Page 37

W hy could she not sleep? Amelia never had difficulty in a good night’s slumber, but her time at the castle was proving most challenging.

In the far distance, she was sure she could hear a clock chime the hour. Two in the morning. Well, she’d been tossing for seemingly hours, and it was pointless to try to sleep when her brain was so restless.

Well, she certainly couldn’t go to the library again. What if Sir Frederick was lying in wait for her? He’d kiss her again. She knew if he’d try to she’d be powerless to resist.

Rising, she wrapped a shawl about her shoulders and slipped her feet into warm slippers.

Despite the balmy summer weather, it was cold within these stone walls.

The windows let in very little light and the silence, when the heavy oak doors closed behind her as she stepped into the passage, was oppressive.

How must Pernilla have felt, a prisoner of her father’s, her desires irrelevant to him?

Picking up a sconce of candles from the wall, for they threw a much better light than her single candlestick, she headed for the tower.

Yes, it was dangerous, the stairs crumbling, but Sir Frederick had helped the ladies navigate their way to the tower and that was exactly where Amelia was going now.

Was Pernilla becoming an obsession?

But if Pernilla was real, and so misunderstood, would it not be honoring the young woman to at least find out her real story? Yes, she had the letters that Lady Pendleton might dismiss as contrived or perhaps even written by someone else conducting a ghost or treasure hunt.

No, Amelia was certain there was something else to be discovered.

And if the three of them had made a general search of Pernilla’s tower room, they certainly hadn’t looked very hard. The moment they’d discovered the so-called letters—and it had been the fake letter written by Lady Pernilla—they had considered their job done.

But what if there was more? More that proved that William was indeed worthy, and that Lady Pendleton did her ancestor a grave disservice by dismissing her as a foolish and easily led young girl. Almost as if she deserved her premature end.

For some reason, the need to get to the truth was becoming an obsession.

So far, Amelia had discovered a treasure trove behind the loose brick Pernilla had used as a letter box. It was the perfect location because it was a general area where no one—not even William—would be questioned about accessing.

But could there be a loose brick in Pernilla’s tower room where she kept more personal correspondence?

Pushing open the door, she stepped inside, placing the candle sconce in the bracket on the wall. With the large waxing moon, a surprising amount of light filled the room. Easily enough to begin a thorough search.

And with Amelia’s mind so busy, she might as well turn her energies to something that would at least satisfy her curiosity, even if it didn’t result in the bounty for which she might have hoped. That was the way of life. But if she didn’t try, she’d regret it by the time it was time to go home.

Amelia was a methodical young lady. Therefore, she began at the bottom of the brick wall and began to work her way around, her hands carefully feeling for any roughness that might indicate a cavity.

After an hour or so, her knees and hands were stiff and cold, and she’d found nothing.

Huffing out a sigh of frustration, she sat on the wooden kist at the end of the wooden four poster and surveyed the room. Could the drapery hold something? Unlikely, though she did rise and shake out the curtains, which yielded nothing except dust.

What about the kist? Had they thoroughly searched that?

Leaning over once more, though her back ached, she raised the lid and stared into the darkness.

She couldn’t see anything, but she plunged her hand to the bottom and carefully felt for something like a letter on the base, beneath the fur-lined cloak that had been folded and kept there for what might be a hundred years.

In frustration, she tapped her fingernails as she tried to think where else she’d failed to look.

And then she had to tap them again, for that didn’t feel right. With her ear to the wooden sides, she tested the sound.

Hollow?

She was sure of it.

With a fiercely beating heart, Amelia looked about for something she could use to prise up what she was sure was a false bottom.

*

Sir Frederick had spent a rather fraught afternoon between tempering Caroline’s enthusiasm for phaeton-riding with unsuitable men and consulting the physician in town for a remedy for the insistent pain in his thigh occasioned by his war wound.

He was not going to bring attention to it by receiving a personal visit from the physician, so he’d made a rather clandestine trip into the village under the guise of riding into town to see the blacksmith.

Now, he was back in the conservatory, feeling slightly undone by Caroline’s rather hysterical outburst that her brother was trying to ruin her life.

Yes, he had been waiting at the end of the drive to halt the phaeton and inform Greene he did not give permission for Caroline to go bowling about the countryside, unchaperoned.

But what other caring brother would not have done the same thing?

He was just contemplating rising and going to his bedchamber to take the powders the physician had prescribed him when Miss Fairchild entered.

“There you are, Sir Frederick! I’ve been looking for you,” she announced to his surprise, gliding over, her eyes alight with something he couldn’t quite identify.

