The Belligerent Miss Boynton AND The Lurid Lady Lockport (Two Companion Full-Length Regency Novels) (67 page)

Jared's frown cleared then and he grinned in understanding. "Four lines in the poem and April is the fourth month. Eight syllables to a line and Gilly was born on the eighth day. Very good, Kevin!"

"I have more than that, old friend, much more. What clock never has to be wound? What timepiece gives the time endlessly? And—and this is the best of all—what sort of timekeeper looks like a pie cut into segments? Think, friends. It's so simple I'm amazed we didn't see it before."

"Sundial!" Bo shouted in glee. "A bloody sundial!"

"Burn it if you aren't right, Bo," Jared complimented the happily grinning cherub. He turned back to Kevin. "Out with it, man—I can see you're bursting to tell us more. Get on with your explanation."

Instead of answering their questions, Kevin went to the door to the corridor and bellowed for Rice to send someone for a spade.

"Buried
treasure?" Amanda all but smirked. "Oh, Kevin, that's almost too much."

"Oh, do be quiet, Amanda," Anne surprised everyone by scolding her friend. "I want to hear
all."

Kevin bowed in Anne's direction. "And so you shall, dear lady, seeing as how it was your brilliance that provided the key that first unlocked the puzzle. Gilly," he called over his shoulder to his unhappy looking wife. "Do you know what time of day you were born?"

"Near dawn, I think," was all she could muster before sinking once more into an uneasy silence. She now knew what Hattie Kemp felt when she would shiver and say "a goose just walked over my grave." Maybe no one was waddling across Gilly's grave, but someone was doing a mighty energetic jig all over her past, and she was convinced she wasn't going to be happy with the results of that nimble dancing.

"Did you hear that, my friends? Gilly said
dawn,"
Kevin repeated triumphantly. "I'd guessed as much. And does anyone here have any idea about what time dawn occurs in the month of April?"

"About six—seven at the latest, I imagine," Jared replied, feeling like a puppet reacting each time Kevin pulled the strings.

"Close enough," Kevin agreed shortly. "I'd imagine that the exact time is recorded somewhere among Sylvester's copious notes concerning every bit of useless information to have occurred these last twenty years and more, but I have no time—pardon my poor joke—for such tedious research. Therefore, if you'd all be so good as to follow me," he said, hefting the shovel Rice had just brought to him, "I shall personally wield my trusty spade as I dig around the numbers six and seven on the sundial located at the center of the maze. Ladies first, please," he then cautioned, holding open the door and bowing again.

"By all means, let us adjourn to the maze," Gilly cooed nastily. "I am all curiosity to discover what it is that so excites Lord Lockport that he's suddenly all uncaring of his appearance. Indeed, this fortune must be of some import to him."

It took only a few minutes of digging before the spade hit upon something metal halfway between the two markers carrying the numbers six and seven.

Kevin dug more carefully now, and soon could lift out a small oblong metal casket. He carried it over to place on one of the stone benches.

"I wish he wouldn't look so smug," Amanda hissed quietly into her husband's ear.

"He's not as carefree as he would have us think, Mandy, my love," Jared whispered back. "Look at his eyes. They appear almost feverish. He's under a great strain, our friend Kevin is, and I believe we both know why. Worse yet, look at Gilly. She's as white as the ghosts you two played at being the other night, poor child."

The rusted lock on the casket broke after one blow from the spade, and Kevin hesitated only a moment before he threw back the lid to reveal the treasure.

There were three oilskin drawstring-topped bags inside, and Kevin dumped them one by one onto the bench.

"Oh, how perfectly
lovely
they all are!" Anne crooned as the diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and other precious stones that adorned the Lockport jewelry appeared before their awe-struck eyes.

For a moment, only a brief, heart-stopping moment, Kevin thought the casket was now empty. But then he saw a flat packet, similarly wrapped in waterproof bindings, reposing at the very bottom of the metal box.

Working carefully so as not to tear the brittle papers he found inside the bag, Kevin unfolded the two pieces of parchment, read them, then handed them to Jared.

"This is Gilly's mother's marriage lines, of course, proving once and for all that she, Miss Alicia Faulkner, and Sylvester were wed in a legitimate ceremony," Jared said, holding up the first paper. "And this second document is incontrovertible proof that our friend Gilly here was born Lady Sylvia Rawlings the eighth day of April in the year of Our Lord 1798."

