by Candace Camp
“Who else? You were the one wanting to buy it, and I wouldn’t sell it to you. I know you aristocrats—not used to not getting your way. When I wouldn’t sell, you decided to snatch it back. That’s why you came over yesterday, to see if it was worth stealing. To see where I kept it.”
“Oh, no, Mr. Bigby,” Cassandra assured him earnestly. “I promise you. Sir Philip did not steal your book.”
“Not with his own hands, no doubt. He wouldn’t want to get them dirty. No, he just hired a burglar to come in and get it, told him where it was and what it looked like.”
The man continued in this vein for some time, with Aunt Ardis and Joanna looking on in avid interest, but finally Cassandra’s and Philip’s assurances that they had had nothing to do with stealing the book began to sink in on him.
“I assure you, Mr. Bigby, I would never steal that or any other book. We, too, have been the victim of bizarre break-ins, both here and at our homes in the country. Three of them.”
“Three of them! What did they take?”
“Nothing. But we think that they were looking for that selfsame book at Haverly House. The thief was discovered in the library. That was when we first became interested in the Queen’s book. I don’t know who the thief is, although I have my suspicions, and I promise you that if, in the course of investigating him, I find your book in his possession, I will make sure that it is returned to you promptly.”
“Investigating him?” Cassandra repeated. “Do you mean to tell me that you have hired someone to investigate David?”
“Yes, this morning,” he replied calmly. “I hired a man to follow him. Obviously I should have done it yesterday evening, and then he would have been caught trying to steal the Queen’s Book.”
“What is so special about this book?” Aunt Ardis asked, puzzled.
“Are you saying that David Miller stole it?” Joanna added, her eyes getting bigger and rounder.
“That is my suspicion.”
“And nothing more,” Cassandra stressed.
“My fiancée has a soft spot for Mr. Miller,” Philip said in a sardonic aside toward Mr. Bigby.
Cassandra made a face at him. “That’s not true. I am simply pointing out that David Miller wouldn’t have known to break into Mr. Bigby’s house to get the book. We are the only ones who knew it was there.”
“If you will remember, my dear, when he came to call yesterday, Miss Moulton told him that we were at Mr. Bigby’s, looking at books. I don’t imagine it would have been hard for him to put two and two together.”
Cassandra’s eyes widened. “Oh, my, you’re right.” She sighed. “I guess there’s no escaping it. Mr. Miller must be the thief.”
“I’m afraid so, my dear. I know you hate to think it, but it is rather clear.”
Aunt Ardis and Joanna continued to exclaim over the likelihood of David Miller’s being a thief all the rest of the morning as the carriage left London. Mr. Bigby had finally left, mostly appeased, and they had been able to depart, only somewhat delayed.
Cassandra found the return journey to Haverly House much less tedious than the one coming to London. Philip rode inside the carriage most of the time, suffering the presence of Aunt Ardis and Joanna in order to be with Cassandra. It was a kind of exquisite torture for Cassandra to be so close to him and yet have to maintain a proper decorum in front of her aunt and cousin. She was supremely aware of his body beside her, of his broad shoulders and muscled thigh almost touching her, of his heat and masculine scent. She found herself gazing at the way his black hair curled forward just behind his ear and, moreover, finding it strangely endearing. She studied the firm bones of his jaw and cheek, the dark sweep of his lashes, and was tempted to trace the lines of his face with her forefinger.
He had not come again to her bedroom, telling her that he wanted no more risk to her reputation, particularly the night they spent in the public inn on the way home to Haverly House. Cassandra had difficulty going to sleep for thinking about him and his lovemaking. She was beginning to decide that she must be a rather wanton person to think such thoughts so much of the time. As the time passed, it seemed that she was thinking them more and more. She hoped that soon Philip would overcome his noble impulses and return to her bed.
