Last Night's Scandal

  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.

  Was that what Herrick had noticed?

  She stood and studied it for a time, but the lumpy soil told her nothing.

  “No hope for it, then,” she said to herself. “I’ll have to do the sensible thing, and ask him.”

  Gorewood

  Some hours later

  The mood in the village had changed overnight, Lisle found.

  He and his valet entered shops and placed orders and no one pretended not to understand them.

  As Olivia had said, word must have reached the village about the wee red-haired lass who’d faced a deranged French cook and his cleaver. By now they’d probably heard as well about how Olivia had made a ghost as well, and turned terror into laughter.

  Well, she was a wonder, no doubt about that.

  Lisle and Nichols entered the Crooked Crook. It was crowded, Lisle thought, for the time of day. But being the only public house in the village, it would be the main gossip exchange.

  He walked to the bar and ordered a pint. The barkeeper didn’t act as though Lisle was speaking Greek or Chinese. He set the tankard on the counter.

  “And a round for the company,” Lisle said.

  That got their attention. He waited until everyone had been served. Then he spoke. He was used to speaking to crowds of strangers. That was how he recruited men to work on excavations. That was how he kept them at it. Money wasn’t always important to Egyptians, and they weren’t terribly eager to risk their lives for foreigners. The foreigners thought they were cowards. Lisle thought the Egyptians very sensible. And so he appealed to their good sense and made sure he gave them reason to trust him to look after them.

  He wasn’t sure about Scots. But he knew they were brave to the point of insanity and could be loyal to the same degree—the Battle of Culloden came immediately to mind. Since, at the moment they outnumbered his forces by a mere twenty to two, he didn’t bother with tact, one language he’d never quite got the hang of.

  “I’m looking for men to repair Gorewood Castle,” he said. “I’m looking for the sort of men who aren’t afraid of ‘ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggety beasties, and things that go bump in the night.’ This is the last time I shall ask in Gorewood. Nichols here has made a list of my requirements in the way of carpenters and masons and such. Those wishing to work may put their names on his list and plan to be at Gorewood at eight o’clock tomorrow morning, ready to start. If Nichols returns with insufficient names, I shall seek in the Highlands, where I’m told I can find real men.”

  He drank off the contents of his tankard and walked out.

  Roy watched him go, same as everyone else did. The room was dead quiet, everyone staring at the door the laird’s son had walked out of.

  Then they looked at the skinny fellow at the bar, with his notebook and pencil.

  Then Tam MacEvoy broke out in a great whoop, and someone else along with him, and then they was all doubled over, laughing like they never heard anything so funny in all their lives.

  “Did you hear that?” said Tam, when he got his breath back.

  “First the red-haired lass, now him,” said someone else.

  “You ever heard the like?” someone asked Roy.

  “No, I never did,” he said. And it was true he’d never heard of a lot of strong, healthy Scotsmen standing still for that kind of abuse from an Englishman—and this one not even the laird himself, which everyone knew was an idiot, but only his son. He looked at Jock, who looked even more confused than usual.

  “We can’t stand for that, now, can we?” Tam said. “We’ll teach his lordship who the real men are.”

  He marched up to the skinny servant, the one called Nichols.

  “You,” he said.

  The Nichols man didn’t turn a hair, stood there all calm and polite in that look-down-your-nose English way. “Yes, Mr. . . . ?

  “The name’s Tam MacEvoy,” Tam said, chin jutting out. “You can sign me up right now. Tam MacEvoy, glazier.”

  Another fellow elbowed up to the servant. “And me, Craig Archbald, bricklayer.”

  “And me.”

  Then they were all pushing and shoving, demanding to be signed up to work.

  “Roy,” Jock whispered. “What’re we going to do?”

  “We can’t sign up,” Roy said. Everyone in Gorewood knew they’d never done an honest day’s work in their lives. If they started now, people would get suspicious. “We’ve got to act like usual.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got an idea.”

  Olivia saw little of Lisle until evening. After coming back from the village, he surveyed the courtyard until sunset. After that, he spent an hour with Herrick in the muniments room, then went to his own room.

  Though she hadn’t seen it, she knew Lisle had created a study in the large window recess of his bedchamber, the counterpart of hers. He would have been working there until he began dressing for dinner.

  Best not to think about his bedroom.

  When, after dinner, they adjourned to the warm comforts of the great fireplace, Lisle repeated the brief, provocative speech he’d made in the Crooked Crook.

  “And nobody threw anything at you?” Olivia said.

  “Certainly not,” he said. “Two minutes after I left, they were laughing and cheering, according to Nichols, and fighting to sign up to work. He tells me they signed up their relatives as well, not wishing any kin to be deemed less brave than savage Highlanders—or less brave than a wee red-haired lass. We all know that you were the one who turned the tide.”

  “But you knew how to take advantage of the situation,” she said. She was sorry she hadn’t been there. She’d have liked to be in the public house afterward as well, to hear the villagers. That must have been a treat.

  “Well done, indeed,” said Lady Cooper. “I can hardly wait to see the burly Scotsmen climbing their ladders and heaving bricks about and such.”

  “Not that we haven’t agreeable sights indoors
,” Lady Withcote said. She cast an admiring glance at Herrick, who came in carrying a tray with their drinks.

  When he’d gone out again, Lady Cooper said, “Where on earth did you find him, Olivia?”

  “He simply appeared,” she said, “like the genie in The Arabian Nights.”

  “I’d like to rub his lamp,” said Lady Withcote.

  “Millicent, let us offer a toast—to Olivia for procuring a fine specimen of a manservant.”

  “To Olivia,” said Lady Withcote.

  Lisle raised his glass. His grey gaze met Olivia’s, and she saw the silvery stars and the glowing moon, and everything flooded back, a hot rush of memories.

  “To Olivia,” he said.

  “And to Lisle,” said Lady Cooper. “For the brawny Scotsmen to come.”

  “To Lisle,” said Lady Withcote.

  “To Lisle,” said Olivia, and over the rim of her glass, she shot him a look full of hot meaning, too, in revenge.

  “I thank you, ladies,” he said. “But now I must beg your indulgence. I’ve an army of workmen expected tomorrow, and I shall want all my wits. That means keeping country hours.” He apologized for being dull, said good night, and went up to his room.

  They’d been over every inch of the castle during the last few years. They knew every passage and stairwell, every way in and out. Huddled in the dilapidated watch house, they watched the windows of the south tower.

  That was where the women were.

  Everyone in Gorewood knew who slept where and which maid belonged to whom and where the servants slept, and which of them sneaked out to the stables and which of the grooms was the most popular with the housemaids. After all, it was Gorewood’s castle, and what went on there was everybody’s business.

  And so Jock and Roy waited for the windows of the south tower to go dark. Then, keeping to the shadows, they hurried to the broken basement door, climbed down the broken steps and made their way to one of the stairways leading up to the first floor.

  Oooowwwoooeeeyowwwoooooooyowwwooooeeeewooyowooooooo.

  Olivia sat bolt upright. “Good God!”

  She heard soft footsteps. “Miss? What is that noise?”