Treasure of the Heart

by Ruth Saberton

  Seeing Luke at the window, Issie waved and smiled. He found himself smiling back. Issie Tremaine was real good fun. Mad as a hatter but fun all the same. Bumping into her had been a stroke of good luck, and that she was as sexy as hell an even bigger one. She was as keen to find the lost treasure as he was, too – and her inside knowledge was invaluable.

  “I was about to say get your coat and gloves on because we’re going for a walk,” Issie said when Luke let her in, “but you’re ready.”

  “It’s the only way not to get frostbite in here. Haven’t you guys heard of central heating?” Luke complained.

  “Stop being such a pussy. Central heating’s for wimps and incomers,” Issie said. “The old fisherman who owns this placed lived here until he was in his nineties without whingeing about central heating. The wood burner did him just fine.”

  Luke had met the ancient wood burner and, after singeing his eyebrows and burning his fingers, decided that it was best left alone. Ditto the temperamental Aga in the kitchen. So far he was surviving by eating pub food and not moving more than a few inches from his hot-water bottle. He would never reach his nineties if he lived here. A heart attack would get him first.

  “It’s probably warmer outside anyway,” he sighed, following her out into the raw afternoon.

  “Stop moaning. A good walk will soon warm you up.” Issie was already striding ahead of him and out of the garden, before turning right and heading down into the village. Her pink flowery hair slide bounced jauntily. “Come on!”

  Luke huddled into his coat. Smoke rose lazily from chimney pots and drifted across the village, while seagulls bickered on the harbour wall. The boats in the marina drifted with the tide’s rise and fall, and far away on the beach a dog was barking at the buzz of a metal detector. The sun was still shining weakly but it was much lower in the sky now, slithering towards the horizon. Luke shook his head. It was crazy to think that this watery blob of light was the same burning eye that sent everyone back home running for the shade.

  “Where are we going?”

  Issie tapped her nose. “Mystery tour.”

  “Is it far?”

  “About three miles. Why? Scared you won’t keep up?”

  “Hardly. I’m more scared it’s gonna rain.” He glanced at the bank of cloud that was slowly beginning to roll in from the sea. “Can’t we drive?”

  Issie laughed. “You know us Brits. We walk everywhere in the rain. Besides, you can’t get cars to where we’re going. It may have escaped your notice, but Henry Ford didn’t exactly design this village. FYI we don’t have a drive-through McDonald’s either.”

  That omission hadn’t escaped Luke’s notice. Although his stomach still felt heavy with the pasty he’d eaten earlier, his mouth watered at the thought of a Big Mac and fries.

  “Where is the nearest McDonald’s?”

  “Way too far to visit now. Halfway to Newquay.”

  “My car’s right here. I’m up for it if you are,” Luke said. He had no idea where the hell New Key was, but it sounded good to him. Right now he’d walk there if it got him a burger.

  They were just passing the private car park where he’d managed to squeeze his little hire car, when raised voices drew their attention.

  “That’s my bloody space you’ve parked in and I’m not moving!” bellowed a red-faced man whom Luke recognised as the owner of the beach café. He was standing by a big gold Rolls Royce parked crazily right in front of a blue Volvo, and squaring up to a much smaller man.

  “I’m really sorry, mate. I had no idea the spaces were allocated. The holiday-cottage people just said to park here,” apologised the shorter man.

  “Pricks like you make me sick,” the Rolls Royce’s owner spat. “I’ve not been able to park in my own bloody space all day.”

  “It’s only been one morning. We didn’t arrive until late last night,” protested a second man, stepping forward. He was taller than the first and had closely cropped hair. He looked rather upset, too. “We didn’t mean to put you out.”

  “Isn’t that the beach café guy?” Luke asked Issie, who nodded.

  “Mickey Davey. My brother, Danny, said he saw him this morning trying to shunt that Volvo out of the way with his Rolls. He’s a lunatic.”

  Luke’s lips twitched. That Rolls Royce was a sixty-thousand-dollar car. It was official: the Brits were insane!