They reached Haverly House in the afternoon. The children, who had spotted them coming up the long drive on the lane from the third-story nursery windows, came pelting down to greet them. The two Lady Nevilles arrived at a slower pace, with Sarah Yorke following them.
“Why, Philip, I had not expected you back so soon,” Violet said, looking puzzled. “I was just telling Miss Yorke that it would probably be two weeks before you returned. Now you have made me out to be a liar.”
“Hello, Mother. Grandmother.” He greeted both his mother and grandmother with a peck on the cheek. “I am sure Miss Yorke will understand that the untruth was caused by my erratic nature, not your lack of veracity. We simply finished our business much sooner than expected.” He turned toward Sarah. “Miss Yorke. How are you?”
“I am in excellent health and spirits, Sir Philip. As are all the boys. They will be very happy to hear that you are back. I must go now. I am sure you wish to visit with your family. I just came over for Lady Neville’s recipe for blancmange.”
“No, wait, don’t leave yet, Miss Yorke,” Philip said persuasively. “You are practically one of the family, and I have an announcement to make. ’Tis easier to do it all at once.”
Everyone turned interested eyes on him at these words. Cassandra suspected what he was about to say, and she went pale, her stomach clenching. She should not have let it go this far, she knew; she should have convinced Philip that he did not have to marry her. It had been sheer selfishness on her part to let it go on. She was certain that his mother would be appalled at the engagement, and his stiff-backed grandmother even more so!
Philip took her arm, pulling her forward.
“Philip, no! Wait!” she whispered frantically, but he only smiled.
“Don’t be silly. Now is the perfect time.” He turned back to Violet. “Mother, Grandmother.” He bowed toward the younger set, who were all watching, wide-eyed. “Everyone. I have asked Miss Verrere to be my wife, and she has graciously given me her consent.”
There was a moment of intense silence. Cassandra wished that she could sink into the ground. Then Lady Violet held out her arms to her son, saying, “Oh, Philip! I have waited so long for this day. I can’t tell you how happy I am.”
Violet hugged him, and Georgette let out a shriek and ran to him, jumping on him as soon as their mother released him. “I knew it! I just knew it! What took you so long? I told Olivia two days after they got here that I had never seen you so gone on a girl.”
The rest of the two families crowded around, offering their congratulations. Philip’s mother hugged Cassandra and welcomed her to the family, and even old Lady Neville offered Cassandra her cheek to kiss and told her that her grandson had excellent taste.
“But I—I mean—” Cassandra realized that she could hardly tell Philip’s mother and grandmother that she did not intend to hold Philip to his offer of marriage, that, indeed, there hadn’t actually been an offer. She certainly was not about to admit that she and Philip had been caught in a compromising position. Finally she smiled. “I was afraid that you wouldn’t approve.”
“Not approve?” the older Lady Neville said with a sniff. “Why ever not? Verrere has always been a good name. Sister to Lord Chesilworth and all that. Quite appropriate, I think.”
“Thank you.”
Georgette hugged Cassandra, telling her that she was perfect for Philip and that she, Georgette, looked forward to being her sister. “Best of all, now Olivia can live with us all the time! I’ve been dying for years to have a sister, and now I have two. And two more brothers, as well!” She cast a laughing look at the twins. “Who
will make excellent brothers, being such pests as they are on occasion.”
The twins, needless to say, took exception to her jest and paid her back by untying the sash of her dress, with the result that all four took off on a shrieking game of chase. Cassandra turned to find Sarah Yorke standing quietly at her side.
“Miss Verrere…” Sarah held out her hand. “I wanted to offer you my best wishes. I am sure you will make a lovely bride.”
She was smiling, but Cassandra detected a glimpse of sadness in Sarah’s eyes. Cassandra thought that she had been right about Sarah’s hidden liking for Philip, and she felt sorry for the woman.
“I hope that you and I will become good friends, now that I will be living here,” Cassandra told her sincerely.
