Chapter 29 #3
Sunny would have followed him, but Cameron tugged on her hand to stop her. She looked at him in surprise, then smiled as he held open his arms. She went willingly into his embrace, closing her eyes and sighing as he held her close.
She supposed she would have to surrender him to Patrick eventually, when she couldn’t avoid it any longer.
He and Cameron would probably make good use of the little meadow behind the castle, fighting, hurling insults and damning with faint praise exactly as Patrick did with Ian and Jamie.
She would sit and watch, and be grateful for Patrick’s generosity and good heart.
Cameron deserved brothers who loved him, who would stand behind him, who would give him back part of the family he’d lost.
But she would also be very grateful for the day when they started a new family made up of just they two.
It was much later that evening when she sat with Cameron at Patrick’s kitchen table, preparing to look at treasure.
They’d intended to go to Moraig’s for the evening but stopped halfway across Patrick’s courtyard, exchanged a look, then turned without a word and gone back inside Patrick’s house.
She had Cameron—almost—and the comforts of the future all in the same place.
After the morning she’d had, she just wasn’t going to take any chances by crossing Moraig’s threshold unnecessarily. Cameron seemed to feel the same way.
He pulled a wooden box out of his backpack and laid it on the table alongside his pocketknife. “I’m assuming there isn’t anything hidden inside that’s toxic,” he said.
“Were you never curious about this stuff?” she asked.
“I was distracted by other things, actually,” he said with a smile.
“Rodney died a fortnight before I first saw you in front of Tavish Fergusson’s, as you know.
I glanced at what he left me, then shoved it all into my office safe and didn’t think about any of it again until Alex suggested it might be useful. ”
Sunny looked at the things he was laying on the table. It was a rather unremarkable selection of touristy sorts of things: a very worn, wooden figurine; a small ashtray with a weighted cloth base; a nondescript Russian nesting doll, and a trio of porcelain elephants. Sunny looked at Cameron.
“You’re sure you want to ruin these?”
“I found a letter from Rodney inside the box this morning telling me he was satisfied—and you’ll appreciate this, I’m sure— that I had an affinity for old things and would know what to do with these when the time came.
” He smiled. “I can guarantee the pieces don’t have any value in and of themselves.
So, I think we should begin by crushing the elephants. ”
Sunny poached one of Madelyn’s oldest dish towels and wrapped one of the elephants in it. Cameron put the lump on a cutting board, then took the cast-iron skillet she handed him and brought it down against the towel mercilessly. He unwrapped it, then frowned.
“Nothing here. Let’s try another.”
She handed him another elephant. He tried it with the same results. The final elephant was larger and it wasn’t simply shards after it had been destroyed. Cameron picked up something that looked remarkably like a safe-deposit-box key and smiled.
“I should have known.”
“But where’s the box, do you suppose?”
“Probably cunningly hidden immediately adjacent to the box his children have already ransacked,” he said with a snort.
“I won’t be surprised to find a letter inside telling me about a few pounds he tucked aside somewhere in Switzerland for use in keeping up the hall.
He would have known Nathan and Penelope would run through their legacies in no time, and he wouldn’t have wanted me to be responsible for maintaining his home after his death.
” He cleaned away the mess, then sat down and pushed the other things toward her.
“You be the surgeon on the rest of this. I want to watch what might have been operating on me if we’d stayed in a different time. ”
Sunny smiled briefly. “You’ve already had that experience and you’re probably glad you don’t remember it. I’ll cut, though, if you want me to.”
He slid his knife across the table to her. She took a wooden figurine and managed to slice it open without too much trouble. She turned the body upside down and shook it.
Three dozen sparkling emeralds rolled across the table.
Cameron looked at them thoughtfully for a moment, then handed her the Russian doll without comment.
It had been glued shut, but she remedied that soon enough.
She only got through three layers of doll before she hit the jackpot.
She poured dozens of beautiful cut stones in a rainbow of colors onto the table.
Cameron sighed, then pushed the ashtray in front of her. Sunny cut it open and another large handful of unpolished rocks rolled across the table.
Cameron put his face in his hands for a moment, then laughed. “Ach, by the saints, I should have known.”
“Valuable stuff?” she asked.
He pulled a jeweler’s loupe out of his pocket and examined a few of the colored stones and emeralds.
