Alden almost groaned at the blatant way Vandal was flirting, but Tamarind needed no help in taking her swain down a peg or two.
“Not likely, mate. Didn’t your sister tell you? I prefer the other side.” Tamarind smiled at everyone before turning to Alden, who was seated next to her. Her voice dropped to an intimate level. “I heard about your house. I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you,” Alden said, experience having taught him how to politely escape the well-wishers. “That’s very kind of you. The house is mostly destroyed, although there is one wall still standing.”
“Do you know the cause of the fire?”
“No. I assume there will be an investigation at some point.”
“No doubt,” Tamarind said. “Fenice told me—I hope this isn’t a painful subject, given the fire, but I am very interested in caves and such—Fenice told me about your smugglers’ cave. Evidently it leads up to the house proper?”
“It did.” Alden, distracted for a few minutes by the obvious interest in Tamarind’s face, told her about thediscovery of the secret passageways. “I’m sure one of the previous Baskervilles used the passages to transport wine and rum, although we found no signs of any hidden cache, more’s the pity.”
She laughed. “I can imagine that such a thing would be quite valuable today. It’s interesting about those lights you said were strung along the passageways. That can’t have been a product of the free-traders.”
“No, I gather Sir James Baskerville had them installed.” He glanced down the long table in the dining room, where Lady Sybilla sat next to her maid, both of them picking at their spaghetti dinner. “Although Lady Sybilla claimed that the passages hadn’t been used for at least a century or two.”
“How very curious. Do you think she was hiding something?”
“Possibly.” He gave Tamarind a long look. “Then again, I think it’s possible you’re doing the same.”
She blinked at him, a half smile on her lips. “Me? What would I have to hide?”
“Fenice said you were a workmate, but given that she is with the police, that could mean a great many things, couldn’t it? It might even stretch to someone who was responsible for looking into house fires.”
Tamarind’s smile grew. “You’re a perceptive man, Mr. Ainslie.”
“Alden, please.”
She glanced around the table before saying quietly, “As a matter of fact, I’m with a different branch altogether. But I can assure you that the fire is being looked into. Would you mind if I had a peek into your cave?”
“I beg your pardon!” Mercy, in the middle of a livelyconversation with one of Vandal’s Swedish friends who had shown up with his team for the competition, evidently caught just the tail end of the conversation with Tamarind. “You want to do what to his what?”
Alden couldn’t help but smile at the outrage in her voice, and was tempted to tell her right then and there just how much he loved her, but he couldn’t do that to her. He had to find a way to provide some sort of a life for them both before he could ask her to join him. “You misheard, Mercy. She was asking to look into the smugglers’ cave.”
“Oh. Sorry.” Mercy looked mollified for a few seconds, then frowned. “Why would you want to do that?”
Tamarind gave an enigmatic smile. “Perhaps I’m a big fan of caves.”
Mercy said nothing, but Alden noticed that she glanced at the other woman several times during the rest of the dinner.
“To bed, to bed!” Vandal called after another hour. By then, Lady Sybilla and Adams had retired, and the rest of the group—including the Berserkers, as the Swedish combat team were known, and a handful of Vandal’s British friends—were scattered around the ground floor of the gatehouse, singing, drinking, and generally having a good time. “I want all of Team Hard Day’s Knights in bed!”
“You can’t have us,” one of the local students answered. “Not while there are ale wenches to be amused!”
“I’ll wench your ale,” Mercy said, having reentered the dining room after a visit to the loo.
“Promise?” the local asked, to the cheers of the Berserkers.
“I will if you all don’t keep it down. Lady Sybilla is trying to sleep, and you lot are making enough noise to drown out a bull elephant in full trumpet.”
“Aw, you know how to take the poop out of every party,” Lisa said, her words slurring a little. She was seated on the lap of one of the Swedes, and leaned out to the side, almost falling off him.
“That doesn’t even make sense,” Mercy replied, scowling. “Not that I’m surprised, since nothing you’ve said since Alden was almost impaled on the window railings has made sense.”
Alden moved over next to Mercy, wrapping an arm around her waist, the better to whisper in her ear not to make a scene with Lisa.
“Oh!” Clearly, Lisa was outraged by Mercy’s comment. “You are so mean to me! I’ve tried to be as nice as I can, and you’re just mean in return. I told my husband about you, and he said you’re just jealous of me. So you can just put that in your jealous pipe and smoke it.”
