Page 2 of Most Ardently (Return to Culloden Moor #5)

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BOXES OF HOPE

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V iolet burst through the library door with enough force to set the hinges groaning.

To her horror, she found her father's beloved sanctuary nearly empty. Row upon row of barren shelves stared back at her. The spaces where cherished volumes had once rested now were marked only by rectangular patches between swaths of dust. The room felt hollow, a skeleton stripped of flesh, the very heart of Durrafair carved out and hauled away.

“No,” she whispered, her voice small in the vast emptiness. “Please, no.”

Three wooden crates sat against one wall of empty shelves, each of them bearing a label that read, Barnaby Pringle, Collector, Overgate, Perth. The man's wagon must have been considerable in size to have already taken away nearly every book. It was a wonder any boxes had been left at all.

A thought occurred—perhaps her father, from Heaven, had a hand in preserving these few! Perhaps he'd known how desperately they would need that treasure now! And if so, his journals would be waiting...

Violet closed the door behind her, hoped she would be left in peace, and hurried to the nearest crate. It was square, far too heavy for one woman to move. The height of it was mid-thigh. Plenty of room inside for hope.

Her fingers fumbled with the lid until it gave way. Inside, books were packed tightly, spines facing upward. She dug through them with growing desperation, a volume of sermons, a history of the Jacobite rebellion, a battered medical text, a ledger of accounts long settled, along with dozens of history books her father had purchased from the university. These were worth so much more than what her mother would have needed to pay a winter's worth of bills!

Perhaps an hour later, fighting the lure of the pages she might only have days left to read, she moved to the next box. She abandoned her methodical sorting and pointedly ignored the titles while she rummaged, searching only for the tan and red journals her father had prized as if they'd been bound in gold.

“Not this one,” she muttered, tossing aside a tan leather-bound collection of poetry. “Nor this.” A farmer's almanac joined the growing pile on the floor. “Come now, Father. Lead me to it.”

As the day steadily passed like grains through an hourglass, her hands grew dusty and dry. Over and over again, her sleeves caught on the rough wooden edges of the crates. Her attention caught on titles and lured her inside their pages until reality tapped her on the shoulder and reminded her why she was searching in the first place.

The second crate, like the first, yielded nothing but disappointment.

What if they were already gone? What if Barnaby Pringle had taken them both in his first load? What if all those clues were well and truly lost?

On the other hand, what if there had never been a treasure in the first place? What if Iris had to flee and they never heard from her again? Or worse yet, what if she were doomed to remain where she was?

Before turning to the last box of hope, Violet stood and stretched. She forced herself to breathe deeply, to swallow the dust in her mouth. And when she couldn't manage it, she went in search of water, to wash it all down...along with her panic.

If failure awaited her in that last crate, she was in no hurry to find out. So, she grabbed an apron and ducked outside, headed to the cherry trees to replace the fruit she'd given away. She would make a pie for supper. The sweetness would either serve as a celebration or it would chase the bitterness away. If it was the latter, she would lie in wait for Barnaby Pringle to come for the rest of the books. She would call him out for cheating her mother, demand better payment, or the return of the journals. Failing all that, she would walk all the way to Perth and find them herself.

Her frustration showed in the abused cherries she delivered to the kitchen an hour later, but her mother wasn't there to notice. She was in the neighbor's field, gathering grain for the chickens. Even from the doorway, Violet could hear the woman humming as she pulled fat kernels from the stalks and dropped them in her apron pockets, swaying and dreaming of happier days, lost in her imaginings.

She and father had been so alike...

Pink-fingered from cherry juice, Violet returned to the library with renewed determination. Her father had loved that legend of the Jacobite gold. He wouldn't have left his most precious notes, which he believed were priceless, where just anyone might stumble upon them. No, he would have hidden them. And though she searched her memory, she couldn't recall seeing either journal since her father died.

Upon entering, she went directly to the grandfather clock that had been built into the dark cabinetry half a century before. The clockworks had been removed and sold a year ago, but the recesses made for prime hiding spots. Her father had often joked that time held the key to all mysteries. Perhaps that had been a clue in itself.

She opened the ornate door and reached into every corner. Her heart jumped into her throat when she found a moving panel, but it fell again when the small space behind that panel was empty.

Next, she searched the window seat. Its cushions were as threadbare as her dresses, but still respectable on one side. She lifted them one by one, checked beneath for any sign of hidden compartments, then searched the cushions themselves for a hint of something inside.

Again, nothing.

She crossed to the hearth and knelt before it. The stone was cool beneath her fingers as she pressed and prodded, searching for a loose brick, a hidden cavity. She came away with sooty hands but no journal.

Think, Violet. Where would he put them?

A memory surfaced of her father sitting at his desk, face close to the journal he wrote in, a candle guttering beside him. She could still hear the scratch of his pen as she snuck down to the library, searching for comfort from the thunderstorm. She had been young, perhaps six or seven. He'd caught her watching him from the doorway but hadn't scolded her.

“What are you writing, Papa?” she had asked, edging closer.

He had smiled, that warm, secretive smile she missed with an ache that never truly faded. “I am turning something on its head. Sometimes, Violet-mine, you must do that very trick to see a thing clearly. Remember that.”

At the time, she had nodded and pretended to understand, eager to please. Now, she wondered...

“Turn it on its head,” she murmured, her gaze sweeping the bare shelves.

On impulse, she lay down on the worn carpet, positioning herself in the center of the room, and tilted her head back.

From this inverted vantage point, she saw the library anew. The empty shelves, the high ceiling with its elaborate crown molding. Nothing unexpected. But as she moved her head in a circle, taking in every bare detail, she found something she'd never seen before. On the bottom of the lowest shelf, numbers had been burned into the wood. And though she searched her memory, she couldn't recall anyone mentioning it before.

3 4 8.

She couldn't imagine what it meant. Had the numbers been placed there by her father as some sort of clue, a game, or just a way to find out if she ever did as he'd suggested and turned herself on her head?

Why else would they be there?

Had those numbers perhaps been on the wood before the shelves were built? Turned upside down to hide the flaw, in a place unlikely to be seen?

And the numbers themselves. Three random numbers. If it was a clue, a way to find one of her father's journals, he might have meant to look on the third case, fourth shelf, eighth book. But if so, those shelves were currently emtpy. The numbers couldn't help her now.

She scurried across to the bookshelf and lied down again to run her fingers over the burns. They were deep, intentional. Nothing more than what she’d seen from a distance.

3 4 8.

Violet allowed her mind to roam, hoping the solution would come to her if she relaxed. It didn't work. And with no other ideas presenting themselves, she finally admitted defeat and begrudgingly returned to the last crate. After prying off the top, she found it was only half as full as the other two. Only half a box of hope remaining.

This time, she moved slowly, intentionally browsing through the pages of each book, in no hurry to be done. But in no time at all, she reached the bottom. Blue covers, black covers, green covers. Cloth, leather, it didn't matter. None of them were the right size or color, though she did open each to make certain. She found not so much as a scribble in a margin.

It was over.

The sound of her mother calling her name interrupted the breaking of her heart, and she quickly repacked the crate and sat the lid on top. With just a few weak strikes from the heal of her hand, the nails found their homes again and held firm. She closed the other two in the same manner, then hurried out the door, loathe to have her mother find her there for fear of making the woman feel worse than she already did.

Violet entered the kitchen with two intentions on her mind now. Make a cherry pie...and lie in wait for Mr. Barnaby Pringle...