A sudden crash drew her gaze back to Oliver and Sheridan, where the guest had somehow managed to drop an entire stack of books onto the floor. Odd, since he wasn’t usually clumsy. But then, he was darting a mortified gaze even now toward the door while he bent to retrieve the tomes.
Libby peered around her brother and saw that Beth had appeared in the doorway, looking like a very different person from the one who had raced past them on the road into Old Grimsby. Instead of the utilitarian braid, she’d brushed her hair into a simple, elegant chignon. The trousers and man’s shirt had been exchanged for a day dress in pale blue that perfectly complemented her complexion. She couldn’t have spent more than five minutes on her appearance after she’d checked on her grandmother, yet she looked more put together than Libby felt after an hour of Mabena’s ministrations.
She almost felt a twinge of jealousy. For half a second. Then she was just glad that this young lady she didn’t know had come home, and that it looked as though she meant to stay for a while, if she was changing back into what must be her normal attire.
Oliver accepted a few of the books that Sheridan thrust at him and put them back on the shelf. “How was Mamm-wynn, Beth?”
“Sleeping, it seems. Could I borrow you for a moment, Ollie? I’d like to hear what happened to her. And perhaps Benna can—Casek Wearne?” She frowned, having not looked to her cousin until that moment. “What are you doing here?”
“Gloating,” his lips said, though the hand he had on Mabena’s back said, Courting far more loudly.
Beth’s frown only deepened. “Hadn’t you better be getting home and cleaned up so you can go to school?”
“School?” Back on his feet with a stack of books helter-skelter in his arms, Sheridan quirked a brow toward Casek.
Mabena smiled. “He’s the headmaster.” Only a dunce could have missed the pride in her tone.
Beth was apparently no dunce. She blinked, opened her mouth, closed it again. “It seems I missed quite a bit while I was . . . on holiday.”
“Mm.” Mabena’s smile turned to narrowed eyes and pursed lips. “Just a tad. You’ve had Charlotte Wight and Lady Emily Scofield looking for you on St. Mary’s—”
“Emily was here?” Beth lurched a step into the room, eyes wide. With panic, or regret? Libby couldn’t quite tell.
“And will be again, we hear, as of Friday. But we can talk more about that in a moment.” Mabena gave her cousin a strange look before turning to Casek. “Let me see you out, dearovim, and then—”
“No.” He said it easily, but he had a statue-like quality just now. Like his feet were made of granite and weren’t about to budge. The smile he sent to Beth looked anything but casual. “I have a few questions for your cousin that I mean to ask before she vanishes again.”
Beth’s chin ratcheted up. “I’m not going anywhere. Not with Mamm-wynn ill. Though I can’t think what business you would have with me, Casek Wearne.”
“I think you can.”
“Johnnie Rosedew.” Libby nearly clapped a hand over her mouth after she said it. Why had she spoken? It must be Darling’s fault with that purring-induced confidence.
Sheridan fumbled the books again. What had gotten into him? Though he winced as they hit the floor, he didn’t bend to scoop them up this time.
Oliver cleared his throat and took a step toward the door. He sent Libby an apologetic look. “Do excuse us for a moment, my lords. My lady. We’ll not bore you with our family business. Beth, Casek, Benna—the garden, I think.”
She understood the apology in his look now. She wanted to go out with them, hear what Beth had to say. And she’d have had every right to, if her brother hadn’t ruined everything with his arrival. But now it was only logical that she keep him and Sheridan out of the way. Oliver and Mabena would just have to update her later. She gave him a small nod to let him know she understood.
Sheridan didn’t seem to though. He stepped forward too, an odd expression on his face and a hand held out. “Actually . . . that is, I think you’d better stay here. I mean, I have a feeling—drat it all. Is this about the search for Mucknell’s treasure? What with Scofields and Rosedews and Elizabeths, I suspect it is.”
Libby knew her own face must register the same shock that the others’ did. And a bit of the matching confusion on Bram’s and Beth’s.
Beth regained herself first, surging another step into the room and slamming the door behind her. “What do you know of that, my lord?”
He gave her a look that was perfectly Sheridan—a bit wincing, a bit self-deprecating, and yet fully committed to whatever path he’d decided upon without a single care to whatever bystanders might be in the way. “Well, you see . . . that is . . . well, I’m the buyer who hired them.”
Bram was pacing, still clutching his empty teacup. Sheridan was hunched into a chair at the head of the library table, looking as though he were trying to keep a mental list of the dozens of questions that had already been fired at him. Casek and Mabena had both taken seats too, and Beth had pulled out a chair across from Sheridan but failed to sit in it, gripping it tightly instead as she glared at him.
Libby had stayed where she was, since her spot afforded a view of all the faces at the table. And she was doubly glad of it when Oliver edged his way to her side.
“I can’t believe this.” A sentiment they were no doubt all thinking for different reasons, but it was her brother who spat out the words at his friend. “You mean to tell me you had ulterior motives for coming here? To check up on . . . on—what exactly? One of your baffling archaeological obsessions?”
“It’s hardly baffling. Family history, actually, you know—a bit.” Sheridan huffed. “I’ve told you before we’re descended from Prince Rupert, haven’t I? He served with Mucknell during the Civil War. And why did you think I was so eager to join you in the Scillies?”
Having reached the opposite wall, Bram pivoted. “To see your fiancée.”
“I am not his fiancée!” Libby probably shouldn’t have shifted closer to Oliver when she said it. It just brought Bram’s thundering attention back to her, and it was clearly threatening enough to scare even the kitten. Darling squirmed out of her hold and leaped to the ground, pouncing on a tassel of the rug as if it were a mouse.
Prince Rupert . . . Wasn’t he the pirate prince Tas-gwyn had mentioned? She looked over at Oliver, who was clearly piecing the same thing together. Her own mind went from pirate prince to the start of Beth’s unfinished fairy tale.
Once upon a time, there was a princess. She lived on an island of rocks and bones, with no one to keep her company aside from the fairies. All her life she’d danced with them to the tunes they played on their magical pipes, the tunes echoed by deep voices from the rock itself. One day, however, the music stopped.
“All right,” Oliver said in that calm voice of his that could bring order to any chaos—at least when it was a chaos of people. “So, Lord Sheridan, you have an interest in information on Prince Rupert of the Rhine and, by extension, Vice Admiral Sir John Mucknell. Is that right?”
Sheridan nodded. “Ever since I learned of the prince as a lad. Who wouldn’t? I mean, a pirate prince! For a relative! I’ve made no secret of it. That is, I’m always on the hunt for more information. In fact—don’t you remember, Telly? I contacted the British Museum years ago, asking if they had anything in their archives that would be of interest. Inspired, actually . . .” He cleared his throat and stole a glance at Mabena, of all people. “Well, when you hired Moon and said she was from the Scillies, it stirred the memory, you know. Of Prince Rupert. That was when I asked the museum for any information.”