The Games the Earl Plays

by Eleanor Meyers

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  11

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

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  Brandt didn't know why he had expected that this was going to be easy. He looked at the tall stack of books that Mr. Sheldon had found for them, easily the height of a four-year-old child and utterly filthy, and wondered whether was a way to pay someone else to read them. Caroline, of course, looked beside herself with glee.

  “Are you sure that's all there is, Mr. Sheldon? You have not missed any others?”

  “No, Lady Caroline. Those is the books that was left over from when the stable was tore down. The last groom, Mr. Carrey, told my grandfather to stick them somewhere safe, and well, nowhere's safer than the cellars at the local town hall.”

  “Of course, thank you so much, Mr. Sheldon. I am in your debt.”

  Mr. Sheldon, who looked quite old enough to be Caroline's grandfather himself, waved her off, and he stumped back toward the garden, leaving Caroline and Brandt alone with the stack of musty books.

  “Have you ever seen anything so incredible?” asked Caroline with satisfaction.

  “Yes. I have. Many times. These look terrible.”

  “But they might hold the secret to the Massey treasure! All this writing and record keeping from Masseys and household members that we've never thought to look through before! I have been through the household accounts of Sarah Massey no less than eight times, and I'm sure my father did it more than I did. This is entirely new.”

  She turned shining eyes to Brandt.

  He had been on the verge of bowing out of this phase of reading, but when he saw her eyes, he sighed.

  “Shall we get started?”

  It was the right thing to say as Caroline rewarded him with a broad grin and a nod. Now was not the time, Brandt decided, to think about why a confirmed bachelor rakehell like himself would feel the need to rustle through filthy books with a woman dressed in a stained white smock.

  He pulled the first book gingerly out of the pile and opened it carefully. There was a lot of work to be done.

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  “Oh, dear God in heaven, I now know far more about croup in horses than I ever wanted to know.”

  Brandt glanced over at Caroline with amusement. They had covered one of the tables in the library with a drop cloth and now they shared it. Two days after the books were delivered, they sat face to face, a generation's worth of horse husbandry between them.

  “Is it a very interesting topic?” he asked innocently.

  She shot him a dark glare.

  “You are reading very slowly there, Brandt. Are you sure that you have not simply hidden a magazine behind the covers?”

  “I'm merely making sure that I work carefully and with consideration,” he retorted. “You seem to prefer your efforts to be rather more slapdash.”

  “I'm getting a complete picture and making sure to take plenty of notes. If something fits, I return to it.”

  “As I said, slapdash.”

  She made a face at him, standing up and stripping off the smock with disgust. Underneath, her simple muslin dress had somehow still managed to pick up some ugly stains from the books, which she picked at with despair.

  “Giving up?” Brandt asked, and it had the effect he hoped it would. Her head shot up, and she glared at him. Pricking her diligence in the hunt seemed to be an excellent formula for perking her up. He hadn't seen it fail yet.

  “I refuse to make it that easy on you. I am only stretching before I go back to it.”

  “Tell you what,” Brandt said with an easy grin. “I'll call for some food. We can eat, we can drink, and then we can go back to it with some fresh eyes.”

  When Brandt returned after asking the impressively slow elderly maid for some bread and cheese, however, he found Caroline sitting where he had sat, her nose just a scant few inches away from the page. She was getting dust and ancient paper crumbs all over her dress, and she looked as if she did not care about it at all. Something about her posture, however, told him not to tease her about it.

  “What have you found?”

  “I saw the page you had left open. These are those lineage things you were telling me about, right, the parentage and the line?”

  “Yes, you can see the sire and the dam's name at the top, every time the mare was covered, and the horses that resulted from it.”

  Caroline's finger traced along the ancient script. Brandt could see that she was shaking a little.

  “Golden Dream, covered by Drake... three times. Produced three colts, Azure, Cobalt's Fire, and Lapis Bright.”

  “So?”

  “So....There's a bedroom on the third floor, one that my father told me was decorated with gold until the gold was removed to fund some war or other, and right next to it is what has always been called Sir Francis Drake's room.”

  “Why?”

  “Because according to family legend, Francis Drake slept here at one point or another. I have no idea if it is true or not. But that's what that room has always been called. Golden Dream, covered by Drake, with three colts between them. Have you seen any of those colts mentioned before or after?”

  “No,” Brandt realized. “No other matings for Golden Dream or Drake, either.”

  Caroline looked up at him, and for a moment, Brandt found himself dazed by the wonder in her eyes. Was that what she would look like if she were in love? If a man had pleased her? For some reason, it made Brandt's heart beat a little faster. He almost leaned in to kiss her, but she was taking a step back, her mind clicking forward a mile a minute.

  “We need measuring tapes, and of course, some hammers, perhaps some saws...”

  “Don't tell me that you are going to pry the wall open. We can at least call for Mr. Sheldon to come with the proper tools for the job.”

