Through the Looking Glass Read online

  Through the Looking Glass is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  2016 Loveswept Ebook Edition

  Copyright © 1990 by Kay Hooper

  Excerpt from The Lady and the Lion by Kay Hooper copyright © 1990 by Kay Hooper

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Loveswept, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  LOVESWEPT is a registered trademark and the LOVESWEPT colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Originally published in paperback in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, in 1990.

  Ebook ISBN 9781101969250

  Cover design: Diane Luger

  Cover photograph: IVASHstudio/Shutterstock

  randomhousebooks.com

  v4.1

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Epilogue

  By Kay Hooper

  About the Author

  Excerpt from The Lady and the Lion

  Author’s Note

  Alice discovered a strange new world when she stepped through her looking glass. Not always a safe world, it held nonsense and lunacy, danger and charm.

  But that was only a story. What would a man find if he stepped through a looking glass? A Mad Hatter’s tea party? Or something even more unexpected?

  Prologue

  “Am I disturbing you, child?” The lovely feminine voice that issued from the telephone receiver held an abstracted tone, but it couldn’t obscure the more resonant notes of a strong and forceful personality. Her voice had a mysterious quality that Maggie had never been able to put her finger on.

  “No, Aunt Julia. I’m alone.” Aunt Julia never wanted to intrude on Maggie’s personal life and never asked probing questions, but seemed to take it for granted that her infrequent calls probably interrupted athletic bouts of youthful sex. Especially since she tended to call very late at night.

  Maggie pushed herself up on an elbow and rubbed her eyes blearily before peering at her bedside clock. Par for the course: It was two A.M.

  “Alone? At your age? Really, Maggie, you—well, never mind. It’s your own business, certainly, and with all the risks you young people have to contend with these days, I suppose you’re wise to be selective.”

  Politely, Maggie said, “That is true. I just wish you’d get it through your head that I don’t have a line of hopeful lovers waiting outside my door. I told you when I was ten that I was going to wait for Mr. Right, and I haven’t changed my mind. Silly of me to be an idealist, I realize, but there it is.”

  “You haven’t found him yet, I take it?”

  “Hardly. There are a number of misters running around out there, but not one of them has been right for me. Did you call to check on the progress of my love life?”

  “You know better. I’d never intrude.”

  Maggie laughed softly. “Sure. You also never mind the time zones. It’s two A.M. here, Aunt Julia.”

  “I’m sorry, child. But I’m afraid I have bad news.”

  Sitting up in bed, Maggie said, “Not Uncle Cyrus?”

  “Oh, no. It’s your cousin Merlin.”

  Maggie remembered this particular cousin, though it had been years since she’d seen him. That was generally the case with her relatives. A large family and long-lived, they were spread out over the globe and rarely got together for clan gatherings. Which was, Maggie had privately decided, all to the good. To say that most of her relatives were peculiar was to understate the matter. They ranged from mildly eccentric to certifiably mad—though none was, to her knowledge, dangerous.

  The undisputed heads of the clan were Aunt Julia and Uncle Cyrus, and both were…unusual. Definitely unusual. The younger generations of the family called them aunt and uncle, but the actual relationships were vague. Maggie didn’t know their ages or, really, anything else concrete about them, and when in a mad moment she’d tried to research her family tree, she’d backtracked as far as the turn of the century before losing her nerve. By that point, the tree branches had been weighted down with so many colorful characters and peculiar stories that she decided she didn’t want to know how it all began.

  Merlin was indeed her cousin, though she wasn’t sure how far removed. His name was legitimate, the gift of a romantic-minded mother, and he’d naturally ended up in a carnival. He’d done the most marvelous magic act years back; Maggie thought she must have been six when she’d first seen it. He had seemed old then.

  “How old is Merlin?” she suddenly asked.

  “I don’t think that matters now, child, because he’s dead,” Aunt Julia replied frankly.

  “Oh. I’m sorry. When’s the wake?” Her clan wasn’t noticeably Irish, they simply liked parties, and without exception every one of them hated wearing black.

  “Day after tomorrow. Of course you’ll come.”

  “Of course. Where?” The last family wake had been held in New Orleans. There had been marching, Maggie remembered. And trumpets.

  Aunt Julia sighed and for the first time sounded a bit irritated. “He wanted his ashes scattered over Disneyland, but the authorities wouldn’t hear of it. Cyrus tried, but he just couldn’t bring them around. We’ve had to settle for Niagara Falls. Not as good, but he did say many times that he wanted to go over it in a barrel.”

  Maggie accepted that without a blink. “Almost as good, then. I’ll arrange to be there. How did he die?”

  “The police ruled it accidental, Maggie, but that’s ridiculous. He was murdered.” Aunt Julia stated her opinion just the way one standing in the midst of a cloudburst would state that it was raining. Absolute authority. There was no point arguing with her; only Uncle Cyrus had ever been known to succeed in getting her to back away from such an unequivocally stated opinion.

