Chapter 8

Lenore's first sight of the sprawling architectural monstrosity that was Trellech Court produced much the same reaction as her first sight of Rhys: instant infatuation.

If someone had given her ten-year-old self a paper and pencil and told her to draw a fairytale castle, a Tudor manor house, and a Palladian villa, all mixed up together, Trellech would have been the result.

The outer ramparts were fifteen feet high, complete with a drawbridge and moat, but inside that, the main structure was an astonishing cluster of styles all cobbled together as if by some mad, drunken architect.

Every generation of Davies had tacked on their own section, just to leave their mark, and the overall effect was quite extraordinary.

A crumbling Medieval clock tower butted up against a half-timbered, red brick section that didn't have a straight line on it anywhere. Another wing, sprouting from the other side, was pure Neo-Classicism, all elegant cornices, huge windows, and pillars.

Lenore almost clapped her hands in delight. After the elegant perfection of Newstead Park, the haphazard charm of Trellech was irresistible. It was perfect in its imperfections.

"Not quite as orderly as Newstead," Rhys muttered as they strode across the courtyard and in through a vast, metal-studded door that looked like it could have withstood a horde of Viking marauders without any difficulty whatsoever.

"It's certainly . . . eclectic," Lenore whispered back.

"I don't blame Tristan for building his own place on the other side of the valley," Rhys said. "As an architect, this place probably gives him an attack of the vapors. There's not a straight line or a right-angle anywhere."

He guided Lenore past an imposing suit of armor, and into a dining room with an enormous oak table that could have easily seated twenty people. A cold collation had been set out on the top, and she accepted a plate and indicated to one of the hovering servants which of the dozens of dishes she'd like to try.

She'd dreamed of such lavish spreads while she'd been shipwrecked, and she felt absolutely no guilt for accepting a little of almost everything. She needed to keep up her strength for the afternoon's flag hunting, after all.

"I've told Gryff he should just burn the place to the ground and start again," Rhys continued with a sideways look at Carys that made Lenore certain he was only saying such a thing to get a rise out of his sister. "He's got more than enough money, after all. Why can't we have a nice, orderly place like Newstead Park, eh?"

Carys sent him a laughing look. "Stop trying to make me quarrel with you. You love this place just as much as I do, warts and all. Anywhere else wouldn't have dungeons and priest holes, secret tunnels and trapdoors. It wouldn't be half as much fun."

"True," Rhys conceded with a smile. "And I must confess, growing up here was never dull. There was always some mischief to be made or new place to explore."

Lenore could just imagine him as a cheeky, tousle-haired rascal. Her heart gave an odd little squeeze.

Morgan and Harriet arrived just then, and they all sat down to eat in a jovial mood. The other couples, Gryff and Maddie, Caro and Max, and Lucy and Will, must have all decided to have lunch at Trellech.

Harriet admitted to finding the flag at the bridge—and to leaving a flower from her hat as a taunt to any future visitors—although she claimed it was all Morgan's idea.

Rhys showed the flag they'd found, but refused to say where they'd found it, presumably to make the other couples waste extra time looking for it at the butterfly house once they deciphered the riddle. Lenore silently applauded his sneakiness.

He wasn't the only one trying to mislead the competition, either. When Tristan held up his flag and baldly declared that he and Carys had found it in the wine cellar at Newstead, Lenore bit her up and tried not to laugh, knowing it to be a shameless falsehood.

Carys caught her eye and sent her a stern warning glare, and Lenore kicked Rhys's ankle under the table to make sure he didn't say anything either.

He shot her a mock-offended look at her for daring to suggest—even silently—that he was too stupid not to keep his mouth shut.

When lunch was over, they all watched the clock and the minute it struck two o'clock everyone raced for the doors. Rhys caught Lenore's hand as she stepped out into the hallway and gave it a gentle tug to stop her heading for the exit.

"This way, come on."

