Rapture Becomes Her (44 page)
Read Rapture Becomes Her Online
Authors: Shirlee Busbee
Alone in his rooms he stalked restlessly around the gracious sitting room, pondering the problem. Barnaby’s watchful reserve hadn’t escaped his notice either. He dismissed the notion that they were annoyed at his unexpected arrival. Barnaby had waved aside his offer to stay in the village, so that wasn’t the cause of their reactions to him.
When last they’d parted, they had all been on the same side, united against whoever had tried to kill Barnaby. That whoever wanted Barnaby dead hadn’t struck again had been encouraging, but while Tom thought they were overreacting, he and Mathew weren’t betting that the problem had simply evaporated. Simon had come to look at Broadfoot’s chestnuts, but that, he admitted, had just been an excuse to call upon Barnaby and Emily. He’d wanted to see for himself that all was well at Windmere and Mathew had agreed that a friendly visit wouldn’t come amiss.
Something was going on, that much was obvious: Emily and Barnaby didn’t trust him any longer and he needed to know why. He sighed. And Mathew needed to know.
Chapter 23
W
ithin minutes the next morning of a Windmere servant departing for Monks Abbey, Lamb relayed the news to Barnaby that Simon had sent a note to Mathew. Lamb would have given much for a glimpse of the contents of that note. Barnaby expressed a similar thought.
ithin minutes the next morning of a Windmere servant departing for Monks Abbey, Lamb relayed the news to Barnaby that Simon had sent a note to Mathew. Lamb would have given much for a glimpse of the contents of that note. Barnaby expressed a similar thought.
“I wonder what was so important that Simon felt the need to write his brother,” Barnaby mused, sipping from the cup of coffee Lamb had brought with him.
Despite the early hour—a pink-and-gold dawn was just spilling over the horizon—Barnaby was already up and garbed for the day. He preferred mornings, but his wife . . . A private smile curved his lips. His bride was still sweetly asleep after a night of passionate lovemaking.
Lamb shrugged at Barnaby and offered, “Reinforcements? The possibility has always existed that we have fallen into a nest of snakes and that more than one brother is involved.”
Barnaby nodded. Knowing the size of the smuggling operation, it wasn’t inconceivable that more than just Simon was behind the Nolles gang. It was even possible that all three brothers were filling their purses with gains from the smuggling. Their fortunes were reputed to be large—had that largeness come from contraband?
A discussion followed that left them no wiser. Setting down his empty cup, Barnaby said, “Enough. We are accomplishing nothing.”
Lamb made a face. “I agree. I’ll see Luc later this morning and tell him about the note to Mathew.” He grinned at Barnaby. “And you’ll tell your Amazon—perhaps she will see something we have missed.”
Preparing to leave, Lamb said, “What are your plans for the day? Should Luc and I be ready to accompany you anywhere?”
Barnaby shook his head. “No. I have meetings with Worley again and several of my tenants throughout the day. I’d like to convince a few to experiment with crop rotation and increased fodder production, as well as suggest that they consider diversifying instead of relying almost exclusively on sheep. Windmere and several of the farms could run substantially larger herds of cattle than they do presently.”
“What you’re saying,” Lamb murmured with a grin, “is in spite of your title, that you’re a farmer at heart and instead of tobacco and sugar, your worries are now sheep and cattle.”
Barnaby laughed. “Don’t forget crop rotation.”
When Barnaby informed Emily of Simon’s message to Mathew, she frowned. They were in her sitting room, preferring its privacy to the morning room and Peckham’s ubiquitous presence. She might not have risen before dawn as had her husband, but Emily was no lie-abed. The time was not yet eight o’clock in the morning and wearing a finely woven woolen gown in a charming shade of mauve, her fair hair caught up in a neat chignon at her neck, she was ready for the day.
On a nearby table, a silver tray bearing the Joslyn crest held the remains of her breakfast—toast, coddled eggs and some strawberries from one of the Windmere hothouses, along with coffee. Pouring herself and Barnaby a last cup of coffee, Emily absently stirred cream, fresh from the herd of dairy cattle on the estate, in her cup, thinking over the implications of Simon’s actions.
“That can only mean one of two things,” she said finally. “Either Mathew is involved and Simon wants his help, or Simon is innocent and wants Mathew’s help.”
