Chuckling, Nick gathered their belongings and put them in the bag. They carefully and reverently returned the map to the drawer, and left the cloth over the windows and doors.
“I’ll own Belle Chere by this time tomorrow and I’ll take it down then,” Holly said, fastening her cloak about her neck.
Nick climbed out the window first, caught the bag Holly handed him, then helped her climb out. It was as though he had a hundred hands, all of which he ran over her body.
When she reached the ground, she tried to glare at him, but she couldn’t quite pull it off. The truth was, she had to work hard to keep from grabbing his shirt and tearing it open.
“I’ve missed you so much,” Nick whispered.
If the flashlight of the guard hadn’t come close to them, Holly was sure they would have ended up on the ground together.
They scurried around to the front of the cabin, out of the beam of light, then, crouching, they ran into the trees.
Because of the dark, because they were afraid of being seen, they didn’t turn on their lights. Instead, Nick followed Holly, often stumbling into the back of her, then grabbing her with his hands to keep from falling. However, his hands always seemed to land on her breast or hips or around her thighs.
“Would you stop it!” She knew her attempt to sound indignant was less than successful. She wondered what in the world she was doing outside in the middle of the night. The temperature was dropping and the air felt heavy; snow was imminent.
“Maybe we should go back,” she said. “Maybe—”
“Someday we’ll tell our kids about this. We’ll say, ‘Remember the day we spent Christmas Eve looking for treasure?’ It’ll become folklore in our family.”
“Maybe I’ll tell my children,” she said. “The ones I have with Prince Raine.”
“Oh,” he said. “Lanconia. Did you know that my middle name is Raine? It’s a name that’s been in our family for generations.”
Holly grimaced, but she didn’t let him see it. “Cousin?” she asked.
“Cousin.”
So much for trying to make him jealous, she thought.
“Tell me about this tree,” he said, looking back at Belle Chere. They were far enough away now not to be heard.
So many things had happened over the years that she hadn’t thought of the tree in a long time. She’d first seen it when she was thirteen. She’d meant to ask Lorrie about it, but he’d been distracted that day and there always seemed to be other things to talk about.
She began to tell Nick the story as they made their way into the dark forest.
As she often had done when Lorrie wasn’t there that summer, she’d taken a break from scraping paint and wandered around. There was a deep curve in the river that formed a teardrop of land. He’d told her that there was supposed to be an old Indian burial ground on that piece of land so she’d been curious. She’d battled her way through thorn bushes and grapevines to find an area that had little undergrowth. The tall trees shaded the ground so deeply that grass didn’t grow, and under her feet was a soft padding of years of mulch.
She’d spent three hours walking through the heavily forested area, looking at the trees, listening, and one time sitting on a grapevine and swinging.
As she was about to leave, she noticed an enormous beech tree that split into two huge branches several feet up. There seemed to be something embedded in the tree right where it split.
After looking around to make sure Lorrie wasn’t near, Holly used a nearby grapevine to hoist herself up into the tree. Since she wanted Lorrie to think she was all grown up, she didn’t want him to see her climbing a tree like a child.
When she reached the object, she saw that it was the handle of what looked to be an old sword. It looked as though, many years ago, someone had tied a sword horizontally across the split in the tree and, gradually, the tree had grown around the sword until little of it could be seen.
“All these years and you’d think someone would have seen it,” Nick said.
“I’m sure they did, but since the legend of hidden treasure was kept quiet, no one was looking for a marker. Besides, a sword in a tree isn’t unusual around here. By the stables is a tree with an old iron sticking out of it.”
“Think it marks a pile of laundry that needs washing?”
“If so, then you buy the place.”
Nick laughed.
Minutes later, they reached the tree and Nick shined his light up. There was little they could see, just an enormous tree with some knobby thing sticking out of the side of it. To see what it was they’d have to climb up.
Nick put his bag on the ground. “So now what do we do? Wait for morning and rent a backhoe?”