  She gave him an impatient look, and Brandt felt that sweet warmth that she always seemed to bring out wrap around him. Being with Caroline, especially when she was on the hunt, was like being spun around by a spring gale.

  “Brandt, you have absolutely no drama and no beauty in your soul.”

  “You know,” he said, following her, “a few weeks ago, I might have said that you were right.”

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  12

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

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  Caroline felt her heart beat in her chest like a drum. Before they called for Mr. Sheldon to come, they measured both rooms, both the inner diameter and what space it took up along the hallway wall.

  She and Brandt compared numbers, and even Brandt had to admit that the space between the Drake bedroom and the formerly gold room was more than it should have been.

  “It still might be a coincidence,” Brandt said.

  Caroline grinned at him.

  “Must you truly be such a killjoy? This might be it! This might be precisely what I and every Massey before me has been hunting for all this time!”

  “It might also be a coincidence in a studbook as well as an airshaft leading down into the depths of the house,” Brandt said dryly.

  Caroline started to tease him, but then she took a closer look at him.

  “You don't really believe that, do you?”

  There was something strange in Brandt's eyes just then, something almost sad, but he shrugged.

  “As I have said before, I am a gambling man, but at this point, I should refuse to guess what is going to happen next here.”

  “Well, if it all goes according to plan, if this turns out to be what I truly believe it is, I will have realized the dream of a dozen Masseys, and you will have a treasure the likes of which has never been seen before.”

  Before Brandt could answer, the maid announced Mr. Sheldon, who had arrived in his own sweet time but with a full complement of tools. He listened carefully and th
oughtfully to what Brandt and Caroline explained to him, and then in his slow and methodical way, he walked along the wall in question, first in the gold room and then in the Drake room.

  “Your ladyship is quite right. There's too much space between the two rooms, and if you look here, see?”

  He pointed a join between the wall in question and the ceiling.

  Caroline saw with growing excitement that there was a seam there, almost hidden by the molding.

  “This wall is newer than the rest of the room?”

  “That's right. It's a common thing to see in some houses, you understand. Rot gets into one wall, and they just build another to cover it when labor and materials are cheap. But perhaps it could be a hiding place for something, it is true.”

  “Can we get into the space, Mr. Sheldon?” asked Caroline eagerly.

  “Without bringing the wall down on us?” Brandt interjected.

  “Maybe so, maybe so.”

  As cautious as he sounded, Mr. Sheldon worked quickly, isolating a part of the paneling in the gold room that could be sawed away and pulled from the wall. As he worked, he talked, telling them in his slow and gentle way about the way Shawly Grange and other estates like it had been built.

  “You see, sometimes there'd be a fashion for grander rooms or smaller ones, and to get the right proportions, people would knock down walls or build them up again. If, as you guess, your ladyship, someone had chosen to hide something during one of those renovations, doing it inside one of these walls might have been a good way to keep something until you could return for it.”

  Finally, what felt like an eternity later, he removed a panel from the wall, freeing a great quantity of dust. He tapped it consideringly before he laid it aside.

  “You see the marks here and here, your ladyship? This has come out before. Those are the marks of saw teeth, but it wasn't mine that did it.”

  The space behind the wall was a deep and inky black. All three of them eyed it warily. Caroline was surprised by how narrow it was. The walls on both sides were thicker than they had seemed, and the space in between them would be a tight squeeze even for her. Brandt might be able to get in if he was willing to contort himself, and round Mr. Sheldon would have no chance at all.

  “Well, I am going to need a candle at the very least,” she said finally. “I would not like to venture into that space without it.”

  Brandt looked startled, but at least he did not try to stop her. However, he did hover by the opening as she inched her way into the wall.

  “How is it?” he asked.

  She sneezed.

  “Dusty! Don't fret, Brandt, you will know everything as soon as I know it.”

  To her surprise, she felt a soft squeeze on her ankle, the only part of her that was still sticking out from the hole. She was on her belly now, with the space too narrow to easily stand. The candle snuffed itself out when she moved too quickly, leaving her in the dark.

  Instead of seeing where she was going, she had to feel around instead. Praying that she didn't discover some new variety of spider or rat while she was lurking in the walls of her home, she felt around, looking for something that might be promising.

  Just when she realized she must be close to the hallway, her seeking fingers touched a smooth wooden surface that somehow felt different from the rest. As she felt the edges of the object, it turned out to be a box, one that was hasped in something cold to the touch.

  “I think I have something,” she called back over her shoulder. “I am coming out now!”

  The area was narrow enough that instead of turning around, she had to crawl backward, inching back and dragging the box with her. By the time she worked her way out of the hole in the wall, her skin was beginning to crawl from how tight the space was.

  “Look!”

  She stood, brandishing the box with a flourish.

