8
It matters a great deal which vine a branch clings to, for out of that vine flows the branch’s source of life.
—Notebook of a viticulturist
Andrew, wait.” I flew down the stairs toward him as he left the drawing room, for he seemed to be my only ally. I tripped over the rug at the bottom and stumbled. Landing with a soft thump against his chest, I instantly drew back and looked up into his shadowed face, tucking a loosened chunk of hair behind my ear.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I have to find my father’s fortune.” Panic tightened around me. “There are so many people about who want it, and I cannot risk losing it to them. I must figure out where it is, and I need to find someone who speaks Welsh, and—”
“Of course,” he murmured as my voice trailed into utter despair. “Of course I’ll help you.” Pulling me close in a motion so familiar to me, his fingertips traced little patterns on my back between my shoulder blades. “I will always help you.”
The soft voice pulled at my mind like quicksand. I pushed away to still the storm of feelings. The cool air that rushed between us tempered my thoughts and stilled my heart.
“I’m afraid you’ve read too much into my display just then. I should never have—”
“Yes, you should. I’m the one person you should be able to come to.”
I placed a hand squarely on his chest, stiffening the arm that held us apart. “Perhaps that isn’t the best idea, Andrew. Mr. Carrington.”
Emotion pinched his features. “Don’t call me that. Tell me what you need, Tressa.”
“Do you speak Welsh? That’s what I need most right now.”
“What about Latin or French? I speak both of those fluently.”
Steps thudded against the rug in the drawing room, then clicked onto the wood, and Andrew stiffened, glancing at the door. “Quick, back to your chamber. We’ll speak later.” He gripped both my arms and studied me with a potent look. “This is not over.”
Turning, he leaped up the steps two at a time and disappeared around the bend at the top. The drawing room door opened and I slipped around the corner into a dark hall and flattened my back against the wall.
As I let out a breath, I became strongly aware of someone sharing the dark hall with me. A nearby shuffle, a low breath, the whoosh of movement. Eyes wide and searching, I waited.
A deep male voice rolled through the darkness. “I speak Welsh.”
I gasped, prepared to scream. A hand came to rest gently, firmly over my mouth, and it tasted of the outdoors and the sticky sweetness of vine sap.
Keeping his hand in place, the interloper moved into the slant of light from the other room. It was Donegan Vance, of course, lurking about in the shadows of my home, as he always seemed to do. The man had the uncanny ability to be everywhere, even where he was not wanted. Which, in my mind, was most places on this estate.
Lowering his hand, he watched me. “Best not to alarm the household, but I thought you should know. I speak Welsh.”
“What are you doing here?” I hissed out the words.
“Looking for you. It’s time we spoke honestly.”
“I do believe at least one of us has been doing that from the start.”
“Certainly you do not refer to yourself, the girl who led me to believe she was a servant upon my arrival.”
“You cannot blame me for your own hasty judgments.” At his pointed look, I bit my lip and glanced away. “You happened upon me in a trying moment when I did not wish to discuss anything personal. Especially where it concerned being my father’s daughter.”
His voice softened. “All right, then. This time I want the truth. Why can’t you pay the workers? What keeps such a wealthy family from providing the barest necessities to those who serve the household?”
“Obviously you’ve overheard the answer.” I indicated the hall where Andrew and I had been talking.
He frowned. “You claim the rumors are true, then. Your father hid his fortune—even from his own family.”
My jaw twitched. “It is so.” Not only would he force me to unveil every bit of exclusive knowledge I had on the subject, but he’d ridicule my answers as well.
“I don’t believe a word of it. What sort of fool in this modern world hides his money?”
“The kind who tended his vineyards in a velvet smoking jacket and took soil samples with silver forks. I promise you the money is hidden and we have hardly a farthing to our names otherwise.” We’d traveled about the country and even abroad, needing little more than our name as currency, and Father paid the notes as they came.
His dark, ominous gaze arrested mine and held it there in the dim moonlight. “Something odd is happening here. I will uncover it, so you’d best tell me straight out.”
I wrenched my gaze from his face. “Before you were offering to help me find it, and now you don’t even believe it exists.”
“My offer remains. Perhaps it’ll help me learn the truth. What do you need to read in Welsh?”
I hesitated. “My father’s notebooks. All his notes on vineyards and grapes.”
He raised one dark eyebrow. “Fascinating. I’ll make a trade.”
“What sort of trade?” Surely he wouldn’t ask for immediate payment when he knew I had no funds.
“I’ll work on translating the notebooks in the evenings if you’ll work beside me in the vineyards. And not just as an observer as you’ve already offered, but as a worker, dirtying your hands.”
I looked up at him through narrowed eyes. “You’re mad. Why ever would you want such a thing?”
“Perhaps I enjoy your company.” He shrugged, a smile turning up his lips. “You are the first person to ever claim that field work is an art.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You wish to humble me.”
“If you find it so detestable an arrangement, I’ll settle for 10 percent of the fortune.”
I flattened my shoulder blades against the wall behind me. “You are merely here for money too, aren’t you?”
“That’s the reason anyone labors for anyone else.”
“There’s more to it than that, isn’t there?”
A muscle pulsed in his jaw as he glanced away, and his silence told me more than any words could say.