"Nay, lass. Elspeth and I kept no secrets."
A look of disbelief crossed Trick's face. "Why, then?" he demanded. "Why would she have written saying she was dying if she wasn't?"
"She wanted to see you," Hamish said simply. "She was hoping the thought of her death would bring you here to Duncraven, even though you'd never answered any of her other letters."
"I never received any of her other letters."
"So Mrs. Ross informed me quite tearfully this morning."
"But you didn't believe her."
Hamish blinked. "Of course I believed her. What makes you imagine I'd think the worst of you, Patrick? If you say you never received the letters, I take you at your word."
A faint pink stained Trick's neck. "My father must have intercepted them."
Kendra took his hand and squeezed, feeling tension coursing through him. He didn't want to be here, talking about this. He wanted to be back in the garden. He'd grumbled as much to her three times on their long trek up the stairs.
"Your father..." Hamish's fingers tapped an irritated tattoo on the coverlet. "I wouldn't put destroying her letters past him, I can tell you that."
Trick set down the goblet of whisky he'd snatched in the great hall and brought along with him upstairs. "I assure you, sir, I didn't hold him in any higher esteem than you did."
Sitting on the bed beside his father, Niall sipped from his own glass of spirits. "Da, do want to tell Patrick why Mam summoned him?"
Trick's gaze snapped to his brother's. "Did she not just want to see me, then? Had she another reason?"
"Aye," Hamish said, "and it's a long story I have to tell you. A story about the first King Charles and his ill-fated visit here to Scotland."
"What could that have to do with—"
"Just listen." Looking toward the closed door to ensure their privacy, Hamish settled back against his pillows for the telling. "Charles was born here, as you know, but left when he was yet a bairn, and we Scots heard tell he rather fancied himself an Englishman." He took a small sip of the green concoction Rhona had left him, then grimaced and held out a hand for Niall's drink. "Still and all, Charles was our king—a Scottish king. The nobles insisted on a second coronation, on Scottish soil with the Scottish crown jewels. Thirty-five years ago, in the eighth year of his reign, he finally assented to the visit."
Intrigued, Kendra leaned forward. "Had he not been home in all that time?"
"He didn't think of it as home, as you will soon see." Hamish drank, closing his eyes for a long, contented moment as the whisky slipped down his throat. "Excitement was rampant," he said after smacking his lips. "Everyone threw themselves into the preparations. Roads were fixed and bridges were repaired. Thatched roofs were replaced with shingles, lest the king should think us poor. All in all, a great deal of money was paid out to improve and decorate the Royal route and show we were as good as the English. We hoped to appeal to his Scottishness, so he'd let up on us and allow us to live as we saw fit."
He paused for another sip. "But it soon became clear that he wanted to forget his origins. He arrived here for a month-long tour with a baggage train two miles long. Fifty wagons, two bishops, dozens of courtiers. Along the way, they stopped to lodge with our Scottish nobles, bankrupting them one by one with all of their costly demands. On a whim, Charles would change his itinerary, bypassing the places that had been so carefully prepared and making it clear he wasn't impressed with the preparations anyway. He treated us as inferiors when we hoped he'd relate to us as the Scot he was by birth."
Trick's thumb kept teasing the palm of Kendra's hand, and his lips quirked when she shivered in response. He didn't seem to be paying attention to the story at all.
"When the coronation finally took place, it wasn't the traditional Scots one that had been planned, but an elaborate religious ceremony instead. A Church of England ritual. The people were aghast to learn such Popishness and blasphemy had taken place in a Scottish kirk."
Apparently listening more than she'd guessed, Trick grimaced. "I expect they were angry as hell."
The older man nodded. "His actions incited a rebellion that eventually led to his end. But I get ahead of myself." He wetted his papery lips. "After the coronation, his last scheduled stop was at nearby Falkland Palace. All the local nobles were invited, and your mother went, of course, along with her family. Every able-bodied commoner was drafted to help with the banquet, myself among them, although I wasn't even Niall's age yet."
"Did the banquet go badly?" Kendra asked, pulling her fingers from Trick's.