Barnaby hadn’t considered the latter conclusion. It was his turn to frown and he said slowly, “I suppose that is possible. After the last attack on me, Simon wrote to Mathew that time, too.” Nettled, he muttered, “Blast it! Perhaps all of our thoughts are wrong and none of my cousins have anything to do with the smuggling—everything could be Nolles’s doing.”
“Cornelia thinks we are wrong about Simon,” Emily said uneasily. “And she did suggest Nolles. . . .” Her lips twisted. “And Jeffery, except we all know he doesn’t have any money.”
Barnaby half smiled. “Your cousin is capable of many things, but this operation took money and brains and it’s my observation that Jeffery is sadly lacking in both.”
Emily sighed. “I don’t disagree.” She looked over at her husband. “So what are we to do?”
“Until we come up with some other plan, all we can do is go about our day as normally as possible.”
“And wait for Mathew’s arrival,” she said dryly. “Whatever his reasons for doing so, I think we can safely assume he’ll come in answer to Simon’s note.” Putting down her cup, she asked, “How soon do you think it will be before he drives up to the front of Windmere?”
“Late this afternoon at the earliest, but before noon tomorrow at the latest.”
Barnaby spent the majority of the day in his study as planned, but in the afternoon, he and Lamb couldn’t resist a stealthy visit to the wine cellar to look for the hidden door. They both felt the timing was propitious. It was Peckham’s half day and the butler was gone from the house until late that evening; Simon was visiting Luc at the Dower House and Emily and Cornelia were busy at the vicarage, helping prepare baskets of food for the needy in the area. After ascertaining that the other servants were busy about their tasks, Lamb and Barnaby slipped down the stairs to the cellar. The occasional torch hung on the stone walls created small pools of lights within the darkness and guided their steps.
They’d thought they’d escaped detection, but as they entered the wide hallway of the lower regions of the house that led to the wine cellar, they met Tilden exiting the room, a pair of bottles of burgundy in each hand.
“Milord!” he exclaimed, startled to see the viscount in the cellar.
“Ah, good afternoon, Tilden,” Barnaby said, cursing their luck. Eyeing the bottles, he added gamely, “Resupply the liquor cabinet, I see.”
Tilden smiled and nodded, though still puzzled by Barnaby’s presence in the nether reaches of the house.
Lamb spoke up smoothly. “I was telling my lord about the extensive and varied collection of spirits that had been laid down by the previous viscount.” Lamb chuckled. “I spoke so highly of it, he wished to see it for himself.”
Tilden’s face cleared. “Of course! I am surprised that Peckham has not given you a tour of the wine cellar before now. It is his province and he guards it jealously.” He grinned and held up the two bottles. “Only when he is away do I dare invade it.”
“Well, then, if that is the case, in the interest of keeping peace,” said Barnaby, smiling, “my visit today shall remain a secret between us.”
Tilden grinned. “As you wish, my lord.” And went on his way.
Entering the darkness of the wine cellar, Barnaby said, “I could have wished he hadn’t seen us, but I think we can trust him not to prattle.”
“I agree,” Lamb said, as he quickly lit one of the torches just inside the doorway. “Even if he were to say something to some of the other servants, Peckham is not well liked and I doubt word would get back to him of our little foray.”
After Barnaby had taken down a torch from the walls inside the wine cellar and lit it, guided by the flickering light, even knowing what they were looking for, it took them several minutes before they discovered it. The door was concealed in the far corner of the room behind a tall rack full of bottles of brandy, hock and Madeira. Upon closer examination they found the catch on the rack that allowed it to swing out and away from its position.
Only a blank corner met their gaze. A careful examination revealed that the adjoining racks covered the seams of the door, and after a further search, Barnaby spied the small handle hidden behind a bottle of burgundy. He gently pulled the handle and magically a large doorway appeared in front of him. A worn stone staircase led downward.
In the light of their torches, the two men descended and studied the walls, eventually finding the mechanisms that worked the door and corner rack from inside the tunnel. Eyes glittering with excitement, Barnaby had to see for himself how well it worked. Leaving Barnaby behind, grumbling, Lamb stepped back into the wine cellar.
With Barnaby standing on the stairs, Lamb watching, Barnaby pulled the lever on the wall and the door slid shut. A moment later the corner rack swung smoothly, silently back into place, leaving Lamb staring at a rack full of bottles of spirits. A moment later, the movements were reversed and Barnaby reappeared.
