Still. She felt a bit detached from her body as she rounded the table, as if her feet were more on a cloud than the library floor. “Oh?”
“Mm.” Gaze locked on hers, he advanced another step, too, until they were only an arm’s length apart. Then he dropped to one knee, making her breath tangle up in her chest. “My lady fair, would you . . . forgive me?”
He pulled his arm forward, revealing not a piece of jewelry or a small box that would house one . . . but a box still. Larger, and a treasure in itself. She sucked in a quick breath. Her trinket box was resting on his upturned palm.
“Oh!” Better by far than a family jewel. Tears stinging her eyes, she cupped the precious wood between her own palms. “Sheridan. This is what you wanted them to bring?”
“Of course I did. It means far more to you than it ever could to me. Well, aside from the fact that it means so much to you. That obviously makes it important to me too. And—well, I ought to have returned it sooner. But it was at the castle, and they were in London, and I didn’t trust just any courier to bring it, and . . . well, there at the start I may have been a bit stubborn about it. Because you were so set on being Beth the Belligerent, that is. But it was wrong of me, and—”
She leaned down and pressed her lips to his, making no objection when he tugged her onto his knee for a better angle. Though he’d probably collapse if they stayed like that for more than a minute. So, she pulled her mouth away at the first wobble of his leg, standing and pulling him up with her. “Thank you. And of course I forgive you. And pray you’ll forgive me, too, for being so . . . belligerent.”
Oh how she loved the way one corner of his mouth tugged up. “Well. Perhaps I will. If you beg enough. On your knees, hands clasped before you, I want the whole show—and it must go on for at least a month. I’m a hard one to win over, you know.”
He brushed a stray wisp of hair from her face as she laughed. “Oh yes. You have certainly proven yourself to be ever so stingy with your affections and forgiveness.”
A bit of a shadow overtook his face. “I admit I’m having a harder time of it when it comes to those who would hurt you.” His fingers lingered in her hair longer than they needed to—not that she was complaining. Her own fingers were tracing the familiar crest on the box’s lid, not quite able to believe it was back in her hands. Somehow, even after everything had changed between them, she’d not been able to think that the box was anything but lost to her.
He’d returned a part of her family to her and valued it enough to ask his own sisters to bring it. She pressed the box to her chest with one hand and wrapped the other arm around his waist. Far better to focus on that than on Nigel Scofield. “I suppose we need to return that hundred pounds to you.”
She loved his laugh too. All the more when she could feel it in his chest and not just hear it. “You know, I’d consider it a fair trade if you’d tell me a story about the box.”
“A story?” She tilted her face up. “I’ve already told you the story that goes with it.”
“Well, with the actual box, yes. I meant your story—the one that goes along with the slip of paper in the hidden compartment.”
“The . . . what?” She pulled away, only vaguely aware of the din of many footsteps coming their way. “The what in the secret what now?”
He was frowning now—even as the pulse she could see in his throat pounded harder. “You don’t—but you must have known about it. I thought it you who must have put it there. A slip of paper. Barely tall enough for a single letter, but long and written on both sides.”
She was shaking her head long before he finished. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. A secret compartment?” She held the box flat again. “Where? Mother never mentioned it—and surely she would have. That would have been part of its story.”
“I assumed . . . here. Let me show you.” His hands trembled as he reached for the box, which was no doubt why he breathed a laugh and shook his head. “Sorry, just—if you didn’t know. If your mother didn’t . . . it could mean no one did. It could—well, it could mean . . .”
She glanced at the doorway and the family and friends spilling through it, then back to him. To the realization in his eyes that mirrored her own. “It could mean that no one ever opened that compartment, not since it was held in the hands of Prince Rupert of the Rhine. Until you.”
Another nervous breath of laughter puffed from his lips, but his hands steadied as he turned over the box, twisted one of the legs, and then eased up the bottom piece.
Oliver stepped close, Libby with him. “What in the world?”
Beth reached for the slender slip of paper curled in the tiny compartment. It wasn’t deep enough for much else—perhaps a necklace with a flat pendant, but nothing thicker than a quarter inch. The compartment was so shallow it was likely no one had ever guessed it was there.
Not paper. The texture was wrong for that. Parchment, much like the map that had led them to the silverware earlier in the summer. But where the map had looked aged and the ink had been faded by time and water, this slip, having never seen either light or elements, was pristine.
“What does it say?” Libby asked.
Beth shook her head, more at the string of letters than her friend. “I have no idea. It’s just random letters.” She lifted her brows toward Sheridan. “Or is it? Have you decoded it?”
“Me?” He shook his head. “I just said I wanted the story from you, remember? I thought perhaps it was a secret code you’d written as a girl, when you were playing pirate. I didn’t honestly spend much time trying to work it out. It looked too new to be that old.”
Beth pulled out a chair and sat, still staring at the slip. “I’m afraid I’m not an expert at secret codes, but everyone grab some paper and a pen. I’m sure one of us, or all of us together, can crack it.”
There was a flurry in the room as everyone raced to obey. She looked up from the slip long enough to see that Mamm-wynn wasn’t among the group—it was her usual nap time—but that Senara and Ainsley and Collins had slipped inside. And Mabena, too, though Beth had assumed she’d leave after tea.
“All right, Beth, read the letters to us,” Oliver said from the chair to her right.
She read them off slowly, one by one, giving everyone the chance to write them down. First the line on one side, and then on the other.
There had to be a message in there, right? From Rupert to Briallen. She stared at it for a long moment, willing words to jump out from the jumble, though none did. She reached for a pen of her own as Oliver and Sheridan and Telford all started scratching notes onto their papers. The ladies, on the other hand, all seemed to be thinking through their tactics first.
Beth smiled a bit at the difference. She didn’t even know what tactic to try, to be honest. She was only vaguely aware of the different encryption methods used in history.
“Ah! Miss Tremayne!”
At Ainsley’s exclamation, she froze, not sure what he was objecting to until she followed his gaze down to her hands and realized she’d curled the slip of parchment around her pen. “Oh, how stupid!” The last thing she wanted to do was damage it!