“Yes, I do, too.” Sarah smiled at her again and turned away to offer her congratulations to Philip.
When she moved on, bidding him farewell, Philip came to Cassandra’s side. Smiling, he slid his arm around her shoulders, pulling her up against him. “I thought that went rather well, didn’t you?”
“Philip, I feel guilty about deceiving your mother—”
“Deceiving? In what way? We are engaged.”
“Not really. You never asked me. You just said that to appease Aunt Ardis.”
“Cassandra, I thought we had gone through all this before. I have intended to marry you from the moment we went down to the gazebo that night.”
“You have?”
“But of course. I knew what it would do to your reputation if it got out. What the consequences would be. When we left the garden, I knew I would offer for your hand.”
But what about love? Cassandra wanted to cry out, but of course she did not. She refused to press him for something that was worthwhile only if given freely.
“But it’s not necessary,” she said instead. “I knew what I was doing. I went into it freely.”
“So did I.” He looked down into Cassandra’s face, frowning. “Do you— Are you saying that you don’t want to marry me?”
Cassandra supposed that she ought to lie and tell him that she did not. But she could not bring herself to say it. “No,” she replied softly. “I do not mean that.”
“Good.” He bent and kissed her on the temple, murmuring, “One thing, my love, do not let my mother persuade you to name a wedding date very far away. I want to be married as soon as possible.”
She looked up into his gleaming eyes, and an answering heat started up in her loins. Perhaps she was wrong to marry him, knowing that Philip did not love her, but she knew that she was not strong enough to resist. She would marry him, hoping that she could bring him to love her, hoping that he would not regret it.
* * *
THEY SET OUT the following morning on foot, Cassandra and Philip and their four siblings, map in hand and leading a pony cart carrying several digging tools. Cassandra had drawn a new copy of the combined maps, which Philip carried now in his shirt pocket. She wore her oldest dress, as did Georgette and Olivia, and Philip had put on the sort of rough trousers and collarless shirt that the local farmers wore. Cassandra wondered what it was about the attire that made all her nerve endings come alive just looking at him. She had never had a similar reaction to any farmer she had met. But it did something to the pit of her stomach to see his bare forearms beneath the rolled-up sleeves and the V of chest that showed at the neck.
“There is Littlejohn Creek.” He gestured toward the brook in the distance.
“It looks much closer on the map,” his sister put in doubtfully.
“I don’t think Margaret Verrere drew the maps to scale,” he told her lightly. “But she put in the distances. That should make it much easier.”
The copse of trees was not where it was supposed to be, and they decided that it must have been felled by man or disease since the map was drawn. They continued along the road, but after some time they still had not found the large stone beside the road that was the last mark before the peat-cutter’s hut.
“Could the stone have been removed since then, too?” Cassandra asked worriedly.
“I don’t know. I don’t recall anything like that beside the road.” Philip frowned, shading his eyes with his hand to peer into the distance. “No sign of an old hut, either.”
“Don’t you think there would be ruins of both it and the wall? Perhaps we should strike out fifteen paces to the side of the road and search up and down until we come to the ruins.”
“We may have to.”
After a few more minutes of fruitless walking, they stopped again. “I don’t think it could be farther than this,” Philip said flatly. “She would have put some more landmarks in, like that huge old oak tree over there.” Philip pointed across the road.
“Why don’t we do what Cassandra suggested?” Georgette interjected.
Philip nodded. “All right. Fifteen paces is a little vague, but we can spread out in a line and make a sweep down. One of us ought to stumble across the ruins.”
Philip paced out fifteen long steps, and the other five spread out on either side of him, a few feet apart. Philip led the pony, with its trailing cart, over the rough terrain. They began walking slowly back the way they had come, keeping on a line with the road. As they walked, their eyes searched the ground, looking for any sign of a former hut or stone wall.
