Page 73 of The Dreaming Beauty
“Is there really a treasure at the end?” Daisy asked.
“Of course.” His Grace pulled a ribbon out of his jacket and stretched it straight to read it.
“I to the world am like a drop ofwater,
That in the ocean seeks another drop;
Who, falling there to find his fellow forth,
Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself.”
“Water?” Daisy said aloud. “Is there not a small creek bed that runs along the edge of the property?”
Tansy was impressed. “How did you know that, Daisy?”
“Mr. Taylor told me once when you were painting with His Grace. He said that is where the river rocks in the drawing room came from. I do believe I might have seen it once myself, but I was quite young then.”
Tansy remembered she had heard water the day she had walked to the dower house with Marcus.
“To the creek it is.” His Grace led the way.
Before Tansy followed, she could not help herself. With as innocent an expression as she could muster, she quickly glanced around. Marcus was conversing with Miss Bellvue. When he smiled at something she said, Tansy scowled in response.Blast that man!She whipped her head forward and forced a smile of her own. Now she was quite determined to enjoy herself today, regardless of how obnoxious Marcus was being.
A few children, along with Mr. Farris, who accompanied a woman Tansy did not know, had already found the second clue and were reading it by the time they reached the creek. Mr. Farris bowed as if Tansy were the queen, and handed the clue to His Grace before hurrying off to their next destination. His Grace handed the ribbon to Daisy, clearly used to such extreme behavior. “Would you do the honor?”
She nodded and read,
“Knowing I loved mybooks, he furnish’d me
From mine own library with volumes that
I prize above my dukedom.”
His Grace accepted the ribbon back and hid the clue once more. “I don’t know about you, but I would wager our next clue is in the library.”
Marcus’s domain.
Tansy latched on to Daisy’s arm this time, still trying to get her bearings after the quote. It took a few minutes to walk back, and His Grace made them laugh over a story about him and Marcus discovering the creek for the first time. They were young men and had returned soaking wet after a dare to see who could walk across it on their hands. Neither of them had won.
Tansy was not surprised Marcus was not in the library, or that all his papers had been cleaned up, but she was disappointed all the same. Staring at her father’s portrait made up for it though. She tilted her head and searched for a resemblance between them.
“You take after your mother,” His Grace said, as if reading her mind.
“I think you are right.”
Daisy shrieked. “It is here, sticking out of Shakespeare’sThe Tempest.”
The next clue led them to the ballroom and then to the front road, each one a quote from Shakespeare and each one a fairly straightforward destination.
“The last clue, my ladies.” His Grace read it slowly to them.
“But earthlier happy is the rose distill’d
Than that which, withering on the virgin thorn,
Grows, lives and dies, in single blessedness.”
“Back to the roses behind the house,” Daisy said, charging ahead.
