Cherished Enemy

by Patricia Veryan

  He detached her clutching little hands and pressed a kiss in each palm. “I shall,” he said gently. “And when I do I will carry with me the memory of a priceless idyll with a very rare lady. More than some men are allowed for all their days.” His mouth twisted into his wry grin. He said with fine nonchalance, “We have, after all, known each other for a very short time. You are so very beautiful, Miss Rosamond…” Almost, he drifted into insanity again, and had to bite his lip hard to return to the proper course. “The gentlemen will flock around you and very soon you will be remembering me as a nice—I hope—but rather wild Highland laddie. Which is as it should be.”

  “Which is stuff!” she declared angrily.

  He clenched his fists and fought the need to seize her and claim those deliciously vehement lips.

  “I will wait—all my life if I must, but—for my sake, Rob—please go to France! Charles can arrange it, I know he can. If you won’t let me go with you, I can follow, but—I beg of you, get away from England before—”

  He said simply, “My word is given.”

  She uttered a muffled sound of despair, and stared at him in helpless misery.

  With a great effort he managed to sound calm. “But I thank you for that generous offer. I think I shall never receive so priceless a gift. In return, I can only beg that … you give your pure heart to—one of your own.” His voice was very low and strained now, but he stumbled on. “To some good fellow like—like Thad Briley, or—” The very thought made him cringe, and he rushed on before his courage failed him. “You were made to be happy, little Rosa. Do not send me away saddened because I have brought you sorrow. Please, promise you will—”

  She smiled into his pale face and said rather threadily, “I—dinna ken, Robbie.”

  He gave a gasp. His face twisted in anguish and the glitter of painful tears came into his eyes.

  Rosamond, her own eyes blurred, said, “I have never given my heart before, my brave Scots gentleman. I shall not do so again. I will wait! And you are too much of an honourable man to make me wait in vain. You are, you see, quite hopelessly trapped, my—my very dear.”

  For a moment he stared at her, then he ducked his head, muttered something in the Gaelic, and, devastated, drew a trembling hand over his eyes.

  “If we—” Rosamond went on.

  He lifted a hand authoritatively and tilted his head, listening, then muttered hoarsely, “The others are coming.”

  At once she put off her cloak. Avoiding her eyes, Victor took it with unsteady hands and laid it over the chair.

  The white, drawn face, the nerve that twitched beside his mouth only made her love him the more. She thought fondly, ‘He tried so hard to be brave and honourable, but he loves me and wants me for his wife. If he gave his word, I cannot fight that. But there will be a way. Perhaps not now, but somehow, someday, there must be a way for us.’

  The door opened and Charles ushered Deborah inside. They paused, both glancing searchingly at the silent pair who smiled at them with gallant but pathetic brightness.

  “Well,” said Charles with forced cheer. “We’d best get to work, eh?”

  “What about poor—I mean, what about Mr. Fairleigh?” asked Rosamond. “He has been tied up for hours. Surely—”

  “I looked in on him,” said Charles. “Slipped out after you ladies left the dining room, and gave him some water—and a hunk of bread and cheese.”

  “He must be horribly cramped,” said Deborah without much sympathy.

  “And extreme vocal,” said Charles. “You never heard such outraged indignation, as though we were fiends, rather than that he is beneath contempt.”

  “It’d not surprise me,” sneered Victor, having to an extent recovered his equanimity, “had you gone so far as to loosen his bonds and let him trot about a bit!”

  “Necessary.” Charles sent a sidelong glance at the girls, his face rather red. “But I had his word first, you may be sure, and kept my pistol handy.”

  Victor gave a snort of disgust. “His word, is it! Much faith I’d pin on that! The fellow is a threat to us all. You’d have done better to put a period to him!”

  “I involved myself in this business to try and save lives,” replied Charles sharply. “I’ve no wish to take one—even that of such a rogue as Roland Otton!”

  “Even if ’tis a matter of his life or ours?” jeered Victor. “Is not just you and me you risk!”

