However, vigour was not enough to solve the riddle, even with two heads. Thirty minutes later Susan sipped gently at her tea, made a slight face when she realised it had completely cooled and set it down with an unhappy frown.
“Shall I ring for a fresh pot?”
Eugenia asked the question without fully looking up from the letter.
“No, not at all, thank you.” Susan stood, brushed her dress into submission, reached out her hand to Eugenia and drew her to her feet as well. “We have struggled with this for too long. It is time to refresh our minds as well as our bodies. Come, let us take a stroll around the garden, as your grandfather suggested in his postscript.”
Eugenia hesitated for a moment, but Susan did not wait for an answer. Before she could complain that she was far too tired and sluggish to go for a walk out of doors, she found herself wrapped in a shawl and escorted out to the gardens. Susan began talking lightly about the weather, some dress she was having made for her little sister — Eliza the wallflower, as Susan lovingly referred to her — to wear to the next Ball, and a million little bits of humour to amuse Eugenia. Before she knew it, she was laughing and talking, too, as they strolled through the beautiful gardens in the refreshing air. The world was beautiful and full of light, for a moment at least. Eugenia found herself drawn to the hedge maze, as always, and led Susan to the centre of it, knowing the way by heart. There were four stone benches along the perimeter of the square clearing at the maze’s centre, and Eugenia paused, sitting down to think and soak in the warmth of the sun beaming down on them.
“Do you think there’s a reason your grandfather mentioned the garden, specifically?”
“He knew that I love it out here, especially the hedge maze. As a child, every time I was upset, I would run out here and hide in the maze. There were many times Grandfather found me sitting on this very bench, or hiding under it, as the case may have been. He would always sit with me until I was ready to talk about whatever had upset me. Then, once we’d talked about it, he would always escort me back up to the house.”
Eugenia toed a loose paving stone. As she did, an idea struck her. It must have shown in her expression because Susan leaned forward, clearly excited.
“What is it?”
“It’s the postscript.” Eugenia reached up, tapping a finger against her chin as her mind raced. “Grandfather said ‘leave no stone unturned’ and this loose stone by my favourite bench got me thinking…”
She crouched, then, and tipped the stone up out of the hole it was supposed to rest in. There was something etched into the underside of the stone. Thinking nothing of how she was dirtying her hands, Eugenia brushed soil off the stone until she could read the words clearly.
“What does that say?”
Susan crouched beside Eugenia, squinting at the words scrawled on the bottom of the stone. Eugenia had to squint for a moment, too, but then she smiled and tapped the stone.
“It says ‘the key to your future’, I believe.” She leaned forward then, sinking her fingers into the soil beneath the stone and coming up with a filthy, rusty skeleton key. “This must unlock whatever treasure it is that Grandfather left for me.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
ASHEWOOD HALL
Marco’s stablemasterwas a hardworking and efficient man. With a little help from Marco and Mr. Morgan, he organised the men of the village into groups and shifts to watch the Mill, the main house, the Dower House, and other important buildings around the Ashewood estate and Ashewood Village.
It was not three days before two lean, hard, dirty strangers were caught poking around the Mill. They were caught putting bottles, which were filled with rum and had a rag in the top of them, in several places around the building. The town blacksmith, Mr Harden, and one of the farmers, a Mr Tiller, had been the ones to catch them and drag them, kicking and screaming, to the main house at Ashewood so that Marco could question them.
Now, as Marco stared across the desk in his study at their gaunt faces and haunted eyes, he felt a shade of pity for them mixed in with his anger.
They looked to be a mere two or three years younger than Marco’s twenty-five years, at the most. As they drew closer, Lord D’Asti took in their nearly identical appearances, from their pitch-black hair to their almost eerie green-gold eyes, and realised that they looked far too much alike not to be brothers.
“How old are you?” Marco barked the question at them, his voice gravelly with the force of his frustration at the havoc they’d wreaked on his home, and the village that relied on it. The bigger of the two puffed his chest up and Marco cautioned him before he could spin a tale. “Tell me the truth, it will go better for you.”
The ruffians looked at each other, as if communicating without a word, and the other young man spoke up.
“I am twenty-two, and he is but twenty.”
Marco could see the truth of it in their eyes, so he probed further, asking another question.
“Why have you been burning my properties? Did you not realise that you might have killed someone? And for what?”
“No, my Lord!”
Both of the young men answered in unison, denying with one voice. The older one cleared his throat and spoke up.
“We made certain that no one was harmed!”
Then, the younger brother picked up right where his brother had left off.
“We gave the old man a good warning before we lit the gatehouse up. The horses and stable staff, too.”
