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“He did what?” Toby said.
They were in what had once been the library, most of its books long gone. Toby was sitting on an old crate he’d filled with ancient almanacs and Turf guides while Miles was out. He was wearing an expression of stunned bafflement that probably approximated Miles’s own when he’d been told about this.
Toby rubbed his face. “I don’t understand. Tell me again.”
“My father sold the lands, and everything valuable we owned, and the investments, and absolutely everything he could short of the house itself, and put the proceeds in the bank.”
“Right, yes, I grasp that part. I’m not clear why.”
Miles shut his eyes. “At first, in order to ensure I got nothing from my inheritance. He started after the last argument, Greenford said. Seven years ago. He didn’t strip the house then, but he sold the land and the investments. And then he got my letters. I wrote several times, but not until I had gone a year without playing. I didn’t feel I could until then, but naturally, hearing nothing, he had no reason to think anything but the worst. I never received a reply. Perhaps he didn’t write back, or maybe they didn’t reach me on campaign. But he got my letters. He used to read parts of them to Greenford, his solicitor. He followed my career in the newspapers. Greenford said he was proud of me.”
Toby scrambled off the crate to kneel by Miles, reaching for his hand. Miles squeezed it. “Only, he’d vowed I’d never get a penny from him, on my mother’s grave. So he decided to put the money into something else. Something he could leave me without breaking his vow.”
“I suppose it’s very important to keep one’s word.” Toby sounded dubious.
Miles threw his hands up. “Apparently it seemed reasonable to him. Christ, I should have been here. Anyway. He wanted to convert the money into something I could inherit, and he decided to make that inheritance bigger and better, a magnificent gesture worthy of his returned prodigal. That became his new obsession. He sold everything he could, stripped the house and let it go to rack and ruin around him, all in the pursuit of this wonderful prize. And he finally decided it was time when I wrote that I was coming home. He bought jewels then. He bought—” He swallowed. “Sixty thousand pounds’ worth of jewels.”
Toby opened his mouth, tried out a few words without managing to voice any of them, and finally managed, “Fuck me ragged.”
“Quite.”
“Sixty— I didn’t know there was that much money. I mean, all in one place. Sixty— Well. Uh. Congratulations.” He looked almost distressed for just a second, and then his face broke into a smile. “That’s wonderful. I mean, very odd and not terribly convenient, but at least your father was thinking of you. And you can sell it—why aren’t you looking more pleased?”
Miles sighed. “Because when Greenford told me this, I was rather hoping he’d say, And it’s here in a safe deposit box or So your father put it in the bank. He didn’t.”
“So where is it?”
“It seems that my father took it home.”
“It’s in the house?” Toby asked, and then his expression froze. “It’s...in the house. And you’ve probably looked in all the sensible places to keep valuables already.”
“I have. Greenford begged him to keep it in the bank and my father informed him he didn’t trust anyone but himself with it. He said he would keep it safe in a good hiding place, until his son, Captain Carteret, came home to look after it.”
Toby’s fingers twined deeper into his. “Oh, Miles. So he hid it.”
“Mmm.”
“In this house.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Shit,” Toby said wholeheartedly. “Any ideas?”
“None at all. It could be anywhere. Under floorboards or behind panels, because if he was waiting for me to come home, it wouldn’t have to be somewhere he could pull it out at a moment’s notice. Or just in a drawer, or a box, somewhere.”
“There are a lot of drawers,” Toby said, sounding hollow. “A lot.”
“Aren’t there just.” It had been bad enough looking to clear the place of accumulated rubbish. The task ahead of him was horrifying.
Toby glanced up at him. “I suppose we should start looking, then. What are we looking for?”
We. His fingers were warm in Miles’s grip. “A diamond necklace. Five strings, large stones, exquisitely matched, with a central sapphire.”
“Hard to miss,” Toby said. “Unless it’s in an anonymous-looking bag, or a cigar box, or any of a thousand unobtrusive things, in which case it will be extremely easy to miss. I don’t suppose you have any ideas? Clues? Memories? Feelings? Divine inspiration?”
“None of the above.”
