by Liz Johnson
“If she has no assets, she can’t repay the claimants.”
That sounded about right. Maybe it had been her plan all along. If she lived lavishly off other people’s money, she’d never have to repay all that she’d stolen. And without another mark, she had no source of income.
“I guess that’s all we can do.” Owen sounded defeated. Even after he’d won the trial and put a swindler behind bars.
But jail time wasn’t restitution. It wouldn’t give those people back their savings. It wouldn’t make their lives any easier. And if she was claiming bankruptcy, then there was no one to pay them back, no one to make things right.
No one but him.
“Have a good day,” Owen said before hanging up the phone.
Standing, Ben took a deep breath of the stale classroom air. He strolled through the rows of empty desks, stooping to pick up a crumpled piece of paper.
He wasn’t exactly responsible for cleaning up the classroom. It was only his for three classes a week, after all. Still, the sparse furniture made it easy to tell if the room had been picked up or not. He wasn’t about to leave a mess for the tenured professor who would teach the next course here.
Bending over, he snagged a pen that a student had dropped before tossing it into the cup on his desk for anyone who showed up to class without a writing utensil. If only it were as easy to clean up after the mess his mom had made.
And he would have to. It wasn’t even a question.
As he slid back into his desk chair and straightened the pile of essays that had been turned in, he gave another hard look at the list in his notebook. There were a lot of names there and few dollars in his checking account. He needed another job. Maybe two.
two
A scuffle down the hallway made her gasp, and Millie flung herself against the bookcase behind the door. Holding her breath, she pressed her eye to the crack above a hinge, searching the corridor beyond for the source of the commotion and praying that the pounding of her heart was only audible to her own ears.
If she was caught, her grand plan—her only plan—would be ruined. It had taken her three weeks to cook up the scheme, land a job at the Chateau, and begin searching for her great-grandmother’s diary. And as long as she was here, there was hope. At least an inkling that she could find a treasure that would save Grandma Joy.
Whether the treasure was marked on the map in the journal with a big red X or Ruth’s words revealed the identity of Grandma Joy’s father, the Chateau was her only hope. She couldn’t afford to be found out of place on her third night at work, or she’d certainly be fired.
Peeking into the hallway, she could only see the pale yellow lines of the wallpaper through the opening.
Until a small child pressed his chubby face into the crack. “What are you doing in there?”
Her pulse galloped as she blinked at the little intruder. She tried to find her breath and her words. “Shh.” Adjusting her dress to lower herself to his level, she pressed her finger to her lips. “I’m playing a game. We have to be silent.”
“Can I play?” He clearly didn’t understand the definition of silent, his voice bouncing down the generous corridor and probably down the spiral stone staircase at the end of it.
“Your mom and dad will miss you. You should go find them.”
He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, and in the flickering light from the antique sconces, she could make out a trickle of green from the corner of his lips to his chin. Apparently he’d indulged in some mint ice cream at the gift shop by the front gate. And now his sticky fingers were pressed against a wooden door older than his great-great-grandparents.
“No. I don’t want to. This house is boring.”
Boring? For a five-year-old, maybe. For all of the other tourists who paid the entrance fee, Chateau Dawkins was an entry to the past. A window into what had once been. And it held more than enough secrets to keep her interested. But arguing the point wasn’t going to get her little visitor to leave her alone. And letting him stay would only alert others to her location.
She patted her hips as though the sleek silk gown would magically grow pockets and a stash of candy in them. But she had nothing to distract him. Nothing she could even use to bribe him.
And all the motion did was remind her how strange the dress felt, even on her third shift. Her simple cotton wardrobe didn’t include anything half as luxurious as the knee-length evening gown with its feather embellishments at the shoulder. It was a few decades out of style, but exactly what her Great-Grandma Ruth might have worn when she visited this estate.
But if she wasn’t careful, Millie might never find out anything more about Ruth.
Her gaze darted around the room on this side of the door. Cloth-covered books in faded blues and greens and burgundies lined every inch of the deep cherry shelves. Like china in a cabinet, many of them were hemmed in by locked doors, the windows replaced with chicken wire so trapped humidity wouldn’t ruin the precious tomes. A turn-of-the-century sofa took up the majority of the center of the room. The matching gray wingback chair in front of the empty fireplace looked perfect for curling up with one of the thousands of stories on these shelves. On any other night, in any other situation, she might have done just that. But none of this would distract her young visitor.
The red velvet rope across the doorway hadn’t stopped her from entering. And it wasn’t likely to keep out someone who could so easily go under the barrier.
The little guy made a move to duck under it, his eyes bright with mischief, and she lunged around the door, blocking his entry before slinking into the shadows on the opposite side.
“You have to go back to your family. Please.”
Perfect. Now she was begging a five-year-old. She might not have had a lot of experience with kids, but even she knew that showing her desperation was bound to end poorly.
“But I don’t want to. I want to play the game.”
The game? Right. The one where they were silent.
