The Elusive Earl

by Maddison Michaels

  “I would not dare to, my dear.”

  “Don’t mock me by calling me such a name.”

  “What is your name then?”

  She turned back to the door and gently opened it. “Sabina,” she said before disappearing down the hallway, the door closing silently behind her.

  “Sabina,” Travis said the name aloud to the now empty room. “Well, Sabina, let us hope you are as capable as you claim to be.”

  …

  Caves, near the Mormano Province

  “I think those seeking the treasure are not simply hoping to find the jewels but are seeking the elixir of life,” Brianna said after recounting the story of King Aleric’s treasure and her parents’ quest for it to Daniel.

  She still looked pale and was nervously drumming her fingers in her lap as her eyes kept darting about the cave, as if she expected a horde of bats to swoop down on them any minute. Behavior completely at odds with her normal, exuberant personality. “What do you mean, elixir of life?” he asked her, hoping to distract her from her obvious anxiousness by keeping her talking. “There is no such thing.”

  She pressed her lips together briefly and turned her focus back to him. “Well, my mother’s notes suggest there’s an extra component to the legend.” Pausing, she glanced uneasily around the cave once again.

  “And what is the extra bit to the tale?” He took another bite of the bread, waiting.

  She bit her lip briefly, her face clouding with uncertainty.

  It looked to Daniel as if she’d come to some sort of decision as she straightened her spine, and a flash of steel began to shine in the depths of her stare, slowly replacing the fear that had been there but a moment ago.

  “Apparently,” she began, “King Aleric was buried with an ancient flask from Rome, which had been filled with some special waters from a mythical spring, allowing whomever drank the liquid to live forever.”

  “What a load of nonsense,” Daniel dismissed, taking a swig from the water canteen. “If that were the case, this King Aleric would have drunk the water himself and would still be living it up with his treasure at his disposal. His men would have had no need to bury him.”

  “Well, of course, it is nonsense,” Bree agreed. “But according to my mother’s notes, the King didn’t have the elixir at the time of his death.”

  “Convenient.”

  She ignored him and continued, “One of his loyal men, on a quest to find the elixir, traveled to one of these very mountain peaks to retrieve the mythical water, but by the time he returned to his king, it was too late; the King had already died. His men decided that the liquid was too powerful to be given to anyone else and, therefore, should be buried with their most beloved leader.”

  “Like I said, nonsense.” Daniel dusted the crumbs from his lap.

  “Yes, but it does add a touch of magic to the whole tale.” Bree shrugged. “And you know what treasure hunters are like; they will believe in any legend, and their belief only gets stronger the longer they search for whatever it is they are seeking.”

  “Apart from Travis and yourself,” Daniel replied, “I haven’t had a great deal to do with treasure hunters.”

  “We’re not treasure hunters.” Her face crinkled up. “Well, at least I’m not. Though it does appear that Travis may have gotten caught up in that world. Treasure hunters can be a very unscrupulous and dangerous lot. I do not suppose you would know such things.”

  “What does that mean?” he asked her.

  She actually shrugged her shoulders at him. Him. The Earl of Thornton, known as a man not to be trifled with within polite society, and feared by those in the dark, shadowy circles of the European underworld. A world filled with intrigue and danger.

  He had to give it to her, the woman clearly had no fear of him—and, it appeared, had also returned back to her normal, outspoken self.

  “It is not as if you are known for your dashing and adventurous ways, now is it? Most in society consider you to be rather stuffy, in a very respectable way, of course.”

  Daniel spluttered on the sip of water he’d just swallowed. Bree leaned across and whacked him on the back.

  Most in society had no idea of the clandestine activities he got up to on behalf of the British Empire. And they certainly wouldn’t think him to be stuffy or unadventurous if they knew what those activities actually involved. Not that Daniel particularly cared what society thought; they could go jump in the Thames for all he was concerned. But he did care about what Brianna thought. He didn’t stop to examine why.

  But after all they had just been through, he felt unaccountably annoyed that she obviously still thought him to be stuffy. He was beginning to hate that word. “You do know that on occasion I work for your uncle, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Well, I’m not exactly adding up the War Office accounts for him.”

  “Yes, but listening for morsels of information whilst at balls and a gentlemen’s club, and playing games of intrigue does not make someone dashing,” she pertly informed him. “A sense of adventure and daring comes from taking risks in one’s personal life, not simply one’s working environment.”

  Blast! He’d nearly been shot by agents of the Russian czar, had narrowly escaped being bitten by a cobra left in his rooms in Bombay, and had almost single-handedly thwarted a plot to assassinate the Queen before it could even be attempted when’d she visited France last year. But he couldn’t tell Brianna any of it. “Taking risks. Which you do in spades,” he scoffed, rather pathetically to his own ears.

  “And which, up until this little adventure, you would avoid like the plague,” she retorted.

  “Simply because I choose to make sensible decisions in my ordinary life that avoid unnecessary danger does not make me stuffy,” he choked out, hating the word with a passion.

  “Actually, it does,” she remarked as she nibbled on the last of her cheese. “But I don’t think you’re entirely stuffy anymore.”