  “I don’t give a monkey’s about your sorrys, son! You bloody did put me out,” Mickey Davey was snarling. “So guess what? It’s my turn to put you out now. Let’s see how you like it.”

  He pocketed his keys, flicked a V-sign at the visitors and sauntered away, leaving them open-mouthed — and unable to move their car. As he passed Luke and Issie, his pug-like face was bright with glee.

  “People get a bit funny about their parking here,” Issie explained.

  “There’s funny and there’s totally freaking insane,” Luke replied. “Maybe I’ll pass on frequenting the beach café in future?”

  “Stick to The Ship, especially when I’m there.”

  He laughed. “Sounds good, apart from your friend Teddy being on the loose. That’s one dude I can do without bumping into.”

  The two men from the car park were staring after Mickey Davey in disbelief.

  “The locals aren’t all mental, I promise,” Issie called to them. “Look, if his car’s still there later on, come to the pub and I’ll get a crowd of us to bump it out the way.”

  The shorter man smiled wearily. “Thanks, but I think we’ll have to wait. If we move that car he can do us for criminal damage.”

  “We’re here for a few weeks having a fishing holiday, so we won’t need it for a while,” added his friend. “Hopefully he’ll move it later when he needs to go out?”

  “Unlikely,” Issie murmured to Luke. “Mickey will probably just use his delivery van to spite them.”

  Leaving the perplexed visitors behind, Issie and Luke headed out of the village and up a muddy footpath, which threaded its way through woodland and up a steep hill. The path was so narrow that Luke had to drop behind Issie. Not that he was complaining; she had a great butt and for a good twenty minutes all he had to do was climb and watch it bobbing in front of him. Even though the hike up made his legs ache and his lungs burn (it was a shock to the system, for someone who was used to flat terrain), there was nothing like a peachy ass clad in tight denim to take a guy’s mind off physical discomfort! Luke thought he could probably climb Everest this way.

  Finally the path began to level out, and Luke’s breathing eased as the track wound through gnarled oaks and withered hawthorns.

  “We’re here,” Issie said. Her face tilted up at him, her wide blue eyes bright with anticipation. “What do you think?”

  He glanced around with curiosity. They’d reached a clearing in the woods where a small stream laughed over pebbles. In front of them, a moss-smothered Celtic cross stood guardian over a pool of water surrounded by toy fairies – and little scraps of brightly coloured fabric had been tied to the branches of the ash and willow trees that paddled their roots in the stream. There was an unusual stillness here; although they were deep in the woods, not a note of birdsong trembled in the air. Luke had the weirdest sensation that unseen eyes were watching him.

  What was this place? Although the trek here had made him sweat, goosebumps dusted his arms now. It was old, ancient even, and he had never in his entire life been anywhere like it. Sure, he’d visited museums and dived enough wrecks, but this sensation of being suspended in time was totally different. For a few moments he watched and wondered. It was almost as if something from long ago was breathing against the back of his neck.

  He shivered and rubbed his arms. “Where are we?”

  “St Wenn’s Well,” Issie said. “It’s another mysterious Polwenna place. There are all sorts of myths and legends about it.”

  “St Wenn, huh?” Luke was bamboozled by the amount of weird and wonderful saints here. As a very lapsed Catholic he sometime
s asked St Anthony to help him find things, but his knowledge of saints was as full of holes as a fishing net.

  “She’s the saint our church is named after,” Issie explained, “but there was a well here long before England became a Christian country. It’s a pagan holy well and people still come here to make requests to the water spirits. That’s why they leave the ribbons and fairies. They’re offerings.”

  Having spent time in California where whacko ideas were peddled just about everywhere, this didn’t sound too odd to Luke. He didn’t believe such baloney for a second, but lots of people did. His mom had been a regular customer of the Key West tarot reader.

  “If you lean in and make a wish, they say St Wenn will grant it,” Issie told him earnestly.

  Luke laughed. “Yeah. And Santa too, right?”

  “Don’t mock St Wenn!” she said. “Go on, make a wish!”

