A Sparkle of Silver

by Liz Johnson

  Ben leaned across her table, the one that looked like it belonged on a front porch between two Adirondack chairs, the one she’d cleared of books and set with coffee mugs when he arrived at her apartment the night before. They’d read until the sun’s morning light broke over the horizon, taking only a short nap to see them through.

  Swiping his thumb across her cheek, he gave her a gentle smile. “You okay?”

  She shook her head, covering her face with both of her hands, her elbows leaning on the edge of the table. “I don’t know. I’m just . . . I know that she married Henry and they were happy. But what about George? What if she never got to tell him that she loved him?”

  She was a hopeless romantic, his Millie, and it made him chuckle. It also made his heart beat just a little faster.

  “I thought you wanted to be a Devereaux.”

  She dropped her hands and glared at him, her lips pursed to the side, showing off the dimple he hadn’t bothered to notice before because he’d been too busy trying not to notice her at all. Until the night before, that is. Somehow a kiss in the dark had suddenly freed him to see what he’d been missing out on.

  “I did.” She huffed, clearly not satisfied with her answer. “I do. I mean, I need to be. But . . .” Jabbing her fingers through the long hair of her ponytail, she sighed again. “But I want Ruth to get what she wanted.”

  She shoved back her metal folding chair and picked up her coffee mug. It took all of two strides to get to the other side of the kitchen, where she clunked her mug on the counter with a bit of extra force. It rang in the silence, and she flexed her neck and shoulders several times before picking up the coffeepot and pouring its contents, which were certainly room temperature by now.

  “Why did she run off and marry Henry when she was clearly in love with George? You don’t just love someone and then run off with someone else.” She spun around, a drop of coffee sloshing over the lip of her mug.

  “And you have a lot of experience with that kind of thing?”

  She shot him a hostile glare, her nostrils flaring and her eyebrows turning into thunderclouds. That just made him laugh harder. Perhaps it was a low blow given that she’d only had her first kiss several hours before. Then her second, third, and fourth. And her fifth when he arrived. And if he didn’t mess this up in the next hour, he was hoping she had her sixth before he left.

  “You can’t read fifty romance novels a year without learning a thing or two.”

  He eyed the stack of books she’d set on the floor by her chair. White tags on each spine identified them as library loaners, and he raised his eyebrows in question. “All right then. What have you learned?”

  “Well.” She swung her hand toward the pile and dipped her chin. “I’ve learned that you don’t give up on love. Ruth wouldn’t have given up on George. Unless . . .”

  He didn’t know where she was going exactly, but she seemed to need a nudge. “Uh-huh. Unless what?”

  “Unless she was expecting another man’s child?” She fell into her chair, setting her cup on the table so hard that coffee splashed across onto the metal top. She mopped it up before it could mar the diary, but the glare she gave the book indicated she wouldn’t have cared if it had been tarred and feathered.

  “We don’t know that she was.”

  “We don’t know that she wasn’t. There was the night on the beach. She alluded to a scandal, and that perhaps George would have to forgive her.”

  “There’s not enough here to convict her.”

  She took a sip of her coffee, cringed, and put it back down. “Says you.”

  “Yes, says me. And I think you should give her the benefit of the doubt.”

  “But there are too many unanswered questions. If Henry isn’t my great-grandfather, then who is? Ruth didn’t tell us. And why would she tell Grandma Joy there was a treasure map in these old diaries? There obviously isn’t. I’ve read every page, and it’s useless.” She threw up her hands and let out a short breath. “Grandma Joy is going to be homeless in seventeen days, and I’ve spent the last month on a wild goose chase for nothing.”

  Ben reached for her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. He wasn’t certain he could take away her frustration. But he could try. “Maybe it’s not for nothing. Ruth did tell us where Angelique buried her treasure.”

  She let out a little puff of air that sent her bangs flying. “I think I’d have noticed if she did.”

  “Or maybe you were too focused on Ruth falling in love with George.”

  She opened her mouth, sure to argue her case, and he held up a finger to hold her off.

  “Hear me out.” She nodded, and he caught and held her gaze for a long second. “Angelique did not have the stock certificates on her when she was arrested, right? I mean, if she had them on her person, they would have been found by the police when she was booked at the jail. And word would definitely have gotten back to Dawkins before Ruth left that last morning. So if she didn’t have the certificates, then she had to have hidden them before she was found out.”

  Millie’s pale eyebrows drew so tight that they almost appeared to be one line, but she nodded a slow concession.

  “So then why did she take a shovel with her that night?”

  “Because . . .” She bit her lips until they nearly disappeared. “I have no idea.”

  “I think she took it with her to dig up the treasure and move it.”

  Her eyes got round, and he could almost see the moment she reached the same conclusion he had.

  “When she said that George’s roses were too close.”

  He nodded.

  “He was planting new roses too close to where she’d buried it.”

  He sat back and crossed his arms. “If I were a betting man, I’d put good odds on that.”

  She flashed him a broad smile, all straight white teeth and sass. But when she lifted her cup to her lips and swallowed, the smile was gone, replaced by a frown that didn’t go away. “But that was ninety years ago. It must be long gone by now.”

