His mother nodded. “I believe I did indeed express to Rupert my devout desire for the two of you to marry.” She sighed. “Evidently, he told his son. It would seem Richard has great confidence in my power over you, Julian, to execute such an involved plan. I am sorry if it led to Leah and Richard both being under Ravenscar’s roof. Why do you think they came?”
Devlin said, “To learn more about what we were doing, what we were thinking and planning.”
This led to more questions and possibilities until Sophie announced, “Julian, I wish you would select a bonnet for me. I think I should like to have a pair of geese perched on the crown. What do you think?”
“Red roses,” Julian said, “a lovely line of them across the crown.”
“Hmmm,” said her grace.
After Julian and Devlin escorted the ladies to their bedchambers, they returned to the taproom to settle in with brandy. The air was heavy and sweet, the conversations around them low and easy.
Devlin said, “Have you made arrangements for a final shipment to the cave?”
Julian nodded. “Yes, the night of the twenty-fourth, there will be no moon. As for storms, it is late spring, so perhaps we will be lucky.”
“It makes no sense for us to return to London. I am not even tempted to settle into London intrigue again. I am quite enjoying myself in the wilds of Cornwall.”
“Your mistresses will languish, Devlin, and perhaps even give up on you, and White’s is surely bereft without your presence.”
“I do enjoy the Season, always have. It is odd of me, isn’t it? Well, the bonnet you selected for your mother becomes her very nicely. I had no idea my uncle had such excellent taste in bonnets.”
“A man must be accomplished at many things,” Julian said, and lifted his brandy snifter in a toast to Devlin’s.
“I see you are worried. Is it about Sophie playing smuggler? Come, Julian, you know there won’t be any problems.”
“I’m worried about Orvald Manners. I must find him, Devlin. He’s the only one who can point to Richard. As I told you, the lad who hunted me down took me right to where Manners was staying, only he was gone. Where to, I wonder?”
“Probably to see Richard and report his failure. At least no one will get aboard the Blue Star now. Captain Cleaves had two men on duty all night.”
An hour later, Julian lay on his back, his head pillowed on his arms, staring up at the inn’s sloping ceiling. It was a warm night, and utterly silent. There was not a sound of a single carriage or horse outside his window, no drunken voices, no yelling or singing. He was tired, but his brain wouldn’t close itself down. He found himself thinking not about Orvald Manners but about an ugly black jewel that was magic. But the magic would work only for him, not for his father. And this magic lay beneath stone spears. His mind went round and round with the absurd idea of magic itself until he thought he’d drive himself mad. He finally rose, pulled on his clothes, and made his way downstairs to the taproom.
He’d hoped Mr. Knatter was still about, but the taproom was dark and empty. He wanted a brandy, anything to make his mind stop racing. He heard a small noise, whirled around to see an apparition all in white standing in the shadows before him, a candle cupped by a hand.
He smoothly pulled the knife out of his boot. Then he smelled her unique scent.
“Julian, what are you doing here? Before you blight me like Leah did, let me explain. I heard you walk by our chamber and followed you. Are you all right? It is very late.”
He slid the knife back into his boot and straightened. “Sophie, it is well after midnight, and there is no one about. You should not have come down after me.”
She merely smiled and glided toward him. “I saw you pull your knife out of your boot. You were fast, Julian. Had I been a villain, you would have brought me down between one breath and the next.”
“Come, I will walk you back to your room. Hopefully you did not awaken Roxanne.”
But she didn’t move. “If I awoke anyone, it would be Tansy. She starts at the sound of a curtain moving at the window. I heard Devlin telling Roxanne about Mr. McGurdy’s hardfisted cider. I should like to try it.”
“Only if you wish to lose your virginity by the second glass. Forget I said that.” Julian scraped his fingers through his hair, making it stand on end.
She held the candle higher. “You have whiskers.”
He nodded, said, “Yes. By morning, I look like a pirate.”
