Treasure of the Celtic Triangle (24 page)

“You don’t know what came of this, then?”

Katherine shook her head. “I cannot imagine that anything did,” she said. “Technically as viscount, Roderick could have sold estate lands without my permission. But surely I would have known. The fact that Hamilton Murray has never mentioned it convinces me that nothing came of it. These are all dated six years ago. However …” she added thoughtfully, “this man Litchfield was here visiting only a couple months ago—ostensibly because of Courtenay’s eventual role in the House of Lords. I wonder …” Her voice faded away. She shook her head but did not complete the thought.

“Would you like me to leave the letters with you?” asked Percy after a moment.

Katherine sighed. “No, take them back to the study. I don’t want them,” she said. She returned the letters to the envelope and handed it to Percy. “Where did you find them?”

“In the cabinet of files.”

“If I should need them, I’ll know where to find them.”

Percy returned upstairs to the study. Again he sat down at his uncle’s desk. One at a time he opened its drawers. As he pulled out the bottom drawer, he heard a sound, as of something shifting. He stooped and peered all the way to the back but saw only the papers and envelopes he had looked through before. Puzzled, he gave the drawer a sharp jiggle. The sound came again. Examining the back of it more closely, he saw what now looked like a false back to the drawer.

He pulled it all the way out toward him. A thin block of wood had been wedged across the width of the drawer. He tried to dislodge it with his fingers, but it held fast.

The next moment he was outside and making for the workshop to find a small hammer. Five minutes later he sat down again, reached into the back of the drawer, and gave one edge of the piece of wood a light rap. Then again. The wedge of wood gave way. Percy removed it, set it aside, and reached all the way now into the true back of the drawer that had not been visible before.

His hand fell on something. He pulled it out and saw that he was holding a black lacquered box about eight inches by six inches and perhaps three inches deep. He lifted it out of the drawer and set it on the desk.

The latch for the lid had no lock. He unfastened the latch and lifted the lid back. Inside were a few five and ten pound notes—not exactly a fortune—several pens, a bottle of ink, and a few other odds and ends. Most interesting of all, however, was a key ring containing perhaps a dozen small keys.

Why had his uncle kept these keys here, nearly impossible to find unless one were looking for them, instead of with the others on the ring behind the door?

Percy looked them over. Suddenly he remembered. The drawers in the safe!

He was out of the chair and across the room in an instant. Quickly he unlocked the safe as before, threw back the door, and fumbled with the new set of small keys.

The first four accomplished nothing. The fifth, a small brass key scarcely two inches long, slid effortlessly into the lock of the bottom drawer to the right of the inside of the safe. Percy turned the key, heard a slight click, and then pulled the drawer toward him.

There sat a pile of letters, still in their envelopes … unopened.

He reached into the drawer and removed them. He did not immediately recognize the names to whom the letters were addressed. But he knew his uncle’s hand well enough, as well as the return address: W
ESTBROOKE
M
ANOR
, L
LANFRYNIOG
, G
WYNEDD
, W
ALES
. Every letter had been sent to a town in Ireland. Every one had been returned, unopened, stamped with the words, M
OVED
W
ITHOUT
F
ORWARD
. The yellowed age of the envelopes indicated that they were old. Percy squinted and could faintly make out the postal stamps. All had been sent in 1842.

He drew in a long breath and exhaled thoughtfully. Letters in his uncle’s hand that predated his 1847 marriage to Aunt Katherine.

He closed the safe and returned with the stack of envelopes to his uncle’s desk. He sat down and set the letters in front of him. To read them seemed almost a sacrilege. But he could not show them to his aunt. There was no one else to read them but him.

He glanced through them all again. Folded between the envelopes was a newspaper clipping, the paper old and brittle. Carefully he unfolded it. The small headline read: G
OLD
F
INDS ON
I
NCREASE
W
EST OF
W
ICKLOW.

He began to read the article.

Percy continued to peruse the article. But the letters held far more interest. He glanced through them again. All bore the destination Laragh, County Wicklow, Ireland.

Wicklow …
where they had been mining for gold!

He scanned the newspaper clipping again. He could find no mention of the date when the article was written. Was it gold that had taken his uncle there?

Along with Mistress Chattan’s words, he now remembered, on his deathbed, his uncle’s words,
“I was young and foolish and had dreams of making my fortune. There were rumors of gold, and that was enough to fire my imagination.”

Percy knew he had to read the letters. But he could take no chances of his aunt discovering them. Closing all the desk drawers, locking the safe again and keeping the small ring of keys with him, then carefully taking the stack of letters and slipping them beneath his shirt, he left the study and hastened up to the privacy of his own room.

Before he lay down to sleep that night, Percy knew that fulfilling his uncle’s commission must next take him to Ireland. He must attempt to accomplish, even if it were thirty years later, what his uncle had not been able to with these letters.

If he failed, no one need ever know.

T
HIRTY
-E
IGHT

Departure

T
he next morning at breakfast, Percy broke the news to Florilyn and Katherine. “I am afraid I must take my departure sooner than I had planned,” he said.

Mother and daughter looked at him with surprise.

“Why … Are you going home so soon?” asked Florilyn.

“I’m not going home. There is something I have to do.”

“Where are you going, then?”

“I would rather not say.”

Florilyn’s face registered obvious disappointment. “But … you’ve only been here a few days,” she said.

“I know. I am sorry,” said Percy. “I can see that this has come out of the blue. I realize I haven’t spent as much time with you as I had hoped. I will make it up to you when I return—I promise. But there is something I have to do. I don’t think it can wait.”

“Does this have to do with what Roderick asked you to do for him?” asked Katherine.

“It may, Aunt Katherine,” replied Percy. “I can’t be certain.”

“Did you find something in his study?”

