“A most thrilling morning, don’t you agree, Ginny?” she said as she joined them. Ginny was very pretty in pale rose muslin and sarcenet and a delightful cap pinned slantways on her head. The ensemble was one of the gowns Lily had offered in the hope of tempting Ginny into remaking it for herself. Though impractical for an outing, did it matter when she looked so lovely? She put her arm through Ginny’s. “It’s unlikely we’ll find anything the first day out, but we might. We just might.”
“What do you think, Nigel?” Ginny asked. “Will we have good luck and find treasure straightaway?”
Lord Nigel took off his hat and bowed. “The first day?” He smiled a bit too heartily. Lily narrowed her eyes at him. “I don’t see why we won’t find something.”
“We mustn’t forget Lily’s Gypsy magic,” Ginny said. “That’s bound to help us.”
Lily pressed Ginny’s arm. “Magic or no, we shall stand firm and not give up even if we are disappointed today. I’m sure we’ll have work for the better part of a month before we’ve excavated whatever building is there.”
“Of course.” Ginny patted Lily’s arm just as a groom brought the carriage around. “We stand firm.”
Thank goodness there would be plenty of food and drink to sustain them through the afternoon. She had no worries about Ginny’s fortitude, but she did not expect Lord Nigel to have her enthusiasm nor to withstand the inevitable tedium of an endeavor such as this.
“You ought to make a good luck wish on your medallion before we go,” Ginny said.
“Excellent notion, my dear.” Standing beside the carriage, she held her medallion, closed her eyes and counted to three, throwing in a hasty wish for good fortune and lots of treasure—no harm in that—and then opened her eyes. How odd that the metal was warm against her fingers. Had she been in the sun long enough to heat the gold? “There. All done. Shall we go?”
She accepted Lord Nigel’s hand up into the carriage. “Come, Ginny.” She patted the seat. When Ginny was seated, Lily held up her medallion. “You ought to wish for good fortune as well.”
“Do you think it will work?”
How wonderful to see Ginny smile. “It can’t hurt.”
“Is there a best form?”
She rubbed the medallion between her fingers. “I think it’s sufficient if you close your eyes and wish wholeheartedly, but whatever you feel is efficacious would be much appreciated.”
Lord Nigel, now perched in the driver’s box, snorted. Ginny stuck out her tongue at her brother’s back. Then she closed her eyes, medallion in her hands. “There,” she said. “I’ve wished for us to find a treasure trove.”
From the driver’s box, Lord Nigel snorted again.
“You ought to wish for good fortune as well, Lord Nigel.”
“I do,” he said. “I do.”
“Well. That’s that then.” She leaned back. Lord Nigel snapped the reins and they were off. He was perfectly put together. It was a pity, really, that she did not like blond men and that he was, in any event, far too young for her. She did admire the cut of his driving coat. If only Mountjoy had a coat that fit his marvelous form as perfectly as Lord Nigel’s coat fit him. Of course, very shortly, he would.
When the day came that Mountjoy dressed in clothes worthy of his physique, no woman would be able to resist him. To be fair, she doubted many women resisted him now. There were times when his eyes positively smoldered. What woman could deny a man who gazed at her with such open passion?
As they drove, Lily kept her map spread over her lap, studying her sketch. She didn’t believe for a moment they would find any artifacts, not the first day, but she saw no reason not to apply her intellect to the matter of exposing a building, whether it once housed Roman Legionnaires, medieval serfs, or a family of Angles or Jutes.
She set aside her study of the map when Ginny said, “I’ve been thinking, Lily, about what we should serve for our spring fete.”
“Have you?”
“Yes. I’ve been wondering about a menu.”
Lily took out her notebook and pencil and found a blank page. “What do you think?”
“We ought to have pheasant.”
“Yes, I think we should.”
“I’ll ask the cook if any is laid by.”
As best she could given they were driving the carriage over a road rutted from the season’s late rain, Lily made a note about the pheasant. “Duck, too, don’t you agree?”
“Jane says to ask her father if we haven’t any. He hunts every season, and she says there’s always an abundance.”
She noted that, too. She wondered when Mountjoy would offer for Miss Kirk. Not until after she left Bitterward, she hoped. She and Mountjoy had no future beyond her stay here, yet the thought of his eventual marriage felt bittersweet to her. Her preference would be to read of the engagement in a letter from Eugenia, not witness it personally. “Duck Mr. Kirk.”
“Cakes, too,” Ginny said. “And other sweets from the confectioner’s in High Tearing.”
“Oh, certainly. We ought to meet with the cook tomorrow. To plan a menu.” She made a note of that, too.
Ginny sat sideways on the seat, a smile on her face, and Lily was strongly reminded of the woman who had become her friend in Exeter, before the heartbreaking loss of her husband. “We should have music and dancing for the young people, don’t you agree?”
