“Gen?”
Gen shuddered. Snapped the box closed so that the gold would never wink at her again, the garnets and emeralds would lose their silky fire. So she wouldn’t remember.
“The, uh... Claddagh ring,” she explained, her voice strained. “It’s an expression of affection and devotion, traditional in Ireland. It’s only become popular here in the States in the past twenty years or so. I’m surprised.”
“It’s beautiful,” he agreed. “What else did you find?”
Gen looked back into the shadowy recesses of that trunk. “My dress,” she admitted.
Rafe looked over. “The one in the nightmare?”
She nodded. “I wish I understood any of this.”
“No letters, no pictures, nothing else?”
“Journals.”
“Good. Maybe we can find something out after all.”
Gen finally couldn’t help it. She looked up at Rafe, needing his support, needing the gentle strength in those beautiful eyes. “I’m not sure I want to.”
His smile was as sweet as sunrise. “I know,” he said, reaching out to gentle her with a touch. “But I think you’re meant to. I think that may be what this is all about.”
Gen fought the urge to simply rest in the comfort of his hand and challenged him. “And what about you?” she demanded. “What’s your part supposed to be?”
His expression saddened. “I don’t know, my love. I just know that I have to be here.”
Gen sighed, struggled against tears. The storm raged outside, but it was more perilous here. She wasn’t at all sure she was going to survive this.
“There’s another box in that trunk,” Rafe said simply. “Have you gone through it?”
She stared at him. At the trunk. “What box?” she demanded.
He reached past her and dug thorough the dresses and cloaks and button-top boots. When he withdrew his hand, it held a small box.
Gen found herself shivering again. How had he known? What was she going to find inside? Because she knew there was something important there, something she needed to see. Something she didn’t want to see.
Without a word, Rafe handed her the little box. Gen looked at it, worn cardboard banded in faded satin. She drew a shaky breath and pulled the once-gold hair ribbon away. Pried open the lid. Looked inside.
She should at least have been surprised. She wasn’t. It wasn’t just that Rafe had known where the photos were. It was that he’d somehow known who they were of.
A bright young lady in her best watered-silk dress, the garnets winking darkly at her throat, her heavy hair captured in a snood. Standing, as was the fashion of the day, behind the chair that held the handsome officer in his gray uniform and plumed hat, the old carved sword hanging by his side, a sash of office bisecting his chest.
His boots were polished to a gleam, his uniform sharp and wickedly handsome on him, his hat rakish, his gloves creased over his belt. The young woman had been caught looking over at him, and the light in her eyes was passionate, the smile on her lips proud. The man looked appropriately solemn and martial. The cream of the South’s fighting men. Probably the last picture they had taken together before he went off to save his land. The last time their eyes had reflected their pride and happiness and anticipation. After this, there had just been the war.
“I always was partial to red hair in a woman,” Rafe said beside her as he looked at Gen’s mirror image in the photo.
Gen nodded. “I know.” And couldn’t say how.
But she knew she would. Because someone had had the forethought to inscribe not only the date—April 14, 1861, two days after the taking of Fort Sumter— but the names of the handsome, happy couple. In swirling, spiderish script on the white cardboard at the bottom. Genevieve Anne Stanton O’Shea and Rafael Edmund O’Shea.
Beneath that lay the picture of the little girl.
