Now, Philip, the youngest of the brothers, handed out the clues, and the other couples took them, giggling.
“Remember, there is a grand prize for the couple who reaches the end of the hunt first,” the marchioness said from the center of the room.“So, hurry off.”
Scarlett did not feel like hurrying off.Nor did she like the sound of a prize that would involve her and Malcolm being thrown together even further.
A shadow fell over her armchair.And she knew, without a doubt, to whom it belonged.
“Miss Perkins,” a deep voice said.
She hated how that voice stirred her.She hated how she wanted to draw nearer to him upon hearing it.
She stood hastily.“Yes, Mr.Brown.Shall we?”
He nodded, brandishing the first clue.
“May I?”she inquired tartly.
He handed it to her and she read the card.
You will find me cool and dark,
even when in the sunlight I lark.
“It is the fishpond,” he said, in a voice even flatter than usual.“It could be nothing else.”
Not wanting to prolong their conversation or their time together, she nodded and followed him as he walked from the house.
The fishpond was not far from the house—it was in a little verdant garden, which when they arrived, George and Gertrude had already reached.Of course, the brothers of the house had an advantage in such a hunt.
When Gertrude saw her and Malcolm approaching, she grabbed George’s arm and pulled him from the spot.
As Tilly’s sister, Scarlett didn’t like how willingly George followed the other girl.
“I see no second clue,” she said.
He pointed down into the water—and there she saw a little stone that had words carved into it, just below the surface.
“Classic Beatrice,” Malcolm said, dryly.“Too clever for her own good.”
The stone read,
About my looks, I cannot boast,
but to a royal, I did once play host.
“What on earth does that mean?”
Whereas she might have been able to puzzle out the fishpond from the first clue, this one she was positive she could not understand.
“She means the dungeon,” Malcolm said, irritation lacing his tone.
“Dungeon?”
“Parkhorne Hall is very old.It was built in the fourteenth century.There is—uh—a dungeon in the basement.The legend is that it once held Mary of Modena for a night, when she was escaping from England to France, with the infant Bonnie Prince Charlie.”
“Why was she kept in thedungeon?”
He shrugged.“Because she was traveling under cover of night, allegedly.She was in hiding.”
