Last Night's Scandal (The Dressmakers 5)

Olivia looked at Lisle.

“Doubtless your lordship and Miss Carsington wish to discuss the matter privately,” Herrick said. “I shall step out of the room.”

He glided out.

Olivia and Lisle watched him go.

“Is that Nichols’s older brother?” she said softly.

“It must be a separate species they belong to,” he said. “I hope he hasn’t a roving eye as well. But one can’t have everything. He’s Scottish, as you want, with local ties. His references are impeccable. He makes a good impression. He’s discreet. Quiet. He speaks a recognizable form of English. Well, do you want him or not?”

“It’s your castle,” she said.

“This isn’t my department,” he said. “I like him well enough, but you’ll be in charge of the domestics. I’m supposed to do the manly things. I need to assess the state of the courtyard and the curtain wall. I need to make a closer inspection of the ground level of the castle as well. I want to find out how our intruders got in. Let me deal with that and leave the butler to you.”

“He seems to be the genuine article,” she said.

“I trust your DeLucey instincts in that regard,” he said.

“He doesn’t seem daunted at the enormous task he faces,” she said. “Hiring a full staff—preferably from the neighborhood—getting everything running properly, setting up a system for supplies, and so on.”

“Far from daunted,” he said, “he struck me as a hound straining at the leash, eager to be away on the chase.”

“He’s tall and good-looking,” she said.

“That settles it, then.”

Nichols appeared.

“Miss Carsington likes him,” Lisle said. “Send in our new butler.”

A short time later

“Nichols will introduce you to the staff and take you about the castle later,” Olivia told Herrick. “Ladies Cooper and Withcote won’t be up and about until noon at the earliest.” They would ogle him and make improper remarks, and he would simply have to get used to it. “Lord Lisle has drawn a set of plans, which I know you’ll wish to study. I’ve found them most helpful. This castle turns out to be a more complicated structure than it seemed to me at first—but I daresay you’re used to the staircase that bypasses a floor or ends abruptly, and the floors between floors with rooms tucked into them here and there.”

“The entresols, miss? Indeed, we had them at Glaxton.”

“I haven’t explored them all yet,” she said. “But Nichols suggested that the entresol directly above the kitchen serving passage might serve as our muniments room. I’ve had the household ledgers moved there for the time being.”

Herrick turned his gaze toward the part of the wall directly above the door to the kitchen area.

He had a way of turning his head that, combined with the high arched nose, put her in mind of a hawk.

“Your quarters are on approximately the same level, in the north tower directly below Lord Lisle’s rooms,” she explained.

His dark gaze shifted to the north end of the hall, to the corner of the minstrels’ gallery behind which a door and passage led into his quarters.

“I had better tell you we had a ghost up there last night,” she said. “In the minstrels’ gallery.”

The hawklike gaze came back to her. It was perfectly calm. “A ghost, miss?”

“Someone pretending to be a ghost,” she said. “Very annoying. His lordship has gone out to try to ascertain how they got in.”

“I did notice signs of vandalism as I came, miss. Most unfortunate, but the castle has stood empty for a good while. An open invitation.”

“Very tempting, I know,” Olivia said. “I believe his lordship said something about missing steps in the lower levels of some of the stairways. I saw pieces of the battlements on the ground as well.”

“Those depredations go back many years,” Herrick said. “I think they’ve given up trying to sell the castle, piece by piece. But the courtyard.” He shook his head. “Shameful. I shouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen for myself.”

“The courtyard?” Olivia tried to remember what she’d seen yesterday, when Lisle took her about the courtyard. The walls had crumbled, and parts of them had rolled a distance from their foundations. The ground, naturally, was uneven. Had something seemed odd about it? She couldn’t remember. She’d been too occupied with romantic fantasies to look about her carefully.

“They’ve been digging,” Herrick said. “Someone’s looking for that treasure again.”

Shortly thereafter

“Buried treasure,” Lisle repeated. “We’ve some idiots about who think there’s buried treasure here?”

The announcement Olivia had flown out of the castle to make had been lengthier and more dramatic and involved a great deal of her arms waving about and the usual accompanying movement elsewhere.

