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{ Chapter 27 }
“You do?” Desmond choked out the words, his eyebrows high. “You recognize it?”
Elle nodded.
“From where?” Jules asked.
Elle looked over her shoulder at Jules. “Near my home on the Isle of Wight. There’s a mosaic wall that features that box—only it’s big.” Her hands went wide in front of her. “But that swirl on the top of it—it is unmistakable—it is the same angry pattern. The mosaic is in the ruins of some Roman Baths deep underground. I was helping to excavate the area and we came across this hidden room filled with mosaics.” She shrugged and pointed at the box. “That box—or what looks like it—is on one of the walls and I always thought it odd, to waste the time and skill to set a picture of a box into tile.”
All eyes wide, Jules looked to Desmond. Wes looked to Laney.
“Can I see it?” Elle asked.
Laney moved so fast she nearly tripped trying to hand Elle the box.
Elle studied it, turning it about in her hands. “Does it open? There’s a mosaic on the opposite side of the bath of a box that is open. The color was faded but it looked like possibly a ruby or a garnet inside—it was hard to discern as there were a number of tesserae that had fallen off that creation.”
Desmond pointed to the top of the box. “Swivel the top to the left—there’s a seam you can’t see well.”
Jules’s aunt flattened her hand on top of the box and slid it. The ruby set into the ring sparked to life the moment the light of the chandelier above hit it. She shifted it in the light, letting it catch the sparks from above. “Oh, that’s pretty—magical even.” She nodded to herself as she stared at the stone. “I’m certain this is it—the picture of the box in the mosaic. It’s mesmerizing even, a thing of beauty. No wonder it was put into the tile.”
Elle snapped the lid closed and handed the box back to Laney. “It is so bizarre that there is a picture of it there and that the box still exists—that it ever existed. Those mosaics are fifteen—sixteen centuries old.”
The second the box hit her hands again, Laney’s body instantly went stiff next to Wes. The reprieve was too short—he needed to get that blasted thing out of Laney’s hands.
Laney’s jaw dropped, her mouth slightly agape as she stared at Elle. “You—you just gave it back to me.”
Elle’s head cocked to the side. “Yes. It is yours, isn’t it?”
Laney looked to Jules, then to Desmond and then to Wes. Her head swiveled back to Jules’s aunt. “You didn’t feel anything?”
“What?” Elle’s brow furrowed, her words drawing out slowly as she tried to understand. “Feel something? It’s a pretty stone and very interesting. Not to mention mysterious.”
Jules heaved a sigh, shifting the babe swaddled in her arms. “Since no one else will say it, I will. We need to go to the Isle of Wight. This is the only clue we have as to the box’s origins.”
“Wedon’t need to do anything of the kind,” Desmond said, glaring at his wife. “You could barely walk down here.”
Jules gave her husband a withering look. “I know I’m not going anywhere, this babe is far more important. I meantwemore in the spirit of the word.” She shifted her look to her aunt. “I have no right to ask this of you, Elle, but can you hold the box for us? It seems to affect most people, but it didn’t affect you at all when you held it.”
“How does it affect people?”
“They go mad, Elle.” Desmond’s voice took on a hard edge. He clearly didn’t like how this conversation was going. “Crazed at what the box can do for them.”
“And just what can the box do?” Elle asked.
“Bring riches beyond anything, but death and much suffering is sure to accompany the riches,” Jules said. “And Lady Helena and her brother have held the burden of it for too long.”
Elle looked at Laney. “But you don’t seem deranged. Very sane, even.”
Laney shook her head. “I have the same reaction as you.” Her head flickered to Wes. “But for Wes and for my brother, it was different. It takes over minds.”
Perplexed crinkles gathered along the edges of Elle’s eyes. “You only need me to hold it? I can do that.” She turned to Laney and Laney handed her back the box.
Wes’s chest deflated, long-held breath released in relief. The box was out of Laney’s hands.
Finally. For good.
All he’d wanted since she’d found the bloody thing in the larder.
