16

T he next morning after breaking her fast, Elizabeth carefully ascended the slippery, uneven stairs to the rooms Miss Oak's map indicated had been used as the nursery. She decided to begin by taking inventory of all the rooms young children were likely to have utilized. She didn't know much about babies, but young ones had to be kept warm, right?

Today was an eighty percent day—practically peak Elizabeth!—but there was no sense risking her cherished limberness on a careless misstep. Castles were already designed for maximum inconvenience. Narrow, slippery stairs of differing heights in dark spirals wasn't a flaw, but a defense mechanism against invading warriors.

And Elizabeth Wynchester.

Since her arrival, Stephen had blown hot and cold. Vexingly inconsistent about what, if anything, he wanted from her. As much as she wouldn't mind a torrid affaire, neither the current case nor Reddington's patience would last forever. She needed to find the will before he harmed the property. Which meant concentrating on the task at hand, not on the rock-hard chest she wished was under her hands.

As Elizabeth wandered through what had once been the current earl's nursery, she kept detailed notes in a journal. She recounted each day's search in her nightly reports home via messenger hawk, in case one of her clever siblings saw something she might have overlooked.

Thus far, their praise of her methods meant she was being depressingly thorough. How much easier it would be if someone would say, "Ah, but did you tap your toes three times on the third stone from the left?" and up would pop framed copies of the will and the deed, for her convenience.

Elizabeth rarely even managed to find a speck of dust. The servants in Castle Harbrook were good .

Impatiently, she moved an apple-embroidered fireplace screen out of the way in order to crouch down and peer up the empty flue. No reasonable person would store an important slip of paper in a place where a fire was likely to be lit, but if life had taught Elizabeth anything, it was never to assume that other people were reasonable.

She felt around for nooks, crannies, or loose stones—but there were none. Just as there hadn't been in any of the other chimneys she'd doggedly checked.

With a sigh, she backed away from the unlit grate. After pushing the embroidered fire screen back where she'd found it, Elizabeth reopened her journal to mark off yet another fruitless fireplace. Her pencil paused in the act of drawing a tick mark next to the current room on the list. She froze in place.

Fruitless. Fruit. Apples .

Every fireplace in the castle had an embroidered fire screen. And every design was decorated with a different fruit. This one was apples, but the others were… She flipped through her journal, heart beating rapidly. Blackberries, cherries, dates, elderberries, figs. Was that another hint? Almost every letter of the alphabet seemed to be represented, and there was otherwise no indication of what these disparate fruits had in common.

She glared at the beautifully embroidered fire screen. Maybe its design wasn't a clue after all. Maybe embroidery was just embroidery, and there was so damn much of it because embroidery was one of the few things gently bred women were allowed to do with their time. Not that Arminia was particularly skilled at it.

Despite the impressive quantity, the still life scenes themselves didn't make much sense. The fruits were recognizable enough, but the embroideries in the bedchambers also contained baby animals completely out of perspective compared to the relative size of the fruits. There was a sheep half the size of a pear in Arminia's old room, and a little lamb no bigger than a bowl of gooseberries in the one belonging to her husband.

"It's a good thing you were a countess," Elizabeth grumbled. "If you'd tried to make your mark as a serious artist, they would've taken one look at your pear and berries… Pair of berries… Sheepskin… Baby lamb…" She burst out laughing. "Why, you delightfully saucy wench!"

She'd solved the first clue!

Fire, like the heat generated between passionate lovers. Fruit, as in the fruit of their loins. Pair of berries, as in male genitalia. Sheepskin, like the "French letters" some men wore for protection during lovemaking.

This wasn't a hint. It was the giant, red-letter sign Elizabeth had been searching for. Directing her to… wherever the earl and the countess were most likely to make love?

"I hope this compass is pointing to a bed here in the castle and not some random log in the middle of the forest," she muttered as she rushed out of the nursery and into the countess's old bedchamber.

With a sinking feeling, she remembered that she and Stephen had already searched every inch of Arminia's private quarters and come up empty. Any erstwhile clues had either been cleared away by overzealous servants or had never been present in this room to begin with.

Elizabeth hurried to the earl's private chambers and began her search anew. Bedclothes, pillows, mattress. All unadulterated, just like the countess's room.