He pulled her down the hall, then, with a glance to make sure none of their siblings were still about, pushed on a section of the dark wooden paneling on the wall. It swung open and Lenore's eyes widened in excitement.

"A secret door!"

"It leads to the stables." He stepped through, into the darkness beyond, his shoulders barely fitting through the narrow opening.

"I swear this gap was much bigger when I was a lad," he grumbled.

Lenore hitched up her skirts and followed him, pulling the door almost completely shut behind her, enclosing them in near total darkness.

"Wait here," he whispered. "I'll go and open the other door."

He stepped away, and could hear him scrabbling around, and then a shaft of light illuminated the tunnel as he opened another small door ahead of him. He climbed out, and Lenore followed, accepting his hand as she straightened.

The scent of fresh straw and the contented whicker of horses indicated he'd been right about where the tunnel led—they were in the empty last stall in the large Trellech stables—but Lenore sent him a confused look.

"Why are we here? There weren't any clues about horses or stables."

Rhys grinned, his teeth flashing white. "One should always take the opportunity to harass the opposition. In the army, we used to all sorts of things to disrupt the French supply lines. We'd steal their artillery, pilfer their food, and bribe the locals to give them false directions. If we knew they were following us, we'd remove all the road signs to make it harder for them to figure out where they were on a map."

"Brilliant! But I'm assuming your siblings already know their way around here without any kind of signage."

"They do, but if they were planning to make their way to the lake and the boat house on horseback, we can slow them down." He peered over the wooden stall divider to make sure no grooms were loitering about, then strode over to the wall that contained the tack, including saddles, bridles and reins.

"Quick, come and help me."

He hefted a saddle from its hook and placed it on the floor, next to a huge mound of clean hay. "We'll put some of the saddles under this hay, and hide all the bridles in the tunnel. They won't know where to look."

Lenore grinned as she scooped up an armful of hay and used it to conceal the saddles he placed on the straw-covered ground.

She loved being his partner in crime. She'd pulled equally silly tricks on Caro and Lucy in her time, and that fact that Rhys obviously had a mischievous streak of his own was delightful.

A sense of humor was an absolute necessity in a man, in her opinion, and one of the reasons she'd rejected so many suitors over the years was because most men she'd encountered were either sadly lacking in any kind of light-heartedness, or, on the other end of the scale, found humor in the most childish of things, like passing wind in public places, and pushing people into puddles.

"There." Rhys clapped his hands, then lifted an assortment of bridles and reins from the hooks and gestured to her to re-enter the secret passageway. She did so, lifting her skirts so they wouldn't get too dusty, and he closed the door behind him—not a moment too soon.

Morgan and Harriet entered the stables with one of the Trellech grooms, and Rhys let out a gleeful little snort as he placed the leather straps on the ground at his feet, then followed Lenore back out into the paneled hallway and shut the little door with a click.

"Mission accomplished!" he crowed. "Now, let's get some flags. I think should forget about trying to find Geoffrey and the other peacocks. Carys always has much better luck in finding her animals, because they actually like her. Geoffrey's given me a wide berth ever since I chased him off with a broomstick a few years ago. We could waste hours looking for him, and the other peacocks could be anywhere on the grounds."

"Agreed. We'd be better to concentrate on the flags we have a decent chance of finding. There was that clue about a clock. How do we get up to that clock-tower you mentioned?"

"There's a trap door in the east wing, but first we should try the library, since we didn't find anything in the one at Newstead."

He led her along the hall, past a billiard room, and into a library with a huge, vaulted ceiling and a fireplace big enough to roast an ox.

"Right. Get to work."

They both searched high and low, with Lenore even looking under the large celestial globes and Rhys climbing up the rolling ladders to peer along the top of the uppermost shelves, but there was no sign of a flag.

"Someone's found it," Rhys grumbled, dusting his hands. "Either that, or it was in the library back at Newstead and someone else beat us to it."

Lenore shrugged. "Or Caro was lying when she said it wasn't there. That's more likely. She's a devious thing. The clock, then?"

"This way."