The Explorer's Code Read Free Page B

marry her. He had believed she was going to tell him good news when she had called yesterday.
    “I have something very important to tell you,” she had breathed over the phone in that tiny little voice. He had been in the middle of the dig, but he had left immediately at her call. No questions asked.
    He actually thought that when he got to Monaco she would tell him she was expecting his child. He had spun quite a pretty picture as he sat on the plane from Turkey. Sinclair shook his head in disgust. He had even been hoping for a boy.
    Well, that conversation had turned into a disaster. Oh, she had a new baby all right, but the Brazilian Formula One driver wasn’t quite what Sinclair had in mind.

Fifth Avenue, New York City
    C ordelia Stapleton smiled to herself as she stood in the doorway of Jim Gardiner’s office. Her lawyer was seated at his desk, doing what he loved to do more than anything in the world—eating. Gardiner was looking over about a half dozen New York deli containers, his white plastic fork poised, ready to swoop. He glanced up and saw her standing there.
    “ Cordelia! Come in, come in,” he said, and put down the fork, and hauled himself to his feet. Gardiner walked to the door and gave her a bone-crushing squeeze. She knew it was coming and braced for it. Gardiner ushered her in, and then hastily returned to his desk.
    “ ’Scuse me,” he said. “I didn’t expect you for another half hour.”
    He took one last bite of French bread and chewed rhythmically, fat-cheeked like a squirrel, while he crumpled up the wrappers and closed up the containers.
    “Don’t let me interrupt your lunch, Jim,” she said as she took a seat. “Sorry, I’m early. I never know how to gauge New York traffic.”
    “Not at all—I’m finished, anyway,” he said, neatly stacking the plastic containers.
    She let him get settled while she looked around. Fifteen years she had been coming here. The room was still pretty much the same. The cases of leather-bound law books insulated the office from sound. Heavy drapes cloaked the windows. The dark-wood paneling also dampened the outside noise. A grandfather clock in the corner ticked as if counting time from another era. Only faintly could she hear the taxi horns on Fifth Avenue.
    She surveyed her lawyer. Even he was almost exactly the same. His paunch had turned into a basketball and his hair was nearly all gray now. But he was still the big bear of a man he had been when she first met him.
    It was she who had changed. Cordelia had met Gardiner just days after her parents had died. Gardiner, the executor of the will, was the one who had to tell her the bad news: no one wanted her.
    Her closest living relative, in England, Peter Stapleton, now had legal custody, but he had no interest in seeing her. It would be boarding school for Cordelia. There was no other choice.
    That was a lifetime ago. Now Cordelia looked at the corner of the desk and pictured her young hands holding on to it. She had gripped the oak as if clutching a life raft. Jim Gardiner had reached across and held her cold twelve-year-old fingers in his big warm mitts.
    She thought about touching the wood of the desk again in the same spot, but her hands stayed in her lap. It was the same wood. Her hands were different.
    “Jim, it’s really good to see you,” she said.
    “Cordelia, I have to say, you look great. You look great.” He was beaming at her.
    “I’m glad I could get a couple of days free to stop off in New York. I wanted to see you before I head to Monaco.”
    “Monaco? Very fancy. Well, you deserve it, honey, you work hard enough.”
    “Oh, it’s not a vacation. It’s an award ceremony, to honor great-great-grandfather Stapleton. And after that, I have been invited to give a lecture on the Queen Victoria. ”
    “The Queen Victoria ! That is wonderful! I’ve always wanted to take a cruise. You have to tell me all about it when you get back.”
    “I’m pretty excited to go, although I