Wherein the Tower Is Identified, Along With Other Items of Significance
Based on his last meeting with the Earl of Alleyneham, Giles thought the blustering aristocrat might have locked up his daughter, Rapunzel-like, until his fortunes were safe. Giles was perfectly willing to spirit Audrina out a window, but in the end, no dramatics were required. Lady Irving simply marched ahead of the Rutherfords up the stone steps to Alleyneham House, rapped at the door, demanded Lady Audrina’s presence, and glared at the servant when he goggled at her.
“That glare of yours is a formidable weapon, Estella,” marveled Richard.
“Enough of your love talk,” said Giles. “We’ll celebrate if Audrina actually comes to the door.”
Two minutes later, she did, descending with as much grace as if she were floating down the grand staircase at a ball. The sound of a baby’s cry and a thundering shout chased her, but as soon as the door closed behind her, all sound was shut away.
Dimly, Giles heard her greeting them, and then saying something about her sister Petra having arrived, and Llewellyn having been silenced—and somehow, a baby was involved in the whole affair. It was all difficult to follow when every speck of his awareness was working on drinking in the sight of her, the scent of her, wanting to embrace her and swing her around in that great dark bell of a cloak, letting it wrap about them both.
“Giles? Giles?”
“Hmm?” He bounded down the steps to catch up with them.
“I was just saying”—Audrina’s lips curved with mischief—“that I have got my garter back from Llewellyn. It turns out the Duke of Walpole was not interested in having his wedding canceled. Also, I appear to be an aunt.”
“You’ve had an eventful morning.”
“I have, rather.” When she clambered into the carriage, she took the backward-facing seat next to Giles. “My sister Petra insisted on studying art in Italy, but it was actually a ruse to hide a—a pregnancy.” She blushed at the word.
“Vulgar,” said Lady Irving from her seat next to Richard as the carriage began to roll.
“That’s what Papa said, too. Petra will not say who the father of baby Adam is, only that he wasn’t suitable for marriage, which made Papa shout all over again. Then the baby cried, and Mama held him. Then she shouted at Papa to stop shouting at her only grandchild.” A dazed expression crossed her features. “And Petra said it wasn’t a lie after all about studying art because she began to paint while in Italy and wants to return there. She has fallen in love with an Italian artist.”
“Art is vulgar,” said Lady Irving.
“Now, Estella, you’re just saying things to make a spectacle of yourself. If you want me to pay attention to you, all you’ve got to do is say so.” Richard’s tone was mild as he took her hand in his.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Pay attention to Audrina’s vulgar story.” Giles noticed that she did not remove her hand from Richard’s.
His own prickled—not with pain, but with the feel of Audrina at his side. So near, yet for the moment, still untouchable.
“That is the end of my vulgarity, at least in relation to this particular subject,” Audrina said. “It seems I am no longer the most scandalous daughter in the family.”
“Does that matter to you?” Giles asked.
Her hand slipped free from the folds of her cloak; her knuckles brushed his. “No. I am still myself. I have only ever been myself.”
“You said the Duke of Walpole arranged Petra’s visit, though, didn’t you?” Lady Irving pressed. “If so, your parents will come around to accepting her. Especially if she takes herself back to Italy and gets married. Not to speak ill of your parents, but they would eat their own heads if a duke told them to.”
“I don’t even know how that would work,” said Giles.
“I don’t either, but it is true.” Audrina laughed. “It is not as if the duke loves having an illegitimate nephew-in-law, but . . . how did he put it? He will not revise anyone out of his future wife’s story. Something like that.”
“Hmph.” Lady Irving shoved at her listing turban. “Walpole might not be a complete horse’s ass after all.”
“I have begun to think he is not a horse’s ass at all,” replied Audrina.
“Steady, now,” said Giles. “You two are going to send us into a swoon with all your profanity and your talk of other men.”
“Vulgar,” Richard said, smiling.
Audrina’s hand had settled in next to Giles’s now, and shielded by the folds of her cloak, her thumb stroked his skin. As Giles’s toes began to curl within his boots, she asked with perfect calm, “Now you must tell me about your own eventful morning. I presume something fascinating has happened for you all to come retrieve me in such haste.”
