He was so near to getting engaged? To Miss Harding? Emma swallowed hard and hoped she didn’t look as stunned as she felt. ‘Quite the on dit,’ she managed to agree.
‘But then, one can never quite rely on Mrs Smythe’s information,’ Lady Wheelington said as she headed on her way. ‘I just hope my son will have plenty to occupy him in his place as vicar now. Come to tea soon, my dear, and we will have a long chat!’
In a daze, Emma turned toward the road to Barton, Philip walking silently beside her until they had left the village behind.
‘So your respectable Sir David is to marry that pretty Miss Harding,’ he said. ‘Amazing.’
Emma glanced up to see a flash of something like anger in his eyes. He quickly covered it in a smile. ‘You know Miss Harding, Philip?’
‘I met her when I first arrived. She and Sir David seem quite different from each other. But then, we all must do what we must.’
‘Is that why you are here?’
‘I came because I wanted to be sure you are well.’
‘You could have written to me for that, rather than taking such a long journey. I know how much you enjoy life on the Continent.’
Philip was silent for a long moment, the only sound the crunch of the dirt and gravel under their feet, the chatter of the birds in the hedgerows.
‘I did wish to see you again, Emma,’ he said, his tone darker, angrier than she had ever heard from him. ‘But also I wanted to show you this. I have had it on my conscience for some time.’
‘Conscience?’ Emma said, puzzled. ‘Whatever do you mean?’
Philip took a much-folded, faded piece of paper from inside his coat. As they stopped near the gates to Barton, he handed it to her.
Emma quickly scanned it and found it was a promissory note signed by Henry and dated nearly a year ago, right before his death. It appeared Henry had lost a game of cards to Herr Gottfried, a man Emma remembered all too well. Herr Gottfried had then signed it over to Philip.
It was for a great deal of money.
Emma did not know what to make of it all. ‘Henry still owed you this money when he died? But he assured me he had paid off all his debts before...’ Before he intended to run off with his married lover. Before he was killed in that duel.
Philip leaned his fist against the stone wall that guarded Barton. ‘I didn’t want to burden you with it, Emma. Not when I had hopes we could be—closer.’
‘Philip...’
‘No, don’t say anything else. I see now that my hopes were impossible, that you want a different sort of life than we could have together. I was going to forget this note, but...’
‘But what, Philip? Surely we can be honest with each other now.’
Philip nodded, his face still shadowed. Distant. ‘So we can. The truth, Emma, is that I had to use much of my legacy from my mother to buy this note. Herr Gottfried was not a nice man and Henry would have been in a great deal of trouble if this debt had stood. Henry vowed to pay me back, but as you see he died soon after. And I have found myself in rather dire straits since then.’
‘You came here to ask me to pay back Henry’s debts?’ Emma said, a terrible certainty dawning over her. Her troubles with Henry were far from over.
‘I came to see if you could possibly be interested in me, care for me, as I do you, Emma,’ Philip said. ‘But as I see now that is impossible, I must ask for something else. I need the repayment.’
Emma stared down at the creased note in her hand. It was a great deal of money, much more than she possessed, even with her legacy from her own mother, which was to go to the bookshop. She had tried so hard to pay off Henry’s debts to tradesmen, forcing her to depend on Jane to get home to Barton. Philip had said nothing of it to her before, but she had no reason to doubt him. Philip had helped Henry out of trouble. Why bring it to her now, though?
She looked up at him over the paper and it was as if she was watching a stranger. Philip stared back at her, his face as hard as granite. Every vestige of Henry’s laughing, carousing cousin, a man she herself had counted on as a lighthearted friend, was vanished.
‘I am very sorry for it, indeed,’ she said slowly. ‘Henry was a careless man to us both. I wish you had told me of this before.’
‘Perhaps I should have. But as I said—I had hopes.’
And now that he realised she couldn’t love him, he thrust this at her? Emma’s head was spinning at how quickly matters had changed between them. She didn’t know what to do.
‘I am afraid I can be of little help, Philip,’ she said. ‘You see how I am set up here. I live on the kindness of my sister right now.’
‘Surely she would help you settle a debt of honour for your husband? She is married to an earl, after all.’
Yes, perhaps Jane and Hayden could help. Yet Emma could imagine the looks on their faces as she told them of another of her failures. As she asked them for help again, after she had vowed to herself she would look after her own needs from now on. They had enough to think about now with the twins and the new baby. Baby Emma. Whatever would her namesake think of her wayward aunt?
Emma just had to find a way to fix this herself. Surely Philip’s pride could not be so hurt that he had entirely forgotten their friendship?
‘I cannot ask Jane,’ she said.
‘Really? I thought families were supposed to always be loyal to one another. That is what Henry always said. That is why I tried to help him, even when it was to my own detriment.’
Emma nodded. She remembered that very well. The nights Philip brought Henry home drunk and babbling, his money gone. The day Philip tried to stop Henry from duelling. Yet she also remembered that Philip was very often the one who led Henry into trouble in the first place. Philip, who was so much cleverer about finding trouble than Henry could ever have been.
‘Jane has already helped me so much,’ she said.
