“That’s true. But you don’t have a picnic basket.”
She thought quickly. “He’s got the basket with him.”
“Now, why would he carry the basket when he could just leave it with you? And even if he did, why were you getting ready to mount your horse and ride off when I walked up?”
Unable to refute that, she went on the offensive. “Why are you asking all these rude questions?” she countered in the loftiest voice she could muster. “This is my home, and I can come here whenever I please, to do whatever I want. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to see where Giles has disappeared to.”
Before she could even round the horse, though, Ned stepped up to press a knife to her side. “I don’t think so, cuz.”
Her stomach clenched into a knot. “Ned,” she said firmly, “what on earth are you doing? Put that knife away! I’m your cousin, for goodness sake!”
“Yes, and a fat lot of good that’s done me. Father and I have a chance to pull the mill out of the fire, and I won’t let you ruin it.”
“I have no intention of ruining anything,” she breathed. She couldn’t fight him; he had a weapon and she didn’t. He could have her gutted before she even screamed. “I don’t care why you’re here. You can do whatever you like, if you’ll just let me go find my husband.”
“We’re going to go find him, all right. He could have been to the pond and back twice by now. So I expect he’s not at the pond. And I expect you know that.”
Oh no. Lord only knew how Giles would react to seeing Ned holding a knife on her. “We don’t want any trouble. Just let me take the horses and—”
“Keep quiet, damn you! And start walking.” He urged her into the woods, keeping the knife pressed in the small of her back. She considered stumbling but was afraid she might stumble the wrong way and get stabbed. Besides, a scuffle with Ned could distract Giles while he dealt with Desmond.
Ahead of her, she could hear the sound of a shovel hitting something. Desmond was probably digging, which meant Giles hadn’t reached him yet. She had to give Giles time. The only way they’d both get out of this safely was if Giles took care of Desmond before she and Ned could reach them.
She walked as slowly as she could, dragging her feet, pretending to have trouble getting over the logs and rocks. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you. You’re being ridiculous, and this is—”
“I said shut up!” he hissed. To her horror, he caught her about the waist and placed the knife to her throat. He kept whispering in her ear as he pushed her along. “You always were a meddler. Just had to shame the family with those wretched books. And Aunt Hetty doesn’t even care—she still gives everything to you lot, while we don’t get a damned thing.”
She refrained from pointing out that his father had inherited the mill from Gran’s brother. He just hadn’t done as well with it as Gran had done with the brewery. “I’m sure Gran has put your family in the will for a tidy sum.”
He snorted. “Not with all of you getting married and having brats. She won’t leave anything for us now. We deserve the treasure. You’ve got everything else—I won’t let you have that, too, you hear me? Not after how hard we’ve worked looking for it.”
“Treasure? What are you talking about?” she said, trying to hide her terror at the thought of the knife at her throat—one slip and she could die.
“Shh,” he whispered. “The digging has stopped.”
It had. Did that mean Giles had heard them? That he’d found Desmond? Or was Desmond just resting?
Moments later, they emerged into a clearing to find Giles standing beside Desmond, holding a pistol to the man’s head. Her cousin was sweating heavily, and the shovel lay at his feet.
As soon as Giles saw her and Ned, the blood drained from his face. His gaze met hers, bleak with worry, but when it shifted back to Ned it held deadly intent. “I see you’re aiming to die, Ned,” he ground out. “Or at the very least, get your father killed.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” Ned cried. “If you do, I’ll . . . I’ll slit Minerva’s throat, I swear I will!”
“Then you and your father will both die.” Giles drew his other pistol out of his pocket to aim it at Ned’s head. “That treasure won’t do you much good then, will it?”
“Stop being an idiot, son!” Desmond said hoarsely, his eyes looking stark and wild. “Let her go! She’s your cousin, for God’s sake!”
The knife wavered at her throat. “She gets everything,” Ned said plaintively. “They all do. It’s not fair!”
Giles just stared him down. “You’ve got no good way out of this, man. You might as well accept it and let her go.”
