Impetuous Page 11

  “Miss Verrere,” he said, his face suddenly serious, and he reached out to take her hand. “I had another reason for coming here.”

  Cassandra’s nerves began to race at his touch. She had not stopped to put on gloves in her mad dash from the house, and she could feel the warmth of his bare skin against hers. He did not release her hand, and she made no effort to pull it away.

  “What is that, sir?” she asked a little breathlessly.

  “I needed to apologize.”

  “Apologize?” She looked puzzled. “Oh. You mean for the way we met—indeed, sir, you have already done so, and it was not your fault. You need not speak of it.”

  “No. Not that, although it was scarcely behavior worthy of a gentleman. No, I am speaking of the way I acted the following morning, when we were in the maze.”

  “Wha—oh!” Her thoughts went to the end of their conversation and the way he had kissed her then.

  “Yes,” he replied grimly. “That. I behaved like a cad. I have no excuse, other than my own lack of control. You…seem to have a certain effect on me.”

  “I do?” Cassandra was astonished at the idea that her charms might have driven a man to lose control of himself.

  Sir Philip had to chuckle at her expression. “My dear lady, that is scarcely the way to respond to a gentleman’s apology. You make me want to prove all over again why I kissed you the other time.”

  “Oh!” Cassandra hadn’t the slightest idea how to respond.

  “I do not apologize for the feelings that I had, you understand. I— Well, looking at you now, I feel the same desire to kiss you.” His voice dropped huskily on the words, and Cassandra went weak in the knees. She could remember no other man who had looked at her in quite the way Sir Philip did now.

  “What I apologize for,” he continued, “is that I put you in an uncomfortable situation. That I made you feel that I had not listened to your words, or that all I was interested in was a, well, a physical relationship of some sort. I wanted you to know that I do not and would not ever regard you as anything less than a perfect lady. I did not intend to demean you in any way.”

  “I, uh…” Cassandra could not continue to meet his eyes, for the look there affected her breathing in the most peculiar way. “I accept your apology.”

  “And I want you to know that I would never…push myself on you. I would not use this situation or our working together in the attics to—to take advantage of you.”

  “Please—you need not apologize. I would be less than honest if I pretended that the fault was all one-sided.”

  She glanced up and saw a look of intense male satisfaction cross his face. “Then I was not the only one who felt the attraction?”

  He reached out to brush his knuckles across her cheek, and his touch scattered all her thoughts. Cassandra quickly moved away.

  “Of course, the fact that there was blame on both sides does not mean that we should allow it to happen again.” She hoped he did not hear the panic in her voice. She was not sure how she would respond if Philip were to kiss her again. Just the thought of it made her insides jump around as if she had swallowed live coals. “I—uh, we are going to be working together, and we should, I think, conduct ourselves in, uh, the manner of professional colleagues.”

  “Professional colleagues?” Humor rose in his eyes. “What profession, may I ask? Treasure hunter? Aren’t those usually pirates?”

  “You know what I mean. We should act the way we would act if, say, you were doing this with another man.”

  He did not point out to her that with another man he would have dropped the whole thing at the beginning and left it that way. What had brought him back to Cassandra was Cassandra herself and not some long-lost dowry, but he was not about to tell her that.

  “Otherwise,” Cassandra concluded, “our work would suffer. And we would be uncomfortable working together.”

  “As I told you, I have no wish to make you uncomfortable.” It was for that reason that he stood and stepped back from her now, letting out a little sigh of regret.

  “Excellent. Shall we agree to meet at Chesilworth this afternoon?”

  “No, you must allow me to escort you,” he protested. “After all, there is no need for secrecy this afternoon.”

  “It is doubtless safer if you do not appear at Moulton House this afternoon. I don’t know what scheme they might have cooked up to keep you there or to accompany us. Besides, I have no need of an escort; the children will be with me,” Cassandra reminded him with a smile. “I know of no men of evil intent who would not be thwarted by the sight of twin twelve-year-old boys and a young girl, too. Besides, there is never need for escort here. Dunsleigh is the most peaceful of places. Olivia often complains that nothing ever happens here.”