  “Why would it?”

  “Well, Angelique . . .”

  “Went to Europe and died there.”

  She drummed her fingers against the table, her eyes shifting back and forth. “Her dad’s lawyers must have gotten her off the charges or at least free on bail. Just like Jane said he would. And then she fled.”

  “Probably with that gold digger that her dad didn’t want her to marry.” His mind raced for the next steps, organizing them like a term paper. Somehow it helped to say things aloud, and Millie’s agreement kept him going. “So she never had a chance to go back for it. At least as far as we know. And Ruth never went back for it, or she wouldn’t have told Joy that there was a treasure and a map.”

  “But why not? Why didn’t she go back? That doesn’t make sense.”

  Why, indeed. He flipped it over and over in his mind, trying to put together everything he knew to be true about Ruth Holiday. “Well, she didn’t forget about it.”

  Millie shook her head in agreement.

  “She might not have known exactly where it was.”

  “But as far as we know, Ruth never even looked for it,” Millie said. She chewed on her thumbnail, her eyes a window to the same mental acrobatics he was performing.

  “So what did she do? She got married to Henry, had a baby, and weathered the Great Depression.”

  They both slammed their hands down on the table at the same time, making the open diary jump.

  “Of course.” Millie got back on her feet and marched the length of the kitchen. “Just two months later the stock market crashed, and those certificates would have been next to worthless.”

  “Dawkins never came back to look for them because he was hit so hard. He knew they couldn’t save him. Whatever Georgia company he had bought stock in would have tanked too.” Ben tapped his foot in time with Millie’s stride. Bouncing his fist against his leg, he tried to make the next logical step. But there wasn’t much to go on.

  �
��So why didn’t Ruth come back for it after the Depression?” His question was meant to be rhetorical.

  Millie didn’t settle for that. “She told us why in her diary.”

  He stared at the open pages, gently flipping back a day or two. He let the words roll across his mind. They’d spent an hour reading and talking, and he was certain—never once had Ruth said she didn’t want the money. “No she didn’t.”

  Millie leaned against his back, her arm stretched out over his shoulder, and for a moment he forgot to care about the diary and the treasure. He couldn’t follow the line of her finger, not when he looked up at the underside of her chin and all the smooth skin of her neck. He remembered how sweet she tasted, like sunshine and strawberries. And he didn’t want to argue with her. He didn’t care about being right. But she didn’t know that.

  “Yes, she did. Remember?” She looked down, and their eyes locked.

  Sparks shot through him, lighting a fire that burned somewhere deep in his chest. Would it always be like this with her? Could it always be like this?

  Always. That wasn’t something he’d ever thought about before. Not when his childhood had been nomadic at best. But with Millie, it didn’t seem far-fetched. It seemed right. It was right.

  Because he had gone and fallen in love with her.

  Forget the spark. That fire inside him turned into a raging inferno. And only one thing could quench his thirst.

  Stretching his neck up, he kissed her chin. Just a peck. Plenty to get her attention.

  “Nice try, bucko. You’re trying to distract me because you know you’re wrong.” But her giggle betrayed that his kiss wasn’t unwelcome.

  He knew no such thing. He couldn’t even remember what they were disagreeing about.

  “It’s not going to work.” She ran a finger along his jaw, her eyes tracing the movement as she bit her lip.

  Oh, those lips. He could practically feel them against his own even now.

  “Ruth said it clear as day. She said that Dawkins loved his money more than he cared about people. And Claude would do the same. Why should George or Henry or anyone else be different?”

  He tore his gaze away from the pink bow of her mouth just long enough to look into her eyes and hear the truth of her words.

  “Maybe Ruth didn’t want the money,” Millie said. “And maybe she never told another soul about it.”

  “Which means it’s right where Angelique left it.”

  “Too close to George’s rosebushes, where the trees reach the beach.”

  He couldn’t not kiss her again after such a brilliant announcement. “You’re smart. You know that, Millie Sullivan?”

  She shook her head, her cheeks turning pink, that blush all too familiar and beyond pretty.

  “It’s true.” He pressed his lips to hers again, and she let out a low giggle.

  “You really think so?”

  “I know so. After all, you chose me to be your partner.”

  She rolled her eyes and pushed away from him. “I don’t recall having much choice in the matter.”

  “Well, you were smart enough to trust me.”

  She considered it for a long moment, her hands on her hips and her head tilted. “I suppose that’s true. Now let’s go find Ruth’s treasure.”

  Millie could hardly breathe. Not because of the long walk from the car to the beach, or because she was carrying a shovel that weighed more than a beluga whale. Not even because the July air was thicker than water.

  She couldn’t breathe because her heart was in her throat, beating a million times a minute.

  And that was because Ben had stopped and pointed. He’d said nothing, but a muscle in his jaw twitched. His knuckles turned white on the handle of his own shovel, and his eyebrows had risen almost to his hairline.

  Now she couldn’t look away from the row of bushes in front of them. Roses. Pink and white and blooming.

  “I’m not sure I really thought those would be here.” She choked out the words around her heart.

