The Earl's Treasure: A Treasure Tale Read online

  “Nay, I survived,” she answered, rubbing her bottom. “Godfrey, after all the oddities going on at the manor, ’tis prudent to keep up our guard. Will ye be all right with the other coachmen?”

  He chuckled. “Right as rain, my lady.” After settling her on her feet, he closed the coach door and climbed up into the driver’s seat.

  Adele watched as Godfrey drove her coach toward the stables, which stood behind the ducal estate. A stiff wind blew flakes of snow across her nose and she slipped a loose curl behind her ear.

  Turning to head toward the estate’s entrance she spied the silhouette of a rider as he and his mount headed toward the stables. His profile in shadow recalled to her the image of a boy she once loved.

  Dear Heavens! ’Twas ten years and a lifetime ago!

  She did her best to sweep aside the childish notion. A sixteen-year-old child’s dreams of a happy-ever-after existence had proved unattainable the day he left without saying good-bye.

  “I am being maudlin.” Sweeping her gaze side to side, it appeared no one had caught her outburst. Instead, she would meet Fanny’s guests as the simple widow of a drowned baron, but not one who talked to herself.

  As a cacophony of voices drifted out the door and into the winter night, her concern for Sadie, Violet, and Godfrey grew. It twisted her stomach into such a bundle of nerves that if she could have called Godfrey back, she would climb inside her musty coach and return home.

  Instead, she lifted her chilled chin, loosened her death grip on her woolen cloak, and marched inside the duke’s magnificent mansion. A manservant took the cloak and bid her head into the ballroom, a short walk from the entryway. With a quick, silent prayer she glanced around and searched for her friend, Jacqueline. Safety in numbers, right?

  Chapter 2

  Livingstone Rockwell Armstrong, the eighth Earl of Larchmont, hid in the shadows. The balcony of the Duke of Bellmeer’s country estate overlooked a ballroom filled with the high-pitched laughter of unattached young ladies. The balcony proved to be an excellent place to hide. He peered down at the crowd, then glimpsed a whisper of blue silk slip behind a column.

  His interest piqued, his attention strayed when the roar of the crowd made his cravat tighten around his neck. Too many people, he thought. Stone, as close friends called him, rubbed his numb fingers up and down his arms, searching for any fragment of heat beneath the elegant pitch-black fabric.

  His thigh muscles shivered from riding through an unseasonable snow squall while wearing thin black pantaloons. Or, was it nerves that chilled him?

  When he’d arrived at the estate, he’d left his horse with a groom, then had forced himself to climb the snow-covered front stairs.

  One foot in front of the other, he kept saying to himself. He nearly slipped off the top step for his trouble. In doing so, he wrenched the tight-knit scar from the bullet that went through his back and exited out his front left shoulder. The injury received on the battlefield had almost taken his life.

  Somehow, he had found the courage to breach the inner sanctum of the bright entryway, even though his gut said to get back on his horse and flee. After a footman announced him to the crowd, he’d ducked his head and rushed up the curved stairway. His hasty retreat meant that the mamas of the unmarried misses had most likely cast evil glares at his back.

  Running fingers through his long hair and taking a deep breath, he forced down his nervous reaction to the crowd. These were not armed enemy troops bent on killing him and his fellow soldiers. He deemed that life over. Now a titled aristocrat, he had turned into new fodder for the area’s marriageable daughters who didn’t seem to care he’d been born a second son.

  As summer heat had turned into autumn’s riot of color, his less than pristine reputation and his disdain for balls, assemblies, and picnics had worsened. He had spent the months since his father’s funeral secreted in his English country estate in Carlisle. Too damn close to the Scottish border. As winter approached, he had realized the blame was not wholly his own.

  Until Waterloo, he’d been happy as a soldier. Before that battle he would never have considered selling his commission, but a bullet wound and his older brother’s untimely accident had forced him to return home.

  Home. What an odd euphemism for his country estate. The three-story granite manor and well-kept stables stood atop rolling hills where one could smell the salty tang of the nearby Irish Sea. He had spent most of his time with the horses, hiding from his father and the responsibilities thrust upon his shoulders as the earl’s new successor.