Holly walked around the tree. “How could anyone have planted a tree on top of a cave? Where would the roots grow?”
“Not dumb, are you?” he said, picking up the biggest flashlight and shining it at the roots. On three sides, the roots were easy to see as they spread out across the ground. On the fourth side, the roots were growing right and left, but not in the center.
“We’re going to have smart kids,” Nick said, grinning at her.
“You and your wife?” she asked innocently.
“Yes, my wife and me.”
She couldn’t help smiling. “Okay, John Henry, get the shovel and start digging.”
“Since all these tools have your name on it, shouldn’t you do the honors?”
“I found the tree,” Holly said. “Besides, I’m sleepy. I think I’ll—”
She broke off because, suddenly, the ground seemed to give way under her. It was as though she’d stepped into quicksand and was going down.
“Nick!” she screamed.
He was on the other side of the tree, removing a shovel from the bag, but he turned and saw Holly sinking down. Dropping the shovel, he leaped, his arms outstretched. But he wasn’t fast enough.
In seconds, where Holly had been standing was a hole.
Nick, on his belly, inched forward. “Holly,” he called, fear in his voice. “Are you all right?” When she didn’t answer, he inched backward, grabbed the flashlight, then crawled forward again and shined his light down.
Holly was about ten feet below him, her cloak splayed out around her. She was sprawled on top of what looked to be a pirate’s treasure of silver ornaments, gold coins, and a few pieces of jewelry winking in the light.
Nick kept his eyes on Holly. “Are you all right? Holly, baby, honey, answer me. Look at me.”
She didn’t move, but she opened one eye. “Are there any rattlesnakes up there?”
“No,” he said, so relieved he was near tears. “Unless you count me. Holly, honey, I haven’t told you this, but I’m actually a doctor.”
She opened both eyes in surprise. “A doctor?”
“Yes, so I want you to take off all your clothes, except for your shoes and your watch, and—”
“You idiot!” she said, laughing.
“It’s just that I had such a very, very good time the last time you were naked and in a pit that I want to repeat the experience.”
Gingerly, Holly tried to sit up.
“Careful,” he said, “that stuff is hard.”
“What stuff?” she asked, sitting up, rubbing her lower back. “I’m covered in bruises.”
“I’ll kiss each one to make it well.”
“Is that what they taught you in medical school?”
“Sort of. Well, not on campus, but off—”
“I don’t want to hear.” Reaching behind her, she grabbed something and pulled it from under years of debris. She blinked at it a couple of times. It was black and had some kind of fungus on it, but it looked to be a candelabra. “Eighteenth century, I’d say. Probably English, but it could be French.”
She lifted her left leg, reached under it, and pulled out something sharp that was sticking her. It was a ring. She rubbed it on her sleeve. “Look at this. I think I may have found the ring that matches the emerald bracelet
.” She lifted her right leg. “Wonder if the necklace is here? Or a tiara? I don’t have a single tiara to my name.”
“Now, isn’t that a tragedy?” came a voice, and both Nick and Holly looked into the eyes of Laurence Beaumont the third. He was holding a flashlight and a gun.
Chapter Twenty-one
BEAUMONT AIMED THE GUN AT HOLLY’S HEAD AND said he’d kill her if Nick didn’t get into the pit with her. Since Beaumont had nothing to lose, Nick had instantly jumped down into the pit beside Holly, fully expecting Beaumont to start shooting.
As Nick looked up from the pit at Beaumont as he hovered over them, Nick’s only thought was to protect Holly. As far as he knew, he was the only person to know the full extent of Beaumont’s insanity.
During the six months that Holly had been traveling with her family, Nick had been digging for information. He’d hired people to find out everything about Taylor Latham, Charles Maitland, and Laurence Beaumont.
Within weeks he’d dismissed Maitland as an innocent bystander, but Nick had been shocked at what he’d heard and read about Taylor and Beaumont. If it was weird and bizarre and bordered on the illegal, then those two were involved.
