“Can you look at when it was made, or a copyright? I know it’s a new map, but I mean the original drawing, which looks like it was hand-drawn.”
Edie inspected the map. “Here! Nineteen sixty-seven, by the Harlaxton tourism office.”
“If I’m remembering right, it has numbers on one side and letters on the other, creating a grid, so the inn is like location C-12?”
“Yes.”
“What’s location D-22? Twenty-two was the cross in the Cistercian numbers, and D is the letter associated with twenty-two in the guest book. It’s worth a shot, right?”
Edie looked up at her, eyes wide, coat unbuttoned, hair damp, clearly absolutely admiring of Cosima, and it was the best compliment she’d ever received.
Then she looked down at the map. “Fuck me!”
“What?” Cosima’s heart was racing.
“D-22! It’s the church! A cross! D-22! All of it! You’re amazing!”
“It could still be wrong. We could be missing something.”
But Cosima’s stomach untwisted and filled with butterflies.
“We could always be wrong.” Edie shrugged. “If we are, we start over, or we find something else to do. There’s no failed treasure hunt police. It’s just you and me, and the sun’s finally shining, and Morag is making jacket potatoes for lunch. We’ve already won!”
Cosima could only grin back, her hand over her mouth to hide just how big her smile was, swallowing over the first tears she’d felt for weeks and weeks that weren’t sad ones.
She would worry about how very fucked she was when it came to Edie Whitelock later.
Chapter Eight
Edie followed the direction of Cosima’s finger, pointing up at one of the carvings on the exterior of the church. “There’s the flea,” Cosima said.
Edie spotted the crouching, rough-bodied stone flea. A church volunteer named Greer Burton-Bailey had told them about the High Gothic church in passionate detail, breathlessly spilling tea about the church architecture drama of the twelfth century, including the habits of famous medieval stone carvers.
“John Oakham was here.” Edie was careful to keep the defeat out of her voice, lest she infect her treasure-hunting partner with it.
“Yes.” Cosima tipped her head. “Though it looks more like—”
“A frog.” Edie nodded. “Definitely a frog. I have a question.”
“How could you possibly have a question about this church after that woman’s endless presentation? I’ve never known as much about a crypt in all of my life.”
“Closing in on my point. There is a lot to know about this church. A lot of nooks. A lot of crannies. A lot of carvings. Places up high and down low. I looked very carefully during our girl Greer’s tour, but I didn’t see a carving with a giant X or an arrow labeled ‘treasure here.’”
“Perhaps the churchisthe treasure,” Cosima said, with a wry smile Edie hadn’t seen yet. “It is a Grade I listed building.”
“That’s not the kind of pessimism my burning thigh muscles and growling stomach are interested in hearing.” Edie sighed. “Should we go back indoors?”
Cosima’s jacket hung open, and her pants were wrinkled beyond recognition, ballooning over the tops of her wellies. Her smooth hair was long gone, replaced by a nest that she’d clipped up with her two barrettes. Her perfect posture hadn’t flagged, however. If anything, she looked more imperious than usual.
But something had shifted between them at the bottom of the wet hill, at Hermione’s Stile. Edie knew she was in danger.
She didn’t want to risk her worst impulses on such a genuinely lovely person. That was why she needed to take a step back and tell her heart not to beat so fucking fast when she stood close to Cosima. She was old and wise enough now not to hurt this woman, but she probably never would be old and smart enough not to hurt herself.
And her heart was already broken. Wasn’t that why she was here, in this tiny town in a part of England she previously could not have pointed to on a map—to nurse the pieces of her heart until they could be fit back together again?
She had no business letting the shattered mess in her chest be softened by a tall, pretty-eyed princess with a three-cornered jawline and a smile that was hard to earn, even if the mess inher heart was beggingPlease, please, please. Just this once.Her heart was in no way trustworthy.
“If we go back inside, it should be with a plan,” Cosima said. “Unless we want to—”
