Page 75 of Dukes Do It Better
“You have your work cut out for you, my friend,” Cal said.
Friend. It was good to have those.
“What do we do with Montague?” Phee asked.
“I’m not paying to ransom my own damn career. Whatever happens, I’ll ride it out. It’s no less than I deserve, after all. The note says he’s almost done with us. What do you think the final act will be?”
Calvin drained his own glass. “I have a feeling we’re about to find out.”
Chapter Twenty
I imagine what it will be like to love you, but I come up empty with so many details. Or I borrow things I see. Stolen moments between others, claimed for myself.
—Journal entry, June 5, 1824
It had been a week since she’d found the cross and Alton had led her, Polly, Charles, Jimmy, and Mrs. Shephard across the lawn, down the rocky cliff trail, and into a cave she hadn’t known was there. Now, wearing her oldest day gown and a borrowed mobcap, Emma wiped a dirty hand over her cheek and flicked a cobweb away.
Alton’s fort did indeed contain treasure, although she had yet to spot a pixie. She rested her hands on her hips and surveyed the progress she’d made. Crates and barrels lined the cave walls. A few contained bottles of liquor, but most of them were valuables of other kinds. And oddly enough for this area, none of the items looked French.
Like the cross, with its distinctive three arms, many of the things stored in this cave appeared to be Russian. There were quite a few labels written in Cyrillic, and more than one crate labeled with the name Athena.
Son of a bitch. Mal had ordered her eviction so he could live on top of his smuggled treasure hoard like some mythical dragon. Emma kicked a lump of straw packing material aside and wished it were more substantial.
Couldn’t he have been a normal, average, everyday smuggler who slipped a few casks of brandy by the excise men?
No, he had to be an honest-to-god pirate, stealing foreign treasures and hiding them in a goddamned cave.
Did he have a map to the cave? One marked with an X and little squiggly drawings so future pirates and treasure hunters could stumble upon his secret spot? Walk three hundred paces away from the lovelorn widow’s house and look for a rock crevice resembling a woman’s lady bits.
She certainly hoped such a map existed, because if Emma ever saw the man again, she was going to wring his neck until he turned purple, and this treasure would be lost until his crew came looking for it.
Oh Lordy, was she going to have to deal with a pirate crew too?
Alton would be thrilled if he knew such a prospect existed. Emma shoved aside the heavy wood lid of a crate and peeked inside. Framed paintings. She tsked. “These will mold, if they haven’t already. Should have thought that through, Your Grace.”
The last crate had been full of fancifully curved brass cups and a samovar covered in delicate metalwork depicting leaves and a harvest scene etched into the great belly of the piece.
It was all a bit overwhelming. This cave was filled with art. Beauty scavenged from other countries, then hidden away in this crevice on the edge of England. What did he plan to do with it?
The scratch of shifting pebbles and sand at the cave entrance had her turning.
“Maaa,” Billy bleated in greeting and skittered over to her in his awkwardly adorable baby goat run. Today’s nappy was a piece of last summer’s picnic blanket.
“Did Mrs. Shephard send you to find me or are you wandering off from your momma? Leonard will worry, you little beast.” Emma reached down to scratch between his ears. Billy leaned into her leg and exhaled in a gust. After a moment, he straightened and wandered over to the straw littering the floor of the cave.
“I should feed you the paintings. There are a few Russian saints in here you might like. Baby Jesus with his halo could be delicious, you never know.”
Billy grunted in agreement and nosed at the lid of a wooden box full of liquor bottles.
Another slip of pebbles at the cave entrance told her she now had two baby goats to deal with, in a cave full of priceless no-doubt stolen art.
Emma threw her hands up and said, “Just eat it all. Every crate, every bit of straw. Wreak chaos and destruction to your heart’s content. It would serve the rat bastard right.”
“No thank you, I ate at the last inn. I will take a cup of coffee though.”
* * *
The first brass cup hit him square in the forehead, but Malachi was quick enough to dodge the next. “There are only eight cups in that set. Use your ammunition wisely, my love,” he said, advancing into the cave.