“So now we know,” Barnaby said as he stepped into the wine cellar, “how Peckham disappeared.” He glanced back at the doorway. “By Jove, but I’d like to do more exploring—actually follow the tunnel to the other end.”
“You need your wife for that,” Lamb said dryly. “She said that there are other tunnels but only one leads to the old barn—the last thing we need is to get lost and suffer the humiliation of being rescued by your wife.”
Barnaby winced but continued to look longingly at the beckoning doorway. Almost to himself, he said, “I’ll wager the tunnel Peckham is using is well marked and that we could follow it with no trouble.”
“No doubt, but do you want to face the wrath of your Amazon,” Lamb asked, the azure eyes smiling, “should you do so without her?”
“Excellent point,” Barnaby said absently, staring mesmerized by the darkness beyond the range of their torches. “But since she’s going to be mad as fire,” he murmured, “with our antics today as it is”—he glanced back at Lamb and grinned—“I’ve a mind to go exploring. Are you with me?”
“I’m sure as the devil not going to let you go disappearing down here by yourself,” Lamb said, an answering grin curving his mouth.
Both men were aware of the reasons why exploring the tunnel would be unwise, but the lure proved irresistible. Like two schoolboys in search of adventure, after closing the secret door, their torches lighting the way, they set off.
The tunnel was not large. In several places, their heads brushed the ceiling. The tunnel was narrow, hardly wider than their shoulders, and thinking of the endless buckets of dirt and rock dug out by pickax and shovel and hauled to the surface, Barnaby wasn’t surprised. The tunnel in which they walked would have taken months, perhaps years to construct. Some oak beams for support had been added, but stopping to examine some of them, it was apparent they were very old—older than the last century when legend had it that his ancestor had constructed the tunnel to hide his smuggling practices. No, the tunnel had been dug out long before that and Barnaby suspected his ancestor had only reopened an existing tunnel.
Lamb echoed his thoughts. “You’ll never convince me that someone spent the time, money and manpower to build something like this for the purpose of hiding and moving smuggled goods. I’ll wager it was constructed when Windmere was a fortified castle and was built to move troops around out of sight of the enemy.”
Barnaby agreed. “That makes far more sense than the smuggling legend—but like most legends it appears that only part of it is true.”
As they explored, they passed two openings leading off from the main tunnel, but a quick glance with their torches revealed that while these other tunnels might have been passable once, they had caved in and were no longer usable.
The tunnel traveled fairly straight, only curving when the makers had hit solid rock and had been forced to change direction around it. The two men pressed onward, noting periodically torches hanging on the walls. Examining one of them, Barnaby smiled grimly. “This is no ancient torch—and it’s been used recently.”
“Probably during Peckham’s last trip down here,” Lamb replied.
The first signs of the smugglers’ activities came into view when they spied several ropes of tobacco piled along the edge of the tunnel near their feet.
“How much farther to the end do you think?” Barnaby asked, staring at the tobacco.
“Not far,” Lamb said. “Your wife indicated yesterday that as the crow flies, the barn is less than an eighth of a mile from the house. Unless I miss my guess, we’ve come nearly that far already.”
Edging past more stacks of contraband, they rounded a bend and stepped into the cavern Lamb had seen with Emily yesterday.
Astonished by the size of the area and the rows, stacks and piles of smuggled goods before him, Barnaby whistled. “What do you want to wager that it was the creation of this cavern that gave rise to the legend that our ancestors built the tunnels in the first place?”
“You’re most likely right.”
Aware that smuggling activities commonly took place under the cover of darkness, Barnaby hadn’t been worried about stumbling across any smugglers this afternoon, yet as he stood at the edge of that large cavern, a feeling of unease swept through him. His head lifted and like an animal scenting danger, his gaze raked the area in front of him. The wavering light of his torch caused shadows to slide and jump over the stacks and barrels of contraband, but he saw nothing to alarm him.
Still, as he stepped out of the tunnel and into the cavern, he whispered to Lamb, “Keep your wits about you.”
Lamb muttered, “I’m not likely to let them stray down here.”
The two men edged cautiously toward the center of the cavern, stopping when they came to a cleared space that contained a chair and a wooden table; several pieces of paper scattered across the scarred surface. As if hastily thrown down, a quill lay amongst the papers, a pewter ink holder and a small lantern sat off to one side of the table. In the light of his torch, Barnaby saw the wet gleam of ink on the quill and the hair on the back of his neck rose. Someone had been down here using the quill not long ago. . . .
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