A Midsummer Night's Romp (26 page)

“If you're worried that I'm rushing into a relationship, I can assure you that Lorina stated several times that she has no intention of marrying me. Although I have to admit, the thought that she's so willing to spurn my offer has wounded my pride a bit.”

“And perhaps your brother's recent marriage has made your own situation look a little less rosy?”

“My situation as in my inability to maintain a serious
relationship?” he asked, wondering if he should be offended that his feelings were so easily read.

She made a conciliatory gesture. “Let us say your choice to stay open to potential new romance rather than commit yourself to one person.”

“I'm a free spirit,” he said with dignity. “I always have been. Elliott's the one who had long-term girlfriends—I'd never found one that I wanted to be with beyond a few weeks.”

She was silent for a moment, her gaze on Cressy's tent, from which came the sounds of both music and occasional crashes followed by muted cursing. “Until now?”

He opened his mouth to say that he would move heaven and earth to protect Lorina, but reality wasn't quite so cut-and-dried. “That is something we will have to wait and see. Unfortunately, the decision is not mine alone to make.”

“And yet you announced your engagement in public without Lorina's consent.”

He shifted uncomfortably, swallowing back the explanation that it had originally been made in jest, but now had taken on a much more enticing aspect. “Yes, well, I might have been a bit premature in that, but I'm sure that once a few problems are taken care of, Lorina will be more open to considering a future with me.”

“And if she doesn't want a future with you?”

He straightened his shoulders. “I don't know. I'm hoping it doesn't come to that, because I'm not sure I could move on from her.” Raising his voice, he added, “Cressy, do you need any spending money?”

Cressy stuck her head out of the tent, clutching the door tightly. Her hair, which had been contained in a ponytail, had somehow gone through a transformation,
and now resembled several hedgehogs locked in mortal combat. “When
don't
I need spending money, Gunner?”

“I apologize,” he said, pulling out his wallet and giving her a few bills. “That was a stupid question.”

“The only stupid question is the one not asked,” Cressy said, blowing him a kiss before disappearing back into the tent.

“I really do not know how she turned out as smart as she did,” Gunner told Salma, “but I'll never stop being grateful to your daughter for her. Shall I see you two later tonight, or will your girls' night out be a lengthy one?”

“I don't think we will be back at a sociable hour. We plan on visiting the cinema after dinner.” She gave him a knowing look tinged with amusement. “You are free to enjoy your evening without our limiting presence.”

He bent down to kiss her cheek. “You're a witch, do you know that? In another age, they'd have burned you at the stake.”

“In another age, I wouldn't have let them know the truth about me.”

He laughed and, after a quick look at his watch, headed back to the castle. He had arranged to meet Lorina shortly before dinner, so they could meet Thompson together, and he had just enough time to shave and change his clothes before that.

It didn't escape him that he was almost giddy at the thought of spending the entire evening with Lorina. That excitement lasted until he had completed his ablutions, and then the thought struck him that perhaps Lorina had other plans for her evening.

“Impossible,” he said aloud, refusing to give in to the doubts that Salma had started within him. “Lorina clearly can't keep her hands off of me, and I'm not going
to encourage such subversive thoughts. The only question is whether she would like to go out to dinner or have me cook for her here.”

The question was still uppermost in his mind when he thumped his way down the stairs to the small sitting room that the family used when they were home. To his surprise, Elliott was sitting with a book in his hand.

“Ah,” his brother said upon sighting him. “There you are.”

“I am indeed, although I'm about to leave. Did you need something?”

“Not need so much as wanted. I thought we could catch up.”

Gunner paused in the act of gathering up the keys to his motorcycle. “That sounded very older brother. You wouldn't, by any chance, be wishing to question me about the fact that I announced I was going to marry a woman I've known for a week?”

Elliott looked surprised. “No, actually, I wasn't going to mention that. I assume you know your own mind.”

