Page 49 of Unearthing the Smuggler's Heart
Indeed, the warmth and strength of his arms as he pulled her into a tight embrace were so reassuring that she felt those roots that had held her feet in place melt away, releasing her from the thrall of fear. She held fast around his middle, burying her face into his shirt, and imagined herself drawing some semblance of strength from the vitality of his body.
"All right," she said after a moment. "All right, let's look inside."
He kept an arm around her shoulders as they crossed the room, and supported her weight as she lowered herself into the couch cushions.
She took up the box with shaking hands and waited until he had settled in next to her, giving her all the comfort of his presence, before she lifted the lid away from its long-time home, despite its creaking in protest.
The inside of the box was lined in a dove gray velvet, though much of its softness appeared to have dwindled away over the years in the dark. It was strange that everything inside had been so well guarded from the passage of time that not even a speck of dust was visible on the assortment of items that soaked up the unfamiliar candlelight from around them.
"Be careful with the parchment," Mathias cautioned, producing a handkerchief with which to pinch the edges and gently draw a folded set of papers from the velvet nest. He moved them quickly to the surface of an end table and allowed them to settle onto the kerchief, relaxing at the leisure dictated by their own force of weight. "It might be brittle," he explained. "We don't want it to crumble."
She winced. "Well, now I shall be afraid to touch it at all."
"Just give it a moment to settle and then we can read them," he assured her, turning back and gesturing to the open box and the dull glint of the items that remained inside. "For now, let us see what else awaits you."
CHAPTER21
“This can't be what you broke into my house to find," Louis Dumand said, frowning at the assortment of trinkets laid out on the carpet, each piece seeming to dull under the scrutiny of his inspection. "Surely it wasn't worth the risk."
Jade Ferris shot him a frown, her fingers pinched on either end of the stack of documents she was currently attempting to unfold. If she had intended to rebuke her captor for this comment, a glance in the direction of Charles Monetier, who was standing rigidly at the door, convinced her to hold her tongue.
True to his word, Dumand had returned to their makeshift holding cell with a guest from his party who might find the capture of a wartime smuggler most intriguing.
So smug had he been as he led Charles into the room that he had missed the startled exchange of baffled glances between his prisoners and his supposed ally. Mercifully, the presumed sweetness of triumph had blinded Dumand from anything amiss.
This unexpected turn of events had resulted in an abrupt necessity for avoided eye contact and tight-lipped silence as the situation was explained to Charles, whose status in Society and good graces might mean the making of a man like Louis Dumand.
Charles cleared his throat, clasping his hands behind his back as he surveyed the scene before them. "What exactly is all of this?" he asked no one in particular.
Jade sighed, pushing some of her escaping hair behind her ears, and looked in turn at each of the men in the room. "This, I believe, was my mother's dowry box. These items were precious heirlooms that were meant to pass onto her, and eventually to me, as we reached womanhood."
Mathias looked up in surprise from his own crouched position on the floor, his fingers lingering over the flat gemstone in the center of a sapphire-lined brooch. These items were far from worthless, though perhaps Dumand had envisioned something grander hiding within the silver box.
"She was denied her dowry for marrying against her family's wishes," Jade continued, as though she owed Louis Dumand any sort of explanation at all. "Somehow it must have been spirited away for her anyhow, by my grandmother perhaps. Oh, Captain. Look."
She waited for Mathias to stand and walk over to her perch on the couch, where she had peeled the old documents apart without so much as a folded corner to mar them. There were four pages that had been folded together, now spread out side by side, each one embossed with signatures and stamps.
"This is the house in Spain," she said, pointing to the first sheet. "It appears to be the original of the deed. I know we suspected it before, but..."
"Yes," he said quickly, before she could reveal any sensitive information to those who might abuse it. "A house in Spain will make a fine winter villa, should you choose to keep it."
She blinked, meeting his eye with a startled flash of understanding. "Quite," she said with a sniff and a tone of put-upon briskness. "This one is to a private account back in London, held in trust for my mother and any descendants. It appears to be made up of investments rather than gold. I suppose I could claim it, if I wanted to."
"You could, yes," he marveled, turning the account ledger over as carefully as he could manage, the margins filled with fledgling shipping companies and dockland enterprises that had boomed to great wealth in the years since this document had been drawn up. "I would go so far as to say you must."
He couldn't say it with Dumand present, but this account's very existence explained much.
Had Jade not remained behind in England and defended her good name, Jade could not have hoped to stake her claim on this fortune. With no one in good legal standing to put a claim to the accounts, the money would be forfeit to the crown. Lost.
Jade Ferris was a very wealthy woman, whether she had yet realized it or not, and her patience in the matter of following her parents to freedom, her willingness to go on a madcap adventure to retrieve these papers, were necessary for the reaping of the wealth that had been buried here for so many years.
The other two documents were vested partial ownership in a brewery and a breeding stable in Thames Valley, both certainly valuable, but not quite as stunning as their counterparts.
"If you were hoping for a bribe," Mathias said to his old friend, setting the document carefully back upon the table, "you doubtless find this cache disappointing."
"I have no need of bribes," Dumand said, though his tone did give away an edge of disappointment. "Nor would I steal from a woman's dower chest."
"I should hope not," put in Charles darkly, which made the other man flush. "Am I to take it that you intend to allow the young woman to leave with her items, free of retaliation for her trespass?"