“I may have. Again, I cannot say for certain. I am sorry, but I just cannot say more. Actually, Uncle Roderick did not give me specifics. I am nearly as much in the dark as you. I hope you can trust me.”

Again his aunt and cousin stared back with expressions of bewilderment.

“Of course we can, Percy,” said Katherine after a moment. “When will you leave?”

“Tomorrow, I think.”

The rest of the breakfast passed somewhat somberly. Percy knew that Florilyn was not merely disappointed. He could tell that her feelings were hurt, as much that he did not feel himself able to confide in her as that he was leaving.

He spent the rest of the morning in his room, again perusing the letters he had found as well as completing
David Elginbrod
.

After lunch, he invited Florilyn for another ride, this time into the hills. Her mood was obviously subdued.

“I was embarrassed to tell you when I came,” he said after they were well away from the manor and climbing toward Rhinog Fawr, “but I hadn’t yet finished the MacDonald book. I knew it was important to you, but school was just too hectic. I finally did so last night and this morning. I think I see everything you were saying to me last Christmas.”

Florilyn nodded.

“It was hard to hear at the time,” Percy went on, “but the wisdom of it is growing on me.”

“Does your leaving have anything to do with Gwyneth?” asked Florilyn. “Mother said you went down to her cottage.”

“Not really,” answered Percy. “I just wanted to look around. There was nothing there.”

“So you’re not leaving because you have some new idea where she went to.”

“Nothing like that. It has nothing to do with her.”

“Does it have anything to do with
me
?”

“How do you mean?”

“Are you … disappointed with me?”

“No, not at all. Why would you think that?”

“I thought maybe that you … I don’t know … that you found it awkward or didn’t want to be with me anymore.”

“Oh, Florilyn—that’s not how I feel at all. I’m sorry if I—”

“It’s not you, Percy,” said Florilyn. “It’s only that I feel … It is just hard sometimes. I miss you, that’s all.”

“I know. The feeling is mutual. I’ve had bouts of sadness, even depression, these last six months … you know … wondering about it all.”

They rode on for several minutes in silence.

“What about the book?” asked Florilyn at length.

“I now understand about Hugh and Margaret,” replied Percy. “Whether their story has to do with me … with
us …
that I still do not know.” He paused a moment. “Are you …” he began hesitantly, “are you still at peace with what you did?”

Florilyn smiled wistfully. “I think so,” she replied slowly. “It makes me sad when I think about it. Doubts creep in. I wonder what it will be like if I one day have to watch you marry someone else.” Her voice quivered slightly. “Then I worry that I may never marry at all. Girls always worry about such things. The worse thing I worry about is that I do not want to be like Euphra—like she was before, you know. But if and when we do marry, or
don’t …
we will be stronger for having waited long enough to be sure. I know that in my head, but sometimes my heart forgets.”

“You would never be like Euphra. You are too wonderful for that. But you don’t know how much it relieves me to hear you say what you did,” said Percy. “I think you’ve pretty well summed up how I feel as well.”

Having cleared the air, the rest of the ride proved thoroughly enjoyable. They raced several times, explored a few new places, and spent the entire afternoon and most of the evening together.

The enjoyable day brought to Percy’s remembrance that he had actually made
two
promises to his uncle. One of them, after he left, he would not be in a position to keep. He had not thought of it in practical terms during his final year in Aberdeen. But with so many changes bound to come to Westbrooke Manor in the coming months, he must perhaps be more attentive to it than ever. Late in the day he found Steven Muir in his office.

“So you are leaving us, eh, Percy?” said Steven where he sat behind his desk. “We’ve hardly had the chance to exchange two words, and now you are off again!”

“I am sorry about that,” nodded Percy, easing himself into a chair opposite him. “It is actually quite unexpected but cannot be helped. I made a promise to my uncle that I have to attend to.” Percy paused then drew in a thoughtful breath. “There is something I need to ask you to do for me, Steven,” he said.

“Just name it.”

“Before my uncle died, he asked me to take care of my aunt and Florilyn. Of course at the time he thought that Florilyn and I would marry. With those plans now uncertain, the situation is obviously changed. Nevertheless, I told him I would do my best to protect them and see that no harm came to them.”

“He could not have left them in better hands,” said Steven.

“Perhaps,” rejoined Percy. “But now I am leaving. And with the strain caused by Courtenay’s position looming larger every day, I cannot help being concerned. I don’t know how long I will be away … and I would like to ask you to do your best for them in my absence and make sure no hurt of any kind comes to them.”

“I would do so even without your request,” said Steven solemnly. “I try to do so every day. But knowing I am standing in your stead, and indeed acting on behalf of the viscount himself, I will be especially diligent.”

“Thank you. That will make my leaving easier,” said Percy. “I know they are in good hands.”

Percy was up early, and his two bags packed the following morning. He had breakfasted an hour before the northbound coach was scheduled to pass through town.

Florilyn and Steven took him in the small carriage into the village.

One last item of business remained. “I need to say good-bye to Rhawn,” said Percy as Steven led the carriage into town. “Do you mind if we stop by her house?”

They drew up in front of the Lorimer home a minute or two later. Percy jumped down and went to the door. Two minutes later, Rhawn returned to the carriage with him.

“Room for one more?” said Percy. “I think we can all squeeze in. Rhawn’s going to the inn with us.” He climbed back up, gave Rhawn his hand, and helped her up beside him.

Ten minutes later, the northbound coach bounded along the street and pulled to a noisy stop in front of Mistress Chattan’s inn. Percy shook Steven’s hand, then embraced Florilyn and kissed her on the cheek. She did her best to smile but was wiping at her eyes. Finally Percy turned to Rhawn. He opened his arms, and she walked into his embrace.