Three Fates

All is forgiven.”
    Malachi slid his hands into his pockets, balled them there. The woman facing him wasn’t the soft, sweet, slightly neurotic one who’d snuck under his skin. This woman was coldly furious and tougher than he’d believed. “Do you want an explanation, or would you rather just pound on me?”
    “I’ll have the first, and reserve my right to the second.”
    “Fair enough. Can we sit?”
    “No.”
    “Be easier if you pounded on me first and got it out of your system,” he responded. “I told you some of the truth.”
    “You’ll have a long wait for your medal of honor, Malachi. Is that your name, or did you make it up?”
    “It’s my name, goddamn it. You want to see my bloody passport?” He began to pace now as she stood cool and still. “I did have an ancestor on the Lusitania. Felix Greenfield, who survived and married Meg O’Reiley and settled in Cobh. The experience changed his life, turned it around and made something out of him. He worked the fishing boats with his wife’s family, had his children, converted to Catholicism and by all accounts was quite devout about it.”
    He paused, ran his fingers—as she’d allowed herself to imagine doing herself—through his thick chestnut hair. “Before that time, before the ship sank under him, he wasn’t such an admirable man. He’d booked passage on that particular vessel as he was on the run from the police. He was a thief.”
    “Blood tells.”
    “Oh, stop it. I’ve never stolen a flaming thing.” The insult grated and had him whirling on her.
    He didn’t look so much the cultured gentleman now, Tia thought dispassionately. Despite the handsome suit, he looked more the brawler. “I don’t think you’re in a position to be so touchy.”
    “I come from a good family. We may not be as fancy and fine as yours, but we’re not thieves and bandits. Felix was, and I can’t be blamed for it. In any case, he turned a corner. It just happened he turned it after he’d taken a few items from the stateroom of the Henry W. Wyleys.”
    “The Fate.” She had to wait until her mind could absorb it. “He took the Fate. It was never lost.”
    “It would’ve been if he hadn’t pinched it, so you might want to consider that in the grand scheme of things. He didn’t know what it was, only that it was pretty and shiny and it, well, it called to him, so to speak. It was passed down through the family, along with the story, and kept as kind of a good-luck charm.”
    Fascinating. Fantastic. Beneath the hurt and fury, she felt interest stirring. “And it came to you.”
    “It came to my mother, and through her to myself and my brother and sister at this point.”
    He was calmer now. He was Catholic enough himself to feel some of the weight of the lies lift by the confessing of them. “I had some curiosity about it, and there’s where I made my fatal mistake. I took it to Dublin. I thought to have it identified, if possible, appraised certainly. My sister, who has a knack for such things, said that she’d see what she could find out through researching books and on the Internet. But I took it with me, impatient, and walked like a sheep into Morningside Antiquities.”
    “You showed it to Anita.”
    “Not at first, no. I told her about it. Why shouldn’t I?” he asked, frustrated all over again. “She was supposed to be an expert on such things, and a reputable businesswoman. I didn’t burst out with the history of it right off, but over the next few days . . .”
    He trailed off as impotent embarrassment shimmered around him.
    “Yes. I can fill in the blanks.” Because it made it worse, it somehow, perversely, made it better. She wasn’t the only one who could be blinded stupid by her own hormones. “She’s very beautiful.”
    “So’s a mako shark to some points of view.” There was bitterness there, for the woman who’d duped him, and for the one who stood placidly with the dark river at her back.
    “Well, she got enough of it out of me before I noticed the teeth. She came by my hotel so she could see it privately. She thought that would be best. Naturally I agreed because she’d already demonstrated a keen personal interest in me. She uses sex the way other women use lipstick,” he declared. “Putting it on and taking it off on a whim. I handed it right over to her.”
    She thought of Anita Gaye. Sharp, sexy, confident. Predatory. Yes, she could understand why even a clever man might be a fool around her.