The Reef

it will be Matthew’s doing, his choosing, not an ancient curse on a piece of jewelry.”

C HAPTER 22
    L ONG AFTER B UCK had gone off to find her father, his words and his worries haunted Tate. She couldn’t dismiss them as absurd or mildly hysterical. She understood that the belief itself, the reality of it was what created legends.
    And she’d believed once. When she’d been young and softhearted and ready to dream, she’d believed in the possibility of magic and myth and mystery. She’d believed in a great many things.
    Annoyed with herself, she poured more tea, tepid now as she’d forgotten to close the thermos. It was foolish to regret a loss of naïveté. Like childhood games, it was something that was set aside with time and knowledge and experience.
    She’d learned the reasons behind such legends as Angelique’s Curse. Indeed that was part of her fascination for her work. The whys and hows and whos were as important to her as the weight and date and fashion of any artifact she had ever held in her hands.
    Innocence and wide eyes were lost perhaps, but her education hadn’t diminished her curiosity or her imagination. It had only enhanced it, and given it a channel.
    Over the years she, too, had gathered information on Angelique’s Curse. Bits and pieces of research she hadeventually filed away on disk. More, or so she had thought, out of a sense of organization than curiosity.
    It didn’t have the renown of the Hope Diamond, or the cache of the philosopher’s stone, yet its story and travels were interesting. Following the trail of any artifact gave a scientist facts, dates and a glimpse of the humanity of history.
    From Angelique Maunoir to the count who had condemned her, from the count after his death to his eldest daughter, who had fallen from her horse and broken her neck on the way to a tryst with a lover.
    Nearly a century had passed before it had turned up again in verified documentation. In Italy, Tate mused, where it survived a fire that had destroyed its owner’s villa and left him a widower. Eventually it had been sold, and traveled to Britain. The merchant who purchased it committed suicide. It came into the hands of a young duchess who apparently wore it happily for thirty years. But when her son inherited the necklace, along with her estate, he drank and gambled away his fortune and died penniless and insane.
    And so the necklace had been purchased by Minnefield, who had lost his life on the great Australia reef. The necklace had been assumed lost there, buried in sand and coral.
    Until Ray Beaumont had found an old, tattered book and had read of a sailor and an unknown Spanish lady who faced a hurricane aboard the galleon Isabella.
    Those were the facts, Tate thought now. Death was always cruel, but rarely mysterious. Accidents, fires, illnesses, even poor luck were simply part of the cycle of living. Stones and metal could neither cause nor change it.
    But despite all the facts, the scientific data, Buck’s fears had translated to her, and had that well-groomed imagination working in overdrive.
    Now the storm seemed eerie with its keening wind and lashing waves. Every distant flash of lightning was a warning that nature continued to thrive on possibilities.
    The night seemed to warn that certain of those possibilities were best left untapped.
    More than ever she wanted to contact Hayden, to callon a fellow scientist to help her put the Isabella and its treasures, all of its treasures, back into perspective. She wanted someone to remind her just what it was they had. An archeological find of significant importance. Not a witch’s curse that seduced.
    But the night was wild and full of voices.
    “Tate.”
    She had the unpleasant experience of discovering just what it felt like to jump out of her skin. After she’d knocked over her cup, spilled lukewarm tea into her lap, she had the presence of mind to swear as Matthew laughed at her.
    “Little jumpy?”
    “It’s hardly a night for visitors, and you’re number two.” She rose to grab a towel from a storage cabinet to mop up the spill. “Buck’s probably upstairs, trying to wrangle a card game. What are you—”
    She looked at him for the first time, saw that he was soaking wet. His shirt and worn jeans clung to him and dripped water heedlessly on the floor.
    “You swam over? Are you insane?” She was already grabbing more towels as she berated him. “For Christ’s sake, Lassiter, you might have