Lord Edward's Mysterious Treasure Read online

  The Victorian Adventures series

  Lady Elinor’s Wicked Adventures

  The Etruscan Adventure

  Lady Emily’s Exotic Journey

  The Assyrian Adventure

  A Scandalous Journey

  The Ruritanian Adventure

  Copyright © 2017 by Lillian Marek

  Cover Design by David R. Leaman, Business By Design, Inc.

  ISBN 978-0-9990180-0-2

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from the owner of the copyright. In other words, pirating books is illegal. Please don’t do it.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Other Books by Lillian Marek

  Copyright

  Dedication

  The Beginning

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-fou

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  To Danny

  The Beginning

  To Lord Edward Tremaine

  Penworth Castle

  Penworth, Dorset

  Chateau de Morvan

  September 26, 1871

  My dear Ned,

  I hope this finds you well and a trifle bored with your dusty tomes, because I plan to tempt you to travel.

  You may be surprised to find me writing to you from a chateau in Brittany, when the last time I saw you I was headed for steel mills in Belgium. Well, my esteemed and reclusive great-grandfather, the vicomte de Morvan, has summoned me and my cousins to his bedside—a command performance, as we all have hopes of an inheritance—and I invite you to join us.

  The bait I hold out to you is that the old man is in his nineties, old enough to have been alive at the time of that Breton rebellion that so fascinates you. Yes, my friend, the Chouans—those peasants who rose up against the Revolution. Ancient history to me (and to most people), but he remembers it. He not only remembers it, but he obsesses over it and over his relatives who died with them.

  I can almost see your eyes, bright with eagerness. And yes, we can also offer you a moldering pile of a castle filled with bundles of ancient letters and suchlike, as well as the meanderings of the old man. You know me. I would just as soon toss all those papers on the fire as so much antiquated trash, but I will restrain myself if you promise to come and relieve my own boredom.

  Ever yours,

  Tony

  PS I don’t know if this qualifies as an additional lure or not, but the old man seems to think there is a lost treasure hidden someplace in the chateau. This is probably just the fantasy of a very old man, but who knows?

  To M. Antoine Morvan

  Chateau de Morvan

  Finistère, Brittany

  Penworth Castle

  September 29, 1871

  Dear Tony,

  I’ll be there within the week.

  Yours,

  Ned

  Chapter One

  Six days later, Ned cursed himself for a romantic idiot. He could have traveled comfortably in the coach along with his valet and luggage, but no, he had to go on horseback to better explore the countryside of Finistère—that region called the end of the earth, the wild, westernmost part of France. And what had this adventure brought him thus far? Cold, wet misery.

  The countryside was invisible, blanketed in a thick fog. He could barely see enough to keep his horse on the road, if one could call this muddy track a road.

  But still… he could not shake the feeling that the fog also hid secrets, now just as it had done in the past. A dozen men—a hundred, a thousand—could be hidden in those woods, and no invading army would be able to see them until and unless they chose to be seen. And after they attacked, they could vanish into the mist again.

  Eighty years ago the stubborn Chouans had done just that, resisting the armies of the Revolution. He could almost see the gray figures slipping between the trees. He could almost hear the owl’s call that had been their signal.

  The fog wrapped him in silence, as if the rest of the world had simply vanished, dissolved in the gray mists around him. It also seeped through his coat and condensed on his collar, sending drips of water down his neck. His horse, a decent enough mount, tossed its head in understandable irritation. With a silent apology to the creature, he allowed it to move on, plodding doggedly ahead.

  They finally crested a hill and everything changed.

  Only wisps of fog lingered here, the rest left behind in the wooded valley. The road divided, one track leading down to the right where off in the distance a village of gray stone cottages with slate roofs circled a harbor, not very different from the fishermen’s villages in his native Dorset. But straight ahead of him—here was magic. Ancient stone walls rose out of the waves, a castle almost completely surrounded by the sea. He pulled up so abruptly that the horse objected, but he had to allow himself a chance to simply look. He stared, drinking in the eerie romance of the scene.

  Could anything be more perfect?

  The Chateau de Morvan looked like an enchanted palace, set as it was upon a rocky promontory—an island almost, connected to the mainland only by a narrow causeway that dipped so low it must be covered by the waves at times.

  At the moment, those waves were gently lapping against the rocks with a shushing sound barely louder than the horse’s breathing, but he could imagine what it would be like in a storm. The chateau would be cut off, isolated.