  Mr. Sheldon and Brandt both looked impressed, and she set it down on the white drop cloth that Mr. Sheldon had thoughtfully laid down. The hasp of the lock looked frail enough that it could be twisted clean off, but then she looked it more closely.

  “Brandt, look at this lock. Is it strange to lock a box without shutting it entirely?”

  As it was, the entire box could be opened easily, and she realized it was a blessing that she hadn't spilled it on her backward journey out of the wall.

  Brandt looked at the hasp and shrugged.

  “This belongs to someone who thought it was a good idea to hide things in sealed walls. Perhaps it was just another bizarre part of the game for them. Aren't you going to open it?”

  She hesitated, but then nodded, handing the box over to Brandt.

  “It's going to be yours anyway. You should get the first look.”

  Brandt took the box from her with due gravity. She appreciated his solemnity and sat on the drop cloth with her hands clasped as he came to sit down next to her. Mr. Sheldon, uninvolved, but aware of the treasure, leaned closer, his face nothing more than mildly speculative.

  Brandt opened the box to reveal a wad of old linen cloth, and he frowned.

  “What in the world is this?”

  To Caroline's dismay, it was nothing more than an ancient handkerchief, a tarnished brass ring, and an ancient and decaying pipe.

  “I can't say I'm all that impressed with the Massey treasure,” he said.

  Caroline took it from him, staring at the items in dismay.

  “No, this can't be all there is! It was in the studbooks; someone has been here before. This must be where the Massey treasure is; it simply must be.”

  “No, there doesn't need to be anything besides this, Caroline. You have to understand how very unlikely it was that you were going to find... anything. The fact that you've found even some gentleman's effects was unlikely. Or butter. Or pornographic figures.”

  Caroline looked at him wildly.

  “Who told you about those?”

  “Everyone did. They were quite a subject of gossip at Shawly Grange for a while. But you have to admit, Caroline, this may be all there is.”

  His words would have been disheartening enough if they were spoken by Aunt Hawthorne. Coming from the man who was going to take Shawly Grange if she didn't find the treasure was simply too much.

  She slammed the box down on the table, making both Brandt and Mr. Sheldon jump.

  “I am not listening to this! I still have three weeks to find the treasure, and I'm not giving up just because you say it’s hopeless.”

  “Caroline...”

  “No. I can't talk to you right now.”

  Tucking the box underneath her arm, she stormed off. Everything was terrible, but in that moment, it felt as if the worst thing were the tears in her eyes. Brandt was not allowed to tell her when to quit, not when he had only been at this for a week!

  Somewhere underneath her rage, however, was the sneaking suspicion and fear that maybe, just maybe, he was right. There was no treasure. She and Aunt Hawthorne would have to leave Shawly Grange.

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  13

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

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  Usually after Brandt won a gamble, he felt satisfied, a quiet thrill at having beaten the odds and landed on his feet. However, despite being completely sure that he had won this particular gamble, the only thing he felt was a knot of dissatisfaction that sat squarely over his chest.

  This hadn't been a gamble, he thought with some guilt. This was a ploy by a desperate girl to hang on to her home and coming out the victor felt like eating newspaper.

  As he walked back to his rooms after a late supper with Aunt Hawthorne, who had plenty to say about her latest embroidery project and thankfully little to say about Caroline's absence, Brandt decided he could talk to Caroline the next day. In the morning, she would see reason. Perhaps instead of wasting the rest of the month on her search, her time could be better spent packing to leave
Shawly Grange and speaking with her Aunt Hawthorne about what was to come.

  Brandt felt that same pang that seemed to shake him whenever he thought about Caroline leaving the Grange. It was strange in the extreme, and he thought as he walked through the halls that he had become very used to the odd young woman in a surprisingly short amount of time.

  He winced when he thought about what he had said to her in the cabin. It was true when he said it. It was still true, and if he thought about it too long, there was a chance he might do something truly foolish about it.

  If he truly had a heart as hard as they thought it was in London, he would have made the girl his mistress. Instead, he might do something as foolish give her the Grange or even worse, ask her to marry him.

  Yes. Tomorrow, he would speak with her, and convince her to end this fruitless quest.

  He was steadfastly ignoring the feeling of emptiness that echoed through him when he walked past the door to the Sir Francis Drake room. A thump and a scrabbling sound stopped him in his tracks. He wondered for a moment if there were rats in the house, and then he realized what it was.

  Hoping he was wrong, he entered the room and saw that yes, the boards that Mr. Sheldon had tacked over the hole he'd made prior to doing a real fix had been pried away. With a growled curse, he set his candle on a nearby table and bent down to the hole.

  “Oh, dear God. Caroline. Come out of there.”

  An expectant stillness hung in the air.

  Brandt rapped sharply on wall, which prompted a sharp cry.

  “Stop that, you're shaking some of the mortar loose, I think—”