“Thank you. Then you, like Salma, must be warning me about stomping all over Lorina's heart. If so, I can assure you that I have no intention of doing anything to hurt her.”

“Again, that wasn't what I was going to say.” Elliott cleared his throat. “It's another matter that's become quite obvious.”

Gunner crossed his arms over his chest. “You know full well that I would never have been in the middle of carrying on with Lorina had I known that you had broken down the door to the bolt-hole and crept along the tunnel to us—”

“We weren't creeping!” Elliott said loudly. “The amount of noise being generated was enough to wake the dead, but evidently not enough to distract you two.”

“I would point out that when I make love to a woman, she's oblivious to all else, but you're well aware of tales of my prowess, so I won't.”

“Don't you try to look modest at me, Gun,” Elliott said, pointing the book at him. “I know full well you haven't a shred of modesty, and yes, I'm equally well aware of both your reputation and the fact that when one is so pleasantly engaged, trivial things like an awareness of one's surroundings get lost. That was, in fact, not what I wanted to talk to you about, either.”

“Well then, what the hell is?” Gunner asked, running out of patience. He hated being called on the carpet, especially when he knew he was guilty of misdeeds.

“It's come to my attention that you are blackmailing a member of the dig team.”

Gunner stared at his brother for the count of twenty before speaking. “That bastard ran to you, didn't he?”

“If by ‘that bastard' you mean a perfectly charming woman, then yes.”

“A woman? What woman? Not Lorina!”

“No, although the fact that you've mentioned her makes me believe she knows what you've done.” Elliott gave him a long look, one that made Gunner think of their father. He felt even more like a naughty schoolboy, which in turn just made him even more irritated.

“Of course she knows—she's the whole reason we're blackmailing that bastard Thompson.”

“So you admit you
are
blackmailing him?”

“No, of course not, I was being facetious. We simply asked Thompson about a situation that is worrying Lorina, and he offered to give us the proof that he wasn't guilty of instigating the situation. There was no blackmail involved, although I have no doubt he thinks we pressured him into doing the right thing.” Gunner took a deep breath and tried to think of the names of all the
women diggers. He had met only a couple of them, although the one he knew best was Daria. “It couldn't have been Daria. . . .”

“That was, I believe, her name.” Elliott set down the book. “Gun, you know I hate to do this just as much as you hate to have me rail at you, but really, we can't have you harassing anyone, let alone people who have given us a substantial amount of money to spend a month on the castle grounds. They may not be guests per se, but they are tantamount to guests, and I draw the line at extorting money from guests. At least, not money they haven't agreed to pay, although god help us if Alice continues to hold those Historic Ainslie Castle events. I may just go mad if she goes through with her plans to have a Victorian Month. Can you see me in a cravat for an entire month?”

Gunner couldn't help but laugh despite the dressing-down he was receiving. “No, although I'm willing to wager that Alice would come up with some costume for you that made you look even more the lord of the manor than you already are.”

Elliott made a rude gesture at him. “Do you want to explain just why you and Lorina see fit to not-quite-blackmail one of the archaeologists?”

“It's not even remotely blackmail, and no, I don't wish to explain,” Gunner said smoothly. “It's not my explanation to give. I will inform Lorina that you're concerned about the situation, and see if she'd like to explain the whole story.”

“Uh-huh.” Elliott gave him a sour look. “I'm sorry, Gunner, but that's not going to be good enough. I want an end to this right now. At the very least, you need to apologize to Thompson.”

Gunner was silent for a few minutes while he struggled between loyalty to his brother and respect for
Lorina. In the end, he couldn't resolve the two and simply said, “You've known me my entire life, El. You know I have done things that aren't quite as respectable as you might wish, but I am not evil. You're just going to have to take it on faith that if I make a few waves, I have a good reason for doing so. You can rest assured that if Lorina and I are in the wrong, then I will most definitely apologize.”