The walk seemed endless. Cassandra’s neck began to hurt from looking down at the ground, searching for signs of the hut, and a throbbing ache was growing behind her eyes. She was tired, thirsty and hungry, and she knew that if she felt that way, the younger ones were probably doubly so.
“Let’s stop and rest. Eat the lunch that Henri sent.”
Philip nodded his agreement, and they sat down together in a clump of trees and devoured the lunch. Afterward, they leaned back against the trunks of the trees and rested. The twins even dozed off.
Rejuvenated, they got up and began their tedious search again. Hart found a circle of rocks, and they got excited, but it turned out to be only the traces of an old campfire. On and on they plodded until finally they could see the steeple of Saint Swithin’s rising above the trees in front of them.
“We’re back to the church!” Olivia cried out in disappointment.
Philip nodded. “Nearly. I fear that we have missed it somehow.”
They sat down again and tried to regroup.
“What happened to it?” Olivia cried out in frustration. “How could the place just disappear?”
“It has been a long time,” Cassandra reminded her. “If the hut was wood and thatch, it could have rotted away or been taken for lumber.”
The twins were sunk in gloom.
“We’ll never find it, will we?” Crispin asked, and Cassandra could tell that he was doing his best not to cry.
“We’ll try again,” Philip promised. “Maybe we’re looking at the map wrong somehow. Cassandra and I will go over it again tonight. And tomorrow I will go talk to Jack Everson. He and his father before him lived in that house we saw on the other side of the road. I’ll see if he remembers anyone ever mentioning a peat-cutter’s cottage on the other side of the road.”
“But unless we can find those landmarks,” Crispin persisted, “we have no hope of finding the treasure, have we?”
“I don’t see how,” Philip admitted.
It was a sad group that straggled back to Haverly House.
* * *
CASSANDRA SAT IN front of the mirror at her vanity, listlessly brushing out her hair. She felt bone weary. Even the long, hot bath she had taken when she got home had not done away with the soreness in her muscles from the day of hiking. Worse than that was the tiredness in her mind—no, she reconsidered, the tiredness was in her very soul. She had been chasing the Spanish dowry for years, all her life it seemed, and her father before her. For the past year, since she h
ad read the diaries, finding the treasure had been her primary goal. It had become not only a means of reestablishing the family fortunes but a way of vindicating her father, and even the long-dead Margaret Verrere, as well.
Now, it appeared, they would not find it. It seemed the final bitter irony to have proved that her father had been right about the existence of the treasure, yet the treasure was still lost.
She laid her forehead on her crossed arms on the vanity top, hot tears seeping from her eyes. She felt as though she had let everyone down: her brothers and sister, her father, even Margaret Verrere and a long string of ancestors. What was her family to do? True, they no longer had to worry about living on Aunt Ardis’s charity. Philip would take in her siblings, and she knew he would be generous. Still, it would chafe them, especially Crispin, to be living on anyone’s charity, even Philip’s, and they could hardly expect Philip to go to the huge expense of putting Chesilworth in order.
Something parted her hair in back, and warm, velvety lips brushed across the nape of her neck. A shiver ran down through her. “Philip…” she breathed, suddenly revived, and raised her head. She looked up at his reflection in the mirror and smiled. “How did you get in?”
“The usual way—the door.” He was standing behind her, dressed in only trousers and a shirt. He gazed back at her in the mirror. “Brooding?”
“A little.” Cassandra nodded.
“Try not to worry. We will do our best to find it. And if we cannot, you must know that I will take care of your brothers and sister. Olivia shall have her coming out and dowry. The boys will go to Eton. Chesilworth will be restored to its former glory. I will make it my special project.”
Tears welled in Cassandra’s eyes. “You are too kind. But I don’t want my family to be a burden to you.”
“They are no burden. And I do not want you worry about them. From now on, you are only to worry about getting ready for our wedding.”
Cassandra smiled tremulously. She hated to admit how eager she was to think about only that. “Your mother wants a grand wedding.”
