By Request Collection April-June 2016. Оливия Гейтс

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СКАЧАТЬ shifted her gaze down to the lake and let the view diffuse some of her anger. “But I’m not going to run any farther than this.”

      Duncan got that. He’d seen that quality in her when she’d been eight and he’d come upon her clinging to the cliff face for dear life. His heart had nearly stopped. But she’d held on until he’d been able to reach her, and she hadn’t panicked. Then she’d followed his directions like a trooper as they’d climbed down together.

      He placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. “You’ll be fine here. Thanks to whoever it was paying nocturnal visits to the castle library, the security is currently CIA approved, and Vi says that Daryl Garnett will be here for the weekend because of that photo shoot. As head of the CIA’s domestic operations, he’s the best when it comes to white knights. But so are you.”

      She frowned at him. “What are you talking about?”

      “That time you had to play damsel in distress in the cave all afternoon? You did that to protect Nell. And you told a bald-faced lie when you claimed that you’d always dreamed of being rescued.”

      “Maybe.”

      “Whoever this guy is who’s sending you flowers, he picked the wrong person to mess with. But I suggested we come out here to get your mind off everything else for a while. And I have an idea of just how we can do that.”

      She stared at him. “You want to have sex here?”

      With a grin he glanced around. They were on the steepest part of the cliff and while there was no one in plain sight, anyone with a good pair of binoculars or a camera with a telephoto lens could see them. “Tempting, but that’s not what I had in mind.”

      Instead, he swung the backpack off his shoulder and sat down. “I thought we might share some lunch before we climb down to explore those caves.”

      “You want to climb down to the caves.” She walked over to him and took one of the sandwiches he held out. “Why?”

      He sat down on the grass near the cliff edge and gestured for her to join him as he pulled out his own sandwich. “I want to check something out.” He explained his theory about it being Eleanor who’d hidden her dowry.

      She took the time to chew and swallow the first bite of her sandwich while she mulled it over. “You’re profiling her.”

      “I suppose I am in a way. I’m looking at what we know and trying to theorize what might have happened.”

      “Okay, I see your point. Eleanor wore the sapphire in her wedding portrait, and there’s no record, either visual or written, of their existence after she died. So it’s logical to think she’d be the one who hid them. It also stands to reason that if she split the earrings and hid just one of them in the stone arch, she hid the two other pieces of her dowry elsewhere. Otherwise, why split them up in the first place?”

      “Exactly. And if she hid one of them outside the castle, it seems logical that she’d hide the other pieces somewhere else, also.”

      “Very logical,” Piper said around a second bite of sandwich. “That’s why we’re here. You figure Angus would have known about the caves. This was land he chose. It stands to reason he would have explored all of it. Heck, it didn’t take you and your brothers more than a week to find them. So Eleanor would have known about the caves also. You showed them to Adair and Nell and me the same day you discovered them.”

      “Right.”

      “But if any part of the Stuart Sapphires is in the caves, surely one of you would have found it.”

      “We scoured both of those caves, but we were looking for some kind of treasure box, not something as small as a leather pouch.”

      “Both of them?” She turned to meet his eyes. “Didn’t any of you ever look in the third cave?”

      Duncan stared at her. “There’s a third cave down there? We only knew about two. How did you find a third one?”

      “Boredom is a strong motivator. The tunnel leading to it was pretty much blocked off by a boulder in the second cave. I couldn’t budge it, but I managed to squeeze behind it. The third cave is the biggest one and it was empty. But then I wasn’t focused on finding Eleanor’s dowry at the time. Finish your sandwich and let’s climb down and take a look around.”

      PIPER’S ARMS WERE ACHING AS she wedged her fingers in between two rocks and searched for the next foothold. She could do this. She wasn’t a scared eight-year-old anymore.

      “To your left,” Duncan called from below her.

      In true white knight style, he’d pointed out the narrow rock ledge about one hundred feet below them, and then he’d insisted on going first and she’d let him. She was betting he’d already reached it. He’d been halfway there when she’d swung her legs over the edge. But she didn’t dare look down to check his progress.

      “A little more to the left,” Duncan called.

      Her shoe found the opening, then slid out. The sudden shift in her weight had her fingers gripping the rocks and her heart leaping up to lodge in her throat.

      “You’ve almost got it,” Duncan called.

      What was the matter with her? This wasn’t any different from climbing to the ground from her balcony. Except there weren’t any vines and it wasn’t soft ground that she would land on if she slipped.

      “Don’t worry. The ledge is directly below you now. If you slip, you won’t fall far.”

      Good to know. If he was telling the truth. She glanced up at how far she’d come and realized that it would take as much effort to go back up as continue.

      And wasn’t that exactly what Macbeth had realized during his famous dagger speech?

      “Shakespeare always comes back to haunt you,” she muttered.

      “What?” Duncan called up.

      “Nothing.” This had actually been easier when she was eight. And with that depressing realization came a surge of determination.

      Muscles straining, she jabbed her toe into the crevice and lowered herself another foot.

      “Directly below you, there’s a flat rock you can step on,” Duncan called.

      The instant her foot connected with the narrow ledge, she heard a rumble above her. Pebbles and small rocks clattered down. The first one hit her knuckles so sharply that she nearly lost her grip. Another bounced off her shoulder, and as she glanced up, a third grazed the side of her head. She had to blink dust out of her eyes, but for a moment, she thought she saw a figure on the cliff above. By the time she blinked again, Duncan was at her side, his arm around her waist, his voice murmuring. “On three, we’re going to jump. The ledge is just below us. Ready?”

      She managed a nod as more dust and stones rained on them.

      “One … two … three.”

      The drop was short, the landing hard. Then he pushed her into the low-ceilinged cave, using his body to block the debris still rattling down.

      “You СКАЧАТЬ