Garden of Lies(33)

“I see.” She paused. “I assume that you became a vegetarian during your stay on the island?”

He smiled briefly. “I’m afraid so. In any event, a ship arrived a year after I emerged from the tombs. By then I had become a full initiate of the Order.”

“Well, it doesn’t sound as if there was a great deal to do on the island except study the ways of this Order.”

Slater’s eyes gleamed with amusement “True. But I found that the ways of the Order suited me. The teachers told me that I was a natural student.”

“These teachers—they spoke English?”

“Some did. As I told you, they came from various parts of the world. The Far East, Europe. There was even an American at the monastery—a ship’s captain who found his way to the island and decided to stay.”

“But you chose to leave when the opportunity presented itself.”

“I returned to London long enough to assure my parents that I was alive and well but I discovered that London no longer felt like home. I told my father that I intended to go abroad to find my own true path. He promptly cut me off without a penny.” Slater chuckled. “A perfectly logical parental response under the circumstances.”

“Perhaps, but it must have put quite a crimp in your archaeological explorations. Financing such expeditions is very expensive.”

Slater looked out the window. “I found other ways to make my living.”

“Did you discover this true path that you sought?” she asked. But she had already sensed that the answer would be no.

Slater smiled faintly and shook his head. “A year into my quest, I returned to Fever Island because I felt the need for more instruction and training. I had questions. But in the time I had been away, the volcano had erupted. The destruction was complete. There was nothing left to indicate that the monastery had ever existed.”

“So you went back to your search until family obligations summoned you home.”

“Where I will be obliged to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. Managing my father’s estate is not something that can be done from a distance.”

“Evidently at some point along the way you and your father reconciled,” Ursula said.

“I think he developed a grudging respect for the fact that I had chosen to go my own way.”

“More than a grudging respect, I’d say. According to what I’ve heard he entrusted the entire estate to you.”

Slater shrugged. “There was no one else.”

“There are always other ways to handle vast sums of money,” Ursula said. “Your father obviously trusted you.”

Slater did not respond but he did not argue.

“Are you going to tell me how you made your living during the years when you were wandering the world without the financial backing of the family fortune?” she asked. “That is why you brought me here today, isn’t it?”

He glanced at her. “Sometimes you see me too clearly, Ursula.”

“Does that offend you?”

“It is unsettling but, no, it does not offend me. Just takes a bit of getting used to, that’s all. In answer to your question, I made a living recovering lost and stolen artifacts.”

“How . . . unusual. There is a living to be made in that business?”

“A very good living, as it happens. Collectors are an eccentric, obsessive lot. They will pay almost anything to possess the objects of their desire. The business sent me to the far corners of the Earth. I dealt with some rather difficult people at times.”

She watched him. “What is your definition of difficult in this case?”

“Dangerous.”

She caught her breath. “I see.”

“Collectors and those who move in the underground world of antiquities often employ violent people to steal the objects of their desire. They employ dangerous people to guard their relics. They build vaults and safes and lock them with complicated mechanisms. Some are willing to commit murder to obtain certain artifacts. In short, my clients were obsessed with chasing legends.”

“They hired you to chase those legends for them.”

“And things sometimes became violent.” Slater turned around. His fierce eyes locked with hers. “The reason I brought you here today, Ursula, is to explain that, for a time in my life, I found the unwholesome excitement of my work, even the occasional violence, gratifying. There is no other word for it. And that is the truth about my eccentric nature.”

“Am I supposed to be shocked?”

“Aren’t you?”

“Not nearly as shocked as I probably ought to be. But here’s the thing, Slater. My life has taken a few odd twists and turns and I find that the experience has made me more tolerant of the odd twists and turns in other people’s lives.”

“That is a very broad-minded point of view,” he said rather dryly.

“Do you believe that Lord Torrence deliberately triggered the trap so that he could escape alone with the Jeweled Bird?”

“No. What I believe is that removing the Bird from the pedestal is what triggered the trap. But because the mechanism was so ancient it was not in good working order. It moved slowly and ponderously. That is why Torrence and the others had time to get to the entrance.”

She thought about the expression she had seen on Lady Torrence’s face. “Perhaps you should make it clear to Lord Torrence that you do not blame him.”