Page 87 of The Nature of a Lady
“Sher!”
Bram’s bark earned a throat-clearing from Sheridan and a splinter of a smile. “He’d found nothing though, and Scofield—or rather you, Miss Tremayne. The first piece you found.” His face lit, eyes all but blazing as they always did when he thought a discovery just beneath the dirt on which he stood. “I had a chance to see it when you sent it to them for authentication. It was Mucknell’s mark, I’d know it anywhere. And it mentioned theJohn. So the timing is right.”
Libby’s brows knit. “Which item was this?”
Beth shot her a look but still said nothing.
Sheridan never had any such inhibitions. “A map—an actual treasure map! Or, well, maybe. On the treasure part. No one knows what Mucknell did with it, you know. The loot, I mean. But it could be here still, in the Scillies. He lived here for years, apparently. With his wife. Well, not right here in this very spot, of course, but somewhere nearby.”
“Thepoint, Sher.” Bram, naturally.
While the rest of them exchanged a glance.Thishouse hadn’t been his. But Tas-gwyn Gibson’s had been, if his word on the matter could be trusted.
“Ah. Right. Well, you see...” He faced Beth again. “You probably know this already. But no one’s entirely certain what happened to theJohn. Might have sunk, or he might have got it back to the islands and then scuttled it. Never sailed again though. Of course.”
Beth sighed and looked to her brother. “I did a bit of digging. It seems the ship he took right before his final battle was called theCanary, and there was something of value on board that the rightful owners spent considerable time searching for to no avail. But if theJohnwas scuttled, then it means whatever treasure he carried was brought ashore. And even if not, if it’s at the bottom of the sea, there was a lot of loot he’d taken with it beforehand.”
“But no one knows what he did with it,” Sheridan concluded.
Mabena snorted. “Spent it, most likely.”
Sheridan shook his head. “Couldn’t have, here—there was nothing to spend it on. I mean, the islands are lovely. Quite the holiday spotnow. But not then. Just rocks, basically. Barely enough to support anyone. Before the Dorrien-Smiths brought the flower trade here, I mean.”
Libby had to give Sheridan a bit of credit. He knew how to do his research.
Oliver sighed. “It’s always been a matter of local speculation. From the Scillies he went to the Caribbean, as you said, and he certainly wouldn’t have taken any of his personal treasure with him. But he never made it back to England. And his wife clearly didn’t take the plunder and use it—she petitioned the Crown for his pension after the war and lived modestly, according to what I’ve read.”
“Exactly!” Sheridan slapped a hand to the table. “Which means it’s probably stillhere. Somewhere. Buried.”
“Or sunken.” Bram stopped pacing and leaned down to scoop up Darling. The little traitor nuzzled his chin and meowed at him. “You’ll never find it if it’s at the bottom of the sea.”
“But it isn’t! Or probably. Not, I mean.” Sheridan gestured toward Beth. “That’s what the map could indicate.”
Bram, kitten purring happily againsthisshoulder, leaned against the wall beside Libby. “Get back to your original point, Sheridan. This other person you’d hired, who had been in the Caribbean?”
“Ah. Right.” The excitement on his face dimmed to something that looked oddly like worry, though she’d never seen such an expression on him before to know exactly what it looked like. “Bloke by the name of Lorne. I called him off. I mean, even I’m not going to fund something fruitless. Not for long, anyway. Told him I had a more promising lead in the Scillies.” He winced. “I didn’t mean for him to come here. But he, ah—well, he’s butted heads with the Scofields’ lads before. In the field, I mean. Quite a competitive game is archaeology, you know. It can get ... nasty.”
Casek’s hand, which had been splayed on the tabletop, curled into a fist. “You mean to tell me this bloke came here? That he’s the one who killed Johnnie?”
Sheridan eased out a breath. “Can’t say. That is, he said the lad was killed in an accident but that it could rouse suspicion. So he was lying low. That’s all I know. Honestly. About the young man.”
“It wasn’t an accident,” Casek snapped. “I saw him, saw the blow to his head. He couldn’t have got it by slipping and falling, not there. Someone’s responsible, and if it’s this Lorne bloke, I’ll see he’s brought to justice. He had to have been involved somehow.”
Beth sucked in a breath. “He’d hired him. I found Johnnie poking about in Piper’s Hole on St. Mary’s, and he admitted he’d been hired by an incomer to find Mucknell’s treasure. I thought at first the Scofields had hired him behind my back and was a bit put out—I wrote a rather heated letter to Emily’s father.” She shook her head. “If I could undo that, I would. But after the ...misunderstandingabout the Prince Rupert box, I was quick to suspect foul motives on their part. Regardless, Johnnie went to the cave that night, and he must have told his contact something that displeased him. Perhaps about me—perhaps knowing there was a rival looking for the same treasure angered him, I don’t know. But the morning after Johnnie’s death, someone left a note at my cottage that said, ‘Find the silver or you’re next.’”
Sheridan sank back against the bookshelves. “I never would have condoned such tactics.”
“Did you forbid it?” Beth drilled him with a glare as cold and sharp as an icicle. “Did you tell them to work together or not at all?”
“Well, ah ... no.” He looked away, rubbing a hand at the back of his neck. “I didn’t think to, at first. That is, at first I didn’t even realize Lorne had come here. Then, when he sent a report ... well, sometimes competition works to one’s advantage, you know.”
“And sometimes people end up dead.” Beth’s voice cracked. “Poor Johnnie didn’t deserve that.”
Casek pushed away from the table, not seeming to be calmed much by the hand Mabena rested on his arm. “Which of them did it? This Lorne bloke or the Scofields?”
Beth shook her head. “I don’t know. I wasn’t there that night, I just—I knew he’d set up a meeting. And then...” She squeezed her eyes shut. “I didn’t know if they’d come after me next. But I knew I didn’t have what they wanted, and they seemed willing to make me pay for that. So I left, and I sent the rest of my rental money to a barrister in Cornwall to set up couriers for the remaining information that the Scofields would be sending to me. They were researching in London, trying to discover what could beinthe treasure we’re looking for. What was on the ships Mucknell took.”
She blinked her eyes open again and turned to Libby. “I didn’t mean to get you involved, Lady Elizabeth.”