“What about—the man in the letter, I forget his name. The snake?”
“Sir Athelney Pugh. He’s the local magistrate. Greenford said he prosecuted my father for unlicensed candle-making shortly before his death, and my father spoke very wildly and bitterly about him. It seems my father had become increasingly erratic by then, that he was confused. Which—”
“You were coming home,” Toby said softly. “You were on your way.”
“Not fast enough.” If only he’d come home sooner; if only he’d faced his problems years ago. If only he could play like a normal man. If only he’d never picked up the dice.
Toby was watching him, looking up into his face. Miles tried for a smile. “It’s all a damned mess, isn’t it?”
“A mess with sixty thousand pounds hidden in it. You could—well, you’d have your inheritance back, wouldn’t you? Your future.” Toby hesitated, then gave a sharp nod. “It seems to me we need a plan. Work through the house room by room. You don’t think it could already have been thrown away?”
“We’ll have to assume it hasn’t been, but I’m not burning anything else, in case.”
Toby rose. “I’ll make a list.”
***
THE NEXT WEEK WAS, without doubt, one of the most exhausting and filthy of Miles’s life, and for a man who’d campaigned on the Peninsula, that said something.
They worked morning to night. First they searched the study from top to bottom, including pulling up floorboards and prising panels off the walls. Then Miles went through his father’s wardrobe, checking pockets, boots, hat-boxes, while Toby searched the rest of the bedroom, examining the mattress, the bed-hangings, the curtains. They moved on, starting with the rooms they’d already emptied, checking floorboards for any sign they’d been lifted, checking walls, furniture, every nook and cranny, every cabinet and drawer and box. It took hours, and that was just the rooms without clutter, and Arvon Hall wasn’t small. It was exhausting work, because, as Toby pointed out, if they weren’t thorough and they didn’t find it, they’d have to start all over again, at which point they’d both run mad.
Miles didn’t find that entirely a joke. He could imagine developing an obsession like his father’s, spending lonely months and years scrabbling through a house full of potential hiding places in search of elusive treasure, shrivelling into a miser who thought of nothing but riches, who feared visitors as thieves and dreamed of wealth that might be found years too late to do him any good. It was a horribly vivid picture, and he held on to Toby as his talisman against it.
Toby wouldn’t get sucked into lonely obsession: he simply wasn’t that sort of man. He attacked each morning cheerfully, insisted on stops to drink, eat, walk outside. He talked, telling absurd stories of his erratic life and asking for Miles’s, in a way that kept the wider world firmly in view, and never let their horizons dwindle to Arvon Hall. He threw the windows open, and let in the air, and Miles’s hand shook, sometimes, when he touched him in the evenings, out of sheer gratitude for the fate that had driven this particular thief to steal his watch.
It could have felt like a very dark and disheartening week of unrewarded labour. Instead, when they sluiced off the dust in the evenings and lay in bed for slow, sleepy lovemaking, or the occasional frantic fuck once Toby turned up a bottle of oil, it felt like a charmed life.
Miles lay now, splayed over the bed, pleasantly tired, somewhat achy. Toby had ridden him exuberantly, gasping praise, fucking Miles with gleeful enthusiasm till he cried out and spent over the sheets. Even in his misspent youth, he’d never imagined himself taking a prick in his ancestral home. The massed ranks of past Carterets were probably turning in their graves.
“Be damned to them,” he said aloud.
“Who?” Toby had rolled off him and was snuggled against his side, sweaty and satisfied.
“My ancestors. Lot of bores.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.” Miles twisted to kiss his forehead. “I think—I think I need to face the fact that we might not find this damned necklace.”
“We might not.” Toby didn’t sound as if this was a new idea to him. “I don’t think we should give up yet, though, and I’ll keep looking for it as long as you want. It might be in the next room.”
“Or my father might have buried it in a hole in the gardens, and it’ll rot there.”
Toby cupped his face. “I’m sure diamonds don’t rot, and we’ll keep looking. But it’s probably good to be prepared for the worst.”
He didn’t say What happens if we don’t find it? Miles was glad about that. He wasn’t sure of the answer.