  “With two rowdy young boys, I cannot imagine how that is possible.”

  “Oh, but whatever one’s brothers do does not count as anything happening, you see.”

  “Of course. How silly of me not to realize that. Miss Olivia, I take it, longs for grand adventures.”

  “Yes. We are all, as you are aware, a family of dreamers.” She cast him a significant look.

  Sir Philip winced. “Ah, I can see that that statement will come back to haunt me often enough.”

  Cassandra chuckled. “I shall not mention it again. After all, you have joined us in dreaming now.”

  “Without your wholehearted enthusiasm, I fear.”

  “Don’t worry. It will come.”

  Sir Philip watched the way her mouth curved up as she smiled, the inviting fullness of her lower lip and the appealing little dent in the middle that cut into its plump flesh. Oddly, her smile seemed to accentuate the narrow crease. He was aware of a strong desire to kiss the dent away. Though he had meant it when he told Cassandra that he would not want to offend her by making advances or try to take advantage of her, he was not sure how he was going to be around her for any length of time and continue to act like a gentleman.

  He forced himself to step back and sketch a bow to her. “Then I will meet you this afternoon at Chesilworth. One o’clock?”

  Cassandra nodded. She felt curiously reluctant to part from him. “Yes. One. We will be there.”

  * * *

  AS SOON AS Cassandra returned to the house, she was swept up in her aunt’s frenzy over the party she had decided to give the following evening. Even though Aunt Ardis had pretended to have already arranged it, in fact there had been no thought of a party until this morning. It would, perforce, be small—if nothing else, there were few people in this rural spot whom Aunt Ardis considered worthy enough to be invited to witness her triumph in having Sir Philip Neville as a guest. Still, there were invitations to be written and given to a footman to deliver, as well as a dinner to plan, not to mention a thorough cleaning of the formal rooms, flower arrangements and a number of other logistical chores to be taken care of. Such chores, of course, fell, in Aunt Ardis’s opinion, into the realm of her efficient niece.

  Cassandra managed to get everything set in motion so that she was able to slip away right after luncheon, and she and her brothers and sister went to Chesilworth, where they found Sir Philip waiting for them. They spent the afternoon working as they had the day before, the time livened by Sir Philip’s occasional bursts of horseplay with the twins or his twinkling teasing of Olivia. They enjoyed themselves so much that they were late leaving Chesilworth and missed tea at Moulton Hall.

  The next day Cassandra once again spent the morning working on her aunt’s dinner party, scheduled for that evening. Then she and her siblings hiked the familiar path through meadow and woods to the grounds of Chesilworth.

  When they crested the rise behind the house, they saw the figures of two men, and as they drew nearer, it became clear that one was holding a shotgun on the other. With a gasp of dismay, Cassandra recogn
ized the man holding the gun as their former groundskeeper at Chesilworth, Jack Chumley, and the man he threatened as Sir Philip.

  “Chumley!” Cassandra lifted her skirts and ran down the hill, her brothers and sister running along with her.

  They came to a panting halt beside their former employee, and it was a moment before they could speak. Hart, typically, recovered his breath first.

  “What are you doing to Sir Philip?”

  “You mean you know this chap?” Chumley asked, his bushy eyebrows lifting in surprise. “I caught him sneaking around the house just now.”

  “Sneaking! No, Chumley…”

  “I reckoned he was trying to break in.”

  “He was not trying to break in,” Cassandra assured him earnestly. “Pray, put down your gun. Sir Philip is our guest. We invited him to meet us here today.”

  She turned toward Sir Philip as the servant reluctantly lowered his gun. “I am so sorry, Sir Philip. I cannot think why Chumley would have accosted you.”

