by Candace Camp
For a moment she wished that she had waited for the time when she had agreed to meet Sir Philip, or that she had made up some sort of excuse to get her siblings out of their religious lessons so they could come with her.
She shook her head, willing such thoughts away, and reminding herself that this was her beloved Chesilworth, not some frightening and remote castle from a novel. She knew every inch of it. And even if the intruder had returned the night before, which seemed extremely unlikely, he would hardly have continued to hang about until noon the next day, knowing that someone was likely to come back.
Cassandra refused to be weak and timid. Squaring her shoulders, she settled the small basket comfortably on her arm and marched into the house. There on the kitchen table sat the oil lamps that they used while they were in Chesilworth, and she quickly lit one and started upstairs.
The empty house seemed even quieter than usual today, and she had to force herself not to glance down the dim, dark recesses of the corridors as she passed them on her way up the stairs. On the upper floor, however, she had to walk along the corridor to the back of the house to reach the narrow attic stairs. Her spine prickled as she marched along, and it was all she could do not to whirl around and look behind her.
Cassandra knew that she was letting herself be frightened by nothing, that it was her own mind creating the ominous atmosphere around her, yet she could not seem to stop it. For a moment she even thought about going back downstairs and waiting under one of the trees until Sir Philip showed up, but she quickly dismissed that idea as far too cowardly. Once she was up in the attic working, she told herself, she would forget all this nonsense, and it would be absurd to waste a couple of hours waiting for Sir Philip.
She climbed the stairs to the attic briskly, pushed up the hinged door and climbed inside. She held the lamp up and looked around the attic. The light from her lamp and the small attic windows left the huge room in shadow, but she could see nothing out of place. She started forward, then glanced back at the open attic door. After a moment’s hesitation, she closed the door before she settled down to work where they had left off searching the afternoon before.
As she had predicted, she grew absorbed in her work and forgot the ghostly shadows and dark corners that lurked around her. Sometime later, however, a noise impinged on her consciousness. She raised her head, not quite sure what had gotten her attention. After a moment she heard another faint sound. She rose to her feet and started forward, not even realizing that she was tiptoeing to make no noise. Halfway across the attic, she heard more sounds, but these were clearly identifiable as footsteps along the hall below. Someone was passing right beneath her feet. She froze, her chest tight and her stomach icy.
The steps started up the attic stairs.
Cassandra whirled and ran silently to the side of the attic. She did not want to be trapped at the far end. She ducked behind an abandoned lacquered screen from some former occupant’s chinoiserie period and wedged herself between an overstuffed chair and a tall, slender curio cabinet. Her stomach tightened as the steps came inexorably upward. The trapdoor in the floor opened upward. Cassandra leaned forward, her nails curling painfully into her palms.
The door landed flat on the floor, and a man stepped up into the room.
CHAPTER NINE
IT WAS SIR Philip.
Cassandra sagged in relief. But before she could call out his name or even move from her hiding place, another realization struck her. Sir Philip had said he would meet her at one o’clock, as they had every day. What was he doing here nearly two hours early?
Suspicion, painful as a knife, pierced her. What if he had come here early to look for the letters on his own?
Cassandra did not consider why such treachery on Sir Philip’s part should hurt so much. She only watched, numbly, her heart hammering inside her chest, as Sir Philip glanced around the attic.
“Miss Verrere?” he called, raising his lamp and turning around. “Cassandra, are you here?”
She waited, struggling to make not a sound, as he strode toward the back of the attic, calling her name.
“Damnation!” He returned to the center of the attic. “Where is the girl? Cassandra!”
There was a long moment of silence so profound that Cassandra was afraid he would hear her breathing. At last Sir Philip muttered an oath and started back down the stairs.
He was leaving without looking for the letters! Cassandra’s chest, so tight the moment before, was suddenly filled to bursting, and she catapulted out of her hiding space, sending a child’s snow sled tumbling over on its side.