  The cliff merged into the stone of the ancient walls almost imperceptibly. It was difficult to tell where one began and the other ended, as if the castle had grown out of the rock. Behind the walls, he could see towers rising, a pair of crenellated medieval ones and several more fanciful turrets with conical roofs.

  Ned gave a sigh of pure pleasure.

  Then he laughed at himself. True, there were bits of fog clinging in tendrils to the castle, but to be truly romantic the scene needed a raging storm, with huge waves crashing high enough to reach the castle walls, cracks of thunder an
d flashes of lightning, winds howling like the cries of the damned, and torrents of rain lashing at the poor traveler seeking shelter. Now that would be dramatic.

  The drama he was willing to save for another day. As it was, he felt quite cold and damp enough. The horse needed only permission to continue and set off with renewed energy down the road to the causeway, doubtless longing for a warm, dry stable and a bucket of oats. Ned could sympathize. He was looking forward to the warmth of a roaring fire himself.

  However, warmth was not immediately forthcoming for either of them.

  The heavy gate in the wall stood open, allowing passage through the thick fortification, but no one appeared to greet him when he arrived before the chateau itself. He faced a bizarre building: half a medieval castle, made of sturdy granite blocks with narrow slits of windows, and half a fanciful Baroque palace, no more than a few hundred years old. Yet it was the newer section that seemed to be crumbling into decay.

  The chateau itself was set well back from the gate. A broad gravel road lined with beech trees—almost denuded of leaves at this season—led to a door as massive as the outer gate. It looked as if it had not been opened in centuries. The whole place seemed deserted. A bit of searching led Ned to the stables, which were in surprisingly good repair and housed what looked like a plow horse and a few decent-looking mounts, the only evidence that the chateau was indeed inhabited. In the absence of any grooms, he had to unsaddle and rub down his horse himself. At least he managed to find some oats, so he could leave the horse contentedly munching.

  It then required several minutes of hammering on the nearest door to get the attention of someone within. Neither the high roof nor the stone pillars of the porte cochère offered any shelter from the damp. Irritation had replaced enchantment long before the door finally swung open, pulled by a desiccated old servitor in black who looked to be of an age with the castle.

  “Lord Edward Tremaine,” snapped Ned, striding into the dark hall without waiting for an invitation. “I am expected.” He took off his hat to shake the water from it and gave himself an angry shake as well. The stone flags of the floor wouldn’t be bothered by the shower, but they offered no warmth either. An oil lamp in one corner offered the only illumination, and a pitiful pinpoint of light it was. The walls bore a pair of enormous paintings, brown with age, of what might once have been colorful crowds of people. Nothing provided any note of cheer.

  It was hardly the welcome he had been expecting.

  “Oh!” A soft, high sound floated down from above.

  Ned looked up, and the scene was suddenly transformed. He beheld a vision atop the stone staircase that rose beside him. The princess imprisoned by the dragon in the enchanted tower. The lady awaiting rescue by a knight in shining armor. A vision of sweetness and light with golden ringlets, huge eyes, and a rosebud mouth shaping a circle of surprise. Her face was all he could see before she vanished into the greater darkness above.

  She must have been an angel. No one had ever heard of a ghost with blonde ringlets.

  He was still staring up, stupefied, when the aged servitor coughed slightly to get his attention. Bringing his attention back to the hall, Ned realized that the man wasn’t actually all that old or desiccated—just a bit cadaverous. There was another servant right behind him—a bit younger, but still with a lean and hungry look. The first one was dressed in black, like a butler, and the second was in some kind of livery. Both were watching him with extreme patience.

  “If you would care to leave your things with Louis? M. Antoine is expecting you. I will take you to him.” The butler spoke in English, but with a French accent strong enough to sound almost comic. Or it might have seemed comic had his face borne even the trace of a smile, and had his words not sounded like a reproof. He took the hat from Ned’s hand and shook it again, before handing it to the footman and reaching up to remove Ned’s coat.

  Ned was tempted to say he wanted to keep his coat. He wasn’t accustomed to being treated like a recalcitrant child, and the stone-flagged hall was both cavernous and chilly. But that would be foolish—especially since a wet coat would not keep him warm.

  While the footman carried off his damp garments, Ned followed the butler first through a long, dusty hall to another set of stairs—he half expected dingy suits of armor festooned with cobwebs in the corners. Did anyone actually live in this place?

  The elderly servant moved with surprising speed, and Ned had to hurry to keep up with him through a labyrinth of corridors in what was obviously the older, medieval castle. Eventually, tall doors were flung open, and the butler announced, “Lord Edward Tremaine,” and Ned stepped into blissful warmth.