“So does my grandfather. Once when I was visiting Allegra Hall with my mother, I chanced to see him early one morning. He had black whiskers all over his face. I asked him if I had to walk the plank, and he came down on his haunches, told me in all seriousness that his whiskers meant he was a Russian czar, not a pirate, and I was to bow to him.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her if she’d bowed, but he got his brain back on track. “Come, back to bed with you.”
“What do you think about this puzzle from your father?”
“Not much.”
“I believe I know what he means by spears of stone.”
They both whirled about at the sound of a man’s angry voice. “What nasty piece of work is trying to steal my ale in the middle of the bloody night?”
Julian took the candle from Sophie, held it high. There stood Mr. Knatter, his bulk wrapped in a lovely Scottish plaid dressing gown.
“We aren’t nasty pieces of work, sir,” Sophie said. “We’re works of art.”
Julian laughed, couldn’t help himself.
47
It was to everyone’s collective relief when Pouffer announced that Richard and Leah had returned to Hardcross Manor during their three-day trip to Plymouth.
Pouffer was rubbing his gnarly hands together, grinning widely. “It’s peaceful now, Prince, very peaceful, no more harangues from Lady Merrick. Master Richard was polite as can be, but then he’s been in and out of Ravenscar all his life, and everyone knows him, so why would he become ill-mannered? However, I did not regard his good manners with any approval at all.”
“Why?” Roxanne asked him.
“Because Master Richard believes our prince killed her poor ladyship. He is naturally quite wrong. It fair to curdles my liver to show him politeness even when he is so very polite to me.”
Corinne said as she stripped off her gloves, “Now they’re gone, we can quite enjoy ourselves.”
She gave a sloe-eyed look at her son, then looked purposefully toward Sophie, who was removing her bonnet. Julian rolled his eyes. He said, “Sophie, aren’t you due in the schoolroom for your geography lesson?”
Sophie said thoughtfully, “Indeed, I wish to chart the Blue Star’s course to Boston. I wonder, are there any ice floes to batter a vessel in the North Atlantic?”
Julian said, “There are ice floes everywhere to batter the unwary.”
“I wonder who is about to instruct me?” Sophie gave him a blazing smile, and walked up the staircase, dangling her bonnet by its blue ribbons.
Julian stared after her. She hadn’t yet told him what she knew about any spears of stone. He supposed she’d been jesting with him. However, not ten minutes later, he looked up to Sophie striding toward him, making her bonnet ribbons dance in the stiff breeze. He stood in the dog run, surrounded by all four spaniels, all yipping and leaping about, trying to bite one another, vying for his attention. When they heard Sophie’s voice, they left him flat and raced back to dance around her, barking their heads off, their tails wild metronomes. He turned again to face the channel, breathing in the wondrous smell of brine and fish and sun, when she said from behind him, “If you will come with me, I will show you spears of stone.”
When he turned to face her, she was on her knees, staring up at him, trying to duck the dogs’ tongues licking at her face and hair.
“Heel!”
The spaniels eyed him, then, one after the other, heeled.
“They obey you.”
“Occasionally. I keep telling them they should do w
hatever I command, since I am their master. Let’s give them another ten minutes—Cletus, no, don’t try to bite Beatrice’s belly. Ah, so you really do think you know where we’ll find these spears of stone?”
Sophie was petting each spaniel’s head, one after the other. She said, not looking at him, “I’m really not such a silly girl with air between her ears, as much as you would like to think so.”
“No, there’s barely any room in your head for air, you’ve got so many brains tucked in there. I’m afraid you know all too much—for a girl your age.”
She grinned up at him now. “You should have known me when I was five years old. I was a right proper little whip, according to our gardener.”
The thing was, he couldn’t really see her as a little girl, not now, dammit.
When they brought the spaniels back into his estate room, Sophie realized she liked the smell—dog and leather and the scent of the sea from just beyond the glass door. And man.
“We’re going to the cave,” she said.
As they walked side by side to the banks of the River Horvath, he said, “Spears of stone, that could very well be it. How came you to think of it?”