It was very trying.

“Had I gone through all of your cousin Frederick’s papers and books, I should have found out,” she said. “He collected everything he could about Gorewood Castle. All the legends in all their variations. I was bound to come upon the buried-treasure story sooner or later.”

“This one isn’t about pirates, is it?” he said. “Because you and I have already dug for pirates’ booty.”

She smiled up at him. She was hatless, her hair coming undone and streaming in the breeze, the same breeze that lifted her swaying skirts. He could feel his brain melting under that smile.

What was he going to do about her?

“Not pirates,” she said. “It was during the civil wars. Cromwell attacked the castle. Eventually the family and servants had to flee. They escaped at night—but they couldn’t take all their treasure with them.”

She almost visibly vibrated with excitement. It was very hard to resist being caught up in it.

But he needed calm. He needed order. He had a dozen problems to tackle, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to think clearly about any of them if he didn’t first solve the problem that was Olivia. He couldn’t solve her when she stood in front of him. He could scarcely think straight.

“So they buried it,” he said.

She nodded.

“I’m sorry to shatter your beautiful fantasy, but if I’ve heard that story once, I’ve heard it five and twenty times,” he said. “Shall I tell you how it goes? Cromwell’s side prevailed for longer than the royalists expected. The family lost everything, including the secret of where their treasure was buried. I vow, every royalist family in Great Britain buried their jewels and silver before they fled in the dead of night from Cromwell and his hordes. And every last one of them forgot where they buried it.”

“Of course I know it’s a legend, but—”

“Nobody, especially the canny Scots, could be so gullible as to imagine there’s any treasure left to be found after two hundred years,” he said. “Nobody over the age of twelve, that is. Please tell me you don’t believe it.”

“I don’t have to believe it,” she said. “But I do believe someone’s looking for it.” She looked about her. “There’s evidence.” She gestured at the numerous little hillocks and furrows that filled the courtyard. “The ground has been so wet that it’s hard to see. But Herrick saw evidence of recent digging.”

“Buried treasure is your bailiwick,” he said. “Feel free to dig all you like.”

“Lisle, that isn’t the point. How can you be so thick? Can’t you see—”

“I do see, but I can’t go off on a tangent,” he said. “There’s too much to do. I need workmen, and I’m going to get them.”

“Of course you must do that. I only wanted—”

“We can’t go on like this,” he said, “with broken windows and the rain and wind coming in, and pranksters sneaking into the castle. In the old day

s, no intruder could have sneaked into the minstrels’ gallery. They would have had to fight their way in. Our ghosts might have come in through the damaged door I showed you, the one that leads into the basement. Then they had only to make their way up the broken stairs. That door must be repaired and secured.”

“I agree, but—”

“I’m going to the village and recruit,” he said.

Turning her back on Lisle, Olivia plunked herself onto a piece of the curtain wall that had rolled into the courtyard sometime in the last century. If she watched him walk away, she wouldn’t be able to resist throwing something at him.

That would be satisfying, but it wouldn’t change him or the circumstances.

He had a great deal to do, and he wanted it done as quickly as possible. Getting to the bottom of the ghost and treasure mysteries was “going off on a tangent.” How could she make Mr. Obstinate see that it was the heart of the problem?

Somebody had been going to a great deal of trouble for the last few years. They must have powerful reasons for believing the treasure existed.

She looked about her. The courtyard was uneven, but that’s what one would expect after years of neglect. Frederick Dalmay had focused his attention on the interior, that much was obvious.

What had Herrick seen that both she and Lisle had missed? It had rained steadily for days before she came, Lisle had said. Then they’d all the horses and carts and people trampling down the weeds and disturbing the earth. The rain and activity had hidden signs—if there were any—of digging.

She let her gaze travel around the crumbling wall. The remains of a watchtower stood in the southwest corner. There? Was there something unnatural about the ground nearby? She walked that way. The earth was mounded about some of the depressions in the ground near the wall. It wasn’t freshly dug. It didn’t look ancient, though.