He set it down, then looked at the rocks.
“The stones are exquisite, actually. They would fetch a good price from the right buyer. And the rest of these are uncut diamonds, probably from the mine Rodney’s grandfather owned in South Africa.
Their value would depend on who cut them and how well it was done, but it wouldn’t be an insignificant amount of money, surely. ”
“Why did he give them all to you?” she asked in astonishment.
“Probably because he knew I wouldn’t immediately sell them to buy drugs or shoes,” he said with a sigh.
He sat back and started to sort the stones idly into piles.
“Well, this solves a bit of the mystery, I suppose, though I don’t know why Nathan or Penelope would have thought I’d have these.
I can’t imagine they even know they exist.”
Sunny wondered if he was thinking about what Alex had said—that Rodney’s death was orchestrated to draw attention away from what was really going to happen.
She didn’t particularly want to talk about that, actually.
“What did you think about the manner of Rodney’s death?” Cameron asked, sounding as if he didn’t particularly want to talk about any of it, either.
“I think the body would have to be exhumed to be sure,” she said slowly, “but I feel fairly sure it was poison. There were striations on his fingernails that could have come from the chemo, of course, but they also could have come from arsenic.”
He nodded absently, then looked at her sharply. “What did you say about his fingernails?”
“Striations,” she repeated. “Of course, there was no proper autopsy done so we don’t know what organs had failed, but his hands were a good clue. That, and the notes your nurse left. Why do you ask?”
“Because my uncle’s fingernails looked like that,” Cameron said faintly. “I thought it was odd when I buried him.”
She felt a chill go down her spine. “What are you saying?”
He toyed with the gems a bit longer, then pushed them away and clasped his hands on the table. “What I’m saying is I think Giric followed one of us to the future. Me, I imagine, since he would have needed time to invent the sort of plan I fear he’s been about.”
“Surely not,” she said faintly.
“I don’t want to believe it, but I fear I have no choice. Derrick told me in Paris that he’d overheard Nathan talking to some Scottish sort of lad who’d advised him to dig into my background to bring me to heel.”
“Oh, Cam,” she said, feeling quite thoroughly sick to her stomach. “It has to be him, then, doesn’t it? Who else would wonder anything about your past?”
Cameron lifted his eyebrows briefly. “I might have suspected one of those pesky MacLeod lads if this had happened six months ago. Clan rivalries, and all, you know.”
“But now you know differently.”
“Aye, I do.” He smiled. “It helps to be in love with their witch, apparently.”
She couldn’t smile. “What are you going to do?”
“We’ll sleep on it,” he said with a sigh, “then see if an answer presents itself on the morrow. Perhaps we’ll take the day and do a little investigating—together, this time. We’ll start at Tavish’s where you can intimidate him for me.”
She pursed her lips. “Did Patrick tell you about the black eye I gave him?”
“He thought I should know whom I was standing to wed,” he said solemnly.
“You look terrified.”
He tangled his feet with hers under the table. “Well, since Patrick did tell me that he taught you everything you know about defending yourself, perhaps I should be.” He reached out and dragged his fingers through the piles on the table. “What shall we do with our largesse here?”
“I don’t know. And speaking of largesse, that’s something we need to talk about.” She paused, then took a deep breath. “You have too much of it. Alex gave me details.”
And he had. He’d left her a little note in with Rodney’s files, a note listing the number of Cameron’s Swiss bank accounts and the approximate value of them when taken together.
At least 750 million pounds, Sunny, he’d written—with a smirk, no doubt. Bet that’ll send you to bed for the rest of the day.
She looked up to find Cameron wearing that little smile she loved.
“I was hoping to wed you first, then give you the unpleasant tidings after it was too late for you to bolt.”
She glared at him. “Don’t laugh at me.”
He apparently couldn’t help himself. He leaned over, slipped his hand around the back of her neck, then kissed her briefly.
“Don’t be daft, woman,” he whispered. “’Tis only money.
” He sat back and smiled. “Sunny, our children will have funds enough to satisfy that highway robbery called the death tax yet still be able to keep the roof repaired on the hall for a few years. If our little pounds see to that, then they’ve served their purpose, haven’t they? ”
She took a deep breath. “But I don’t have anything to offer in return.”