“No, she gave it to her to give to me. Let me tell you what my grandmum told me, and maybe you’ll understand. I certainly didn’t at the time, and still don’t, but here it is, best as I can remember. My grandmum was already Lady Malory’s maid, but the lady summoned her one day, told her to sit and have tea with her, that they were going to be the best of friends. Grandma said the lady often said strange things, and one of them she said that day. She said, ‘We’re going to be related, you know. It won’t be for a very long time, and we won’t see it happen, but it will happen, and you’ll help it to happen when you give this to your granddaughter.’ ”

“The journal?”

Molly nodded. “Lady Malory had more to say about it, specific instructions actually. My grandmum admitted she’d thought the lady was daft at the time. After all, she didn’t have a granddaughter yet. But the instructions she was given was to have her granddaughter—me; I’m the only one she ever got, after all—deliver the present to the Malory family for Christmas in the first quarter of the new century. Not to any specific member of the family, just to the family. And being a gift, she wanted it to look like a gift. And that’s all she had to say about it. No, wait, there was one other thing. About the time of delivery. She said, ‘I have the feeling that’s when it will be of the most benefit.’ ”

Jason smiled slowly and gave his grandmother a silent thank-you. To Molly he said, “Amazing.”

“You understand it, then?”

“Yes, and so will you, I think, as soon as you read it. But why didn’t you leave a note with it, so we would have at least known who it was for, and who it was from? Not knowing turned it into quite a mystery, which is why the younguns didn’t wait for Christmas to open it.”

“Because it was for all of you, of course.” And then she chuckled. “Besides, if it turned out to be nothing important, I wasn’t going to own up to putting it there.”

“Oh, it was important, sweetheart, and more than that, a valuable heirloom for this family. And I’m most definitely looking forward to hearing what you have to say after you read it.”

She gave him a suspicious look. “Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like whatever’s in that journal?”

“Possibly because you’re so pigheaded stubborn about certain things.”

“Now you’re really starting to worry me, Jason Malory,” she said in a grumbling tone.

He grinned. “No need to fret, love. Only good things will come of it, I promise.”

“Yes, but good for whom?”

Chapter 30

Chapter 30