The Games the Earl Plays

by Eleanor Meyers

  As the fifteen minutes ticked by on the clock on the shelf, Caroline fussed with the basin and the bag, but she made no move to leave. Rather than watching her flutter, Brandt reached out and hooked an arm around her slender waist, dragging her back to sit on his lap.

  She relaxed against him with a sigh, looping her arm around his shoulders and resting her cheek against his head.

  "You know, we really shouldn't do this anymore," she said softly. "The rules only bend so far in the West Country. We are not savages to break them entirely."

  Still, she didn't get up, and after a few moments, Brandt closed his eyes. Despite the fight, the rain, and the admittedly terrible day, he wasn't sure he had ever felt as good as he did right now, close to Caroline, breathing in her scent and feeling her arm around him.

  * * *

  9

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  .

  .

  .

  * * *

  * * *

  .

  The abbey bell-tower stood out in sharp relief against the nearly white sky. When Caroline looked up at it, she felt a twitch of superstitious dread go through her. Something foreboding tainted the place, for all that she had been there several times before.

  It was different when I was here with Brandt. She pulled her wrap a little closer around her.

  Even though she had come out to the abbey precisely to get away from him and to have some time to think about everything that had happened, she couldn't stop from being a little wistful about him.

  Was it always this lonely doing all my exploration and hunting on my own? I don't remember it being so.

  She shoved the thought out of her mind. If she couldn't find the treasure within the month, she and Aunt Hawthorne were going to lose their home. She knew very well that she would survive, even if she was forced to live with her brother. Aunt Hawthorne...

  Caroline couldn't picture her aunt living anywhere but at Shawly Grange. The idea of uprooting her to a place where she did not know every stick of furniture, every creak of every door, seemed painfully harsh to Caroline, and she squared her shoulders. It wasn't going to happen if she could help it, and if she was going to do what she came to do, she was going to get started.

  The portal to the bell-tower was mostly intact, and when she walked in, she was relieved to see that the interior had at least some light from the open portion above. A steep and narrow staircase spiraled around the walls of the tower all the way to the top. She guessed that ages ago, there had been a wooden banister around the edge to prevent falls, but of course, that had rotted away.

  All right, come on, Caroline.

  Despite the cold, she laid her wrap aside and tucked her skirts up into her the narrow cloth belt around her waist. The stairs were steep, slick with moss and crumbling in more than one place, so she moved carefully.

  She was only halfway up when she heard the thudding of hoofbeats. Caroline froze, her mind flashing to the poachers who were still at large, but then she realized men who were poor enough to resort to poaching would likely not be riding horses.

  Oh, no, I almost might rather have the poachers, she thought in dismay, and then, of course, Brandt stormed into the tower.

  “I knew it!” he shouted up at her. “I knew I would find you here!”

  “Brandt, don't shout at me! I have every right to go where I like!”

  “Not up bell-towers that a stiff wind could collapse! Not into woods where we were literally assaulted by poachers yesterday! Get the hell down here!”

  Caroline looked down at him in indignation. Why in the world had she wished he was along anyway?

  “You haven't any right to tell me what to do! If you'll remember, you were the one who only gave me a month to save my house from you. I have a certain vested interest in finding the Massey treasure quickly, you know!”

  “I know that if you don't get down from there, I will climb up there and drag you down myself, and believe me, you won't like what happens if I have to do that, Caroline, because I will turn you over my knee and spank you like a spoiled child!”

  Caroline nearly squawked with outrage.

  “You wouldn't dare!”

  “To make sure you don't break your fool neck? I might dare a great deal.”

  Caroline had no doubt that he meant it, but after a moment of thought, she shrugged.

  “Well, as long as you do after I have done what I needed to do.”

  All the outrage drained out of Brandt, leaving him with an odd desperation on his face.

  “Caroline. Come down. If you come down, I'll give you an extra week to your deadline. How's that?”

  Caroline looked at him in surprise.

  “You mean it?”

  “If it will get you to come down to solid ground, yes.”

  “And you promise? On your honor as a gentleman?”

  “Yes!”

  A week. She could get a fair amount done in a week. It might be the saving of Shawly Grange.

  “All right, I'm coming down.”

  She made her descent slowly, but it wasn't only that she wanted to be careful with the decrepit stairs. It was also that she knew that Brandt was waiting for her at the bottom. As soon as she was on the last few stairs, he swept her off her feet and back onto level ground.

  Instead of setting her down and shouting at her, or even turning her over his knee as he had threatened to do, Brandt held her tight to his chest, so tightly that for a moment, she could barely breathe.

  “Brandt, I'm fine!”

  “When I couldn't find you this morning, and I asked your aunt where you had gone, she said something about 'that tower where a man died when I was only a little girl.' Believe me when I say that it did not fill me with confidence.”

  “You're worried about me?”

  “Am I… Dear God, yes, Caroline! Of course, I'm worried about you. We came out here just twenty-four hours ago, and we were nearly drowned and then murdered.”

