the family is in London at the moment.” Once again, tension crossed Nicholas’s face. “Let’s go up to the library. I’ve got some new wiring plans I’d like you to look at, if you wouldn’t mind. While you do that, I’ll track down that food and tea.”
“Sounds like a fair trade to me. Marston’s scones were always worth a king’s ransom.” Calan kept his tone casual, but he was considering how best to bring up the attack of the prior night and the woman whose rich, seductive scent kept drifting through his thoughts.
“Something wrong?”
Calan realized that Nicholas had turned to stare at him. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I know you damned well by now, MacKay. Nothing troubles you or frightens you. Yet right now you’re distracted—and you don’t want me to know it.”
“I forget you were our government’s best field agent, with a reputation for missing no detail.”
“Don’t change the subject. What’s wrong? Not your…health, I hope?”
“I’m in excellent shape. As shapes come and go,” the Scotsman said drily. “As for the rest, I think I’ll have that tea first.”
“SO ARE YOU EVER going to stop?” Nicholas frowned at his friend over the silver tea set.
Even with Nicholas, Calan’s habitual distance was firmly in place. That reserve never left him, even around his few friends.
Calan sank into a thick leather chair beside the open French doors. “By that, you mean I should stop dropping in on you with no notice? I apologize for the inconvenience,” he said stiffly.
“Rubbish. I’m delighted to see you, notice or not.” Nicholas turned to fill their teacups. “I’m talking about this damnable travel obsession you have. I’ve barely seen you in the last four years.” Nicholas Draycott put down his scone, untouched. His eyes narrowed. “You never stay here in England. You’re constantly on the move.”
Exactly. And he would stay that way, Calan thought. Right up to the day he died. Ancient clan prophecies could not be changed, though Nicholas knew nothing of that.
Calan gave a casual shrug. “I enjoy new languages and new people. I wasn’t aware that travel was a crime.” He inhaled the smoky scent of the dark tea and smiled. “I’d forgotten how much I miss England. I’d also forgotten how beautiful this old abbey of yours can be.”
Especially by moonlight, with the clouds drifting like silver froth and rose petals carried on the wind. Such a night could make a man forget every promise, every duty.
But Nicholas didn’t know about his earlier visit or the attack that followed, and Calan wasn’t giving him the details yet. First he wanted to know why someone would be staking out the road at the abbey’s edge.
And who the woman was.
“Don’t change the subject, Calan. It’s time you turned in your frequent flyer cards. Settle down. Open another six software design studios, or whatever it is you do to make such obscene amounts of money.”
“Satellite mapping technology,” Calan said. “And I would hardly call my fees obscene.”
“More than anyone needs. I know you give away a large part of it to charities. I also know about your dangerous sideline.”
“Windsurfing?” Calan tried to keep his tone cool and just a little flippant. He hadn’t expected his old friend to turn their first conversation in months into an interrogation of this sort.
“Hardly. I am referring to your land mine and ordnance disposal work.” Nicholas drummed his fingers on a gleaming Georgian side table. “I found out last week from a Red Cross colleague in Switzerland. He filled me in about your work in developing countries without the equipment or expertise to clear their old fields. In all these years you never mentioned it to me.”
He sounded especially irritated, Calan thought, as if this secrecy had betrayed their friendship. “It didn’t seem relevant.”
“You nearly get yourself killed every six months and it’s not relevant? I saw the file about your last job in Azerbaijan. The government had several small remote detection vehicles, but they couldn’t get across the rocky terrain, so you went instead. You managed to save four children who had wandered into the minefield, I heard.”
Calan 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
