Chapter Twenty-Seven
Meg sat up with a start, the sunlight streaming through the lace curtains onto the bed. Sprawled beside her, Dougal opened one eye.
“I’ve just had an idea,” she said. She’d been dreaming about the treasure, about pirate girls running through the Abbey, spite and freedom in their veins. About angry fathers, rules and decorum. Treasure hunters with knives, rumors about gold coins, dried flowers inside the walls. Stars.
Treasure maps.
Dougal pushed up onto one elbow. “Should I be worried?”
She grinned. “I know who to ask about Dahlia.” She scrambled out of the bed. “We need to get home.”
He smiled softly. “I like to hear you call it home.”
She kissed him quickly. “Hurry!”
Instead, he pulled her back down into the bed and covered her with his body until she was writhing and panting and moaning.
All in all, a perfectly acceptable delay.
It took no time at all to pack the carriage, and a little more time to take their leave. The duke would not hear of them leaving without luncheon, seeing as they had slept through breakfast. And most of the morning. And then there were hugs to be passed between the Cinderellas, and cubes of cheese to feed Chartreuse when he pouted.
It was early afternoon by the time they set out in the leafy carriage. Meg touched the vines. “I truly do feel like a Cinderella,” she murmured. “I married my prince and I am traveling home in a pumpkin.”
Dougal kissed her and pulled her against his side. It wasn’t long before she drifted off, and he followed suit. They woke to the flash of the ocean on the other side of the window. “I know we should greet your family first,” Meg said. “But do you mind if we stop in Perchance-By-The-Sea first?”
He nuzzled her cheek. “Are you craving a strawberry ice?” he asked. “Because I know exactly where I would like to eat one off of you.”
“No, I…” she trailed off. “We’re definitely coming back to that.”
Dougal had the coachman detour through the town. He’d grown up there, as had his mother and his mother’s mother. He knew exactly where to take them.
“It’s something the constable said when that treasure hunter broke into the abbey,” Meg explained. “That the old duke had such a bad temper the workmen were called in to fix the damage often enough to bear mentioning. So, it got me to thinking. Lady Marigold was away at school and there are probably only a few people still alive who remember Dahlia. But what if one of them was still in the village?”
“Such as?”
“Such as the plasterer who would have been called in to fix the hole from the duke’s fit of temper, at any time, but especially on the last night Dahlia was ever home. We know they fought and that he threw things when he was angry.”
He nodded slowly. “She definitely could have moved the treasure there, just to spite him. If she hadn’t already.”
“To show him he was not stronger, just because he was physically stronger.” She’d have done the same to her uncle, had the opportunity arisen.
“Those treasure hunters have nothing on you,” he said fondly.
“It’s just a theory.” She preened just a little. She couldn’t help herself.
The coachman stopped in front of a small cottage off the main street of the town. “You want Old Atkins,” he told them. “He lives just yonder. He’s ninety if he’s a day, mind.”
The cottage had a cheerful green door and seashells placed in the rows into the plaster around the door and the short wall out front. A face appeared at the window. A man with a shock of white hair squinted at them. He came to the door and yanked it open before Meg could knock.
“Good evening,” she said. “We’re sorry to disturb you.”
The old man blinked at the carriage. “You must be the new duke,” he said to Dougal.
“I am. And this is my duchess.”
“I always did think that carriage was ridiculous.”
“Da!” A woman nudged him aside, half-amused, half-horrified. “What a thing to say to his lordship. I’m sorry, Your Grace.”