  “Ned!” A long, thin gentleman unfolded himself from a plush armchair angled to catch the heat from a roaring fire, and reached out his hands in smiling welcome. He was wearing a brown sack suit of heavy wool and sported a carefully twirled mustache over a small pointed beard.

  They exchanged the hearty slaps on the shoulder and laughing greetings of old school chums. In no time at all, Ned was ensconced in a chair of his own by the fire with a glass of whiskey in his hand.

  “Good Lord, Tony, where did you get those whiskers? You’ve turned into a Frenchman.” Ned laughed as he shook his head.

  “But I am a Frenchman, at least a quarter of one, and the camouflage is useful these days. When I meet with potential investors, they think me a foolish flâneur, an idle man about town, and assume that any agreement we make is in their favor.”

  “You’re still determined on that steel factory, then.”

  “Yes. And at the moment, it’s a damned nuisance, having to spend my time dancing attendance on the old man here. He has the money to invest, all we would need, but I can’t seem to talk any sense to him. Nothing modern means anything. He keeps meandering off into some nonsense about the Morvan treasure.”

  “Treasure?” Ned halted with the glass halfway to his lips and put it aside. “You mentioned a treasure in that intriguing postscript of yours. What sort of treasure is it?”

  “Damned if I know. The old man mutters that it ‘must be found,’ but refuses to say what the hell it is. Or where.”

  “That must make it a bit difficult to find.”

  “Impossible is more like it.” Tony’s face twisted into a grimace of disgust. “The blasted chateau is enormous, a rabbit warren of rooms and passages, and I have no idea where to begin looking. Hell, I don’t know if I should be looking for something the size of a pea or something the size of an elephant.”

  Ned’s lips quirked up in a half-smile. “Is this treasure hunt the real reason for your invitation to me?”

  “Well…” Tony had the grace to look a trifle embarrassed. “Maybe a bit. It seems to be important, and I do need help. There’s a tower full of documents that might be connected, I suppose, but they’re all in writing I can’t read and half of them are in Latin to boot. You’re the only one I know who might be able to decipher them—see if there’s anything about a treasure that might give us a clue about what we’re looking for.”

  Disappointment settled on Ned. “So the lure of the Chouans was just a trick to get me to come help you?”

  “Not exactly. From what I’ve been able to understand of the old man’s maunderings, that’s when the treasure disappeared—when the Republicans were marching in, putting down the local resistance.” Tony winced and rubbed his stomach.

  Ned frowned. He’d been a little annoyed that Tony hadn’t been exactly forthright, but perhaps there were problems. Now that he looked at him, his old school friend seemed even thinner than usual. “Is something wrong, or are you just forgetting to eat, as usual?”

  Tony glanced down at the hand that was massaging his belly and gave a light laugh. “No, it’s just that my stomach can’t seem to get accustomed to the rich food the chef here insists on providing. I spent too many years feeding it English stodge. And what about you? You’re so wet that you’re steaming as you sit there. What did you do, travel in an open carriage
?”

  Ned grinned. “No, I was ferried over to Brest in Father’s yacht and decided to ride. My valet’s coming in the carriage with my baggage.”

  Tony snorted. “Decided to ride! And no doubt you were watching out for fairy creatures or noble knights or brave peasants all along the way, my romantic idiot friend. And what did you see? Gloomy gray villages and their mistrustful inhabitants, I expect.”

  “Not even that.” Ned gave a rueful shake of his head. “Mostly what I saw was fog. It was hard enough to find the road much of the time.”

  “Well, come along.” Tony stood and held out his hand to his friend. “I’ll show you to your room, and you’ll have a chance to dry off and regain your strength before dinner, when you’ll meet the others.”

  “Your great-grandfather?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t take you to see him yet. He’s pretty much bedridden and he’s only up to visitors in the morning. That’s when my cousins and I are granted our daily audience.”

  “Your cousins, yes. I always thought you didn’t have any relatives, at least not on the French side.” Ned looked a question.

  “They were a surprise to me as well. It seems the Morvans are not a very close-knit family.”

  “What are they like then?”

  Tony paused and then smiled, a slow teasing smile. “I’ll let you form your own judgment.”

  Ned opened his mouth to ask about the vision he had beheld when he arrived, but decided to wait. After all, she might have been one of the servants, or her beauty might have been a mere trick of the light. He had endured enough teasing about his supposedly romantic streak ever since their school days at Rugby. He had no intention of giving Tony any more ammunition.