“There should be a compartment hidden in the mantel,” she told him. “If it’s there, we’ll know that it was all real.”
“I thought we already knew that.” He grabbed her hand again as she tried to dig the key under one of the flowers. “Let me do that before you hurt yourself.”
Mikah raised a brow. Kris was a bit taller than she, but he was wiry rather than muscular. Still, she bowed with a mocking sweep of her hand and stepped aside. “Please, do be a manly man and use your bulging muscles to do what this frail woman could not.”
“Very funny.” He frowned and looked at the fireplace. “What am I doing?”
“You need to turn that,” Mikah pointed to the first flower. “And that, and then you need to press that.”
“VeryIndiana Jones. Or would it beDa Vinci Code?” He tried to turn the first one. “There isn’t much to hold on to.”
“Well it wouldn’t be very secret if there was a handle on it.”
Her friend shot her a frown. “Tell me why I’m here again?”
“Because you love me.”
“Oh, right.” Kris turned back to the mantel and worked at the flower until suddenly it gave with a crack and rotated. He stepped back with a relieved smile. “Thank God, I was beginning to doubt your sanity. Again. I hope they don’t fine us for this.”
“I’m sure they will. Just hope they don’t arrest us. Next one.”
“Slave driver.”
“Yup. Keep going.”
“I hope Scottish prisons have room service.”
Ten minutes later, Kris finally depressed the last button and the leafy door front unlatched with a crackle of paint.
Ithadall been real.
Mikah was elated by the realization, then immediately crushed by it. All that pain and loss because of the greed of one man. Ian and Hero had experienced something that most people only dreamed of, and she’d shared it with them. Heartbreak inundated her for their loss and for hers, too. Her worst fears were realized.
Itwasworse knowing it’d been real.
With a sorrowful sigh, she turned away, but Kris’s curious “What’s this?” drew her back in time to see him pulling a dusty object from the compartment.
Hesitantly, she reached out and took the little velvet bag, which almost crumbled beneath her touch. Loosening the stiffened cord, she opened the bag and tilted it into her palm. A ring slid into her hand, sparkling as if it’d just been polished the night before.
Mikah gasped, recognizing it immediately. Grief gave way to awe as the sapphire winked up at her. Then the warmth of love and dazed amazement she’d felt when Ian slipped it on her finger one hundred and fifty years before spread through her as well. “I can’t believe it’s still here.”
“Wow,” he said, taking the ring from her unresisting hand. “That is really something.”
A tear slipped down her cheek. “Damn.”
He turned at the tone of her voice. “Ah, geez, Mikes. Come here.”
He opened his arms to her and Mikah went into them with a sniffle. Where was she supposed to go after this? What on earth could possibly be out there waiting for her that could compare to that love?
“Mikes,” Kris whispered, kissing the top of her head. “I’m so sorry.”
“Would it be wrong to keep it?” she choked out between sobs.
“Of course not. It’s yours, isn’t it?”
Chapter Forty
“Showtime.” Kris yawned into his coffee cup early the next morning as they sat side-by-side in the last row of folding chairs that had been set up for the auction in the Round Drawing Room. The winter sun beamed weakly through the French doors, reminding Mikah that she still hadn’t gotten a look at the firth. Neither had she found the courage to walk out on the ramparts.