The last time they’d parted, she’d seemed quite determined to ensure he got no ideas regarding the possibility of any romance between them.

So, he was therefore astonished when she added, in quite urgent tones, “Please, will you accompany me to St John’s Church at your earliest convenience? To speak to the parson.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Her excitement was so great that she didn’t even register the irony in his tone.

“Lady Pernilla married her true love, William!” she went on. “I just don’t know where, and I hope you’ll come with me to ask the parson if there’s a record in the parish register.”

Sir Frederick sent her a fond look. “My dear Miss Fairchild, do you really suppose that her legal marriage would be registered in the local parish register when Lady Pendleton has told everyone her great-great aunt died when she fell to her death from the tower, because her father refused to sanction her love for a stable boy.”

“Yes, that’s what everyone was obviously told, but it’s not the truth!”

Miss Fairchild took a seat opposite him, reaching into her reticule to withdraw a small book, which she opened.

“This is Lady Pernilla’s diary,” she said. “I found it in a false bottom of the kist that was in Lady Pernilla’s tower room.”

“The same place we found false letters written by Lady Pendleton to keep up the fun of the treasure hunt?” Sir Frederick tried to sound kind.

“Nearby. But this isn’t false. It’s not written by anyone pretending to play games.

” Miss Fairchild tapped the book before pushing it towards him.

“Have a look at the entries which begin at the beginning of the year. Read a few of them until you’re convinced they’re not fabricated, and then read the last one. ”

Of course he had to humor her, even if he didn’t for one moment believe this was really Lady Pernilla’s diary from a hundred years earlier.

But what might have been a more cursory look through the small, leather-bound book packed with dense writing, difficult in places to decipher but generally quite readable, became a more drawn-out exercise.

And this was because Miss Fairchild, in her continued excitement, had drawn closer to him, her fragrant light brown hair almost touching his cheek, and causing such distraction it was hard to concentrate on the words he was supposed to read.

Fortunately, Miss Fairchild kept him to the task at hand with her frequent interjections.

“See, she states quite clearly here that though William is the son of a solicitor and had been acceptable at the start, William’s father’s bankruptcy and ensuing scandal meant William was no longer allowed to court Pernilla.

” She shook her head. “How could Lady Pendleton be so dismissive of poor William? Clearly, he was given a very damning accounting of in the annals of history which he did not deserve.”

“How do you explain the letter which stated he was a stable lad?”

“Oh, now you are confusing Lady Pendleton’s letters and something written by William, wrongly interpreted.

” Miss Fairchild was clearly frustrated.

“See what Pernilla writes here?” She tapped a page halfway through the book.

“William had found work as a tutor, but his love of horses and his rare gift of soothing them had some of those in the area requesting his services. So, you can see how that would be blightingly referred to by Sir Pendleton if he wanted to force his daughter to marry a local landowner she didn’t care for. ”

“Another of Lady Pendleton’s falsehoods, I’m sure,” Sir Frederick said in as bored a tone as he felt he could get away with, for he certainly enjoyed Miss Fairchild’s darkling looks.

How nice it was to get something other than a bland reaction which he’d expected when she’d decided it was safer to have nothing to do with him.

“No! See here!” Miss Fairchild turned a few more pages to nearly the end of the book, located a certain passage, then began to read:

“I fear Papa will pressure me to the point where I have no further means of resistance. William says that if I can hold them off—Papa and Sir Simon—for another five days, he’ll have organized a special license, and we can elope.”

She turned her wide-eyed gaze upon Sir Frederick.

“Did you read that? William got a special license and he and Lady Pernilla eloped. I thought maybe the parson at St John’s might be able to verify it because, as you can see, the diary ends several pages later when she’s made plans to run away with William the following day.

” She shook her head. “Perhaps Pernilla forgot the diary. Or perhaps she had planned to take it with her but was unable to.”

Sir Frederick didn’t dismiss the idea that the diary was not real this time. There was something both real and compelling about the entries.

But now he shook his head as he said, “All this flies in the face of everything Lady Pendleton clearly believes about her ancestor. She says Lady Pernilla died here, at Pendleton Castle. If that’s the case, her grave would be here.”

“All right, let’s find it.” Miss Fairchild rose and took a few steps towards the door, turning to him in invitation.

“Do you mean right now?”

She nodded. “Of course,” she said, as if there was nothing else that could be of any greater importance.

And despite the objections of Sir Frederick’s painful leg, he found that he was more than happy to accompany Miss Fairchild on a visit to the family crypt.