Josie clamped a hand on her cousin’s arm. “He’s here,” she breathed. “He just walked in.”
“Well, if he doesn’t have anything you want, Josie, I can see a few things I like,” Ashley said. “Look at him.”
Josie was, and he was as gorgeous as her cousin intimated. Dressed in his evening black, his hair brushed back, his face a mask of social politeness, he looked every inch his title. Indeed, he looked like a king. He was that regal, that imposing, that exciting.
That trustworthy?
He’d come, as promised. She saw him look around the room, saw his eyes light on her, and she couldn’t help but sigh. Handsome, trustworthy, exciting. How was she going to keep her emotions from getting the better of her?
“Excuse me,” she said to her cousins and made sure Westman saw her angle for the dining room, which was all but empty now. She peered back and saw him threading his way through the crowds. In the dining room, a few servants were busy mopping up a spill of red punch, but other than that she had the dining room to herself. Leaning against the wall, she clutched her reticule to her chest and breathed deeply. She knew the other half of the map was in the haversack. Tonight she and Westman would put the two halves together, and they’d finally know the location of the secret treasure.
“Dreaming about silver, Miss Hale?” a low, velvet voice asked.
She opened her eyes and stared into his lovely blue ones. “Gold doubloons, Lord Westman.” She was so excited, so eager, she could have kissed him.
His eyes warmed in response, and he smiled. “Did you bring the map?”
She nodded. “Where’s the sack?”
He patted his tailcoat, and she saw that the lines of the form-fitting garment were not quite as sleek as usual.
“Good. I’ve already found us a secluded place to open it. Follow me.”
Westman raised his brows. “Follow you? How do I know this isn’t just a ploy to steal my virtue?”
Josie laughed at Westman’s role reversal. “I promise your virtue is safe with me,” she said, then motioned for him to follow. They wound their way through the kitchen, which was a hive of servants cleaning dishes and loading silver trays with full glasses of champagne. And then they were out a back door and into an alley where several grooms were crouched, playing dice.
They stood and doffed their hats when they saw her and Westman. “Go play somewhere else for a quarter hour,” Westman said, tossing a few coins in the midst of the game.
The men scrambled for the coins and, without protest, gathered up their blunt and disappeared back to their horses and coaches.
The men had left a wobbly three-legged stool with a small lamp on it, and Josie pulled her map out of the reticule and spread it on the ground, in the yellow spill of light. Westman was busy removing his coat. It was no easy feat without the aid of a valet, and when he was done, he tossed it to Josie.
“Here, sit on this.” The coat wasn’t as nice as some she had seen, but it wasn’t cheap either, so she spread it carefully beside the map and knelt on the wool. She looked up in time to see Westman pull the haversack off his shoulder and over his head.
Josie wanted to reach for it, but she held back, watching with impatience as Westman fumbled with the old clasp. Finally, he had it, and he crouched beside her, dumping the contents on the coattails.
Josie gasped at the bounty that spilled forth. “Jewels,” she said on a breath.
Westman blinked, his eyes wide, and lifted the small rubies and the emerald as big as her thumbnail. There was also a jeweled dagger; a sextant; a compass; a yellowed parchment that reminded her very much of her half of the map; the sixth, and presumably last, journal; and a large bronze key.
Josie lifted it. The once shiny blade was now dulled with green, but it was still intact. The bow was fashioned into a skull and crossbones. Josie shivered. “It’s the key to the treasure box,” she whispered. “I’m certain of it.” What else but the bad-luck treasure would have such a macabre key?
Westman was a step ahead of her, unfolding the yellowed parchment to reveal the half of the map Josie had never seen but imagined so many times. Josie lifted her half of the map and frowned. It didn’t fit right.
Westman reached out, took her map, turned it, and fitted it to its lost partner. The halves came together like lovers, the frayed edges melting into one another, forming a near seamless picture of the landscape. And now Josie saw that all her life she’d thought the map had been torn horizontally, that she had the lower half. Now she realized the map had been torn vertically, and she had the right half.
“Cornwall,” Westman said. “I’d recognize that shape anywhere.”
“Are there islands off the coast of Cornwall?” Josie asked. She pointed to the map. “I always thought these shapes were islands.”
Westman nodded. “That’s what I thought as well, but now that I see the whole, I think they’re too close to shore. They must be markers of a different sort.”
“Guides to the treasure,” Josie whispered, tracing a finger over the drawing until she touched the X near the shoreline and directly opposite the three small island-shapes.
“Perhaps rocks jutting out of the water near a hidden cove or a cave. Smugglers use them all the time.”
Josie shook her head, her confidence in the treasure suddenly shaken as well. “Smugglers? But if they’ve been using Grandfather’s hiding place, then they might have discovered the treasure.” Lord, there’d been so many reports of smuggling the last few years. Since the war, every ruffian with a ship was looking to make money smuggling French goods.
