Page 94 of Impetuous

Philip hesitated, then shook his head. “No. I’m afraid of getting them excited and then disappointing them again. We may not be able to locate it, you know.”

Cassandra nodded her agreement and hurried away on tiptoe to get her bonnet. They stopped in the kitchen to grab a quick breakfast, startling the servants, then went down to the bottom of the garden, where Philip pulled a shovel out of the gardener’s shed. He propped it on his shoulder, and they set out once again for Saint Swithin’s.

This time, when they reached the church, they did not follow the existing road but walked along in the general direction in which the old road was drawn. Soon, a little to their surprise, they found themselves on a narrow trail.

“Do you think this is it?”

“It corresponds to the map. Look, the creek is much closer now. I suppose people continued to walk along here, and it didn’t become completely overgrown.”

There were places, they found out as they moved on, where the path did disappear for a time, but if they continued to walk in the right direction, after a while the trail would reappear.

“There’s the copse of trees!” Cassandra pointed out, her voice rising. “Oh, Philip, we really are on the right trail.”

They reached the stone landmark beside the road and launched in search of the peat-cutter’s hut. At first they walked past the remains of the hut, but on their second sweep they found it. There was little left except a rectangle of tumbled rocks, hidden by weeds and shrubs.

Cassandra and Philip looked at each other. Her heart was pounding in her chest. They were only five paces away from the dowry’s hiding place. Cassandra drew in a deep breath. She was scared. What if they failed again? Philip raised his eyebrows in inquiry. She nodded.

He turned back around and looked down at the jumble of rocks. “It’s hard to tell exactly where the corner was. It would be quite easy to go a little off.”

He positioned himself in what he hoped was the right direction and walked away from the corner. When he reached five paces, he stopped and began to dig. After a while, he had a hole, but no sign of a small casket. He began to dig out in a straight line on either side of the hole, creating a narrow trench. By the time the sun was climbing toward the center of the sky, he had dug a trench three feet to one side of the hole. He moved back and began to dig in the opposite direction.

Within minutes, his shovel clunked into a hard object.

Philip looked up at Cassandra. She moved closer, nerves leaping in her stomach. “Do you think that’s it?”

“It could be almost anything.” Carefully he began to dig away around the object, finally getting down and brushing aside the earth with his hands. Cassandra joined him, heedless of her dress and hands. The rounded metal top of a box appeared. They dug away from its sides, and began to rock and pull. Finally, as they tugged, it popped free, startling them. Philip pulled it the rest of the way up and set it on the ground beside the hole.

They looked at it for a moment, breathing hard from their exertions. It was a heavy box, despite the fact that it was only a foot and a half long and two-thirds as wide. It resembled a miniature humpbacked trunk, with little ornamentation and a hasp close secured by a heavy lock. It had held up well through the years.

Philip brought the shovel down hard on the lock several times until the lock broke and fell off. Scarcely breathing, Cassandra knelt beside him in front of the casket. Her heart was pounding. Philip gestured toward the little trunk.

“Go ahead. It is your chest, after all.”

Cassandra drew a long breath and pushed the lid up. It fell back, revealing a box full of little velvet bags and stacks of coins. On the top lay a large object swaddled in velvet. Philip reached in curiously and took out one of the bags and spilled out its contents into his hand. Several large uncut jewels fell into his palm, including sapphires, rubies and a very large uncut emerald. Another small bag revealed several jewels of antique cut and setting.

“These are worth far more than they were at that time,” he commented. He poked in the box beneath the bags. “Loose gold coins on the bottom, I believe. Yes, a tidy sum for our Lord Chesilworth.” He paused, then added, “Aren’t you going to unwrap that?” He nodded toward the large object.

“I’m scared,” Cassandra admitted. “I have imagined the gold leopard for so many years that I’m a little afraid to see what it really looks like.”

But she reached out her hands and picked up the heavy object. She set it in her lap and carefully unwrapped it. As the velvet fell away, a large gold leopard was revealed. It gleamed in the sun, an object of expert craftsmanship, each spot an indentation, its crouched stance so real that it seemed about to spring. Around its neck was a collar of small rubies. Its eyes were brilliant dark emeralds.

Cassandra could do no more than stare for a moment. It was so beautiful, so expertly wrought, that it quite took away her power of speech. “Philip…” she breathed at last, stroking a hand along its back, almost as if it were a real cat. “It’s beautiful. Have you ever seen anything like it?”

Before he could answer, a voice behind them said cheerfully. “I certainly have not.”

They swung around, Cassandra instinctively cradling the leopard to her chest. Standing several feet away from them was Mr. Simons. He was smiling, looking as jolly and avuncular as ever. The only thing that spoiled the image was the rather large shotgun in his hands, which he held pointed directly at Cassandra.

“Mr. Simons!” Cassandra stared, slack jawed.

“It was you, then?” Philip asked, his eyes hard and dark. “All this time? The break-ins? Everything?”

“My, yes. As soon as Mr. Miller brought those diaries to me, I could see the possibilities. If anyone could find the maps and the treasure, I knew it was Miss Verrere. She was always a sharp one, a better mind, really, than her father, even. When she dealt with me for a book, I rarely got much profit out of it.” He seemed quite happy to talk, rather proud of his actions. “At first I couldn’t bear to wait for her to find it. I was too greedy. I sent someone to get the maps, but I quickly realized how futile that was. Far better to let the two of you locate the maps for me.”

“And, of course,” Cassandra said disgustedly, “we played right into your hands by inquiring about the prayer book.”

“My yes. I had not seen it before, but it wasn’t hard for me to find out who had bought it from Sir Richard and where it had wound up.” He pulled the small prayer book from his coat pocket and held it up, almost as if he expected to be applauded for his cleverness.

“So you stalled us by sending us to places you knew it would not be while you searched for it—and had your man break in to steal the map we had.”