Then they added dropped jaws to the look.
Beth sighed. “What? There’s a thief in my house. I’m not taking any chances, nor do I trust him not to sneak in here looking for more Prince Rupert memorabilia when I’m not at home.”
Emily looked dubious. “If you honestly believe he’s so nefarious, why would a flimsy desk lock stop him?”
“I don’t imagine it would stop him. But it may slow him until someone catches him at it.” She turned to Libby—their resident Sheridan expert. “He doesn’t know how to pick a lock, does he?”
Libby blinked. “Not that he’s boasted of. Though really, I don’t think he’s quite as bad as all that, Beth. He’s annoying, but he’s not nefarious.”
Funny. Beth didn’t find him annoying—she simply didn’t trust him even a morsel. Because he was a selfish, greedy, thieving cad. “He stole my trinket box.”
Emily sighed. “That was my father. Though I’m certain he’d misunderstood your intentions.”
She could excuse that opinion, given that Emily was his daughter. For her own part, Beth was happy to wash her hands of every Scofield but the one before her now.
Lord Scofield had been out only for his own profit—he and Emily’s older brother both. She’d not yet met the younger Scofield, Nigel, but only because he’d mistaken Libby for her. Poor Libby. She’d received both the threats and the violence meant for Beth.
But even so. She crouched down to insert the key into the drawer’s lock—which wasn’t as flimsy as one might think. Morgan, when he was well enough, had enjoyed tinkering with such things. He’d not only fitted it with a stouter lock than it had come with, he’d also reinforced the drawer.
Well, granted, that was after he and Oliver had broken the old one in search of a diary, which she didn’t even keep. Typical brothers. But he’d paid his penance with the fortifications. Unlike some other people she knew, whose sins went unrepented.
“Your family wouldn’t have had that misunderstanding if Lord More-Money-than-Sense hadn’t offered them such a ridiculous sum for anything linked to Prince Rupert. Perhaps your father let his enthusiasm for a sale get ahead of his reason”—though she doubted it had been anything but intentional—“but Sheridan was still at the root of it.”
Beth yanked the drawer out and pulled a stack of letters from within, holding it up for whoever wanted to take it. Someone did, so she followed it with another.
With the addition of what she’d added that morning, the drawer was crammed full. Letters from Mucknell to his wife, letters from his wife back to him—presumably from some point before his final voyage to the Caribbean, given that he must have brought them home with him again and stowed them there. Copies she’d made of the map that had led them to the queen’s silverware Mucknell had stolen from a ship called the Canary. Books she’d borrowed from their library or her grandfather’s, with helpful pages marked. Reams of notes she’d taken on other books she couldn’t borrow indefinitely. Lists of every ship Mucknell’s pirate fleet had reputedly struck and the cargoes they’d supposedly carried, when the Scofields had been able to dig them up for her in London.
It was rather fortunate that so many of the ships had been East Indiamen. The Company had kept meticulous records.
“Gracious.” Emily took a stack of those manifests from her hands. “Did Father send you all of this? I had no idea it was so much. He must have had someone . . .”
At the way her voice trailed off, Beth looked up to find her friend staring into empty space, a frown marring her brow. “Had someone what?”
Emily blinked, pulled out a smile that looked about as authentic as the copy of the Venus de Milo Beth had attempted when she was ten, and cleared her throat. “Nothing, I’m sure. I only meant that he wouldn’t have spent the days in the archives that fetching all this would have required. But he would have simply hired a clerk to do it. That’s all.”
If that was all, it wouldn’t have given Emily such pause. Pursing her lips, Beth pulled out the last of her research, pushed the drawer closed, and stood. Rather than try to get her shoe back on without the help of her now-full hands, she toed the second one off too. “Which means someone else has a list of all the ships Mucknell took. For that matter, these aren’t the originals, which means someone made the copies. Someone knows everything I know.”
Emily hugged her stack of materials to her chest. “Well, of course. And I always assumed Father kept a record of everything he sent you—he’s that sort. So naturally Nigel would have it all, but he’s never been one to fuss over papers. I suppose I just had the thought . . . well, whoever else they have interested in this—the American. If perhaps he were as resourceful as Lord Sheridan has proven himself, willing to hire someone else to determine what we’ve learned . . .”
“If that someone finds the clerk who did this work,” Libby filled in, “then he could access it all as well. If it were someone whose loyalty could be bought, not your family members themselves.”
Emily nodded.
Beth let out a loud exhale and stomped to the door. “Just in case we hadn’t enough players involved already, I suppose.” She flashed a smile at them over her shoulder to let them know she didn’t begrudge their involvement—much—and led the way back into the corridor and down the stairs.
And truly, she did appreciate having friends surrounding her. Without a doubt, this quest had grown too large and dangerous for her alone. Still, it had been rather grand in the spring when it was her own private mission. Just her own wits, her own sense of adventure, her own intimate knowledge of every nook and cranny of the islands, earned through two decades of bold—and occasionally foolhardy—exploration. Her own victory when she found another piece to the puzzle. Her own disappointment when she ran into a dead end. No one else there to cluck their tongue or scowl at her.
Or to all but leap upon her with their demands and expectations the moment she entered a room, as Sheridan did when she dared to step foot in the library. “Let me help,” he said with his lips as he snatched a few books and papers from the top of her pile. Let me see everything you’ve worked so hard to find, he said with his overeager claws.
Had she another set of hands, she would have grabbed the things right back. “Bar the windows, Ollie. Don’t let him make off with these things.”
She was a bit surprised when Sheridan turned to meet that little barb rather than letting it roll off him. “I believe,” he said with half a smile, “that of the two of us—well, I’m not the one with a habit of vanishing. Am I?”
“Touché.” Oliver had moved forward, too, to relieve Libby of her burden. And to linger there at her side. But he smiled. Actually smiled at a reference to Beth’s disappearance, which she knew well had caused him no end of grief and worry.
He’d forgiven her, just as Mamm-wynn had said he had. Beth had to blink a few rapid times to clear the unexpected relief of it from her eyes. Worrying him had been the last thing she’d wanted to do.
No, not true. Seeing him hurt, or Mamm-wynn, had been the last thing she wanted. She’d gone into hiding to avoid it, after Johnnie Rosedew was killed and her own life threatened by one of the thugs Sheridan had hired. She hadn’t known how else to keep them safe.