Page 32 of To Treasure an Heiress
Senara rapped on the door at the top of the stairs. “Beth? May I come in?”
A squeak, footsteps, and then the door creaked open. “Since you’re not an arrogant brat of a gentleman, yes.”
The storm in her young friend’s eyes was familiar enough to make Senara feel comfortably at home. She slipped in and let Beth close the door behind her, making no attempt to tamp down a smile. “Bad morning?”
Beth growled and stomped past her, throwing herself onto her bed just as she’d been doing all her life. “Why are men all such idiots?”
“The same reason women tend to be such fools over them, I suspect.” She gathered her skirt and sat on the mattress beside Beth. “I can’t quite wrap my mind around my little Beth having gentleman problems. You’re supposed to be ten still. Twelve, at the most.”
Beth flicked her a smile and rearranged herself to sit beside her. “Life was simpler then. And yet, when I was ten, all I wanted was to be twenty. To be a lady grown, like you, off on the adventure of my life. Now I wish I could go back and appreciate where I was.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself.” Senara tapped on the back of Beth’s shoulder as she’d done hundreds of times—and then hundreds more to the Clifford girls. And apparently the old training was still ingrained, because Beth scooted around to put her back to Senara, presenting the braid in desperate need of tidying. Senara pulled the tie from the bottom and began fingering the weave and the snarls from the locks. “You took every possible moment of enjoyment out of your childhood—and borrowed a few more besides. Looking forward to adulthood is part of that joy, though, I think. Dreaming of all you’ll do. All you’ll see. All the people you’ll meet and love. Of pirate princes and ladies fair.”
Beth exhaled, long and hard. Her shoulders sagged. “Pirateprinces are better in fairy tales than reality. In a story, their exploits are glossed over with pretty words and heroic motivations. But in reality, you can’t help but see the lives they wreck and the destruction they leave in their wake.”
How true that was. Senara unplaited the rest of the braid and then stretched behind her for the hairbrush, where it sat as always on the dressing table. “And is that what happened on Gugh this morning? Did you get a glimpse of a gentleman’s trail of destruction?” She’d spare her those lessons if she could. And yet, generally speaking, they all had to learn them for themselves.
Beth shrugged. “Reminded of it, anyway. I ran into a gentleman—quite literally. In the fog. And he was handsome and charming and we flirted, and for a moment ... for a moment I actually entertained notions of love at first sight.”
Senara’s hands stilled with the brush only halfway through its first stroke. Beth had always been the sort to revel in such tales. But she also had a level head on her shoulders. She knew, didn’t she, where stories ended and reality began? “But?”
“But it was Nigel Scofield. Emily’s older brother, whom I’ve yet to hear a single kind thing said about. Who may have had something to do with Johnnie Rosedew’s death.”
“What?” She dropped the brush onto the bed and leaned around to peer at Beth’s face. “Mam said it was an accident!”
“That’s what everyone thought, until a week ago when we apprehended a fellow who admitted to it. A fellow who’d been working with Mr. Scofield.” Beth reached up to rub at her eyes. “He’s a cruel man. I know that. Emily has said so, and if anything, she ought to be looking at him through a lens biased in his favor. But when he was smiling at me, when I didn’t know who he was—I felt something. Or thought I did. And now Sheridan’s accusing me of being in league with him, when it’shimwho started all this by hiring both Lorne and the Scofields to begin with, and—”
“Wait a moment, Elizabeth. I think you had better start at the beginning of this tale. I don’t have any idea who these people are.”
Senara picked up the brush again, stroking it through Beth’s long blond hair while her young friend filled her in on all that had happened since spring. Pirate maps and threats, mistaken identities and armed abductions.
The hair ended up glossy and well-ordered. The story was anything but. Senara was left feeling as heavy as the cannonball Beth said she’d found a few months ago.
And she still couldn’t shake the oddity of Rory bringing up Mucknell with her just five days ago. But this tale of Beth’s had been in motion long before that.Rorycouldn’t have told these Scofield people anything that she told him.
Coincidence. That was all. Obviously.
If only her churning stomach would get the message.
Senara slid the brush back into its place. She would simply have to accept Ainsley’s invitation to join this odd treasure hunt. Learn everything she could. No doubt within a day or two, she’d convince herself that Rory couldn’t have possibly had anything to do with it.
“Nara?” Beth turned to face her, questions clouding her storm-colored eyes. “Are you all right?”
Senara mustered a smile. “Sorry. It’s a lot to take in.”
Beth drew her lip between her teeth for a moment and gnawed on it—a habit Senara had thought she’d been broken of years ago. “What am I to do? Other than steer far clear of Scofield?”
“Yes, run far and fast from that one.” Her voice sounded heavy to her own ears as she said it, a remnant of the thoughts she couldn’t—wouldn’t—put voice to. But she shook them off and focused on Beth. Young, pretty Beth. Headstrong, impulsive Beth.
Something more muted than panic but less controlled than concern clawed at her throat. She couldn’t let Beth tumble into the same errorsshehad made. She’d learned firsthand the consequences for letting such emotions carry her away. “That sort of man is bad news for any girl.”
Beth nodded, which wouldn’t have eased Senara’s feeling any. But her eyes went cool as steel, and that did. “You needn’t tell metwice. He has proven himself violent and cruel. I have no use for such a man.”
“Good. As for the rest ... I think you ought to apologize to Lord Sheridan.”
“What?” That was clearly not what Beth had expected. She pushed onto her knees, poised to leap to her feet if she thought it necessary to storm off or stomp a foot. Typical Beth. “Why should I?”
Senara gave her the arch look she’d perfected years ago. “For starters, because you purposely dumped him off theNaiadwhen you came round the point.”