"Sylvia?" Anne squeaked. "Not another name!"

"The Rawlings invariably name their females Sylvia, just as they curse their males by dubbing them Sylvester. I don't think my Rawlings ancestors cared much for children. Thank heaven my mother was a stubborn Irish colleen," Kevin supplied with a hint of his usual sarcasm.

"Well, I won't have it!" came Gilly's voice, clearly astounding everyone. "My name is Gilly. I like it. I won't be called Sylvia. It's a stupid name."

"I couldn't agree with you more, Gilly," Kevin told her silkily, crossing to where she stood some bit apart from the others. "What's so special about a name anyway? Shakespeare said it best, as everyone says he most often does. 'What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.'"

"Ha!" Gilly retorted, twin flags of color showing in her cheeks. "Try calling one a bastard for ten and eight years and then see if renaming it a rose will rid it of the stink!" Pointing jerkily to the papers in Jared's hand she jeered, "Do you think those scraps of paper have suddenly made everything all right? What about my poor betrayed mother? Where's
her
vindication? What rose does she smell?"

Gilly shook her head violently, as if to throw off her own thoughts, then whirled on Kevin in a fury. "This changes nothing. Keep your papers. Keep your fancy jewels. Keep your fortune now that you've solved the puzzle. Keep The Hall and the estate. God knows you've earned them. I don't want any of it. And most of all—
I don't want you!"

With tears streaming down her cheeks, betraying just how very much things had changed, Gilly took to her heels, her skirts held high above her ankles and one fist pressed to her mouth as she disappeared down one of the pathways, leaving Kevin looking like a scarecrow that has just lost half its stuffing.

Amanda approached him, sympathetically folding him into an embrace to which he did not respond. "She'll calm down, Kevin. Give her time. It was a shock, that's all."

"And when the shock is over and she realizes that the reasons for our marriage no longer exist? What then, Mandy? Will she demand her share of the money and her freedom, leaving this place and all its unhappy memories, never to return? I wouldn't blame her, you know."

"She won't do that," Amanda contradicted him earnestly, while the sound of Anne's soft weeping in the background gave the lie to her optimism. "She loves you, I know she does."

Kevin managed a small lopsided grin. "Sure of it are you? Well, Mandy, at least that makes one of us."

#

With most of the day gone, the Rawlings' guests decided to spend another night at The Hall, and as Gilly was locked up in her chambers with Miss Roseberry guarding the door, they spent their time one by one seeking out their host and giving him the benefit of their advice.

By now Kevin was sorely in need of mentors. Before Gilly had barricaded herself in her chambers, Kevin had confronted her, courageously recounting all his self-proclaimed sins against her and offering her a divorce if she wished one, apologizing that his boorishness made an annulment impossible.

Her reaction was to be expected: she accused him of being in a rush to return to London and his many mistresses now that the terms of the Will had been fulfilled and the marriage between them had become superfluous.

He didn't try to argue with her. He had resolved to be noble—to do the decent thing. She would thank him in the end.

Kevin learned something as he watched Gilly turn from him in disgust. Doing the decent thing hurt. It hurt a lot.

He hid in the library after a decidedly uncomfortable dinner with his friends, who were so excruciatingly aware of his unhappiness, and was well into his third bottle when Bo and Jared sought him out.

"Still feeling downpin?" Jared asked, eying the empty bottles.

Kevin lifted his head and looked at his friends through glazed eyes. "I've been thinking. Perhaps I should get away. Wellington needs good men still. I could enlist in a cavalry regiment under an assumed name."

"Not cavalry, Kev. Hussars, that's more the thing," Bo corrected him, happy to be of any service at all.

"Do you think, Bo?" Kevin returned.

"No. He don't think," Jared cut in, rolling his eyes at the well-meaning redhead.

"Gilly. How is she? Missed her at dinner," Bo improvised quickly, vainly trying to cover his
faux pas
with yet another one.

Kevin raised one expressive eyebrow and gave a hollow chuckle. "A marked friction has developed between myself and Lady Lockport. I cannot say how she is faring at this exact moment, however, as it's difficult to converse through four inches of solid oak door."

"Send up some flowers. Women like flowers," Bo suggested hopefully, gaining him a groan from the man he was trying to cheer into better spirits.

