Scoundrel's Daughter

by Margo Maguire

  She knew Jack had asked the villager about the priest and the abbess only to divert attention from his real interest, the lay brother who had passed through on his way home from the Holy Land. It was only a matter of time before Jack understood the clue of the nursery rhyme. He would head toward the last site on the map, and there was a very good chance he would find the home where the Mandylion had been hidden.

  Dorothea had to get there first.

  She undressed and slipped on her nightgown. It was late enough to go to bed, but Dorrie did not think she’d be able to fall asleep until Jack returned. Besides, the bed was lumpy.

  After blowing out the lamp, Dorothea lay down and closed her eyes, but the voices from the tavern traveled upstairs. She tossed and turned awhile, but finally gave up and lit the lamp again.

  Then she heard a sound coming from Jack’s room.

  A heavy scraping sound was accompanied by a thud against the wall. Instantly, she realized Jack had returned without stopping in her room first. She threw off the blanket and slid out of bed. Pulling a shawl from her bag, Dorothea wrapped it around her shoulders and went to the door. She dared to open it only a crack, to peer out into the hall.

  No one was there.

  As anxious as she was to find out what he’d learned, she crept out of her room and slipped down the hall to Jack’s door. Glancing quickly in both directions, Dorothea tapped on the door.

  It was yanked open by a brown giant, who grabbed her by the fabric gathered at her chest and pulled her into the room, clamping a hand over her mouth before she had a chance to cry out.

  Her heart fluttered wildly in her chest as the man pinned her to the wall and spoke. “Where the map be?” he demanded with a kind of accent Dorothea had never heard before.

  She tried to speak but could not. Then she attempted to move her head, but he held her fast. How did he expect her to answer him?

  “You be Bright’s daughter.”

  She was finally able to nod.

  “I come from Bright,” he said. “To get map. You tell me where.”

  She nodded again, and he loosened his grip.

  “I don’t h-have it,” she said.

  “Temple.”

  “No!” she cried, then said more calmly, “No. Temple put it away for safekeeping. He didn’t want—”

  “You be lying, woman!”

  “No, I’m not!” she replied indignantly. How dare he assume she was being untruthful, even if she was. She was not about to turn the map and key over to this overgrown buffoon without verifying that he was truly her father’s man. Besides, she doubted Alastair would hire such a ruffian. “Where is my father?”

  “Not far,” he said. “He will contact you.”

  A moment later, the man was out of the window and gone.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “That was all he said? That the lay brother was some kind of Yorkish gentry?” Dorrie asked.

  Jack handed her into the carriage and pulled himself up beside her. The hours he’d spent in the tavern had been essentially wasted. He knew only a fraction more than he’d known before, and what he’d learned was hardly useful information.

  “What about the priest’s story? Was there anything to that?”

  The tale of Saint John’s priest and the Holywake abbess was indelicate, to say the least, and he didn’t want to impart it to her now. Or ever.

  “Jack!”

  He took the eastern road out of the village. The third Templar head on the map lay in that direction, so that was where he had to go. Jack figured there would be more than enough castle ruins for him to examine, once they got closer to the coast, and he had to determine how he was going to proceed with his search for the Mandylion.

  “Jack!”

  He wished Gauge O’Neill were here. The man had a knack for unearthing useful information from unusual sources. That wasn’t to say that Jack couldn’t get the same information, but it always took him a lot longer. He wondered if he could excavate without drawing attention— “Ouch!”

  “You are ignoring me, Jack,” Dorrie said sweetly after pinching him.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Tell me what you heard last night,” she said. “You didn’t tell me anything when you got back.”

  Because he could hardly speak when he’d seen her standing there in her nightclothes, the same gown he’d nearly removed from her delectable body when they’d stayed near Rievaulx. His fingers had itched to touch her, his blood had burned with his need to hold her, to make her his own.

  But instead of taking her in his arms, he’d forced himself to turn and leave her. He spent the night without her, just as he had at the Boar’s Head Inn. Wanting her. Wishing she were anyone but Bright’s daughter.

  “There was nothing of use to us,” he said.

  “Well, can’t you at least tell me what happened with the priest and the abbess,” Dorrie countered.

  He supposed he could tell her the story without embellishing it the way he’d heard it.

  “The abbess had a child,” he said. “The priest died. That’s it.”

  She turned in her seat and grabbed his arm. “What do you mean, ‘that’s it’? It must have been terrible for them. Can you imagine?”

  “I’m sure it was terrible,” Jack replied. “The child was a girl, and she was raised in the convent. Became a nun. Her mother, ah, was banished.”

  Dorrie frowned. She did not let go of Jack’s arm but shifted her body closer to him, sending a shock of heat through him. “That is so sad.”

  Jack swallowed.

  “I wonder where she ended up,” Dorrie said. “The abbess.”

  “They didn’t say,” Jack remarked. He was glad that Dorrie still had a grip on his upper arm, or he’d have been tempted to wrap it around her shoulders and pull her even closer. And that was something he had to avoid.