  “I’ll tell ’ee why,” Chumley volunteered loudly. He had been growing gradually more hard of hearing over the years, and the volume of his voice had grown with the decrease in his hearing. “’Cause of the strange happenings out here last night, that’s why. I may not be working here no more, but it’ll not be said that Jack Chumley allowed such goings on where he lived and worked his whole life.”

  “Dear Chumley, of course you would not. But what are you talking about? What happenings are you talking about? What goings on?”

  “You mean nobody’s told you? It was all over the village this morning. Ned Plumpton was the one who told me. Folks are saying there’re ghosts in the house.” He jerked his thumb toward the castlelike structure behind him.

  “Ghosts?” Cassandra repeated blankly.

  “Aye,” he said disgustedly. “Ghosts! ‘Ye’re mad,’ says I. ‘Weren’t never any ghosts at Chesilworth.’ Why, his lordship would’a gone on and on about it if there had been. He’d’a been tickled pink, he would, been talking on and on about ’em, tryin’ to see ’em and all.”

  Cassandra smiled fondly. “You’re right about that. But I still don’t understand—”

  “Well, it weren’t just Plumpton, now, was it? Missus Brookman, she tells me she’d heard the rumors, too. From Farmer Crawford. Now I know Farmer Crawford, and he’s one with a good head on his shoulders. Missus Brookman, she says it were his son what seen it.”

  “The ghost?”

  “Yes’m. So I goes over to the Crawfords’ place, and he says the story’s true enough. His son—”

  “Ben?”

  “No, not that one. Beggin’ your pardon, miss, but that one’s got bats in his belfry, he does. No, Crawford wouldn’t go ’cause Ben saw it. It were young Alf. Only the age of the young lordship here, but he’s as sharp as the day is long. So when he come in talking about lights in the windows and such, Crawford knew he’d seen something, well, just like we would if it were Master Crispin or Master Hart.”

  “He saw lights in Chesilworth?” Cassandra repeated, her gaze going to Sir Philip. She saw mirrored in his face the same sudden concern that stabbed her.

  “Aye, miss, lights, and not just him, neither. When he told his pa about it, Farmer Crawford went back over with him to look. He knew Alf wasn’t lying, but he figured he must have been mistaken about what it was. Well, Crawford saw the light, too. It were in the attic, he said. You can only see it from those little windows. But it were there, and it glowed.”

  “I see.” Someone had been in the attic. Cassandra could think of only one reason why anyone would go there at night—to search alone and undetected.

  “’Course, I knew it weren’t no ghosts. Intruder, more like. A tramp or something, I thought, who’d broken in for a place to stay. Though the attic seems a mighty uncomfortable place to choose, if you ask me. So, anyway, I decided I best come over here and check things out, see if there’s sign of someone breaking in. And who do I find but this one—skulking about.”

  “My good man, I was not skulking,” Sir Philip protested. “I was waiting for Miss Verrere and family.”

  “And how was I to know that, sir? Ye’re a stranger to these parts.”

  “He was telling the truth, Chumley,” Cassandra assured him. “But it was very thoughtful of you to come to check on the place for us.”

  “I reckon it were my duty to his lordship, God rest his soul.”

  “Papa would have been very grateful. You may go on home now. I don’t expect you to watch Chesilworth for us. We will check and see if there are any signs of an intruder.”

  The old man looked doubtful. “Mayhap I’d best come in with you. You might need a weapon.”

  “I am sure that whoever it was is gone now.”

  But the old man would not be satisfied until he had gone around to each of the downstairs doors and windows and found the broken pane where the intruder had reached in and opened the window. He nodded, vindicated, and said that he would board it up.

  They made a cursory inspection of the upper floors with Chumley, but as all of them expected, they found no one, or even a sign of anyone. Even the attic floor, dusty as it was, had had too many people tramping through it to isolate an intruder’s footprints.

  After Chumley clumped down the attic stairs, the others stood for a moment, looking at one another. Finally Crispin cried, “Well? Who is it? Is somebody looking for our treasure?”

