Abbie snorted. It was, of course, a ladylike snort. The kind that screamed high-born disdain. “Far too well.”
Sheridan let Millicent pull him farther into the front garden. “He’s a fellow antiquities hunter. That is—”
“An antiquities shark, more like.” Millicent shook her head, tossing the length of tulle attached to her hat over her shoulder.
Why the devil had she chosen such an extravagant hat for a sail to Tresco? It must have been tangled about her the whole way. “Well—”
“He isn’t underhanded or anything, let it be noted.” Abbie moved toward the front door, pulling the rest of them along in her wake by the sheer force of her will. “He simply employs a vast team of people, which meant that he was quite frequently a step ahead of us when we were exploring a lead.”
Sheridan smirked at Millicent as they joined the others. “Which Millicent took as a personal insult.”
She ignored him. “We haven’t bumped into him in years, though. Not since Theo decided to focus on the Druids. The Dutchman has no interest in them.”
“American,” Abbie corrected again. She turned to the others from her place on the doorstep. “By way of the Dutch West Indies, which is where his family made their fortune in sugar and rum. I believe it was Mr. Vandermeer’s father who decided to move to New York as a young man. His son was born there. And therefore is American, as my sister well knows.”
“Allow me.” Oliver bypassed the rest of them, including Abbie, and opened the door. “After you, my lady.”
She rewarded him with a sweet smile. “Thank you, Mr. Tremayne. Now.” Abbie pivoted again and marched inside, beckoning them to follow with a raised hand.
Sheridan took a bit of pleasure in seeing that Beth and Lady Emily obeyed that flutter of her fingers every bit as quickly as he, Millicent, and their maids did. Always good to know it wasn’t just his spine that was a tad weak where she was concerned.
He tried to hang back so he could fall in beside Beth, but Millicent didn’t relinquish his arm. Which meant he simply craned his head around instead and nearly tripped on the doorstep. “So, what is it? About Vandermeer, I mean. He’s in London? With your family, my lady?”
Emily shook her head and cast one of those fretful gazes of hers at Beth. “That’s the thing, my lord. He’s not there anymore—none of them are.”
“They’re on the way here.” Beth delivered the death blow calmly. Coolly. But he could hear the strain in her voice just as clearly as he could see it in her eyes. “They’ll be here tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow!” He paused, even though it made Beth bump into him—shame, that—and Millicent tug on his arm. Then he charged forward, shaking free of that sister and surging past the other. For all he knew, she meant to march into the drawing room or something and request some tea to aid them in their planning. But that wouldn’t do at all.
The library. Their maps. That’s what they needed, and they hadn’t a moment to lose. “Hurry, then! No time to waste. Abbie—and Millicent.”
They were right behind him, already pulling out papers and pens. Sheridan unfurled the most detailed map of the Scillies that the Tremaynes had. They’d already pored over it last night, trying to guess at which section of Gugh’s northern coastline might be the correct one. But now he had something more to go on—at least he hoped he did. They had only to draw a line.
“Beth—where were we?”
She didn’t ask him what he was doing. Just slid to his side, glanced at the map for a moment, and rested her fingertip at a spot on the southern end of Tresco. He would have guessed nearly right, but she obviously knew the island far better than he. He held out a hand toward his sisters.
Millicent slapped a ruler into his palm. He set one end of it on the spot Beth indicated, then lined it up with the north-south arrow on the map’s compass rose. He looked to Beth again. “Look reasonable to you? As a location, I mean? You know Gugh better than the rest of us.”
She stared at the map for a moment, closed her eyes.
He held his breath. Well, for a second. Then huffed it out. “Tell me it’s not. Where he was already digging, I mean.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Beth.” Oliver’s voice was hesitant. And had a warning in it. “One line isn’t enough to go on. We can’t exactly dig all along it.”
“Well. We don’t just have one line, though, do we?” He nodded toward Beth’s stack of papers. “We’ve got the clues that led us there to begin with. Mucknell mentioning the Old Man. And that part of his watermark map with the word in it.”
“Perfect.” Abbie moved over to the stack he indicated. “Three points will allow us to triangulate with precision.”
It took them a bit of doing to put it all together on this one map, however. It wasn’t exactly drawn to the same scale as the one Mucknell had put down by hand on his letter. But between the two clues the pirate had left for his wife and the one the prince had for his, they soon had it.
A beautiful dot on a beautiful map. And nearly twenty-four hours’ head start. Surely that was enough time to dig up a pirate hoard, all evidence to the contrary not worth considering. At least since Telly wasn’t awake yet to remind him of it. Once he drew a circle around their place of choice, he looked up with a grin. “Well, then. Time to get digging.”
28
Considering the fact that a swarm of people she didn’t trust a whit would be descending upon them any moment, Beth probably shouldn’t have been having quite so much fun. But as the sun burned its way from the mist the next morning and spilled its gold onto their site, she couldn’t help but grin.
She’d thought, when she set out on this adventure three months ago, that it was hers and hers alone. She’d thought she had to hide it from her family—and then hide her family from the people who would take it from her if they could. But when she paused for a moment to lean on her shovel and look over her shoulder, she couldn’t deny how wrong she’d been.
Oliver was sitting a stone’s throw away, rubbing at eyes that had been closed in sleep the last time she looked. Libby stood a few feet beyond, spyglass raised and watchful, Telford at her elbow. Senara had remained on Tresco with the promise that she’d join them in the morning with some fresh-baked sustenance, but Emily still slumbered on her blanket, having refused to return to St. Mary’s when they dropped the Howe sisters there yesterday afternoon.
They had business to attend to, they said. And since Sheridan had only nodded, his smile not dimming in the slightest, she hadn’t questioned them on what this business could possibly be that was more important than finding the treasure before the Scofields and Vandermeer arrived.
To be perfectly honest, she still couldn’t quite reconcile the idea of either of them at an excavation anyway. Obviously they were, and frequently. But until she saw them dressed in appropriate clothes for it and taking a shovel in hand, she just couldn’t picture it.
It was challenging enough to accept that elegant, proper Ainsley was knee-deep in the trench they’d been digging, humming an old hymn as he dug.