Page 10 of Set in Stone

The three partners had been up late, going through the items retrieved from the sea bed and comparing them with the list that had been in the sealed envelope.

“Royal jewels of the House of Elchenburg,” the list was headed, “sent by Her Serene Highness the Grand Duchess as collateral for a loan from the Rothschild Bank.”

So that was it. Thom had read somewhere that the Haverfords were related by marriage to the ruler of Elchenburg, a little country on the eastern border of Russia.

One by one, they had matched the tiaras, necklaces, earrings, bracelets, rings, and other items to the list—a heap of precious items that had glittered in the candlelight even through the mud and other grime that coated them.

“We are missing nine items,” Jim had declared at last. “Do we try for them, gentlemen?”

“One more try,” Paul had decreed. “Tomorrow or the next day.”

Thom agreed. They needed to be fast, because they could not expect their sailors and divers to keep the finds secret. Someone would talk, and then every decent swimmer on the coast would be out in the water attempting to find jewelry, and cluttering up their operation.

However, the next day dawned wet. That would not have been a problem—what was a little more water?—but there was also a brisk off-shore wind that had stirred up choppy water further out and a strong swell close to the cliffs.

Paul—who had stayed the night with Jim, Thom, and the treasure—went back down to the fishing harbor, to keep an eye on his ship and his sailors. Jim and Thom divided the day so the treasure would never be left alone. It had been wrapped, item by item, in various clothing items and hidden in the cabin trunks they’d brought with them, but a determined searcher might still find them.

Jim came up to relieve Thom from his second shift as treasure guard just before three in the afternoon, half an hour before Thom had expected him. “I bumped into your Miss Westbrook, Thom,” he said. “She asked after you. I offered to give you a message, and she said she and her mother would be at home this afternoon. I wouldn’t go if I were you. Sounds like she is measuring you for a wedding ring.”

Surely not. Thom hardly knew the lady. But even so, he checked his appearance in the mirror and then changed his waistcoat and retied his cravat in a more fashionable style before putting on his jacket and his coat and walking out into the rain.

At the Westbrook’s rooming house, he was shown into the parlor, where Mrs. Westbrook presided over a teapot, three gentlemen paid court to her and to Miss Westbrook, and the maid Brownlee knitted in a corner.

Was it Thom’s fancy, or did the younger lady’s eyes light up when he entered? She certainly smiled at him, and presented him to her Mama, repeating her tarradiddle about him being presented to her by a lady of the parish when they encountered one another in church.

He had met the other men before. They were all staying at the inn, and Brewster, that affable host, had made a point of introducing them. Two of them were fashionable fribbles who were on their way to a house party somewhere near Greater Yarmouth. With time on their hands, they had diverted to Fenwick to see Brewster’s well, after reading about it in the London papers.

The third was a young naval lieutenant. He claimed to be here merely as escort to his aunts, who had been attracted to Fenwick by the fairy-blessed water, but Paul had commented he seemed inordinately interested in the fishing village and the coastal paths in both directions. He was probably on active duty, though he was not in uniform. After all, smugglers sailed from hidden anchorages up and down this coast.

Were they here to fill the afternoon and—in the lieutenant’s case—to provide verisimilitude to his masquerade? Or were they truly interested in Miss Westbrook and in the dowry that Brewster claimed was significant? Thom was startled to find himself assessing them as rivals. Was he truly interested in the young lady?

The answer surfaced in his mind. A simple yes, solid as the weights his divers wore on their belts to keep them submerged. Her intelligence, her grace, and her quick thinking had made that much of an impression on him. For the first time since he was a callow boy—when surface beauty had been his one measure of a girl—he had met a lady he wanted to know better.

And her surface appearance was pleasing, too. Her good looks were buried a little in what she wore. The frills and flounces that made her shapely form look merely fat, and the fabric—a print of large orange and yellow flowers on a white background—magnified the effect and clashed with her lovely hair. But Thom had first seen her in the simpler garments she had worn to the church, and he had admired what he had seen.

The two fashionable fribbles dominated the conversation, entertaining the ladies with stories from the latest London season. Entertaining Mrs. Westbrook, at least. Miss Westbrook sat with a polite smile on her face, but her eyes hinted that her mind was far away.

Lieutenant Wilson came to sit next to Thom. “How is your salvage going?” he asked. “I saw you out there yesterday, but I couldn’t tell what you were bringing up.”

The question behind the comment was obvious, and Thom had a prepared answer—one that both Paul and Jim would also be giving to anyone who asked.

“I fear we shall have to tell our client that retrieving the wreck is not going to be worth the cost,” he said. “We’d like to take him back something to prove we actually found his ship. A plank with the name on it. The ship’s bell. Something. But the client’s vessel is not the only wreck down there, and figuring out which bits of wreckage are from which ship has been problematic. If the weather cooperates, we’ll give it one more try tomorrow. At least it has been an opportunity to test our new diving bell.”

There. Let that be explanation enough of their intentions.

“A little bit of a needle in a haystack,” Wilson suggested.

“A particular piece of straw in a haystack,” Thom corrected. “The divers managed to bring up a few things, but nothing definitive.”

“I saw you from the strand beyond the inn,” Wilson commented. “At that point, you were not using the diving bell. But later, when I walked down to the cliffs to take a look, you had it lowered.”

Again, an implied question. Thom was inclined to leave that one alone. “Yes,” he said.

Miss Westbrook spoke up, interrupting something Beaumont was saying. “Mr. Medlock, how does the diving bell work? Does it contain air? Does it move along the sea bottom? How long can the divers stay in it?”

“Arianna!” her mother protested. “Mr. Beaumont was telling us about his new horse!”

“Not at all,” said Beaumont. “I am certain Mr. Medlock’s diving bell is a very interesting topic to entertain a young lady.” He gave his words a sarcastic emphasis to reverse their meaning.