Neville whirled around, his shoulders still above the floor of the attic. “Cassandra!” Exasperation tinged his voice, stilling whatever remaining doubts Cassandra had. “What the devil are you doing? Why didn’t you answer me? Are you hiding back there?”
He came back up the stairs as he spoke, and Cassandra moved toward him. She felt foolish now, both for working herself up into a state of fright to begin with and then for suspecting Sir Philip of double-dealing.
“Yes,” she admitted shamefacedly. “I was all alone, and I heard someone coming and I…was a little frightened.”
“Well you should be,” he retorted unsympathetically, but he took her hand in his and squeezed it in a way that made her feel better. “I don’t know what you are thinking, coming to this empty house all by yourself—and after we nearly caught an intruder here last night. I could not believe it when your aunt’s butler said you had come over here.”
“You went to Aunt Ardis’s house this morning?”
“Yes. I had to make a courtesy call to your aunt for the party last night, and I hoped that if I arrived this morning, the Moultons might still be abed,” he replied honestly. “I had thought I might have an opportunity to sit and talk with you someplace other than a hot and dusty attic.” He cast a wry glance about at their surroundings.
Cassandra had to smile. “You mean you do not find this room elegant enough?” She struck an arrogant pose, her arm outstretched toward the jumble of goods that filled the attic.
“Indeed, Miss Verrere.” He put one hand theatrically to his heart. “Any room is elegant as long as you are there.”
Cassandra giggled and started back toward the trunk where she had been working. It was amazing how lighthearted she felt now that her suspicions about Sir Philip had been proved false.
Sir Philip followed her, good-naturedly pitching in to help with a box just beyond Cassandra’s trunk. They laughed and talked as they worked, making their way closer to the trunk in which Olivia had discovered the clothes the day before. Neville opened a trunk and pulled out a moth-eaten suit of men’s clothing. Looking at the style, Cassandra’s heart skipped a beat. It was the sort of attire worn by Richard Verrere, the Lord Chesilworth who was Margaret Verrere’s father, in the painting of him in the ancestral gallery on the second floor.
Eagerly she came over to kneel beside Sir Philip as he dragged out piece after piece of clothing. Carefully he made his way down to the very bottom of the trunk, but there was no sign of anything other than clothing. Cassandra sat back on her heels with a groan.
“At least we are close,” Philip reminded her. “Here, let’s shift these things and get out that trunk.”
He began to move a bedstead, and Cassandra went to help him. He pulled a chair out of the way, and there, in front of the other trunk, hidden beneath a small table, was a square metal box. Cassandra reached down and dragged it out by its handle. Philip moved around her and shifted a last piece of furniture so that he could open the trunk he had indicated.
Cassandra turned the box around to undo its clasp, but when she did, she found that it was fastened with a lock. She sighed. She had no idea where its key might be. For a moment she started to ignore it, but she couldn’t put aside the niggling thought that it looked the sort of box in which one
might store valuables and papers to protect them from the elements. She searched around her for something heavy and finally returned with a fireplace poker.
She began to beat on the lock with the poker, and after a few moments, Sir Philip took over. It took some time, even with his superior strength, and in the end, it was the clasp that came away in a shower of rust from the box, not the lock.
Cassandra lifted the ruined lid. Inside, on top, lay a ledger book. She lifted it out and opened the cover, her heart going into her throat when she saw the date at the top of the page—eleven years after Margaret eloped with her lover. Carefully, she set the old book aside and reached in for the papers below it. She found several bills of sale for various horses and other animals, as well as a few IOUs. All the dates were in the years following Margaret’s aborted engagement.
She lifted a deed, and there, on top of another ledger book, lay a stack of letters, bound by a black ribbon and all addressed in a hand now familiar to Cassandra.
Her chest tightened, and she put in a shaky hand to take the stack and pull it out. “Philip…”
He turned, and when he saw the expression on her face, he moved quickly to her side. “My God. Are they hers?”