  Charles flinched. “True. I’ll send him off with Treve. He’ll know what to do with the fellow. Enough of this! ’Tis past one o’clock already—we’ve only a few hours before you must leave us. Let’s to it!”

  Victor gave him a fulminating glare but no further argument and they all bent their concentration upon the cypher.

  And it began again, the frustrating battle against the innocuous verses that seemed to mock them as the minutes and the hours slipped away and they were defeated time and time again. Hating the cypher that had brought them together, yet now claimed these last precious hours she yearned to spend alone with her love, Rosamond fought in vain to keep her mind on the problem. She glanced obliquely at Victor. His eyes were red-rimmed with weariness but his frowning gaze was fixed with complete absorption on the verses, and she knew that at this moment she occupied no part of his mind.

  Deborah gave a moan of exasperation as her latest theory was exploded. “No, but ’tis hopeless!” she exclaimed. “Truly, I think the numbers have no meaning whatsoever. It was likely a simple case of forgetfulness that the fourth number is different!”

  Charles sighed wearily. “Perhaps. But what else have we?”

  “Well, not this course!” cried Victor, driving an impatient hand through his already dishevelled hair. “All this time wasted, and we go nowhere! We cannot break this stupid thing, Charles! Better that I go up there and move the treasure to a place of my own choosing, at least until some clever mind can solve this riddle for us!”

  “But that would mean moving it twice—no?” cried Rosamond, alarmed. “And I should think that to even move it once would be so dangerous!”

  “A very desperate business.” Charles pulled the timepiece from his waistcoat pocket and frowned at the remorseless hands. “As desperate as for you to linger here, Rob. Twenty minutes past three! You must leave before dawn, old fellow, for I’d give little for your chances after today!”

  Victor muttered irritably, “Oh, never fret so. Holt may not have discovered aught. You know how poor is the army record-keeping. At all events, Treve will warn me in plenty of time.” He glanced at their worried faces and at once his winning grin flashed. “Your pardon! Never heed my ill-natured grumbling. Come—let’s try again. Now, if we abandon the notion that the numbers have any bearing on the solution, as Deborah says, we—”

  “But—surely they must,” argued Rosamond. “You cannot think that a message so vital, so deadly would be sent out with a careless mistake? They likely read and re-read it hundreds of times. And if this Scottish lady is so shrewd as you say—”

  “Oh, she’s a canny grande dame, I can vouch for that,” put in Victor, with a loving smile at her tired face. “I’d not be alive today, save for her quick wit!”

  “Then,” went on Rosamond, blushing happily before the caress in his eyes, “’tis all the more certain that the lady who conceived such a puzzle would not make a heedless slip. Only see how firmly she has writ the Roman one, and two, and three. Then—”

  Victor’s hand lifted arrestingly. “Jove!” he half-whispered. “Now there’s a possibility we’ve not explored!”

  “What?” said Charles, leaning forward expectantly. “I don’t follow you.”

  “Nor I,” agreed Deborah.

  “What did I say?” cried Rosamond, blinking at Victor in bewilderment as he again snatched up the quill pen.

  “One, and two, and three…” he answered, his voice sharp with excitement. “Suppose, instead of being just the third of something, what is meant by the Roman numbers is a sequence rather!”

>   “Do you mean, for instance, the first line of the first verse, but the second line of the next, and the third of the next?” asked Rosamond.

  “Yes—or something of that nature.”

  “Jupiter!” cried Charles exuberantly. “Is worth a try! Have at it, Rob!”

  “Very well. But I think that if we take the first line of one verse, the second line of the next, and so on, it cannot apply, for there are four verses.”

  “Then perhaps when we get to the fourth verse, we start over again at one,” interjected Deborah. “Oh, do try, Mr. MacTavish!”

  He wrote rapidly, held up the result and gave a derisive snort. “‘Cattle sleep at night, daringly the eagle flies, riding off they were not so, all is quiet in the city!’ Be dashed if even Pitt would write such balderdash!”

  “And were you to take the first letters of the words in those four lines,” put in Charles, frowningly intent, “you’d arrive at, Csandtefrotwns—and so on, which is no better. So ’tis not the first, second, and third lines. Try the first word, next the second, and then the third of each succeeding line and see what happens.”

