Meg swallowed. Suddenly just hearing “Your Grace” made her feel warm all over now. As if Dougal was still gripping her hair, was still issuing sensual demands. He slid her a knowing glance out of the corner of his eye. She absolutely refused to meet his gaze. Duchesses probably shouldn’t stand on someone’s front porch squirming and giggling.
“That’s quite all right,” he told Atkins. “I’m not fond of the carriage myself.”
“I think it’s very pretty,” Atkins’ daughter said. “How can we help you, Your Grace?”
“We have some questions about the abbey,” Meg said. “And I was told Mr. Atkins was the one to ask seeing as he’d done all the best work inside the house.” A little flattery never went amiss.
Atkins puffed his chest out. “You’d be hearing right.”
His daughter’s smile was wry. “Won’t you come in?”
“We’re so sorry to intrude,” Meg said again, as they followed her inside. A fire crackled in the hearth, and a cat slept in the rocking chair beside it. “We won’t be long.”
“Not often we have a duchess here,” Atkins said, still gruff but chuffed with himself. He scooped up the cat. “Up you get, Mittens. You’re not the highest-ranking lady in the house anymore.”
Meg sat because it clearly pleased him to offer her the chair. His daughter, who said her name was Alice, brought them small beer. “I’m sorry we don’t have tea to offer you,” she fretted. “But it’s my own brew.”
Dougal took a hearty sip and sighed with true enjoyment. “I can’t tell you how I’ve been missing a good beer,” he assured her.
“Now what’s this about the abbey?” Atkins said. “It’s not the frieze in the music room again, is it? I told them not to use that kind of glue.”
“No,” Meg assured him. “It’s not that. We only wondered about the history of the house. Did you ever meet the Lady Dahlia, for instance?”
“Not much call for a duke’s daughter to talk to a workman. Still, everyone knew she loved the ocean. The only one surprised she turned privateer was her father.”
“We were told she did not get on with him.”
“No one got on with that one. He was a right blighter.”
Alice sighed. “Da.”
“Well, he was. And he’s dead now, what twenty years at least? What does he care what I have to say about him? If he wanted kind words, he ought to have paid me my full wages.”
“I can’t argue with that,” Dougal said.
Atkins gave a little triumphant “hah” in his daughter’s direction.
“He kept me in work, when he bothered to pay us,” Atkins allowed. “He made more holes in the walls than anyone I’ve met. Throwing things, throwing punches.”
Something tickled the back of Meg’s brain.
“Had artists going through the abbey on a regular basis to fix up the murals he’d damaged.”
The tickle in Meg’s brain intensified. She stood up abruptly. The treasure wasn’t hidden in the ceiling or under the floor.
It was in the wall. It had to be.
Never mind that the dining room ran the length of the abbey and there were more walls than most houses.
“Mr. Atkins, would you be able to make a list of the holes you were asked to mend?”
He scratched his face. “Can’t say as I could remember them all.”
She refused to give into the disappointment. “I see.”
He shifted on the bench, worried to have possibly upset her. He knocked over his beer, and a jar of ointment. The strong acrid smell of camphor and lavender burned their nostrils.
“Da, careful.” Alice scooped up the ointment. “It’s his arthritic cream,” she explained apologetically. It put Meg in mind of something, but she wasn’t sure what. A memory just out of reach. Someone’s perfume? Maybe Lady Blackwell had a similar cream, though she’d never admit it. “Have more beer, it will mask the smell.”