  “Really, Brandt, you are overstating things. I checked the almanac and it promises to be bone dry, and after what happened here, those two poachers must be miles away by now. There was nothing to worry about!”

  “I reiterate: your aunt called this the tower where a man had died.”

  “That was many years ago. As you can see, I am fine.”

  Brandt sighed, finally letting go of her. The look of naked worry on his face shocked her. She had roamed Shawly Grange for years, and she didn't think anyone had ever been that worried about her comings and goings.

  “Brandt, really. There's no need to be after me as if I were a child.”

  “I am not certain of that. I came here to take possession of my winnings, not to chase after a possibly mythical treasure and to possibly be murdered by poachers. I had no idea the West Country was so dangerous.”

  He sighed, meeting her eyes again.

  “You've already won an extra week and sworn me to it on my honor as a gentleman. Will you agree not to go up into the tower again until I've had a man out to look at it and to make sure that it is at least somewhat safe?”

  Caroline glanced up at the tower. It really did not inspire a great deal of confidence.

  “All right. I will stay out of there until you've verified it as safe.”

  “On your honor as a lady and a treasure-hunter?”

  She grinned.

  “On my honor as a lady and a treasure-hunter, Brandt.”

  “Good. Now come on. Your aunt is expecting us back for lunch, so long as you had not broken your head open, and I'm sure you can find some kind of investigation in the search for treasure to endanger our lives until then.”

  * * *

  10

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  .

  .

  .

  * * *

  * * *

  .

  After the events of the previous days, Caroline knew that she should have slept through the night. She had ended up staying up late the ni
ght before, Aunt Hawthorne and Brandt proving to be far more convivial dining partners than anyone had anticipated. At least, Aunt Hawthorne could keep Brandt amused for ages with stories about Caroline's misadventures, and even accounting for the fact that she had known Caroline her entire life, Caroline had to admit there had been a great deal of them. They hadn't gotten to bed until well past midnight, but now, a good hour before dawn, Caroline realized she couldn't sleep.

  Rather than wake her poor maid to help her dress, Caroline threw her embroidered cotton robe, a gift from her father, around her shoulders and padded down to the library. After all the hubbub of the last few days, she wasn't altogether sure she was ready for more adventures, at least not without a decent breakfast under her ribs.

  Instead, she pulled out another set of journals, starting her reading all over again. Her father had been over them as well, but he never stopped her from doing so.

  "You never know when one day, you just have all the right pieces and the truth jumps out at you," he told her, and she imagined the truth as some gold and shining beast, leaping from the old pages.

  "I miss you, Papa," she murmured, and then for some reason, "I wonder what you would have thought of Brandt."

  She shook the strange thought off and resumed her search. The history was dry, but there was something intensely soothing and fascinating about reading about Shawly Grange. It had been her home for as long as she could remember, but it had also housed generations of her ancestors. As she read, she made notes in her own journals, adding another layer to the history of the property.

  "What in the world are you doing up so early?"

  She jumped, managed to keep herself from yelling, and looked up to find Brandt leaning against the doorjamb. Unlike her, he was fully-dressed, and she took a moment to admire how handsome he looked in well-fitted breeches, shirt, and jacket.

  "I might ask you the same thing. I am almost certain that we are the only ones up so far."

  He shrugged.

  "I'm used to keeping all sorts of strange hours at dawn. Mostly when I see this time of day, I've not been asleep yet. Don't tell me you are already trying to find some new way to kill us?"

  Caroline glared at him.

  “I'll have you know that this is usually a very safe thing that I do. I've never had to deal with poachers in the course of my work before you showed up.”

  “Oh, yes, nearly as safe as getting stuck up chimneys.”

  She eyed him warily.

  “Who told you that? I thought that Aunt Hawthorne had missed that in her recital of my misdeeds.”

  “My valet. He has a great deal to say about you, and I cannot seem to get in a word edgewise because he's stone-deaf. I've been meaning to ask you; do you have any servants here who are not on death's door?”

  “Philbert is quite competent! He told Mrs. Markam that he was very much up to serving you and seeing to your things.”

  “He does quite well, but the question stands.”

  Caroline bit her lip. She couldn't find it in her heart to tell him that most of the servants who were still at Shawly Grange had no families to return to. By all rights, they should have been turned off, as she was sure Brandt would do if he was allowed to take possession.

  “I suppose I prefer familiar faces,” she said with a shrug. “But to answer your first question, no, nothing death-defying today. I'm catching up on some of the journals that I have not reviewed in a while. I was hoping for some inspiration that could direct my search.”

  When she saw Brandt give the moldering pile of journals a dubious look, she smiled at him.

  “You are welcome to embroider with Aunt Hawthorne if you don't want to help me, or perhaps you could while your time away in the south parlor. I believe that was always where our gentlemen guests ended up when they were inclined to visit.”

  “Embroider with your aunt or sit alone in a parlor to watch the rain fall. You really do know how to show people a good time at Shawly Grange.”

