Knight In Blue Jeans

“Yes, you are,” agreed Arden as she closed the door behind him, taking pleasure from her baby brother’s high spirits. She’d needed a distraction from the return of Smith Donnell into her life, and Jeff, as always, did the job. His cheeks glowed with health under dark hair even curlier than hers. Camp in Switzerland had energized him. “Which is why we do not throw luggage.”

“Arden!”

“Jeffie!” she parroted back his long-suffering moan, eliciting another grin. “Carry your bag to your room and I’ll make sure Esperanza has a snack for us, all right?”

He saluted. “Ma’am, yes, ma’am!” As if it had been some kind of military camp, instead of a training ground for sons of privilege.

She couldn’t believe how he’d grown in two short months, all feet and elbows. Then their father came in from the backyard—from his detached office—and she believed it after all. Donaldson Leigh was no small man, himself.

“Jeff!” he bellowed. “Let the help take care of your bags and come tell me about camp! Arden, you’re staying the night to spend time with your brother, aren’t you?”

When Jeff turned his big eyes on her, Arden was lost. Heaven knew she could ignore Smith’s warnings of possible danger to her. She could even dismiss Val and Greta’s concern as paranoia. She could resist her father’s paternal pushiness. But Jeffie…?

And what could be safer than her father’s house?

“Of course I am. Go on to the kitchen, I’ll meet you there.” She watched her father sling a burly arm over Jeff’s narrow shoulders, too pleased to force the issue of the backpack. Instead, after they’d vanished, she grabbed the pack and carried it upstairs herself.

She saw no reason why perfectly healthy boys should abandon even their carry-ons. But her stepmother, Jeff’s mom, hadn’t been gone for a year yet.

Today, it was enough to see her brother smile.

Some men, at least, didn’t hide secrets behind every jibe and grin. Some men…

But she’d meant to forget Smith. Sugar.

Leaving Jeff’s backpack on his bed, she felt the unlikely roughness of its leather straps as it slid from her palm. Intrigued, she looked closer.

The good quality of the leather had been nicked and carved, as if by a boy playing with a knife.

Jeff hadn’t etched anything disturbing, really—his name, a frowning face, the symbol of his favorite band. Still, the idea of her baby brother playing with even a Swiss Army knife disturbed her, and not just because of the memory of last night’s blade.

Arden reminded herself that she had to let him grow up sometime. He’d turn fifteen in a few weeks. In a year, he would have a learner’s permit….

Arden trailed her fingers across the nicked leather—a perfectly good backpack, mutilated—then curled them into a fist. No. Not her business.

Wondering why she had such trouble understanding males in general, Arden left Jeff’s room and shut the door.

Chapter 5

Long explanations later, Smith still felt lost. Trace would arrive soon with the alarm supplies, probably with Mitch driving. And Smith didn’t want that extra complication just yet.

“Wait, wait,” he protested as Greta drew breath for yet another recitation. “How about I tell it, and you just see if I’ve got it right?”

The older woman sat neatly back in her kitchen chair, clasped her frail hands and waited. The sword lay on the table between them, the odd, not-quite-glowing patina of its blade tempting him to touch it.

It tempted him enough to make him seriously wary of it, of anything he could want that badly.

“This warrior, Aeneas. He’s the guy from the Roman epic I slogged through in World Lit.”

“Virgil’s Aeneid,” she clarified, as if he hadn’t actually passed the class.

“You’re saying this guy was real.”

She smiled, looking not at all insane. “Yes.”

“Wasn’t his mother a goddess?”

“Much of his story was probably mythologized.”

“You don’t say.” Okay, so that was rude. But Greta was apparently crazy. Fair trade.

“Historical details in the story also confuse the timing. Aeneas couldn’t have left Troy after its walls fell and still founded Lavinium—Rome—within the same generation. And while Dido of Carthage did exist—”

The dog Dido scampered to her feet, sure they meant her.

“The queen that Aeneas dumped,” Smith clarified. “The one who killed herself.”

“Yes, the true Dido was a Phoenician exile. However, had she met Aeneas before he founded Rome, he would have been centuries old.”

“That’s some age difference.” Smith took a deep breath. “So, not really from Troy. Not really Dido’s lover. And this sword probably wasn’t forged by the blacksmith god Vulcan—”

“Greek name Hephaestus.”

“—for the invincible warrior Achilles.”

Greta smiled a small, mysterious smile, kind of like the one Smith used to see on Arden. He hated—well, loved—no, hated that wise, womanly smile. “I like to think it could somehow be true,” she said, “but external logic would imply not.”

“But this is his sword.” Ancient. Precious.

Amazingly powerful.

He fisted his hand, resisting the urge to slide a finger down its fuller, the groove that divided the flat of the blade. Don’t touch it. If you do, you’ll be lost….

“So says my family legend.”

Smith’s own family hadn’t been that big on legends. Sure, they traced back to investors of the Peters Colony, some of the earliest white settlers of central Texas. Before that, they went all the way to Jamestown.

But Troy? Not so much.

“Your family the Hapsburgs. Of the Holy Roman Empire Hapsburgs. Aren’t some of them still running around, heading the family in Austria?”

Dido flopped back onto her tummy, watching them through spaniel eyes.

“In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many of the royal families of Europe experienced schisms, even complete exile, as did the Stuarts of England. The Stuarts who even now head the Comitatus, yes?”

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