Chapter Six
W hether it was the curse or simply astoundingly bad luck, Carys was not enjoying her day. As Minnie and Lord Lawrence distracted the family with their discovery in the desk, Carys lowered her head and frowned. She was absolutely certain that she had sent Godwin Castle’s tax payment to King Swithin’s Exchequer in Winchester. She was equally certain that she’d been sent notification that the payments had been received as well. Why there was any sort of question now was baffling.
She glanced up at Dunstan as Minnie and Lord Lawrence bantered over the contents of the parchment. More than anything, it pained her to think that Dunstan might be convinced she had failed, and that he would think less of her because of it. She simply could not fathom what was happening.
She could not fathom what was wrong with her heart either. Dunstan was her friend. To consider otherwise would be silly. It would also be a risk she was not willing to take with the connection she found most important in her life.
And then Minnie said, “According to this, Morgana’s half of the amulet that Aethelbore gifted her is not, in fact, lost to time.”
Carys was startled enough by that statement to push all of her other worries from her mind. “It’s not?” she asked crossing to Minnie and Lord Lawrence, Dunstan following after her.
“No,” Minnie said. “According to this, Morgana’s half of the amulet was buried with her.”
Carys’s brow went up, and when she reached Minnie’s side, she turned to glance over her friend’s shoulder to peruse the parchment.
There was no telling how the parchment, which seemed to be a single page of some much larger document, possibly an accounting of lost family belongings recorded hundreds of years before, had made it into Lord Gerald’s desk. There was no mistaking the simple lines that recorded Morgana’s half of the amulet as buried with her.
“I suppose that makes sense,” Carys said, touching a hand to her heart. Or rather, to the brooch she’d inherited.
She scanned the rest of the page to see if there was any mention of her family’s heirloom. Then again, why would there be, since her brooch was a Weatherby item, not a Godwin one?
However, that supposition seemed disproven when farther down the page, she noted mention of a silver brooch in the shape of a knot with several stones inset. That was a bit of a surprise. Perhaps the original Weatherby owner of the brooch had been gifted the item from a past Godwin employer.
“That is the answer, then,” Lord Arnold said, joining their group by the desk, his smile wide.
“What answer would that be?” Lord Lawrence asked.
Lord Arnold shrugged. “Why, the answer to where the other half of this famous amulet is. You said yesterday that Aethelbore’s half is in the family vault,” he said to Carys, then gestured to the paper. “The other half is with Morgana. All that is needed is to locate Morgana’s grave and exhume the poor woman, then the halves of the amulet can be reunited.”
“It seems awful to dig up a woman who has been at rest for nearly a thousand years just for the sake of some jewelry,” Lord Lawrence said, his face pinched.
“No,” Minnie said in a voice of wonder, her eyes shining with excitement. “It sounds deliciously macabre. I bet Morgana would love to be exhumed.”
“Would she?” Lord Lawrence asked with a frown.
“Darling, the woman put a curse on the family that has lasted more than nine hundred years,” Minnie said. “That is the sort of person who would relish the idea of having her bones dug up for the sake of love.”
“If you insist,” Lord Lawrence said, one eyebrow raised.
“Where is Morgana’s final resting place?” Lady Muriel said as she pushed herself to stand from the sofa. Lord Cedric rushed to help her.
“I’m not sure if it’s known,” Carys answered. “Though there is a family cemetery close by where generations of Godwins, and Weatherbys, have been buried.”
“Would Morgana have been laid to rest in a cemetery?” Lord Arnold asked as the family began to gather in the center of the great hall, their eyes alight with renewed enthusiasm for their own lore. “Or would she have been entombed in a crypt in some long-crumbled church? How were things done in the nine hundreds?”
“She was not nobility,” Lord Waldorf reasoned, rubbing his chin. “She very well could have been buried in a barrow somewhere.”
“Surely, if she was that important to family history, she must have been buried with pomp and circumstance,” Lord Lawrence argued.
“The only way to discover the truth is to visit the family cemetery and find out,” Minnie said. She handed the parchment over to Carys, then made straight for the door to the great hall.