  “When you arrive as a guest and not a colonizer, I will be more entertaining.”

  Instead of taking offense at her statement, Brandt took a few of the notebooks from the stack and went to sit with them on the chaise. Rather than going straight back to her own work, she watched him for a moment. He was making himself shockingly at home at Shawly Grange. Of course, there was the threat he would turn her and Aunt Hawthorne out, but something deep inside Caroline rather liked the look of Brandt relaxing on the chaise, an old notebook in his lap.

  He is rather handsome. Caroline gave herself a rather hard mental shake. She needed to concentrate. If she were going to save her home, she could not allow herself to be distracted from her course.

  They worked silently for some span of time. Absently, Caroline could hear the clock chime in the main hall, and the gentle rustle of servants going about their day. She read on, making notes in her own journal about possibilities and further things to cross-reference, but it was all beginning to take on a feeling of hopelessness. She was one more drop in the bucket of Masseys who had searched for the treasure their entire life, and it seemed as if the odds against their finding it were ever dwindling.

  “Do you have the third volume of Hester Massey's journal over there?”

  Caroline jumped. For a moment, time reversed itself, and she was thirteen again, searching the crabbed handwriting of her ancestors for clues as her father sat at the desk. Then it righted itself, and she shook it away, glancing through her pile.

  “No, all I've got over here are the journals for Chester Massey and William Edgar Massey.”

  Brandt frowned. She almost said that for a man who didn't really believe that there was a treasure, he seemed awfully invested.

  “Is there a place I can check to see? It seems strange that her journal just ends here in the middle.”

  “Ends? Oh, Hester Massey? I know who you're thinking of now. It took me a moment. No, her writing does end there, unfortunately.”

  “Unfortunately?”

  “Yes. Aunt Hawthorne actually remembers something of it from when she was very young. Hester Massey, well. She fell in with a bad man, or so goes the story I was told. He seduced her, ruined her, and ran off, and she killed herself over it.”

  Brandt flinched.

  “Poor girl. She seems sweet from what I've read here. Obsessive about the treasure, like it seems all your family are, but sweet. I wonder if the man who ruined her is the J who is discussed in her journal. He seems to have been helping her hunt.”

  “My father thought it was likely her brother Justin, but at this point, there's no way to tell. I know what you mean about thinking she's sweet, though. When I read her journals, I always thought that I would have liked her a great deal.”

  “Still... I wonder if she was on to something,” Brandt said thoughtfully. “She seems very excited by the end. She's talking about the stables a great deal.”

  “The stables are still there, but they were greatly expanded upon and improved in my father's day. Whatever she is excited about is gone now, unfortunately, and if I remember correctly, my father went over the old ground with a fine-toothed comb.”

  She paused.

  “Brandt, what are you thinking?”

  “These old books, all these old journals. When I first saw them as I walked in, I thought at first glance you were going over studbooks.”

  “What are studbooks?”

  “They're records kept by stables, information on the horses of a particular farm, the bloodlines, things like that. Some of the records go back generations, and horse breeders hold the lineages to be more sacred than that of the house of Windsor. Did Shawly Grange ever breed horses?”

  Caroline was beginning to feel the same kind of prickle up her spine that she always did whenever a new lead turned up. Slowly, she rose to her feet.

  “Yes,” she said softly. “It did. Long ago. We made some of our fortune in horseflesh.”

  Brandt's dark eyes glinted, and he rose as well. She could tel
l that he felt the same tingle she did, the same anticipation that always reminded her of lightning getting ready to strike.

  “We need to those studbooks,” he said.

  Caroline was already striding for the door.

  “Mr. Sheldon, the groundskeeper, will be the first person to ask. He keeps plenty of records on the outdoor operations of Shawly Grange, and if necessary, I believe we can speak to some the older tenants as well.”

  Caroline's mind was already busy with the idea of tracking down the studbooks, and she was completely unprepared for Brandt to hook his arm through hers, dragging her to a stop. It brought her perilously close to his body, and all at once, she was reminded by how good he felt, and how she could not afford to give in to temptation.

  “Brandt... we can't do this. I... I know that there's something drawing us together, I know that... that you make me feel things...”

  A slight smile whisked over Brandt's lips, and all she could imagine was him kissing her again.

  “You need to get dressed,” he said softly. “I didn't want you to run off to talk to the groundskeeper in your night things.”

  She stared at him for a moment, and instead of being embarrassed, she felt a wave of sunny buoyancy drift over her. It didn't matter that she might lose her home; it didn't matter that she didn't know what to do about Brandt and how she felt about him. The search was on, and she laughed.

  “Thank you,” she said, stepping back. “That would have been most awful.”

  “Go get changed. I'll go talk to Mr. Sheldon, and we can talk at breakfast.”

  “Absolutely not. Ask Cook to put us together some food we can eat as we walk, and I'll meet at the back. We can walk out to Mr. Sheldon's cottage together. If you think I am letting you start this without me, you are utterly mad.”