most precious of his gifts-a true friend…


"More tea, Penfeld?" Emily gazed wanly into the delicate china cup the valet offered. "What a delightful surprise. You must have read my mind."


"A fine New Delhi brew," he pronounced, beaming proudly. "Justin procured it from the Bay of Islands for my last birthday."


"How dear of him," she murmured.


She waited until he had bustled back to the stove before tossing the contents of the cup over her shoulder and out the window. She'd trade all the fine teas in the world for one coffee bean to suck on. The mannerly valet had been very vocal in his opinion that coffee was simply too crude a drink to pass her dainty lips. Emily was beginning to wonder if the sly Mr. Connor was smuggling not gold, but tea.


She smacked her lips on the cup's rim, pretending to drain it. "Marvelous flavor. I've never tasted anything quite like it."


Penfeld clapped his plump hands. "It warms my heart to see a young lady enjoying tea." He swept the cup from her hand. "If you like it so well, I'll pour you another."


Groaning silently, Emily buried her face in her hands. The portly valet was killing her with kindness. Every time she'd wiggled in the past three days, he had been there- fluffing the blankets beneath her ankle and pouring tea down her throat as if it were the elixir of life. She would almost swear her wary host had sicced him on her out of spite.


The mysterious Mr. Connor disappeared each day at dawn and did not return until sunset. After wolfing down some flat biscuits and a hot pasty stew consisting mostly of canned beans, he would collapse on

his pallet with little more than a grunted good night.


As attentive as always, Emily thought grimly.


A cooling breeze wafted through the window, stirring the curls at the nape of her neck. Her nose twitched at the salty tang of the sea. A twilight paradise beckoned to her with a whisper of sunlight and surf, but thanks to her own lie, she was trapped in this musty hut, watching Penfeld polish his teapot. She ached to sink her toes into the warm sand, to feel the ocean spray mist her skin. She eyed the stacks of books longingly. She was also dying for a moment of privacy to dig through the hut for some hint of the treachery her guardian had worked on her father.


Her wish was granted when Penfeld pulled a wicker basket off a peg and trotted out the door, mumbling something about a "tidy pinch of mint." Praying mint did not grow in this hemisphere, Emily jumped to her feet and whirled in a giddy circle. A teetering stack of books blocked her way. She steadied them

with her heel, torn between the books and the window. The warm breeze was too strong a temptation. She thrust her head out the window, savoring the salty bite of the sea air.


The wicker hut crouched at the very edge of a sun-dappled forest, huddled beneath the sweeping boughs of two trees that resembled gigantic ferns. The murmur of the sea was a distant sigh, luring her toward freedom. She ought to climb out that window and never look back. But how far could she get before the truth would catch up with her? She'd spent far too long eluding it.


She tightened her jaw in determination and turned back to the books. Her daddy had always said you could divine a man's soul by reading his books. Somewhere among them might be a deed, a map, or a journal holding clues to the whereabouts of her father's gold.


She picked up a leather-bound volume and blew the dust off its cover. "Mozart: The Master and His Music," she read aloud. She thumbed through the pages, then tossed it aside and plucked out another. "The Polyphonic Symphonies of Beethoven?"


Emily frowned. She had been hoping for Machiavelli's The Prince or perhaps the Marquis de Sade's

Les 120 Journées de Sodome. She examined book after book, only to discover weighty biographies of Mendelssohn and Rossini, fifteen volumes describing the rhythms and meters of the world's greatest operas, and a mildewed treatise pleading the case of the viola against the violin. She pawed through the stacks, swearing under her breath as the precious minutes ticked away.


A hefty libretto of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde slowed her progress. She gave it a vicious yank. The entire heap weaved dangerously. She threw her arms around it, bracing the books with her chest. Dust tickled her nose. She swallowed a sneeze. All she needed was for Penfeld to return and find her buried beneath a pile of musty tomes, her skull crushed by The Encyclopedia of West Indian Dance Rhythms.


The shift had revealed a tiny cavity between two larger books. Emily drew out a slim volume bound in morocco. Although the leather had worn well, the gilt-edged pages had tarnished with age. It was almost as if the book had been tossed aside and forgotten. Or carefully hidden.


Emily's hands began to tremble as she stroked the unmarked cover. Perhaps now she would learn her guardian's dark secrets.


She sank down cross-legged on the floor and opened the book. Inscribed across the frontpiece, not in

the strong, measured script of a man, but in the clumsy scrawl of a child were the words: This book is

the property of Justin Marcus Homer Lloyd Farnsworth Connor III. (Peek at your own peril.)


"Homer?" Emily whispered, smiling in spite of herself.


Her finger traced the ominous skull and crossbones sketched beneath the warning. She turned the page, already suspecting what she would find. But instead of hasty jottings about how many frogs he'd caught or plum puddings he'd pilfered, she found wavering lines connected into grids and splotched with ink.


She held the book up to her nose. "Why, the clever little brat was already writing his nasty secrets in code!"


Her vision blurred; the lines danced, then steadied into a recognizable pattern. Her mouth fell open as

she fanned the pages, turning them faster than her eyes could follow. Not a code after all, but wavering bars connected by blots of ink. Music. Bar after bar, note after note, transcribed with a patience that should not have belonged to any child.


