tensed. He kept this part of life as quiet as possible, and secrecy was always a stipulation of his help. The last thing he needed was a horde of journalists badgering him for human-interest stories or inquiries about his unusual skill at detection. “Who told you, Nicholas? My ordnance work is meant to be private.”
“The man who told me is high enough for access to all personnel records. And in case you’ve forgotten, I’m your friend. I know that you need your privacy. I accept your choice to have no contact or involvement with your family. But I’m hardy a stranger raking up details for a tabloid story.”
Calan didn’t answer.
“Fine, I’ll go back further. I’m the friend who dug you out of the mud when you were eight after the upper-form boys buried you up to your waist at summer camp in Scotland. I’m the one who bandaged you up afterward. I recall giving you your first cigarette as a consolation.”
“It was a Gauloise. The thing tasted like straw and old pavement, absolutely awful. So was that whole summer in the Hebrides.” Calan stared at his teacup. “I haven’t forgotten a single detail, you see? You made certain that my scrawny Scottish backside was not further harassed that summer.”
“They called you an orphan and you didn’t deny it. Why didn’t you tell them the truth?”
“Because I prefer to keep my family private.” Calan smiled grimly. “And for the record, I do appreciate all the help you have given me over the years. My…adjustments haven’t always come easily, so I’m grateful for a place of safety and your sound advice.”
“I don’t want your gratitude. I want you to come home and stay home, damn it. Be normal. Be happy.” Nicholas cut off a sound of irritation. “Why can’t you just settle down and find a smart woman who loves you? Start a family before you forget what the concept means.”
“I think not.” Calan’s eyes hardened. “Wife, children and holidays in St. Tropez are not in my future.”
“You want to die in a wretched little shack at the mouth of the Amazon or crossing a minefield in Africa? What kind of end is that?”
Last night’s rain had washed the air clean. Calan watched a bird circle slowly above the moat. Looking for food, no doubt. Nicholas made it a point to keep the abbey’s waters well stocked with trout.
Predators and prey, always circling. This was the natural order of life. One day you were a predator, and the next you were the prey. “Since I won’t be around to notice if I’m dead, how it happens hardly matters.”
“I’m serious, Calan.”
“So am I.” Calan stood up, carrying his teacup to the window. In the clear sunlight the abbey’s slopes were startlingly green. Roses framed the path with a riot of color. In the distance the moat gleamed like a freshly polished mirror, three swans caught on the bright surface. “It’s…an old kind of restlessness. You could call it a curse of my blood. I can never manage to stay anywhere for more than a few weeks.”
He had no real home. Definitely no family.
Restlessness was a friend when you trusted no one—not even yourself.
In every sense his family was dead to him, their memory no more than ashes tossed on barren soil. His past was closed, his future bound by ancient laws that Nicholas Draycott would neither understand nor condone.
Some things were best kept secret.
“You make it sound like a medieval legend, Calan, but I don’t believe in fate or curses. You have a beautiful house in Norfolk. You have work that can be done wherever you like and enough money so that you need never work again. Yet you keep pushing, always restless. What are you running away from?”
Calan didn’t turn around, but his back stiffened.
“It’s none of my business, of course. But I count you as my friend, so I refuse to let you throw your life away, forever rootless among strangers. So come home. Stay home this time.”
“Impossible.”
“Why?”
“I don’t think I care to discuss that.” Calan’s voice was polite, but there was an edge of warning in his words.
“And that means back off and keep my mouth shut?”
“I’d have put it more graciously. But…yes.” Calan put his teacup down on the table, wishing for something stronger.
Don’t look back.
Don’t think about how the sea feels, clawing at your feet in a northwest gale. Don’t think about the voices in the night, come to administer clan law to a boy too young to understand.
“What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Calan laughed shortly. “Simply the aftereffects of some tainted water in Azerbaijan.”
“You don’t look sick to me.” Nicholas leaned back and crossed his arms. “But since you’re determined to change the subject, so be it. You’ve come at an excellent time, as a matter of fact. It’s Kacey’s birthday in two weeks and I’ve just bought her a painting that may turn out to be a missing Whistler Nocturne.”
“You hardly need my help deciphering art, Nicholas. And why did you ask for my advice on your new wiring? Have you had any problems here?”
It was Nicholas’s turn to look uncomfortable. “The possibility always exists. Crime is everywhere. Civilization is going to hell all around us, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I’ve noticed.” Calan looked down at the scars on his hands, reminders of one grisly ordnance job in Serbia. It was hard to ignore the world’s problems when you walked through minefields on a regular basis. It was also hard to forget man’s capacity for villainy when you saw it up close, written in the faces of the victims.
“My wife believes that people are innately good. I wish I could feel the same. But the things I’ve seen make it hard to believe in goodness and innate human kindness.” Nicholas lifted a small photo in a silver frame. A grave woman with intense eyes and streaks of paint on her hands, Kacey Draycott was a recognized expert in nineteenth-century painting. Nicholas’s photo had caught her at her easel, holding a jeweler’s loupe to examine brush stroke and pigment layers of a suspect Whistler portrait. In a nearby photo, she stood holding a gardening spade, laughing with Prince Charles.
“She moves in good circles,” Calan murmured.
“I could barely tear her away that morning. The two of them were deep in a discussion about rose grafting and compost.”
“Your wife has an extraordinary ability to put anyone at ease.”
Nicholas carefully straightened the row of photos of his wife and their laughing daughter. His next words were spoken softly, almost to himself. “You try your best. You plan and you pray and you maneuver. But you never can keep them separate, can you?” He took a harsh breath. “On one side you have your work—your duty to your country. On the other you’ve got your family, and both of them deserve the very best you can give.” He traced his wife’s photograph, his eyes restless and worried. “But one will always affect the other. Whatever ties you to your family weakens you and makes you vulnerable to attack or influence. I, of all people, should know that.” His hand closed to a fist. “Now I’ve let myself be caught, trapped between duty and family. But I won’t have my family put at risk. I’ll walk away first.”
“Walk away from what?”
“A promise I made to someone in the government.”
“And this problem involves danger?”
“Yes. I’m already regretting my promise. No good deed remains unpunished,” he said coldly. “Then last week I thought someone was following me. When I ran the plates with a friend, he said the car had been reported stolen.”
“I’d