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“Georgie?”

They kissed her. Any excuse. And this was more than an excuse. This was a cause for celebration.

“Georgie?” She was breathless now, as well as quizzical, but she took the hand they offered and went willingly, with light steps, as they pulled her, cackling, from the room.

23

“St. Alcmund’s?” Elfreda had missed something crucial. She turned to Georgie, who was giving her a significant look, arching their dark brows. She turned back to the church, bloody old, yes, and small, and unprepossessing. To the uninitiated, it appeared an unlikely focal point for a village war, albeit a war that consisted primarily of damn your eyes and spittle. As Georgie’s destination, it bewildered in the extreme.

While walking with them, arm in arm, over the springy meadow grass, she’d begun to suspect they were leading her to a field of buttercups in a secluded dell. They’d grinned mysteriously every time she’d asked where they were bound and peppered her with questions of their own, questions about druid lore. Grandpapa hadn’t raised a dragon, but, according to Papa, he had raised a snow-white pig that marched with him through the standing stones, garlanded with anemones. With Georgie laughing and goading her on, she’d revealed that the pig also told fortunes, at which point Georgie had to hold her up, she was laughing so hard herself. And your grandmother was the fanciful one? The honeysuckle was blooming profusely, perfuming the air. The storm had blown by, and the sun felt delicious. She’d slammed the door in her mind on the blue room, on her worries, on everything but the day. When they’d reached Redmayne Manor, she’d wondered if the bower of bliss was journey’s end, but Georgie had gone inside, swapped the druidic vestment for a walking dress, and then driven her to the village in a gig. They drove at least as well as they rowed, and bowling along the muddy lane was a pleasure.

The inn? The green? Where?

“St. Alcmund’s?” she repeated now. “I don’t understand.”

Georgie passed into the churchyard, with its sprawling yews and tilted gravestones, and stood in the deep green shade. She followed, tingles moving up and down her spine as her eyes roamed the stones. Georgie grasped her hands.

“Within my depths,” they recited, “the shadows play. And yet there is light at my mouth and water that brings life.”

Her stomach fluttered at their touch, and her brain rebelled.

Kiss. Wasn’t it always kiss when it came to Georgie and riddles?

She glanced around. St. Alcmund’s stood in the heart of the village, just off the high street, but the curved walls enclosing the grounds, and the large churchyard, and the ancient trees made it feel remote. No one would see.

She stepped toward them, pressed up through her toes. The look of surprise that crossed their face halted her forward motion.

“Kiss,” she muttered, heels coming back to earth.

Their laugh shook their shoulders.

“Font,” they said, and backed her up against the nearest tree, planted their hands on either side of her head, and kissed her, mouth moving hot on hers. Too soon, they broke away, and twirled. “Font! Baptismal font. It’s a riddle written by nuns, after all. When babies are baptized in the waters of a font, they’re given new life in Christ. And Christ is the light. The nuns hid the hoard beneath a font.”

She shook her head, kiss befogged, dizzy, the tree’s trunk keeping her upright. “I’m not so sure.” She wasn’t sure of anything, truth be told. Georgie had come up with a new possibility, a location, plausible if not probable, but the urge to drag them off into the buttercups was still rolling through her in waves. Tomorrow for the hoard.

Appalled, she focused on the reasonable objection. “The Northmen looted churches. Hiding a hoard of items looted from churches in a church—it’s…”

“Ingenious,” supplied Georgie. “Why look beyond the cross on the altar?” Their sparkling eyes searched her face and clouded. “Don’t tell me there’s no font.”

Obviously, her face was communicating distress. Distress she absolutely shouldn’t feel. “There’s certainly a font.”

“Hooray.” Georgie strode down the path that wound toward the church’s keyhole-shaped door. She watched them walk away. Mortifying, that she’d hoped to linger, among buttercups, while they’d kept their attention fixed on their goal. Treasure. London.

“I’ve never been inside,” they said when she caught up to them. “It looks more solid than I remember.”

“And less Saxon.” Her response was instantaneous. “The north porticus was reinforced with buttresses.”

“Oh, no,” Georgie teased. “Not buttresses. The horror.”

She wrinkled her nose at them. “The buttresses are innocent. But they don’t belong on a Saxon church.”

“That’s what you think? Or what your father thinks?”

“We agree on the buttresses. However, I’m unconvinced that Sir Hugh and Mrs. Alderwalsey are vandals, or that Mr. Hibbert merits rat torture.”

“Rat torture. I should hope you’re unconvinced.” They linked her elbow, fitted her snugly to their side. “What should happen, in your opinion, to a church like this? Should it crumble?”

“Ideally, no.” Elfreda looked up at it. “I’d rather someone stabilize the church than let it fall to pieces. But not through so many insertions of new materials and styles that the building dies.”