“Maybe you can take Eve after Christmas,” Quinn suggested. Gabe always spent Christmas with his parents, but liked to take off for a week after the holiday, having had enough family togetherness, particularly since his mother had a long list of chores for him to complete before returning to London. Being an only child, it fell to him to see to the never-ending repairs needed to maintain the family home. His father was getting on in years and could no longer manage the upkeep on his own but was too stubborn to hire a handyman.
“Actually, Eve and I are no longer, but that’s not why I’m here,” Gabe said but didn’t elaborate. Eve had been the latest in a string of women in Gabe’s life, an editor at a fashion magazine who was glamorous, vivacious, and dangerously independent. She was the type of woman who had lovers, not partners, and Quinn strongly suspected that she’d moved on to someone else while Gabe wasn’t looking. Quinn never could understand why a man as intelligent and warm as Gabe always went for women who could never quite give him their full attention and bailed at the first sign of trouble. She had never known Gabe to be truly in love with any of his amours and wondered what kept him from finding someone who could really touch his heart.
Perhaps he feared commitment, or was wary of getting hurt. After her experience with Luke, Quinn could commiserate. She’d always craved a relationship that could sustain her, but her choice of partners hadn’t been any wiser than Gabe’s. There had been a few men who professed to love her, but sadly, she’d never become their number one priority and was discarded as soon as something better came along, as it had with Luke. The future she offered him couldn’t compete with a professorship at Harvard University.
Quinn was actually surprised that Gabe made no mention of Luke’s departure. Luke would have informed him since he’d been on the faculty and would have had to give notice. Perhaps Gabe even warranted a phone call or an e-mail, and not just a text, Quinn thought bitterly.
“So, why are you here on a rainy Friday night?” Quinn asked, her expression coy. The last thing she wanted to do was discuss Luke or Eve, but she was too curious to remain silent any longer.
“Have you seen the news?” Gabe asked as he took a sip of his whiskey-laced tea and sighed with pleasure as the alcohol hit his bloodstream.
“No, why?”
“Human remains were discovered yesterday at a construction site in Mayfair. They’d just broken ground a few days ago for another building of luxury flats few of us can afford. It seems there was a hidden chamber below ground that never appeared in the blueprints.”
“And they called you?” Quinn asked, unsure of why exactly Gabe was involved. “Hardly your area of expertise.”
“The foreman called in the Met and the coroner, but they quickly ruled it out as a recent crime.”
“So, why’s it on the news? Don’t skeletal remains normally get reburied or left where they were found?” Quinn asked.
This wasn’t the first case of human remains being found during excavation. The ground beneath London was full of surprises. Workers routinely came across remains of plague victims who’d been carelessly thrown into pits and buried en masse. At times, they even dug up what used to be whole cemeteries and reburied the dead in another part of town. Unless the remains belonged to someone of historical interest—like Richard III, whose remains had been resting under a parking lot for centuries—they didn’t get much press. These were nameless, faceless relics of another time, a time when people were buried in paupers’ graves and plague pits and forgotten about. There wasn’t much to be learned from these remains, historically speaking, so they were usually just left in their final resting place as a sign of respect or moved somewhere safe.
“This find was special,” Gabe replied with a sigh. “The remains were in a large chest of some kind, padlocked and chained. The two skeletons inside were lying face-to-face, as if sharing a final kiss as they lay dying. Clearly, they didn’t die of natural causes, especially since there are scratch marks on the inside of the lid. Those two were murdered, their bodies hidden and denied proper burial.”
“Do you think they were someone of historical significance?” Quinn asked, her interest piqued.
“I have no idea, but some tosser took pictures with his mobile and sent them to the media. The Globe picked up the story, and it went from there. The skeletons are now being referred to as ‘the Lovers,’ and they’ve become a real human-interest story. The public want to know who they were and what happened to them,” Gabe said with a faint lift of his eyebrows. “If the media runs with this, we’ll have another Romeo and Juliet on our hands.”
“They’ll lose interest in a few days,” Quinn replied. She was very familiar with the fickle nature of the public. Unless the find was significant, people’s attention very quickly strayed to something more current.
“I don’t think so. I’ve actually had a call from someone at the BBC just this morning. They’re thinking of doing a program based on various finds of historic interest that have cropped up all over the country these past few years. Think of them as historical scavenger hunts, if you will, like Time Team. Interest is high since Richard’s remains were found earlier this year. People are intrigued by the notion that they are going about their daily lives and not suspecting for a second that they might be walking over the mortal remains of a royal.”
“In all probability,