  “How very fortunate for me,” he replied sardonically. His best bet was to change the conversation before he revealed too much out of sheer pique. “Now, can we please stop discussing me and get back to the journal, which seems to be the very catalyst for all of this mayhem and madness?”

  She brought her now cheese-free hand up to her chin and rested her head upon it. Her face lost any frivolity as her brows drew together. “There were some scraps of paper, aside from Mr. Bartardi’s translations, that I would like you to look at.”

  Bree reached into her satchel and retrieved the journal, paging through it until she found the papers she had spoken of. She picked them out and handed them to him. “These first two are in Italian.”

  Daniel took them from her and held them close to the light of the candle. “This first is a birth certificate of a male, and the second is a marriage certificate.”

  “My parent’s marriage certificate?” Bree asked.

  “No,” Daniel said. “Some Italian names I have not heard of before.” He glanced down at the third slip of paper she’d handed him, a very old piece of parchment. He read the poem it contained. He handed it back to her. “What does this mean?”

  “I really don’t know,” she said with a shake of her head. “I think it is a list of clues my mother left on how to locate the lost treasure.”

  “Why do you say that?” Daniel watched, mesmerized, as she idly traced her finger across the front of the journal.

  She stopped and waited until he met her gaze once more. “Because my parents did, in fact, find the treasure.”

  Daniel searched her face for any sign that she was teasing him. “They found it?”

  She nodded. “My mother wrote that it was the most amazing thing she and my father had ever seen, an absolute archeological find of the century. Ancient statues and urns, a whole cavern full of history, buried and untouched for centuries.”

  Bree’s eyes seemed to glaze over in wonder, and Daniel quirked his lips, finding her expression unexpectedly charm
ing. He pulled out another candle from the satchel and used the waning flame from the other one to light it. It was the last one, and when that flickered out, they would be in complete darkness. “What happened?”

  Her eyes flicked over to stare at the new flame. “I don’t know. Her last entry made reference to someone named Calogero and that they couldn’t let him find it. She says they took steps to hide from him and hide the location of the treasure. That entry was dated April third, 1834.” She turned her attention back to him. “That was three days before they were murdered, in a town called Mendicino.”

  “That is not far from Cosenza,” Daniel remarked. “How old were you?”

  “Just a babe. Eighteen months.” She sighed softly. “I don’t remember anything. Well, not really…more just feelings and impressions.” And terror. She rubbed her upper arms, warding off the chill that had crept into the space from the cold, night air. “I don’t even know how they died, or even how I survived.”

  “Sir Walter didn’t tell you?”

  “No, he’s never spoken about it.” She paused. “I had to pester my aunt for the longest of times to tell me what she knew had happened. But all she knew was that Uncle Walter traveled to Italy after receiving word of my parents’ deaths, determined to seek answers, but then, he returned unexpectedly with me, as up until then, they hadn’t known I had been born. My uncle returned with a bit of a surprise for my aunt, but she took it all in her stride and welcomed me with open arms.”

  Daniel smiled. “Your aunt is an exceptional woman.”

  Bree smiled wistfully, the first sign of homesickness he’d seen in her. He had to give it to her—she was no wilting flower when it came to adventure and intrigue. Had she been a man, her uncle may have found use for her in the War Office’s employ as well. “She certainly is.”

  “You take after her.”

  The air became charged as her eyes, wide at the unexpected compliment, locked on his. For one mad moment, he wanted nothing more than to pull her onto his lap and taste her again. To tease the rosy blush that he knew would be spreading up the delicate column of her neck with kisses.

  Abruptly, he stood and stalked over to the entrance. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and looked out through the rain into the deepening night. He’d very nearly been unable to control his actions. That never happened to him. That was what his father had been like, and Daniel hadn’t damn well spent the better part of his thirty-two years avoiding such behavior only to succumb to it now.

  He was not like his father. He couldn’t be. That would lead to the ruination of his family. Daniel could still hear the echo of his father’s last words when the man lay on his death bed—after getting drunk yet again, then stumbling into the murky waters of the Thames, only to catch a chill that he couldn’t recover from. Though racked with fever, his father had still been able to sneer at him, and had said, “You might think you’re better than me, boy, but you’re not. You’re still a Thornton, and the men in our family have always succumbed to temptation. And you’re no different, even though you like to pretend you are. You will succumb, too. Over and over. Just you wait.” And with those words, Daniel had left his father’s room, never to look back. His father had died later that night.

  “Is everything all right?” Bree asked, her voice sounding rather shaky.

  “I’m fine.” His own voice sounded rather more ferocious than he had intended. But then, as he took in the concern in her eyes, the memory of his father faded, replaced with Bree’s wholesomely beautiful face. It was going to be a very long and trying night.

  He took a moment to calm down, concentrating on regulating his breathing and focusing his attention back to watching as the rain pelted down. He imagined that the already muddy dirt track they had sloshed through earlier had been turned into a boggy mess from the continuing downpour.

  If he focused on the weather, surely his mind would not be so obsessed with the woman sitting behind him? He felt like laughing at how his thoughts had turned from wanting to strangle her to desperately wanting to ravish her.

