“Yes. Or, at least it was last time I checked six months ago.”
Adam faced Jane, his features suddenly unreadable. He blinked twice, slowly, before addressing the others. “I wonder, would you be willing to give Miss Hancock and me a moment for private conversation?”
Barlow furrowed his brow. “Private conversation? Whatever for?”
Aunt Hester snatched Barlow’s hand and commandeered Thomas’s elbow. “Come, gentlemen. Perhaps Mr. Chance might tell us something of the surrounding countryside just over that way.”
Without waiting for agreement, she dragged the men some thirty yards away along the slope and proceeded to make an animated spectacle of inquiring about the adjacent fells. She pinned the men tightly, keeping their backs to Jane and Adam. Despite her morose state, Jane could not help but smile. Dear Aunt Hester. The smile faded abruptly when she shifted her attention to Adam. His grave expression raised a tremor that rippled through her.
“Jane.” He paused to inhale a slow, deep breath. “I do not know what we will or will not find below. If the gold does remain, I do not know how the coin will fall. For that reason, I must say something before all comes to light and every motive becomes suspect.”
The tremor magnified when he grasped her hands between his and stepped closer until their hips nearly met. He loomed over her, intense, determined, and forlorn all at once. She dared not utter a word for fear of interrupting the power of his presence. He opened his mouth to speak but halted. A moment of tortured reflection passed over his features before he drew another deep breath.
“Miss Hancock,” he said mournfully, “You have proved the worthiest of adversaries and finest of friends. And though these last days have been a glorious and unexpected gift, they have broken me, I fear. For as long as I live, none will ever measure up to your cherished memory. You have ruined me, Jane, heart and soul, regardless of what happens next.”
His pronouncement lifted her briefly before snuffing all hope. She saw his words for what they were. He was giving up. As he must. She straightened her weary spine, determined to meet surrender with surrender. “Then we are both wrecked, Mr. Ashford. For I will never be whole as long as I live, knowing that we can never again be friends. Regardless of what happens next.”
His breath hitched, and then he fell in to her as a comet from the heavens blazing a trail across starlit skies in a plunge toward the earth. She reflexively tipped up her chin, barely able to muster rational thought. His lips found hers, tender, sorrowful, desperate. She pressed herself to him as a low moan emanated from her well of broken dreams and shattered intentions. When his kiss grew firmer, she slowly capitulated to the massage of his lips with a hungry desperation born of a terrible prospect. This, their first kiss, was destined to be their last. She resisted the throes of that dismal notion by living only for the kiss, only for the moment. Nothing more.
When his lips finally slipped away to gently rest upon her forehead, she immediately mourned their absence. In the clutch of his arms and the mutual silence, she strove to embrace the passing of a brighter world for a darker reality. She flinched when he released her hands to hold her cheeks and brush away her tears with his thumbs.
“Thank you, Jane.”
She inhaled a stuttered breath and forced a smile. “No, Adam. Thank you. For everything.”
He nodded and stepped away. After a grim pause, he called to the others. “Well, then. We’ve only one way to learn if the gold is still there.”
While the others wandered back, Adam unlashed a pair of torches from the horse’s back. Thomas promptly set them alight with flint and steel. Adam handed one to the old man and faced Jane once more, his face blank.
“You and Hester should remain here. Although you are more than equal to the task, I’m not sure your dresses are suitable for navigating a mine shaft. We will return in short order with all questions answered.”
“Of course.” She bravely battled the tremble of her chin. “Call out if you encounter trouble.”
“I will.”
Then, he leaned to place another kiss on her forehead. When he pulled back, she lifted a hand to the place where his lips had touched. Without another word, he spun and followed Thomas and Barlow into the shaft. As she watched him disappear into darkness, she could not dismiss how the entrance resembled an open grave.
…
The mine swallowed Adam in its gaping maw and forced him down its narrow throat. The entrance tunnel descended gently some fifty feet before opening into a vertical shaft the same width as the main shaft. Thomas turned to Adam, his face cast half in shadow by the flickering torches.
“This ladder leads below to the primary levels. They used to haul slate upward with bucket and pulley.”
“Is the box down there?”
“No, sir. My father chose a less obvious hiding place.”
Thomas handed his torch to Barlow and pulled a heavy plank about six feet in length from an unseen crevice in the shaft wall. He wrestled it to the lip of the shaft, stood it upright, and let it fall forward across the pitch-black opening to catch on the far side of the vertical shaft. Then he retrieved the torch.
“This way, gentlemen.” Thomas walked across the plank to a narrow ledge on the far side of the hole. He carefully maneuvered sideways and disappeared into another unseen crevice. Adam peered down at the seemingly bottomless pit below. The plank seemed as narrow as a razor’s edge. He inhaled a steeling breath and slipped across. He peered to his left to find a crease from which the light of Thomas’s torch emanated. With great care, he slid along the ledge into the opening. Once safely off the ledge, he offered light for Barlow, who stood peering into the pit.
“A long fall, that one,” said Barlow.
“It is. Will you wait here, then?”
“And earn Hester’s disfavor? Never.” He stepped gingerly across the plank and joined Adam in the adjacent opening. They turned to find Thomas at the rear of the narrow space. He had planted his torch inside a divot and was disassembling a cairn of rock stacked against the wall. Adam handed his torch to Barlow and joined the effort. The diminishing stack soon revealed a cube-shaped box, stained with age. At only one foot on a side, it seemed far smaller than he had expected.
“This is it? This box holds all of the gold?”
