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She laughed, then swallowed the sound and cleared her throat. “If we do not find something of interest here, we will have wasted a day of productive work.”

“I’d hardly call it wasted.” He extended a hand to the water, to the waves rolling up and down the shore, to the still, still line where sky met sea, a storm brewing above it. “Don’t you like the beach? Doesn't the ocean call to you with its vastness and its storminess?”

“Call to me?” She snorted. “Why would it do that?”

“Because you are also vast and stormy.”

She did roll her eyes then. “I suppose you mean that as a compliment.”

He wrapped a hand around her waist, spun her around and pressed their bodies together as he took her lips. A brief kiss, but it made her as unsteady as the ground they stood on.

He broke the kiss and looked at her with coffee warm eyes. “I like my women mysterious and complex.” A hint of a grin the sun saw and wrapped around. Even light loved him.

She pulled out of his embrace and restarted her march toward the ruins. “At the very least, we’ll have some first-hand experience of these ruins to add to the book. I am convinced they are of a similar era, despite their greater deterioration.”

“My father has likely already included something like that. We know he came here for research. We have the odious Mr. Stewart to thank for that slice of information.”

The castle, or fort, rather, was squat and mostly square. One end appeared rounded.

Gwendolyn nodded to it. “A gun room, do you think?” She stopped and opened her satchel, pulled a pencil and her notebook out.

“Likely. And the outer stone seems to have been stripped away almost entirely.”

“Yes. But look!” Gwendolyn hitched up her skirts and ran to the doorway. “The royal coat of arms is still intact.” She reached for it, but her fingers fell a few inches short, so she studied it, set pencil to paper and soon had its details outlined on her paper.

Jackson peered over her shoulder at her work. “Exactly its match. If we can ever find the manuscript, your illustrations will make it invaluable.”

“The information inside will do that.” But she beamed a little, just inside, knowing she might add something of import to his father’s work.

“I know people who buy Uncle Henry’s books just for the pictures. Your pictures, Gweny. You should be as direct in your pride as you are in your prickliness.” He bussed her cheek with a kiss as he passed around her.

He gave affection so easily. She hoped to someday do the same. She shook her head out of hopes and dreams and focused on the ruined fort.

“It was supposed to be torn apart entirely,” he said, stepping inside. “I believe two centuries ago, when it was decommissioned.”

Gwendolyn followed him. “Wise. So others cannot use it.”

Jackson turned and ran a flat palm up one stubbly wall near the doorway. “Well, let’s take notes. As usual. Two rounds of observations—yours then mine. Call out what we find while the other writes it down.” He crouched and opened the picnic basket, pulled out a pencil and notebook from the very top and sat on a nearby fallen stone. He opened the book up on top of the basket and set the tip of the pencil to the paper. “Ready when you are, Gweny.”

She began a circular inspection of the ruins from outside in, round and round, calling out her observations. Then they switched spots and Jackson did the same but in the reverse direction.

When done, he crouched beside her with a huff. “What do you think? Time wasted?”

She cocked her head, looked to the clear sky, the fallen walls, the rock-strewn earth, the golden man gazing at her. “No.” If she had so few days with him already, an hour spent with him would never be wasted.

He bounced upward and stretched out a hand to help her up.

“Just a moment.” She closed the book and replaced it in the basket, but when she lifted it to stand, something snapped, and the weight shifted. “Oh!” She looked down. The bottom had fallen out of it. But… none of the food had spilled from inside.

Jackson took it and held it up between them. The bottom had indeed fallen out. It swung down from one side, but it was not the basket’s only bottom.

“A hidden compartment.” The words escaped Gwendolyn’s lips as the barest of whispers. Her hands tingled. A hidden compartment could mean nothing. Nothing at all, but the air around them shifted somehow. The dangling false bottom and the darkness in its shallow depths sang out.

Jackson sank back to the stone he’d sat upon while taking notes, and Gwendolyn found another nearby to sit on. He held the basket upright, to keep the food in the main compartment from spilling forth, and Gwendolyn reached for the hanging bottom. Brown, it seemed, and empty. She brushed her hands along the inside—brown and… soft. The softest leather. Her heart stopped. She felt around the edges of the basket bottom. The brown leather was not a bottom at all, but something stuck inside it, wedged. She pried at a corner, her heart having found its purpose again, though it raced like a thoroughbred at Ascot.

The leather shifted, revealing the bottom was not shallow at all, but quite deep, because the brown leather she pulled from it was a thick portfolio, just the size used to carry papers. Her hands trembled as she held the folio up to Jackson.

“Bloody hell.” He swooped in, taking it from her, turning it so he could unwind the strap that kept it closed then pull back the flap. Inside—papers. He pulled the first one out with curiously steady hands and read it. “A Celebration of the Castles and Fortification of Southern-most England from the Reign of Henry VIII, with Illustrations and Thoughts Concerning the Remaining Ruins.”