“Ah!” Sheridan sprang away from the table, eyes ablaze. “Excellent. I mean, do you need any help?”
What he meant was that he wanted to get his grubby paws on all her research, all her finds, all her weeks—months—of work. She sent him a scowl that he probably wouldn’t even notice through the haze of his own excitement. “I have everything in my room, so . . .” The idiot man was starting around the table, as if he meant to vault up the stairs and grab it all. “So, no. You’re not stepping foot in there, as my brother and everyone else with a shred of sensibility will guarantee.”
He didn’t slow. “Library! I’ll clear the tables!”
She might have muttered a phrase that she’d learned from the girls at finishing school. And it might have made Emily giggle even as Libby frowned in confusion. And it also might have made her brother clear his throat and rise with that vicar cloak around his shoulders.
She rolled her eyes and turned to the door, but she couldn’t convince her shoulders not to bunch up or her fingers not to curl into her palms. Perhaps Mamm-wynn was right that she must share, but that didn’t make it any easier to do so.
Libby must have noted it. She reached out to put a calming hand on Oliver’s arm, her face all compassion. “We don’t have to go over it all if you don’t want. Do we, Oliver? There’s no need to hunt for more of Mucknell’s treasure. We’ve found the silver, and that’s all anyone was searching for, wasn’t it? Why not let it rest?”
“What?” Lord Incorrigible was back in the doorway, horror on his face. “You can’t—she mustn’t—Telly, tell her.”
Beth turned her head, along with everyone else, toward Lord Telford, Libby’s brother. He hadn’t said much through the meal, but that was no great surprise. He was utterly silent upon rising, never seemed to say a word until eleven, and was still largely quiet at midday. Though by afternoon he had a sarcastic rejoinder for every observation.
Beth quite liked him.
And Sheridan’s oddities never ruffled him in the least. “Certainly. Libby, it’s like this.” He leaned forward, hand waving along with his words. “Sher is obsessed and won’t give us a moment’s peace until either we find every last coin of Mucknell’s treasure or he’s convinced that what remains can’t be found by someone else.”
Yes, she really quite liked Lord Telford.
Sheridan huffed. “Thanks, chum.”
Telford grinned at him. “I am, as always, at your disposal.”
And sarcastic or not, he was right. Even more to the point, they had reason to think that Emily’s brother, Nigel, might be every bit as obsessed and considerably more cutthroat about it, so . . . “I need just a moment to gather it all.”
“I’ll help you.” Libby moved to her side, a bit of apology now in her eyes.
Beth couldn’t help but smile at her. She was a strange girl in some ways, this lady who kept her hair in a braid and wore the same style blouse and simple skirt that any islander would—other than at dinner, when she donned a gown, on those evenings when she joined them here. But it hadn’t taken long to see why she’d captivated Oliver so quickly. She had a keen mind and a heart even keener to know and be known.
Libby loved Oliver. She loved Mamm-wynn. She loved the Scillies. And so Beth would welcome her to the family with open arms. “I appreciate it.”
She darted a look to Emily to see if she wanted to tag along, too, which was all it took for her friend to scurry after them. Not surprising. Emily never liked being left alone with gentlemen. She’d flush crimson in about two seconds and forget she knew how to speak English. Funny, since she was bright and buoyant in the company of other girls, or even mixed company.
At the top of the stairs, Beth turned into her room, her eyes moving straightaway to the wall of shelves with its bare spot. For the last three years, that was where her trinket box had sat, proudly displayed in the place of honor. As a girl, she’d admired it endlessly on her mother’s dressing table. She’d traced a finger over its crest, imagining the prince whose symbol it was. He would be tall, she’d decided, with hair as black as any Cornishman’s. Handsome—obviously—with the sort of roguish charm that always sounded so intoxicating in a story, and which would be considerably less so in reality. And, of course, he would be a regular swashbuckler. That, after all, was part of the story.
Once there lived, and once there was, a beautiful maiden at the edge of the world. She made her home here on the islands, where the sea surrounded them day and night, bringing them life and bringing them death. And one day, it brought her a prince.
But he was more than just a prince, exiled here when his family’s crown was stolen. He wasn’t satisfied to sit and wait while his fortunes were restored. He had inside a drive to be the one to restore them. And so, this prince took to the seas, where he could wage war on his enemies and take back his family’s lost treasure.
And he took to the Scillies, where an island girl waged war on his heart.
Not just a prince, but a pirate. She ought to have pieced together long ago that it was Prince Rupert her mother was talking about, the legendary pirate prince. He was a regular character in Tas-gwyn’s tales—but then, that was the problem. Her grandfather had so exaggerated Prince Rupert’s exploits, frequently turning him into a cursed figure, a magical one, a mythical one, that she’d forgotten he was real. Real and once vibrant and breathing and capable of falling in love with a girl who could never, except in a fairy tale, be accepted by his family.
They would have had, then, the typical dilemma—to defy family and risk losing everything he had to his name and marry her, or to indulge the yearning and defy their morals but save his reputation at the cost of hers.
In Mother’s story, they married. What else would she tell her? But ever since the Scofields had verified that the crest on that box did indeed belong to Prince Rupert of the Rhine, she’d begun to wonder. That he’d given it to a local lass was likely. That he’d loved her was a reasonable explanation for the action. That he’d married her was as farfetched as Tas-gwyn’s tales of walking skeletons.
And now who knew if she’d ever even see the box again? Unless she sneaked away to the Lake District and stole it from Sheridan’s blasted castle.
Her lips tugged up. Come to think of it, that sounded like quite an adventure.
“Oh no. What are you grinning about?” Emily leaned close to Libby. “That grin is always a sign of trouble. She led me into all sorts of mischief when she grinned like that at school.”
Beth laughed and turned to her desk and its locked drawer. “Relax, Em. I’m only deciding if I should break into Sheridan Castle and steal back my trinket box.”
Emily’s eye twitched. “Only, she says. Relax, she says.”
Libby, at least, laughed. “I’ve been to Sheridan Castle. I can tell you the best way in. Though fair warning, it’s a veritable museum, with all the artifacts he has. You could well get lost for a month trying to find one little box amidst all his ridiculous antiquities.”
Emily turned a horrified look on Libby. “Now you’ve done it. She’ll be gone again by morning.”
“Don’t tempt me.” Beth toed off her shoe, which earned her raised brows from both her companions. At least until she pried away the heel and slid out the small key to her desk drawer.