  She looked so serious that Luke found himself kneeling at the side of the well, dabbling his fingers in the icy water. In spite of himself he found that a wish was bubbling up from his soul, like the stream that emerged mysteriously from the earth in this peculiar place.

  “I’d sure like to find Polwenna Bay’s treasure, St Wenn,” Luke said.

  Issie looked at him in disbelief. “You’re wishing for treasure? Wouldn’t you rather find true love or something?”

  “True love?” Luke rolled his eyes. “I know we’re telling fairy tales here, but c’mon. True love? You’re kidding, right? At least we know the treasure existed.”

  Her blue eyes were fixed on his face. “Don’t you believe in true love?”

  Luke thought of his mom and dad. They’d thought it was true love – and look where that had got them. And Stella and her husband. Jeez. Love was just a myth pedalled by the Hallmark channel.

  “Honey, I believe in facts.”

  “Then you’ve never been in love,” Issie said quietly. “Fact.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe you’re right. Or maybe I am. Who knows? Anyhow, it’s your turn, Issie.”

  “I’ve already made my wish here.”

  “So you only get one? Go on, make another!”

  But Issie wouldn’t, shaking her head so hard that her pink flowery hair slide flew into the well. Luke’s hand shot forward to retrieve it but Issie reached out and caught his arm.

  “That can be our offering to St Wenn,” she said softly.

  Moments later it had vanished into the dark depths of the well. Luke hoped St Wenn liked big pink gerbera hair accessories, otherwise his wish was screwed.

  The light was starting to fade so they left the woods and, picking up another track, began their descent towards the village. As the trees became more widely spaced and Polwenna Bay came into sight, Luke realised that the footpath had brought them down to the back of the village and into the graveyard.

  “This is awesome,” he declared, sprinting forward to check out the lichen-smothered headstones. “See how old these are? Look, this one is seventeenth century,” he added, crouching down to examine it.

  “Half of them are Tremaines,” Issie said nonchalantly. “You should come up here in the daylight and have a good look around. You’ll love it, being a historian. There are all sorts of tales about hauntings too, although I reckon those were spread by the smugglers.”

  He looked up, suddenly alert. “Really? Why would that be?”

  She wound one of her braids around her forefinger. “One of the vicars here back in the eighteenth century was apparently the smugglers’ ringleader and was storing all sorts of contraband in the crypt. People would’ve kept away from the place if they were scared of ghosts, though. And the ghost stories would have helped to explain away any odd lights and noises at night.”

  It made perfect sense, and now a theory was starting to piece itself together for Luke. The myths in this village were as buried within facts as the roots of the yew tree in the churchyard soil. Mumbo jumbo and stories were all very well but what he really needed was evidence. As Issie chattered on about the legend of the smuggling vicar, Luke’s brain was working overtime.

  What if the tunnel under the village wasn’t just a story but actually had existed? The cave on the beach and the church could well be linked; that would have made life a lot easier for the smugglers. And what if Black Jack Jago had taken advantage of that very tunnel to move his loot without being spotted? Luke felt the familiar fizzing sensation in his gut which always told him when he was onto something.

  “How’s the research for your paper going, by the way?” Issie asked.

  “Uh, fine.” Luke was suddenly even more fascinated by the curling script on the ancient slab of marble. He wasn’t proud of himself for not being straight with her, but the girl had ten thousand dollars hanging around her neck, and that coin had to have come from somewhere. How he might be starting to feel about her didn’t matter. He would do whatever it took to solve this mystery, because a slice of the fortune buried in this strange village would more than set him up in the salvage game. There was no room for sentimentality.

  Luke stood up, brushing grass from his jeans, and stared down at the streets that wiggled their way between clusters of houses. Could it be that a direct route was concealed beneath this haphazard layout? The beach. The cave. The pub. The church. Four landmarks all linked to the legend and, as the crow flew, all in a line. Was it possible? Did the secret tunnel run under the pub and up to the church? And if so, how could he prove it?

  He needed to find a way of exploring the pub undisturbed – and maybe, just maybe, the answer was standing right next to him. Perhaps St Wenn was working her magic after all?

