“And?” Jack demanded.
“The old man who owned this house mocked the unfortunate grandchildren with it. He was a right bastard. The worst sort of mean. For them, it’s not about the money or the gold, it’s about winning against a man who tormented them the whole of their lives.”
“Who are we dealing with?” Jack asked.
“The three grandchildren were Harriet, Oscar, and John Prescott. John is dead, but—”
“John had two sons?” Vi guessed, thinking of the second and third voices. The one who had searched the auto and the one who had been worried that others would come. To her surprise, she felt sorry for all of them.
Chapter 15
“It’s moments like these,” Victor said, “where I find myself grateful for Father just being entirely absent. Poor chaps. Must’ve been hard.”
“My father would have made the old man with his cruel treasure hunt seem like the fairy godmother,” Smith told Victor, shaking his head. “There’s no excuse for breaking into a man’s home.”
Vi bit her bottom lip, but she couldn’t stop the laughter from escaping. Everyone turned to her and then glanced at Smith who, to her shock, winked.
“Ironic?” he demanded.
“Possibly,” Vi agreed and then took in the gathered force. “I shall endlessly be grateful that you all are my family. And speaking of family and the strength we give each other, where’s the goblet?”
Rita crossed to the grandfather clock by the door and opened its cabinet, pulling out the cup. She tossed it casually to Vi and Vi looked at Jack. “I have an idea.”
To be honest with herself, she expected him to put her in the nursery with the babies. The worry and love in his gaze was pained when he nodded and she grinned at him.
“To the roof.”
“With a rope,” Victor called as Vi and Jack started up the stairs.
When they reached the attic, Vi showed Jack the window, and he shook his head. “It’s too narrow for me, Vi.”
“We need to go higher,” Vi pointed to the roof. “This goblet is a few generations old, right?”
Jack nodded. “Ham and I verified that. There are credible stories from around the village. People who saw it as children or heard of it. The vicar laughed far too long about the name, but he agreed that it had been around for a while.”
“So, the map, if it is a map, must be of something that would last,” Vi told him. She handed Jack the goblet and then leaned out. He, like Victor, grabbed the back of her dress. “Look, Jack, do you see it?”
He wasn’t looking at where she was pointing, he was looking at her face. “You seem better.”
“I’m fine,” she told him and this time it wasn’t a lie.
She turned in his hands and faced him instead of the land below. She took his face between her hands as he had done so many times, rose up on her toes, and she placed a kiss on each eyebrow, then each eyelid. When she went for the tip of his nose, he laughed, and she was beguiled by the edge of his mouth where all his humor lived.
“Jack—” There was longing in her voice, and his fingers dug deeply into her spine.
“Vi,” he countered, and she got the kiss on the tip of her nose instead. “We’re going to the Amalfi Coast after this. Just the two of us.”
Vi shook her head and confessed, “I told Gerald—”
“Then we’ll go back to one of those Spanish islands or to Cyprus or to a Hawaiian Island, and we’ll linger in the sun and avoid killers and people who would dare—” He took her face between his hands as well, and they were tangled together when Ham entered the attic.
He took in the sight of their tangled forms and said mildly, “There are bigger windows on that side of the house.”
Vi let go of Jack’s face, but he leaned in and placed another kiss on her forehead before they followed Ham to a larger window, which opened as though it had been recently oiled. So, Victor had confessed to Ham what they had done. Vi didn’t know how to feel about that, though she was grateful that Ham was prepared.
Ham held a rope in his hands and Jack took it, tying it around Vi’s waist, and then watched as she kicked off her shoes and peeled her stockings away. A second rope was placed around Jack’s waist and Ham anchored them to a support post in the attic. Vi loved them both in that moment. She knew neither wanted her to go out that window, but instead of arguing, they silently helped.
Before Vi was able to climb through, the others joined, except the nannies and the babies, and Victor shook his head at Vi’s mischievous grin.
Vi went first, since she was smaller and could test the strength of the roof. Jack followed after and she crawled towards the peak of the house with the goblet secured inside of her dress, sure of his strength to keep her from falling. She moved up the roof easily and then took a seat by the top part of the house. They could see for miles and miles and much of the land was covered in trees that had stood for as long as the house.
“How lovely,” Vi said, looking at their house in the distance. It hadn’t been there as long as Ham and Rita’s home, but it was a noble old thing all the same and all the more beautiful for being the place where Jack had been raised and where they would someday raise their own children.
Vi fished the goblet out of her dress and then realized that Jack had stiffened next to her.
“Smith! Ham!”
“Jack?” Smith answered with casual ease, poking his head out from the window.
“In the trees at three o’clock. Can you see them?”
“There’s an auto there,” Vi