“Or perhaps we should search the castle itself to find the location of this mythical vault where Aethelbore’s half of the amulet is kept?” Lady Muriel suggested.
She was ignored. The speed with which the rest of the Godwin family charged for the hallway had Carys’s head spinning. Even Lady Kat, who still held a subdued but alive Napoleon in her arms, and Lady Muriel, who needed her husband’s help to waddle toward the door, were eager to join them.
Carys hesitated by the desk, glancing first at the parchment she now held, then at Lord Gerald, who seemed both delighted at his family’s enthusiasm and disappointed that he could not go with them to search, at Dunstan.
As soon as their gazes met, Carys felt the camaraderie between them again. Without an audience scrutinizing their every move in regards to each other, the pressure to be something more than they were was gone.
“I should assist Uncle Gerald in rising so that he can join in the fun,” Dunstan said, turning away from the desk and glancing to Lord Gerald.
“No, no!” Lord Gerald called out, evidently hearing him. “You have other tasks to complete.”
Dunstan’s brow furrowed in confusion for a moment. “I do not mind abandoning the ball decorations for an hour or two if you wish to go outside with the others,” he said.
“That is not what I mean,” Lord Gerald replied. He gestured to Carys, then said, “You need to assist Mrs. Weatherby in locating the records of her payment of our taxes.”
Carys sucked in a small breath, deeply suspicious about Lord Gerald’s motivations for setting Dunstan that task.
Then again, it could very easily be argued that locating the tax records was more important than searching for an ancient grave outside somewhere, and that since Dunstan would be the one to inherit the castle one day, he should know where things such as tax records were kept.
“It should only take half an hour at most,” Carys said apologetically. “I can assure you that I am thorough in both my accounting and my organization.”
“I do not doubt it for an instant,” Dunstan said, smiling.
His smile was like birdsong after too long indoors. Carys smiled in return, feeling as though the misery of her day might blow away like clouds after a rainstorm.
All the same, she glanced past Dunstan and asked Lord Gerald, “Would you like me to call Ruby or one of the footmen to assist you outside?”
“No. Bother that,” Lord Gerald said, sinking back into his chair. “I intend to enjoy this rare moment of silence. The herd will return to the paddock as soon as they discover rooting through graveyards on a gloomy December day is not the lark they imagine it to be.”
Carys grinned, certain Lord Gerald was right in that regard.
“Come along, then,” she charged Dunstan, starting for the door. “We’ll leave them to their search as we engage in our own.”
Dunstan followed her, his steps lively and his mien cheerful once more.
“Do you know,” he said as they walked the short way down the hall to the study, “I do not think I have truly breathed easily since the bulk of my family arrived at the castle.”
Carys laughed. “They have been quite a diversion,” she said as they turned the corner and stepped into the study.
Carys walked ahead to the shelf behind the study’s desk that contained ledgers and boxes of loose papers, and Dunstan slowed his steps as he followed her.
“To be honest,” he said, taking a seat on the corner of the desk and watching her as she brought down the box that contained more recent notes and receipts, “as much as I enjoy the closeness and affection of my family, I’m finding their presence to be more of an intrusion than I expected.”
“Oh?” Carys asked distractedly, turning to set the box on the desk. She then helped herself to a seat in the desk’s large chair and removed the top from the box.
“Yes,” Dunstan said, pivoting to face her while retaining his seat on the desk’s corner. “This autumn was such a delight, when it was just the three of us here, with only occasional visits by the rest of the family.”
Carys hummed and smiled up at him as she began to remove papers from the box. “It was certainly quieter,” she said.
“And without anyone tossing subtle insinuations our way.”
Carys’s hands froze as she removed an invoice for meat and vegetables and other stock for the pantry. She raised her gaze slowly to meet Dunstan’s.
The way he smiled at her, with so much fondness, but with a touch of wistfulness as well, had Carys’s heart beating faster.
“Those insinuations have not been lost on me,” she said setting the invoice aside and folding her hands on the desk instead of continuing to sort through the papers. “Your family, and, it would seem, Lord Gerald in particular, seem to have had a certain notion about the two of us lodge in their imaginations.”