“Heavens, yes. We must have dancing for everyone who wishes to. Including you, my dear.”
“If you will, I will. If anyone asks, that is.”
“You may be assured of that.”
“I haven’t danced for ages and ages, Lily. I’m not sure I remember how.”
“Everything will come back to you as soon as you hear the music.” Lily waited for the carriage to pass over another rut before she made that note. “Is there a local orchestra you can recommend or should we send to Sheffield?”
“We’ve a very good one here.” Ginny leaned in and pointed at Lily’s notebook. “Put down that I’ll hire them.”
And so it went until Lord Nigel slowed the horses and looked over his shoulder at them. “We’re here. The awning isn’t up yet so now’s the time to say something if this isn’t the spot you meant, Miss Wellstone.”
She looked around. They were on the northeast corner of the property at the rock-strewn meadow she and Ginny had felt was the most promising. The field was no more than a thirty-minute walk from the ruins of the Norman church and within sight of the river Tear. A likely place, as she’d thought from the very first, for a fortress.
“Yes,” she said. “This is the place.”
Lord Nigel put on the brake and secured the reins before getting down to assist his sister and then her. Interesting, she thought, that the degree of Lord Nigel’s attentions to her could be predicted by whether his brother was present. In the former case, she could count on Lord Nigel flirting a little too much. But without Mountjoy? He was merely a very polite young man.
By the time they’d crossed the meadow, the servants had put up the awning and were arranging table and chairs underneath. Farther away, the rest of the men were unloading the shovels and other excavation implements.
Lily put up her parasol and walked smartly to the spot she thought was the place to begin. Lord Nigel and Ginny came along. The ground was strewn with rocks, most smaller than her fist, though a few were larger. She strongly suspected and hoped to confirm that the rocks were all that was left of a Roman garrison. Larger stones that would have once formed the walls had likely been long ago scavenged for fences or homes elsewhere. Like Lily, Ginny held a parasol over her head to ward off the sun. The day was really quite warm. Lord Nigel’s hat did not provide him sufficient shade. He’d be brown as toast before long.
“See there?” She pointed for Lord Nigel’s benefit as he had not been present when she and Ginny first examined the site. “Those impressions in the ground along there and there? They are too straight to be natural and surely mark the location of an ancient structur
e. Ginny and I noticed that the first time we came here.”
“You think it might be Roman?” Lord Nigel said, a bit too jovially.
She gave him a sideways look. “Perhaps.”
“Or Viking,” Ginny said. “Or Norman. Or whoever was here before that.”
Lord Nigel suppressed a grin. “Or after.”
“Given the Roman artifacts so often found around here,” Lily said, “I have high hopes this was the site of a garrison.” She squinted to narrow her field of focus to the outline of the foundation. On which side should they begin?
“Cromwell might have done that,” Lord Nigel said. “Leveled a building. He was mucking about here with his cannons. Or it might have been our great-great-granduncle—or was he a cousin several times removed?—the first duke. Any one of the ancestors who preceded Mountjoy, actually.”
Lily, who didn’t want to dampen anyone’s spirits, continued her study of the foundation lines. She pointed at another series of furrows barely visible in the grass. “Could there have been two buildings here?”
The footmen with their shovels, picks, and spades had reached them and were now awaiting instructions. “Do you mean for us to dig here, miss?” the eldest of them asked. He wasn’t more than twenty-five and looked a strapping man. He nodded at Lord Nigel. “Perhaps we ought to dig by the river. That’s a likelier spot than this one, I say.”
Lord Nigel, it seemed to her, made a particular point of looking away from the fellow. And now she rather thought Lord Nigel and the footman were both trying to hide a smirk.
“Is it?” she said. The ground by the river hadn’t even the faintest sign of human habitation. Flooding over the years would have washed away any structure built so foolishly near the water.
“Yes, Miss Wellstone. It is.”
She didn’t like the way the eldest servant looked at Lord Nigel, nor Lord Nigel’s overly hearty tone of voice.
Something was afoot, and she meant to discover what it was.
Chapter Twenty
LILY THOROUGHLY STUDIED THE THREE FOOTMEN Mountjoy had been kind enough to allow on this adventure. The eldest was Walter, she learned. A smile continued to twitch at the corners of Walter’s mouth. Lord Nigel had interfered in some way. She was sure the two of them were partners in some plot.
“You recommend we start near the river?” she asked the young man. She smiled at him quite deliberately. He goggled, but only for a moment because another of the footmen poked him in the back.
“Aye.”
“May I ask why?”
“Heard tales about it when I was a lad.” Walter nodded as if that were of vital importance. As if, perhaps, he’d rehearsed the words. “Romansford, it was called. Isn’t that so, boys?”
