Taking the Earl (Heiress Games Book 3)

by Sara Ramsey

  Lucy had dismissed Callista as a threat, at least when it came to knowledge. Tiberius had hated the rest of the family — Lucy doubted he would have spent much time telling Callie what her bloodlines were.

  But Octavia’s comment reminded Lucy of something she’d forgotten — something she felt stupid for not remembering before now. The original Briarley Family Bible listed the family’s earliest marriages, births, and deaths. And it had disappeared when Tiberius had run away from Maidenstone.

  If he had destroyed it, or if Callie had left the Bible in Baltimore, it wouldn’t cause any problems for Max’s claim. But if Callie had brought it back with her, it might ruin everything.

  Lucy could still marry Max even if the Bible proved that he wasn’t the Maidenstone heir. But it wouldn’t make sense to do so unless she was guaranteed to win Maidenstone with him.

  There was also the little matter of whether he actually wanted to marry her. But that problem wasn’t as immediate as the issue of the Bible.

  It also wasn’t as immediate as the issue of Octavia’s desire to “help” Lucy. Lucy took another sip of wine. “I have the situation under control. And anyway, it will take a few more days before Ferguson’s messenger comes back from London with more news about Mr. Vale’s claim. If you want to return to Exeter and wait for your marriage license, I can send word when we know more.”

  Octavia shook her head, but whatever she might have said was lost when Max strolled up.

  “Does the next ritual involve throwing wineglasses into the fire?” he asked.

  Some of her tension melted away. His voice didn’t betray any sign of anger — if he was still upset with how she had hinted at his claim to the earldom in front of the guests, he didn’t indicate it.

  And she was glad to see him. More glad to see him than she’d been to see Octavia, and she had missed Octavia for years.

  “I wish I could throw a wineglass,” she said. “Instead, I must present you to my cousin Octavia and her….”

  She gestured at Rafe. “Fiancé,” Rafe supplied.

  “Fiancé,” Lucy repeated. “Octavia, Lord Rafael, this is Maximus Vale.”

  “Your reputation precedes you,” Max said. He looked down his nose at them as though he was already an earl. “Miss Briarley, do you want me to escort you away so you don’t have to associate with them?”

  Lucy laughed a little, one of those surprised, horrified sounds that had no mirth in it whatsoever. She was pretty sure that Octavia hissed.

  But then Max winked at Lucy. “Seems as good a reason as any to pry you away and have you to myself. I beg your pardon for using you like that,” he said to Octavia and Rafe. “But will you excuse us?”

  They both nodded, but their eyes were narrowed — Max hadn’t done himself any favors with them. “Lucy, I’ll want to hear everything in the morning,” Octavia said.

  Lucy nodded. “We’ll talk tomorrow,” she promised.

  She took Max’s arm. Suddenly, despite all the emotions, and all the wine, and all the conversations they were avoiding with each other, she felt safe.

  He patted her hand as he led her away from Octavia and Rafe. “I hope I wasn’t too peremptory by taking you away, but I guessed you might want to be rescued.”

  “Why would you think that?” she asked.

  “Your feelings about Octavia are obvious. I’m sure you love her — but I’m equally sure that you already had enough emotions to contend with tonight without having to deal with her as well.”

  It seemed impossible that he could know her so well after such a short period of time. But he was exactly right.

  Perhaps she was making a mistake with him. If she was, it wasn’t the same mistake she’d made with Chapman. Max might break her heart in the end — but it wouldn’t be because he didn’t care about her.

  “I thank you for the rescue,” she said. “You’re right — I wasn’t entirely happy to see Octavia. But she’s not my biggest concern at the moment.”

  His steps slowed. “If you want to discuss our arrangement again….”

  “Not now,” she said, cutting him off. “There won’t be an arrangement if someone proves that you’re not the heir. Let’s stay focused on that for now?”