“That's just the problem,” Elliott said, ruffling a hand through his hair and making the curls stand out in spikes. “I said the exact same thing to Alice, and she took it further and said that Thompson probably deserved being accosted for doing something so bad that you'd have to talk to him about it, and she was all for kicking him off the property. But that aside, I really have to ask you to fix the situation. I don't care how you do it, but make it good.”

“I said I would if it's warranted. And I should know that”—he consulted his watch—“in less than two hours.”

“Thank you.” Elliott was silent for a moment; then his eyes grew amused and he grinned. “I can't believe you've finally fallen for a woman. You
have
fallen for her, haven't you? Yes, I can see you have—you've got that same expression on your face that I started seeing in the mirror after I met Alice. Plus there was that marriage proposal.”

“Yes, that was a bit of a surprise to me, too,” Gunner said, relaxing into a chair to ease his foot. “It just kind of burst out without my being aware of it until after I'd spoken. Lorina thinks it's all a joke, of course.”

“Of course.” Elliott leaned back in his chair, propping his feet up on an open drawer. “I notice, brother mine, that you are trying deftly to avoid addressing the issue of having fallen for Lorina.”

“Not avoided, simply not acknowledged. And stop
being so nosy—my romantic life is none of your business.”

Elliott took the abuse as it was intended—with halfhearted sincerity. “And should I let Alice go ahead with plans for a wedding?”

“Eh . . .” Gunner didn't like being put on the spot, and wondered if he could distract his brother. He decided he had a morsel of news sufficiently intriguing, and gave it a shot. “Let's put plans for a wedding on hold until I've had a chance to talk more about it with Lorina. But I meant to ask you, did you hear that they've found another treasure stone today? In the cellar, actually.”

Elliott sat up at the word “treasure.” “No, I didn't hear that. I was going to ask you why you authorized a cellar dig, but tell me more about this stone. The TV producer was going on and on about the potential treasures to be found, but it didn't seem realistic.”

“We don't know that there is a treasure, but it seems more possible than it did a week ago.” He spent twenty minutes going over the history of the dig finds, with emphasis on the riddles and how they could be pieced together. “The greeting is clearly exactly what it says it is—the start of a series of communications.”

“In this case clues,” Elliott agreed. “And the ship and roof tile can only mean a decoration on an upper story.”

“But the ring . . . that one has me. You're the scholar in the family—what do you think of the riddles? Do they seem to point to something specific?”

Elliott thought for a few minutes, idly turning back and forth in his swivel chair. “It could be . . . do you remember a program on TV some years back about a series of Roman decorations found near Hadrian's Wall? As I recall, they were round in shape, and bore a distinct resemblance to coins. What if the ring clue doesn't mean a ring itself, but a circular decoration?”

“Now, that's a good idea,” Gunner said, mulling it over. “So you think the decorations were along the roofline of the second villa, the one that's now under the castle?”

“Not necessarily the second villa.”

“So you think the treasure is behind the decoration?” Gunner thought about that for a moment. “Makes sense to me, especially if there's precedence.”

“I believe there is.” Elliott got up and went to a computer, typing for a few minutes before he said, “Ah, I thought I remembered that correctly. It
was
a temple, not a villa.”

“What was a temple? Where they found the ring decorations?”

“Yes.” Both men stared at each other.

“The temple is where all those people were killed. The ones from the original villa, and probably the one under us as well.”

“A temple in the grove,” Elliott said, his eyes alight. “How very dramatic. I wonder if I could use it in a book.”

“You're brilliant,” Gunner told his brother, his mind racing. “It all fits: the clues leading away from the villas, the sacred safety of a temple—at least sacred in the mind of the Romans—being used as a hiding place for their precious items, hidden away behind seemingly innocent decorations. It's all there. And even if there are more stones and we don't find them, at least we have a definitive place to look.”

“If the decoration was plaster, as they frequently were, then it's not likely to have survived,” Elliott warned.