth. 'I don't know who those men up there are. I heard them and I got
you out. I knew about the cellar, but I didn't know about that skinny
staircase. That thing is a danger! I almost got stuck twice.'

She
didn't stop staring at him or lose her train of thought. He was just too
relaxed about all this for her taste. 'What do you want? And how can I believe
that
you
didn't send those men into the house?' She had the satisfaction
of seeing him blink rapidly three times.

'I
truly believe that the information I want is inside your head, not hidden away
inside your house, so why should I send ransackers?'

'Does
that mean that you've already been through every inch of my house and know
there's nothing to find?'

'More
or less,' he said, putting the jar back on the shelf and giving her a crooked
grin. 'But I didn't get to see all that I wanted to because I was attacked by a
wildcat.'

'I see
that you recovered well enough. Where's your sling?'

He didn't
answer but went to the side wall and pulled four boxes out onto the floor. They
were boxes full of big canning jars, and when stacked on top of one another,
they made uncomfortable seats. He took one and motioned to Eden to take the
other. After she'd moved her two boxes to the opposite wall, far away from him,
she sat down.

'I
don't know any spy and I have no idea why your spy would be interested in me,'
she said in the tone of a person who knew that a long night was coming. She
wasn't sure if he'd set this up or not, but she had her suspicions. It wouldn't
surprise her to be told that help would arrive only after she'd told him what
he wanted to know — which she'd do in an instant if she only knew what it was.
'Did you check out whether or not he was writing a book?'

'We're
looking into it now. Are you warm enough?' He listened for a moment but could
hear nothing.

'It's
silent down here,' Eden said. 'You can't hear anything except what's going on
on top of you. If I was going to be down here for more than fifteen minutes I
had to get someone to watch my daughter. I wouldn't be able to hear her
clearly, even if she was just in the dining room. Maybe you should call again.
Are you sure they're sending someone for us?'

He
looked at his watch. 'It's only been ten minutes. You have somewhere you need
to be?'

'Since
you've listened in on my every conversation, you know that I'm meeting Brad at
ten.'

'Brad?
The lawyer? Braddon Granville? Who names their kid Braddon?'

'I have
no intention of explaining Arundel baby-naming policies to you. If we make
chitchat you're never going to find out what you want to know. If you have
questions to ask me, then do it.'

'I
would if I knew where to start. I was hoping that if I showed you Applegate's
photo you'd say, 'Oh, that's so and so,' and the mystery would be solved. Are
you sure you've never seen him before?'

'As I
told you, I don't remember if I have seen him. I could have met him, yes, but
then I'm an editor, so I meet thousands of people. When I go to writers' conferences
I meet hundreds of people — quickly. He could have been in one of those
three-minute sessions where an author presents his ideas to me. I really don't
remember him.'

Jared
looked at his shoe tips for a moment. 'What you're saying makes sense, and maybe
that's all this is about. Maybe the whole mystery is that Applegate was about
to turn in a manuscript that told everything about everybody. You would have
remembered a manuscript about a spy, wouldn't you?'

'Yes,
and I would have turned it over to a nonfiction editor.'

'Maybe
you haven't come across the book yet.' There was hope in Jared's voice.

'Maybe
you should contact my publishing house and —' She broke off at a loud noise
that came from upstairs.

Jared
was on his feet in an instant, looking up at the ceiling of the cellar. In the
next moment, they heard another noise, then silence.

Eden
was standing beside him. 'I hope they aren't destroying the house, and I really
hope they didn't knock over the big secretary in the hall.'

'Those
were shots,' he said, frowning. He ran up the stairs and tried the door.
Locked. For a moment he looked as though he was studying the door, then he went
back down. He opened his cell phone again and made another call. This time Eden
realized that he was talking to a message machine. Again, he was calm, just
saying that they were ready to get out.

'Nobody
home?' she said, sitting back down. 'That gives me great confidence in the FBI.
Aren't they supposed to always be on the alert? How come you don't have a
firearm on you?'

'I
figured you'd find it and use it on me,' Jared said absently. He seemed to be
thinking hard about something. 'Is there any reason other than whatever the spy
wanted you for that people would be ransacking your house?'

Eden
gave a sigh. 'Those blasted jewels!'

'Jewels?'
Jared asked as he sat back down, then said, 'Oh, yeah. In the book. You know, I
didn't have time last night to read that, so why don't you tell me about it?'

'You
don't think that spy was searching for those jewels, do you?'

'I have
no idea. Could have been. We've always thought that maybe he swallowed your
name to keep you from being thought  to be part of his professional life.'
He leaned his head back against the damp wall. 'So tell me about the jewels.'

'How
about if I tell you the truth ?'

'I'd
like that.'

'I
thought you would. It's been my experience that liars love to hear the truth
from others.'

Again,
Jared gave a one-sided smile. 'You have me pegged exactly. I took on this job
of risking my life for my country just to have the opportunity to lie. It's
what I live for.'

Eden
had to smile. 'Okay, so maybe there is some truth in your story, but . . .
Anyway, the jewels. You see, I'm cursed with knowing the truth through Mrs.
Farrington, so I know there are no jewels to be found. How much do you want to
know? From the beginning or just the facts, ma'am.'

Jared
looked at his watch again. 'We have lots of time, so entertain me.' He leaned
his head back and closed his eyes. 'Tell me every word of the story. Maybe there's
something in there that could help me figure this thing out.'