Cassandra nodded. Her voice trembled when she spoke, “It is her writing. I can scarcely believe it. These are Margaret Verrere’s letters to her father!”
* * *
“IT IS ALL true.” Sir Philip looked stunned. “I cannot believe it. The diaries, the letters, the map, everything—it’s all true.”
Cassandra narrowed her eyes at him. “You mean you still didn’t believe it?”
They were sitting beneath the shade of a spreading oak tree in front of Chesilworth, the remains of Cassandra’s picnic lunch spread out before them. The pile of letters, once again bound, lay on the ground next to Neville, and now and then he reached out and touched the top one, as if to convince himself of its reality.
They had unbound the letters and gone through them, breaking the seal of each unread letter. It was a heartrending series of a daughter’s attempts to reconcile with an unyielding father. Cassandra thought that if Margaret’s father had wanted to remain at odds with her, he had been wise not to read the letters. They would have melted any but a heart of stone. Just glancing through them for mention of the map, she had had tears in her eyes by the time she had found the letter she sought.
“No, I really did not believe it,” Sir Philip admitted. “I think perhaps I wanted it to be true, and after your intruder tried to break into Chesilworth, I began to think that perhaps the diaries were real, but I could not believe that the letters would still be here after all this time, or that one of them would contain a treasure map.”
“Somewhat of a treasure map,” Cassandra corrected, pulling the document in question from the top of the pile and gently opening the yellowed, creased page. She laid it on the dark background of her skirt and studied it. Sir Philip moved closer and gazed over her shoulder.
“It still makes as little sense as when we first looked at it,” he commented.
There were lines drawn here and there on the page and a block that Cassandra thought might indicate a building of some sort, with an arrow pointing away from it. In two places, there were numbers, and in another there was the word Littlejohn. The letter N was written on one side of the paper. By common consent Cassandra and Philip had designated the N to mean the direction north and had turned the paper so that it lay at the top.
“I know.” Margaret sighed. “I had hoped that it would contain enough information that we could at least figure out the general area where the treasure might be hidden. But this… Margaret has done her job too well.”
“I hope that when we get the other half—if we get the other half—it will all become clear, and we will not have two incomprehensible maps.”
“The other map must carry the key to this one. I cannot believe that a woman who wrote as clearly and well as Margaret would have drawn a foolish map.” She paused. “I think the important thing here is Littlejohn. Is there anything near your home named Littlejohn?”
He let out a snort. “Oh, yes, indeed. The problem is that there is a great deal too much named Littlejohn. It is a common name in the area. There are several families named Littlejohn, as well as a meadow and a creek—two creeks, actually, a greater and a lesser. And of course, the lane to where two or three of the Littlejohns live is called Littlejohn, too, for convenience.”
Cassandra groaned. She cast a last look at the map, refolded it with a sigh and slipped it back into the stack of letters. “We shall be able to figure it out, I’m sure, when we have the other map. I refuse to be discouraged.” She smiled at Philip. “Not on this day, when we have found what I had almost given up hope of getting.”
Philip leaned closer. Their heads were almost touching, their faces only inches apart. Cassandra looked into his eyes, golden in the sunlight. She wanted him to kiss her. Instead, she moved back.
“We had better go,” she said, turning her face aside and beginning to rise. “There are…things to do. I mean, now that we have the map.”
“Of course.” Sir Philip rose reluctantly. “Let me walk you home. I—we need to make arrangements for your coming to Haverly House.”
He untied his horse and led him as they started along the path toward Moulton Hall.
Cassandra’s heart rose in her chest at the thought of traveling with Sir Philip to his home. She told herself it was the excitement of looking for the rest of the map. “Yes, of course. How—how soon do you think we can go?”
“How soon can you get packed?”
Cassandra smiled. “That, sir, I can do this evening. I do not need a multitude of trunks for my wardrobe.”
