“I am perfectly able to lead this scheme myself,” she said stiffly.

Robert hid his smile, glad to see her sadness replaced by firm resolution. It had been torture to see her so sad, which was only natural. Any man would be upset at seeing a beautiful woman on the verge of tears. And after all, I was once wildly in love with her.

The thought surprised him. Where did that come from? I was madly in lust, not love. It was no more than that.

She sent him a glance from under her lashes and he was instantly on his guard. “There is one thing I’ve been wondering. Something you haven’t fully explained. In the beginning, you needed a specific onyx box to free your brother from his captor. But then things changed. Somehow you discovered that there were three such boxes, and now you want them all. Why is that? What is it about these three boxes that make them so valuable?”

He adjusted his hat so that it would shade his eyes. Should I tell her? Can I really trust her? He wanted to tell her everything, only it wasn’t really his secret to share, but Michael’s.

She fixed him with a firm stare. “We are partners.”

He couldn’t deny her reasoning so he shrugged. “Fine. I will tell you. There are three boxes, and if you know how to unlock them they open flat.”

“To make a panel?”

“Exactly. And—when they are fitted together, they make a map.”

Her eyes widened. “A treasure map?”

“Yes.”

“So Aniston must know about the map. That explains why he’s so determined to find it.”

“He never mentioned a map to you?”

“No. But I knew there had to be something very special about the first box that he sent me to fetch, so when I had it in my possession, I examined it. But I never saw anything resembling a map.”

“You have to know precisely what you are doing in order to open one.”

“Ah. What kind of treasure do you think the map will lead to?”

Some part of him urged him on. If he wanted her to trust him, he had to show trust in her. “My brother Michael hopes that it will lead us to a lost family heirloom, the Hurst Amulet.”

Her eyes lit with interest. “This just gets better and better.”

“The amulet was in my family for centuries, until a member of the MacLean clan stole it and gifted it to Queen Elizabeth. She kept it for some years, but supposedly became fearful of its powers.”

“An amulet with powers?” Her lips twitched. “You can’t believe that.”

“To be honest, I don’t know what I believe. A telling number of people who came into contact with the amulet claimed that it had certain . . . abilities. Michael spent years researching it; he found many mentions of the amulet and its powers in old archives, even those in Elizabeth’s court.”

“What special power does the amulet supposedly possess?”