She raised her skirts a bit to avoid a tangled bush.
“Sophie?”
“All those brains in my head have to be good for something.” Fifteen minutes later, they slipped behind the thick brush that hid the entrance and stepped into the cave. Julian raised the lantern high. “I’ve never thought of stalactites being made of stone, yet they are. There are so many of them.”
“You’re right, I hadn’t realized. Very well, we must concentrate only on those that look exactly like a spear.”
Unfortunately, most of them were spears.
She faced Julian, shaking her head. “I imagined it would be so simple. I would bring you here, point to the only spear, we would scrape away sand, and there it would be, this ugly black jewel, perhaps wrapped in seal cloth. But instead . . .” She waved her arms around her.
“I had thought to impress you, to make you see me as a grown-up lady, to make you see me as, well, never mind.” She sighed. “I had thought to be a heroine, but I am not. I am not even a right proper little whip anymore.”
“Don’t say that.”
His voice was deep and harsh. Sophie stared at him. “But it is true, Julian. We could spend the next ten years digging beneath every single limestone spear in this dratted cave.”
“Your deduction was excellent. We must try to think like my father when he was writing out his blasted clues. Spears of stone—it has to have meant something special to him, something he perhaps mentioned to my mother. We will ask her to think on it.”
“Or perhaps it is here.” Sophie fell to her knees beside a particularly long sharp stalactite and dug her fingers into the smooth sand. After several minutes, she stopped and looked up at him. “Well, this probably isn’t the right one.”
He laughed, hauled her to her feet. He used too much strength, he knew it, and yet he still did it. She came flying up hard against him, every bit of her hard against him, and he felt a bolt of lust so powerful he nearly fell over.
“No,” he said, pushed her away, grabbed the lantern, and left the cave, pausing only to hold the branches out of the way for her to pass.
“I’m not a right little whip anymore, Julian. I’m a right big whip.”
He said not a word to her on their walk back to Ravenscar.
Pouffer told them Baron Purley was in the drawing room with her grace, drinking tea.
“Like Pouffer, I shan’t pay much attention to his lordship’s politeness, either,” he said.
As they drew near, Julian heard his mother say, “I found a folded note beneath the tear, Rupert. Let me show it to you. Sophie made several copies of it.”
He and Sophie came into the room even as his mother opened a small Chinese box atop a marquetry table, retrieved the paper, and handed it to the baron.
Julian said nothing, merely watched the baron’s face, aware of Sophie’s every breath. The baron looked interested, then excited. “Good Lord, Corinne, I had no idea. I mean, I saw the backing paper had torn away, but I didn’t wish to take the time to repair it, I only wanted to give it to Julian. Come, my dear, this puzzle from his grace, what does it mean?”
“None of us knows,” she said. “Julian, Sophie, do come in. I have shown Rupert the puzzle from your father.”
“Do you have any ideas what this can mean, Julian? Do you know where these spears of stone could be? Or what they are? Or what this magic jewel could be?”
“No, sir, I have no idea where this so-called magic jewel can be, or its purported magic. It will work for me but not my father? Did my father ever speak to you of this?”
“You’re speaking of thirty years ago, my boy. But I imagine I would remember if your father spoke of a magic jewel.”
Julian shrugged. “I understand Richard has escorted Lady Merrick back to Hardcross Manor.”
“Yes,” the baron said, smiling. “She is a charming lady. I believe my son has perhaps found his future wife.”
Sophie opened her mouth, then shut it.
“Would you care for tea, dearest?” Corinne asked, her voice carefully neutral.
“I must see to business, Mother, and Sophie and Roxanne have planned an outing. Sir, good luck with your houseguest.”
They heard the baron say, “Why would Julian wish me luck with Lady Merrick? She is Roxanne’s sister, is she not? Sophie’s aunt? A charming young woman, and I must say her husband left her very well situated, indeed.”
“Oh, dear,” Sophie said to Julian, as they walked from the drawing room. “I wonder what Leah is up to at this very moment?”
