Chapter 17
Emmeline was pacing back and forth in her father’s library when Mr. Hardy announced the arrival of Lady Louisa. “Show her in here, Mr. Hardy.”
The butler bowed, then disappeared from view to return within moments with Louisa in tow.
“I will bring tea, my lady,” he promised, as he disappeared once more.
“Emmeline,” Louisa moved across the room, taking Emmeline’s hands into hers. “How are you? You look as if you have not slept a wink since the night of the ball.”
“That is because I have not,” Emmeline admitted.
Louisa’s eyes held compassion as she pulled Emmeline over to the settee flanking the fireplace. “Is it the worry for Rebecca that is robbing you of sleep, or has something else happened?”
Emmeline spent the next several minutes informing Louisa of everything that had transpired since the ball where they had met the coachman.
“Now, at this moment, Michael and Colin are out inspecting each of the locations on the coachman’s list.”
Louisa nodded slowly, her eyes studying Emmelin’s face questioningly. “How has it been spending so much time with Michael after all of these years?”
Emmeline sighed, leaning back in her seat. “It has been…” She shook her head, unable to find a word that fit her feelings. “I gave him my father’s compass.” The gesture was the only way she knew how to describe what was happening between them.
Louisa’s eyes widened in surprise. “Emmeline,” she breathed in awe of the sacrifice.
Emmeline nodded. “I know.”
“Does he know?” Louisa asked, reaching out and taking her friend’s hand in support. “Does he understand what such a gift means?”
“I do not know what he is thinking. He does not share his thoughts with me. His eyes tell me that he is still hurt and angry, that he still blames me for marrying the marquess.”
“If he were to forgive you, would you be willing to begin again?”
Emmeline closed her eyes, leaning her head against the top of the settee in a most unladylike fashion.
It was a true expression of her emotional exhaustion.
“My marriage to Norman was so very cold and distant. Once he died, I discovered that he had been lying to me and my family since before our marriage. Honestly, I am not fond of marriage and do not wish to surrender myself to another man who might make me feel as he did.”
“Do you believe that Michael would?”
Emmeline shook her head. “The Michael that I knew before, when we were younger, I would trust with every aspect of myself. The Michael that looks at me with hurt and anger in his eyes, at times with cold indifference, that Michael, I do not believe that I could. I am not saying that I do not deserve his anger, but I could not trust my heart to someone who is capable of misjudging me and my intentions so harshly.”
Louisa nodded in understanding. “I wish that you had been able to experience marriage as the beautiful experience that it can be with the right man.”
Emmeline turned a sad, wistful smile toward her friend. “I am so very happy that you had a wonderful marriage, but most women do not have the luxury of marrying for love. Most marriages are business arrangements or familial alliances for the sake of an heir, nothing more.”
“I am aware of societal norms,” Louisa admitted, “but as your friend, I wish more for you than that.”
“I would be lying if I said that I did not have feelings for Michael, but those feelings put my heart at great risk of being shattered beyond repair. I can bear a cold marriage with a stranger that I do not love. I could never bear a cold marriage with the man that I do love.”
Louisa nodded in sympathy. “I can understand that. Had the same been true for myself and my beloved husband, it would have broken my spirit.”
Emmeline smiled lovingly at her friend. “I cannot imagine that there would be anything in this life that might break your spirit. You are the most indomitable woman that I have ever met.”
Louisa shook her head. “I am not. Of the two of us, it is you who holds that title of distinction.”
“I am not indomitable,” Emmeline shook her head in argument.
“You survived the loss of the man you loved, a marriage that you did not want, a husband who neglected you, who left you with nothing but a title to your name, lost your father, your sister is missing …” Louisa spread her hands out in supplication.
“How much more must you endure and survive to see yourself as the brave, beautiful, worthy woman that you are?”
Emmeline did not have an answer. She sat in silence, just staring at her hands. She did not know what to say or think. “I do not deserve him,” she finally breathed, her voice cracking. “I submitted myself to family pressure rather than to have the courage to follow after love.”
“What you did took great courage. I would not have had the courage and strength to do what you did and turn my back on love to honor my familial duty,” Louisa admitted.
“It is clear to me, my darling, that you do not have a true understanding of yourself. I wish that you could see yourself as I see you.”
“Regret does nothing to serve our present situation. How I feel is not the priority. Finding Rebecca is the only thing that matters. Once that is done and she is home safely, then and only then, will Michael and I decide what we are to one another if anything at all.”
Unable to bear the sympathy in Louisa’s eyes, Emmeline attempted to change the subject.
Standing, she crossed the library and lifted the coded messages from her father.
Coming to sit beside Louisa once more, she handed her the letters.
“This is the one that I found behind the painting,” she pointed to the second message.
“It appears to be a map key of sorts if I am understanding its symbols correctly, but a map to where I do not know.”
Louisa took the paper from her hand and examined it closely.
She shook her head in confusion. “I do not see what you are seeing. I cannot read any of it.” She frowned at the indecipherable symbols.
Rising, she walked over to the painting where Emmeline had found it. “This one?” she asked in confirmation.
