Under the Moon Gate Read Free Page B

gown.
    For some reason the man was stalling, drawing her attention away from the matter at hand. Okay, she’d play along. Humor him until she could get him out of her house. Because she wasn’t entirely convinced he wasn’t somehow connected to the man who was threatening her. His presence here now was too much of a coincidence to be circumstantial. And she didn’t believe in coincidences. She was in a weakened condition and distracted by grief, but she wasn’t stupid.
    Maybe he intended to rob her. The papers had reported that the Whitestones were the wealthiest family in Bermuda. She would keep him talking until Sallie came back into the house. Where was she, anyway?
    “No, that’s not me,” she said. “That’s my grandmother. People make that mistake all the time. That picture was painted at the Castle Harbour Hotel, where my grandparents first met. That’s the dress she was wearing when they danced together for the very first time.
    “My grandfather had the portrait done because he wanted to freeze that moment in time, capture the way he remembered her, out in the garden, under the moon gate. All my grandmother’s friends say I look exactly like she looked when she was my age. The Castle Harbour’s gone. It’s a private resort club now.” Just like my grandmother. Everything good goes.
    Now she was babbling like an idiot.
    “She is very beautiful,” Nathaniel said, and placed his hand over hers.
    Patience flushed at his touch. If he thought the woman in the portrait was beautiful, then that meant he thought she was beautiful, too.
    “Yes, she was beautiful,” Patience agreed. “I guess you didn’t hear that I buried my grandmother last week.” Why did she feel compelled to talk to this stranger about her personal loss? She tried to gauge his reaction, but his face was inscrutable, and her gaze couldn’t penetrate those vivid blue eyes.
    “I don’t appreciate your intrusion on my grief,” Patience blustered.
    ****
    “I’m really sorry to hear about your grandmother,” Nathaniel said sincerely. She hung her head, so he gave her the necessary time and space to compose herself.
    When he’d set sail from Virginia, it was with every intention of meeting with Diana Hargrave Whitestone. On his arrival in Bermuda, he’d been disappointed to read about her illness and death in The Royal Gazette . The event had merited extensive coverage. She was, after all, from one of Bermuda’s most prominent families—a Smithfield on her mother’s side. Before he learned of her death, Nathaniel had pinned all his hopes on questioning William Whitestone’s widow in person. Now his only link to the past was a grieving, doped-up granddaughter.
    He had seen Patience’s fragility at the funeral. Would her vulnerability make a difference? He couldn’t let it. He had come too far to turn back now.
    He was painfully aware of her grief. At her grandmother’s gravesite behind St. Peter’s Church, where a large crowd had gathered for the funeral, Patience had seemed isolated, even as she was surrounded by a tight-knit group of friends who closed ranks to protect her. She looked utterly lost, bereft, but she put on a brave front. She hadn’t shed one tear. She held up her head regally, like a princess. And he had begun to think of her as one.
    Nathaniel had gone to Bermuda’s first church early on the morning of Diana Whitestone’s funeral, waiting to see Patience. The beauty of the church’s whitewashed façade drew him, the rich historical feel and the peacefulness of the place, saturated with the aroma of cedar, impressed him. And, even at a distance, he was blown away by the stunning beauty of the granddaughter.
    At the conclusion of the service, Patience knelt in front of her grandfather’s grave and gingerly placed a clutch of colorful flowers there. Then she’d raised her head, drifted through the crowd of mourners, and silently walked down the chalk-white steps to the limousine waiting in front of the