Page 22 of To Treasure an Heiress
Those lovely golden brows quirked up at him again.
He decided to take it as a compliment on his clever mnemonics. “Not how you learned all the islands’ names?”
“Can’t say that it is. Why did you bother learning them at all?”
Now she sounded like Telly, who hadn’t much appreciated hismnemonics either as Sheridan chanted them over and again on the train to Penzance. “Because I’m here. What’s the point of coming to a place if you don’t learn about it? It’s half the fun.”
He couldn’t tell by the way she regarded him if she agreed with that or not. But she tilted her head in a way that had her braid spilling over her shoulder, and the fog curled around her, and he was fairly certain she was the naiad after whom her sloop was named, all magic and myth. “So, what did you learn about Gugh already? Aside from the fact that it rhymes with Hugh.”
“And is holding hands with St. Agnes. Don’t forget that part.” He grinned and turned his face toward what he suspected might be the sun, though he couldn’t be entirely certain. A slightly lighter part of the sky, anyway. “I admit, I’m charmed by all these tombolos connecting your islands. This one’s only visible at low tide, correct?”
“That’s right.” She hummed out a sigh. “I sometimes wonder what Scilly was like in the Roman days, before the sea rose, when it was all one big island.”
“Nearly tropical—or so I’ve read. All of England, that is. Or much of it. They grew orange trees here, you know.”
“Really?” She fished her compass out of her other pocket and held it out to him. “I have a feeling you know how to use this.”
He kept his own inhispocket at all times. But no point in digging it out if hers was unearthed already. “Looks exactly like mine.” And it was still warm from her body heat too.You should marry me, Beth, so our compasses can be friends.
He cleared his throat. “Otherwise—back to Gugh. There’s the Old Man as the primary interest. Standing stone from the Bronze Age, most likely. And a cairn that Bonsor excavated a few years ago. Quite a chap—I heard him lecture in London last year. Not about Gugh. An excavation in Spain. Even so, it was fascinating stuff. Did you meet him while he was here?”
Her lips twitched. “I might have.”
He’d only known her a week, but he knew mischief when it twitched. “What did you do?”
“A few of us children might have played a bit of a prank, that’s all. We snuck into Obadiah’s Barrow one night and buried a few surprises for him.”
“No!” He didn’t know whether to be amused or horrified. “You interfered with a sanctioned archaeological dig?”
She chuckled. “I wouldn’t call itinterfering. It was only chicken bones and a few beads. Didn’t fool him for a moment, much to our dismay. Which was considerable, when he then found us watching him from Kittern Hill and put two and two together. The lecture we received was certainly far less fascinating than the one you heard in London.”
He laughed, though he commiserated with poor Mr. Bonsor. “What did you find, then? Notthen, at his dig. But to bring us to Gugh now.”
Her amusement banked itself into flintiness again. And the sun was definitely elbowing its way through the fog. A glint of it danced on her braid. “A line from those letters of Mucknell to his wife—the first one that had the line you found about her future. He also said,‘The old man can tell you the way.’And, as you just pointed out, the standing stone on Gugh is called the Old Man.”
“Interesting. I’d assumed he meant the literal old man he’d mentioned in the previous line. And the way to the weaver’s he said he found, whose cloth she would like. But of course it would be hidden behind something so mundane, if it were a clue to the treasure.”
“Exactly so. Heading?”
He checked the compass. “South-southeast, dead on.”
She adjusted the rudder just a bit. “I feel a bit of sympathy for poor Elizabeth Mucknell, I confess. She was clearly either dead set against using any of the plunder he took or terrible at deciphering his hidden messages and codes. She certainly never collected any of his treasure.”
“Prince Rupert was known for it, though. Working with codes, I mean. Did you know he was rather famous for his ability to break ciphers?”
She shook her head and actually looked at him as though he was more than either a dunderhead or eccentric. That was progress. Worth two years off his estimate, certainly. Eight years, at this new rate, and he could convince her to be his marchioness. “I knew he was a scientist in later years. A founding member of the Royal Society.”
“Ah. Yes. The ‘philosophic warrior,’ they called him. Invented weapons, methods of dyeing granite, quadrants, a new brass.” He very nearly went off on a tangent about the so-dubbed Rupertinoe naval gun and the Prince Rupert cube, but he caught himself. Best not let her eyes glaze over and remind her of yesterday’s frustration with him.Focus, old boy. Mucknell. Treasure. Pirate.“But ciphers too. So, if he came across any of Mucknell’s attempts...”
Beth’s hand gripped the tiller more tightly. “Then he could well have cracked them. He’d know where some of his earlier loot was buried. Which means what? Could he have already looted the loot?”
Sheridan opened his mouth to assure her that the prince would have no reason to steal from his comrade-in-arms, the man who taught him all he needed to know about pirating.
Then the irony of it struck him—he’d taught himpirating, for heaven’s sake—and he had to shrug. “Any mention of it in your mother’s story? You didn’t finish writing it out yesterday.”
She shook her head. “According to the story, the prince never returned to the islands. His bride died alone.”
“That’s terrible.” He meant it. It was one of the things he hated about the old tales—they so often ended in death and tragedy and betrayal. Abbie always went on about King Arthur, when she wasn’t rereading Jane Austen, and he’d never understood why—except that Telly was all rapt attention when she did, which urged her on. What was so alluring about a man cuckolded by his own best friend and the woman he loved?
