Chapter Eleven #2
Damien’s somber gray eyes lit up with amusement. “It was rather delightful forcing the old witch to acknowledge me. I doubt anyone will dare to snub me openly now. Perhaps the gossip that surrounds my name will finally begin to fade.”
Isabella smiled with relief, infinitely pleased the outing had been so successful. She felt a sense of pure elation at the turn of events. And a closeness to the earl that went beyond simple friendship.
They rode for the next mile in silence. Searching her mind for a neutral topic of conversation, Isabella blurted out the first thought that popped into her head.
“Please, Damien, tell me the story of Lady Anne’s treasure. I’ve heard Maggie and Fran make passing remarks, and Jenkins mentioned it again briefly this morning, but he did not have time to relate the entire tale.”
“Lady Anne’s treasure?” Damien replied with a twisted grin. “To my knowledge it has been several years since the legend was openly discussed at The Grange. I suppose it is time to resurrect the tale.”
Isabella gave him an encouraging smile.
“Lady Anne is one of my more colorful female ancestors. She was the great-granddaughter of Henry VIII, descended through the illegitimate Seymour line, but inanely proud of her Tudor blood nonetheless. She came to The Grange as a young bride of fifteen, and it is said her husband was completely besotted with her.”
“A love match?”
“So the story goes.” Damien’s tone implied he did not agree. “Yet, for all her supposed love for her husband, Lady Anne was also greatly devoted to Prince Charles, possibly improperly.”
“With the prince’s reputation for womanizing, tis no wonder there was speculation.”
“Perhaps,” Damien grudgingly conceded. “There was no disputing Lady Anne’s loyalty to the Stuarts. She was a fierce defender of the crown, a stanch royalist to the end, and while her husband was off fighting with Lord Fairfax—”
“Pardon me,” Isabella interrupted. “Did you say the earl fought with Fairfax?”
Damien nodded.
“But Fairfax was Cromwell’s man. They fought against the king!”
“There were numerous aristocratic families that sided against the Stuarts, Isabella, though not many will boast of it today. Yes, the earl took up arms against the king, but his wife vehemently opposed his views. Lady Anne was a unique woman for her time, an independent thinker who was not ruled by her husband. She aided the royalist cause by collecting, hiding, and routing monies for the crown.”
“Was she a spy?” Isabella leaned forward eagerly.
“I don’t think so,” Damien replied thoughtfully. “But we really can’t be certain. Undoubtedly her actual involvement in the war has been greatly exaggerated over the years.”
“What about the treasure?”
Damien grinned broadly, amused by Isabella’s gathering excitement.
“The largest and supposedly most valuable collection of coin, jewels, and gold plate was hidden somewhere at Whatley Grange for safekeeping until the king’s man could collect it to pay for arms for the royalists.
Apparently the contact died before the treasure could be retrieved—murdered, the story contends—so Lady Anne was forced to bury the entire treasure somewhere on the estate. ”
“Then what happened?” Isabella prompted.
“Lady Anne fell ill and took to her bed. There was no one she trusted to divulge the location of the treasure, and she greatly feared her husband would use the funds against the crown. According to the legend, she died before the treasure was passed on, telling no living soul of its whereabouts.”
“Are you saying the treasure has never been found? After all these years?” Isabella squirmed with unconcealed excitement. “Did Lady Anne leave any clues as to where she buried the treasure?”
“She kept a journal. The final entry is reported to be a poem proclaiming the location of treasure. Solve the riddle of the poem, discover the hidden treasure.”
“Oh.” Isabella sank back in disappointment. “I imagine the journal has long since been lost.”
“Quite the contrary,” Damien replied in an offhand manner. “The last time I saw Lady Anne’s journal, it was in The Grange library.”
Isabella clasped her hands together in undisguised glee. “How wonderful! Can you just imagine how exciting it would be if we solved the riddle and discovered the treasure?” Suddenly she sobered, reality taking hold. “Of course, it must be a very long and complicated poem.”
Calmly, Damien recited, “Oh, Gloriana of titian hair, thy savior I shall be; for through the rose of the noonday sun, thy enemies shall flee.”
“You know it!”