Emmeline nodded. “It was attached to the back of the frame and covered over.”
Louisa ran her fingers over the frame eyeing each inch carefully. “May I?” she asked, grasping the frame with both hands to remove it from the wall.
Emmeline nodded her head in permission. “Of course.”
Louisa lifted the frame from the wall, but frowned when it caught on the nail that was holding it up.
Wiggling the frame in an attempt to free it, she jerked with a little too much force, and a section of the corner seam came away from the painting.
“Oh!” she cried out in dismay. “I am so very sorry!” Horror at having damaged something so precious to Emmeline filled her eyes. “I am so very sorry!”
Emmeline rose from her place on the settee and came over to help her. “A frame can be mended. Do not worry yourself over it.”
She took the broken side of the frame, and they lifted the painting from the wall together. Emmeline motioned with her head toward the desk, and they laid it down to inspect the damage.
“Hmm,” Emmeline mused as she bent over the dislodged corner piece. “There seem to be two canvases,” she noted, pulling the frame away from the corner so that Louisa could see it.
“Another painting beneath?” Louisa asked, her brows rising with the mystery of it.
Emmeline’s heart began to race as she carefully removed the frame from the painting. Peeling the corner of the top canvas back, she saw the edge of another work beneath. “There is something underneath!”
The women exchanged an excited look. Louisa bent over the painting in anticipation as Emmeline peeled back the rest of the top canvas.
“It is a map!” She stared at Emmeline in wonder. “You were right.”
There before them was a detailed map with notations made from the same mysterious code as the letters, all in her father’s hand. Both women smiled in delight as they embraced in celebration.
Emmeline laughed for the first time in days as she pulled back to stare at the newly revealed canvas. “He left me a map.”
“What is it a map of?” Louisa asked, cocking her head to the side to gain a different perspective. “I hope that it is not going to take us abroad, given the current situation with Rebecca.”
Emmeline shook her head. “I do not think that he would do that unless there was a very good reason.” She studied the map from all angles. “I had hoped that Father’s riddle would lead us to something that might aid us in finding her, but the more I find, the less I think so.”
Louisa looked at her, puzzled. “Your father would have had no way of knowing that Rebecca would be taken. He died far too long ago for him to have known of such an event.”
“I know. I was desperate for answers when I found the first letter, and all that I could think about was finding Rebecca. I thought that maybe one of Father’s associates might have something to do with it, but the more I think about it, the less I am able to see it,” Emmeline admitted.
“Perhaps it has something to do with more inheritance,” Louisa offered. “Perhaps he buried treasure somewhere, and he thought it would be a fun way for you to discover what he left you.”
“Perhaps,” Emmeline mused as she followed the lines with her fingertips.
She held up the letters, examining them next to the map.
She had been fairly certain that the second letter was a map key, as it had been laid out like one.
Now with a map right in front of her, she knew that she had been on the right path.
Using her earlier thought that the four sigils behind the canvas had been something like the word open, she used the map key and began to decode those specific markings.
After that, it was just as much guesswork as it was anything else, but then the lines on the map began to make sense.
She knew those lines almost as well as she knew herself.
Standing upright with such sudden force that she startled Louisa, Emmeline grasped her friend by the arm. “You were right, Louisa!”
“I was?” Louisa asked, her brow furrowed in confusion. “About what?”
“It is a buried treasure!” Emmeline took Louisa’s hands and danced around in a circle with glee. “Father buried something on the old family estate!”
“Where?” Louisa asked, stopping their spinning to stare at the seemingly meaningless lines of the map.
“Here.” Emmeline pointed with her finger to one of the sigils. “He buried it just on the line between the Frampton family country estate and the Earldom of Ravenshollow. It is the exact spot where Michael and I used to meet in secret so that we could be alone together.”
Louisa’s eyes widened. “Is it a coincidence? Or did he know about you and Michael?”
Emmeline shook her head. “I do not know how much he was aware of between Michael and I, but a person would have needed to be blind to not know that there was love.”
“What are you going to do?”
Emmeline sighed, chewing on her lip worriedly. “I will need to speak with Michael and Colin about what they found in their search of the locations where Rebecca and Martha would meet one another. After that, we will take action upon whatever they have discovered.”
“And if they have found nothing?”
Emmeline shook her head. “I do not feel comfortable leaving London without having found Rebecca.”
“There is nothing that you can do for her that the Bow Street Runners are not already doing. Today is the first time that I have truly seen you smile in days. It might do you good to get away from the city and connect with this last gift from your father. When Rebecca is found, she will have something pleasant to come home to,” Louisa suggested.
“I do not know.” Emmeline’s heart felt torn. “At the very least, we will need Michael’s permission to dig as part of the spot marked on the map is on his property.”
“Do you believe that he would refuse you?”
Emmeline shook her head. “I do not believe that he would, knowing what my father meant to me, but it is a place that will remind him of my betrayal. It is the place where we planned our future together, and it is the last place that I saw him before my family left for Scotland, and I was married off to another man.”
Louisa nodded in understanding. “Michael is a good man. He will not deny you.”
“We shall see.”