  Again silence fell, save for the busy squeak of Victor’s pen. It soon ceased. “Another journey into futility,” he sighed. “Cattle—of—owls—cannot—of—chill! The first letters of those words spelling a delicious—Coococ—which may have some meaning somewhere in the languages of the world, but does nothing to help us!” He crumpled the page and tossed it away. “What next, Charles?”

  Charles took the pen. “One last hope, I’m afraid. We’ll try the first letter of the first word, second of the next, third of the next, and back to the first of the next, throughout. Or has anyone a better suggestion?” Nobody offering a sudden inspiration, he began to write, but was defeated on the first line, for the third word had only two letters, not the requisite three. With a muttered exclamation he threw down the pen.

  “Damn!” Victor sagged, drawing a hand across his eyes. “My apologies, ladies. But I fear we’re at a stand again. Unless…” He frowned.

  There was an eager chorus of “What? What?”

  Victor said, “The pen! Where the deuce…?”

  Charles retrieved it from the settle and passed it to him.

  Victor said, “Read off the first letter of the first line, the second letter of the next line, the third letter of the next, and so on, Rosa.”

  She read hopefully, “C-a-n” and stopped as a collective gasp sounded. “Oh! Oh, Robbie—Charles—could it be?”

  “The first word, at all events,” said her brother with a grin.

  Victor urged, “Go on, lo____er, ma’am.”

  “C-r-i-z. Oh dear, oh dear!” she wailed, her shoulders sagging with disappointment. “That is not a word, so we have failed yet again!”

  Victor stroked his chin with the pen and looked thoughtfully at Charles. Returning that quizzical stare wonderingly, Charles started and, suddenly very pale, said, “Good heavens! Here, give it me, Rosa!”

  She thrust the parchment at him and they all watched breathlessly as he whispered out the letters down through the ten lines of the first stanza. “By—Jupiter!” he gasped.

  “Cancrizans…!” breathed Victor. “The crab—eh, my lad?”

  Charles nodded. “We’ve—we’ve done it!” he exclaimed, dazedly incredulous.

  Deborah gave a squeal and sprang up.

  Rosamond fairly flew into Victor’s ready arms.

  With a shout of triumph he whirled her around, beaming down into her glowing face.

  “Oh! Have we really?” she cried. “Is it broken, Rob? Is it?”

  “Thanks to you, Miss Albritton,” he said formally, restoring her to her feet. With no formality at all, he gave her a smacking kiss. “Bravo, my bonny lass! Bravo!”

  “But—I did nothing,” she protested, clinging to him. “You were the one, my dear!”

  “I’d never have thought of it, had you not said that about the Roman one and two, and three.” He turned to Charles and hugged him and, exuberant, they pounded each other. The two girls embraced ecstatically and even Lightning, as if sensing that something of major import had occurred, gathered himself together and padded over to join the celebration with tail flaunting loftily.

  Rosamond snatched up the cat and gave him a kiss, then dropped him on top of a small hill of books. Their joy satisfied, the triumphant little group gathered around the table once more.

  “Now for the rest,” said Victor, bending over the table eagerly. He checked, and with a flourish presented the pen to Rosamond. “Your turn, m’dear, since you are the genius amongst us.”

  Elated, she spelled out: “U-a-w-s-o-u.” Her lips drooped and she looked up at Victor tragically. “Oh … Rob!”

  There was a crushed silence. Then Charles gave an excited shout, “Yes, but you began at the beginning again, Rosa! With the first letter of the next verse, I mean. And Cancrizans ended with a first letter! So you’re one letter off!”

  Too tired to think, she blinked at him uncomprehendingly.

  Victor said gently, “What he means is that you should start the next verse at the second letter of the first line. As if there had been no break.”

  “Oh! I see! How dense I am.” Hope rekindling, she wrote, “P - r - i - o - r -”—her voice squeaked—“- y! Priory! Oh, is it not marvellous! We have it! We really do!”