  He looked down at her, seeming skeptical. “You just laid flowers on your grandfather’s grave, you had to handle Octavia, and you were disappointed that I didn’t agree to make a public declaration — and yet your main concern is proving my claim?”

  Lucy laughed. “Yes, hard as it is to believe. All the rest of that can wait, but there’s one thing we must do tonight.”

  “Do I want to know what that is?” he asked.

  “Only if you’re willing to help me break into someone’s room.”

  He came to a sudden stop. “Why would you ask me to do that?”

  His voice sounded offended — almost dangerous. She squeezed his arm. “I know you’re probably too law-abiding for such an activity. But if you’re going to be a Briarley, you’ll have to become accustomed to bending the rules when it suits you.”

  His laugh sounded pained. “I think I’ll be able to manage that. Whose room do you want to break into?”

  “Callie’s,” she said. “Octavia reminded me that she might have the Briarley Bible. And tonight may be our only chance to find it.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  After searching Callie’s room for an hour, Max was ready to admit defeat.

  “Are you sure she has the Bible?” he asked.

  Lucy shoved her hair away from her face. It looked a little wild after the evening’s festivities and he tried not to think of how she would look if she indulged in even more wildness. He was tempted to try to convince her to misbehave.

  But her attention was entirely focused on the room, and on all the trunks and hatboxes they’d searched so carefully. Luckily, Callie’s door had been unlocked — Max hadn’t had to decide whether he would show Lucy his lockpicking skills. But Callie’s maid had packed everything for her eventual move to Thorington’s house, which made their job more difficult. It was harder to dig through a deep trunk without disturbing it than it was to look through drawers and shelves.

  “I’m not sure,” Lucy finally admitted. “But Grandfather knew Tiberius stole the Bible before he left England. With the war, I assumed Callie would have brought everything of value from America in case she wasn’t able to return.”

  “Well, it’s not here,” Max said. “Unless there’s a hidden vault in the wall of this room?”

  Lucy looked at the trunks again. “You didn’t see any jewels in her trunks, did you?”

  He shook his head. “The only item of interest I saw was a flask of cognac. You Briarley women are more rebellious than I would have guessed.”

  “Callie and Octavia are the rebellious ones, not me,” she said. “I’ve had my adventure already.”

  Her gaze was still on the trunks. Her voice said she was only half-thinking of what she was saying. He wondered what her adventure had been — and why she would choose not to have any more, especially given that she seemed to have been born into the only family in England that encouraged its daughters to get into as much trouble as its sons.

  But, as he’d reminded himself so many times already, Lucy’s past and future were of no concern to him.

  “Why did you ask about jewels?” he asked, changing the subject back to something that was definitely of concern to him.

  She tapped one of the trunks with her foot. “I know she brought jewels with her. She asked Claxton to store a case in the strongroom for safekeeping. Maybe the Bible is there as well?”

  Max felt a little flash of heat — the same feeling he always got when a picked lock finally opened. “The strongroom?”

  “We might as well look there,” she said. “Unless you’d rather go to bed? The servants say you get an early start most mornings to ride with your groom.”

  She said it as though it was entirely natural to admit that her servants tracked his whereabouts. The knowledg
e made him uneasy — had any of them noticed how much he talked to Titus while they were riding?

  But any concern over that threat was easily forgotten. She’d just invited him to Maidenstone’s strongroom.

  If he weren’t so good at controlling himself, he might have done a little dance.

  “It is late,” he said. “But if you think Callie and Thorington will return tomorrow, we must find the Bible tonight. I won’t let an earldom slip through my fingers because I wanted sleep.”

  “So you still intend to claim the title?” she asked, giving him a sidelong glance. “I wasn’t sure after your reaction to decorating the mausoleum.”

  For once, her forthrightness annoyed him. Most others would have avoided their real question in favor of keeping the peace — and Lucy’s questions weren’t ones he wanted to answer.

  “I know we owe each other a conversation about what happened tonight. But I thought we agreed to have it after we find the Bible?”

