Candace Camp - Impetuous

“My brother Crispin, Lord Chesilworth, and his twin Hart. And this is my sister, Olivia Verrere. Children, this is Sir Philip Neville.”

Neville exchanged polite greetings with the other three, adding as he bowed over Olivia’s hand, “Ah, another beauty in the family, I see.”

Olivia’s eyes grew even wider, and Cassandra knew that he had won her sister over. Behind them, still standing beside the attic stairway, Joanna shifted and sighed noisily. She unfurled her fan and made a production of waving it in front of her.

“It is so dreadfully hot in here,” she opined. “Cassandra, I don’t see how you can stand it. I swear, I think I should faint.”

“Oh, you know I am never subject to the vapors,” Cassandra answered her pragmatically. “But perhaps you should go back downstairs, where it is less stifling.”

“Yes, of course.” Joanna gave her a cat-in-the-cream smile and went on in dulcet tones, “We ought to return to the house, Sir Philip. Cassandra and the other children could join us when they get through here.”

“Thank you for your concern, Miss Moulton.” Sir Philip sent her a brief, disinterested glance. “No doubt you should return to the house if you are feeling unwell. However, I shall remain here. Miss Verrere looks as if she could use some help.”

Joanna stared at him. “You are going to help them clean the attic?”

“If that is what they are doing, yes.” He gave her a perfunctory smile and turned back to Cassandra.

“But I—I can hardly go back to the house by myself,” Joanna protested.

“Your groom was with us.”

“Yes, of course, but that isn’t the same. I mean, he is not a gentleman.”

“You do not trust your servants to behave in a proper manner?” Neville asked, lifting his eyebrows in surprise.

“Of course—I didn’t mean—that is—”

“If you are scared to go back with Jessup,” Olivia suggested with great innocence, “then perhaps you had best wait downstairs. I am sure we will be through in a few hours. Won’t we, Cassie?”

Cassandra had to bite her lip to keep from giggling at Joanna’s outraged expression. “Yes. Joanna, that sounds like an excellent idea.”

Joanna cast a fulminating glance at Cassandra, then at the others, and finally stalked ungraciously to the nearest trunk, lifting her skirts from the dusty floor. She put on a show of dusting off the top of the trunk with her handkerchief, but it was lost on Sir Philip, who was once again looking down at Cassandra.

“Where shall I start, Miss Verrere?”

“Ah...” Cassandra glanced around vaguely, trying to pull her thoughts together. “Well, I had just finished this trunk, and I was going to move on to the one beside it. Perhaps you would like to go through that one.” She pointed to the flat-topped, brass-bound trunk on the other side.

“Of course.” He moved to the next trunk and opened it, sending dust cascading from its top.

Cassandra knelt in front of the trunk beside him and opened it. She glanced over at Sir Philip, still scarcely able to believe that he was there. Her initial embarassment over her appearance was subsiding. It didn’t really matter how she looked; what was important was that he had come.

Quietly she asked, “You have decided that you believe me, sir?”

“I never disbelieved you, Miss Verrere. I was simply of the opinion that you had been duped.”

“A vast improvement. You merely thought me a fool.”

He looked at her, his eyes dancing. “Never that, dear lady.”

“What made you change your mind?”

He shrugged. “I am not saying that I believe there is a treasure waiting for us, or that we can find these maps that will lead us to it. Let us simply say that for the moment I am willing to withhold my judgment.

The fact was—though he would not have dreamed of telling Miss Verrere this—that Sir Philip still found the idea of a hidden treasure and a secret map or two the stuff of gothic novels. He had merely found himself excessively bored at Lady Arrabeck’s house party after Cassandra left. He had kept thinking about her and the offer she had made to him. Absurd as it was, it somehow intrigued him. But more than that, Cassandra herself intrigued him. He recalled the intelligence and clarity of her large gray eyes, the humor of her wide mouth and the slender femininity of her form. He had never gotten a good look at her pale hair in the daylight, he reminded himself; he would still like to see it. And their conversation, though bizarre, had made what everyone else said to him seem insipid. Most of all, he remembered the way Cassandra had felt in his arms, the taste of her mouth beneath his, and the memories made him feel most unsettled.

He was, he told himself, too old for treasure hunts, and, of course, he did not believe for a minute that Cassandra was going to find the clues she needed in some old letter to her ancestor. Still, he had begun wondering what it would hurt to go to visit her and see those precious diaries of hers. It would do nothing worse than waste his time, and, frankly, the idea of wasting a few hours’ time in Cassandra Verrere’s company had grown more and more appealing. Even the thought of having to spend time in the company of her aunt and cousin had not been enough to put him off.

“I am sure you will be convinced soon,” Cassandra assured him, her eyes shining in a way that made his loins tighten. “Once you have read Margaret’s diaries, I know you will realize that they are real. You can see how close we are growing in our search. We are already only fifty years or so away from Margaret’s time, and we have all the way to the wall left to look.” She waved her arm toward the end of the attic. “I am sure there are things left from her father.”

“If he saved those letters.”

Cassandra frowned. The possibility that Margaret’s angry father had thrown away the letters from his wayward daughter was not something she liked to think about. She shook her head. “We will find them. We must.”

They continued to unpack the trunks, searching through the stored articles for a packet of letters. Boxes were opened and clothes unwrapped to make sure that no letters were folded inside. Sir Philip was soon distracted by an intricately carved snuffbox so small that it fit into the palm of his hand, then again by a quaint old book on manners that made him chuckle and read choice excerpts aloud.

“Whatever are you doing?” Joanna asked snappishly. She did not understand Sir Philip at all. Her hopes had soared when the footman had announced him. She was certain that he had traveled to Dunsleigh because his desire for her had overcome his brief bitterness at the trick she had tried on him.

But then he had kept on asking about Cassandra and had actually insisted on riding over to Chesilworth to find her. Of course, he had expressed great consideration for Joanna and assured her that she needn’t accompany him, but she had not been about to let such an opportunity to be alone with him get away from her. However, she could not understand why he refused to leave now, or why he was pawing through old trunks and chuckling with Cassandra over things in which Joanna could see no humor. She narrowed her eyes at Cassandra, who was smiling at Neville in a way that made her eyes positively luminous. She was almost pretty, Joanna thought in amazement, even with her hair covered in a powder of dust and a great streak of dirt across one cheek. Joanna found the revelation distinctly annoying. Did Cassandra actually think that Sir Philip Neville would have any interest in her?

“What are you doing, Cassandra?” she repeated when her cousin continued to ignore her. “Why are you looking through all these old trunks?”

“I thought there might be something of interest here,” Cassandra replied vaguely.