They passed the remainder of the carriage ride catching Audrina up on the letters, the clues, and the deductions that were leading them these several miles through the cluttered streets of London. Had Giles been less distracted by the sly sweetness of her touch, he would have contributed much more. But the tale rolled on, just like the carriage wheels, and by the time Richard and Lady Irving halted, Audrina glowed like Yorkshire moonlight.
“You solved it,” she said. “You all solved it. That is amazing. We are going to find those diamonds if I have to crush rock into gemstones myself.”
“If you can do that,” said Richard, “I’d be glad to offer you a position in my shop.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said. “If we find these jewels, Mr. Rutherford, will they rightfully belong to the marquessate?”
“No, these jewels were given to Bea personally and irrevocably. Which means, I suppose”—Richard tilted his head—“that they’re now mine.”
Lady Irving snorted. “They won’t suit you.”
“Would they suit you?”
She pulled her beringed hand free from Richard’s. “No, I’d rather choose my own. I’ll clear a finger for you, though.”
Giles and Audrina exchanged does that mean what we think it means glances.
“Why, Estella!” Richard beamed at the countess. “I believe you just accepted my proposal.”
Nonchalantly, she patted her turban. “I believe I did.”
A few more minutes’ drive brought them to the possible home of Lady Beatrix’s jewels. Saint Luke’s was a small church of pale stone, simple in form, with arched stained-glass windows. The neatly trimmed lawn and cemetery, now winter-dry, were fenced in by wrought-iron pickets.
“There’s a tower,” observed Richard as they stepped from the carriage.
This was not a particularly insightful observation, for the tower was taller than the church was long. A strange tower it was, dotted upward with windows of different shapes and topped with a reeded obelisk. As they walked up to the entrance, Giles noticed something yet more odd: The windows had an alarming cant, as though bits of the church were sinking. Stepping away from the others, Giles prowled along one side of the building, noting signs of subsidence in the foundation.
Though this was bad news for the church, it was good, good, to allow himself to notice such details of structure and form. Like greeting old friends instead of hiding from them.
Not wanting to test the others’ patience too much, Giles strode back to join them, and the four entered the small church together. A robed rector was moving about the pews, a service clearly just over. He welcomed them and asked how he could help.
“We wish to look at the tower,” said Richard.
“We need to pay our respects to a relative,” Giles said.
“We’re here to visit Caslon’s grave,” barked Lady Irving.
The rector blinked at them.
“What we mean,” Audrina said smoothly, “is that we wish to do all of those things.” She lifted her chin, that look he’d once thought of as haughtiness. Now it looked like confidence. I have a right to be here. “We will, of course, leave a generous donation in the poor box before we depart.”
Coins jingled in her reticule, and suddenly the rector was tucking something into his pocket. “Take all the time you require. I shall leave you in peace.”
They were left alone, then, with the smell of damp stone and just-snuffed candles and no idea where to look next. Giles’s gaze roved the white-painted lines of the church, the small round stained-glass windows, the wall of stained glass behind the altar.
“Quit making flirtatious eyes at the windows, young Rutherford, and come smash up the floor.” Lady Irving jabbed Giles’s side with an elbow, then pointed to the pattern of tiny black and white squares.
“I am not going to smash the floor of a church.” He rubbed at his poor elbowed ribs. “Besides, Mother couldn’t have hidden anything beneath the floor or she would have had to smash the tiles herself.”
“Damn. She couldn’t have made our hunt easier, could she?” Lady Irving mused.
“Oh, she could have,” said Richard. “But what would be the fun in a life with someone who made everything easy?”
Giles shook his head. “You and I, Father, are very different.”
“Indeed we are.” Richard clapped Giles on the shoulder. “And what on earth is wrong with that?”
“Nothing in the slightest.”
“While you all are arguing, or agreeing, or whatever it is you are doing”—Audrina’s voice echoed off the stone walls—“I have begun looking around the base of the tower, and I’ve found a stone with a date on it.”
“Let me see!” Lady Irving was the first to reach her. “Oh, phoo—it says 1733. That’s got to be the year the church was consecrated. That doesn’t do us a bit of good.”
“Not that stone.” Crouched on the floor, Audrina pointed to the beveled stone molding that joined floor and wall. “That one.”
