Veiled Legacy by Jenna Mills

Author:Jenna Mills
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Silhouette
Published: 2006-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

The keys fit. Turned in unison, the keys Scarlet and I had treasured all our lives freed the lock on the old metal box.

After half a day of travel, including a stop at MI6 headquarters in case anyone had managed to follow me, where my former superior had insisted upon a helicopter to ferry me back to Cornwall, I knelt on the rug in my bedroom and spread the contents of the box before me. No one had followed me. I’d gone to great lengths to ensure that. Still, I kept my 9 mm at my side.

Broken. That was my first thought. Then…beautiful. Glassy, almost. Amber. The misshapen tiles glowed against the white sheet like puzzle pieces waiting to be fit together. I almost didn’t want to touch them.

“They’re smooth,” I told Catrina, who’d been waiting on the phone as I emptied the box. Energy hummed through my blood the second I touched the first tile. “Almost like glass.”

“Excellent,” Catrina breathed. “Most excellent.”

I moved a few of the broken fragments together until I found how they fit. “An eye,” I said. Wise. Serene. “And a mouth.” Again, serene. Gentle. But fierce somehow. Protective.

“The face.” Awe danced through Catrina’s voice, and I could hear Eve, or maybe one of the other women, whisper something to her. “Is there anything else?” she asked.

Excitement eddied through me. An ancestor of mine had hidden these tiles. There they’d stayed for centuries, buried. Waiting. Scarlet had been so close….

My throat closed up at the thought of my sister and the remarkable legacy we shared. At first, there was a stab of grief for all that she’d never had the chance to know. But then I realized that she did know, and that even though Olga and Lexie had yet to return from their afternoon outing, I did not kneel there in my bedroom alone.

“Definitely a face,” I confirmed, as a few more tiles fit together, forming the smooth, elegant line of a nose.

“You must bring them to us immediately,” Catrina purred.

I planned to. But first, I had something else to tell her. “There’s more,” I said, shifting my attention to the scroll that had fallen from the box along with the tiles. I picked it up and removed the beautiful thread binding it, unrolled the movie-poster-size vellum.

And forgot to breathe.

There she was. The Lady. The Blessed Mother. Exactly as Eve had described her, serenity in her eyes and a sword at her hip.

Torn.

Desecrated.

But still beautiful.

The sense of loss was acute. Part of the lady had been ripped away, stealing the child from her arms.

“Nadia?” Catrina’s voice was sharp.

But I could not speak. The detail was exquisite, not just a drawing or a portrait, but a representation with the painstaking detail of a stained glass window.

Trancelike, I turned to the glowing tiles scattered on the white sheet, and selected one. Part of the eye, so peaceful and quiescent and blessed. I brought the glassy tile to the vellum and compared it to the Lady’s eye.

The fit was perfect.

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