the stairs, holding the candle in one hand and the hem of her cloak up in the other. She paused at the bottom, toying with the idea of rousing her father to come and help, but then she dismissed the thought. Sir Arthur Odell would insist on bringing his blunderbuss and making an unconscionable amount of noise. It would be better to check out the situation and return for help if it was required. After all, it might be that she had simply spotted a poacher. Even so, Rachel paused to remove a medieval dagger from the wall. She had borrowed it before and found just the sight of it made most would-be villains think twice. It also made her feel much, much safer.
The sound of the bolt drawing back on the big front door was loud in the silence, and the crunch of the gravel under Rachel’s boots even more so. At any moment she expected to hear an enraged shout from her father, demanding to know what was going on and putting all miscreants to flight. But there was silence. Nothing stirred under the moon.
Rachel had left the candle in the hall, thinking its light would be drowned out by the moonlight, but the loss of its warm flame made her feel slightly nervous and she wished that she had brought a lantern. She crept along the edge of the house until she reached the gate into the stable yard. In the daylight it did not seem very far. Now it felt like a mile. She slipped through into the cobbled yard. The gate swung open without a creak and Rachel blessed the fact that she had had the hinges oiled only the previous day.
She stood by the fence, scanning the yard. Her eyes must have been deceiving her. There was no one here.
Then she saw the movement. Once again it was no more than a flash on the edge of her vision, but it brought her head around sharply. Someone was in the stables and they had struck a light.
Rachel had no thought to challenge anyone unless they were actually stealing something, and the chances of that seemed remote, for the stable held none of the antiquity finds and precious little besides. Nevertheless she was curious as to the identity of the mystery intruder. She crept along the side of the stables until she could peer through the window.
The inside of the stables was dark, but for a corner where a small lantern was set on the cobbled floor. A man was crouched beside it, methodically sorting through the books that Rachel had stacked there only a few days previously. Except that now they were not neatly stacked. They were scattered across the stone floor in a haphazard muddle that made her furious. Covers were ripped from the wood; splinters lay in the grooves between the cobbles. It was the most unconscionable mess.
The lamplight fell on the man’s tawny hair, but Rachel hardly needed it as a means of identification. She would have recognised Cory Newlyn anywhere, for she had seen him so many times in so many different stances that the images were familiar and unquestioned. With an exclamation of wrath she retraced her steps to the stable door and pushed it open.
She had been intending to declare her presence immediately, but when Cory did not look up from his position sorting the books, a new idea took her. She stole forward softly in her stout boots. The hilt of the dagger felt cold in the palm of her hand.
She crept forward until she was standing directly behind him. She put the dagger against his throat and bent forward until her lips brushed his ear. Apart from the first, sudden tensing she had sensed in him when he felt the blade touch his skin, he did not move.
‘A rifleman caught off his guard,’ she said in his ear. ‘That will never do, Lord Newlyn.’
Cory put his hand up to the dagger and ran his finger along the edge, moving it away from his throat.
‘You could kill someone with that,’ he said conversationally.
‘That,’ Rachel said, ‘was the idea.’
She reversed the dagger and stowed it away somewhere beneath the capacious black cloak. Cory’s breath came slightly more easily. He knew that she had been taught how to use it. He had done the teaching himself.
‘I knew it was you,’ he said.
‘I know you knew,’ Rachel replied, without rancour. ‘If you had not, you would have disarmed me.’
Cory laughed. She sounded as calm and collected as though they were in her parents’ drawing room. He did not intend to tell her that she had had him at a genuine disadvantage. He had not seen or heard her approach, but he had felt her presence. And when she had crept closer to him, he had inhaled the familiar scent of her skin and for a moment it had so paralysed his senses that she would have had plenty of time to despatch him to his maker and he would not have moved a muscle.
‘So you come armed with a dagger when you meet me now,’ he said.
‘It seemed a good idea,’ Rachel said.
‘Have you brought your pistol as well?’
‘No, of course not.’ Rachel looked askance. ‘That is for real emergencies.’ She looked at him critically. ‘What are you doing here, Cory?’
Cory stood up. He felt less vulnerable that way for even without the dagger, Rachel had a way of getting under his guard.
‘Well?’ she said, a little sharply. She pushed one of the books with her foot. ‘You have made a disgraceful mess.’
Cory smiled faintly. He might have known that that would be one of the aspects of the situation that occurred to her first.
‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘I will tidy it up.’
‘It appears,’ Rachel said, frowning slightly, ‘that either you have been suffering acute insomnia and were desperately seeking some reading matter, or that you were searching for something.’
Cory hesitated. Now that the moment had come, he found that he was utterly incapable of lying to Rachel. This was inconvenient, since he had a secret purpose, but he had not lied to her in seventeen years and he did not intend to start now. He looked at her and she looked back, her brows raised slightly as she awaited his explanation. Cory took a deep breath.
Then she forestalled him.
‘Oh! I know what you are doing!’
Cory’s heart jumped. ‘Do you?’ he said weakly.
‘Yes!’ A wrathful gleam had come into Rachel’s eyes. ‘You are trying to steal a march over me in finding the treasure. You remembered that I said I had found some of Mr Maskelyne’s old books and you thought that they might contain a clue. It is plain as plain!’
‘So it is,’ Cory said. He felt a mixture of relief and guilt that Rachel had saved him the necessity of explaining.
‘Well!’ Rachel said. She put her hands on her hips and glared up at him. ‘Of all the low tricks! To think that you crept out here in the middle of the night as well. That is taking our rivalry too far!’
‘I know,’ Cory said. ‘It is shameful.’ He picked up the lantern and took her arm, steering her out of the stall. ‘I swear that I shall come and tidy them up tomorrow.’
‘You had better do,’ Rachel said, only half-mollified. ‘I put them away in here to keep things neat.’
‘I do not suppose,’ Cory said, ‘that you saw anyone else creeping about in the stables tonight?’
‘No, only you,’ Rachel said crossly. ‘How many people were you expecting?’
‘None,’ Cory said truthfully. He wanted to ask her whether she had told anyone else about Jeffrey Maskelyne’s books, but he knew that it was dangerous to do so. Rachel was no fool and would soon put the evidence together- and come up with a conclusion different from the one that she had just reached. For the time being he did not want her making any deductions of her own.
‘I thought that no one had seen me coming in here,’ he said.
Rachel brushed some stray pieces of straw off her cloak. ‘I am sorry to disappoint you. You are not as surreptitious as you think.’
‘Evidently not,’ Cory said. He put the lantern down on the floor. ‘Nor are you very sensible, Rae. Did you not think to rouse your father before coming out on your own in the dark, in pursuit of a scoundrel?’
Rachel was dusting the hem of her cloak, but now her hand stilled. She flashed him an irritable look. ‘No, I did not. I had my dagger to protect me. Besides, you know how dangerous Papa can be with his blunderbuss. The last time that I called on him to secure a site, he almost shot a gamekeeper.’
Cory allowed his gaze to travel over her. The hem of her nightgown peeped from beneath her thick dark cloak. Beneath the white lace edging, the heavy boots looked more incongruous still. Cory found himself dwelling on what lay under the nightgown and quickly re-focussed on Rachel’s face. That did not help a great deal. Her hair was loose