  She gave him another sidelong glance. He almost thought she rolled her eyes. “You’d test a saint’s patience,” she muttered.

  She started blowing out the candles they’d lit for their search. As smoke wafted around them, he laughed. “Are you saying you’re a saint?”

  Lucy glanced up as she blew out another candle. “Briarleys aren’t saints. Even the ones who don’t have adventures.”

  Something was bothering her tonight — something beyond the usual question of what his intentions were. He’d seen the look on her face when Octavia had arrived, and he’d noted her quick move to retrieve her wineglass from Claxton. He’d been watching her, off and on, throughout the night. He was glad he caught that moment, although it had taken him a few minutes to reach her through the crowd. Her relationship with Octavia was a mystery, one that had apparently hurt her.

  But he cut himself off. What self-respecting thief would be thinking of Lucy’s mood when she had just offered to show him a strongroom?

  So he helped her blow out the candles, keeping their banter light and easy. Then they walked silently through the darkened passages until they reached the stairs that led up to the main floor of the Tudor wing.

  He stepped aside, gesturing for Lucy to precede him. The Tudor State Apartments, which she’d shown him the day before, were opulently decorated and fit for a king. That was surely their destination — but he hadn’t noticed any rooms where the dimensions suggested a hidden door.

  She shook her head. “We must go down, not up.”

  She led him around a corner, to a wide, dark stone stairway that descended below the ground floor. The candles they carried flickered, nearly guttering out as they walked down the shallow, well-worn steps. They emerged into a large, cavernous space, one she hadn’t shown him on their previous tour.

  He held his candle aloft. There were no treasures here — instead, in the weak, flickering light, he saw several huge fireplaces. A pot still hung in the nearest one; on a nearby table, a stack of wooden trays were cracked by age and disuse. They weren’t as far below ground as he’d thought, since a row of windows lined the upper third of the two longest walls. The windows hadn’t been opened in generations. He realized now that the vines that covered the base of this wing on the outside would obscure all view of the windows and the kitchens submerged within.

  Lucy walked forward, intent on her mission. Max could only shake his head and follow her. “Do you realize how ludicrously extravagant it is that your family keeps all of this?” he asked, unable to help himself. The copper and iron cookware, left to corrode in peace when the kitchens and dining rooms had been built in the Palladian wing, should have been melted down and sold long ago.

  “Yes, but in this case, it was superstition, not laziness,” she said. “After the fourth earl killed all his brothers, poisonings still happened occasionally for years after — poisonings he vowed he’d had nothing to do with. When his son inherited, he built new kitchens and ordered that this kitchen be abandoned intact. He thought it might lure the ghosts to stay here rather than bringing their poisons to the Palladian wing.”

  They crossed the kitchen. Max glanced behind them when they reached the other side. It was too dark to see clearly, but this room wasn’t cleaned with the same regularity as many of the other disused rooms. He thought he saw their footprints in the dust.

  “Does superstition keep the maids from sweeping the floors?” he asked, already thinking of how he would cover his tracks next time.

  Lucy nodded. “It shouldn’t. They clean everywhere else, whether we have guests or not. But since the only people who have a key to the strongroom are Claxton and myself, neither of us require the maids to clean the kitchens regularly. He’ll make someone sweep every few months, when he comes to clean the strongroom and discovers that the dust has grown too thick for his sensibilities.”

  “Claxton cleans the strongroom?”

  “He takes his duties seriously. You’ll see why in a moment.”

  She ushered him into a small room in the hall beyond the kitchen. It was empty, save for an uncovered cot in the corner and closed cabinets along two of the walls. But the metal ring in the center of the floor made Max’s heart speed up.

  “This was the butler’s pantry. Claxton’s ancestors used to sleep here,” Lucy said. She lifted the trapdoor soundlessly; the hinges were kept well-oiled. “Do you want to see what the Briarley earls have collected over the years?”

