Page 29

“I saw him carry a horse! On his back. A full-grown horse. Sixteen hands.” Phipps was waving emphatically with his fork.

Georgie sat at the other end of the breakfast table, failing to glean something about agriculture from The Derby Mercury . “You told me last night. I still don’t understand the circumstances.”

Phipps began to explain. A few minutes into it, Georgie realized the problem was them.

They’d stopped listening. Yesterday afternoon, Charles Peach had, for some inexplicable reason, performed the impossible feat of horse portage—a truly remarkable exploit upon which Georgie couldn’t focus for half a second.

They were counting down to their rendezvous with Elf.

“He’s going to show me the threshing machines,” Phipps was saying when Georgie stood up. “I take an interest in threshing machines.”

“Grand,” responded Georgie, meaning it. If Phipps didn’t intend to leave, at least he didn’t intend either to be always underfoot. They wouldn’t worry about the trouble he could cause for Charles Peach. Peach could drop a horse on him.

The clouds were low and drizzly. As Georgie reached Holywell Rock, the clouds dropped lower still and opened.

Elf had a lantern, and a trowel, and no umbrella.

Georgie had a flask, and some chocolate, and no umbrella.

Both of them were soaked to the skin within minutes, and raced through the soggy park up to Marsden Hall.

Elf took them straight to the library, left them dripping by the Finglesham urn, and returned promptly, with linens, Agnes, the twins, and a fat, friendly beagle.

While they dried off, Elf built a fire in the fireplace, a novelty and a defiance, to gauge by her sisters’ awed excitement.

As soon as it was crackling, everyone piled in front of it.

Georgie realized they’d rather missed Matilda’s wiggles and kicks, and surrendered as well to the beagle, who draped herself over their legs.

The twins wanted to hear a story, and Elf obliged, and then Agnes wanted to dress her hair, and Georgie obliged, extracting carefully from children and dog, and following her to her bedchamber.

She wanted the Titus, in fact. Georgie demurred, but she grabbed one of her waist-length tresses and snipped it so close to the scalp that they had no choice but to finish the job.

“It wasn’t my idea,” whispered Georgie to Elf afterward, when Agnes was back by the fire, the twins rubbing her shorn hair with chocolatey fingers. “I tried to stop her.”

Elf was stretched out, propped on her palms, feet toward the hearth, and Georgie assumed the same position, right next to her, pinkies overlapping.

“My sisters have ideas,” she sighed. “It’s very hard to stop them.” She sounded sleepy, and fond, and before long, her head was in Georgie’s lap, and they were stroking her silky hair, surrounded by napping Marsdens, listening to the grunts of the beagle and the soft patter of the rain.

The next day was fair, and the next, and the next. Reverend Cruttwell’s second cave proved recalcitrant, and they tramped with Elf upstream and downstream and back, again and again.

“Perhaps the intrepid vicar mistook a hollow log for a cave,” Georgie suggested on the afternoon of the fourth day. “No lack of hollow logs around here.”

That was the day Elf found it, the second cave, as shallow and underwhelming as the first.

“We’ll head north, to the Roman ruins,” she said, so determined, they didn’t lodge the obvious objection. What two defenseless nuns would have dared to travel so far with stolen gold?

Instead, they agreed, and proposed they go by boat.

The following morning, they rowed upstream, facing Elf, who sat stiffly on her bench.

“I’ve never been in a boat before.” She gasped and gripped the hull as it pitched in the current.

“We Redmaynes made our fortune on boats.” They grinned. “Watermen all the way back. Transported cargo and passengers on the Thames. Until my grandfather got a foothold in the Docklands and became a go-between for suppliers and wholesalers.”

“That’s why Papa refers to him as…” She bit her lip.

“Pray continue. Is it scurrilous?”

“Fishmonger,” she said, with obvious chagrin.

“Nothing wrong with fishmongering. And it’s not too wide of the mark. I’m sure Grandfather mongered a few fish, among other things.”

Elf rarely took the path of least resistance, not if it involved letting an error pass. They knew this about her. They liked it about her. They could see the thoughts moving behind her eyes as she conducted a rapid self-interrogation.

“Be that as it may,” she said, “in my family, it’s used as an insult. Because of our appalling prejudice.”

“You understand your family’s treatment of my family as deriving from…appalling prejudice?” They raised their brows.

She nodded. “And I am endeavoring to examine more closely my own assumptions.”

