Homeport by Nora Roberts

her angry heart, it was close.
    The Dark Lady had been her ticket to glory. Elizabeth was right about that at least. Glory was always the goal. But by God, she had worked for it. She’d studied, pushing herself brutally to learn, to absorb, to remember, when her contemporaries had jumped from party to party and relationship to relationship.
    There’d been no wild rebellious period in her life, no thumbing her nose at rules and traditions while in college, no mad, heart-wrenching affairs. Repressed, one roommate had called her. Boring as dirt had been the opinion of another. Because some secret part of her had agreed, she had solved that problem by moving off campus and into a small apartment of her own.
    She’d been better off, Miranda always thought. She had no skill for social interactions. Beneath the armor of composure and the starch of training she was miserably shy with people, and so much more comfortable with information.
    So she had read, written, closed herself into other centuries with a discipline fired by the hot light of ambition.
    That ambition had one focus. To be the best. And by being the best, to see her parents look at her with pride, with stunned delight, with respect. Oh, it galled her to know that motivation was buried inside her still, but she’d never been able to dig it out and dispose of it.
    She was nearly thirty, had her doctorate, her position at the Institute, a solid reputation in archeometry. And a pitiful need to hear her parents applaud her act. Well, she would just have to get over it.
    Before long, she thought, her findings would be proven. Then she would make certain that she gained the credit she deserved. She would write a paper on The Dark Lady , and her own involvement in its testing and authentication. Andshe would never, never forgive Elizabeth for taking the control and the joy out of her hands. Or for having the power to do so.
    The wind rose, sneaking under her sweater like hands grabbing at flesh. The first thin, wet flakes began to swirl. Miranda turned from the sea, her boots clattering on rock as she climbed down the cliff.
    The steady beam of the great light continued to circle atop the white tower, shooting out over the water and rock though there were no ships within its range. From dusk to dawn, year after year, she thought, it never failed. Some would look and see romance, but when Miranda studied the sturdy whitewashed tower, she saw reliability.
    More, she thought now, than was usually found in people.
    In the distance the house was still dark and sleepy, a fanciful silhouette from another time etched against an unforgiving sky.
    The grass was a sickly winter brown and crunched under her heels from frost. The scar of her grandmother’s once lovely garden seemed to scold her.
    This year, Miranda promised herself when she passed the blackened leaves and brittle sticks of stems, she would give it some time and attention. She would make gardening her hobby—she was always promising herself a hobby.
    In the kitchen, she poured the last of the coffee from the pot into her mug. After a final glance outside at the fast-falling snow, she decided to drive to the Institute early, before the roads were covered.
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    From the warm comfort of his rented Mercedes, he watched the Land Rover glide effortlessly over the thin layer of snow on the street, then turn into the parking lot beside the New England Institute of Art History. It looked like a vehicle that should have been driven by a general during an elegant little war.
    She made quite a picture herself, he mused, watching her climb out. About six feet of female in her boots, he judged, and most of it wrapped in a steel-gray coat that owed moreto warmth than fashion. Her hair was a sexy stoplight red that escaped in untidy curls from a black ski cap. She carried a thick briefcase that bulged a bit with its contents, and she moved with a precision and purpose that would have made that wartime general