but certainly long enough to stash this journal among her things. Was this what his killer had been searching for?
Studying the book more closely, she returned to the front cover. Inside, a heavy piece of parchment had been glued on three sides to form a pocket decorated with an odd crescent symbol. Running her fingers over the pocket, she felt a hard circular outline within. Barely one finger fit within the tight space between parchment and book, but enough for her to touch the edge of a smooth object hidden inside. Slowly, carefully, she eased the object loose a little at a time until it slid the rest of the way out.
A glass disk in a beautiful lapis blue, perhaps three inches in diameter, with four deep notches spaced evenly around the edge. She turned it this way and that. What on earth was it? She’d never seen the like.
She pushed the disk carefully back into the pocket. Whatever function it served, it had been important enough to hide. Perhaps answers would be found in the journal itself.
She flipped back through the pages. With much study, she made out:
Three miles northeast of San Millán. Few losses. Maucune’s division escaped across the mountains. Flannery, St. Leger, and I share a barn. De Coursy arrived after dark. Good thing. I’d have hated to explain Gray’s death to His Grace.
She pictured the severe, sharp-eyed captain hunched over a billet fire, sharing stolen poultry and cussing his superiors. Difficult to do. Far easier was imaginingCaptain Flannery hiking the hidden mountain tracks and lonely hillside forests of Spain in pursuit of the French army. He was a man bred for wars of old. Broad-shouldered. Iron-muscled. The past caught like amber in his long beryl-green gaze.
She gave herself a mental slap. Stupid woman. No dewy-eyed dream spinning for her, no sir. Both feet on the ground. Heart firmly locked away. Forget her resolve for a moment, and she had no one to blame but herself for the consequences.
She flipped ahead, discovering a long, flat-bladed leaf—perhaps an aster’s. A small blue flower—gentian? larkspur? A sprig of some piney-scented herb—definitely, possibly wild thyme.
It had been too long since her days cataloguing beside her father. She’d forgotten too much since leaving America behind as Lawrence’s bride.
Aire-sur-l’Adour. New moon of Morderoth. Shift impossible.
The fire flickered and burnt low as she read entries on the war years. Notes on scouting missions. Another mention of Captain Flannery. References to St. Leger and de Coursy.
By the time she skipped further along to a page bookmarked with a wilted primrose, petals brown, stem withered, she could barely make out the blur of shadowy pages, and the handwriting had gone from atrocious to nearly illegible.
She squinted to make out the plants listed by genus and species. Some common—willow, hemlock, vervain. Others less so, like marsh fern and burr medic.Measurements had been penned beside each one as well as suggestions on which part of each plant should be used—root, leaf, or stalk. Farther down the page followed a procedure for preparation with normal details like cooking times and temperature veering into outlandish instructions, like “Should be completed during the new moon or bury for a day and a night tied with a scarlet ribbon.”
What on earth? Bianca flipped through the next pages, but nothing else had been penned, the last few pages still waiting to be filled.
Rising to stir the fire, a paper fluttered free to drift across the carpet. She bent to retrieve it, catching back a gasp of astonishment at the face staring back at her—the same shaggy head of hair, the same wide-set, mocking eyes.
Adam’s lover.
4
Mac tried focusing on the ordnance supply lists in front of him, to no avail. The amount of black powder in storage at the depot in Kinsale and the whereabouts of a lost shipment of carbines on the road between Portsmouth and Plymouth held little allure this morning. Instead,
Studying the book more closely, she returned to the front cover. Inside, a heavy piece of parchment had been glued on three sides to form a pocket decorated with an odd crescent symbol. Running her fingers over the pocket, she felt a hard circular outline within. Barely one finger fit within the tight space between parchment and book, but enough for her to touch the edge of a smooth object hidden inside. Slowly, carefully, she eased the object loose a little at a time until it slid the rest of the way out.
A glass disk in a beautiful lapis blue, perhaps three inches in diameter, with four deep notches spaced evenly around the edge. She turned it this way and that. What on earth was it? She’d never seen the like.
She pushed the disk carefully back into the pocket. Whatever function it served, it had been important enough to hide. Perhaps answers would be found in the journal itself.
She flipped back through the pages. With much study, she made out:
Three miles northeast of San Millán. Few losses. Maucune’s division escaped across the mountains. Flannery, St. Leger, and I share a barn. De Coursy arrived after dark. Good thing. I’d have hated to explain Gray’s death to His Grace.
She pictured the severe, sharp-eyed captain hunched over a billet fire, sharing stolen poultry and cussing his superiors. Difficult to do. Far easier was imaginingCaptain Flannery hiking the hidden mountain tracks and lonely hillside forests of Spain in pursuit of the French army. He was a man bred for wars of old. Broad-shouldered. Iron-muscled. The past caught like amber in his long beryl-green gaze.
She gave herself a mental slap. Stupid woman. No dewy-eyed dream spinning for her, no sir. Both feet on the ground. Heart firmly locked away. Forget her resolve for a moment, and she had no one to blame but herself for the consequences.
She flipped ahead, discovering a long, flat-bladed leaf—perhaps an aster’s. A small blue flower—gentian? larkspur? A sprig of some piney-scented herb—definitely, possibly wild thyme.
It had been too long since her days cataloguing beside her father. She’d forgotten too much since leaving America behind as Lawrence’s bride.
Aire-sur-l’Adour. New moon of Morderoth. Shift impossible.
The fire flickered and burnt low as she read entries on the war years. Notes on scouting missions. Another mention of Captain Flannery. References to St. Leger and de Coursy.
By the time she skipped further along to a page bookmarked with a wilted primrose, petals brown, stem withered, she could barely make out the blur of shadowy pages, and the handwriting had gone from atrocious to nearly illegible.
She squinted to make out the plants listed by genus and species. Some common—willow, hemlock, vervain. Others less so, like marsh fern and burr medic.Measurements had been penned beside each one as well as suggestions on which part of each plant should be used—root, leaf, or stalk. Farther down the page followed a procedure for preparation with normal details like cooking times and temperature veering into outlandish instructions, like “Should be completed during the new moon or bury for a day and a night tied with a scarlet ribbon.”
What on earth? Bianca flipped through the next pages, but nothing else had been penned, the last few pages still waiting to be filled.
Rising to stir the fire, a paper fluttered free to drift across the carpet. She bent to retrieve it, catching back a gasp of astonishment at the face staring back at her—the same shaggy head of hair, the same wide-set, mocking eyes.
Adam’s lover.
4
Mac tried focusing on the ordnance supply lists in front of him, to no avail. The amount of black powder in storage at the depot in Kinsale and the whereabouts of a lost shipment of carbines on the road between Portsmouth and Plymouth held little allure this morning. Instead,
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