Jordan sighed. “Just finish the garden, Bartie. I want to see roses in there before the end of the week. Stop digging holes, stop sneaking into the house. If there was hidden treasure here, you would have found it already.” She looked over at Danny. “I’m going to bed. Are you coming?”
“You don’t want to see where this passageway goes?” he asked, surprised.
“No! It’s the middle of the night. We’ll look at it tomorrow.” She stumbled out of the room, grumbling, “I can’t believe Bartie was the brownie. All of that worry for nothing.”
THE NEXT FEW DAYS at Castle Cnoc were a flurry of activity. The moment Jordan got a look at the smuggler’s tunnel, she insisted that it had to be renovated before the owner arrived: electric lighting installed, the walls freshly painted and the tile floor restored. She would even have the blueprints for the house redrawn to show the new discovery.
Danny had been left to find work for himself, staying out from underfoot as much as he could. The furniture was being delivered that morning and though he’d offered to help, Jordan had suggested that he help Bartie finish up the plantings in the garden.
In truth, Danny was glad to be banished from the house. Since the movers had arrived at eight that morning, Jordan had been edgy and curt, overwhelmed with the details of examining each piece before it was placed in the proper room. Jordan had also hired five women from the village to give the manor house a final polish. They were to wash the new linens, make the beds, unpack china and silver in the butler’s pantry and carefully arrange all the bits and pieces of decor that she had chosen over the past seventeen months. When she wasn’t dragging furniture from one spot to the other, Jordan was directing traffic and barking out orders.
Danny wandered back outside and headed to the walled garden. After the confrontation with Bartie two nights before, the old man had focused all his energy on finishing the planting. Danny felt a bit sorry for him. After years of searching for his treasure, he’d finally decided to give up looking.
Bartie had brought a crew from the village to help yesterday and they’d worked all day to get nearly a hundred rose bushes planted. Now he was spreading mulch between the plants and the crushed-stone paths.
Danny grabbed a shovel that was leaning against the wall and stepped inside the garden, ready to give the old man a hand. But as he shoved the spade into the mulch, an image flashed in his mind. There was one place that Bartie might not have searched.
“Bartie,” he called, motioning the man over. “Grab your shovel and come with me.”
“I have to finish. Miss Jordan wants this done by the end of the day.”
“We can take a break. I’ll cover for you with Jordan.”
Bartie joined him and Danny headed toward the cliff. “Have you ever been down to the cove?”
“When I was a kid. Gettin’ down the cliff is tricky at my age.”
“And you know about the cave?” Danny asked.
Bartie shook his head. “I don’t know of any cave.”
“Well, I’m sure your great-grandfather knew about it. I suspect they used it to store smuggled goods until they could move them through the tunnel. I’m thinking that maybe your great-grandfather buried his treasure in that cave.”
“It makes sense,” Bartie said. “What if we find it?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Danny said.
He helped Bartie navigate the narrow path down the cliffs, then showed him how to get inside the cave. The flashlight he’d used for the last trip to the cave was still in his pocket and he turned it on. “He’d have to bury anything past the reach of the water,” Danny said. “You can see on the wall how far up it comes.”
They started at the back wall of the cave, working in the wavering light. Almost immediately, they struck something metallic buried in the sand. Bartie looked up at him, wide-eyed, then bent down and began to brush the sand away with his hands.
Slowly, he uncovered a small metal box, the kind that usually held ammunition. Danny held his breath, hoping that Bartie wasn’t about to be disappointed. “Can you get it open?” he asked.
“You do it,” Bartie said. “I’m not sure I care to look.”
“Let’s get it into the light,” Danny said.
They hurried back to the cave entrance and set the box down on the ground. It was barely rusted, the dark- green paint still visible. The box wasn’t locked. Danny grabbed the top and pulled it back.
“Jaysus, Mary and Joseph,” Bartie whispered. “It’s the treasure. It’s gold.”
The old man was right. The box was filled with gold coins, hundreds of them. Danny picked one up and examined it. “It’s a British sovereign,” he said. “Looks like a coin from the Victorian age.”
“But my great-grandfather buried the treasure in the 1920s,” Bartie said.
“This might not be his treasure. This might be gold from the smugglers.”
“How much do you reckon it’s worth?” Bartie asked.
“I don’t know,” Danny said. “A lot. It’s gold.” He took a deep breath. “We’re going to have to show this to Jordan. It was found on private property. I don’t know what the law says.”
They made their way back up the cliff and Danny ordered Bartie to take the box of gold to the garden and wait there. With every step he took toward the house, he thought about keeping the gold a secret from Jordan, of letting Bartie walk away with his treasure-even though it wasn’t the treasure he was looking for.
Though he knew Jordan well, Danny had no idea how she’d react to this interesting development. Would she insist that her clients get the gold? Or would she find a way to compromise? The new owner was certainly rich enough. A movie star like Maggie Whitney made millions for each picture.
He found Jordan standing in the foyer, a clipboard clutched in her arms. He strode up to her and gently grabbed her elbow. “Jordan,” he murmured. “I need to see you out in the garden.”
“Not now,” she said. “They’re just bringing in the dining room table and I need to make sure they put it together properly.”
“This is an emergency,” Danny said.
She looked up from her clipboard. “Can’t it wait?”
“No, it can’t.” He took her hand and pulled her out the terrace door and down the path to the walled garden.
“What is it? Is Bartie all right?”
“Bartie is fine,” Danny said. “We found the treasure.”
Jordan stopped short. “
“In the cave,” he said. “A big box of gold coins.” He squeezed her hand. “What are you going to do?”
She drew a deep breath. “What do you think I should do?”
“I think you should let Bartie keep his treasure,” Danny replied. “But I’m not the boss, you are.”
He watched as she thought through her options. Then she glanced up at him. “Why am I out here? There can’t be anything more important than moving the furniture into the house. You and Bartie get back to work on the rose garden.”
With that, Jordan turned on her heel and strode back inside, leaving Danny to wonder at what had just happened. She’d completely ignored everything he’d just told her-
He grinned, then walked back to the garden. There was a reason he loved Jordan and he had no doubt that his feelings weren’t going to change.
Odd how the prospect of falling in love had once scared the hell out of him. Now, it made him feel as though he was sitting on top of the world. Danny didn’t care that it had happened so fast, or that they hadn’t completely decided on a future together. Jordan wasn’t going home tomorrow, she was coming to live with him. Tomorrow, they’d start their life together.
Bartie was waiting for him, the box at his feet. “I guess you can just take that old metal box and everything inside it home, Bartie, and I’ll finish up in the garden. Jordan isn’t interested in anything you’ve found.” Danny pressed his finger to his lips. “But I wouldn’t go passing this story around the village or she might change her mind. Keep your good fortune to yourself.”
“I’ll do that,” Bartie said, reaching down and picking up the box. “Yes, I will. I’ll do that.” He pulled a coin out of the box and handed it to Danny. “Here. It will bring you luck.”
Danny watched as Bartie hurried off, the box tucked under his arm. He chuckled softly. Things had a way of working out just grand.
