Page 63 of The Earl's Secret
“You will find what you seek in this place where creatures never lay but always sleep.”
Devon rubbed his chin. “I wonder if that is a stall, then.”
“May I see it?” Whitehall asked, stepping forward, surprising them all. He hadn’t seemed overly interested in the riddle before.
He noticed their surprise. “I have some experience with codes.”
“How so?” Devon asked, for the viscount had never portrayed such experience before.
“It doesn’t matter,” Whitehall muttered. “Just give me the paper.”
Cassandra passed it over, and Whitehall held it in his hand as he paced a few steps forward and then a few steps backward, muttering to himself as he did.
“It’s in the last stall on the right.”
They all stared at him.
“How did you know that?” Cassandra demanded. “It wasn’t part of the code.”
“There is another code embedded in it,” Whitehall said. “One much more difficult to decipher.”
“But—”
“Leave Whitehall be, Cassandra,” Gideon said gently. “We can question him later. Let’s search now.”
She nodded, although Devon nearly laughed aloud at the suspicion she eyed Whitehall with. He knew better than to allow his mirth to show, however, and instead he took her arm as they walked toward the back of the stable.
“Hello there, old girl,” Gideon said, stepping forward and rubbing the nose of the horse within. Devon knew she had been with the family for years, and while she was too old now to do much more than graze in the pasture, Gideon loved her and the rest of the horses far too much to let her go. The man loved his animals more than he did most humans. “What have you been hiding in here?”
The horse whinnied as though in answer to them, and Devon started when he could have sworn the horse jerked her head to the back corner.
“Where could it be?” Cassandra asked, as she, Gideon, and Devon stepped into the stall, the rest of them waiting outside as they all couldn’t fit without spooking the horse. “It is not as though there would be some treasure sitting out here in the open.”
“It would only be in a wall or the floor,” Devon said, rubbing his chin as he looked around them. “We best get to searching.”
Gideon tried to convince Cassandra to remain outside the stall to allow room for another man to come into search, but she quickly quelled his suggestion with a look. They did, however, move the mare, Annabelle, to another stall. They ran their hands down the walls, trying to find any secret compartments, while Gideon and Devon found shovels to scrape the straw away from the floor to determine if anything was buried beneath.
Devon didn’t see anything that gave away the location – instead it was the sound his shovel made when he brought it back to the floor.
“Cassandra?” he said, his voice low in a whisper, wanting to speak to her about it before anyone else. “Does this sound hollow to you?”
She joined him as he tapped his shovel on the floor, before she bent down in the straw, obviously uncaring that her skirts would be completely soiled after this.
“I’ll do it,” he said, but she waved him away, running her hands along the wooden floor, until she looked up at him with an excited grin.
“It does – and there is something here!”
That captured the attention of everyone, and soon they were all leaning over her as she found the nearly imperceptible seam in the floor, digging her nails into it until it finally cracked open and she was able to lift it up.
Devon realized he was holding his breath until he heard Cassandra’s gasp, and then he couldn’t help but kneel beside her, joining her on the floor as she revealed a dark, square compartment below.
She reached her hands in and pulled out a dirty velvet bag wrapped around something large and heavy before setting it beside her.
“What do you suppose it could be?” she asked, looking from Devon to Gideon and then up to the rest of them. “Coins? Jewels?”
“Should we take a bet first?” Devon asked, half jesting until Cassandra frowned at him.
“Could you seriously wait that long to open it?”
