Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
The following day was the much-anticipated final day of the event.
Julia had gone to bed the previous night with images of the Duke and her father swimming around her head, making it impossible to relax.
She still couldn’t make up her mind about what to do, and she was aware that after today, she had nowhere to go.
Unless she and Poppy turned up at their father’s room at the Tavistock Inn with all their cases, they would be sleeping in a park.
The thought was daunting, and she knew that by the end of today, she would have to choose with whom her loyalty lay.
For now, though, there was something else to focus on.
The Duke had prepared another game for the final day, with a modest prize for the winner.
It took place in the hedge maze where she’d found Benjamin playing yesterday, which it turned out had been prepared with a treasure trail and a series of riddles that would make up today’s game.
This time, Poppy wanted to participate, and she had teamed up with Lord Blackwell now that Miss Burbank wasn’t there to terrorize either of them, so Julia was currently partnerless.
She knew she should probably team up with the Duke this time, but she wanted to wait and at least make him ask her.
As it turned out, he was taking no chances on her finding a different partner this time. He approached her before breakfast, already in a crisp waistcoat and jacket, as she sat with her sister and aunt.
“Miss Norish,” he said with a bow. “Will you do me the honor of partnering with me for the labyrinth puzzle today?”
“Why, of course, Your Grace,” she said. Lady Bendon beamed at the two of them, no doubt already planning the wedding in her head and thrilled to tell her husband he’d been wrong about Julia’s prospects all along.
Poppy sipped her tea quietly, keeping her eyes down.
She’d always been a terrible secret-keeper, so Julia didn’t blame her.
“Excellent. Then I shall see you out there.”
The game was divided into three sections, each of which would take place in a different part of the maze.
The first part, based on the outer edge, was a riddle that had to be solved to reach a checkpoint with the first clue.
After the checkpoint, they would advance further into the maze, repeating the process, and the third riddle would lead to a challenge at the center that had to be completed as a team, revealing the third clue.
All three clues put together would be the solution to winning the prize.
It called for intellect, coordination, instinct, and teamwork.
Honestly, as a lover of games and competition, Julia was really rather excited.
It seemed that most of the guests felt the same way, as the atmosphere was abuzz on the lawn outside the orangery.
Julia spotted Poppy and Lord Blackwell getting ready; the poor man’s hat was too large for him today, and it kept slipping over his eyes.
The Marquess of Thynne was also participating, accompanied by a woman Julia didn’t know, but who seemed to be far more interested in standing as close to him as she could physically get than in preparing for the game.
Finally, she found the Duke of Pridewell waiting for her at the far side of the crowd.
“Are you ready?” she asked. “I suppose you don’t know anything about what’s waiting for us in there?”
“Nothing at all,” he promised. “Anthony came up with the idea for the game and outsourced the creation of the puzzles to a company in Bath, which is apparently known for such things. The gardeners have even changed the maze’s layout, so I don’t even know the way.
Regrettably, we have no unfair advantages whatsoever. ”
She laughed. “You really spared no expense on this event.”
He shrugged. “I don’t throw parties often. It was actually all Anthony’s idea, if you’d believe it. I’m not fond of having this many people in my house, but he insisted on my having a party for my thirtieth birthday.”
Julia was shocked. “When was your birthday? I’m so sorry. I had no idea! Should we have brought you a gift?”
“It was last month,” he reassured her. “I didn’t make it known. I preferred not to center things on myself. But I did let Anthony have as much fun as he liked with the preparations, hence the extravagance and, well, this.” He gestured at the hedge maze.
“He’s a good friend,” Julia noted the reluctant smile on his face.
“The best.”
Just then, the game master stepped forward.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the game begins!"
Mr. Finch's voice cut across the lawn with the authority of a man who had spent years making himself heard above crowds. He was a compact figure in a bottle-green coat, and he held a brass horn aloft with the satisfaction of someone who had been waiting all morning to use it.
Six pairs. Three sections. Three riddles. One challenge at the center. The first team to solve all three and complete the final task would claim the prize.
Julia didn't need to hear the rules twice.
The crowd surged toward the maze entrance in a cheerful, jostling mass.
Lord Blackwell's hat immediately slid over his eyes, and Poppy caught his arm before he walked into a hedge.
The lady accompanying the Marquess of Thynne had gathered her skirts and was already pulling him toward the opening with a focused expression that suggested she played to win.
Somewhere behind Julia, two young lords from Northamptonshire were arguing about which of them would navigate, neither of them apparently willing to concede the point long enough to actually move.
She and the Duke entered at a steady pace.
The hedges closed around them immediately, tall and thick, swallowing the noise of the lawn in a matter of seconds.
The path curved left, then straightened into a cool green corridor where the light filtered down in long strips.
She could hear other teams nearby, footsteps and voices bouncing oddly off the walls, but she couldn't see anyone.
The first riddle was mounted on a small board at the initial fork.
I have cities but no houses. I have mountains but no trees. I have water but no fish. I have roads but no carriages. What am I?
She read it once. "A map."
The Duke glanced at the board, then at her.
"The indicator confirms it." He nodded at the small painted arrow beneath the answer. "Right path."
They moved.
"I had a great deal of practice finding my way through the hedges as a child," she said, as they turned and the corridor opened into a slightly wider stretch. "My mother's family had a maze at their estate in Shropshire. I spent every summer there."
"You appear to have used the time productively."