‘Then perhaps they might come to know more about Herr Gottfried and his friends,’ Philip said in a granite-hard voice. ‘And the circumstances under which this was obtained. Surely you remember them, Emma?’
Emma shook her head, appalled to think of the night she had gone to the casino at Baden with Henry, hoping her presence there would make him behave a little better. Far from it, of course. Herr Gottfried and his loathsome friends had made her horrible propositions in German she could barely understand—until one of them grabbed her and pulled her on to his lap.
Henry had only laughed, already filled with brandy, and asked the Germans if they cared to make her part of the wager. She’d been forced to slap the horrible grabber in the face and kick him in his fat leg with her heeled shoe before she ran away, their coarse laugh following her.
Philip saw her home that night and every vestige of her affection for Henry vanished for ever.
She would be so ashamed if Jane knew that sordid tale, knew the sort of life Emma really lived as Henry’s wife. The people who had been around her. She’d hidden the incident with Mr Milne, the school dancing master, from Jane for so long. She meant to hide as much as she could. What Jane already knew was bad enough.
And now Philip of all people was trying to blackmail her? She longed to slap him as she had that German bounder! To kick him and scream at him. But impulsiveness was what had got her into this mess in the first place. She had to be calm now and work out the best thing to do.
She slowly folded the nasty note. ‘I will find your money. Jane doesn’t need to know about this.’
Philip gave her a stiff nod. ‘I am sorry it has come to this, Emma. I had sincerely hoped...’
Emma held the paper out to him. She was careful not to touch him when he took it back. ‘Just leave now, Philip. Please. I will send you word when I have decided what to do.’
‘Very well. Just don’t take too long. I don’t wish to stay at the Rose and
Crown any longer than necessary.’ He turned and strode away down the road, back towards the village.
Emma watched until she was sure he was gone, then she spun around and ran through the gates of Barton. She didn’t stop running until she had gained the safety of her own cottage and locked the door behind her.
She tore off her bonnet and tossed it to the floor. The books under her arm followed and she sat down heavily on the wooden planks to bury her face in her hands. Why was everything in such a mess?
She heard the click of Murray’s paws on the floor and he nudged her with his cold nose and a whine.
Emma wrapped her arms around his furry neck and hugged him tightly. ‘I’m such a fool, Murray,’ she whispered. He answered with a lick to her cheek that made her laugh. ‘But we can’t sit here for ever. We have to figure out what to do now.’
Murray barked as if in agreement. Emma gathered up the books, the old diaries Mr Sansom gave her. As she dusted off the faded leather covers, she suddenly remembered the old tale she was reading in the bookshop, the one her father had loved so much.
The stolen treasure of Barton.
* * *
From the diary of Arabella Bancroft
The treasure is real! I must scribble these words in pencil as I am running away forthwith. My William has found where it must be at—among the ruins of the old medieval castle of Rose Hill. We are going there to search it out before anyone can discover us.
Please God let it be there. It would be the answer to all our troubles and we could be together at last.
Chapter Fourteen
‘Papa! Papa, where are you going?’
David turned from Zeus to see Beatrice standing at the top of the stone steps, looking down at him on the drive. She wore an old brocade curtain around her shoulders for a cloak and he was sure she was pretending to be Queen Elizabeth again. She had done that a great deal since her day with Emma at the bookshop.
The day he found them dancing so freely with Philip Carrington—in a way he himself could never have been free.
‘On an errand into the village,’ he answered. ‘Where is Nanny?’
‘Asleep, of course. I was reading in the window seat and saw you down here.’
David made a mental note that it was time to talk to nanny about retiring. It was clear Beatrice was becoming far too lively for her.
And for him. Every time he turned around now, his quiet, watchful daughter was into some mischief. He suspected it was Emma’s influence.
She hurried down the steps, her cloak flowing behind her. ‘You aren’t going to see that Miss Harding, are you?’
‘I am going to see the lawyer,’ he said, making another note not to let Louisa talk too freely around Beatrice about her matchmaking attempts. ‘Why would you think I was going to see Miss Harding?’
‘Aunt Louisa brought her here that day and told me to be nice to her. Aunt Louisa likes her. But I don’t, not very much.’
David knew very well he should not encourage Beatrice’s new outspokenness, but he still wanted to laugh. He’d been so worried about her since Maude died, afraid her spirit had gone into hiding for ever. Now it was back, stronger than ever.
And he had the feeling it was Emma to thank—or blame—for that. Emma, with her own imaginative delight in life. Beatrice had spoken of nothing but her since that day in the bookshop.
But he wasn’t sure that was a good idea at all. She brought things out in him he had thought long suppressed.
‘That isn’t very kind, Beatrice,’ he chided. ‘Miss Harding was most polite to you.’
‘I don’t think she means it. I think she is only saying what she thinks she ought.’
‘Sometimes that is what being polite means, I’m afraid. But why would you think that?’
‘The way her eyes crinkle when she talks to me,’ Beatrice said.
‘Miss Harding is a most respectable young lady. She might be in the village for some time.’
‘I don’t mind if she stays in the village. I just don’t want to try to talk to her very much. She knows nothing about anything interesting. I doubt she even knows who Queen Elizabeth was.’