"I'd sit at her feet on a leash if it would make her happy, Bo, but somehow I believe it's my absence, not my presence, that she most desires."

Amanda, who had come on her own mercy mission, heard this last statement and quickly admonished the crestfallen Kevin. "Nonsense! The last thing Gilly wants is to have you disappear from her life." Putting one finger to her lips she added, "Of course, on the other hand, I also cannot see Gilly content to have a husband who resembles an overgrown lapdog. Knowing Gilly as I'd like to believe I do, she would soon be disenchanted with such slavish displays of devotion and dash off on a smuggling run or some such thing to escape the boredom."

That drew a faint chuckle from Kevin and, correctly reading his wife's silent signals, Jared took Bo's arm and neatly steered him from the room.

"All right," Amanda said sympathetically as the door closed behind Bo and her husband. "Now that we are alone, I want to know something. Please, Kevin dearest?"

Kevin sighed and took another drink. "Name it."

Amanda's delicate hand shot out and the wineglass went winging to the floor as she went on the attack. "Are you out of your
mind
, Kevin? What on earth are you doing? Are you really planning to give Gilly up without so much as lifting a finger to keep her?"

Kevin straightened a bit in his chair, the better to face his attacker. "Amanda," he reasoned, giving a look to the broken glass, "Gilly has led a life filled with nothing but poverty, drudgery, and shame. My advent into it gave her a name she already owned—not that I knew it, I do allow myself that one balm to my spirit—and took away what little freedom she had."

"My, we are feeling sorry for ourself, aren't we?"

He glared at her. "There's more, Amanda. Now, even if she takes only half Sylvester's private fortune, she'd be rich enough to buy an Abbey. She's legitimate. She's young. She's pretty."

He looked at his very good friend. "God, Mandy, she's more than pretty. She's the most beautiful, wonderful woman I've ever seen. She has the whole world at her fingertips. At least she would, if she weren't married to me. How can I ask her to give all that up when she deserves it all and so much more, just because of her father's demented Will?"

"How?" Amanda railed at him. "You ask me
how?
You silly, silly man. You ask her because you love her, because she loves you—and because you'd both be only half a person without each other. I know love, Kevin. We're very lucky, Jared and I. We found each other. Silly pride and stupid fears almost kept us apart, but our love was stronger than those things."

"You and Jared were meant to be together," Kevin agreed, taking her hand and pressing it to his lips.

"Yes, we were, and I remind him of it daily," Amanda said brightly, then frowned. "However, I don't know if I believe you really love Gilly. No man who loves a woman like you say you love Gilly would give her up without fighting for her. You disappoint me, Kevin. Until now I never would have taken you for a coward—or a fool."

Rising from his chair, Kevin picked up Amanda and placed a kiss on her cheek. "Now I know why I at one time believed myself to be hopelessly in love with you, little minx. I never had a woman for a friend before. And you
are
my friend, Mandy. My good, dear friend. Thank you. I'll go to Gilly tomorrow, on my knees if I have to, and try to win her." He smiled as Amanda gave him a fierce hug. "And if that doesn't work, I'll send you after her."

"Goose. How you do run on," Amanda told him huskily as he finally put her down, her golden eyes bright with unshed tears. She reached up and kissed his cheek. "We'll be heading out at dawn, to leave the field clear for you. Good luck, my dear, good friend. You've found your true love at last. May you always be as happy as Jared and I—you deserve it."

#

The grass was still wet with early morning dew when Gilly spread her skirts to sit beside her mother's grave. Dressed in a becoming morning gown of mint green, embroidered Spitalfields silk, she looked the picture of youth and beauty—unless one looked too closely and spied the age-old weariness in her sad blue eyes.

"Good morning, Mama, Tommy. I have some very happy news for you today," she began, and then went on to tell of the discovery of the casket and its contents the day before.

A person could have filled volumes with the words she left unsaid: a lifetime of remembered hurts, years marked by never-to-be-forgotten slights and snubs. But Gilly didn't speak of any of this. Instead, she concentrated on the bright things—the disclosure that her mother had indeed been Lady Lockport and Tommy a Viscount. Gilly would have her family moved to the Rawlings mausoleum on the estate, she told them, there to have them sleep their endless sleep surrounded by all the Rawlings who had come before them as well as those who would join them in years to come.