“You figured out most of the puzzle,” he said. “You should spy the death’s head first.”
Her eyes sparkling up at him were nearly his undoing. He wanted to kiss her again, knew he always would, but at that moment, it was better to stick to the plan. Falling to their deaths in a lover’s embrace was not the ending to this adventure he hoped for.
“Help me, then,” Eleanor asked. “I haven’t a clue.”
He drew out the compass. Though figuring out degrees of latitude and longitude were not skills he truly possessed, since he’d hooked up the skull himself in the dark in the rainstorm, he could certainly fake the directions.
“First, we must find northeast by north, as the instructions said.” He held out the compass as another rumble of thunder sounded, a little closer, causing the hair on the back of his neck to raise. The wind had shifted, too, heralding a rainstorm heading their way.
Holding the compass flat in front of him, he waited for the needle to settle and then showed her before pointing in the direction.
She lifted the spyglass to her eye and looked.
“Tell me if you see a tree with anything strange. When this was written, it was twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes above the visible horizon.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“In truth,” he said, as thunder boomed again much closer, “I had to look it up.” Glancing behind them, he saw the thunderheads rolling in from the horizon. They didn’t have much time, and now, he feared, all they would get done was spotting the death’s head and then have to seek cover.
“The horizon is zero and directly above us is ninety degrees, so twenty-one is about two of my fists up from the horizon.”
Eleanor dutifully pointed the telescope in the direction and at the level in which he pointed. Unfortunately, it was growing darker quickly.
“What are minutes?” she asked.
“Trickier. Those are smaller than degrees, so I suggest you find the twenty-one degrees and then go up and down a little until you see—”
“Something white, like bones.”
“Yes, exactly,” he agreed. “If you see it, let me know.”
“That’s what I mean. I see something very white, like bleached bones. It is round and could be a skull.”
“Remarkable!” He felt a thrill almost as if they were truly discovering Kidd’s treasure.
“I’m focusing in on it,” she said. “Yes! It is a skull, for I see eye sockets.”
And then the first fat raindrops hit them.
“Bollocks,” he said, not curbing his tongue around her, knowing she wouldn’t mind.
“I suppose we’d best descend before we are skewered and sizzled by lightning,” Eleanor said, not sounding the least frightened. “But first, mark which tree. Do you see it? Do you see the skull?”
She was still peering through the glass and pointing, waggling her finger around in front of her, which made him smile. If he didn’t know which tree it was, he would not have been able to tell from her excited gesticulating.
“Yes, I see it now,” he said. “It’s an oak tree and has quite wide spacing between the branches. Good for climbing. If it were better weather, I would have you stay here while, with your direction, I went to mark it.”
“That would be a good plan,” she agreed. “But from the relation to the other trees and the river and the distance from this rock, I believe we can find the tree again from the ground.”
“Time to go,” he said.
Taking the telescope from her, he put it and the compass away. Shouldering the bag, he stood and offered her a hand. In a manner of minutes, they were on the ground once again, with their outer layers totally soaked.
“At least we’re not in London,” she reminded him, looking up with the brim of her tightly woven straw hat dripping.
He chuckled. “You are a gem, Eleanor. Come along. I know some shelter without having to go all the way back to the hall.
He and Cam had explored every inch of the riverbank between Turvey House and Angsley Hall. And this wasn’t the first time he’d been caught in a storm. It was, however, the first he’d been caught with a beautiful woman. He hoped she would accept the humble shelter he knew was nearby.
