Jared turned to her with a sweet smile. “You’re right,” he said. “Nothing in the world makes up for that loss.”
For a moment they looked at each other, the soft Nantucket sea breeze on them, but then Jared stood up and the moment was lost.
“You’re supposed to find out what happened to Valentina,” he said.
“I’m what?” Alix asked as she got up.
“You’re to find out what happened to Valentina. It’s the Great Kingsley Mystery.”
“This woman disappeared over two hundred years ago. How am I supposed to research that?”
Jared started walking down the path and back to the truck, Alix close behind him. “Beats me,” he said. “Aunt Addy left boxes of papers collected by various relatives, but no one could find out. She always said the secret died with Obed.”
They had reached the truck. “Let me get this straight,” Alix said. “Your ancestors spent years trying to figure this out but couldn’t and now they want me, who is—I hardly dare say this—an off-islander, to figure out what happened to her? Is that right?”
“That’s exactly right. You catch on quickly. But then I’ve seen that you’re smart, a little impatient at times so you get things wrong, but you have brains.”
“Me impatient? You were throwing rocks at my window this morning and hurrying me to change shoes.”
“I was afraid you were having a long conversation with the Captain you’re so crazy about.”
“I told him to keep quiet.”
Jared’s eyes widened. “You were talking to him?”
“Just blowing kisses at him. Our relationship is purely physical.”
“Bet he likes that,” Jared muttered as he got in the truck beside Alix.
She sat in silence, thinking about what he’d said as he turned the truck around and drove back to the paved road. She was thinking so hard about all that he’d told her that she paid little attention to where he was going.
All she could think of was the story she’d just heard. Two people deeply in love, but they’d agreed to wait for years. Alix couldn’t imagine that happening in the modern age. At least Caleb and Valentina’d had some time alone. Was it the night before he left? One wild, passionate night? Maybe they’d decided to wait until Caleb returned from his voyage, but on that last night Valentina had slipped into his room and untied her corset strings and—
“We’re here,” Jared said. “You seem a million miles away.”
Alix came out of her trance and looked out to see a house, new, fairly modern, and definitely not designed by Montgomery. The sea stretched out behind it. “I was thinking of the story you told me. My mother wrote about a man who built up a soap empire.”
“Did she?” Jared asked. “What did she say about where he got the recipe?”
“I don’t remember. It’s been too long since I read it, but I seem to remember that there was a second wife. Sally?”
“Susan,” Jared said, then gave her a sharp look. “Not that your mother was writing about my family.”
Alix was about to make a sarcastic remark about her mother spending so much time on Nantucket yet he didn’t want to believe that she wrote about the place. But she stopped herself, suddenly understanding that Jared didn’t like the idea that his family’s past passions and indiscretions had been published for the world to see.
“What’s the name of the book about soap?” he asked.
“Forever at …” She looked at him.
“At what? Making bubbles?” He was not being funny. In fact, he looked thoroughly disgusted.
“Sea,” she said softly. “Forever at Sea.”
“Great,” he muttered. “And my quarterboard is …”
“TO SEA FOREVER,” Alix said, sympathy in her voice as she thought, Oh, Mom, what have you done? “It could be a coincidence. Kingsley Soap used to be a very big deal, so maybe Mom—”
Jared looked at her with hooded eyes. “Do you really think it’s a coincidence?”