right.” He laid his lips on hers. “What’s just right. It scared the hell out of me at first.”
“I know, me too. But now?” Tears spilled out of mermaid eyes and sparkled in the moonlight. “I feel absolutely courageous. What about you?”
“I feel happy.” Struck with tenderness, he kissed the tears away. “I want to make you as happy as I am.”
“You do. It’s a good night. Or day, I guess. Another really good day.” She pressed her lips to his again. “Let’s give each other lots more good days.”
“That’s a promise.”
And Landons keep their promises, she thought. Overwhelmed, she wrapped around him again. “We found each other, Eli. Just when, just where we were supposed to.”
“Is that a karma thing?”
She drew back to laugh up at him. “You’re damn right it is. Is this why you couldn’t sleep? Because you suddenly accepted your karmic path and wanted to tell me?”
“No. Actually, I didn’t know I was going to say it until you walked out here. One look at you, and it blew through me, all of it.”
“We should go back to bed.” Her smile was full of promise. “I bet I can help you sleep.”
“There’s another reason I love you. You always have really good ideas.” But as he took her hand, he remembered. “Jesus, I got caught up.”
“A habit of yours.”
“No, I mean I forgot why I came out here in the first place, why I couldn’t sleep. I went up and started working on the books—the ledgers, the accounts.”
“All those numbers and columns?” Instinctively she reached up to rub at temples she imagined ached. “You should have nodded off inside five minutes.”
“I found it, Abra. I found Esmeralda’s Dowry.”
“What? How? My God, Eli! You’re a genius.” She grabbed him, circled and swayed. “Where?”
“It’s here.”
“But here where? And do I need a shovel? Oh, oh! We have to take it to Hester, to your family. It needs to be protected, and . . . There must be a way to trace Esmeralda’s descendants, make them a part of the discovery. Hester’s museum. Can you imagine what this means to Whiskey Beach?”
“Talk about running with it,” he commented.
“Well, Eli, think of it. Treasure unearthed after more than two centuries. You could write another book about it. And just think of all the people who’ll be able to see it now. Your family could lend pieces to the Smithsonian, the Met, the Louvre.”
“That’s what you’d do? Donate, lend, display?”
“Well, yes. It belongs to the ages, doesn’t it?”
“One way or the other.” Fascinated by her, he studied her glowing face. “Don’t you want it? Even a piece of it?”
“Oh, well . . . Now that you mention it, I wouldn’t say no to one tasteful piece.” She laughed, spun in a circle. “Oh, just think of the history, the mystery solved, the magic uncorked.”
She stopped, laughed again. “Where the hell is it? And how fast can we get it and secure it?”
He turned her, gestured. “We’ve already got it. It’s already secured. Abra, it’s Bluff House.”
“What? I don’t understand.”
“My ancestors weren’t as altruistic or philanthropic as you. They not only kept it, they spent it.” He gestured toward the house. “Built not just on whiskey, but pirate booty. The expansion of the distillery—the timing of it—the expansion of the house, those first innovations, the lumber, the stone, the labor.”
“You’re saying they sold the dowry to expand the business, to build the house?”
“In pieces, I think, if I’m reading all the accounting right. Over a generation or two, starting with the coldhearted Roger and Edwin.”
“Oh. I have to adjust.” She pushed at her hair and, he imagined, pushed back her excited thoughts of museums, and sharing. “Bluff House is Esmeralda’s Dowry.”
“Essentially. It doesn’t add up otherwise, not if you really dig into the expenditures, the revenue. Family lore says gambling—they liked to gamble and they were lucky. And they were smart businessmen. Then the war, the buildup of the country. All of that, yeah, but gamblers need a stake.”
“You’re sure it was the dowry.”
“It’s logical. I want Tricia to take a look, to analyze, and I want to hear back on James Fitzgerald. It adds up, Abra. It’s in the walls, the stone, the glass, the gables. They accounted for it, in their own way, Roger and Edwin, because they considered it theirs.”
“Yes.” She nodded at that. “Men who could cut a daughter, a sister, so completely out of their lives would consider it theirs. I see that.”