An Unexpected Pleasure. Candace Camp

it did cause her to wonder how in the world she was going to get inside the mansion to investigate Theo Moreland.

      Megan turned away from the window and walked over to the small dresser. Opening the top drawer, she reached inside it and pulled out a small pink case. It was her box of treasures, a childish pink music box with a rose on top and a little ballerina rising out of the middle of the rose. Once the ballerina had danced when the top was opened, but the mechanism that propelled her had long since died. Still, Megan had kept the box, treasuring it as a link to her mother, who had died when Megan was only seven years old.

      She reached inside the box and pulled out a small piece of smooth glass. Although cylindrical in shape, it was not perfectly round, but had several flat, smooth sides.

      Megan had never known exactly what it was. She had found it one day years ago—it had been, in fact, not long after Dennis had died, when she had been filled with sorrow. While cleaning her room, she had stumbled across this piece of glass in the dusty area beneath her bed. Pulling it out, she had held it up to the light. It was clear glass, a prism, she thought, with the flat sides, and shot through the middle were tiny strands of silver. She had no idea how it had gotten there; she had never seen it before, and Deirdre, who had slept in the same bedroom with her at that time, had denied all knowledge of it.

      Megan had stuck it in her pocket, and had carried it with her, changing it from dress to dress. It had become something of a lucky charm for her. She had found it soothing to rub the flat sides as she thought or worried about something, as she had been in the habit of doing before with the religious medal she had worn much of her life.

      That, an oval silver medallion with the raised portrait of the Virgin on it, had been a present from her mother on the occasion of Megan’s first communion, and it was all the more precious to her because her mother had died not long afterward. Megan had worn it always, putting it onto a longer chain as she grew older.

      But a few weeks before she found the glass cylinder, she had lost the medallion. She was not sure what had happened to it. She had searched high and low, all over the house and even outside on the sidewalk and in her father’s grocery, but she had finally given up. The chain, she thought, must have broken, and it had slipped off without her even noticing. The odd piece of glass had seemed, somehow, a replacement.

      Though Megan no longer carried the good luck charm with her, she had not wanted to leave it behind, despite the limited space in their trunks. In facing Theo Moreland, she thought, she would need all the luck she could get.

      Absently, she rubbed the piece of glass for a moment, then shook off her thoughts, and put it away. She left the room and ran lightly down the stairs to find her sister.

      Deirdre was sitting at the kitchen table, peeling potatoes for their supper that evening, and she smiled at Megan’s entrance. Megan sat down, and took up a knife and a potato to help her sister.

      “Did you go to see Broughton House this afternoon?” Deirdre asked.

      “Aye, I did, and it’s as grand as you might imagine.”

      “Have you ever wondered about him?” Deirdre asked. “Theo Moreland, I mean.”

      “Wondered? Wondered what?”

      “You know, what he’s like. How he looks.”

      “Oh, I can imagine that perfectly,” Megan responded. “He has English coloring, of course—blond hair and pale, lifeless skin—and doubtless a weak chin. He’ll have that supercilious expression, as if he looks down on the rest of the world with all the arrogance and contempt of a man who’s going to be the Duke of Broughton someday. His eyes are probably a cold blue.”

      “Do you think he feels guilty over what he did to Dennis?”

      Megan shrugged. “I don’t know. All I care about is that I make sure he pays for it till his dying day.”

      “What are you going to do? I mean, how are you going to find out what happened? How are you going to prove it?” Deirdre asked.

      “Well, it’s essential that I interview the other Englishmen who were there. Mr. Barchester, of course, and the other one. Julian Coffey.”

      Their brother had set sail ten years ago on an expedition to the Amazon led by an American explorer named Griswold Eberhart. In the only letter they had received from Dennis after he left, he had told them that all the other men on the expedition had either fallen ill or given up by the time they had started up the Amazon, leaving only him and Captain Eberhart. Dennis had been exuberant, however, about their good fortune in coming upon a group from England, similarly depleted, with whom they had decided to join forces.

      The English party had consisted of three men: Andrew Barchester, Julian Coffey and Theo Moreland. All of them were “excellent men,” he had written, especially Theo Moreland, who was only four years older than he and, according to Dennis, “great good fun.”

      Some months later, Frank Mulcahey had received a short, formal note from Theo Moreland informing him of his son’s death and extending his sympathies. But it had been Andrew Barchester who had written to give them a longer account of Dennis’s death, revealing the unexpected news that Dennis had died at the hands of Theo Moreland himself.

      “What he told Da wasn’t very specific,” Megan said now.

      Deirdre nodded. “It’s been ten years, too. Da’s bound to have forgotten some things.”

      “Unfortunately, I imagine Mr. Barchester probably has, too. Still, I have to talk to him.”

      “What about Moreland?” Deirdre asked. “Are you going to question him?”

      “I doubt he would even talk to me. He lives in a grand house, with a footman. I’m sure some unknown woman would not get past the door.”

      “I’ve known you to lurk about until someone you want to interview comes outside and then accost him as he’s getting into his carriage,” Deirdre reminded her, her eyes twinkling.

      Megan grinned, a dimple deepening in her cheek and her eyes glowing with mischief as she agreed, “’Tis true I’m not shy about throwing myself in his path. But for the moment, at least, I think it’s better not to do so. He’ll not admit that he killed a man. I need to use subterfuge here. I have to get inside his house and spy on him. If he took something from Dennis, as Da suspects, it’s most likely that he has it in that house. If I can track it down, it will give me proof—and will be something I can use as leverage. If I’m lucky, I’ll trick it out of him in some way.”

      “How?”

      Megan shrugged. “A number of men are talkative when they’re in their cups. I remember one fellow at Tammany Hall who let out quite a few secrets. He was a regular drinker at O’Reilly’s Tavern, and I was able to get hired on as a tavern maid.”

      Deirdre shook her head in rueful admiration. “I remember the fit Da threw when he found out how you’d gotten that story.”

      “You’d think I had taken up walking the streets, the way he carried on. I did nothing but serve drinks—and I showed no more bosom than many an evening gown I’ve seen on an elegant lady.”

      “I don’t know how you have the nerve. I’d have died of embarrassment—not to mention being too scared to go in the door. Weren’t the men forward? Even, well, forceful?”

      Megan shrugged. “Nothing I couldn’t handle. It helped having been around newspapermen for several years.”

      Megan had had to fight for respect in her field—indeed, she had had to fight for everything she had gotten in her profession, from her first chance to write a story to her present job. She had known from the first that she could never reveal any weakness or others would seize upon it as proof that women were not competent to be reporters.

      She had never told Deirdre about many of her experiences, knowing that they would have frightened her delicate sister—enough that Deirdre might even tell their father about them. And while Frank Mulcahey had