Nick read reports of bartenders who remembered seeing Beaumont and Taylor together in the months before Holly’s father bought Spring Hill.
Nick knew that Holly believed she’d been the one to manipulate her entire family into moving next door to Belle Chere, but Nick saw that Holly had been the one who’d been maneuvered. And used, he thought.
Over the months, as the story began to unfold, Nick had pieced things together. Beaumont had planned to marry Holly for her money. As when she was a child, she would probably have been used as free labor to do all the work of restoration at Belle Chere, then she’d…what? Meet with an accident? Had that been the plan? Nick never doubted that kindhearted Holly would have left a will giving her fortune to her sister and her husband.
As for Taylor’s marriage to Maitland, Nick figured it was a combination of social climbing and greed. Maitland was worth a couple million, nothing compared to Holly, but it was some. Nick guessed Taylor wanted Maitland’s old-world name as much as anything. One report told how Taylor often spoke with hatred of her father’s background.
Snobbery and greed, Nick thought. All of it had been caused by snobbery and greed.
The only thing that puzzled Nick was why Beaumont had killed Taylor. What had gone wrong?
“How’d you manage to escape?” Nick asked, putting himself between the gun and Holly.
Beaumont smiled. “Call it a family trait. I sold”—he swallowed—“my furniture and used the money to grease some very dirty palms.”
He pointed the gun at Holly, nearly hidden behind Nick. “I should have killed you two, you know, but Taylor made me so very angry that all I could think of was getting her.”
Holly was trying to get in front of Nick, but he wouldn’t let her.
“What did she do to make you angry?” Nick asked.
“She laughed at me,” Beaumont said, looking down at them. “Can you imagine that? She laughed at me. You see,” he said slowly, “I told her about finding the two of you together in the attic. Taylor and I had laid such careful plans, but you stepped in and destroyed them. If it hadn’t been for you, stupid little Holly would have married me. When she was thirteen she absolutely worshiped me.”
“I did no such—” Holly began, but cut herself off when Nick put pressure on her arm.
“So you took a gun and went to visit Taylor.”
“I only meant to frighten her, but she was at a party, having a wonderful time, while I was…”
“You were going through hell,” Nick said, sounding sympathetic. He was moving one foot and Holly saw that he seemed to be trying to unearth something. Looking down, she saw what looked to be a knife, some souvenir from a trip to the Middle East by the look of its jeweled handle.
“Yes,” Lorrie said. “I was in misery, but Taylor was laughing. She told me she had what she wanted, meaning Maitland’s money and his name, so she didn’t care about me. She didn’t care that if I didn’t get Hollander Tools I was going to lose my family home.”
Suddenly Holly put her hands over her face and began to cry loudly, collapsing into a heap on the pile of goods.
Lorrie waved the gun. “Shut her up.”
Nick patted Holly’s head and took a step to one side, giving Holly better access to the knife by his foot. “And Belle Chere is everything to you, isn’t it?” Nick asked quietly.
“Of course,” Lorrie said, standing up. “In order to keep the place, I was willing to marry her. Can you imagine? A tool manufacturer’s granddaughter?” He shuttered delicately. “She’s one generation away from being poor white trash. To think of someone like her being mistress of my home. Boggles, doesn’t it?”
“Why are you here?” Nick asked. “Why aren’t you on the run?”
“That was my plan, but I wanted, no I needed, one last look at…” He couldn’t seem to say the name. “I saw you two skulking about in the dark. You know what I did? I crawled under the overseer’s house so I could hear you. Me. I crawled. I lay in the dirt to listen to you two discussing who was going to own my home.”
He paused as he seemed to need time to calm himself. “When I heard what you’d found I decided to follow you.” He shined his flashlight around the treasure of Belle Chere. “So the legend was true. Auntie told me Arthur Beaumont sold all the house slaves down to Mississippi to work in the cotton fields to keep them from telling what Jason had done. You see, Beaumont pride is very important to us.”