  With a deep breath, he returned to where she was huddled. She had her knees pulled up to her chest, her arms hugged around the skirt of her dress.

  Though she did her best to hide it as he approached, he could see she was more frightened than she’d been letting on, perhaps distracted by their conversation. In fact, as the candlelight flickered across her complexion, he realized with a start that she was literally petrified. Her eyes were wide, dark pools flickering across the room, and her skin was as white as chalk, whilst her lower lip trembled gently. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me you were terrified of caves?” he growled, bracing his hands on his hips. “I thought you simply didn’t like them, as most don’t.”

  Defiance clashed with the fear in her expression. “I am not terrified.” Her voice wobbled slightly on the last word. “I simply dislike dark and confined spaces a great, great deal. Especially after accidentally being locked up in the old crypt on Uncle Walter’s estate whilst I was playing hide-and-seek with Travis when we were but six.”

  “How on earth did you get locked in there?

  “The groundskeeper, Mr. Norton, had left it unlocked to do some maintenance, so I snuck in, and while I was waiting for Travis to find me, I started exploring a bit below. Uncle Walter had always told us tales of our ancestors buried down there for hundreds of years, so I wanted to see them.” A visible shiver ran through her body. “Then, when I heard the scrape of the door closing above and the key turning in the lock, I scrambled up the narrow steps to the main area of the crypt, but the door was closed, and Mr. Norton had already wandered off. I pounded against the oak, but unfortunately, it had no effect as Mr. Norton was rather deaf. So, there I stayed in the dark, surrounded by the coffins of my ancestors, until Travis eventually found me.”

  Daniel could only imagine what sort of impression being locked in a dark crypt would leave on a six-year-old. “No wonder you are terrified of dark and enclosed spaces.”

  “I hardly think I’m terrified of them,” she snapped at him.

  He held up his hands. “Fine. But you do realize that was the last candle we had, and it won’t last much longer?”

  She gulped and pinned him with her eyes. “Yes, I had figured that out, and um, I don’t know if I shall be able to stay in here tonight.”

  “Well, you can’t stay outside,” Daniel told her. “It’s still raining heavily out there.”

  Bree rubbed her shoulders again. “I shall be fine.” Her voice was but a whisper and lacked conviction. It was completely unlike the Brianna he knew.

  Daniel sat down beside her. One thing Bree never did was lack conviction; it was slightly unnerving to hear her do so now. She looked vulnerable, and, for some reason, he didn’t like seeing her like that. “I will stay right here beside you tonight.”

  Her gaze was like that of a cornered rabbit. “Will you?”

  Hesitantly, he put his arm around her. He knew it would be pure torture to touch her, but he couldn’t stand seeing her scared. “I shall. I promise.”

  “Thank you, Daniel.”

  At first, they sat next to each other, his arm stiffly draped over her shoulders, but after a moment, she relaxed into him. He had to grit his teeth as he felt the soft swell of her breast press in against the side of this chest. The material of her dress had no corset as a barrier between it and her skin, and he could literally feel how soft she was, even through the layers of cloth they both wore.

  He really wanted to swear, but instead, he said, “Come, we need to lie down and get some sleep.” He readjusted their satchel bags into makeshift pillows and motioned for her to lie down.

  She said nothing as she lay down and turned away from him.

  Daniel did likewise and focused on thinking of anything but her next to him, with only the thinnest of cotton dresses separating them.

  A boom of thunder reverberated across the walls of the cave, and she let out a small screech. She scooted backwards to
ward him, until her back was touching his arm. He could feel light ripples run through her. Whether she was shaking in fear or was cold, he couldn’t tell.

  “Bloody hell,” he mumbled, turning onto his side, putting his arms across her, and pulling her in snugly against him.

  She gasped softly.

  “Now go to sleep,” he roughly whispered against her hair.

  After a moment of holding herself rigid in his arms, she sighed and then relaxed, the curve of her body spooning against him.

  She yawned. “Goodnight, Daniel.”

  “Goodnight, Brianna.” He tucked her more tightly against him.

  If anyone could have seen them, she would have been ruined. But as it was, Daniel knew it would be the only way for her to get past her fear and go to sleep.

  Not that he was going to be able to sleep. No, he was too busy actively having to think of the most mundane and boring things he could imagine to ensure a certain part of him did not reveal itself against her.

  It was going to be a bloody long night.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Bree slowly became aware of a hand gently shaking her shoulder and a deep voice muttering something in the distant edges of her awareness. She tried to knock the irritating hand away, but the thing still persisted. With a final, half-hearted attempt to swat it away, she rolled over onto her other side.

  She sighed happily as the annoyance stopped, and she drifted back to her dream.

  The icy water splashed onto her face without warning.

  She shrieked and bolted upright into a sitting position. Her sleepiness washed away in an instant, with her heart pounding and her face pinching from the cold. She blinked the water out of her lashes and looked around in confusion for a second.

  “Good morning, Princess,” Daniel said, standing in front of her with a cheerful grin on his face.

  She narrowed her eyes as she wiped away the liquid dripping from her cheeks. “What were you thinking, doing such a horrid thing?”

  “You sleep like the dead.” He shrugged. “It was the only way I could think to wake you.”