“How do you know these things?”
He grinned. “I’m the bellman. I know everything. Lady Davenport designed the dresses for a wedding here this summer. Mum was visiting then, and you know how she is.”
Lizzie did, indeed. Her aunt loved anything connected with fabrics and design, especially if it involved hotels or weddings. Preferably both. “She put you through an analysis of every stitch?”
Justin gave a long-suffering nod. “It would help if you’d hang out with her once in a while and let her talk to you about these things.”
“I adore Aunt Henrietta, but talking wedding dresses-”
“Better than taking on an Irish bull.”
Lizzie pictured Arabella Davenport’s older brother walking into the quiet pub before her fight in the stone circle. Whatever his sister’s talents, Lizzie was certain that his didn’t involve weddings. As controlled and polite as he’d been, he’d clearly arrived in the little village on Kenmare Bay prepared to do battle. But she suspected he arrived everywhere prepared to do battle.
She shook off the image. “I’m wiped out, Justin. I’ll see you in the morning.”
She got two steps before her cousin spoke again. “Did Lord Davenport have a role in muddying your shoes?”
She glanced back at him. Perhaps because he was the youngest, or so much his mother’s son, Justin had a tendency to see more than most people in a similar position would see. “It’s a long story.”
“With you, Lizzie, it always is.” He sighed. “I’ll call when your Brit gets here.”
Should her circumstances call for a quick exit, Lizzie’s one-bedroom suite was conveniently located on the second floor near the stairs. She brought her backpack into the bathroom and set it on the tile floor, where any crusts of dried mud and manure that fell off would do the least damage. As she stripped to her skin, she fought back images of whipping her pack against Michael Murphy’s assault knife…of the drooling, snarling black dog…of the swirling fog and mist.
Instinct and training had taken over the moment she’d realized she wasn’t alone in the stone circle, but now, in the familiar surroundings of her favorite hotel, she could finally let down her guard-at least until Lord Davenport arrived. But she and Keira Sullivan had come close to being killed a few hours ago. Would Will have arrived in time to save them if she’d failed?
A moot question, Lizzie told herself as she pulled on a cuddly hotel robe and tied it tightly around her waist.
She went into the beautifully appointed living room of the suite and ordered a full Irish breakfast from room service. Her blackberry crumble was long gone, and she was starving. But she resisted ordering brandy, or a martini.
She sank onto the sofa and grabbed a deck of cards off the coffee table, an antique she and her aunt had bought two years ago at an estate sale in County Clare. Each of the hotel’s thirty-seven rooms was individually decorated, as much as possible, with furnishings and objets d’art from Ireland.
Against her father’s objections, Lizzie had spent eighteen months working at their Dublin hotel, loving every minute. She and her aunt had crawled through countless Irish galleries, choosing Irish paintings, pottery, sculpture, glasswork, throws and whatever else caught their fancy. Lizzie recognized a copper vase they’d found at a gallery in Kenmare. It was fashioned by a contemporary Irish metalworker but reminded her of the old mines where Keira’s story of the stone angel had originated.
Lizzie moved the copper vase and a stack of books on Ireland aside, creating space on the table, and dealt the cards into four piles of thirteen each for a game of bridge. She sorted the hands and counted up the points, then silently bid each one as if she didn’t know what was in the others. She produced an offense and defense and played the game. Flipping one card after another, keeping track of aces and kings and trump cards, scooping up winners and losers. The process anchored her mind while allowing it the freedom to roam.
She had to have her thoughts in order before she made the call she knew she had to make.
The offense won. She dealt another hand.
Her breakfast was delivered by a longtime employee of the hotel, an older woman who didn’t ask why Lizzie was having breakfast at such an hour. She set the tray on the coffee table, and when she left, Lizzie debated eating her meal, taking her bath and going to bed. She could postpone her call and tell Justin to never mind and not to let her know after all when Will Davenport arrived.
Instead she buttered a chunk of brown bread and took a bite as she got out her disposable cell phone and dialed a number she’d received in a terse e-mail last summer. She’d called it only twice before, preferring to stick to e-mail whenever possible.
It was just after 9:00 p.m. on the U.S. East Coast, but John March picked up after the first ring. “Where are you?”
“ Ireland.” No reason not to tell him that much. “ Norman didn’t go on a joy ride this morning. He didn’t crash into a mountain or run into mechanical problems and make an emergency landing somewhere. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry about what happened today. I wish I’d known sooner. Are Scoop Wisdom and your daughter-”
“You’re the one who needs to do the talking.”
Lizzie’s heart jumped painfully. “The bomb was a diversion, wasn’t it?” Her father had taught her about bombs, diversionary tactics. “ Norman had your daughter kidnapped, didn’t he?”
“Talk.”
She picked up her fork. If she let John March intimidate her now, she’d be of no help to him or anyone else-especially Abigail Browning. “I’m debating whether to try black pudding,” she said, poking it on her plate. “What do you think?”
“It’s made with pig’s blood. Tastes like sausage.”
She could hear anguish in his voice. “White pudding?”
“No pig’s blood. Suet, oatmeal. This and that.”
“Doesn’t sound very appetizing. I guess some things I just don’t want to know.”
“That’s true for any of us.”
Under the strength and determination that had characterized the FBI director in her dealings with him, Lizzie now heard the terror of a father for his missing daughter.
“Are you still in Boston?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Simon?”
“He’s still here, too.”
Lizzie stared at the warm brown bread, butter, eggs, bacon, grilled tomatoes-the black and white pudding-on her simple white china plate, all a reminder of normalcy. She’d led a relatively normal life of family, work, travel and the occasional romance and adventure before she’d let her curiosity-her sense of duty-ask questions and see things others might ignore. Once she’d found herself in a room of violent drug traffickers, what was she supposed to have done? She’d started by e-mailing names and surreptitious photos to John March.
But hadn’t she been looking for an excuse to contact the detective who’d looked into her mother’s death thirty years ago?
It didn’t matter. Instead of dropping out of Norman ’s circle of friends as she otherwise would have, Lizzie had dived in and hung on for the next year.
“ Norman will never look at himself and understand he was arrested because he did wrong.” She spoke calmly, despite her own fatigue and fear. “He’ll blame you and Simon. And me, if he ever finds out what I’ve done.”
March didn’t soften. “You’re the woman who saved Keira Sullivan and warned Bob O’Reilly about the bomb.”
“I’m not sure Keira needed my help. An Irish gale, an ancient stone circle, a black dog out of nowhere. Spooky.” Not to mention an aristocratic British spy. Lizzie stabbed her fork into the black pudding and cut off a small piece. “For all the time I’ve spent in Ireland, I’ve never tried black or white pudding. I suppose you have Michael Murphy’s file on your desk by now?”