Except it would be anything but when the kid’s parents noticed he was missing. Every flickering light in the house would be turned on, every employee—from security all the way to reenactors like her—would be sent out to find him.
Maybe she could convince him to go back with a different tactic. “Where did you last see your parents?”
He waved a finger past the room that had once served as Howard Dawkins’s study and toward the stairwell at the end of the hall. “Over there.”
“What did the room look like?”
His eyebrows, so fair that they nearly disappeared into his pale skin, rose halfway up his forehead. “There was a big table.”
“The dining room?” Oh dear. That was on the far side of the house. How had he wandered so far?
He shook his head. “It was for playing a game.”
She let out a quick breath and offered a soft smile. “The billiard room?”
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
Well, as far as confirmations went, “maybe” was pretty weak. But it would have to suffice. The game room was at the foot of the stairs, and she couldn’t think of another room in the house with a big table.
Glancing behind her once more at the rows of unsearched books, she sighed. They would have to wait for another night.
She unlatched the velvet rope from its gold post, slipped past him, and held out her hand. “Let’s go for a walk.”
“Is this part of the game?”
“Um, yes.”
With a nod and a skip, he led the way down the corridor, the sound of his little feet echoing off the arched ceilings. At the top of the stairs, he turned back to her. “What do we do next?”
Sure, he’d ask her about the rules of a game she’d only made up to distract him.
“Well . . .”
“Jamie! Jamie, where are you? Come here now.”
Saved by the call of a frantic mom. Millie heaved a sigh of relief, and Jamie must have recognized a tone that meant business. Grabbing ont
o the relatively recently installed handrail, he disappeared down the spiral staircase. Within moments his mother’s audible relief reached the upper hallway.
“I was so worried about you. Where did you go?”
“I was playing a game with the lady.”
“What lady?”
There was a long pause, and Millie’s heart jumped to her throat. This was it. The moment they rushed up the stairs and she was discovered at the very last place she should be—in the room she most needed to search.
“That lady with all the books.”
“Don’t be silly. There’s no one up there. Now, come along.”
“But there is, Mama. There’s a woman in red.”
Jamie’s mother must have dragged him back to join the rest of the tour group, his voice disappearing but remaining adamant.
Millie smoothed down the front of her red evening gown, and even through her white gloves the silk was cool beneath her suddenly trembling fingers. Too close. This was all too close.
And it might all be for nothing.
There was no telling how much of Grandma Joy’s story had been true. Probably less than was false. Still, she had seemed so certain. There had been something about the fragile old woman’s eyes that gleamed with excitement and hope. “It’s in the room with the books. Find it. It’s in there.”
“Find it,” Millie muttered to herself as she slipped across the hallway and let herself back into the library. “No problem. Find a book in a library.” It was like finding a particular piece of hay in a haystack. Every single binding could be the journal she hunted for.
But after two tries, she wasn’t sure any of them really were.
Running a finger down the blue spine of a classic by Jules Verne, she sighed. The three cases to her left had all been history and architecture. Then there were several rows of poetry. Where the dust was too thick to read the gilded titles, she brushed it away, whispering every name to herself, lest she skip the only book she really wanted to find.
“Leaves of Grass. Poems by Emily Dickinson. The Road Not Taken and Other Poems.”
No. No. No. Not what she needed.
The clock on the mantel above the fireplace chimed a tinny, hollow sound, its bells long since coated with the same film that covered every other surface of the room. But it couldn’t be ignored. Nine o’clock. The last tour would be wrapping up in fifteen minutes. If she wasn’t in her place in the theater room in ten, she’d be missed. And then she’d be fired.
But she was so close. There was only one more bookcase. She hurried over to it, her finger almost but not quite touching every cover as she moved from poetry to prose.
“Poe. Hawthorne. Melville. Alcott.”
Whoever had organized this library was a fan of neither Mr. Dewey nor the English alphabet. But she couldn’t very well argue with them, as they’d likely been gone for as long as her Great-Grandma Ruth. Longer than Millie had been alive.
A shiver raced down her spine at the very thought. Ruth had been in this room, maybe perused these same tomes searching for a summer read to indulge in on the beach or on the deck of the estate’s swimming pool.
Ruth had been here. At least according to Grandma Joy. Though nearly ninety years apart, great-grandmother and great-granddaughter had found their way to the same place.
If only Millie could find Ruth’s journal and the map Grandma Joy had promised would be in it.
The ever-present ticking of the clock reminded her that she had to hurry. If she wanted another chance at searching this room, she’d have to stay on the payroll.
She sighed, her shoulders slumping as she rested her hand on the final volume in the third row from the bottom. Tucked between the wooden column built into the wall and Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence was a slender volume. Its dark brown cover wasn’t the same quality leather as its compatriots, but that wasn’t the most interesting thing about it. It didn’t have either a title or an author printed on it.
Holding her breath, she gave it a gentle tug. The book and a tumble of cobwebs pulled loose. Heart thudding harder than it had when Jamie’s mother had come after him, she gingerly opened the front cover.