  “Really?” Maggie asked. “Members of our family don’t generally get bumped off.” Her peculiar family did have a rather impressive record of good health and few enemies.

  “We don’t have stupid accidents either. You’ve just begun your summer vacation, haven’t you? After the wake, perhaps you could find Wonderland and look around a bit? We should know the truth, child. For our own peace of mind. And for poor Merlin, of course. He’ll hate it if he can never leave the area of that wretched well he was pushed into.”

  Maggie followed that reasoning only because she vaguely recalled that Cousin Merlin had believed strongly in ghosts and in the conviction that an unresolved or violent death chained a helpless spirit to the spot of his or her untimely demise. She wasn’t particularly surprised by her aunt’s request; over the past ten years, Maggie had become something of a troubleshooter on family problems. Apparently, a possibly murdered cousin fell into that category.

  “All right, Aunt Julia. You can fill me in when I get there. I’ll get a flight tomorrow if I can.”

  “Wonderful, child. We’ll see you then.”

  —

  Julia hung up the phone and sat gazing somewhat thoughtfully across the big old desk. “This time, you’ve surprised me, Cyrus,” she said. “To send that delicate child into such a potentially dangerous situation alone—”

/>   He chuckled softly. “Delicate? In appearance, certainly, but Maggie is no frail flower, sweet. She has an astonishingly good mind—particularly considering her upbringing. Of all our descendants she has inherited the highest degree of tolerance, the best-developed sense of the absurd, and the most childlike spirit. Combined with her sheer intelligence, those traits make her a rather formidable young woman. I’m not at all surprised she has yet to find a man to match her.”

  “And so?” Julia prompted.

  “I’ve found one for her,” Cyrus finished simply.

  “You’ll send him to Wonderland?”

  Cyrus’s vivid dark eyes shone with the radiant intelligence that only Julia saw unshuttered. “Like Alice, he must fall down the rabbit hole. If he is to see Maggie clearly, he must see all that she is.”

  After a moment Julia smiled faintly. “Daunting for him, poor man.”

  “He will survive.” Cyrus chuckled again richly. “He may even prevail.”

  “Will we help?”

  “Perhaps. We will certainly be ready to do so. At the very least we’ll keep a close watch, as usual.”

  Julia nodded and smiled wryly. “I suppose you know what you’re doing.”

  “Always, my sweet. Always.”

  —

  It didn’t strike Maggie as at all peculiar to find that the owner of the Wonderland carnival bore the improbable name of Balthasar Bundy; she knew of odder names, principally among her own family.

  Her own given name had been strictly confined to her birth certificate, since she refused to use it; her understanding father had suggested “Maggie” as a reasonable compromise on her fifth birthday.

  It didn’t strike her as strange either that Balthasar instantly welcomed her into his troupe of carnies; she’d taken care both to dress and act suitably, after all, and her claims as an animal trainer would have been proven valid if he’d given her a chance to demonstrate.

  What struck her as somewhat bizarre was Balthasar’s immediate and cheerful request that she “mind the store” while he journeyed off to Africa in search of a rhinoceros.

  “But why me?” she asked curiously as he bustled about his rather exotic caravan throwing colorful clothing into a battered suitcase. She had silently debated and discarded a question about the realistic possibilities of not only locating and capturing a rhinoceros, but then sneaking it off African soil and onto American soil in violation of a number of laws. To her experienced gaze, he bore all the signs of a man who would consider such a question totally pointless.

  Balthasar gave her a comical look of surprise. “Well, my dear, no one else here could do it.”

  Maggie had too much experience with amiable lunatics to question this one further. And since she had several good reasons to believe he’d had nothing to do with Cousin Merlin’s unfortunate “accident,” she didn’t try to prevent him from leaving. She merely asked a half dozen or so sensible questions and stood pointedly in his way until he answered them, then accepted the key to the money box—which was currently housed in the floor of the boa constrictor’s cage—and promised to make herself at home in his caravan until he returned.

  Then she waved good-bye from the doorway of said caravan as he rode off into the sunset in a battered 1958 black Caddie.

  A muffled thump behind her made her jump. She turned to stare at the bed. It had come down from the wall, which it was supposed to do only after being unfastened. Balthasar had warned her in passing that the catch was defective. She gazed at the plush red velvet spread and gold-tasseled pillows, then allowed her pained eyes to take in the remainder of the caravan. Not that there was a great deal of space left once the bed came down.

  There was a worn path in the faded carpet around the foot of the bed, which indicated that Balthasar habitually made certain he wasn’t walking under the bed when it decided to drop. There was an emerald velvet love seat wedged in near the door with a scarred wooden table and oil lamp beside it. There was a wardrobe, which Balthasar had emptied, leaning a bit drunkenly on two shortened legs beside the narrow trapdoor that allowed access to the driver’s seat of the wagon. And taking up the remaining floor space was a gleaming old rolltop desk, its every pigeonhole stuffed beyond capacity with yellowed papers.

