Page 88 of Impetuous

“But, then,” Philip continued, “I slid a fingernail down the paper on the inside of the cover, right beside the spine, and, lo and behold, it lifted a fraction. I managed to slip in the ends of my fingers, and I felt something. I tugged, very carefully, and this came out.”

He held up a thin sheet of paper, folded many times.

Cassandra stopped breathing for a second. “The map?”

He nodded. “The map.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

CASSANDRA WAS ACROSS the carriage in an instant, sitting beside him and peering over his shoulder as he carefully unfolded the aging paper.

It was difficult to make out the faded ink on the yellowed paper in the closed carriage, but it was obviously the work of the same person who had drawn the map they had found at Chesilworth. There were little stick drawings indicating various landmarks, as well as writing, none of it close to the drawings. Just looking at it was enough to make Cassandra’s insides shake. They had done it! They had actually done it! Much as she had believed in the treasure, as badly as she had wanted to find it, there had always been a part of her that feared she would never locate both parts of the map, never find the dowry.

“It makes no better sense than the other one,” Philip said in exasperation. “But perhaps when we get home and put it together with the other map, it will all be clear.”

Their plan to put the maps together was interrupted, however, by Aunt Ardis greeting them from the drawing room. “Ah, Cassandra. Sir Philip, there you are. We have a visitor. You must come in here and meet him. I am sure you will be delighted.”

Cassandra frowned. She was nearly dancing with impatience to get to the maps, but there was no way to politely avoid the invitation since her aunt had spoken right in front of whoever their visitor was. Forcing her face into a pleasant expression, she stepped into the drawing room, Philip on her heels.

She stopped so quickly that Philip nearly bumped into her. She stared at the man rising from his seat on the sofa beside Joanna. He was grinning broadly.

“Look who came to call on us!” Joanna cried, her eyes gleaming with mischief. “Your American cousin.”

“Mr. Miller,” Cassandra managed to recover enough to say. She stepped forward to give him her hand. “What a surprise. I thought you were long since in America.”

“This is Miller?” Philip asked a trifle rudely and cast a meaningful glance at Cassandra. He fixed the young man with a hard stare.

Miller looked a trifle taken aback, but replied, “Yes. David Miller, sir, at your service.”

Cassandra introduced Philip, and he nodded politely, shaking Miller’s hand, but he kept his eyes fixed on the young man in a way that Miller obviously found disconcerting, for he kept glancing over at Philip the entire time he was there.

“I, too, thought I would be home by now, Miss Verrere,” Miller said, replying to Cassandra’s earlier statement. “But when I returned to London after my visit to you, I found out that there had been quite a delay in one of the products I most particularly wanted to ship home. It took a great deal of time and trouble to straighten it all out. It is finally done, however, and I am hoping to leave next week.”

“I am sorry you had so much trouble,” Cassandra commiserated. “What have you been doing to keep yourself busy?”

She ignored Philip’s snort, hastily turned into a cough when Miller looked at him oddly. David began to describe his visits to various museums and such.

“Haven’t gotten out of London and seen the countryside any?” Philip asked.

“Not much, except for my trip to see the Verreres,” he admitted. “Of course, I had to travel to Manchester to speak directly to the manufacturer once.” He smiled a little self-deprecatingly. “Frankly, I was running out of things to do. That is why I went back to the bookstore yesterday. When Mr. Simons told me that Miss Verrere was staying here in London, I was thrilled.”

“Yes, poor Mr. Miller was afraid that he had missed you,” Joanna interrupted, cutting a look over at Philip to see how he reacted to her words. “Your cousin is so devoted to you.”

Cassandra knew Joanna was hopeful that David Miller’s presence would cause some sort of conflict between Philip and Cassandra, but she knew that her cousin was not aware of exactly how great a bombshell she was blithely dropping in their laps. It looked more and more as though Philip was right: David Miller must be the man who had broken into their houses, looking for the maps. It was hard to reconcile his boyish, eager manner with the soul of a criminal.

David blushed a little at Joanna’s words.

Joanna plowed on. “When I told him that you had gone to that Bigby fellow’s to look at books, he said he would wait for you. Isn’t that sweet?”

“It was very kind of you,” Cassandra told David politely.

He stayed for some time, idly chatting, until it was difficult for Cassandra to keep a smile fixed on her face. She wanted only to get rid of him so that they could examine their maps. Besides, it was difficult to be polite and friendly with someone when the whole time she was busy trying to determine if he was the same height and build as their thief of the night before.

Finally he took his leave. Cassandra scurried up to her room to retrieve the map they had found at Chesilworth and brought it back down to Philip’s study. He set a lamp in the middle of his desk and spread out the two maps side by side in the lamp’s full glow. They leaned over the desk and gazed down at the papers.

They looked like two confusing maps. There seemed no connection between them. Nothing jumped into crystal clarity. Cassandra and Philip glanced at each other. He moved the maps around, trying them against each other on different sides and at different angles. It still made no sense.

“This is mad,” Philip said in disgust. “Only a bunch of disjointed names and symbols, nothing matching. There is nothing the same on both maps, no meeting place.”