In perfect script someone had written Ruthie Holiday—1929.
“Oh.” It was more breath than actual word, but the moment seemed to require something to recognize its importance.
Then, because she did the same with every book she’d ever read, she turned it over and opened to the last page to read the last line.
Let it be there. Please, let it be right there.
“Come on, come on,” she whispered.
“Come on out of there.”
The deep voice made her drop the journal.
Ben stared hard at the woman in the shadows on the far side of the room. Partly because she’d pulled him from a warm cup of coffee in the security office. And partly because he couldn’t believe that little Jamie Grammer had been right.
There really was a woman in red in the room with all the books. But she didn’t look anything like the other visitors finishing up the final tour of the night.
He let his gaze sweep over her costume. The shimmering red fabric of her dress skimmed her thin frame and swished as she turned toward him. With wide eyes she stared back, the angle of her chin both certain and stubborn.
He couldn’t make out her coloring under the too-yellow lights of the library, but her fair hair was held in place by a red headband that sparkled with every hitch of her breath. All of the actresses on the property had costumes covered with too many ornaments, and sometimes it seemed the outfits from the twenties wore the women.
Not the case with this one. Her firm shoulders and staunch posture could have easily placed her in the Chateau’s heyday. But she wasn’t an apparition. She was an actress. And she had broken at least half the rules in the relatively short employee handbook.
“Come on out,” he said again.
She froze, her gloved hands fixed behind her.
“What’s your name?”
She still didn’t respond, but neither did she drop her gaze.
The clock on the wall to his right chimed the quarter hour, and they both turned toward it. Her shoulders slumped. No doubt she’d missed her last post of the night. She would have lost her job even if he hadn’t found her beyond the red velvet rope. “Where are you supposed to be?”
“The theater.”
He nodded. “Are you ready to go?”
As she stepped into the beam of light from the hallway, she shook her head. The feather tucked into the band around her head dipped and brushed her cheek, only emphasizing her impossibly smooth skin.
He had no business noticing that. He had a job to do, and two weeks into his new job at the Chateau, he didn’t intend to lose it for a pretty face. After all, there were twenty-three other faces counting on him. Sure, he hadn’t seen them. That didn’t mean he didn’t owe them.
Squaring his shoulders, he cleared his throat and pulled himself up to his full height. “Let’s go, theater girl.”
“It’s Millie—Camilla, actually. Please. Plea—”
“You know the rules.” His tone carried a hint of bitterness, and he tried to dial it back. “We’ll both be here late enough filling out paperwork.”
“But I . . .” Her voice trailed off as her eyebrows bunched above her nose. “You don’t have to turn me in.”
If he’d expected her to beg for a reprieve, he was disappointed. While distress was scripted across her features, her voice never wavered.
“I was looking for something. It belonged to my family.”
“Ha!” He couldn’t help but bark out the laugh. “Are you a Dawkins?”
Her pale features turned even more wan in the dim light, and she opened her mouth, only to close it again without a peep.
“I’ll take that as a no.”
Still she made no motion to step out of history and into the present. Into the hallway with him. So he unclipped the rope from its gold stand.
“Let’s go, Camilla.”
“It’s Millie.” The knot in her jaw suddenly relaxed, and she pressed her shoulders back. When she spoke again, her voice was stronger. Certain. “My name is Millie Sullivan, and my great-grandmother was a guest here. She left behind a journal. It’s—it has some family history. I need it.”
As she spoke, he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the red line of her lips—the same shocking shade as her dress. There was a firmness to their set, a quiet line at each side that seemed to swear to the truth of her words.
Oh, if they were true. How incredible it would be to find family history in this great castle looming along the Georgia shore.
And how very unlikely.
He had an early class in the morning and no time for fairy tales. “Come on.” He grabbed her arm right above her elbow at the top of her white evening glove. “Let’s get going.”
“Wait! Wait!” She tugged on her elbow, trying to free it from his grip, but he refused to let go. Whatever other wild stories she might concoct, he wasn’t interested. At more than fifteen bucks an hour, this was the best part-time job he’d been able to find on short notice. That it happened to be at the island’s most famous historical locale was just a perk.
Fear and hope flashed in her blue eyes, promising that whatever she was about to claim would almost certainly land him minus one job. And he didn’t have any to spare.
“I don’t think so. Let’s go.”
Beneath his fingers, her muscles flexed. “There’s a lost treasure.”
His eyebrows pulled together, his forehead wrinkling.
“In my great-grandmother’s journal.” She took a ragged breath and struggled again, but he shook his head hard. Best to put a stop to this and get her to the office, where her manager could take care of the situation.
But she was still going, as though more words would somehow convince him. “It’s on the property. Here. At the estate. Don’t you see?”
“I understand what you’re saying.” He let his gaze narrow in on her front teeth, which bit into her full lower lip, picking up a tint of the red there. “Doesn’t mean I think it’s true.”