“So you can have me and Father arrested for trespassing, or some other trumped-up charge? I saw your friends at the wedding—all those important gentlemen. You’ll make sure that Father and I are ruined.”
“He won’t do anything to you, I promise,” Minerva coaxed. “I won’t let him. You’re family, after all.”
“That’s what you say now,” Ned retorted, “but as soon as I let you go, you’ll have us both locked up.”
“You don’t think they’ll lock you up for killing her, you idiot?” Desmond cried. “They’ll hang you! Stop being a fool and think, for once in your life.”
At his father’s insults, Ned stiffened. “Just for that, I’ll take her off with me and leave you here with Masters. Let him kill you—what do I care?” He tightened his arm around her waist and began trying to urge her back the way they’d come.
“Wait!” Giles cried. “What if we agree not to turn you over to the authorities? And help you find the treasure.”
“We’ve got a better map of the estate,” Minerva said, playing on Giles’s ploy. “It’s in my apron pocket.” If she could just get Ned to move that knife from her throat . . . “Compare it to your map, and you’ll see exactly where the treasure is buried.”
“How did you know about our map?” Desmond rasped.
“I’ve got my sources,” Giles said. “And they tell me that you’ve got a map that leads to where Mainwaring buried some jewels.”
Desmond shook his head. “Not jewels—Spanish gold, worth a fortune.”
“Well, you’re not going to see an ounce of it if you don’t get your bloody son there to let my wife go!” Giles growled.
“Ned, please!” Desmond cried.
“That other map of yours,” Ned said into her ear. “You really think you could find the gold with it?”
“I’ve already put them against each other to compare,” she said. “It looks to me like that gold is buried right next to the pond. If you get the map out of my apron pocket, I can show you.”
Ned hesitated, but greed won out. He slid his hand down to her apron pocket, letting out a grunt when he patted the outside and heard the crackle of paper. And as he slipped one hand inside the pocket, groping for the map, his other hand moved the knife away from her throat, just as she’d hoped.
In that instant, she brought the heel of her half-boot down on his instep as hard as she could and dropped to the ground.
Giles fired, the bullet whistling over her head. And Ned went down.
Chapter Twenty-five
As smoke clouded the clearing, Giles tossed his spent pistol aside and rushed over to Minerva. He’d seen the glint in her eyes moments before she’d stomped Ned’s foot and had prepared himself for anything. Now his heart was about to pound right out of his chest at the thought that he might have hit her, even though Ned was the one writhing on the ground, screaming about his shoulder.
The first thing he saw when he reached her was the blood splattered all over her pretty gown. “Oh, God, Minerva!” he cried as he knelt beside her.
“I’m fine,” she said. “It’s all his, my love. It’s not mine.”
He found Ned’s knife and threw it into the woods, then shoved his other pistol into his pocket so he could clutch her to him. What would he have done if he’d lost her? He wouldn’t have survived it.
S
uddenly she stiffened and hissed, “Giles, behind you! Desmond—”
He rolled away with her in his arms, reaching for his pistol as the shovel came down a few inches from his head. Before Desmond could lift it again, Giles pointed the pistol at him. “I swear I’ll kill you,” he said, letting anger take him over. “You and that damned son of yours both.”
With an oath, Desmond lowered the shovel.
Giles rose, his pistol never wavering from the man.
Behind him, Ned groaned, “I’m dying, I tell you! You can’t let me die!”
“You’re not dying, Ned,” Giles heard Minerva say. “It looks like the bullet went clean through your shoulder. You’ll live.”
“More’s the pity,” Giles bit out.
“Now hold still and let me bind it before you lose any more blood, will you?” Minerva said.
“You can let him bleed to death for all I care,” Giles growled.
“He’s still my cousin,” she said. “And you don’t need a death on your hands. Especially when you’re about to become a K.C.”
“She’s right, Masters,” Desmond said, backing away from him. “There’s no reason to let any of this become public. You keep quiet about Ned’s bumbling, and I’ll keep quiet about your shooting him. We’ll even give you some of the treasure. How’s fifty percent, no, sixty percent of whatever gold we find?”
