“Oh.” Isabella sank back in disappointment. “I imagine the journal has long since been lost.”
“Quite the contrary,” Damien replied in an offhand manner. “The last time I saw Lady Anne’s journal, it was in The Grange library.”
Isabella clasped her hands together in undisguised glee. “How wonderful! Can you just imagine how exciting it would be if we solved the riddle and discovered the treasure?” Suddenly she sobered, reality taking hold. “Of course, it must be a very long and complicated poem.”
Calmly, Damien recited, “Oh, Gloriana of titian hair, thy savior I shall be; for through the rose of the noonday sun, thy enemies shall flee.”
“You know it!”
“By heart.” Damien’s deep voice echoed with laughter. “I believe that at one time or another each child of every generation of our family attempts to make the monumental discovery of the treasure.”
“Well, I am not a child.” Isabella straightened up in her seat and eagerly repeated the verses. “Gloriana with titian hair—that must be a reference to Elizabeth the First. I suppose the rose might refer to the Tudor red rose.”
Isabella continued muttering to herself for several minutes and then shot up like a spark. “Good Lord, the treasure is buried in the rose garden on the north side of the castle.”
“Stop right there,” Damien insisted, smothering a laugh. He was impressed by her quick mind. It had taken him hours to reach the same conclusion. Of course he had been ten years old at the time, but Isabella’s rapid conclusions were still impressive.
“Rest assured, Isabella, during the past one hundred and fifty years this story has existed, each and every one of the rose bushes at Whatley Grange has been uprooted and the ground beneath thoroughly searched. I can say, with a fair amount of certainty, there is nothing beneath any of the roses on my estate other than dirt.”
“Every bush?” Isabella’s voice held a trace of skepticism.
“Every one,” Damien insisted emphatically. She wilted visibly at his words, and Damien felt strangely bereaved as he watched the glow disappear from her sparkling violet eyes. “I am sorry,” he finally whispered in a soft voice.
“Pray, forgive my foolishness,” Isabella replied with a nervous laugh. “I’m afraid I tend to get a bit carried away at times.”
“I rather liked your enthusiasm, Isabella,” Damien confessed quietly. He glanced down at her tightly clutched fingers. “Please, feel free to avail yourself of Lady Anne’s diary. Perhaps you will discover a clue that has eluded us all these years.”
Isabella studied his handsome face for a few moments, testing his sincerity. Convinced he was being honest, she favored him with a dazzling smile. “Thank you, Damien. I do believe I shall take you up on your kind offer.”
“Come along children,” Isabella prompted. “Your father is expected for tea and we all must get cleaned up before we join him.”
Isabella looked with undisguised dismay at her two dirty charges. She imagined she looked just as unkempt. They had spent the better part of the morning and early afternoon out of doors collecting various flowers and fauna to identify and study in the schoolroom.
Ian, in his exuberance over discovering a water lily, had nearly toppled into the lake. Isabella managed to save him from falling, but his walking shoes, socks, and short pants were covered in mud. Catherine fared no better, tripping over an exposed tree root and ripping out a substantial length of the hem of her light blue gown. Her previously neatly braided blond hair was loose and straggly, and a drying streak of brown mud crossed her forehead. Isabella shuddered to think what horrors would be revealed about her own appearance when she viewed herself in the mirror.
“Let’s cut through the garden, Miss Browning,” Catherine suggested. “It will be faster.”
At Isabella’s affirmative nod, Catherine grabbed tight hold of her brother’s hand and the two raced ahead. Isabella’s heart lurched at their obvious excitement over the impending visit with their father. Despite the earl’s promise, he had not been spending very much time with his children. To Isabella’s knowledge, the children had spoken with their father only at bedtime in the past five days.
At least Catherine and Ian have each other, Isabella mused, watching Catherine deliberately slow her pace to match her younger brother’s. It never ceased to amaze Isabella how devoted these siblings were. They fought often and occasionally violently, especially in the presence of their father, but Isabella knew how much they meant to each other. No one would ever be able to sever the special bond that existed between Catherine and Ian.
Isabella reached the outer edges of the rose garden just as Catherine swung open the heavy French doors on the upper terrace.
“I shall be in your room in five minutes to help you change,” Isabella called out loudly. Catherine paused a moment, waving her free hand in understanding before she and Ian entered the house.
Isabella slowed her pace once the children disappeared. She wandered along the narrow gravel path through the rows of roses, her eyes alight with speculation as they darted from bush to bush.
“I will never to able to walk among these lovely blossoms without thinking of Lady Anne and her blasted treasure,” Isabella muttered to herself. Her enthusiastic start to discovering the treasure had met with very little success. Curiously, the diary the earl had spoken of was not where he remembered it to be in library and thus far, Isabella had not had the time to search among the thousands leather-bound volumes for it.
Instead, Isabella concentrated her efforts on deciphering the simple poem, convinced that if she found the elusive rose in the clue, she would find the treasure. She quickly discovered, however, there were roses of all kinds, shapes and sizes among the furnishings of The Grange—wood furniture with roses carved in it, stone-and-wood moldings featuring a rose motif, stained glass windows with roses prominently and subtlely displayed, stone carvings of roses on the face of archways both inside and outside the castle walls.
She also learned in the course of her brief investigation that there existed a rose bedchamber, a rose sitting room, a rose drawing room, a Queen Elizabeth bedchamber, a Tudor bedchamber, and innumerable rooms supposedly named for Lady Anne.
Surprisingly, Jenkins was able to supply much of the information she required about the history of The Grange and its various rooms, but Isabella was no closer to arriving at any conclusions than when she had first begun her search several days before. She conceded honestly to herself that greatly hampering her efforts was her appalling sense of, or rather lack of, direction. Isabella knew she could not go mucking about the castle alone. She would surely get lost after a few turns.
Jenkins had gallantly volunteered his assistance, but he was preoccupied with estate matters, and as yet was unable to spend any time with Isabella.
“I could use some hot water if there is any to spare, Maggie,” Isabella said to the maid when she entered the warm kitchen. Isabella had deliberately made this detour through the kitchen to acquire fresh water for washing herself and the children. She knew from experience there would be no male servants about the castle to perform this simple task at this hour of the day.
