Hot Ice

the little box hidden under the floor in the kitchen.”
    Whitney set the page aside. “How old was she, I wonder.”
    “Fifteen.” He touched another paper sealed in plastic. “Her record of birth, her parents’ marriage lines.” He handed it to Whitney. “And death certificates. She died when she was sixteen.” He picked up a last page. “This gives us the rest of it.”
    “To my son,” Whitney began and glanced up at Doug. “You sleep in the cradle I made you, wearing the little blue gown your mother and sister sewed. They are departed now, your mother giving you life, your sister from a fever striking so quickly there was no time for a doctor. I have discovered your sister’s journal and read it, wept over it. One day, when you are older, it too will be yours. I have done what I thought I must, for my country, my queen, my family. I have saved them from the Terror only to lose them in this strange, foreign place.
    “I have not the will to continue. The sisters will care for you as I cannot. I can give to you only these pieces of your family, the words of your sister, your mother’s love. With them, I add the responsibility I took for our queen. A letter will be left with the sisters, instructions for passing you this package when you are of age. You inherit my responsibility and my oath to the queen. Though it will be buried with me, you will again take it up and fight for the cause. When the time is right, come to where I rest and find Marie. I pray you do not fail as I have done.”
    “He killed himself.” Whitney set the letter down with a sigh. “He’d lost his home, his family, and his heart.” She could see them, French aristocrats displaced by politics and social unrest, floundering in a strange country, struggling to adjust to a new life. And Gerald, living and dying by his promise to a queen. “What happened?”
    “As best I can make out, the baby was taken into a convent.” He shifted through more papers. “He was adopted and immigrated with his family to England. It looks like the papers were stored away and just forgotten until Lady Smythe-Wright unearthed them.”
    “And the queen’s box?”
    “Buried,” Doug said with a faraway look in his eye. “In a cemetery in Diégo-Suarez. All we have to do is find it.”
    “And then?”
    “Then we take a stroll on easy street.”
    Whitney looked down at the papers in her lap. There were lives scattered there, dreams, hopes, and loyalty. “Is that all?”
    “Isn’t it enough?”
    “This man made a promise to his queen.”
    “And she’s dead,” Doug pointed out. “France is a democracy. I don’t think anyone would back us up if we decided to use the treasure to restore the crown.”
    She started to speak, then found herself too tired to argue. She needed time to take it all in, evaluate her own standards. In any case, they’d yet to find it. Doug had said it was the winning. After he’d won, she’d talk to him about morals. “So you think you can find a cemetery, stroll in, and dig up a queen’s treasure.”
    “Damn right.” He gave her a quick, dashing smile that made her believe him.
    “It might already have been found.”
    “Uh-uh.” He shook his head and shifted. “One of the pieces the girl described, the ruby ring. There was a whole section on it in the library book. That ring had been passed down through royal succession for a hundred years before it was lost—during the French Revolution. If that or any of the other pieces had turned up, underground or otherwise, I’d’ve heard about it. It’s all there, Whitney. Waiting for us.”
    “It’s plausible.”
    “The hell with plausible. I’ve got the papers.”
    “We’ve got the papers,” Whitney corrected as she leaned back against a tree. “Now all we have to do is find a cemetery that’s been around for two centuries.” She closed her eyes and went instantly to sleep.
    It was hunger that woke her, the deep, hollow kind she’d never experienced. On a moan, she rolled over and found herself nose to nose with Doug.
    “Morning.”
    She ran her tongue around her teeth. “I’d kill for a croissant.”
    “A Mexican omelette.” He closed his eyes as he pictured it. “Cooked to a deep gold and just busting with peppers and onions.”
    Whitney let that lie in her imagination, but it didn’t fill her stomach. “We have one brown banana.”
    “Around here, it’s serve yourself.” Rubbing his hands over his face, Doug sat up. It was well past