  “Issie, honey,” Luke said, turning and giving her the smile full of sexy promise that had never failed him yet, “are you working in The Ship tonight?”

  Chapter 15

  Bar work in January was usually an absolute doddle. The Christmas and New Year’s visitors retreated back to the cities, the second-homers handed their cottage keys to their cleaners, and most of the locals were too broke to spend any money on beer. At this time of year, an evening shift at The Ship ought to entail little more than perching at the bar with a good book and pulling the occasional pint for the few regulars who’d braved the cold to get here. Now and then it might be necessary to throw a log on the fire or put some glasses away, but generally that would be as busy as the night would get for anyone working behind the bar. It was a cushy number, as Kelly had remarked when she’d learned that Issie was taking on her old job, but it would make up for the summer season when her feet would scarcely touch the ground.

  Yes, that was what January was usually like in The Ship. This year, however, was very different. If it hadn’t been for the cold wind outside and the roaring fire in the hearth, Issie could have sworn it was August. The pub was packed. Rose Harper had been flat out all evening with orders for bar food, while Issie and Adam were run off their feet pulling pints and collecting glasses. All the tables were taken and even the locals had decided to join in, seating themselves in a group at the farthest end of the bar, which was about the only space remaining. In fact, the place was so crowded that Little Rog had been forced to squeeze into the alcove under the stairs, where the coats and waterproofs hung. Every hour or so his empty glass would shoot out from between the oilskins for Issie to refill. It was like dealing with a beer-drinking Harry Potter.

  “This is crazy! I can’t keep up!” Issie gasped to Adam, squeezing behind him to retrieve mixers from the fridge.

  “It’s bloody great, is what it is,” Adam said. He’d been grinning from ear to ear all evening. “Well done for finding that old wreck, Is! I owe you one.”

  “Humph,” said Issie. She was starting to wish she’d kept her big trap shut about the Isabella. So far she’d been worked to death in the pub and not been able to move for emmets, all intent on finding the treasure. On the other hand, if she hadn’t gone public with her find, Luke Dawson would never have arrived in the village – and that would certainly have been a shame.

/>   She sneaked a glance across the pub to the far window seat. There he was, his tawny head buried in a book, his long lean legs stretched out in front of him and a bottle of Bud held loosely in his tanned fingers. A shiver ran through her as she imagined those same fingers skimming across her naked body...

  Sensing her gaze, Luke looked up and smiled, showing a glimmer of white teeth and a dimple in his cheek. Issie flushed and, embarrassed to be caught staring, returned her attention to pulling pints. What on earth was happening here? She was never like this with guys. Until now she’d always been the one to call the shots. Only Mark had ever had the power to stop her in her tracks – and even he had never made her breath catch or her heart gallop like this. It was the strongest physical attraction she had ever known and, for the first time in her life, she didn’t have a clue what to do.

  Issie checked her watch. It was only ten o’clock in the evening. Ages to go until closing. She and Luke had agreed to meet up once the pub shut, but the minutes until then were really dragging their heels. Praying that time would speed up, Issie busied herself collecting glasses and plates. Mickey Davey and some of his wide-boy mates had left theirs on their table, and as she staggered through the bar with her arms precariously full, Issie wished that people had the manners to help. How hard would it be for them just to put their dirty plates on the bar?

  “You can pick ours up next and fetch us another round.”

  This clipped command was issued by a shiny-faced young man sitting in the corner booth. He was clearly one of the monied set, judging from his blue and white stripy shirt, teamed with chinos and a blue sweater draped across his shoulders – not to mention the expensive Omega watch on his wrist and the fact that he was sitting with Teddy St Milton. Teddy and several of his Hooray Henry mates had been in all night, bolstering Adam’s Caribbean holiday fund by ordering champagne and oysters. They’d also been barking orders at Issie non-stop, as though she was just some skivvy there to run around them. Warned by Adam that she had to be on her best behaviour after the last incident, Issie had bitten her tongue so many times this evening that she was amazed it wasn’t severed.