“Yes, I believe they have,” Dunstan said, his voice soft and rich.
They stared at each other for far too long, as if each were waiting for the other to say what they both knew needed to be said.
Carys summoned her courage to be the one to say it. “The notion is preposterous, of course. We could not possibly make any sort of match.”
“No, of course not,” Dunstan said, his gaze dropping from her eyes to the box of papers and a pink splash filling his cheeks. “We are far too good of friends for anything like the sort of mischief my family thinks we should be up to,” he went on, taking the next paper from the stack inside the box.
“Absolutely,” Carys said, breathing out and telling herself she was glad Dunstan felt the same as her.
Even if she was not entirely certain she was glad of it.
“I know too well the horrors that marriage can bring,” he went on, taking more papers from the box, studying them, then setting them aside. “What begins as infatuation ends as resentment. I have seen it in more than just my own, short, ill-fated marriage.”
“I have witnessed it as well,” Carys said, following Dunstan’s lead and turning her attention to the work in front of her. Even though she could not concentrate on the household papers to save her life. “This is one of many reasons why I absolutely will not ever accept Cousin Edgar’s implied offer for my hand.”
“Does he really want to marry you?” Dunstan asked, glancing back to her, a sour look making the lines of his handsome face stand out more.
“He does,” Carys said in tones of gloom.
She looked up at him, and for a moment, her heart seemed to stop entirely as their eyes met. For a man swiftly approaching fifty, Dunstan wore his emotions on his sleeves and in his eyes. It was as easy as reading a recipe to read the pain he carried in his heart.
“I have rejected all of his advances in no uncertain terms,” she said quickly, as if he needed to hear that she would not forsake him.
Or rather, that she had no interest in marrying Edgar.
Carys had no idea why the first thought that had come to her mind was that she would not forsake him.
Well, she did know, but she did not want to know.
She cleared her throat and shifted a few more papers. The tax records should have been right there, but for whatever reason, they were not.
“That is odd,” she said, the wild swing of her emotions taking her back to more practical confusion.
“What is odd?” Dunstan asked, standing from the desk.
His movement made Carys realize how close to each other they had been. She could have reached out and brushed his thigh without having to stretch her arm.
That thought unsettled her, so she stood. That, however, only brought her so close to Dunstan that he could have slipped an arm around her and drawn her into an embrace.
She turned quickly away from him, stepping back to the shelf that contained the household records.
“I am certain the receipt for our payment of this year’s taxes was consigned to that box, but the papers are missing,” she said, careful not to look behind her at Dunstan.
“Where else could they be?” Dunstan asked, stepping up to her side and looking at the shelf with her.
Carys shrugged and shook her head slightly, her movements stiff and uncertain. “There is nowhere else where they should be,” she said. “I certainly have not moved them from their places. The only other people who I would imagine would care to touch them at all would be you and Lord Gerald.”
“I have not moved them,” Dunstan said, crossing his arms and swaying closer to her. “I cannot imagine my uncle would move them either.”
“Something is not right,” Carys said with a sigh.
The sigh loosened her body just enough that her arm brushed against Dunstan’s. Despite the fact that the two of them had occasionally bumped or brushed, or even deliberately touched each other in the past, that small bit of contact felt as though she’d touched a hot stove.
And yet, she could not convince herself to pull away and put the desk between her and her friend.
Dunstan seemed to be feeling similar sensations. He turned his head to gaze at her, his body stiff. For a moment, Carys could have sworn that his gaze dropped to her lips.
Then he sucked in a breath and turned towards her while also taking a step back.
“Do you suppose it is the curse?” he asked, mischief replacing the tension in his eyes and a smile spreading across his lips.
Carys burst into laughter, not because she thought the quip was particularly amusing, but because the tension within her had reached a point at which an explosion of some sort was essential to keep her from hurting herself.
“More likely it was one of the maids dusting the study and putting the boxes back in the wrong places,” she said.