He glared at Holly. “But you have destroyed us.”
Slowly, clinging to Nick, Holly stood up. Her body was so close to his that Lorrie didn’t see her pass him the narrow-bladed dagger.
“What do you plan to do to us?” Holly asked.
“Why, kill you of course. Kill you and leave your bodies to rot. It will be years before anyone finds you.”
“Do you know who my family is?” Nick asked quietly.
“Oh, yes. I found that out long ago. Did you know that that stupid little toolmaker’s granddaughter has no idea what that yellow stone around her neck really is? She told Taylor she thought it would turn her neck green. Can you imagine that I was supposed to marry someone so low class?”
“If you kill me,” Nick said, “my family won’t let you get away.” He kept his eyes on Lorrie, ignoring Holly’s puzzled look, but he could feel her hand go to the necklace.
“If I lose Belle Chere, what does it matter if I live or not? Now which of you wants to die first?”
It was at that moment that Nick threw the knife and it landed in the middle of Lorrie’s throat. He staggered for a moment, then fell backward onto the ground above them.
It took Holly a moment to realize what had happened, then she collapsed into Nick’s arms. He held her, and for the first time since Taylor’s death, Holly really cried, not superficial tears full of guilt, but real tears, tears that released her.
Nick held her to him, stroked her hair, and kissed her tears. At about four, Holly fell asleep in his arms and the snow finally began. Holding Holly, he looked up through the hole at the big flakes drifting down to them. He wasn’t worried about being found. When neither of them showed up for the auction, his family would call in helicopters and dogs. He had no doubt that his family would come for him.
Holly stirred in his arms and he kissed her soft lips.
“Forgive me?” he asked.
Opening her eyes, she nodded. A few hours ago she’d been at death’s door. Holding onto her anger at a man she loved seemed frivolous.
“Merry Christmas, darling,” he said.
“Merry Christmas,” she replied, then kissed him in return.
They made love on top of the silver, the gold, and the jewels, with the snow falling down on them, not feeling the cold, feeling only their love for each other.
At eleven, they were sleeping under Holly’s cloak and wrapp
ed around each other to stay warm, when Nick’s cousin Mike looked down on them.
“Hey!” Mike called down. “You two want to be rescued or you want to stay in there?”
“Is it clear up there?” Nick asked, feeling Holly begin to awaken.
“Yes,” Mike said, knowing his young cousin was referring to the body of Laurence Beaumont. It had been removed.
“So who won Belle Chere?” Nick asked, feeling Holly’s eyes on him.
“I did, but I’ll sell it to you for a dollar.”
“No,” Nick said. “Give it to Miss Latham.”
Holly squeezed Nick’s hand, but said nothing. A few days ago she’d wanted nothing to do with a place associated with the Beaumonts, but now she thought that Belle Chere needed new blood. It needed a cleansing, a renewal.
A ladder was lowered for them and Holly went up first. As Mike Taggert helped her step onto solid ground, he said, “Nice necklace.”
Behind her, Nick said, “I took your advice,” and both men laughed.
“What was that all about?” Holly asked.
“Mike told me who I should give the necklace to and I obeyed him.” He put his arm around her. “Come on, let’s go see your Christmas present.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” she said. “Not so fast.” She held up the necklace to the sun. “What is this thing and how much is it worth?”
“It’s a flawless canary diamond and it’s worth a few mil. Come on, let’s go.”
She didn’t move. “But what did you mean when you said you took Mike’s advice?”
“He told me to only give it to the woman I planned to marry.”
“But you gave me this necklace before you came to Edenton.”
“You mean, before I knew I could win you away from another man?”
She nodded.
“I never had any doubt that I was going to win you. You were mine from the moment I looked down into that pit—the first one.”
“But…” she began, but then she smiled. They’d have time to argue later. Now she wanted to walk with him and look at Belle Chere, the place that was to be their home.