  “More than anything,” he said, too eager, for once, to keep his tone steady.

  The steps that descended into the darkness were so steep that they were almost a ladder. Lucy climbed down them easily. When he joined her, he discovered that the space was so short that his head nearly grazed the ceiling. And it was so tight that he naturally put his arm around her shoulders to conserve space — a move that felt more right than it had any right to feel.

  She didn’t shrug him off. Instead, she stood still as though soaking in his warmth — as though she had no desire to move away.

  She remembered their mission before he did. She lifted her candle toward the only interesting feature in the tiny room — a heavy iron door, held shut with two ornate locks.

  His heart beat even faster.

  She handed him her candle. “Can you light my way?” she asked. “It’s easier to do this with two hands.”

  He couldn’t trust his voice. He stayed silent, lifting both their candles as she fumbled with her chatelaine. One of the keys was iron, with elaborate scrollwork that matched the looping roses and vines of the first lock. She slipped the key in, and the click as the lock came undone was the sound of fate smiling.

  The second lock, though, was trickier. It was a set of seven rotating cylinders, each marked with a variety of Chinese characters. Only the right alignment of characters would unlock it. He’d come across a few Chinese locks and never managed to open them — but he’d never had an incentive quite as rich as the Briarley strongroom on the other side.

  “Where did the lock come from?” he asked, looking over her shoulder as though he was interested in the lock’s provenance — not in trying to memorize the sequence of characters.

  “One of my grandfather’s aunts eloped with an East India Company officer and went with him to Canton. She sent this back as a gift for her father, along with the jade figurines in your bedroom.”

  She slid the seventh cylinder into place. He watched as carefully as he could, but the characters would be almost impossible to remember after only a glance.

  “I’m impressed that you know the sequence by heart,” he said as she removed the lock from the door.

  She surprised him by handing him the set of cylinders and taking her candle back. “It’s not so difficult, once you’ve had a chance to study it,” she said. “Stay here and look at it if you like. I want to light the candles in the room so you can witness the full effect.”

  She opened the door just enough to slip around it and disappear inside. He stared down at the lock in his hands. If only he had paper an
d pencil so he could take a rubbing of it — the characters were too unfamiliar to commit to memory easily.

  Still, by the time Lucy peeked through the crack in the door, he thought he had a good mental image of the sequence. The lock was forgotten, though, when she gave him a mischievous grin that made him think dirty thoughts.

  “You’re the first person who’s not a Briarley or a Claxton to enter this room since the workmen built it,” she said. “Are you sure you’re ready? The ghosts might strike you dead, you know.”

  “I’m more afraid of living Briarleys than dead ones.”

  Her grin widened. “I knew you were intelligent. Close your eyes and I’ll lead you in. I want to see your face when you see the room for the first time.”

  He slipped the lock into his jacket, then closed his eyes as she took his hand. Whatever had bothered her earlier seemed temporarily forgotten — instead, it felt like she was eager to show him the most sacred part of Maidenstone’s past. Eager to include him.

  Eager to keep him.

  His breath caught as he took a step forward. He could give her nothing other than the ability to win Maidenstone — which was, to be fair, an incredible prize. But when she looked at him with that particular smile, it was too easy to believe that she would have wanted him even if he had nothing at all.

  Had anyone ever wanted Max for himself, and not for his ability to steal?

  He took two more steps. He could tell the room was taller than the passage had been — they’d passed through the basement wall into a submerged space below one of Maidenstone’s many gardens. He tried to think of access and how to get back into the strongroom later — tried to distract himself from Lucy, and the too-dangerous question of why she was eager for him.

  “Open your eyes,” she whispered.

  He opened his eyes. It took a moment for his vision to adjust to the increased light — and even after it adjusted, he was still dazzled.

  “Good God,” he said.

  He didn’t know what he had expected — shelves, perhaps, with crates and chests, sealed against the elements. This was something else entirely.