David struggled not to laugh. ‘Well, you don’t have to talk to Miss Harding today. Go and read your Queen Elizabeth book and try to keep out of trouble until I get back.’
‘I will.’ Beatrice slid the toe of her slipper along the gravel of the drive. ‘Papa, when can I go to the bookshop again for another lesson? I must tell Mrs Carrington I need new books to read.’
Mrs Carrington—he wanted to see her too, far too much. And he didn’t think that was a good sign. She was becoming too much a bright spot in their lives. ‘I’m sure Mrs Carrington is very busy. But we’ll see. We can talk about it when I get back.’
He bent down for Beatrice to kiss his cheek and then swung up into Zeus’s saddle. At the turn of the driveway, he glanced back and waved. Beatrice waved back from the top of the steps. With her reddish-gold curls and brocade drapery, she looked like a young queen. He realised with a pang that his daughter was indeed becoming a young lady and very soon he would have to make decisions about her future and his own.
He had to do something he never liked to do—examine his feelings.
Outside the gates of Rose Hill, he started to turn towards the road into the village. Suddenly he changed his mind. He tugged on Zeus’s reins and sent the horse galloping toward Barton Park instead.
It was time for Emma Carrington and him to cease dancing cautiously around each other, to fully acknowledge the lightning of attraction and caution and need crackling between them.
It was time for him to be honest with himself and her. It was time to find a way to end things, once and for all. Before it all went too far and his passion got the better of him.
* * *
The old castle at Rose Hill. Surely that was where it had to be.
Emma looked up from the open diaries spread on the table in front of her, surprised to see the light at the window was a pale pinkish-grey sunset. She had given Mary the day off and settled down hours ago to read Arabella’s diaries and finish deciphering them. Now the day was almost gone and the pot of tea she made herself long gone cold.
But surely she had the answer now, unless Arabella somehow carried the treasure off later, after her lover died. Yet the diary ended abruptly and Emma had no way of knowing what happened to Arabella Bancroft without more research. Arabella could not have gone too far, not if her diaries stayed all this time in the village. And the couple’s last refuge was in the old castle.
Emma stood and stretched out her aching back, sore after so long bent over the old books. Her eyes itched from deciphering the faded ink and she was hungry, yet she also felt strangely energised. The hunt for the Barton treasure was a futile idea, surely. It had been a legend for so long and no one had ever found it.
And yet—if she could find it, she could pay back Philip with no one ever hearing the whole shameful story of her life with Henry. She could refurnish the bookstore, too, make a real life here again. And surely then Philip would know for good that she could never, ever live with him.
If nothing else, Arabella’s story had taken her out of herself for a while. Given her something to think about, dream about, besides David Marton.
Emma sighed at the thought of him. She hadn’t seen him since he took Beatrice out of the bookshop so suddenly. Surely he would never let his daughter see her again after the chaos of her ‘lessons’ and Philip’s presence there. Surely he had seen she was no good example for a little girl like Beatrice.
Possibly he was even engaged to the pretty Miss Harding now, as Lady Wheelington said.
Emma hurried over to kneel down by the fire and stir the embers to life. Murray roused himself from his bed to watch her and whined as if to remind her what time it
was.
‘I know, you haven’t yet had your tea, poor old Murray,’ she said, reaching out to pat his head. ‘Perhaps you and I should do a bit of exploring tomorrow? We could go take a look at the old castle at Rose Hill, see what we can find.’
And if David didn’t catch them there. The last thing she wanted was to look silly in front of him yet again! To be caught trespassing would be too embarrassing.
As she rubbed at the dog’s soft ears, Emma thought about the treasure. If it was at the old castle, it wasn’t terribly surprising her father had never found it. Her parents were never great friends with David’s, despite how near their estates were. The Martons were too respectable and conventional for the eccentric Bancrofts. They wouldn’t have let him on to their land, so he mostly dug about on Barton Park.
Murray whined again and Emma smiled down at him. ‘I know. I’m just as hopeless as my father. But I must do something to make Philip go away.’ Or she would lose everything here she had so carefully begun to rebuild.
Suddenly, a knock sounded at the door. Murray barked, and Emma jumped to her feet, startled.
‘Don’t let it be Philip,’ she whispered, a cold sweep of panic touching her. He had said he would give her time. Surely it hadn’t been long enough.
She heard another knock, and she knew she couldn’t just hide. Hiding never solved anything. She quickly smoothed her hair and her simple muslin day dress and hurried out of the sitting room, Murray at her heels.
She pulled the door open and to her shock saw it was not Philip on her doorstep. It was David.
The dying sunlight cast his dark hair in a golden halo and he looked more handsome than ever. She thought her heart even skipped a beat at the sight of him, just as the silliest poets always said.
‘I am sorry for calling unexpectedly, Mrs Carrington,’ he said.
‘Not at all,’ Emma gasped, still in the grip of surprise. ‘Please, do come in. I was just about to make some tea.’
‘Thank you, I won’t trespass on your time very long,’ he answered, patting Murray’s head as the dog eagerly clambered to greet him.
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