The Expected One Read Online Free PDF Page B

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    Lord Bérenger Sinclair paced the polished floors of his library. Flames from an enormous stone fireplace cast golden light upon an ancestral collection of priceless books and manuscripts. A tattered banner hung in a protective glass case that stretched across the full length of the enormous hearth. Once white, the yellowed fabric was emblazoned with faded gold fleurs-de-lis. The conjoined name
Jhesus-Maria
was embroidered on the buckram, but was visible only to the rare few who had the opportunity to get close to this particular relic.
    Sinclair recited the prophecy aloud and by rote, his slight Scottish accent rolling the “r”s in the sentence. Berenger knew the words of the foretelling by heart; he had learned them while sitting on his grandfather’s knee as a little boy. He didn’t comprehend the meaning of those lines back then. It was merely a memorization game he played with his grandfather when he spent the summers here on the family’s vast French estate.
    He paused in his pacing to stand before an elaborate lineage, a family tree spanning the centuries that was painted floor to ceiling on the wide far wall. It was a massive mural that displayed the history of Bérenger’s flamboyant ancestors.
    This branch of the Sinclair family was one of the oldest in Europe. Originally called Saint Clair, they had been driven from the Continent to take refuge in Scotland in the thirteenth century, when the surname was subsequently anglicized to its current form. Bérenger’s ancestors were some of the most illustrious in British history, including James the First of England and that king’s infamous mother, Mary, Queen of Scots.
    The influential and savvy Sinclair family managed to survive civil wars and political upheaval within Scotland, playing both sides of the crown through the country’s tumultuous history. A captain of industry in the twentieth century, Bérenger’s grandfather had established one of the greatest fortunes in Europe with the founding of a North Sea oil corporation. A billionaire several times over and a British peer with a seat in the House of Lords, Alistair Sinclair had everything any man could ask for. But he remained restless and unsatisfied, a seeker after something his fortune could not buy.
    Grandfather Alistair became obsessed with France, buying an enormous château outside the village of Arques in the rugged and mysterious southwestern region known as the Languedoc. He called his new home Château des Pommes Bleues — House of the Blue Apples — for reasons known only to an initiated few.
    The Languedoc was a mountainous land filled with mysticism. Local legends of buried treasure and mysterious knights dated back hundreds, even thousands, of years. Alistair Sinclair had become increasingly fixated on the Languedoc folklore, buying as much land in the region as he could acquire and searching with increasing urgency for treasure he believed was buried in the region. The cache he sought had little to do with gold or riches, items Alistair already possessed in overabundance. It was something far more valuable to him, to his family, and to the world. He spent less and less time in Scotland as he grew older, happy only when he was here in the wild, red mountains of the Languedoc. Alistair insisted that his grandson accompany him during the summers, and he ultimately instilled his passion for the mythic region — indeed, his obsession — in the young Bérenger.
    Now in his forties, Bérenger Sinclair paused once more in his circuit around the great library, this time before a painting of his grandfather. Seeing the sharp, angular features, the curling dark hair, and intense eyes was like looking into a mirror.
    “You look so much like him, Monsieur. You are more like him every day, in many ways.”
    Sinclair turned to answer his hulking manservant, Roland. For such an enormous man, he had uncommon stealth and often seemed to appear out of the air.
    “Is that a good thing?”