  The truth of the matter was that he was going to take the Mandylion from her. He was going to see to it that her father was exposed as the criminal he was. And when all was said and done, Dorothea Bright would hate him.

  He was not going to have her seduction on his conscience, too.

  Jack would never have thought it possible, but he liked Dorrie Bright, in spite of the fact that she was Alastair’s daughter.

  Hell, he more than liked her. She had more spunk and spirit than any three women he knew, and he had yet to spend a dull moment with her. But their differences were vital. She was the daughter of a scoundrel, a man who thought nothing of desecrating ancient excavation sites, of stealing important timeless artifacts meant for posterity.

  Jack’s principles were too firmly ingrained for him to ignore all that.

  If Dorothea had worried that Jack would discover why she was preoccupied this morning, it had been needless. It seemed he had his own worries.

  She had attempted to keep him distracted with her questions about the Holywake abbess, but he was not going to share any more than he had already. Instead, they rode in silence, while Dorrie pondered the meaning of her late visit by the brown giant.

  Not that he had visited her. When she thought about it, she realized that the man had been searching Jack’s room for the map and key. She supposed her room would have been searched next when the man didn’t find what he was looking for.

  Dorothea shuddered at the thought of that hulking man coming through her window as she undressed. Her encounter with him in Jack’s room had been terrifying enough, and she had been adequately covered in her gown and shawl. She did not care to meet with him again, under any circumstances.

  She took frequent furtive glances behind the carriage, wondering how her father had found her, and how he planned to meet with her. She was hardly ever apart from Jack. Surely Alastair did not intend to confront Jack. If he did, he’d have shown up himself at the tavern last night or on the road.

  Dorothea clutched her fist to her chest, as if she could slow her beleaguered heart, and worried that that was exactly what her father had in mind. With the big chap
to force the issue, Alastair could take the map from Jack and—

  “Are you all right?” Jack asked.

  “Yes, of course,” Dorothea replied. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  He turned his eyes back to the road.

  Dorothea could not bear it if anything happened to Jack. He might be an American, and he definitely had some raw edges, but she had grown fond of him. He had taken care of her for days, seen to her needs, risked his life for her safety…He’d been more than kind, even if he was singularly responsible for every unpleasant situation from which he’d had to rescue her.

  Still, she knew that in years to come, she would remember this adventure warmly. When she thought of Jack…

  Dorothea could not place Jack in the past tense. She could not imagine a day without bantering with him, arguing with him, loving him.

  Her breath caught in her throat. What a ridiculous notion. To fall in love with someone in a week’s time? It was not possible. They’d spent a great deal of time together, that was all. And he’d been kind when it had not been strictly necessary. He’d given her bluebells.

  When the memory of his kisses came to mind, Dorothea did not know what to think. Her mother had always admonished her to remain chaste. The touch of Albert’s lips on the back of her hand had been acceptable but nothing more. Dorothea had not even been allowed to ride alone in a carriage with him.

  Her mother would be appalled at her recent behavior. Bluebells would not have impressed her.

  “You keep pressing your hand to your, uh, bosom that way,” Jack said, “and I’m going to start thinking you intend to draw my attention to it.”

  “Why, of all the—”

  “But that crease in your forehead tells me I’d better keep my eyes on the path and my thoughts on the Mandylion.”

  The Mandylion. The only reason they were together.

  “When we find it—”

  “We’ll take it to the museum in London,” he said. “Archibald Crowe is the curator of antiquities there, and he knows what he’s doing. He’ll see that the cloth is sent to the proper experts to be authenticated. Studied.”

  And Jack will not be paid for his trouble, Dorothea thought. The museum will not pay him for the cloth, though perhaps he might receive a stipend for his effort.

  “You are going to a great deal of expense just to take your revenge on my father,” she said, prying although she did not want to appear to be doing so.

  He shrugged. “It’s only half of what I’d like to do to him.”

  “You are certain it was my father who stole the fertility god from the tribe?”

  “Without a doubt,” he said almost carelessly. His sparkling blue eyes engaged her, and though he was in good humor, he seemed ready to argue about Alastair.

  But Dorothea was distracted. She wished Jack would pay more attention to his surroundings. The man who’d climbed into his room at the inn could be lurking in the trees beside the path, on horseback perhaps, just waiting to overtake them and force Jack to give him the map.

  And Dorothea knew Jack would not back down from a fight, even if their assailant was double his size.

  “And when the tribe realized one of us had taken it, all hell broke loose.”

  “Um. So you said,” Dorothea commented absently.

  “Dorrie, it’s obvious that you aren’t ever going to believe me, and I guess there’s no reason that you should. Alastair’s got you convinced that he’s a reputable dealer, and your loyalty to him is admirable,” he said. “But misguided.”

  She did not believe that for a second. There had to have been some misunderstanding in Africa. Her mother would not have spoken so highly of Alastair had he been the sort of man Jack alleged. Her father was a reputable explorer—and a collector, she had to admit—but she’d seen no evidence that he was a fraud.

  In fact, if anyone’s methods were questionable, they were Jack’s. He’d broken into her father’s house and stolen the map and even come back later to search for the key. If anyone was a charlatan….