"Not at all. We all thought it a roaring success, the entertainment more impressive than any we'd ever seen. But by then Charles had tired of Scotland—no doubt as much as we had tired of him—and at three the next morning, he woke the household and announced that he'd decided to leave immediately. Everyone at Falkland scrambled to ready his belongings for travel."
"What sorts of belongings?" Kendra asked as Trick reached over and took her hand again, resting it on his lap and trapping it there with his own hand on top. Neither Niall nor Hamish seemed to notice, but, scandalized, she couldn't help thinking what was beneath that fabric under her hand.
Nothing.
"You wouldn't have believed what he'd brought along," Hamish was saying, his gaze glazed with memory. "My eyes boggled, they did. Besides clothing and furnishings fit for a palace—he slept in his own Royal bed—King Charles traveled with his household goods, personal treasures, jewelry, and his entire kitchen including the Royal plate. Half a ton of silver and gold. Not for him to be eating off plain Scottish dishes or drinking from plain Scottish cups. It was this we were ordered to help pack for his return to London."
Beneath Kendra's hand, Trick stirred, and her palm tingled. "I-it must have taken you all night."
"The smells of the banquet still hung in the air, and we had but a few hours to get it done. Charles couldn't wait to leave. At first light, he set out. On the journey up they had crossed the River Forth by the bridge at Stirling, but this day the king was too impatient to take the long way around. His men found three boats to cross the firth from Burntisland to Leith and loaded two of them with as much as they possibly could. When it wouldn't all fit, Charles insisted the rest be loaded anyway, till everything was aboard and the vessels rode low in the water."
Trick frowned and shifted, draping an arm around Kendra's shoulders. "Were you there to see it?"
"Nay, but I've heard stories. It was storming something awful, that I do remember. The wind blew stronger and the waves tossed the boats as they piled the treasure chests aboard. King Charles was rowed to the third vessel while his domestics and servants went with his goods. Twenty-five people on one of those boats...but only two lived to tell the tale."
"Oh, no," Kendra said. "What happened?"
"The rest of them ended up at the bottom of the Firth of Forth, along with the treasure. Safe aboard another boat, Charles could see the vessel founder and sink, but there was nothing he could do to stop it. Nothing anyone could do to save any of those lives."
A chilling vision. Kendra leaned against Trick's side, taking comfort from his warmth. "Charles must have been furious."
"Aye, that he was. Folk claimed the sinking was an act of God to avenge his religious misdeeds, but he decided that witches were responsible and rounded up people to punish. It was injustice of this sort that led to our siding with the Roundheads in the Civil War, wrong though we were to do so."
Trick's fingers traced lazy circles on Kendra's shoulder, and her free hand fisted in her lap. The one on
his
lap felt hot against the wool. Keeping her face passive, she nodded at Hamish. "Were the chests ever recovered?"
"Nay, lass, for the Forth is cold and deep. They lie there to this day."
He briefly closed his eyes. Eyes that looked familiar, Kendra thought and wondered why.
"But the treasure," he said when he opened them, "is not in those chests."
Trick's hand stilled on her shoulder. "Pardon?"
"You must understand, the people were angry well before the witch hunt. After the banquet, your mother stole from her chamber and met me in the storeroom along with Rhona and Gregor—the four of us were best of friends, even then. The Yeoman of the Buttery had been charged with packing the kitchen, which included the Royal plate. John Ferries was his name. Shorthanded, he was, and willing to accept whatever help he could find. So we helped."
He fell silent.
Trick reached for his goblet. Niall put a hand over his father's atop the coverlet. "Tell them how you helped, Da."
Hamish sighed. "First we helped get John Ferries drunk. Then we helped fill the chests, but not with gold and silver plate..." He drew a long breath, a dramatic pause. "With rocks."
Trick choked on a sip of his spirits. "Rocks?" he repeated incredulously.
"Aye." Shifting on the bed, Hamish looked less than proud of what he'd done. "The treasure we spirited away. Poor John Ferries' body washed up on shore shortly thereafter, so the secret remained between the four of us. The Royal plate remains hidden to this day."
"Where?" Kendra breathed.
