“I found some old tools and broken bits on a set of metal shelves on the opposite side of the attic. Maybe you could take a look at those and see if there’s anything interesting. Tools are not my area of expertise.”
Holt couldn’t resist the chance to pounce. Payback for all the times she’d lectured him about this house. “Because I’m a guy, you think I’m a tool expert, is that it?” She seemed to enjoy the challenges of her profession. She wouldn’t be able to resist if he challenged her in other ways.
Caitlin paused with her sandwich halfway from her plate to her mouth. “I never said?—”
“No, you assumed. Don’t they call that gender bias now?” He was tempted to grin, to soften the implied criticism, but he wanted to get a rise out of her. She was too professional, too set on doing her job. He wanted her to have the same sense of enjoyment he’d felt yesterday reconnecting with old friends, then rescuing her from spider webs. Enjoyment she seemed to have, and he lacked, their first few days here. Funny how their moods had reversed. A little teasing seemed in order.
Grimly, Caitlin set down her sandwich and met his gaze. “I am one of the foremost experts on late medieval to Jacobean furnishings. That doesn’t make me an expert on everything likely to be found in a dusty, cobwebby old attic on the other side of the Atlantic. Since you asked what you could do to help, I’d have asked you to take a look at those shelves, whether you were male or female or from another planet.”
Her voice had increased in volume as she spoke, but then she pulled her napkin from her lap and tossed it on the table, muttering something under her breath that sounded likeDoes he think me head zips up in the back?That couldn’t be right. But she did look furious. No, insulted. Holt decided a tactical retreat was in order. “Okay, okay. I was kidding.” He held up both hands, palms out. “I’m not questioning your competence. I was making a joke. A poor one. Not funny. I get it. Finish your lunch. Please.” Getting a rise out of her was one thing. Pissing her off to the point that she stormed out again, or worse, decided she’d had enough of him and quit, was just damn stupid.
To his great relief, Caitlin replaced her napkin across her lap and picked up her sandwich, though her eyes still sparked when she glanced his way. What he needed was a change of subject. Like now. While she was chewing.
“So, the people in those images, do you think they’re related? To me?”
Caitlin shrugged and swallowed. “Maybe. I dinna ken how we’d ever prove it, though, unless someone wrote names and dates on the backs of some of the card framing the pictures. Like as not they’d no’ write directly opposite the image for fear of ink bleeding through.”
Holt had noticed that the more emotional Caitlin got, the thicker her Scottish brogue became. She was still angry. He wasn’t out of the hole he’d dug for himself yet.
“We haven’t looked at all of them,” Caitlin continued, frowning, “but I noticed a lot of single people. Or one adult with only one or two children. Not many couples, none of the big families that would have been more common during that time. I do wonder why that is.”
A frisson of awareness ran along Holt’s spine, tightening his muscles and making him draw his brows together. He dropped his gaze to the table, unable to look at Caitlin while uneasiness chilled his blood. In the novelty of his experiences since he’d arrived here— and his growing attraction to the woman sitting across from him— he’d nearly forgotten about this aspect of his family history. Could they have been looking at proof of the family curse all morning? Proof he had failed to notice? As much as he wanted to laugh it off, his mother had sworn the curse was real. The only way to be sure was to find some names or find another way to identify some of the people in those stereographs.
“Holt?”
Caitlin’s voice jerked him back to the real world, and he looked up. “I don’t know. Or maybe I do.”
“What do you mean?”
He crossed his arms. “My mother used to insist the family was cursed.”
“You’re joking again, and again, not funny.” Caitlin regarded him under lowered brows.
“No, I’m not.” He heaved a sigh, resolved to give her the whole crazy story. “She swore that earlier generations of the family had only one or two children and that no heir found a love that lasted their lifetime. In every generation, the heir or their spouse left. Or died. Or somehow disappeared, never to be heard from again. None grew old together.”
“Did your great-aunt have children?”
“No, none. My grandfather, her younger brother, was her heir. Had he outlived her, all this would have been his, then my mother’s, then wound up as mine.” Which might also explain his great-aunt’s bequest, to repair the line of succession. “But he didn’t outlive her. Unfortunately, since she named me heir, there must not have been any other family on her husband’s side to inherit, or to carry the curse, so my grandfather’s line acquired it. My mother’s parents died. She was left alone…with me, an only child.”
Caitlin leaned back and regarded him, disbelief plain in her furrowed brow. “And your father disappeared…”
“Exactly. Before my mother told him about me. Before she even knew about me. She told me once my father was dead, too.”
“I’m so sorry. What happened to your grandmother? Did she leave your grandfather?”
“In a way. She died long before him, after giving birth to my mother.”
“Ach, Holt. What a sad tale.”
“If you believe in the curse, it could explain a lot. And if it’s true, any woman foolish enough to marry me will die after giving me an heir, or divorce me, or disappear into the Bermuda Triangle.” She needed to know that. It should send her running back to Scotland all the faster. He wanted to laugh it off, but those pictures… He fought a shudder. “Those sad faces, adults’ and children’s, have begun to haunt me. Ghosts of Christmases past, I suppose.”
Caitlin reached over and grasped his hand. “Ye canna think that way. It may just be an old tale. Like fairies and ghosts and goblins.”
Then she paused, and Holt swore the color fled her face for just a moment, then came back even stronger, painting her neck and cheeks in that lovely dusky rose. “What’s wrong?”
“Would ye believe me if I told ye I have seen a ghost? Many times? We have them in Scotland, aye.” She smiled wistfully at that, then became serious again. “And curses, too, or so the grannies say.”
Holt pressed his lips together. “No, I wouldn’t believe you— or I don’t want to. I’m sure of that.”