To bring his eyes to the level of her finger, Giles had to lie flat on the floor.
“I felt it,” she explained. “The rest of the stone is so smooth, and then something is chiseled into it. Once you know it’s there, you can make out the numbers.”
He slid his hand where she indicated, and there were the numbers. 1785.
It was real.
Lady Beatrix had left behind jewels and puzzle boxes thirty-five years before. Her message, her gift to a family that didn’t yet exist.
“I never knew my mother had such a fondness for chiseling things.” He traced the numerals, so small and faint that one could almost overlook their existence—but there they were, tiny imperfections in the stone.
He smiled as he sat up again. She seemed found again, the woman who had been lost to long illness. When she scratched these numbers into stone, Lady Beatrix was hopeful and happy and full of mischief. A laughing woman with Giles’s blunt-fingered hands and sturdy frame, his freckled face and fiery hair.
“I wish you could have known my mother,” he told Audrina.
“I do, too,” she said. “Though I feel I’m getting to, a bit. She certainly enjoyed an adventure.”
“There must be something behind the stone, then.” Lady Irving straightened up, one hand at the small of her back. “None of us brought a single tool with us, did we?”
Audrina pawed through the folds of her cloak and put a hand into the pocket of her gown. “I have a penknife. I picked it up earlier after writing some notes, in case Llewellyn caused any trouble.” She said this matter-of-factly as she unfolded the flat blade from its ivory handle and extended it to Giles.
He caught her hand instead of simply taking the knife. “I love you. Did you know that?”
He hadn’t meant to say that. But when the words tumbled forth, they were exactly right.
She sat back on her heels, brows lifted. “I didn’t, actually, but that’s good. I love you, too.”
Each crouching in a ridiculous pile on the cold floor of the church, a stone and a knife between them—they smiled. No, smile was too mild a word for what Giles’s face was doing. It wasn’t just his lips; it was his heart and his mind and every sinew of his frame, all wanting to leap and jump with swooping delight. “You do?”
“Yes.”
She blinked, then laughed, a low bubble that made him forget the hard cold stone or anything that wasn’t her face and her laugh and her kindness and her brilliance, because good Lord, the woman has a penknife with her and she is ready for absolutely anything.
Giles caught her up and planted a smacking kiss on her lips. “You amaze me, princess. You. Are. Amazing.”
“No doubt this is all beautiful”—Lady Irving’s voice filtered down as though from a great height—“but if one of you doesn’t use that knife on the stone, I will use it on you.”
Giles rolled his eyes. “Do you feel as though we’re being chaperoned?” Not that he minded, really. He wouldn’t mind anything right now. He felt as though his face must be permanently folded from all the grinning.
Taking up the penknife, he caught its tip in the top seam of the stone molding. “Here goes.” He pressed down onto the beveled joint with the thin blade.
Something crumbled.
His hands shook. “It’s joined with mortar. It’s not solid stone.”
“Lady Beatrix mortared the hiding place? Was she in the habit of carrying mortar about?” Lady Irving sounded skeptical.
“Surely she would have brought what she needed to hide the jewels,” Richard said. “Mortar, tools—anything to hide her treasure.”
“Keep working at the joint, Giles!” Audrina urged.
Giles needed no urging, though. Drawing in a deep breath, he steadied his hands and followed the line of the stone. A grating sound issued as the knife blade split the thin seam of old mortar. With a satisfying pop, the last bit came free and a plate of stone molding the height and width of his hand tipped forward. Audrina worked it free and set it gently aside.
“What do you see?” asked Richard.
Giles leaned back so they could all look together: a crack, likely from the settling foundation, which had been chipped out and widened into a space the size of a fist. Stuffed into it was a wad of faded, discolored velvet.
He caught his breath. Held it. Tugged free the fragile old cloth, which proved to be a small drawstring bag. It was weighty, promisingly so. One of the strings snapped, rotten, as he pulled it.
“Father? Will you do us the honor?”
Richard held out a hand, and Giles upended the bag into it. A jumble of glassy fire and gold fell forth, so much that Richard had to swoop up his other hand to cradle it all in his palms.
Lady Irving uttered an admiring blasphemy.
“Yes,” said Richard. “Yes, exactly.” The diamonds beamed at them.