  “It could be simply an intruder, I suppose,” Cassandra said slowly. “Someone who needed a place to spend the night.”

  “In the attic? With all the beds downstairs?” Olivia said scornfully.

  “Yes, I know. But it seems so absurd—I mean, who?” Cassandra carefully avoided looking at Sir Philip, for fear he would see the thought that had immediately sprung into her head as soon as she said the question. The most likely person to have been searching for the letters was Sir Philip himself.

  He alone had access to the other half of the map. Now that she had told him where the map was located, he could steal her letter and have both halves. Perhaps he had only pretended to want her help and not to know what the Queens Book was. It might have been as familiar to him as the family Bible, so he had known instantly where he could find the other half. He wouldn’t need her help to find it, and if he could steal the letters from Chesilworth, then he could have the whole dowry to himself.

  “What about your American cousin?” Sir Philip suggested.

  Cassandra was startled out of her thoughts. Her head snapped up and she stared at Neville. “What?”

  “I am referring to Mr. Miller. Isn’t that his name? The former owner of the journals.”

  “No!” Olivia’s answer was swift and emphatic. She moved forward, crossing her arms pugnaciously over her chest. “He would never do such a thing. David, I mean, Mr. Miller, was a very nice man.”

  Cassandra narrowed her eyes thoughtfully at her sister. She had suspected that Olivia had developed something of a crush on the handsome American. Perhaps it was worse than she had realized.

  She shrugged aside the thought. There was more to worry about now than her little sister growing up and forming tendres for inappropriate men. “Honestly, Sir Philip, you take suspicion to new heights. I thought you envisioned Mr. Miller as the forger of the journals, swindling Mr. Simons out of a few pounds.”

  “Perhaps I am rethinking my position. Someone breaking into the attic here puts a new light on things.”

  “I am glad to find that something will make you examine your opinions a little more closely,” Cassandra told him tartly.

  “It makes more sense,” he stated, ignoring her remark. “The quality of the forgery would have to be stupendous, and it would have been far too much work, as you said, for a relatively small amount of money. If the journals are real, then Mr. Miller, in read
ing them, would have realized that there was the possibility of finding a fortune here in England.”

  “I don’t understand,” Crispin interrupted. “What do you mean, if they are real? What else could they be?”

  Cassandra gave him a pithy explanation of the possibility of forging such documents, adding, “But obviously there must be something to them, or there would not have been a person searching our attic for the letters Margaret wrote to her father.” She turned back to Sir Philip. “But I see no reason for it to have been Mr. Miller. Why would he have sold the journals in the first place if he knew of the existence of the treasure? Why not come here and steal the letters, steal the book from your library…we would have had no idea why anyone had broken into either place, since we would have known nothing of the maps to the dowry. We would have written this episode off to a thief or a vagrant breaking into Chesilworth for a night.”

  “Yes, but you have to remember that Mr. Miller is an American several generations removed from the events. The legend of the missing dowry probably was not handed down in his family from generation to generation, as it was in ours. When he read the journal, he would not have even known where to start. He wouldn’t have known where the Neville and Verrere families lived or who might still have the maps in question. He wouldn’t even know that the dowry was still lost. Our families could have joined together as Margaret requested and found the treasure long ago. The best thing he could do was bring the journals to England and try to sell them. He could wait and see who was interested in them, see if he could stir up the Verreres or the Nevilles. He could follow the leads and locate maps. He did, after all, follow the journals to you.”

  “He only wanted to meet us,” Olivia interjected.

  “And if I remember correctly,” Sir Philip continued inexorably, “you told him how you were searching your attics for the letters in question. I suspect you even told him about the Nevilles’ part of it. All he would have to know was that Haverly House was the Neville home seat and he could have figured out that he would need to search the library there to retrieve a book. After that, it would have been relatively simple. Search the attics, find the letters, then go on to Haverly House, cutting out all the pesky relatives.”