  Maggie heard herself sigh, which wasn’t exactly surprising. She turned again and looked out on what was, she thought, a cross between a gypsy camp, a moth-eaten circus, and a lunatic asylum on wheels.

  “Interesting place to spend a vacation,” she murmured, and ventured forth to meet the inmates.

  The scary part was that she felt right at home.

  “I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, sir,” said Alice, “because I’m not myself, you see.”

  “I don’t see,” said the Caterpillar.

  —Lewis Carroll (1832–1898)

  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

  Curtsey while you’re thinking what to say. It saves time.

  Chapter 1

  “Pardon me, but would you have the time?” The voice was harassed and anxious, just like the face Gideon found turned beseechingly up to him. It was an elderly face with wrinkles and a tentative smile, sitting atop a portly body dressed in a plaid suit that combined the improbable colors of lime green and purple.

  Somewhat hastily, Gideon looked at his wristwatch. “It’s a quarter after three,” he replied.

  “Oh, heavens, I’m late.” The little man moaned and bustled away.

  Gideon gazed after him for a moment, grappling with the notion that there was something familiar about the preceding scene. He shook off the thought and ventured a few more steps away from his car, looking around him with the wary gaze of a man quite definitely out of his element. Since he was sprung from a long and distinguished line of financial wizards with the Midas touch, his natural habitat tended more toward stately homes, huge boardrooms, and Learjets.

  Definitely not seedy carnivals.

  Though, to be fair, the colorful jumble of tents, wagons—the horse-drawn kind—people, and animals wasn’t exactly seedy, since everything appeared to be clean and in good shape. It was just…well, cockeyed. In this age of high-tech special effects, the Wonderland carnival was positively archaic. In its thirty years of existence it had eked out a marginal living for its varied dependents without ever making much of a splash. The carnival rolled into small towns and took up temporary residence in a parking lot or empty field for a few days or a week before moving on. The carnival wandered without rhyme or reason. That fact was the major cause of Gideon’s apparent short temper. It had taken him nearly a month to find the carnival, and since his task wasn’t a particularly pleasant one, the delay had done nothing to improve his state of mind. Muttering to himself, he took several more strides into the heart of chaos and very nearly fell over a towheaded urchin who had appeared out of nowhere.

  “You cuss better’n Maggie,” the urchin confided with the air of bestowing a great compliment.

  Estimating the boy’s age at six or so, Gideon got a grip on himself and said, “Do you belong here?”

  “I’m carny,” the boy said, lifting his chin and showing a missing tooth as he grinned.

  “Is that your name?”

  “ ’Course not. My name’s Sean.” Sean eyed the tall man before him while giving him a disconcertingly adult smile of condescension. “Don’t know much, do you? ‘Carny’ means I belong here. You don’t belong here. Whatcha want?”

  Unused to children, Gideon returned the stare for several moments before it occurred to him that he wasn’t going to win the battle of wills. Sighing, he said, “I want to talk to the—the manager, I suppose. Whoever runs this place.”

  “Why dincha say so? Come on, I’ll show you.” Without waiting for an agreement Sean turned and walked away, his short legs covering the ground with remarkable speed.

  Gideon followed as the boy wound his way between wagons and tents and cages. The cages held animals, most of which were sleeping. The variety was astonishing. Gideon counted two
lions, a tiger, and what he thought was a cheetah, as well as monkeys, bears, and a number of unidentifiable balls of fur.

  He was thinking about the unexpected variety when he rounded the corner of a tent to see Sean holding an earnest conversation with a woman. She turned to face Gideon as he approached—and he felt a jolt as strong as a kick in the stomach.

  Mid-twenties at a guess, though all he was certain of was that childhood was behind her. Her hair was so light it seemed made of spun silver, gleaming in the afternoon sunshine, and it was so long she probably sat on it. Incredibly green eyes looked out of her delicate face with the enigmatic mystery of a cat and an underlying…something…that wasn’t wildness exactly, but more like the mischief of an incorrigible, but delightful, child. And her small, slender body was draped in some filmy green material that fluttered about her in the slight breeze.

  If Gideon was any judge of shapely female forms, she was wearing absolutely nothing underneath the gauzy emerald material.

  “You’re just in time,” she told him in a bright, sweet, childlike voice.

  Taken aback, Gideon said, “Just in time for wh—” and found himself with an armful of something furry. To his immense relief, he discovered it was a puppy. He stood there holding the small, wriggling creature and feeling slightly shell-shocked as he stared at the woman.

  Ignoring him now, she spoke to Sean with improbable sternness. “You should be helping Malcolm get ready. You know he likes tea and poker promptly at four o’clock.”

  Tea and crumpets, Gideon thought. Wasn’t it supposed to be tea and crumpets? If she’d said beer and poker, then he could have understood. He shook the absurd thought away.

  “I’ll help him, don’t I always?” Sean was demanding aggrievedly. “But you said to find Leo and I can’t, so I had to tell you. And besides, he wanted to talk to you.” A small, grubby thumb was jerked toward Gideon.