  His father never recovered from Naughton’s drunken fall from his horse. He’d sent their mother away immediately after the funeral, or had she fled? His parents’ marriage appeared to all an unhappy union, but the death of the heir must have torn what had remained to shreds.

  He’d had mere months to learn anything about being a lord and master before his father, Harcourt Armstrong, the 7th Earl of Larchmont, died in his sleep.

  Stone clasped his hands together and leaned his forearms on the cool marble railing. He gazed down at the people who meandered around the polished dance floor. An orchestra tuned their instruments in a corner of the balcony, opposite his hiding spot. The candles in a score of wall sconces and half a dozen chandeliers sparkled, yet his vantage point remained dark, reflecting his sullen mood.

  When the beginning strains of a country reel echoed through the ballroom, he cringed. He did not wish to dance. That he had made the attempt to visit his godmother during a house party, no less, should be a point in his favor. He had no wish to upset the duchess. Fanny’s letters, received while he recuperated in the battlefield’s hospital, had kept him apprised of goings on both in London proper and the border towns of Gretna, Carlisle, and Longtown.

  The death of Naughton Pherson Armstrong had arrived by special messenger from Fanny, not his family. He’d found out later that his mother was inconsolable, and his father had fallen into a fugue state. Stone had no choice but to return to England and mend things.

  “Ha! Me? I destroy things,” he stated to the shadows.

  As the couples paired off for the next dance, he rubbed his cold hands together. “I need a drink.”

  “Well, you shall not find anything stronger than Madeira wine on the refreshment table, my boy. This is a proper country gathering, not a London gaming hell.”

  Stone straightened and turned toward the slightly bent woman, who meant the world to him. Fanny had saved his life. Her letters kept his spirits up so well, that he had stopped praying for death. As his wound festered, he remembered her promise to celebrate life with him and not allow him to throw it away.

  “Fanny, I need brandy.”

  “Brandy? Are you of a sound mind? You recently returned from war against those dreadful French. I will not have their poison in this house.”

  “The battle ended more than a year ago. Have you anything stronger than wine? As long as it isn’t that single malt bilge water.”

  “Don’t flutter your brown eyelashes at me, Livingstone. Yes, we have fine Scottish whisky. Payton keeps a bottle or two hidden in his study. Just like his father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather the Scottish laird, but I know where it is.” Layers of gold silk and off-white lace barely constrained Fanny’s rounded figure. When she slapped a palm upon her ample bosom, a string of pearls glinted around her fleshy neck. Woven strands of the opalescent gems were coiled in her upswept gray hair.

  When she sighed he kept silent, knowing she missed her late husband, Payton’s grandfather. A love match, his good friend Payton had told him, which left Stone unimpressed. If love caused the pain evident on his godmother’s face, he was better off keeping it far from his own heart.

  Needing to change the subject he pondered the fact that the Christmas holiday loomed less than a fortnight away. “Tonight’s sprinkling of snow caught me by surprise.”

  “You did not come by coach, I see.” Fanny stared down at his wet formal shoes, then up at his hair. “Your hai
r is damp and a tad long.”

  Stone smiled and glanced down at his feet. “Archie will grumble when he sees what a mess I have made of these shoes.” His friend and fellow soldier, Archibald Kent, insisted on acting the part of his valet.

  Stone had ridden his stallion, Satan, to the ball and should have worn riding boots, but could not ignore the short distance from his country house to the duke’s estate near Longtown. Boots were out of the question, since the gathering was, in fact, a ball. He planned to at least make the effort, but he’d veered away from the crowd in the ballroom.

  “I agree, my child. The snow is still falling? I would love to take a ride in the duke’s horse-drawn sleigh. I shall get Payton to drive me in the morning.” Fanny tapped her folded fan on the balcony railing.

  “Fanny, I assumed I would find your grandson, the duke, dancing with a bevy of beauties. Instead, I saw him outside with a few of your guests. Where is he now?”

  Fanny huffed. “I believe Payton is with Bryce Ketteridge.”

  “With his cousin? Might they be looking for partners for the next dance?”