Now was his chance to figure out how this treasure hunt connected to the murders. Pretending to consider Desmond’s offer, Giles said, “How can you even be sure there’s any gold out here? Considering that you’ve been looking for it nearly twenty years—”
“No, I just started looking a few months ago. I mean, when Ned was seven and told me about finding some in the dirt, I did bring him out here to show me where, but he couldn’t remember where it was, save that it was by the pond.”
Giles’s eyes narrowed. “Ned actually found gold out here?” Since Ned was Gabe’s age, that would have been around the time of the murders.
“Yes!” Desmond cried. “It’s here, I tell you. I looked for it a bit myself back then, but I never found any more so I gave it up as pointless. Then after I saw that map in the museum a few months ago, I knew Ned must have stumbled across Mainwaring’s treasure.”
“That’s absurd,” Giles said. “For one thing, Mainwaring’s treasure was supposedly in jewels.”
“They’re wrong about that,” Desmond said. “Mainwaring was a buccaneer—they all took Spanish gold. And you must admit that the map looks like this estate.”
“It looks like a lot of estates.”
“It’s this one, damn it. I know it is!”
Suddenly they heard sounds of thrashing through the woods behind them. “What’s going on here?” Stoneville cried as he burst into the clearing.
“Damn it all to hell,” Desmond muttered, obviously realizing that his chance to keep the matter from being “public” had just gone up in smoke.
“Oliver!” Minerva cried. “I thought you were in town!”
Jarret rushed into the clearing, followed swiftly by Gabe. “The wives were tired, so we decided to come home. We were just heading up the drive when we heard a gunshot, and a few moments later two horses came bolting from this direction.” Jarret glanced around. “Who the devil shot Ned?”
“I did,” Giles answered. “He had a knife to Minerva’s throat.”
Stoneville lunged for the man, but Minerva held him off. “Leave him be. He’s wounded.”
“He’ll be dead by the time we get through with him,” Gabe put in.
“I wholeheartedly agree with that plan,” Giles snapped.
“None of you are going to kill him,” Minerva said. “He’s simply laboring under a gross misunderstanding.”
“What sort of misunderstanding?” Stoneville demanded.
Giles nodded at Desmond. “He and his father have some notion that there’s a fortune in Spanish gold buried hereabouts.”
As Stoneville groaned, Jarret said, “Oh, God, Ned. Tell me you’re not that stupid.”
“I saw the gold! Don’t lie and say I didn’t!” Ned cried as he struggled to a stand.
“Oh, for pity’s sake, you’re making it bleed more!” Minerva stood and leveled a hard glance on her brothers. “Could we continue this conversation elsewhere? Ned needs a doctor.”
“He needs more than that if he thinks there’s gold out here,” Jarret said.
Annoyed that his wife was looking after Ned as if he were some wounded puppy, Giles gestured to Desmond to follow them.
“What does he mean about your being stupid, Ned?” Desmond asked as they trooped back through the woods. “You said there was gold here. You gave me several pieces of it.”
“Then he stole pieces of it to give you,” Gabe snapped.
“You mean from the treasure buried here—”
“There’s no treasure buried here, Desmond,” Stoneville said with a sigh. “There never was. The Christmas before our parents died, Father gave each of us pieces of eight from some old Spanish gold he’d won in a card game.”
“I remember that!” Minerva said. “We all got ten pieces.”
“Then the Plumtrees came to visit,” Jarret said, taking up the tale, “and Ned was being such a brat to Celia that we . . . er . . . played a trick on him.”
“Good Lord,” Minerva said. “What did you three do?”
Giles had already begun figuring out what they’d done. He’d been part of too many such “tricks” that the Sharpe brothers played on their friends.
“A trick?” Ned said hoarsely. “No, I saw you get it from the ground. You said a pirate had buried the gold. I dug through the dirt with you myself!”
