God only knew what Homer had hidden away. A mausoleum, he’d called the house, but he didn’t really believe it. He loved this place and everything in it. It was a museum, filled with the artifacts Homer and past Sinclairs had collected. Most of it should be in a real museum, and would be once Homer was gone…
She cut off that line of thought and inelegantly wiped dusty hands on her old T-shirt. The box was no different from countless others—except for the simple, faded label on top. “Sinclair” was all it said. Homer grunted and folded back the dog-eared flaps.
“Ah.” He lifted out a wrapped, squarish bundle and set it carefully down beside him on the bed. “I was sure it was in here.”
Mac leaned her elbows on her knees. “So what is it?”
“A piece of family history. And perhaps something more perilous.” Homer’s fingers trembled a little as he unwrapped the top layers of yellowed newspaper to reveal still more layers of ancient tissue. Within were two smaller packages, one a small box and the other a flat envelope.
Homer’s reverence for the past was in every careful motion as he peeled the brittle tape from the envelope and opened the top. Carefully he slid out the contents and spread them on the comforter.
A handwritten sheet on old-looking stationery. Newspaper clippings, even more yellowed than the paper they’d been wrapped in. And a photograph, creased at the corner and fragile with age.
Homer turned the photograph toward her and leaned back. “There,” he said. “Take a look.”
Mac looked. The photograph was of two men, and it was undoubtedly an antique. The men wore clothing that was of a noticeably nineteenth-century cut; one of them even wore a bowler hat set at a jaunty angle.
She picked up the photograph by its edges. The background had an exotic cast to it, and she recognized the setting: ruins. Maya ruins, to be exact. One of the two men—the one with the bowler, dark hair, and a neat mustache—was dressed like a Victorian gentleman on a pleasant stroll into the wilderness. He was smiling.
Mac studied his face with a little shock of realization.
“You recognize him, don’t you?”
“He’s a Sinclair,” Mac murmured.
“Who?” Homer almost grimaced.
“Meet your great-greatgrandfather, Peregrine Wallace Sinclair.”
Peregrine Sinclair. Of course. “I think you mentioned him once before, when I was a kid. The one who was the youngest son of an English viscount, came to San Francisco—”
“And, in spite of his look of great propriety, was one of the Sinclair adventurers,” Homer finished. “Note the background.”
“Maya jungle,” she said. “Lowlands, I’d say.” She scratched her chin. “Tikal?”
“Right. Perry was down in the Petén in 1880, after Stephens and Catherwood but before Maudslay took his famous photographs. When the jungle was still a pretty dangerous place.” He tapped his finger on the edge of the photo. “Notice the family resemblance?”
She couldn’t help but notice. Peregrine Sinclair had the dark hair and eyes, the height, the regular but unremarkable features. And he was lean. All the Sinclairs were lean. On a man it could look quite elegant—as it did in the photos she’d seen of her father, or on Homer before he’d had the accident, or even Jason.
On a woman it streamlined chest and hips and turned into—Mac. Just plain, wiry Mac, who used to be mistaken for a boy.
“Hard not to see it,” she quipped.
“Because you’re a true Sinclair, just as he was. The same blood beats in your veins, Brat. Even Perry’s wife, your great-great-grandmother Caroline, was a Sinclair in everything but blood. She was a reformer against the slave-girl trade in San Francisco and went on to become one of the country’s leading suffragettes.”
“Good for her. Did they screen her for the proper adventurous spirit before they let her join the family?”
Homer frowned over his glasses, but Mac deliberately turned her attention to the other man in the photo.
He was different from her great-great-grandfather, though at first the differences seemed subtle. Maybe an inch or two taller, a little stronger of build, with a stance that hinted at a greater weight of muscle under his clothes.