Eden
couldn't resist saying 'Once upon a time' and smiling. Except for genocide and
murder and revenge, it was a great story. Or maybe because of those things it
was a great story. She started to tell a cut-and-dried version about what had
happened to the necklace, but then she thought. Why not tell all of it? She'd
written the entire story in her fictionalized version of the Farrington family,
and she'd even told the truth, as revealed by Mrs. Farrington, of what happened
at the end. She sincerely hoped that her telling of the family secret wouldn't
cause any of the Farringtons to come back from the dead and haunt her.

'It was
a necklace made for a French duchess,' Eden began. 'A stunningly beautiful
necklace of three sapphires, each one the size of a quail's egg and surrounded
by diamonds. It was said that the duchess's rich old husband bought the
necklace for her, but she wore it — and nothing else — to bed with her lover.
Her lover was the head gardener, and it was said that the son the old duke
loved so much was actually the gardener's child.'

Taking
a breath, Eden leaned back against the wall. McBride still had his eyes closed,
but she could tell that he was listening intently, and he was enjoying the
story.

She
continued. 'A young Farrington son, on his Grand Tour, was traveling through
the French countryside when the French Revolution broke out. By chance, he was
staying in a small village on the very night when the villagers decided they'd
had enough of the debauchery and greed of the old duke and were going to end it
all. I don't know what the duke had done to make the villagers hate him so.
There was something about a young boy in the village, but I don't know the
details,' Eden said. 'And if Mrs. Farrington did, she didn't tell me, and I
certainly didn't ask. I do know that they set the duke's great manor house on
fire. As the villagers were celebrating his death, one of them paid a visit to
the outhouse, and that's where he found the duke hiding.

'Of
course they murdered the duke, then they went in search of his wife, who, I was
told, was as bad as he was. But she had dressed as a peasant woman, so she
escaped. She knew that a young, rich American man was staying in the village,
so she went to him. Under her dirty clothes she was wearing all her jewels,
which I was told were so many that she could hardly stand up under the weight
of them.

'For
all that the duchess was very beautiful and the young Farrington wasn't
handsome at all, he was quite clever. The duchess offered him a pearl necklace
if he'd get her out of the country, but he held out for the prize of her
collection, the sapphire and diamond necklace. Since she was in no position to
bargain, she agreed. He hid her under the seat of his carriage to get her to
the coast, then he stowed her away in a trunk as they crossed the Channel. I
can't imagine how horrible the trip must have been for the poor woman!

'When
they reached England, she gave him the necklace, and they parted company.
Unfortunately, no one knows what happened to the duchess after that, and since
there's no record of her name, I couldn't research her. The young Farrington
man went home to Arundel with the necklace sewn inside his coat. A few years
later, when he got married, he had the necklace delivered to his bride an hour
before the wedding, and that was the first time anyone in his family saw it.

'Mrs.
Farrington told me that the necklace became what was most important in their
family. They were called the Farrington Sapphires, and they would be taken out
to be worn by the mistress of Farrington Manor only three times a year. People
would come from miles around just to see them. The family developed traditions
about who could wear the sapphires, and when. Each Farrington daughter could
wear them on her wedding day, but only if the family approved of her husband.
First cousins could wear the necklace once in her lifetime, but second cousins
never. On and on it went. Mrs. Farrington said that it got to the point of being
ludicrous, and many fights and long-standing feuds came about over that
necklace.

'It
stayed in the family until the late 1800s, and that's when the lies and the
mystery began.'

Pausing,
Eden took a moment to get her breath. McBride was still listening intently.
Smiling, she continued. 'Mrs. Farrington told me that her great-grandfather,
Minton, was a man cursed with bad luck. If he bought a racehorse, it broke a
leg the next day. If he bought timberland, there would be a hurricane that
turned all the trees into toothpicks. If he bought land for cotton, it would
flood. Whatever the poor man planted, died. Mrs. Farrington said that if he'd
just left things alone, he would have been fine financially, but he wanted to
prove to his relatives that he could do as well as they had, so he tried to
expand.

'I was
told that the real reason he worked so hard to be a success was that he had a
beautiful wife and that he was trying to win her love. But since he was as
awkward and as socially inept as he was homely, he couldn't do it. It was said
that she had married him for the Farrington Sapphires and that it broke his
heart and his spirit because he knew that's what she truly loved.

'Now
here's where the secret comes in. Because the poor man failed in everything, in
the end he had to do the unthinkable and sell the necklace in order to pay the
bills to keep Farrington Manor running. When he returned from the trip to New
York, where he'd secretly sold the necklace, he found the safe open and empty,
and his wife dead on the floor. She'd been strangled. That same day, a handsome
young man who'd worked for the Farringtons for years — a notorious womanizer —
was found dead in the swamp. Everyone said that he'd stolen the necklace, been
interrupted by the wife, so he'd killed her, then he'd run off into the swamp,
where he'd been bitten by a poisonous snake. When the necklace wasn't found on
him, it was decided that he'd hidden it somewhere on the plantation, and that's
how the story of the missing necklace got started. The story has been printed
in a hundred books, and it's caused many years of problems with people
searching for the Farrington Sapphires.'

Jared 
opened his  eyes  and  leaned  forward. 'The Farrington man
either killed the wife or her lover or both.'

'You've
seen and done too many bad things,' Eden said primly. 'Unfortunately, though,
you're right. On his deathbed, Minton Farrington told his eldest son the truth
of what had happened. It seems that Minton had overheard his wife and her lover
plotting to steal the necklace and run away together. Mrs. Farrington said that
this was what made her great-grandfather want to get rid of the necklace. He
decided that the sapphires were cursed and that his bad luck was caused by
them, so he took the necklace to New York and sold it.