“We put it there, you fool!” Gabe said. “When some of it went missing afterward, Oliver was furious. He thought Jarret and I had lost it in the dirt. But you took it, didn’t you?”
“It can’t be,” Desmond said, his face deathly pale. “It was old gold, centuries old.”
“Yes,” Stoneville said. “That’s what Father won. He was in one of his extravagant moods and gave some of it to us. We can show you ours, if you want.”
“I can’t believe it,” Desmond said. “All those hours digging . . . coming out here and looking and—”
“That’s what you were doing the day Minerva’s parents died, wasn’t it?” Giles prodded. “Digging for gold.”
Everyone fell quiet as the four men surrounded Desmond.
“What happened, Desmond?” Stoneville demanded. “Did they catch you digging for it? Were you afraid they’d take the gold from you, so you shot them?”
“No!” Desmond said, true shock spreading over his face. “I had nothing to do with killing them, for God’s sake! How can you even think it?”
“It’s a stone’s throw away,” Jarret pointed out, “and we both know you were here that day. I saw you in the woods.”
“And a groom at the Black Bull swore that he cleaned blood off your stirrup that very night,” Giles added.
Desmond paled. “Oh God oh God oh God . . .”
“What happened, Desmond?” Stoneville growled. “If we prosecute Ned, he’ll hang for stealing that much gold. Not to mention his attempt on Minerva’s life. So Ned is going to the gallows if you don’t tell us the truth now. How did the blood get on your stirrup?”
“I found them dead, all right?” Desmond cried. “I found Pru and Lewis after they were shot.”
“You found them,” Jarret repeated skeptically.
“I was out here looking for the gold when I heard the shots,” Desmond babbled. “I went running to see what had happened, and I noticed that the door to the hunting lodge was ajar. So I . . . went in and saw the blood and fled.”
“A likely tale,” Gabe snapped.
“If I’d shot them for catching me digging, don’t you think I would have shot them in the woods?” Desmond cried. “Why would I have done it over there in the hunting lodge?”
He had a point. And Giles had always thought it rather
far-fetched that a milksop like Desmond would have committed cold-blooded murder.
“Besides,” Desmond went on, “at that point I wasn’t even sure there was any gold. All I had was my seven-year-old son’s tales of it, and no evidence beyond what he’d claimed to have found. I certainly wouldn’t have been mad enough to shoot someone over that.” He glanced around at his cousins’ murderous expressions, and cried, “I swear it! I had nothing to do with it!”
“Did you see who did shoot them?” Stoneville asked.
Desmond shook his head.
Giles brandished the gun at him. “You’re lying.” He’d spent too many years sifting lies from truth in people’s tales not to recognize a lie when he heard one. “Who did you see?”
Desmond’s gaze dropped to the pistol. “I swear, all I saw was someone on a horse.”
“Describe who you saw,” Giles prodded.
“I . . . I . . . can’t be sure . . . it was dusk . . .”
“If you want me to keep your son from hanging, Desmond . . .” Giles began.
“Whoever it was wore a cloak!” he said, his voice desperate. “I-I couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman.”
“Describe the cloak then,” Giles demanded.
“I-it was black and had a hood. Or perhaps dark blue. I’m not sure. It was getting too dark to see by that time.”
“And the horse?” Giles asked.
Desmond glanced around at the four men. “A black Arabian with a blaze face. And one white stocking on the left hind leg.”
Stoneville glared at him. “All these years, and you never told anyone about this. We could have been looking for their murderer, for God’s sake!”
“No!” Desmond protested. “You don’t understand. The one I saw on the horse was riding toward the lodge.”
That stymied them all. “Toward?” Giles asked.
“Yes. I was in the drawing room when I heard a horse approaching. I looked out the window and saw the rider heading toward the lodge. So I went out the back and got right out of there. Didn’t want whoever was coming to think I’d killed them, you see.”
“Could it have been you, Oliver?” Jarret asked. “You were the one to find them.”
How to Woo a Reluctant Lady Page 29