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“Well, look where it got me.”
He reached over and covered my hand with his. “You did what you thought was right. You can’t go back and change anything, so stop beating yourself up about it. All you can do is move forward, and I’ll help you anyway that I can.”
I looked up into his warm hazel eyes. “Thank you.” I’d always wondered if I could trust Collin, right up until the end. But David didn’t seem to have any ulterior motives. Still, I didn’t trust my own judgment. I pulled my hand from his. “I need to start cleaning the rooms upstairs. I’m behind after talking to Tom.”
“But we have dinner plans.”
“Oh,” I said, flustered again. “I thought that was to talk about you helping me.”
“We still have to eat. And after hearing you tell what I suspect were a bunch of half-truths and lies, I’d like to get to know the Ellie Lancaster who existed before hell broke loose.”
“Well…” I wasn’t sure getting close to David was a good idea.
He sensed my hesitation. “And I’ll tell you all about growing up as the son of a famous barrister.”
My eyebrows lifted. “Your father’s famous?”
“I guess you’ll find out tonight.” He winked. “Why don’t you get your work done while I see what I can dig up about the Ricardo Estate.”
I locked eyes with him. “You caught the coincidence there too?”
“I did. It could turn out to be nothing, but a collection of sixteenth-century English and Native American objects disappearing around the time the curse broke is highly suspicious.”
“Especially since Collin is somehow tied to it.”
He turned serious. “Agreed.”
I went upstairs to start working, feeling guilty about not telling David the entire truth about my connection to Collin. Since he was putting his safety on the line to help me, he had a right to know that I had bound my soul to Collin’s. Still, I wasn’t ready to tell him. I could barely admit the truth to myself.
I cleaned all the rooms, leaving my old room for last. I told myself that I’d grown up in there, so there was absolutely no reason to be afraid of it now. But the moment I stepped over the threshold, the hair on my arms stood on end. I made the bed and dusted off the dresser, shifting a stack of books to the side. The title of one of them caught my eye:The Head in Edward Nugent’s Hand.
It was David’s. David was staying in my old room.
I froze with my hand on the book, telling myself it didn’t mean anything. There were four available rooms up here, so it wasn’t that odd that David was staying in this one.
When I finished an hour later, I found David at the dining room table in front of a legal pad and his laptop, lost in concentration, a pair of reading glasses perched on his nose. He looked up when I paused in the doorway.
“All finished?”
“Yeah. Did you find anything?”
“Not much more than we already know, but I’ll keep digging. The collection was set to go to auction three weeks ago. The police appear to be baffled by how it was stolen. There was video surveillance, but it doesn’t show anything untoward. It’s rather odd that I hadn’t heard of it, given that the collection contained Native American antiquities. I’ll ask some colleagues to see if they’ve heard mention of it.”
“Okay.” I hesitated. “I wonder if we should skip dinner and just look for Daddy’s notes and the ring.”
He pulled off his glasses and set them on the table. “I’d agree with you if I didn’t know that they were closing the site early tonight, and Myra offered to cook the team dinner.”
My mouth dropped open. “Myra’s cooking?” Before Daddy got sick, they used to host dinner parties all the time. Myra was a fantastic cook; she just hadn’t done any entertaining in years.
“Forgive me if I’m overstepping my bounds, but I think there might be a connection between her and Steven.”
“What?”
He held up a hand. “It’s nothing really. Not yet. But I can see that there’s something there.”
“But isn’t Steven married?”
He shook his head. “No, widowed.”