  “Hmph. Wishful thinking. Each of those two rogues is probably taking advantage of some poor miss in a shadowy corner.” She sighed, then winked at him. “The orchestra has been at rest these twenty minutes, though a country reel is starting. I have seen little of Payton or his cousin, but they ought to dance. ’Tis his ball, of course.”

  “Of course.” He knew Fanny had planned the whole thing, probably to find Payton a wife. “Bryce is always by his side, I hear tell.”

  “They act like brothers, though poor Bryce will never own a title or share in such an estate as grand, but he dotes on Payton, so I should not mind.”

  Stone nodded as he peered down at the crowd again. In search of Payton or Bryce, his gaze locked on a head of dark blonde curls that tumbled down over pale shoulders and back. The petite visage, breath-taking in a whisper of blue silk, disappeared behind a large potted plant.

  There she is again!

  “Hmph! Those two boys are up to no good, I dare say.”

  “They are grown men, Fanny, but good friends. I wish I had a cousin or two with whom I could vanish during a ball in my own home.”

  “As if you would host a ball. Ha!”

  She sounded upset that he stood beside her as a titled gentleman with no plans to marry? Unless searching for a bride, he thought of no other reason to host a ball.

  “I am not in need of a countess.” Not yet. Not until he came to grips with the deaths of his brother and father. A thought made him ask, “Is Payton shopping for a bride?”

  “Payton and Bryce are in danger of ending up alone in the world,” Fanny sniffed, raising a handkerchief to her nose while not answering his question.

  “How so?”

  “How do they expect to find wives if they never show their faces in mixed company?”

  “I heard Payton has acquired a new racing stallion. Perhaps they are in the stables?”

  Fanny turned toward an approaching footman. “Upton, send someone to the stables. Find Payton and Bryce. I need to see them. Now!”

  “Yes, Your Grace.” The footman’s lips quirked.

  Stone assumed the man knew his mistress was in a tizzy, and her grandson and great-nephew were in for a tirade. Stifling a laugh, he turned back to the railing. Watching people at a ball or the theater had morphed into something useful as a soldier spying behind enemy lines. He had blended in with the French because of his dark hair and complexion. Much could be learned in the guise of a commoner while sharing a cup of wine in a French tavern.

  Another reason to say thanks that I hadn’t inherited my mother’s flaming red hair.

  “Well, well, well. She actually came,” Fanny whispered near his shoulder.

  Glancing first at Fanny, he then followed the direction of her gaze. His attention snapped to a young woman. She had a radiant smile as she bounced on her toes with a joyous need to join the dancers. Her sable hair and brown eyes appealed to him more so than her pink gown. Tiny flowers in her hair reminded him of spring in the Highlands. He assumed she plucked the buds from a heated conservatory, since snow covered the hillsides surrounding Longtown, yet his body did not stir with a desire to know her better.

  When she stepped forward, closer to the swirling dancers, her companion came into view. The blue gown he’d seen earlier enveloped a beautiful woman. Her dark gold hair and low-cut gown revealed pale white shoulders. Her generous curves were unfamiliar, but he would never forget that face.

  Stone gulped. Could it be? “No.”

  “No? I believe you are wrong, dear boy. I invited Miss Bartholomew against my better judgment. She’s half French, you see, and that pink dress is too lively for a simple country ball. However, I feared her companion would not come without her, so she also received my invitation.”

  “Her companion. Is that…Adele Hartwell, Payton’s cousin?”

  “I see your memory is still intact after your awful stint in the military. Yes, that’s your little friend from the country, a distant cousin of my dear departed duke’s ancient Scottish line. She is quite grown up, of course.”

  Stone’s mouth had gone dry and his palms dampened with sweat. His heart thumped loudly, worrying him that Fanny might notice. Adele…a memory come to life. He had not seen her since he kissed her ten years earlier, which would make her twenty-six to his twenty-seven.

  With cheeks as pale as her lovely naked shoulders, the gown showed off her heavy breasts. Loose at the waist, it appeared that she had lost weight since buying it. She stood a head shorter than the other young lady. He, himself, would tower over her.

