Chapter 16
In the corner of the garden, Alexandra performed the onerous task of preparing a new area of land for planting. She lifted her face to the sun and swallowed hard. Nicholas’s slip the day before rested heavy. He pretended having children was not important and his denial confirmed to her more than ever, she would release him from his vows if rescued.
She tugged at a mass of vines, yanked them free and tossed them behind her. Although the afternoon wind had fallen, a slight breeze off the ocean lifted her hair and cooled her heated neck from the glare of the tropical sun.
The patch was dense from years of neglect and the roots held fast to the soil. She pulled away an elephant ear leaf. Two long thin bones were stretched out across the ground. She inhaled, forcing her fingers to clench around more stalks and ripped away. A skeleton reclined against a tree. Bony legs led-up to a spine and rib section, and a skull leaned sideways, its eye sockets staring off to sea. Suspended from the neck and resting over the ribcage where his heart would be was a gold locket.
“Nicholas.” Her knees buckled and she sank to the ground. Hands shaking, she opened the locket. Gazing back at her was the miniature of a pretty woman. No doubt, the gold locket Lady Jane Winthrop Dabney had given to Captain John Sharp, and with it, his dream of a life with her extinguished. Alexandra’s gaze drifted over the sad remains of the sea captain. To think he had died alone.
Nicholas approached from behind. After a moment of silence, he said, “I’ll bury him. There can’t be happy endings all of the time, Alexandra.”
Like Nicholas and her.
She stood and unclasped the locket from Captain Sharp. “Maybe someday we can return Lady Jane’s locket and the diary to her. It is the decent thing to do.” Tears burned her cheeks with their heat and quiet power. Nicholas turned her around and she put her arms around his neck, sobbing into his chest. She cried for the darling sea captain and for Nicholas, the man she’d have to leave behind if they ever reached the shores of England.
With his machete, Nicholas hacked through the brush, an endless task for wherever he cut, the growth reappeared. To erase the tragedy of Captain Sharp and his own indiscretion about children, Nicholas diverted her attention with an outing. He pulled Alexandra up on a high craggy cliff overlooking the beach that lay like a shepherd’s hook of gold. “My senses are heightened on this island. I see that which is far off with but a glance, I hear the crack of stone or branch on high protecting myself from falling branches and rocks. I smell the coming of the storms while they are still days away. The soup you make tastes as fine as any I’ve ever eaten back in civilization.”
Nicholas swept up his cocked hat and jammed it beneath one arm. His nose twitched, the air was pregnant with the smell of salt. “The folly of looking for treasure is an exercise in uselessness, Alexandra.” They had been talking about his sister, Abby. How he missed her, how he worried about her. “She is probably dead by now.”
“Like you, Nicholas, she survived. You must count on that, live with that thought.”
His eternal optimist. “How do you know?”
“I don’t. But if there is a just God, then she is safe.”
He took a swig of water from the calabash and offered it to her. “How can you treat your life like that?” So far, he’d survived, but if his father or siblings hadn’t…that yoke of guilt would be the price he’d have to bear.
She shrugged. “We can’t control the wind, but we can adjust our sails.”
She was right.
He took a deep breath. If his family did survive, what did they think happened to him the night of his abduction? Would there have been any witnesses? He was certain if there was a trail, they’d be looking for him.
“My intuition says the treasure is here. Captain Sharp did not come all this way and not have his treasure with him. I can use that money to get justice for Molly and my father.”
She wanted justice as much as he wanted vengeance. If they got off this island, he’d do everything in his power to have her stepmother prosecuted for her crimes. But without witnesses, the charge would be impossible. Molly was dead. How convenient for her stepmother. And to prove Alexandra’s heritage? Like blowing thistledown against a hurricane. Yet maybe a Sutherland servant would know.
“Just tell me why, and I’m not talking about the treasure. For what purpose have we had to go through this struggle?”
“Sometimes trials are to make us stronger, to act as a bridge to another part of our life. Samuel always said, ‘Birth is the day molded into a sculpture, happenstance is an oil painting and experience is a mosaic of them all.”’
They came to an end of an animal path with a cliff a quarter mile straight up. They would have to climb. “Are you ready for a new experience?”
She grasped thick strangler vines and Nicholas followed behind her. “I have to say the view from here is fantastic.”
“Leave it to you, Nicholas to point that out,” she laughed and hitched herself over the top of a ridge.
She lay there panting when Nicholas heaved himself up beside her. Her scent beckoned him. His mouth was bone dry, sweat ran between his shoulder blades like warm rain. Temptation lay one foot away. He looked down on the ocean where waves slammed against rocks in a surge of spray.
Alexandra shielded her eyes from the sun and looked at him. “Who else could have plotted against your family?”
“There could be any number of persons. An angry tenant.”
She tossed a stone off the cliff. “An angry tenant would not have money.”
“Lord Eaton, the father whose son I killed in self-defense. He definitely has the financial means.”
“And the motivation,” she added.
She picked up another stone and examined it. “Have you ever had a hint of enmity from Duke Cornelius?” Alexandra said.
“Nicholas shook his head. “Never have I seen any animosity, only kindness, bestowing us with gifts and all the things he did for me are countless.”
“Yet he never married? Doesn’t that trouble you?”
Nicholas shrugged. “Why should it?”
“Do you think that in a twisted way, since he didn’t have your mother, he substituted the Rutland children as his own? That there might be subterfuge and patience to get back at your father? Samuel always told me to look at my closest friends before my distant enemies. The Duke would have the resources to pull off such a scheme to destroy your family.”
Nicholas stopped to ponder. “That is the most absurd notion I’ve heard to date. I’m also thinking of a fellow in the House of Lords. My father has gone up against those pushing the war in the Colonies because it is bankrupting England. He has many war-mongering enemies who stand to profit from contracts and have the funds to seek his demise. I would start there.”
“You are probably right.” Alexandra stood and dusted her bottom. “Look, Nicholas, an ‘E’ is carved into the rock, probably by Captain Sharp. We have not climbed this high before. Remember his diary. Lovely, Only, Valuable and Enthralling. If we take the first letters of each word—”
“Not too hard of a clue to figure out. His love for Lady Jane.”
She whooped loudly. “Yes, but you’ve missed Captain Sharp’s point. As we speculated before, he used the first letters of each coordinate, and then applied each letter to a landform. Lagoon, Ocean, Valley, Escarpment.”
Nicholas snorted. “And?”
She pointed to the rocky ground, and then to the ‘E.’ We stand on the escarpment which is to the west of the other land features. The ocean is down there to the east. South is the lagoon and the valley is to the north.”
The sea crashed on the sand below, seagulls soared and cried overhead. She waited for Nicholas to see her point.
The emergence of recognition flooded his face. “The cottage was built where the four coordinates merge.”