Romansford. Oh, for pity’s sake. The two hadn’t even bothered to come up with a believable name. “Is that so?” Lily asked dryly.
“It was?” Ginny asked. “How odd. I don’t think I ever—”
“Eugenia.” Lord Nigel, standing a bit behind his sister, grabbed her by the shoulders and leaned on her in a hearty manner. “Romansford. Everybody calls it that. How could you fail to remember that? Mountjoy and I were out here the Easter after we moved to Bitterward, and we found an entire cache of coins along the banks. I remember it as if it were yesterday.”
Ginny shook her head, craning her neck to look at him. “I don’t recall that.”
“Aye, milady.” Walter nodded with enthusiasm. “I found a wee coin there once.” He nudged one of his companions. “Didn’t I?”
“You did, Walter,” the young man said.
“Mountjoy still has them, Eugenia. Ask him if you don’t believe me.”
“I don’t think you found any coins at all,” Ginny said, one hand on her hip.
“Did too.”
“In fact, I’ll wager anything you like that you can’t produce a single one of them,” Ginny said.
Lily slowly turned her parasol in a circle over her head. She was highly tempted to close it and give Lord Nigel a sharp rap over his head. “Can you, Lord Nigel?”
“I don’t know precisely where they are. Somewhere in the house.”
“Nigel.” Ginny shook her head.
Lord Nigel put his hands in his coat pockets and looked sheepish. He cleared his throat. “Just because I don’t know where they are now doesn’t mean we didn’t find them.”
Ginny rolled her eyes.
“Do you remember the winter I built a model trebuchet? The year before you were married.” He held his hands about two feet apart. “About that big.”
“Yes,” Ginny said, looking at him with her arms crossed over her chest.
“I tested it.”
“Mountjoy told you not to. He said you’d break a window if you did.”
Lord Nigel drew himself up. “That’s why I used the coins instead of pebbles. I shot most of them off the west tower roof.”
“What about the rest?”
“Into the lake.”
“Does Mountjoy know?”
“Good God, no, Eugenia. He’d have skinned me alive if he’d found out.”
“Allow me to understand,” Ginny said. “By your own admission, my dear little brother, the coins you claim you found, if ever they existed, are stuck in the gutters at Bitterward or sunk to the bottom of the lake.”
“Yes.”
“Do you really expect us to believe any of that?”
“Yes.”
“Rubbish, Nigel.”
“It’s not.”
Ginny snorted. “If you’ve interfered with our adventure, Nigel, Lily and I are going to be peeved with you. Very peeved.”
He lifted his hands in protest. “This is the thanks I get for trying to help?”
“Thank you, Lord Nigel,” Lily said in a firm voice. “That is indeed helpful information. Very kind of you to share, and so important to the cause.” She rested the handle of her parasol on her shoulder and braced it underneath her forearm so as to have both hands free to hold her map and consult the sketches and notes she’d made. “That clump of rocks is intriguing, don’t you think?” She pointed away from the river. “Perhaps the threshold of the garrison building.”
“The riverside, miss,” Walter said. Again, too heartily. “You’ll want the river. It’s the best spot.”
“Shall we toss a coin?” Lord Nigel reached into a pocket and came out with a coin, which he flipped into the air and caught on the back of his hand. “Heads it’s the river, tails, your meadow of rocks there.”
Ginny scanned the meadow as Lily had done. “I think Lily’s medallion ought to determine where we start.”
“Brilliant idea,” Lily said. One never did want to accuse one’s host of cheating, but she was convinced, among other things, that Lord Nigel Hampton had rigged his toss of the coin. Or else so thoroughly seeded the area with “treasure” that her project was hopelessly compromised. “You are clever beyond words, my dear Ginny.”
Lord Nigel lifted his hand, but tilted it so she couldn’t see the coin. “Heads.” He glanced at her. “Right then. The river it is.”
While Lord Nigel was still looking at her, she clapped a hand to her chest and stared to her right. “Good Lord!” She added a hint of alarm to her words. “What on earth is that?”
Lord Nigel looked.
She snatched the coin off his hand, placing a finger over the side that had been facing up. “Just as I thought.” She sniffed and handed back the coin. “Tails, sir. Not heads.”
Lord Nigel had the grace to look abashed, but in the end, he shrugged. “Does it matter?” He pointed. “The ground is softer by the river. Why make these poor fellows dig among the rocks when the day promises to be so warm?”
“Do you find it warm?” she asked. “I do not. It’s rather cool out in my opinion.”
“Romansford it is,” Walter said. He pushed off on his shovel, ready to go. The other two propped their shovels and picks on their shoulders and prepared to follow him to the river.
“I d
o not care for luck that is no luck at all,” Lily said with a meaningful look at Lord Nigel. “Ginny’s idea appeals to me.” She smiled. “Let’s have my medallion choose.”
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