Page 39 of Choosing Her Earl at Last
“Regret does nothing to serve our present situation. How I feel is not the priority. Finding Rebecca is the only thing that matters. Once that is done and she is home safely, then and only then, will Michael and I decide what we are to one another if anything at all.”
Unable to bear the sympathy in Louisa’s eyes, Emmeline attempted to change the subject. Standing, she crossed the library and lifted the coded messages from her father. Coming to sit beside Louisa once more, she handed her the letters. “This is the one that I found behind the painting,” she pointed to the second message. “It appears to be a map key of sorts if I am understanding its symbols correctly, but a map to where I do not know.”
Louisa took the paper from her hand and examined it closely. She shook her head in confusion. “I do not see what you are seeing. I cannot read any of it.” She frowned at the indecipherable symbols. Rising, she walked over to the painting where Emmeline had found it. “This one?” she asked in confirmation.
Emmeline nodded. “It was attached to the back of the frame and covered over.”
Louisa ran her fingers over the frame eyeing each inch carefully. “May I?” she asked, grasping the frame with both hands to remove it from the wall.
Emmeline nodded her head in permission. “Of course.”
Louisa lifted the frame from the wall, but frowned when it caught on the nail that was holding it up. Wiggling the frame in an attempt to free it, she jerked with a little too much force, and a section of the corner seam came away from the painting. “Oh!” she cried out in dismay. “I am so very sorry!” Horror at having damaged something so precious to Emmeline filled her eyes. “I am so very sorry!”
Emmeline rose from her place on the settee and came over to help her. “A frame can be mended. Do not worry yourself over it.”
She took the broken side of the frame, and they lifted the painting from the wall together. Emmeline motioned with her head toward the desk, and they laid it down to inspect the damage.
“Hmm,” Emmeline mused as she bent over the dislodged corner piece. “There seem to be two canvases,” she noted, pulling the frame away from the corner so that Louisa could see it.
“Another painting beneath?” Louisa asked, her brows rising with the mystery of it.
Emmeline’s heart began to race as she carefully removed the frame from the painting. Peeling the corner of the top canvas back, she saw the edge of another work beneath. “There is something underneath!”
The women exchanged an excited look. Louisa bent over the painting in anticipation as Emmeline peeled back the rest of the top canvas.
“It is a map!” She stared at Emmeline in wonder. “You were right.”
There before them was a detailed map with notations made from the same mysterious code as the letters, all in her father’s hand. Both women smiled in delight as they embraced in celebration.
Emmeline laughed for the first time in days as she pulled back to stare at the newly revealed canvas. “He left me a map.”
“What is it a map of?” Louisa asked, cocking her head to the side to gain a different perspective. “I hope that it is not going to take us abroad, given the current situation with Rebecca.”
Emmeline shook her head. “I do not think that he would do that unless there was a very good reason.” She studied the map from all angles. “I had hoped that Father’s riddle would lead us to something that might aid us in finding her, but the more I find, the less I think so.”
Louisa looked at her, puzzled. “Your father would have had no way of knowing that Rebecca would be taken. He died far too long ago for him to have known of such an event.”
“I know. I was desperate for answers when I found the first letter, and all that I could think about was finding Rebecca. I thought that maybe one of Father’s associates might have something to do with it, but the more I think about it, the less I am able to see it,” Emmeline admitted.
“Perhaps it has something to do with more inheritance,” Louisa offered. “Perhaps he buried treasure somewhere, and he thought it would be a fun way for you to discover what he left you.”
“Perhaps,” Emmeline mused as she followed the lines with her fingertips. She held up the letters, examining them next to the map. She had been fairly certain that the second letter was a map key, as it had been laid out like one. Now with a map right in front of her, she knew that she had been on the right path.
Using her earlier thought that the four sigils behind the canvas had been something like the wordopen, she used the map key and began to decode those specific markings. After that, it was just as much guesswork as it was anything else, but then the lines on the map began to make sense. She knew those lines almost as well as she knew herself. Standing upright with such sudden force that she startled Louisa, Emmeline grasped her friend by the arm. “You were right, Louisa!”
“I was?” Louisa asked, her brow furrowed in confusion. “About what?”
“It is a buried treasure!” Emmeline took Louisa’s hands and danced around in a circle with glee. “Father buried something on the old family estate!”
“Where?” Louisa asked, stopping their spinning to stare at the seemingly meaningless lines of the map.
“Here.” Emmeline pointed with her finger to one of the sigils. “He buried it just on the line between the Frampton family country estate and the Earldom of Ravenshollow. It is the exactspot where Michael and I used to meet in secret so that we could be alone together.”
Louisa’s eyes widened. “Is it a coincidence? Or did he know about you and Michael?”
Emmeline shook her head. “I do not know how much he was aware of between Michael and I, but a person would have needed to be blind to not know that there was love.”
“What are you going to do?”