“Then it stands to reason that we will find what we need if we continue to look for it,” Dunstan said.
His eyes dropped to her lips again, and Carys caught her breath. Looking for what was missing was most definitely one means of finding it. But sometimes the object one needed and desired above all else had been there in plain sight for a very long time without being recognized.
Carys cleared her throat, then turned back to the bookshelf. “Can you reach that slightly amber-hued box on the top shelf?” she asked, pointing to the box in question.
“Yes,” Dunstan said.
He stepped closer to the shelf and reached up. Carys did her very best not to note how fit and svelte her friend was, especially at his age. She’d known men approaching fifty who had grown paunchy and sallow, or whose faces had filled with wrinkles, even as their teeth began to fall out.
Dunstan still had the physique of a younger man, likely because he continued to enjoy activities such as riding and hiking out of doors, and as she well knew from how often he smiled when they were together, his teeth were still in good order and the only wrinkles on his face were from his good humor.
“There you go,” he said with a small huff as he brought down the box in question. “With any luck, the records you need will be contained in here.”
He presented the box to her, but pulled it back when she tried to take it, causing her to laugh once more.
“I entrust you with this sacred treasure,” he said with mock solemnity, “the way poor, dear Morgana’s casket was entrusted with her half of Aethelbore’s amulet of love.”
Carys giggled, accepting the box, her face going hot with the riot of emotions within her. Surely, Dunstan did not mean to make that close a comparison between an ancient gift of love and the practical item he handed to her.
“If the tax records are not contained herein,” she said as ordinarily as possible, “I shall suspect the curse is responsible.”
“Ah, the curse,” Dunstan said as they both turned toward the desk.
Fortunately, the tax records were, indeed, contained in the box. Carys was immensely relieved. She’d known full well that everything was paid and in order, and she’d been certain all of the records were safely kept.
The fact of the matter remained that somehow, King Swithin’s Exchequer had come to believe Godwin Castle had not paid what was owed. And on top of that, it was a bit of a mystery how the correct box had ended up on a high shelf, far out of Carys’s reach.
“It was but a bit of bad luck,” Dunstan said half an hour or so later, when he and Carys brought the box with the records to Lord Gerald as proof that Mr. Isaacson was mistaken.
“Was it?” Lord Gerald asked, no longer teasing. “It feels very much like foul play of one sort of another to me.”
“Why would anyone meddle with something as banal as Godwin Castle’s taxes as a means of foul play?” Dunstan asked.
“Why indeed?” Lord Gerald answered, staring hard at Carys.
Carys stood a bit straighter, uncertain whether Lord Gerald was attempting to accuse her of something or if he had another reason for scrutinizing her so closely.
She did not have a chance to question him to discover more as the sound of the rest of the family returning to the great hall gradually increased.
A few moments later, the entire cluster of chilled, pink-faced, weary sons, nephews, brides, and guests flooded the warmth of the great hall.
“There must be dozens of graves in that cemetery,” Lady Bernadette said, heading straight to one of the sofas and collapsing there.
Carys was glad the woman had recovered from her earlier illness.
“It was a delight,” Minnie said, beaming. “I should like to spend a great many more hours exploring there.”
“But perhaps not on a cold, windy day,” Lord Lawrence added, walking to the fireplace with her.
“The earliest of the graves in the family cemetery date to the sixteen hundreds,” Lord Waldorf pointed out with a frown. “Wherever Morgana was laid to rest, it is either not in the cemetery or any mark of her grave has been lost to time.”
“My wager is that she is buried in the crypt of a nearby church,” Lord Alden said.
“Do we pursue the matter?” Lady Bernadette asked, snuggling against him. “Do we let it drop?”
“We must pursue it,” Lord Cedric said, crossing the room to thump Dunstan on his back. “We cannot allow Dunstan to suffer a moment longer than he must.”
Dunstan sent Carys a wry smirk that had her near laughter. It was a sign of the bond of friendship they had and it felt like a promise that nothing would spoil that friendship. Not even a meddling family who wanted to make more of the two of them than was there.
If only Carys could convince herself nothing was there as well.