Jack looked at her in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
The pieces were falling together. Sebastian had told her how Charles II granted amnesty to everyone who fought on the Puritan side except for the fifty-nine men who voted for his father’s execution. For them there was no mercy.
“Charles II spent more than a decade in exile after his father was beheaded during the Puritan Revolution,” she told Jack. “After he was restored to the throne in 1660, he wanted revenge against every man who signed his father’s death warrant. Any regicide who was captured was put on trial, then they were hanged, drawn, and quartered.”
Jack looked skeptical. “How did his signet ring get to Virginia? The guy died in 1659.”
It was a good question. That ring went into the wall in 1661 when the house was built. “There must have been a relationship between Reid Santos and William Reid Denby,” she said. “The name Reid is somewhat unusual for the time. He might have been an illegitimate child?”
“But why did the ring comehere?” Jack pressed. “And why go to such trouble to hide it?”
Alice’s heart began to pound and her palms tingled. “Santos meanssaintin Spanish. The Puritans called themselves ‘the Saints’ during the English Civil War, and William Reid Denby was a highly-placed Puritan, probably a member of the parliament.”
If he was to escape the wrath of the king, he would have needed a new name. More pieces started falling into place in her brain and a slow smile spread across her face.
“Reid Santos and William Reid Denby were the same person,” she said. “And he didn’t die in 1659.”
Jack nodded, his eyes alight. “He faked his death, and his family covered for him,” Jack said. “They wrote a fake date of death on his tombstone when it became obvious that Charles was going to retake the throne and was out for blood. Helga probably backed the story and helped spread a story that William was dead . . . but in reality he fled to Virginia, still an unsettled and dangerous wilderness.”
“Too dangerous to bring his wife,” Alice said. The story seemed wildly dramatic and still had holes. She stood and began pacing. “If William Reid Denby was a Puritan, why wouldn’t he have gone to New England? Massachusetts was settled by Puritans who would have been sympathetic to his cause. Virginia was settled by Royalists.”
Jack clapped his hands together and flashed a roguish grin. “Nope! Virginia makes perfect sense. Nobody would be looking for him here. If William Denby was well known among the Puritans, all it would take was for a single person in Massachusetts to recognize him and turn him over to the Crown for a fat reward.”
It was making sense to Alice. “So he came to a place nobody would recognize him,” she continued. “He made up a fake name and lived happily ever after. It’s why I couldn’t find a birth or death record for Reid Santos in England, because there neverwasa Reid Santos . . . only William Reid Denby.”
If anyone had good cause to disappear, it was a man the king of England wanted to see hanged, drawn, and quartered. Charles II vowed he would never call off the search until every person whosigned his father’s death warrant was made to pay the ultimate price.
Jack leaned over the laptop to study the photograph of the signet ring. “All those religious symbols show Denby’s loyalty to the Puritan cause. It looks like our man was one of the bad guys. A regicide on the run.”
She released a heavy sigh. A man who carved his wife’s name into window glass? She didn’t want to believe it. “There were a lot of good Puritans,” she said. “Had the war turned out differently, William Reid Denby would have been considered a hero. The Puritans started out with noble intentions. They wanted a fair and representative government. They wanted to curb the abuses of wealth and believed in universal education, even for women! Once they got into power, they started implementing all those things. History is written by the winners, and the Royalists ensured that the Puritans were remembered not for their reforms, but for their most egregious abuses.”
Jack leaned back against the pillows and looked at her with a speculative gaze. “So you think Helga was the Widow Santos?”
“Probably,” Alice said. “The letter I found said Helga sailed to Virginia because she still had hope for a child. It’s sad that it never happened for her.”
“How can you be so sure about that?” Jack asked.
“Because the Roost and all its contents were sold at auction in 1705. Courthouse records indicate the Roost was owned by the Widow Santos, but she had no children so it was put up for auction after she died.”
Jack continued to stare at the image of the ring on her laptop monitor, his expression growing darker. “I want to know who has that ring.”
“I’ve already reported it to the police,” she said. “Every pawn shop in a fifty-mile radius will be on the lookout for it.”
“I don’t think it’s going to show up at a pawn shop,” Jack said. “I think one of the Tuckers took it. They know its historic value and had access to my room. I’m going to get it back.”
Right after he was released from the hospital, Jack asked Alice to drive him to Kyle Tucker’s fancy art gallery. It was in the rich part of Williamsburg, crammed with snooty cafés and antique shops.
“Please be nice,” Alice cautioned as she scanned the street for a parking spot.
“I’m not feeling nice,” he replied. “I have a hunch Daisy’s got her hands on my ring.”
“She claimed not to know anything about it,” Alice said, slowing down to ease her car into a tiny spot.
“And you believed her?”
“I suppose,” she said with an uncertain shrug. Alice was too sweet to risk an ugly confrontation, but Jack wasn’t. Somebody swiped a historic relic, and he wanted it back. Responsibility for the security of his hotel room began and ended with the Tuckers. He’d make Kyle launch a search to identify everyone who had access to his room.
The Tucker Gallery took up two storefronts, the display windows filled with Old World furniture, highboys, and elegant writing desks. Alice walked ahead to hold the heavy glass door for him as he navigated inside. It was hard to project an intimidating aura while tottering on forearm crutches, but he’d get the job done.