  “Cancrizans Priory,” said Charles happily. “Jove! Never heard of it, did you, Rob?”

  “Never did. I hope they’ll tell us where it is.”

  “You next, dearest,” said Rosamond, beaming at her brother.

  Typically, he deferred the honour to his beloved, and Deborah’s word was culled. “D - o - r - s - e - t.”

  The two men looked at each other in dismay. “Good God!” muttered Victor.

  Charles took the final verse, and they all whispered out the letters as he wrote them. “L - e - i - s - t - o - n.”

  A small cheer went up.

  Charles picked up the complete message and read, “Cancrizans Priory, Dorset. Leiston.”

  “Dorset!” Victor said ruefully, “They did not make it easy for us, did they! Why the deuce must they choose a spot so far to the south? ’Twill be the very devil to transport the treasure all that way!”

  Charles was thinking that this brave young Scot, who was so obviously and quite hopelessly in love with his sister, had small chance of succeeding in such a hazardous venture, but “I doubt they chose it lightly,” he murmured.

  Deborah asked, “Is Leiston the name of the gentleman to whom you are to deliver the treasure, Rob?”

  Gazing at Rosamond’s fading smile, he nodded. And suddenly the triumph, the gaiety vanished, and they were just four young people, loving and loved, standing in a dim, cold room, about to part—perhaps never to be all together again in this life.

  Looking from her cousin’s grief-stricken face to Victor’s fixed and empty smile, Deborah suffered such a sympathetic pang that she had to turn away quickly. She wandered across the room and affected to examine a small and beautifully ornamented box that had been half-buried under some books.

  Charles said quietly, “Well, this cypher has served its turn and must not be left lying about. You have it committed to memory, eh, Rob?”

  Victor nodded.

  Charles took up both sheets of parchment, tore them in half and in half again and deposited them in the hearth. Victor lit a taper at the candle and applied it to the fragments and they all gathered around and watched in solemn silence as the vital stanzas, which had reached here at the cost of so much terror and suffering and death, curled, smoked, blazed, browned, and crumbled into ashes.

  * * *

  The two couples walked slowly, each pair hand in hand, across the lawns. The night air was quite chill now. In the eastern sky a faint glow announced the coming of dawn, but on the ground it was as yet very dark. Grateful for that darkness, Rosamond clung tighter to Victor’s strong clasp, leaned her cheek against his sleeve, and prayed silently, �
��Oh, Lord! Protect this man I so love. Bring him safely back to me!’

  Charles, his thoughts turning from the inevitable sorrow that awaited his beloved sister, wondered if he dare ask Victor to delay another few minutes so as to give him a hand with Fairleigh. Regardless of the man’s treachery, he was a human being and must be suffering miserably in that wood-shed, although he’d been remarkably quiet, considering—

  Victor halted and whispered a terse “Listen!”

  A most unexpected sound drifted through the gardens; the tinkling strains of “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?”

  “What on earth—?” began Deborah.

  The two men were already racing back the way they had come, Rosamond following.

  Picking up her skirts and running also, Deborah gasped, “Rosa—what is it?”

  “Aunt Estelle’s music box,” explained Rosamond breathlessly. “Someone is in the pavilion!”

  Sprinting across the silent grounds, his gaze fixed on the faint light that flickered now and then from around the curtains, Victor grated, “It’s that thrice-damned Fairleigh!” Even as he ran, his hand slid into his pocket and emerged gripping the pistol. He muttered grimly, “He’ll no betray another … Scots laddie tae the block!”

  Keeping pace with him, Charles saw the faint outline of the pistol. “No—Rob,” he panted. “Give him a chance at least!”

  “Like hell!” growled Victor, and with a bound was up the steps and had flung open the door.

  The candle had already been extinguished and he encountered total darkness.

  With a yowl, Lightning darted between the newcomers and instinctively they separated. That movement saved Victor’s life. The shot was sharp and earsplitting and he felt the whisper of the ball as it passed close to him. In immediate reaction he fired at the bright flash. There came a startled exclamation and the sound of a fall. “Got the bastard!” snarled Victor.

  The two terrified girls ran up.