Hot ice - By Nora Roberts Page 0,112

that they faced each other across the stones. “He’d guarded the treasure just as he’d promised. He died still guarding it. He must have buried it here before he wrote that last letter. He might have written down a request to be buried in this spot. They couldn’t bury him in there with his family, but there wasn’t any reason not to give him a last wish.”

“All right, it makes sense.” But her mouth was dry. “What now?”

“Now, I’m going to go steal a shovel.”

“Doug—”

“No time for sensibilities now.”

She swallowed again. “Okay, but make it fast.”

“You could hold your breath.” He gave her a quick kiss before he was up and gone.

Whitney sat between the two stones, her knees drawn up and her heart thudding. Were they really so close, so close to the finish at last? She looked down at the flat, neglected plot of ground beneath her hand. Had Gerald, queen’s confidant, kept the treasure at his side for two centuries?

And if they found it? Whitney plucked the grass with her fingers. For now she’d only remember that if they found it, Dimitri hadn’t. She’d be satisfied with that for the moment.

Doug came back without rustling the grass. Whitney heard him only when he murmured her name. She swore and scrambled forward on her knees. “Do you have to do that?”

“I’d rather not advertise our little afternoon job.” He held a dented, short-handled shovel in his hand. “Best I could do on short notice.”

For a moment, he just stared down at the dirt under his feet. He wanted to savor the sensation of standing over the gateway to easy street.

Whitney saw his thoughts in his eyes. Again she felt twin sensations of acceptance and disappointment. Then she put her hand over his on the shovel and gave him a long kiss. “Good luck.”

He began to dig. For minute after minute, there was no sound but the steady rhythm of metal cutting earth. No breeze blew in from the sea, so that sweat drained off his face like rain. The heat and quiet pressed down on them both. As the hole grew deeper, each remembered the stages of the journey that had brought them this close.

A mad chase through the streets of Manhattan, a frantic leg race in D.C. A leap from a moving train and an endless hike over barren, rolling hills. The Merina village. Cyndi Lauper along the Canal des Pangalanes. Passion and caviar in a stolen jeep. Death and love, both unexpected.

Doug felt the tip of the shovel hit something solid. The muffled sound echoed through the brush as his eyes met Whitney’s. On their hands and knees, they began to push the dirt aside with their fingers. Not daring to breathe, they lifted it out.

“Oh God,” she said in a whisper. “It’s real.”

It was no more than a foot long, and not quite as wide. The case itself was moldy with dirt and damp. It was as Danielle had described, very plain. Even so, Whitney knew that the small chest would be worth a small fortune to a collector or a museum. The centuries made gold out of brass.

“Don’t break the lock,” Whitney told him when Doug started to pry it.

Though impatient, he took the extra minute to open it as smoothly as if he’d held the key. When he drew back the lid, neither of them could do anything but stare.

She couldn’t have said what she’d been expecting. Half of the time, she’d looked on the entire venture as a whim. Even when she’d caught Doug’s enthusiasm, pieces of his dream, she’d never believed they’d find anything like this.

She saw the flash of diamonds, the glint of gold. Breathless, she dipped her hand into them.

The diamond necklace that dripped from her hand was as bright and cold and exquisite as moonlight in winter.

Could it have been the one? Whitney wondered. Was there any chance at all that what she held in her hand had been the necklace used in treachery against Marie Antoinette in the last days before the Revolution? Had she worn it, even once, in defiance, watching how the stones turned ice and fire against her skin? Had greed and power taken over the young woman who loved pretty things, or had she simply been oblivious to the suffering going on outside her palace walls?

Those were questions for historians, Whitney thought, though she could be certain that Marie had inspired loyalty. Gerald had indeed guarded the jewels for his queen and his

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