Baffled and oddly touched, Emily let the little book fall shut. She almost didn't hear the warning creak

of the door.


She made a diving roll for the pallet, praying Penfeld's coat would follow. Losing it could have dire consequences. Apparently no one had thought of offering her the valet's long underdrawers.


As Justin ducked beneath the lintel, Emily realized with horror that she was still clutching his journal.

She shoved it under the blankets, faking a tremendous yawn.


"Hello, Emily," he said, his voice notably devoid of warmth.


She bit her tongue to keep from blurting out Hello, Homer. "Good evening, Mr. Connor."


He gazed around the hut. "Where's Penfeld?"


She folded her hands in her lap. "He went out to pick some mint."


Justin lifted an edge of the stained linen tablecloth and peered beneath. "You sure you don't have him trussed up somewhere?"


She flashed a deliberate dimple. "Why, Mr. Connor, you flatter me."


He drew off the watch and laid it on the table.


"Beautiful workmanship," she murmured, hoping his face might betray something.


"Pity I don't have a waistcoat pocket to keep it in. I have to wear it around my neck like a woman."


One would have to be blind, deaf, and comatose to mistake him for a member of that fairer sex, Emily thought as he dipped into the wash bucket and poured handfuls of water over his flushed face. Sparkling drops caught in the dark filaments of hair along his forearms. An errant trickle eased down his muscled abdomen and disappeared into the low-slung waistband of his dungarees.


She swallowed, wishing for even a drop of tea to wet her throat.


He turned toward the door. "Tell Penfeld I went down to the beach."


It was all Emily could do to keep from scrambling to her feet. She would have gone to the beach with Lucifer himself to escape the stifling confines of the hut.


"Take me," she blurted out.


Her innocent plea stopped Justin in his tracks. She would be gone in a few days, he reminded himself, and then he could resume the orderly tempo of his life. All he had to do was turn around and tell her

he wasn't interested in her company.


He turned around. Her ardent brown eyes sparkled up at him. "Penfeld's coat is due for a washing.

We might as well wash it with me in it."


Justin ruffled his hair. She lowered her lashes, obviously bracing herself for his refusal.


"I have only one question, young lady," he said sternly, bending over her.


"What?" Emily replied, biting her lower lip. To her embarrassment, genuine tears of disappointment

stung her eyes.


She gasped as he caught her under the knees and shoulders and swept her into his arms, bringing her

nose to nose with him. "What if Penfeld should decide to iron the coat with you in it?"


She giggled. "It wouldn't be the first time I'd been ironed. My teachers used to sit on me and iron my hair."


His gaze softened. He raked his fingers through her mop of curls, mesmerizing her with his tenderness. "What a crime."


* * *


As they started down the short, sandy path to the beach, Emily threw an arm around Justin's neck.

They burst onto the beach and her senses exploded in drunken abandon. The warmth of the setting sun branded her skin; the wind dragged soothing fingers through her hair. Moaning with delight, she tilted her face back and closed her eyes.


When she opened them, Justin's face was very close to hers. She could see each stubbled hair along his jawline and was seized with a strange urge to rub her cheek across it and see if it felt as prickly as it looked. Her face flushed with more than the heat of the sun.


"You may put me down," she said primly.


Mischief glinted in his golden eyes. "Oh, no. You wanted a bath, and it's a bath you'll be having."


Before she could even squeal, he strode through the damp sand into the waves. She buried her face in

the haven of his chest, clinging as he waded deeper into the swirling surf. Cool water licked her thighs. Penfeld's coat ballooned around her hips. She pressed it down with frantic fingers.


"There now, isn't that pleasant?"


"No." Her teeth chattered against his chest. "It's bloody cold."


"I'm afraid there's only one cure for that."


He dropped her.


Emily thrashed wildly. Salty water rushed into her mouth. Good Lord, the lunatic was trying to kill her! She should have suspected as much. He must have recognized her from the photograph. Her toes churned up a mass of sand and she realized the water was only a few feet deep. She also realized the muffled sound above her was not the pounding of the surf, but the infuriating rumble of a man's laughter.


Her fingers dug into Justin's thigh, and she shot from the waves, climbing him like a tree monkey. She shook water from her stinging eyes. "You ill-mannered, wretched-" She sputtered to a halt, trying to remember some of the viler names Barney had called her on the journey from England.


"Would you like to sit on my shoulders?" he suggested dryly. "The view is much better."


Justin knew a brief moment of panic when it looked as if she might take him up on his offer. The prospect of being cradled between her shapely thighs for such a benign purpose was too torturous to contemplate.


He caught her hips to stop her panicked ascent. "I was only trying to help."


Emily opened her mouth to argue, but realized the water now swirled around her hips in currents of delicious warmth. Even worse, most of the warmth seemed to be centered at the juncture of her thighs, where the faded V of Justin's dungarees was pressed with alarming intimacy. By flinging her legs around him, she had put herself in a more precarious position than she dared to admit. She'd lost track of Penfeld's coat during her writhing, and most of it was trapped around her waist. She stilled, terrified