“According to your newly examined view, tell me: Is being in trade a blot on one’s character?”

She shook her head.

“Good.” They laughed. “I should do more to examine my own assumptions as well.”

Her lips twitched, then she sobered once more.

“Your grandfather did level a historically invaluable Saxon abbey,” she said. “So my unprejudiced opinion of him remains very low.”

“Noted.” They paused. “You could have left it, you know. At examining assumptions.”

She looked at them, uncomprehending.

They smiled widely and focused on the oars.

The day was already warm and hazy, and the air had a sweet, summery sluggishness. Clouds of insects hovered over the water.

Elf’s posture gradually relaxed, and her complexion improved. She wasn’t green around the gills and seemed more at home on the water.

“The Northmen’s boats looked like dragons,” she said, leaning over to dip her finger in the water. “They had heads carved on the stems and tails on the sterns.”

“Dragon boats.” Georgie kept rowing, slow, even strokes. “Terrifying. I’d rather face a seventy-four-gun French ship of the line.”

She shivered. “Seeing those ships racing up the river—it must have felt like a bad dream.”

This. This felt like a good dream. Afloat with Elf, the boat bobbing gently, the sunlight painting her with gold, a reminder to treasure this , now, this moment, worth as much as whatever cache of cold metal waited in the dark. Worth more.

Why such urgency to get back to London? Their haste seemed increasingly misguided. Life wasn’t there , passing them by. Life was here too.

They rowed on, between low hills quilted with pasture and tillage, green checkers interrupted by the occasional copse of trees or quadrangle of farm buildings.

It was early afternoon when the stone cottages of Thornton appeared on the banks.

“Shall we stop for buns?” They maneuvered the boat under the stone arch of the bridge, fully aware that Elf would brook no delay. They’d packed a basket with jam puffs, strawberries, cheese, bread, butter, and lemonade with her doggedness in mind.

“No,” she said. “Unless—do you need to rest?” She gave them an unexpectedly protective look, concern for their welfare written plainly on her face. Their chest felt tight, not from the exercise, from an emotion that strained their breath.

“Rest?” they scoffed. “I can row all day.”

Their arms were screaming by the time they reached their destination. Roman ruins conjured visions of the Colosseum, but what Georgie confronted was a few low stone walls in a field.

Why all the fuss? was the question that sprang to mind.

They didn’t ask.

They searched with Elf, rowing from bank to bank, then combing through the vegetation, zigzagging farther and farther upstream, even as the river narrowed on its course through a high valley, and they had to take increasing care with the boat to avoid scraping rock.

The bat cave was visible from the boat, near the top of a hill, and they carried up the lantern, clambering behind Elf, who went into the cave first—thank God.

This cave was taller, thinner, and longer than the other two, with sharp turnings, and Georgie didn’t like the experience of shuffling blind around corners, and liked less the idea that sleeping bats dangled all around them, that any moment they might feel the impact of furry bodies, tiny claws tangling in their hair, leathery wings brushing their cheeks.

They were so relieved to exit, they didn’t care that the cave had been empty. Elf bore that disappointment alone.

She insisted on searching the banks again, after they’d turned the boat around, and on this pass, she spied the badger cave—maybe.

It didn’t match the description she’d cited, but it was a cave, albeit the smallest yet, and it did smell a bit like badger, or at any rate, like animal, a rangy, musty stench, with a tang of ammonia.

No gold.

This time, they insisted.

“Enough for today,” they said. “Or it will get dark while we’re still on the water.”

The trip downstream was relatively swift. When the river widened and smoothed, they stowed the oars and gobbled a jam puff.

Elf ate her own jam puff in neat bites. She seemed thoughtful, rather than deflated, and was watching them with an expression they couldn’t interpret.

They swallowed the last of the pastry. “What?”

“I owe you something,” she said.

They didn’t let their gaze drop to her mouth. Their heart began to pound, and they tried to sound offhand as they drawled in response.

“Another kiss? I thought we were finished.”

“Something else.” Her smile was a bewitchment. “Come closer.”

They scooted forward on the bench. “Should I shut my eyes?”

“If you like.”

Her sugary tone set off warning bells. They lowered their lashes, not all the way, and saw her hand flash out.

An instant later, cold water slapped the side of their face.

“That’s hardly sporting,” they began, but sporting became a sputter, as more river water splashed into their mouth.

“You threw me into a pond!” She splashed them again, expression delightedly righteous. “This is your just deserts.”