Page 36 of To Treasure an Heiress
Sheridan held his place. It was a relatively new church building—he’d guess it to be no more than thirty or forty years old. But an older one would have stood in the same spot or a nearby one before it was built. An island that boasted two castles would most assuredly have had some sort of priory too.
Priories and churches kept records. Meticulous ones. And even if the old building were no longer around, it was still the same parish, and they were likely still in the care of the same parish priest—or vicar, now.
He pivoted back the way they’d come.
“Sher?” Telly jogged to catch up. “Now where are you going?”
“To fetch Tremayne.”
“Because ... ? You’re ready for his lecture about his sister?”
The toffee was quite good, really. Though he usually preferred lemon drops. Or perhaps anything would taste good right now. “Don’t be silly. He can lecture me about that any time. Right now, we need him in a professional capacity.”
“You need spiritual guidance?”
Sheridan shot him a look. Ainsley would no doubt be thrilledif he had a heart-to-heart with a vicar on spiritual matters ... and maybe he would, at some point. When his nose wasn’t aching and he had the mental capacity to engage him in a rousing debate on why Christianity was often presented as so very dull, when its truth was far more interesting. In other words, not today. “No. I need church records. Preferably dating back to around 1650.”
Telford was an intelligent chap. It only took him three steps to let loose a grunt of understanding. “You mean to test Beth’s theory that Prince Rupert married an island girl.”
“If he did, a clergyman would have presided. There’d be a record.” It might take them nowhere. But it was a lead he could follow here on Tresco.
And since he didn’t fancy another swim quite yet, leads on Tresco sounded like just the thing.
10
Beth had grown up with a vicar for an uncle, and now for a brother. But never did she imagine that it would result in their library table being completely covered with every parish record able to be dug up. Which, given the long history of the isles, meant a considerable stack of manuscripts, books, and ledgers.
Even so, they knew what range of dates they were looking for, and there were plenty of them to do the looking. They ought to have found the answer by now. But it had taken approximately forever for Oliver and Uncle Mark to unearth the key to whatever cupboard the old records were stored in, and then rain had blown in, and they hadn’t wanted to transport them until it had passed. Then they’d had to eat, and they had only been at work for an hour before Sheridan succumbed to his headache again and retired, and the rest of them had stopped, too, out of sympathy. And because those old books smelled so strongly of mold that they wereallgetting headaches.
Which meant that here it was, midday on Saturday, and they were still paging through texts between sneezes—though at least the long stretches of time had given Senara ample opportunity to organize and assign. They’d come in today and found a nice little chart telling who to read what.
Beth scanned yet another faded list of births and deaths. Some of the dates were impossible to make out, but the ones she could be certain of said 1646. Close. They didn’t know exactly what year to look for, but it ought to be sometime between 1648, when Mucknell returned to the Scillies after prowling the waters around Ireland for a while, and 1650, when he and Prince Rupert left English waters for a term in Portugal and Spain before going to the Caribbean. Any line could be the one that held the linchpin to her theory.
Beside her, Emily dragged the church’s cupboard key in a slow circle, her eyes moving back and forth across another page. “Here’s a Kerinda and a Robert in 1651. Rupert is a form of Robert.”
“A year too late, though,” Sheridan said from his chair on the opposite side of the table. “Mucknell and Rupert were in Portugal by then and would soon be on their way to the Caribbean.”
“And if we consider every Robert, we’ll never be able to narrow it down,” Oliver added.
Beth forced her eyes back to the pages Senara had assigned to her, but her gaze kept wanting to drift to Sheridan. His bruises were even worse today, though the swelling around his nose was finally going down. He didn’t have full black eyes, but the smudges still looked awful. And must feel even worse.
And clearly the blow had knocked something loose in his head for him to have spouted that nonsense yesterday. What had he meant, he wasn’t going to propose? Why would he have? They barely knew each other.
And she certainly wasn’t the prettiest girl in England. Nor would she ever spend a decade begging him for anything, most especially “another chance.” He was mad, that was all. The only possible explanation.
Or Senara was right, and he was sweet on her. Which may in fact explain his otherwise inexplicable fixation with her having flirted with Scofield before she knew he was Scofield.
She sucked in a long breath and blew it slowly out. All her self-lectures on grace should have been more diligently applied. She feltlike an utter heel when she looked at his mottled face and considered that he’d only earned the bruises because he’d been trying to rescue her. Spurred on by jealousy over her.
It was rather sweet, really. At least if one ignored the fact that he was still holding her trinket box hostage. No one had ever exchanged fisticuffs for her sake before. A bit brutish ... and a complete failure ... but sweet.
The mold was clearly getting to her. She sat back in her chair and rubbed at her eyes, which prompted Emily to do the same.
“You know what this reminds me of?” A ghost of a smile on her lips, Emily twirled the key in her fingers now. “Etiquette class at the academy, where we had to recite that endless list of titles from the peerage. Creation, extant, or extinct. So many names and dates.”
Beth chuckled, following the movement of the iron with her tired gaze. “I had to tell myself stories about them to remember them.” But she already had the story for the records she was looking for now. Just not the names.
Clearly as weary of eye as she was, Emily stared at the key too. “It’s pretty, isn’t it? Old keys are so much more interesting than the modern ones. All the scrollwork on the handle end. Almost looks like jewelry—and I suppose they were worn as such, back in the day. Grandmama still has an old chatelaine that’s a true work of art.”