Sir Philip looked at her with some disbelief. He had never known his mother to be able to pack for a journey to London or Bath in less than a week.
Cassandra raised her eyebrows. “Do you doubt me, sir?”
He chuckled. “No, indeed. I am not foolish enough to issue you that challenge. You would work through the night just to prove me wrong.”
Cassandra merely smiled for an answer.
When they arrived at Moulton House, they found Aunt Ardis and Joanna in the sitting room. Aunt Ardis rose, smiling broadly.
“Sir Philip! What a delightful surprise!” Aunt Ardis gave him her hand and shot Cassandra a glare over his shoulder as he bowed. Cassandra knew that Aunt Ardis was miffed, not only that Sir Philip had been with Cassandra, but that Cassandra, by bringing him in unannounced, had not given her and Joanna a chance to primp before seeing him.
Joanna bared her teeth at Cassandra in something resembling a smile. “Why, Cousin, wherever did you find such a delightful escort?” she asked in a teasing voice, looking up at Sir Philip from beneath her lashes and dimpling.
“We met as I was returning from a walk,” Cassandra said hastily. The last thing she wanted right now was to set Aunt Ardis against her by admitting that she had spent the past two hours with Sir Philip. She was already afraid that her aunt would find a way to block her going to Haverly House. “Sir Philip was coming up the lane from town.”
“Yes. I came to call on you ladies to thank you for the delightful party yesterday evening,” Philip continued smoothly and spent the next few minutes congratulating them on the excellence of the repast, guests and entertainment, until Aunt Ardis and Joanna quite forgot their irritation at his arrival with Cassandra.
When the women were done simpering over his compliments, he went on casually, “I also came because of a missive I received from my mother this morning.”
“And how is your dear mother?” Aunt Ardis asked, as if she had known the woman all her life, when, in fact, they had never met.
“In excellent health, thank you. She wrote to say that she was delighted that I had decided to come by Dunsleigh on my way home. And s
he begged that you would allow me to escort Miss Verrere to Haverly House for a visit.”
Aunt Ardis’s beaming face went suddenly still. “Miss Verrere,” she repeated blankly. “Cassandra? Your mother is inviting Cassandra to visit her?”
“Yes. As you no doubt know, my grandmother and Miss Verrere’s grandmother were friends.”
Cassandra’s brows rose at this whopper, but she said nothing, hoping that Aunt Ardis would be too unwilling to admit that she did not know something to call his statement into question.
“Indeed?” Aunt Ardis replied vaguely.
“Yes. Quite good friends, actually. My grandmother is very desirous of seeing her friend’s granddaughter. So my mother urged me to bring Miss Verrere home for a visit.”
“You can’t take Cassandra!” Joanna burst out furiously. Cassandra glanced over at her cousin, whose features were drawn into a most unattractive scowl.
“Indeed?” Sir Philip looked at Joanna, his eyebrows rising disdainfully.
Aunt Ardis, catching his expression, hurried to say, “Poor Joanna. She would be quite bereft without her cousin. They are so close, you know. But I am sure that Lady Neville’s invitation extends to us, as well, Joanna. After all, she would not expect a young lady to go jaunting off alone like that to a strange house without family to accompany her. Why, I would never consider allowing Cassandra to make a journey with a gentleman unchaperoned. Isn’t that right, Sir Philip?”
She smiled blindingly at Neville, who understood the implied threat perfectly. Aunt Ardis would refuse to give her permission to Cassandra to travel to Haverly House unless she and Joanna went with them, and Sir Philip could hardly take her without her aunt’s permission or it would create a scandal.
He returned Ardis’s smile and replied blandly, “Of course, Mrs. Moulton. I expressed myself poorly. My mother invited the entire family. You and Miss Moulton and Lord Chesilworth, Master Hart and Miss Olivia, as well. My grandmother is eager to see all her friend’s grandchildren.”