  “What’s got you so jumpy today?” Jack asked.

  “That place,” she said without hesitation. “The inn. It was as unsavory an establishment as it could be.”

  “But it was either that or a night under the stars,” Jack replied. “And I didn’t think you’d want to sleep in the carriage.”

  “You are entirely correct,” she said.

  “We’ll find a better place tonight.”

  “One can only hope,” Dorothea replied.

  “As I recall, there are numerous little villages between here and the coast.”

  Dorothea shrugged. She was unfamiliar with this part of the country. She didn’t know Oxfordshire well, either, due to the restrictions her mother had placed on her activities.

  “Quite a few castle ruins, too.”

  Oh dear. Dorothea wondered if Jack intended to search every one of them. She was certain the Mandylion, if it actually existed, would be found somewhere near the sea. It was a waste of time to explore every ruin between here and the coast. “Do you have the map?” she asked. “The modern one?”

  He gave it to her, and she opened it, hoping to get an idea of where the castle and head were drawn. If she was not mistaken, the castle they sought would be overlooking the sea, halfway between the Humber River and Flamborough Head. It could be near a town, or not…the medieval map was not very specific, and things had probably changed in five hundred years.

  “Any idea where to start?” Jack asked.

  Dorothea raised her eyebrows and shrugged. “It’s all the same to me,” she finally said.

  A stone tower was all that was left of the first castle ruins. There was no town or village nearby—no one around whom they could question about the history of the place. Jack and Dorrie wandered around the site for a while, and Jack jotted a few notes and made some drawings in a tablet, even though he didn’t believe this was the site where the Mandylion was hidden.

  Since he had little else to go on, he had to rely upon his instincts. Nothing that was written on the map or in the key led him to believe the Mandylion would be hidden in one of these inland estates.

  At the ruins of the fourth castle, Jack watched Dorothea sit down on a broken stone wall. Her arms were braced on the wall behind her, and she leaned back to hold her face toward the sun. Her hat lay on the wall beside her, so his view was unobstructed.

  Purposely, he walked away from her. He enjoyed looking at her far too much for his peace of mind.

  Many of the walls of this castle were intact, and Jack examined the stonework of the fireplace in what would have been the great hall. He walked the length of the hall and stepped outside, wondering who had lived here so long ago. Was it the man who had made the map?

  He’d been so sure that the cloth had been hidden in a church or some other consecrated place. Why not Rievaulx or Holywake? Those seemed to be the most likely connections to the Mandylion, yet he didn’t think it was hidden in either place.

  He glanced at Dorrie, sitting so patiently, waiting for Jack to finish his examination of the site. She had not seemed anxious to walk these grounds. It was almost as if she, too, were certain the cloth was not hidden here and was just biding her time.

  Gritting his teeth against a growing suspicion, Jack continued walking around the periphery. They had seen the same clues. There was nothing in the words—

  Unless she’d fabricated the Arabic lines of the poem. Jack supposed that was possible, although he could pick out a few words himself. And the way she had translated was in line with what he saw.

  What other clues were there? The markings on the map were geographically questionable. Rievaulx was shown in the correct general location, but it certainly was not exact. Nor was the face that seemed to indicate Holywake Abbey.

  It suddenly seemed as if the simple, straightforward search for the Mandylion was becoming more complicated by the hour. With every castle site they explored, Jack’s pessimism grew. He didn’t know why he’d t
hought he could find the Mandylion without his men.

  This was going to require a lot more investigation, inquiries and actual digging than he had been prepared to do. In fact, when he’d stormed into Bright’s house the week before, he’d only planned on throttling the man. The idea of taking the Mandylion from him had been a direct result of Bright’s absence.

  If he couldn’t do any physical damage to the man, he was going to go for the next most important thing: the cloth Alastair had bragged about while they were in Africa.

  Jack jabbed his fingers through his hair. He was going to have to wire his men in London, and have them meet him here in York, with all their equipment. If O’Neill was better, he could probably put a proposal together and go to Crowe for financing. Obviously, the British Museum would love to have the Mandylion in its collection and would want to fund a legitimate expedition. Jack had the credentials needed for such a purpose and had worked with Crowe before.

  He circled around the outer wall as he thought through his future course of action and came upon Dorrie, lying on her back in the sun. The sight of her hit him like a punch in his midsection.

  She was on the same stone wall, her eyes were closed, and she appeared to be asleep. Her arms were outstretched beside her, hands on the ground, palm up. One leg was bent at the knee and the position would have been indecent but for the bright burst of petticoats around her legs.

  Jack had the most compelling urge to sneak up to her and slide his hands up the length of her legs through that feminine froth of petticoats. She would be shocked, but he would turn her protests into acquiescence with his kiss. He wanted to taste her, more than he wanted to take his next breath.

  Somehow, he’d managed to keep his lust at bay for the last two days, but seeing her now….

  He balled his hands into fists and forced himself to look away. There were so many other things that should occupy his mind—he had plans to make. A wire to send. Supplies to procure. He should not be thinking of all that smooth, white skin hidden under so many layers of clothes.