  Ben stabbed his blade into the soil and leaned over the flowers. Pressing his nose against the petals, he took a deep breath and sighed. “George sure knew what he was doing.”

  “Uh-huh.” But Millie didn’t stop to literally smell the roses. Her gaze landed on the rock wall to their north, the Chateau’s southern property line. “How did they get down here, off the grounds?”

  “The wall is relatively new, within the last thirty years or so. Maybe this land was sold off by Dawkins’s nephew at some point. We know for sure that the land the museum occupies ends at the wall.”

  Millie dug the toe of her tennis shoe into the soft soil. It was rich and black, protected from the sun by the canopy of trees above. A small creek trickled along ten yards away, its bubbling a soundtrack of tranquility. “So who owns it now?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see any ‘No Trespassing’ signs on our way. Did you?”

  She shook her head.

  “But one thing’s for sure. If we find a treasure on this land, whoever owns it won’t stay silent for long.”

  With a chuckle, she stepped toward the end of the row of roses. “I’m pretty sure you’re right about that. So, where do you want to start?”

  Ben surveyed the ground around them, a clearing not more than five feet. The place where Ruth had been nearly killed and George had rescued her. And Angelique had cried out that he was getting too close.

  “I mean, it’s pretty clear that the treasure isn’t under the roses, right?” She didn’t really need his agreement. She knew her argument was solid. “Otherwise George would have found it when he was planting them.”

  “Makes sense.” He picked up his shovel again and dragged the point along the ground, seeming to test how hard the dirt had been packed. “And she would have wanted to make sure there was a marker, something that would help her identify the spot.”

  Millie’s eyes roamed the clearing. What would Angelique do? Nothing too brazen or obvious. After all, she’d kept the entire house party in the dark about her thefts for months. She knew how to be low-key, to fly under the radar. So what would that look like here?

  She turned a slow circle, surveying every tree and root and fallen twig. But the ground cover wouldn’t have been there—at least not as it was now—ninety years ago. She turned again, trying to see what would have been there then. The trees would have grown wider, taller. The branches were thicker now, and they let in only patches of light through the leaves.

  And then she saw it. It wasn’t remarkable at all—not really. But it made her stomach flip and her heart leap at its spot in the base of her throat.

  It was a simple mark on the birch tree. Its white trunk had been marred with a single line longer than an axe head. It was almost at shoulder height now, but ninety years ago it would have been at her shin perhaps. Just right for slamming a shovel through the bark.

  “That’s it.”

  Ben stopped his own survey and followed the line of her finger. And when he gasped, she knew he realized it too.

  Without any more conversation they began to dig. Their shovels took turns sliding into the earth and tossing it aside. The damp dirt thumped as it landed in the ever-growing piles behind them. The air filled with the scents of dirt and leaves and the outdoors. And sweat.

  In a matter of minutes Millie had to stop to wipe the drops from her forehead. When she missed one, it rolled into her eye, the salt stinging. She winced and blinked and wiped her face with her sleeve.

  That’s when she saw Ben watching her.

  Perfect. The man who was used to seeing her in all of her Gilded Age glory now saw her for what she really was. Her silks were gone, her pearls forgotten. Her hair, always so carefully arranged and sprayed permanently into place, ran stringy and wild down her back. And she undoubtedly had sweat marks around her neck and down her back.

  Nothing said “kiss me again” like sweat dripping off her nose.

  But Ben didn’t look away. And he didn’t look disgu
sted. Instead he gave her a smile. It wasn’t mocking or filled with pity. It was gentle and sweet, and it promised that they would do the tough things together.

  And somehow that hit her harder than the roses or the tree trunk or Ruth’s unmailed letter to George. Because this was real life. It was her life. For the first time in almost eight years, she wasn’t alone. And more than that, she didn’t want to be alone.

  Her heart slammed into the back of her throat, and she tried to smile back at him. But she knew it came out shaky and uncertain at best. He didn’t seem to care. He just kept right on shoveling and smiling at her. Shoveling and smiling.

  And then he struck something.

  It echoed through the clearing and across the grounds, and Millie didn’t know if she should fall to her knees or make sure that no one else had heard their discovery. Her stomach dropped, and she followed it, hitting the dirt with a quiet thud. Ben knelt on the far side of the shallow hole, his shovel abandoned and his hands clawing through the mud.

  They brushed and scraped at the black earth until it revealed a pale blue metal box. Its corners had rusted over the years, and the silver buckle closure had certainly seen better days—probably right around 1929.

  Ben dug his hand down the sides and pulled the box free of its burial place. And there, engraved in the metal below the buckle, were two little letters.

  AD.

  nineteen

  Ben tried to pry the metal open with his bare hands, but the rust wasn’t going along with his plan. It squealed and groaned and didn’t budge at all. “Come on,” he mumbled.

  “Come on,” Millie joined in.

  It didn’t help.

  He was breathing hard by the time he set the box back down. It wasn’t particularly heavy, but it was sturdy and built to last. That boded well for whatever was inside it. Not so much for the people trying to crack it open.

  He looked at Millie, and she put her hands on her hips, her eyebrows forming an angry V. “We need some sort of leverage. You know, fulcrums and force and all that.”