Page 92 of Impetuous

After a few more minutes of fruitless walking, they stopped again. “I don’t think it could be farther than this,” Philip said flatly. “She would have put some more landmarks in, like that huge old oak tree over there.” Philip pointed across the road.

“Why don’t we do what Cassandra suggested?” Georgette interjected.

Philip nodded. “All right. Fifteen paces is a little vague, but we can spread out in a line and make a sweep down. One of us ought to stumble across the ruins.”

Philip paced out fifteen long steps, and the other five spread out on either side of him, a few feet apart. Philip led the pony, with its trailing cart, over the rough terrain. They began walking slowly back the way they had come, keeping on a line with the road. As they walked, their eyes searched the ground, looking for any sign of a former hut or stone wall.

The walk seemed endless. Cassandra’s neck began to hurt from looking down at the ground, searching for signs of the hut, and a throbbing ache was growing behind her eyes. She was tired, thirsty and hungry, and she knew that if she felt that way, the younger ones were probably doubly so.

“Let’s stop and rest. Eat the lunch that Henri sent.”

Philip nodded his agreement, and they sat down together in a clump of trees and devoured the lunch. Afterward, they leaned back against the trunks of the trees and rested. The twins even dozed off.

Rejuvenated, they got up and began their tedious search again. Hart found a circle of rocks, and they got excited, but it turned out to be only the traces of an old campfire. On and on they plodded until finally they could see the steeple of Saint Swithin’s rising above the trees in front of them.

“We’re back to the church!” Olivia cried out in disappointment.

Philip nodded. “Nearly. I fear that we have missed it somehow.”

They sat down again and tried to regroup.

“What happened to it?” Olivia cried out in frustration. “How could the place just disappear?”

“It has been a long time,” Cassandra reminded her. “If the hut was wood and thatch, it could have rotted away or been taken for lumber.”

The twins were sunk in gloom.

“We’ll never find it, will we?” Crispin asked, and Cassandra could tell that he was doing his best not to cry.

“We’ll try again,” Philip promised. “Maybe we’re looking at the map wrong somehow. Cassandra and I will go over it again tonight. And tomorrow I will go talk to Jack Everson. He and his father before him lived in that house we saw on the other side of the road. I’ll see if he remembers anyone ever mentioning a peat-cutter’s cottage on the other side of the road.”

“But unless we can find those landmarks,” Crispin persisted, “we have no hope of finding the treasure, have we?”

“I don’t see how,” Philip admitted.

It was a sad group that straggled back to Haverly House.

* * *

CASSANDRA SAT IN front of the mirror at her vanity, listlessly brushing out her hair. She felt bone weary. Even the long, hot bath she had taken when she got home had not done away with the soreness in her muscles from the day of hiking. Worse than that was the tiredness in her mind—no, she reconsidered, the tiredness was in her very soul. She had been chasing the Spanish dowry for years, all her life it seemed, and her father before her. For the past year, since she had read the diaries, finding the treasure had been her primary goal. It had become not only a means of reestablishing the family fortunes but a way of vindicating her father, and even the long-dead Margaret Verrere, as well.

Now, it appeared, they would not find it. It seemed the final bitter irony to have proved that her father had been right about the existence of the treasure, yet the treasure was still lost.

She laid her forehead on her crossed arms on the vanity top, hot tears seeping from her eyes. She felt as though she had let everyone down: her brothers and sister, her father, even Margaret Verrere and a long string of ancestors. What was her family to do? True, they no longer had to worry about living on Aunt Ardis’s charity. Philip would take in her siblings, and she knew he would be generous. Still, it would chafe them, especially Crispin, to be living on anyone’s charity, even Philip’s, and they could hardly expect Philip to go to the huge expense of putting Chesilworth in order.

Something parted her hair in back, and warm, velvety lips brushed across the nape of her neck. A shiver ran down through her. “Philip…” she breathed, suddenly revived, and raised her head. She looked up at his reflection in the mirror and smiled. “How did you get in?”

“The usual way—the door.” He was standing behind her, dressed in only trousers and a shirt. He gazed back at her in the mirror. “Brooding?”

“A little.” Cassandra nodded.

“Try not to worry. We will do our best to find it. And if we cannot, you must know that I will take care of your brothers and sister. Olivia shall have her coming out and dowry. The boys will go to Eton. Chesilworth will be restored to its former glory. I will make it my special project.”

Tears welled in Cassandra’s eyes. “You are too kind. But I don’t want my family to be a burden to you.”

“They are no burden. And I do not want you worry about them. From now on, you are only to worry about getting ready for our wedding.”

Cassandra smiled tremulously. She hated to admit how eager she was to think about only that. “Your mother wants a grand wedding.”