“By heart.” Damien’s deep voice echoed with laughter. “I believe that at one time or another each child of every generation of our family attempts to make the monumental discovery of the treasure.”
“Well, I am not a child.” Isabella straightened up in her seat and eagerly repeated the verses. “Gloriana with titian hair—that must be a reference to Elizabeth the First. I suppose the rose might refer to the Tudor red rose.”
Isabella continued muttering to herself for several minutes and then shot up like a spark. “Good Lord, the treasure is buried in the rose garden on the north side of the castle.”
“Stop right there,” Damien insisted, smothering a laugh. He was impressed by her quick mind. It had taken him hours to reach the same conclusion. Of course he had been ten years old at the time, but Isabella’s rapid conclusions were still impressive.
“Rest assured, Isabella, during the past one hundred and fifty years this story has existed, each and every one of the rose bushes at Whatley Grange has been uprooted and the ground beneath thoroughly searched. I can say, with a fair amount of certainty, there is nothing beneath any of the roses on my estate other than dirt.”
“Every bush?” Isabella’s voice held a trace of skepticism.
“Every one,” Damien insisted emphatically. She wilted visibly at his words, and Damien felt strangely bereaved as he watched the glow disappear from her sparkling violet eyes. “I am sorry,” he finally whispered in a soft voice.
“Pray, forgive my foolishness,” Isabella replied with a nervous laugh. “I’m afraid I tend to get a bit carried away at times.”
“I rather liked your enthusiasm, Isabella,” Damien confessed quietly. He glanced down at her tightly clutched fingers. “Please, feel free to avail yourself of Lady Anne’s diary. Perhaps you will discover a clue that has eluded us all these years.”
Isabella studied his handsome face for a few moments, testing his sincerity. Convinced he was being honest, she favored him with a dazzling smile. “Thank you, Damien. I do believe I shall take you up on your kind offer.”
“Come along children,” Isabella prompted. “Your father is expected for tea and we all must get cleaned up before we join him.”
Isabella looked with undisguised dismay at her two dirty charges. She imagined she looked just as unkempt. They had spent the better part of the morning and early afternoon out of doors collecting various flowers and fauna to identify and study in the schoolroom.
Ian, in his exuberance over discovering a water lily, had nearly toppled into the lake.
Isabella managed to save him from falling, but his walking shoes, socks, and short pants were covered in mud.
Catherine fared no better, tripping over an exposed tree root and ripping out a substantial length of the hem of her light blue gown.
Her previously neatly braided blond hair was loose and straggly, and a drying streak of brown mud crossed her forehead.
Isabella shuddered to think what horrors would be revealed about her own appearance when she viewed herself in the mirror.
“Let’s cut through the garden, Miss Browning,” Catherine suggested. “It will be faster.”
At Isabella’s affirmative nod, Catherine grabbed tight hold of her brother’s hand and the two raced ahead.
Isabella’s heart lurched at their obvious excitement over the impending visit with their father.
Despite the earl’s promise, he had not been spending very much time with his children.
To Isabella’s knowledge, the children had spoken with their father only at bedtime in the past five days.
At least Catherine and Ian have each other, Isabella mused, watching Catherine deliberately slow her pace to match her younger brother’s.
It never ceased to amaze Isabella how devoted these siblings were.
They fought often and occasionally violently, especially in the presence of their father, but Isabella knew how much they meant to each other.
No one would ever be able to sever the special bond that existed between Catherine and Ian.
Isabella reached the outer edges of the rose garden just as Catherine swung open the heavy French doors on the upper terrace.
“I shall be in your room in five minutes to help you change,” Isabella called out loudly. Catherine paused a moment, waving her free hand in understanding before she and Ian entered the house.
Isabella slowed her pace once the children disappeared. She wandered along the narrow gravel path through the rows of roses, her eyes alight with speculation as they darted from bush to bush.
“I will never to able to walk among these lovely blossoms without thinking of Lady Anne and her blasted treasure,” Isabella muttered to herself.
Her enthusiastic start to discovering the treasure had met with very little success.
Curiously, the diary the earl had spoken of was not where he remembered it to be in library and thus far, Isabella had not had the time to search among the thousands leather-bound volumes for it.