Damnation! Not dreaming.
Of course she hadn’t been dreaming. A dream couldn’t be quite this painful. She’d never held her arms above her head for this length of time, and now she knew why. Her shoulders felt as if she were literarily holding up the wall, and her muscles burned and cramped.
Another rat chirped and sniffed at her feet and she kicked out again, vaulting this one off to the right. “I still do not understand what I am doing here,” she told her captors.
The men paid her no mind, so she instead turned her energy to thinking of ways she could get herself out of this mess. Perhaps if she pretended to have a fit of the vapors, they would come to revive her and she could—Could do what? Talk them to death?
“What are you digging for?” she asked.
“Pan—,” Waters began, but before he got the word out, Thatcher clipped his shoulder with the shovel. Waters yelped in pain, jumping out of the way.
“Dig more. Talk less,” Thatcher growled.
Esme’s heart thundered. Could it be? What else started with “pan”?
Pantaloons. Pantomimes. Well, they couldn’t possibly be digging for either of those.
Pandora’s box. Here in England. Perhaps the story was true. She’d read about a sixth-century Saxon warlord who supposedly purchased the box for his new bride, and then they settled somewhere north of Cornwall. The bride had opened the box and brought destruction on the entire village until a priest stole the box and escaped with it.
It had always been a favorite theory of Esme’s, but she’d never imagined she’d be present when it was found. “Who told you Pandora’s box was here?” she asked. “Is it that Raven person you mentioned earlier?”
“Our employer is none of your concern,” Thatcher said, not bothering to look up from his digging. “Suffice it to say if he says the box is here, it’s here.”
The key! That’s what they’d meant back at her house. They were looking for her key. Or rather, her pendant. Her father had given it to her only as a frivolity, a small token he’d picked up in a shop in Greece. He’d known she’d enjoy the fact that it had been advertised as the key to Pandora’s box.
But how would anyone know of her pendant? She’d told very few about the necklace or that lately her research had led her to believe that it might, in fact, be authentic. There were the two scholars she corresponded with, but they were mild-mannered, academic types. She knew they would never work with villains such as these. Aunt Thea knew, but she’d always believed it to be nothing more than a trinket.
Who else? Esme scoured her mind for some clue. Her sister knew, but they didn’t even speak. Oh, and about three months ago there had been that man at the library. He’d been passing by, had somehow seen her pendant, and stopped to inquire about the origin. He’d seemed harmless, but perhaps she’d been fooled. She could feel the slender chain resting against her neck now, the gold pendant resting lightly against her chest.
Clearly, they fully expected that if they did find the box, she would use her key to open it. But that would never happen. She was no fool. All she needed to do was convince them the key was back at her house. They’d have to take her back to London; then, at least, she wouldn’t die out here, a place no one would even begin to think to look for her. She could always demand they take her to this Raven person—anything to stay alive.
Perhaps if she deterred them now, they’d stop digging all together. It was unlikely, but she could try.
“You’ll never find it here,” she said.
“Maybe she’s right,” Waters said.
“She is but a woman. What does she know?”
She gasped, momentarily forgetting the danger in her indignation. “I know a great deal more than you! That’s for certain. Why, I—” But she swallowed her words. Her intellect was her greatest weapon against these men. No need to flaunt it before them.
Thatcher eyed her for a moment before continuing. “The Raven said we would find it here. So we will dig until we do.”
It had been a silly plan, but she knew she had to keep her wits about her. If there was ever a time she needed her mind, it was now.
Esme scavenged her memory for any reading she might have done on an ancient monastery in connection with the box. She couldn’t find any. Whomever these men worked for must have had resources completely different resources from her own.
The theory that Pandora’s box was in Britain indicated it was much farther west than they were now. And they hadn’t driven long enough to have hit a western coastline.
“I’ve found something,” Waters yelled. He jammed his shovel back into the hole, and a great hollow thud sounded around them.
Esme’s stomach lurched. Pandora’s box, here in the same room. Well, same dungeon—or whatever this space was intended to be.
Thatcher moved over next to Waters, and they both began digging furiously. They must not have been far above the water table, because the ground quickly became saturated as they dug. Mud caked onto their hands and arms and flew against their clothing. Thatcher fell to his knees and put both arms in the hole up to his shoulders. For several minutes he sloshed mud and scooped it behind him, ever increasing the depth of the hole. Finally he pulled back what looked to be a square object dripping with mud.
“Bring that other lantern over here,” Thatcher growled.
Waters ran to fetch the light, and together they bent over their discovery.