"I always intended to win at something." She kept her eyes on the path ahead, watching for the next fork. "Poppy was better at painting and music, and all the talents a young lady is meant to accomplish. I was rather more suited to competition."
"And did you win?"
"Consistently." A pause. "Though Poppy has always maintained that I cheated."
"Did you?"
She considered the question with appropriate gravity. "I memorized the layout the summer before I started winning. I would argue that it constitutes preparation rather than deception."
He said nothing for a moment. When she glanced at him, there was something quiet in his expression that might, on a less guarded man, have passed for amusement.
They rounded a corner and came upon the second riddle, posted at the entrance to a narrower passage where the hedges leaned inward overhead.
The more you take, the more you leave behind. What am I?
She read it. Stopped.
It was simpler than the first and should have come to her immediately. It did not. She stood with the words in front of her and felt something else press in alongside them, some thought that the riddle had snagged and wouldn't release.
The more you take. The more you leave behind.
She thought of her mother's house in Shropshire, which she hadn't thought of in months.
She thought of Poppy saying, “I just want this moment.
Just the two of us, like it always was. She thought of how much she had taken from the life she used to have, piece by careful piece, in order to keep both of them standing.
And she thought of everything she had left behind to do it.
"Footsteps."
She came back to herself. The Duke was looking at the board.
"Yes," she said. "Footsteps."
He glanced at her briefly. He did not ask what she had been thinking about that brought her to this conclusion. She was grateful for his silence.
The indicator pointed left. They followed it into the narrower passage, and here the space between the hedges forced them closer together. Their arms nearly touched. She did not move away. Neither did he.
From somewhere deeper in the maze came the frustrated sound of a pair encountering a dead end, a clipped male voice followed by silence. Ahead, the path forked again without warning.
The Duke stopped. So did she.
Three exits. No board yet. She looked at each in turn, trying to calculate the geometry, the way she'd done as a girl in Shropshire when she'd pretended it was a game and not a method of forcing herself to remember a layout she had spent two weeks memorizing in secret.
"The center will be north-east of where we stand," the Duke said. He was studying the paths with the same focused attention he brought to everything. "The right-hand path angles in that direction. The others do not."
"Agreed." She moved toward it. "Though I notice you've been keeping track of our turns."
"Force of habit."
"Indeed?"
He didn't answer immediately. They entered the narrower passage, and the hedges pressed in tighter on both sides; the light above them reduced to a long strip of sky.
"My father," he said finally. "He believed that a man who could not find his own way out of a situation had no business walking into one."
She absorbed that carefully. There was something underneath the words. "He sounds very exacting."
"He was." Another pause, shorter. "He was right, more often than I was willing to admit at the time."
The passage opened suddenly into a wider section, and there was the third board.
I can be broken without being touched. I can be kept without being held. What am I?
Julia read it.
Her breath came in evenly. The answer was immediate and obvious, and sat in her chest like a stone she had been carrying without knowing its name.
A promise.
She read the words again. She thought of her father's note, folded and re-folded in the inner pocket she had sewn into every traveling dress she owned, because some habits began young and never left.
She thought of the morning she had found it on the windowsill and stood there for a long time with it in her hands, weighing what it meant to tell the Duke and what it meant to keep this secret.
She thought of Poppy saying, “Follow your conscience, Julia. It's always led you right.”
She had not been certain her conscience had an opinion until now.
A promise.
She picked up the sealed envelope beneath the board and held it.
"The path ahead branches," the Duke said. He was looking at the two exits.
"I know." She did not move immediately. The sounds of the maze surrounded them, the distant bounce of other voices, a burst of laughter somewhere to the left, the steady, quiet of the hedges in the light wind. "Leander."
He turned.
She had thought about how to begin this conversation so many times that she had worn the words thin. Now that she was standing inside it, she found that none of her prepared openings would come. She set them aside.
"My father contacted me," she said. "Two nights ago. He left a note on my windowsill."
He went very still.
"I have been deliberating over what to do with the information ever since.
" She met his eyes and held them. "I am aware that the arrangement between us requires my honesty, and I will not pretend that I have not been slow in offering it.
But I wished to be certain of my own reasons before I spoke.
" She kept her hands steady at her sides.
"I am telling you now because I have chosen to trust you.
Not because I am compelled to, but because it is a choice I have made freely.
I should like you to know that distinction. "
The maze was noticeably quiet.
"He is staying at the Tavistock Inn." She said it plainly.
"He wishes to meet with me. I believe he intends to ask me to use whatever position this arrangement affords to help him travel north undetected.
" She paused. "I have not replied to him.
I have not gone to him. I have not told anyone, other than my sister, until this moment. "
The Duke looked at her for a long time. She could not read his face with any certainty, and she did not try. She had given him the information. What he did with it was no longer in her hands.
She had known, when she made the decision to speak, that she was handing him the one advantage she had kept for herself. She had known and done it anyway. There was a lightness that came with it, not relief, not exactly, but something cleaner than the weight she had been carrying.
"I am aware," she continued, "that you now hold every card there is to hold. I hold none. I expect nothing in return for telling you this information. I only wish to have done what is right." She looked at him steadily. "Whatever that costs me."
The Duke's jaw shifted, almost imperceptibly. Something moved through his eyes that was not anger or gratitude.
"He will be expecting money," he said.
"Yes. I rather think he assumed the engagement implied a more generous set of circumstances than currently exists."
"He'll contact you again when you don't respond."
"He will." She turned the sealed envelope in her hands before giving it to him. "I thought you ought to know before he does."
"I see."