Gift of Gold

with us but that she’s made the mistake of underestimating her enemy. God knows she wouldn’t be the first one in history to have done that.”
    Verity chewed on her lower lip. “Now you’ve really got me worried, Jonas. What if Kincaid has guessed he’s being set up?”
    “If Kincaid had any inkling of what was meant to happen tonight, I wouldn’t give two cents for Caitlin’s chances of getting her vengeance. In fact, I’m not sure I’d give two cents for her life.”
    “Jonas!”
    Jonas ignored her small, choked cry. He tracked Kincaid’s progress through the room, watching as the man moved graciously through the crowd, greeting acquaintances and introducing himself to others. He was a man completely in command of himself. A Borgia who had total confidence in his power. Jonas decided that if Kincaid had guessed what was meant to happen, Caitlin Evanger didn’t stand a chance.
    “Something tells me he knows something’s up, Verity. He’s too smart and too powerful to be taken unawares. Caitlin is a fool.”
    “Jonas, we’ve got to do something.”
    “Such as?”
    Verity put her hand urgently on his sleeve. “I don’t know. I do know I can’t talk Caitlin out of her plan. She’s convinced it will work.”
    “Then there’s not much we can do except stand by in case Kincaid gets nasty.”
    The evening wore on toward midnight. In the dense crowd, it was relatively simple for Jonas and Verity to avoid Kincaid.
    Simple, that was, until Kincaid sought them out.
    “Ah, there you are, Miss Ames. Quarrel. I understood you two had been invited tonight,” Kincaid said smoothly as he walked up to them with the easy attitude of an old acquaintance. He helped himself to a couple of canapés from the buffet table. “An interesting affair, isn’t it? Falls a little short of the real thing in places, however. This food, for instance, is certainly very twentieth century.”
    “Not particularly,” Verity countered crisply. “A lot of the items on this buffet would have looked right at home on a Renaissance table. The egg-based dishes, the meats, and the pastas would have appeared familiar to someone from that era. A lot of modern cooking dates from the Renaissance. Of course, there aren’t any pies with live birds inside, and I don’t see any salted pork tongues or boiled calves’ feet, but I expect the caterer had to make a few concessions to modern tastes. You’re the expert, Jonas. What do you think?”
    Jonas had heard the underlying hostility in her voice as she defended the buffet selections and he winced. Acting was apparently not one of his love’s talents. Now that Verity had decided Kincaid was the bad guy, she was going to have a tough time hiding her dislike of him. He tried to gloss over the implicit rudeness, not wanting to alert Kincaid any more than he already was.
    “I think you’re right. The buffet table could have passed muster four hundred years ago. The caterer had an advantage tonight, however. He didn’t have to worry about kitchen security.”
    “Security?” Kincaid cocked a handsome brow.
    “In the Renaissance, food for an important gathering had to be prepared under tight security,” Jonas explained patiently. “Everyone worried about getting poisoned.”
    “Oh, yes, that’s right.” Kincaid chuckled and helped himself to another canapé. “Life back then must have been a constant adventure.”
    “That’s an understatement. Did you ever get around to having the dagger authenticated?” Jonas asked conversationally.
    Kincaid sipped his wine. “I did. And you were quite right. I hate to say it, but it appears I was taken. Not something I like to admit.”
    I’ll
just bet you don
’
t,
Jonas thought. “Did you speak to whoever handled the deal for you? Or contact the original owner?” He didn’t know what made him ask that last question. He simply couldn’t resist. He saw the attentive gleam in Verity’s eyes and knew she, too, was remembering the man who had died in a bowl of linguini.
    “There was no third party involved in the deal,” Kincaid said casually. “Perhaps if I had been willing to pay a commission to someone qualified to authenticate the dagger, I wouldn’t have found myself in the embarrassing position I was in when you spotted it for a fake in my office. As for the original owner, I’m afraid there’s no going back to him for restitution. He’s unavailable. The man had the bad manners to die a few years back. Shot, I believe, by