48
Julian was walking from the stables, flicking his whip against his boot, when he heard shouting. It was Sophie, and she was running to him, her riding skirts pulled above her ankles, calling his name over and over. He felt an awful fear. He grabbed her arms. “What’s wrong? What’s the matter? Are you all right?”
“She’s gone!”
“What? Who is gone, Sophie?”
“Roxanne. She is not in her bedchamber, she is nowhere, I’ve asked everyone. No one has seen her. Everyone is looking for her. Do you know where she is?”
He took her hands in his, rubbed his thumbs over her palms to calm her. “No, I don’t know. Here’s Devlin. Surely he knows where she is.”
“No, he doesn’t. He and I are riding to Hardcross Manor. I know Richard Langworth took her, I know it; so does Devlin. Now that you’re back, we can all go.”
“Wait a moment—you’ve looked here?”
“Yes, yes. Tansy came to me at seven o’clock this morning and said Roxanne wasn’t in her bed. At first I wasn’t worried. Ravenscar is huge, and Roxanne loves to explore, but I couldn’t find her. I asked everyone, then Pouffer told me Devlin was in the billiards room. He was losing to himself, and cursing, really quite mad about it. Oh, who cares if he or himself was winning?”
“I usually lose to myself, Sophie,” Devlin said, trying for calm even as cold fear nearly bowed him over. “Julian, we must go now to Hardcross Manor. I agree with Sophie, Langworth took her. It makes no sense to me, but he must be the one to have taken her. After his failure to burn Julian’s goods on the Blue Star, he must be getting desperate.”
In the nine years Julian had known Devlin, he’d never before seen him so afraid.
Devlin said again, “I know Langworth took her, I know it. He has gone too far. I fully intend to kill him.”
“Devlin, you said it makes no sense, and it doesn’t. Why would he take Roxanne when you are the one she—” Sophie stalled.
The two men exchanged a look that said clearly, If he wanted you to suffer all the way to your soul, he would not have taken Roxanne, he’d have taken Sophie.
“What?” Sophie turned from one to the other. “What are you thinking? What don’t you think I should know?”
Julian said, “If Richard wanted me to
suffer, he should have taken my mother.”
Devlin rolled his eyes. Julian ignored him.
Sophie said, “Maybe he did try to take her grace but couldn’t manage it. So he took Roxanne instead. But why? She is Leah’s sister, and he supposedly is going to marry Leah. Why would he take his future sister-in-law?”
Devlin said, “Leah carries a great deal of dislike in her, some of it toward her sister. Once we have Richard, he will tell me. He has hidden her, probably on manor property. Do you know of a storage house, an old barn, a gazebo, any ancient ruin where he could hide her?”
“There is an old barn on the edge of the property, where Richard and I played as boys, though I don’t know if it is still standing.”
“Let’s go,” Sophie said, and raced into the stable.
“I’m going to pound the bastard into the dirt, Julian, so don’t try to talk me out of it.”
“When we find Roxanne, I’ll help you.”
“And then I’m going to kill him.”
Thirty minutes later, the three of them pulled up their horses in front of Hardcross Manor to see Victoria Langworth standing on the deep steps, hands on her hips, yelling and waving her finger at a man they’d never seen before.
She looked up at them, then continued to shout as she waved her fist in the man’s face. “This villain was supposed to fix my saddle! But did he? No, he patched it with some cheap leather that looked like it was taken from a dog collar. You, sir, you are an poltroon, and I shall see you ruined!”
The man managed to get in, “But miss, it is my brother who was to fix your saddle. He’s a feckless lad, and I’ll—”
Victoria actually growled. “You will take my saddle back to your feckless brother and see that he does it right or I will come at night and chew off his cheek when he’s asleep!”
“Goodness,” Sophie said, “that’s a powerful threat.”
Evidently, it sounded fairly powerful to the man as well. He grabbed the saddle from the ground, hoisted it onto his back, and nearly ran toward the stables.
The Prince of Ravenscar Page 22
