Dreams of Stardust Read Free

"You know," he said
thoughtfully, "you look a great deal like Mr. Jackson Kilchurn III."
    Given that his father was not an unhandsome man, even in his early
sixties, Jake had no trouble taking that as a compliment.
    "I do," he agreed. "And happily so, since I'm his son."
    "Indeed," the other man said slowly, as if he couldn't quite believe
it.
    "Don't let it worry you. Today I'm just the errand boy."
    "High-priced errand boy."
    "Not high enough, believe me." He handed over the manilla envelope.
"Here you go."
    "Thank you." The man rose as he took it, then held out his hand.
"Gideon de Piaget. I run AE, Inc. I'm surprised we haven't met before.
I seem to have spent an inordinate amount of time at Kilchurn and Sons
of late, but I've never seen you there."
    "I try never to be there," Jake said. "I have three other, quite
capable brothers who are soldiering on, doing the family name proud.
They mostly live at my father's offices in Manhattan, but they do make
the occasional appearance here in London to put in their obscenely long
hours for the firm. I'm quite thankful for that, as it leaves me free
to pursue other quite inappropriate interests."
    "Hmmm," Gideon said, looking faintly interested.
    "Just a bit of dabbling in gems," Jake admitted modestly. Actually,
that dabbling took him all over the world in search of the unusual and
exquisite, which in turn left him able to create one-of-a-kind pieces
that fetched prices even his father found outrageous. All that left him
with neither time nor desire to put in the eighty a week that
employment at his father's money machine required. Not that he ever
would have anyway. He couldn't stand the thought of all those hours and
nothing but paperwork to show for it.
    Gideon's fascination with inappropriate interests was apparently
evaporating. He sank down into his chair, his attentions fixed on the
documents in his hands.
    Jake sat as well, briefly. He didn't want to be hanging out in some
corporate box, no matter how luxurious; he wanted to be slogging
through some mosquito-infested swamp in search of a forgotten mine
where he might find a cache of something rare. In fact, he had just
such a trip planned for the next day—if he could get out of AE, Inc.
and over to his father's office to finish his task before he died of
corporate asphyxiation.
    He was on his feet almost before he knew how he'd gotten there.
Gideon just turned another page and kept reading, so Jake assumed he
wouldn't mind having his things perused.
    To Jake's surprise, Gideon's office wasn't filled with important but
impersonal pieces of art a decorator would have chosen. It was filled
with quite lovely pastoral scenes that were no doubt geared to make one
feel as if he needed to spend pleasant afternoons on a little hill in
the Lake District. Nice, easily digested paintings that demanded
nothing and offered peace.
    Well, except for the one dominating the wall to Jake's left.
    Jake's pacing ended abruptly as he came face-to-face with an
enormous photograph of a castle. He was accustomed to seeing castles,
having lived in England for well over half his life, but this was
different.
    It wasn't that the place wasn't huge; it was. It wasn't that it
wasn't imposing; it was. It wasn't that it wasn't stark and
unforgiving; it was that as well.
    It was that it looked so… familiar.
    But he was quite certain that he'd never seen it before.
    Artane…
    The name whispered across his soul, sending a violent shiver down
his spine. He never shivered, not even when facing down spiders the
size of his head in the depths of South American jungles.
    He wondered, briefly, if that stray blow to his nose had damaged his
good sense as well.
    "Artane," Gideon said absently.
    I know , Jake thought with a gasp, like a drowning man gulping
in his last breath of sweet air before he surrendered to the pull
beneath him.
    "The family seat."
    "I beg your pardon?" Jake managed with enormous effort, unable to
turn away from the photograph. "Your