"I figured as much."
"She still doesn't want to involve you."
He nodded. "That's her right."
"But it's your land."
"I didn't say I'd cooperate."
That brought a smile, but it quickly faded. "The letters in her shoebox were compelling, Clate, but I wish they'd been more conclusive, one way or the other. There's no proof there's any treasure, here or anywhere else. I think it's time I went back to the library. Maybe I'll stop on my way to see Hannah." She scanned the area of cut poisonous herbs. "I really can't imagine that this was her doing."
"I agree."
"My caller?"
"I don't know, Piper. Maybe your family—"
She cut him off, starting down his sloping lawn. "The minute my father and brothers find out about any of this, I'll lose all room to maneuver."
"They might know something."
"Uh-uh. They'd have told me."
"Maybe they're thinking the same thing about you."
She swung around, and he was surprised to see her grinning. "Are you kidding? My father and brothers would never assume I'd tell them anything."
"I wonder why," he said dryly.
She laughed. "I'll give it some thought, okay? Meanwhile"—she took a breath—"I guess I'll see you around."
It was her signal to him. He understood. She needed to walk back to her house alone, without him.
Watching her go wasn't easy. Someone was out there who could be mean, desperate, or just plain stupid enough to do anything. If threats weren't working, what would come next?
But Piper was no fool. She knew the score, the risks. And she knew what she needed.
She stopped halfway down the path, whirled around, and yelled to him. "I have no regrets, you know." He grinned. "I know."
Piper started a small fire in her keeping-room fireplace to take the damp chill out of the air and sat on her wingback chair with a bit of knitting. The fog distorted sound, made the bay seem closer, the wind fiercer. She'd locked her doors, although her locks were totally inadequate.
She knew she had only to say the word, and Clate would be over. To deal with an intruder, to spend the night.
"Your destiny isn't my destiny, Piper. It's yours to discover and to live."
Only Hannah. How was conjuring a man up for her niece letting her discover and live her destiny?
But no one could have conjured up Clate Jackson. Not even Hannah Frye.
Finally, Piper laid down her knitting needles and headed up to bed. She peered out her dormer window, but saw only the fog. When she climbed between her sheets and pulled her quilt up to her chin, she stared at her ceiling. What time did Clate go to bed? What would he think when he did?
It was a long time before sleep overtook her, her thoughts filled with images of how explosive and wild and free she'd felt that afternoon.
No one needed to warn her about Clate Jackson.
By morning the fog had burned off, the sun was shining, and after a morning class in making beeswax candles, Piper set out on her bicycle. Bypassing everyone and everything she knew in town, she ensconced herself in a remote corner of the Frye's Cove Public Library. If she ever hoped to sort out her relationship with Clate, she needed to sort out her business with Hannah. Plainly, she was getting on someone's nerves. Maybe it had to do with buried treasure, maybe not. But she meant to find out.
She checked every article, every mention she could find, of the mysterious shipwreck of Caleb and Phoebe Macintosh. She read up on the Russian royal family tree. She dug into princesses and baronesses and other wealthy upper-class women whose escape from revolution in Russia might have coincided with her greatgrandfather's time in Europe. There were a few possibilities, none concrete, none she could examine with any precision from an old Cape Cod library on an early summer morning.
As facts and tidbits came to her, she jotted down everything that had happened, everything she knew, on a spiral notepad. She hoped that putting it all together, right there in front of her, would help her make sense of what, on the face of it, made no sense. An old woman who claimed she'd lured a Tennessean to Frye's Cove as the love of her niece's life. Disturbing phone calls. Recovered memory of treasure. Rumors of the Tennessean wanting to develop his newly purchased land. Signs of digging. Hacked poisonous herbs. Piper wrote it all down in chronological order.
She skipped the parts about midnight kisses and afternoon lovemaking. Relevant or not, she needed no reminders about when, where, and how they fit into her time line of events.
Had the caller known she'd been on Clate's property or just guessed? If he'd known, how? Was he spying on her, on Clate? From where?
Piper shut her eyes and let the questions wash over her. Maybe some insight would come just from formulating the right question.
"There you are."