Richard sat on the floor and began laying out pieces. A crescent-shaped brooch, a jeweled hair comb, a ring. Bracelets. A tiara. Drop earrings and a necklace.
They were large and lovely gems, baguette and emerald cut, with delicately worked settings. Giles traced the lines of the necklace, the linked lyres of gem-studded gold from which hung a giant teardrop diamond.
It was a fortune in stones. It was enough to build a business on—or a new life.
Giles swallowed. “My father and I talked about this, Audrina. If we found the stones, we agreed that you should choose any piece you liked.”
She turned from the diamonds to look at him, puzzled. “Why?”
“Because you were part of this quest. Because I don’t want you to feel trapped, ever. You should have the right and the freedom to decide your own worth, in whatever way you wish.”
Richard cleared his throat. “Let’s give them a bit of privacy, Estella.”
“You must be joking,” protested Lady Irving. “This is better than an evening at the theater.”
Before Richard marched her away, he turned out his pockets into the poor box.
Audrina watched them walk up the church aisle. “If you want to know what I wish, Giles . . . I wish we would marry. If the only thing keeping us apart is your hands—and my pride—and all the happenstances of birth, and distance—”
“Oh, is that all?” Somehow, over his heartbeat’s thumping agreement, he managed a mock frown.
“Well, yes. I said nothing about feeling or worth, did you notice? And that’s what’s important.” She considered. “I feel more myself with you. And I love you, just as you are.”
She laced her fingers into his. “If we need to, we can use my whole dowry to treat your hands, and we’ll live in a hovel. As long as you design it. Only if you think any of this sounds like something you might like to do, tell me at once because I am beginning to feel nervous.” Not that her features betrayed a flicker of it.
Until he said, “It all sounds like something I want to do,” and she let out a sigh that seemed to fold her in half.
“Let me do the thing properly.” Helping her to her feet, he then knelt before her right there on the cold flags of the church floor.
“I see what you’re up to, young Rutherford,” called Lady Irving. “There’s a ring right next to you.”
Giles ignored this in favor of the pair of warm green eyes that studied his. “I want to marry you, Audrina. I want to be with you; I want to deserve you. I want to watch you laugh or set your jaw or ruin bread. I want to notice when your eyes well up—yes, just like that—and have a handkerchief for you . . . Oh, for God’s sake, I don’t have a handkerchief. I’m sorry.”
She laughed. “I don’t need to wipe these tears away.”
“Everything you suggested sounds delightful,” he said, “except for living in a hovel and tossing away money on medical expenses. I do not think that will be necessary. You see, there’s a chance that I am . . .” What was the word? Not healthy, exactly, but not ill as his mother had been. “Fine.” Fine was as good a word as any.
She gaped. “How—when—how can you—” She shook her head. “Explain,” she finally choked out.
So he did, a quick sketch of his mother’s symptoms and his own, and—not insignificantly—the relief from pain that had persisted for a blessed interval after she stretched and rubbed his hands.
“But even if that weren’t the case,” he said, “I would have come for you. I would have proposed marriage to you. I wanted to, you know that. Between the two of us, we did a fair job of chasing ourselves apart. But I never wanted to go.”
“I wanted you to stay.” Her voice caught. “I wanted to lie in your arms in bed, in a room painted the color of your eyes. I wanted you to say that you wanted to marry me because a future together was worth fighting for.”
“You are worth it.” He paused. “You make me want a future of bright and infinite possibility. You make me appreciate the present more: this now, and all the nows that come after. On either continent, on either shore, I want to be with you.”
“Why not both? Your father has crossed the Atlantic several times. Surely we could, too.” The set of her jaw, that vivid look in her eye, that flush on her cheek: She was having An Idea. “When you wish, I will travel with you to America, as long as you meet two conditions.”
“What are those?”
“First, we must live in New York, or wherever it is a man of imagination and skill can design buildings. Second, our home must always be open to your siblings—or mine, should any of them venture across an ocean. Oh, and there’s a third condition as well.”
He realized he was still kneeling. Holding her hand, he eased to his feet. “The first two would be my honor. What else are you thinking of?”
“We must get a dog. Since we left Castle Parr, do you not miss having dogs about?”