“Supposedly, it brought long life to anyone who possessed it. Not only that, but it was said to choose its next owner by growing warm in the hand of the woman destined to possess it.”
Hero stared up at the woman in the painting. She looked to be somewhere in her early thirties, her thick dark hair cascading in loose curls around her shoulders. She had inherited her royal father’s oval face, full lips, and strong chin. There was wisdom in the gentle composure of her features, and strength. But her eyes were clouded as if with sadness and an unflinching awareness of painful disasters to come.
“And did she have a long life?” Hero asked.
“She did, yes; they say she lived to be over a hundred years old. Although I’m afraid her life wasn’t exactly happy.” Lady Seaton paused. “I suppose the necklace didn’t promise that.”
“Why?” asked Hero. “What happened to her?”
“Her father married her to a Scottish laird named Malcolm Gordon. She had eight children by him, seven sons and a daughter. But once King James was deposed in the Glorious Revolution, she went from being an asset as a wife to a potential liability. Not only that, but all of her sons rallied to the Jacobite cause after the death of Queen Anne and were either killed in the Risings or exiled. In order to save himself—and acquire new sons—Gordon divorced her.”
“She took refuge here, with her granddaughter?”
“Briefly. But I’m afraid the Lord Seaton of the day wasn’t particularly happy to be seen giving refuge to a Stuart.”
Not surprising, thought Hero, given that he was a Catholic desperately trying to remain invisible. She looked up into the long-dead woman’s lovely, sad face. “So what happened to her?”
“I believe in the end she went to her daughter in Wales.”
“And the necklace?” asked Alexandrine Bonaparte, obviously intrigued by its story. “Do you still have it? Does it glow warm in your hand?”
Lady Seaton gave a light laugh. “I wish I had it. But I’ve always assumed it must be in Wales—if it even still exists. It’s such a plain, old-fashioned thing, I can see some new bride who didn’t know its history simply tossing it out.” She moved on to a large portrait farther down the row. “And this is probably one of the best paintings in the collection. It’s a Van Dyck.”
Hero followed their hostess on down the gallery, her features schooled into an interested expression even as her thoughts remained on the sad-eyed, ill-fated woman in the portrait behind them.
She couldn’t have said precisely what she’d hoped this visit to the Long Gallery would accomplish. Yes, she had confirmed the existence of the portrait and the link between Lady Hendon’s necklace and the Seatons of Northcott Abbey. But it provided no real clue to the identity of the unknown man who’d presumably fathered both Devlin and Jamie Knox.
For the eyes of Guinevere Stuart were a pale blue, as were her granddaughter’s. And though Hero carefully scrutinized each of the many portraits hanging in the gallery, not one of that long line of Seaton ancestors hanging memorialized in oil had yellow eyes.
Later that night, in the hours before dawn, Hero awoke to the sound of a cow lowing in the distance and the whisper of the wind through the limbs of the ancient chestnut out on the village green. Somehow she knew even without moving that she was alone in her bed.
She opened her eyes to see Devlin silhouetted against the window’s pale glow, his body limned by the wind-tossed light of the moon.
“Did I wake you?” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“How did you know I was awake?”
She heard the amusement in his voice. “I saw your eyes open.”
“Dear God, you are unnerving sometimes.”
She rose to go to him and loop her arms around his shoulders. He tilted his head back against hers, and she saw he held the necklace in his hand, the silver triskelion gleaming in the soft glow from the window.
He said, “Thirty years ago, an old woman in the wilds of northern Wales gave this to my mother. She always told my sister and brothers and me that she didn’t want to take it, but the woman insisted. And truth be told, I think the legend fascinated my mother. She swore the stone grew warm as soon as the old woman placed the pendant in her hand.”
“Who was the woman?”
“I’m not certain my mother ever knew. She said the woman was very old, and I’ve always pictured her as some haggard, ancient crone. But was she really?” He shrugged and shook his head.
Hero reached to lift the necklace from his hand and felt the warmth of the stone against her palm. She had never told him of her own reaction to the stone, for it seemed too fanciful to credit. And yet . . .
“I suppose the old woman could have been a descendant of Guinevere Stuart,” she said. “Lady Seaton did tell us she took refuge in Wales.”
Devlin smiled. “Where’s a Debrett’s Peerage when you need one?”
She laughed softly, then sobered as a shadowy movement out on the village green caught her eye. “What was that?”