The Reef

he’d distracted her from her worry over VanDyke. Setting his brandy aside, he crouched to open a storage compartment under a padded bench. “Stay put,” he said mildly when she headed for the door. “You’ll want to see this. And believe me . . .” Still crouched, he glanced over his shoulder at her. “I’m not interested in seducing you. At least not right now.”
    Tate’s fingers tightened on the glass she’d neglected to set down. It was a pity, she thought, that there were only a few drops left in it. Not enough to make an impression if she poured them over his head.
    “Lassiter, you’ve got as much chance of seducing me as a rabid skunk does of becoming my favored pet. And there’s nothing you could have that I want to see.”
    “A few pages of Angelique Maunoir’s diary.”
    It stopped her in her tracks, her hand on the door. “Angelique Maunoir. Angelique’s Curse.”
    “VanDyke has the original diary. He tracked it down almost twenty years ago and had it translated.” Matthew took a small metal box from the compartment and straightened. “I heard him tell my father he traced the descendants of Angelique’s maid. Most of them were in Brittany. That’s where the legend started. It was VanDyke’s father who told him about it. Import-export, shipping, lots of tales and legends get passed around in those types of industries. And they had a personal interest as they were supposed to be some distant relations to Angelique’s father-in-law. That’s why VanDyke considers the amulet his.”
    Though he realized she was staring at the box, Matthew sat, set it in his lap. “VanDyke liked the idea of being descended from a count, even one, or maybe especially one, with an unsavory reputation. The way VanDyke told it, the count got the amulet back. He had to kill the maid to do it, but she was only a maid. He still had it when he died, quite miserably, I imagine, of syphilis a year later.”
    Tate moistened her lips. She didn’t want to be fascinated. “If you knew all this, why didn’t you tell us before?”
    “Some I knew, some I didn’t. My father talked to Buck, and Buck kept most of it to himself. He kept most of my father’s papers to himself, too. I didn’t come across them until a couple of years ago when he was in rehab and I was shoveling out the trailer. The whole business spooked him.”
    Matthew watched her as he tapped a finger on the box. “See the problem was VanDyke told my father too much. Arrogance made him careless. I imagine he thought he was close to finding the amulet, and he wanted to gloat. He told my father how he’d traced the amulet through the count’s family. Several of whom died young and violently.Those who lived suffered poverty. The amulet was sold, began its journey and developed its reputation.”
    “How did your father copy pages of the diary?”
    “According to his journal, he was worried about VanDyke. He suspected a double-cross, or worse, and decided to do some research on his own. He had a chance when winter set in and they had to take a break from diving. He used the time to work on his own. That’s when he must have come across the Isabella. His notes were cryptic after that. Maybe he was worried VanDyke would find them.”
    The old frustration came back, rough around his heart. “It’s mostly speculation, Tate. I was a kid, there was a lot he didn’t tell me. Shit, he didn’t tell me anything. Putting it together is like trying to put him together. And I’m not even sure I knew who he was.”
    “Matthew.” Her voice was gentle now. Drawn, she went to sit beside him, lay a hand over his. “You were only a boy. You can’t blame yourself for not having a clear picture.”
    He stared at their hands, hers narrow and white, his beneath it big, scarred and rough. That, he supposed, illustrated the difference between them as well as anything could.
    “I didn’t know what he was planning. I guess I knew something was going on. I know I didn’t want him to go down with VanDyke that day. I’d heard them going at each other the night before. I asked him not to dive, or at least to let me go with him. He just laughed it off.”
    He shook off the memory. “But that doesn’t answer your question. The best I can piece together is that my father got into VanDyke’s cabin and searched it. He found the diary and copied down the relevant pages. It couldn’t have been long before he died, because that’s part of what they were arguing