“I told you that I don’t know, but I feel … a sense of anticipation. I just know that my life … your life … the lives of all of us are going to change soon. You need to tell Alix what you and Ken have been plotting. You can build it in time for the wedding.”
“I’m not sure,” Jared said. “There’s not enough time.”
“You need to do it!” Caleb said, his voice adamant, fierce. “You know where her chapel goes, don’t you?”
“On the old house site.”
“Yes, you have it right.” Caleb listened. “Alix has the bathtub full. Go to her.” Caleb’s body was beginning to fade away. Not disappear in an instant as usual, but more like the sun beginning to set. “You need to find—”
“I know!” Jared said impatiently. “I’m supposed to find out what happened to Valentina.”
Caleb’s body was little more than a shadow. “I think that before you can find her, you should look for Parthenia.” He was gone.
Jared stood there a moment staring into the dim length of the attic. “Who the hell is Parthenia?” he muttered.
Shaking his head, he pulled the light string and went down the stairs. When he got to the bathroom, Alix was already in a tub full of hot water, six-inch-deep bubbles across the surface, her head just peeping above. She gave Jared a smile of invitation, but when he didn’t seem to notice, she sat up straighter in the tub. “What happened?”
Distracted, Jared removed his cold, wet clothing and put a leg into the water. “Damn! But this water is hot.”
“I think you need it. You’re white as a glacier.” As soon as he was in the tub she moved between his legs, her back to his front. “Tell me what’s bothering you. And don’t even think of saying that nothing is.”
Jared took a while before he spoke. Even though his life had been one of secrets and keeping things to himself, right now he wanted to tell Alix what his grandfather had told him. On Izzy’s wedding day, Captain Caleb Jared Kingsley, who’d died over two hundred years ago, was at last departing this earth. It would not be a joyous day for Jared.
He couldn’t tell Alix that. But what he could tell her was what he and her father had been secretly working on for the last two weeks.
“I think we can build your chapel,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Ken and I’ve been working on this in secret and he should get building approval very soon. It hasn’t been easy.”
Alix was silent as she listened to Jared tell what they had accomplished. Her father had taken measurements from Alix’s sketches and her model, and he’d spent an all-nighter drawing a floor plan and elevations.
“Then he sent them to New York to be made into blueprints. Stanley rushed it all through.”
“Your assistant,” Alix said.
“Sometimes I think Stanley is the boss.”
She turned to look up at him. “Now, why do I doubt that?”
He kissed her and
she turned back around. Her heart was pounding. She was going to see one of her own designs built? She couldn’t really believe it.
“Of course Ken knew we had to make two designs.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Committees never accept the original proposal, so the first time around your dad turned in a caricature of your design, and with Dilys’s help—”
“What does she have to do with this?”
“She’s on the board. My name can’t be on the plan because she’s my cousin, but she and Ken aren’t related, even if they once were …”
“Were what?” Alix asked, then held up her hand. “Don’t tell me. I can guess. So what did she do?”
“Raised a ruckus, said the plan was horrible, and threw it out. Then the next week Ken put on his meek face and presented the real one. Dilys led the group in saying the new one was much better.”