  “She…married, I heard.” Regret for actions undone and words unsaid made Stone tug at the pristine white cravat Archie insisted would enhance the somber look of his black jacket. Perspiration dampened the back of his neck. The cravat felt too tight, so he concentrated on breathing in enough air to keep his attention readied for Fanny’s answer.

  “Yes, Baroness Adele Hartwell Maxwell. Quite the mouthful, poor dear. I was unhappy the day her father sold her to that idiot, the baron.”

  “Pardon me? Sold her?” Stone’s chest constricted. In France he had come across too many women forced to sell their bodies in order to feed their children.

  “You know how things are, dear. She had a dowry, but her father wanted his hands on that stodgy old manor house, west of here. Gaining Maxwell Hall and the opportunity to have his only daughter marry a title were all he talked about, once he met Rupert.”

  “Rupert?”

  “Rupert Maxwell, the young baron. His father had recently died, and Rupert was in dire need of funds. He married Adele, made her a baroness, took her home to Maxwell Hall, and used her dowry to run off to seek a larger fortune. A world traveler, so I’d heard.”

  “What? He left her?” Stone could not imagine anything more idiotic. Adele stood like a goddess come to life in the body of a beautiful human being. They had played together as children, until his father had sent him off to Eton.

  Soon after, Stone had thrown off the shackles of his father’s earldom to seek his fortune in the military. He had never forgotten the beautiful lass who had kissed him with such passion beneath a rowan tree. He thought of that kiss each time he spied a similar tree.

  Bloody Hell!

  She was married and untouchable. Before Waterloo, he bedded willing tavern wenches in need of a few coins, but he stayed far from married women.

  Glancing closer at her attire, he cursed under his breath. A dark blue ribbon rested under the icy blue bodice, enhancing her décolletage. He could tell her bosom had filled out since when they’d last embraced, but the gown did not fit. Why would a baroness appear at a public function in something less than perfect? Had she been ill?

  Her pale golden tresses of her youth had darkened with age, as if she had spent the last decade indoors. However, her green eyes glistened, reflecting the light of a hundred candles. She was still tiny, as if she had not
grown an inch since they’d embraced beneath that tree ton hat one perfect day.

  He could still imagine the sun on his face and the sweat on his brow as he led her beneath the tree’s berry-laden branches. Hidden in a distant corner of her father’s estate, on the banks of the River Esk, he had pressed her against its trunk and gazed into her eyes.

  Her golden eyelashes had fluttered closed, and her berry-red lips had opened slightly. Brushing his lips against hers, he’d sighed. When she nibbled his bottom lip and wrapped her arms around his neck, he pressed his body against the softness of her breasts and belly.

  He’d gone as hard as the famous Lochmaben Standing Stone. When she wiggled her hips, he had nearly exploded inside his breeches. As pleasure washed over him, he ignored a noise beyond the tree, but she had shoved him aside. He watched her run toward home, while he sought to fill his lungs with air.

  “I am glad to see she has put away her widow’s weeds. Black was not her color,” Fanny said.

  Stone glared at her. “What?”

  “Livingstone, my dear, you are not listening.” She tapped him on his shoulder with her fan. “I am admiring Adele’s gown and for her not dwelling on the past. Rupert is gone, don’t you know, and I fear the girl is trying hard not to let on that her marriage was a sham.”

  “A sham?”

  “You sound like my friend, Elizabeth’s, parrot. Yes, a sham. The man married her, bedded her, deposited her in that drafty manor, and left her to fend for herself while he went traipsing around the world in search of buried treasure.”

  “Treasure?” Before Fanny could slap his shoulder again, Stone stepped away and slammed both clammy palms on the balcony’s cold marble railing. “Let me get this straight. She had married, is now a widow, and her time of mourning has passed?”

  Fanny nodded. “Are you not intrigued? I know you were fond of her, when you were children. I thought if she showed up tonight you might draw her out of her shell.”

  As he let Fanny’s words sink in, a man wearing a purplish-brown waistcoat beneath a pale blue jacket approached Adele. He could not hear their conversation, but he watched her face. She did not smile or frown, but shook her head and glanced at her friend. The brown-haired chit curtsied to the fop and headed to the dance floor with him.