"If you're willing, I'll send Niall to show you. First thing tomorrow."
Trick failed to see the point. Intriguing as the story might be, he was planning to leave for home tomorrow. He needed to complete the king's mission. And make a fresh start with Kendra.
He gave her hand in his lap an experimental squeeze, smiling to himself when the pulse at her wrist sped up. "It's an interesting tale, but what does this have to do with my mother's summons?"
"She hoped—we hoped—that you'd return the treasure to its rightful owner. King Charles II."
Disappointment scraped a raw place inside him. His mother hadn't been wishing for a reconciliation. Like his father, she'd wanted only to use him for her own ends.
"They never sold even one piece," Niall put in, a transparent attempt to make light of his parents' wrongdoing. "It's all been locked away in twenty-three chests for thirty-five years."
Hamish nodded. "You must believe me, we didn't take it to enrich ourselves. It was a prank, an act of revenge. We were young enough—angry enough—to risk such folly. And although we were fortunate in that our rocks sank and were never discovered, the misdeed has preyed on our minds ever since."
It would, Trick supposed. But the fate of his mother's soul was in God's hands now, and he wasn't responsible for unburdening this old man's conscience.
Without Hamish, perhaps Elspeth would have come to love her husband, or at least learned to live with him, and Trick would have had a family. He owed this old man nothing.
Hamish took a long, bracing sip from Niall's cup. "Charles was beheaded—he paid for his actions. His son is a better man, a better king. We don't want the treasure—we never did. But your mother feared that if we returned it, we'd face arrest. So she was hoping you'd do it for us. You have the king's ear, and he trusts you—"
"How would you know that?"
"Do you think your mother wouldn't keep watch on you the best she could? We—she hired people to report to her. If ever you'd really needed her, Patrick, she'd have been there."
He
had
really needed her. The times he'd been left alone in a school in France, and the other times, the endless years he'd worked as little more than a slave for his father's unlawful business.
But the past was done. He'd long ago accepted the hand he'd been dealt, and more pressing matters required his attention.
King Charles deserved the Royal treasure, and God knew he needed it. The poor man was reduced to selling titles to make expenses. Even now, his ambassadors roamed the country with blank forms for anyone wanting and willing to pay for a baronetcy. Regardless of whether this ill old man deserved Trick's loyalty, his monarch did.
Charles. His life these days seemed to be reduced to serving Charles.
"I'll do it," he said with a resigned sigh. "Show me the chests tomorrow, and I'll find a way to get them home."
"If I'm going to lug this treasure home," Trick muttered on the way down the stairs, "I need to make plans."
Behind him in the dark, narrow turret, Kendra sighed. All the sensual feelings between them seemed to have vanished into thin air. She a put a hand on his shoulder. "What is it you have to do? Maybe I can help."
"I must see these twenty-three chests and decide how many extra vehicles I'll need to transport them, how many additional guards I must hire. And what am I going to do with it all during overnight stops? We'll attract attention traveling through the country with an entourage worthy of royalty. The treasure will need to be protected around the clock."
"We'll work it out," she soothed. "Let's see the treasure first, then we'll deal with the logistics."
"My head aches just thinking about it."
"Perhaps it would be best to dispatch a messenger to Charles. He could send a contingent of soldiers to escort the goods."
"And wait here, twiddling my thumbs, for three weeks or more until the soldiers arrive? I think not."
They arrived downstairs to find that the dancing had ended and the trestle tables were back in place. Torches had been lit on the walls to augment the light from the iron chandeliers, and women bustled about, setting out all the dishes they'd brought for the
draidgie
supper.
Trick handed Kendra a trencher from a stack on the end of a table, then took one for himself. The food smelled delicious, but he was in a devil of a mood, and the offerings he piled on his platter didn't seem to help any.
Odd, he was, for a man, she thought as she chose a piece of spice cake and a wedge of lemon tart. Her brothers had never failed to be cheered by a hearty plate of food.
Niall waved them over to join him at an empty table, filling two more goblets with ale from a pitcher. They'd no sooner settled themselves than Annag and Duncan dragged her young ones over to take the remaining seats.