But she would not give up. She tossed her sword stick onto the prior earl's mattress and climbed up onto the bed. She ran her fingers up the wood of all four bedposts. Nothing. Then she checked each hem of the blue silk canopy, inch by inch.

One of the edges was lumpier than the other.

"Either that's a dead mouse, or you've hidden something in the hem," Elizabeth murmured. "Please don't have hidden a dead mouse. I'd rather that wasn't the next clue."

She pulled the tiny throwing knife her sister-in-law had given her out from its secret compartment in her stays and carefully sliced open the hem.

A scrap of embroidery no larger than a playing card fell into her palm.

"I did it!" She spun in delight. "I made it to the next clue!"

Once she'd twirled herself out of breath, she stumbled over to the wall and rested her shoulders against the cold stone so she could inspect her prize. The square of cloth contained an embroidered unicorn.

"A baby unicorn, so at least we're still on theme," Elizabeth said out loud.

Now that she thought about it, maybe all the baby references weren't referring to the fruits of the countess and the earl's personal loins—after all, nothing seemed to specifically point toward their runaway offspring. The child motif might rather be indicating the raison d'être at the end of the treasure hunt: a school and home for orphans.

"Brilliant," Elizabeth muttered. "But what the devil does this bit of needlework mean ?"

The soft tap of leather boots sounded just outside the earl's bedchamber.

Elizabeth jerked upright, then wished she hadn't. The sudden motion dropped her from eighty percent down to seventy-five. Still high enough for swashbuckling, which meant it was also high enough to straighten her wrinkled skirts and adjust her knifeless bodice and throw back her shoulders and plump up her—

Stephen stepped into the room.

"Oh, good day," said Elizabeth. "I didn't hear you coming. I was just…"

"… casually assuming a deliberately provocative pose, with one hand on your curvaceous hip and your head thrown back just so to catch the sunlight in your blond curls? Ah, yes, that makes perfect sense. I carry out searches in exactly the same pose."

She didn't change position. "Provocative, you say? Is it working?"

"It's not helping you find the missing will." His gaze heated. "But, yes. It's working."

She grinned at him and gave her bosom a little wiggle.

"Have mercy," he begged. "I am but a poor foot soldier, bearing an offering of sandwiches."

"Sandwiches! Why didn't you lead with that?" Elizabeth took a seat in the middle of the carpet, picnic-style, and motioned for Stephen to do the same. She placed the small needlework on the floor beside her.

"Did you find something?" he asked with curiosity as he settled across from her.

"Oh, this?" She held up the tiny embroidery. "It's my lucky fictional avatar. A security totem I like to carry when I don't have claymore swords or battle-axes handy."

"It's a clue ?" He set down the plates of sandwiches and held out his hand. "Let me see it."

She handed him the scrap of cloth.

"A baby unicorn?" He handed back the embroidery in mystification. "What does it mean?"

"I have no idea." She tucked the needlework into her bosom for safety.

He watched with interest, then shook his head. "Do you have time for nuncheon?"

Unfortunately, now that she and Stephen were on the carpet, Elizabeth wasn't thinking about sandwiches at all. She was thinking about yesterday, when he had grabbed her and kissed her. He'd seemed as though he had been trying with all his strength to resist temptation, only for overwhelming desire to break down his defenses and unleash the warrior he kept hidden beneath his tinker shell. She wouldn't mind doing that again.

Many people found Elizabeth to be a little… much , but Stephen took everything in due course, from his cousin's original deception through to Beth the Berserker. He had never made her feel as though she were Too Much Elizabeth. On the contrary, here he was, seeking out her company for no reason except to enjoy it.

He handed her a sandwich and bit into his own. For a long moment, they chewed in companionable silence.

"Is going around solving cases always this difficult?" he asked at last.

"Maybe when I'm on my own," Elizabeth said. "I suppose I should get used to it, now that there are more cases than Wynchesters."

He looked skeptical. "Really? How many of you are there?"

Elizabeth took a bite rather than answer right away.

The number of siblings in her family was a perfectly reasonable question. The precise number was speculated about endlessly in the papers. Tommy alone had played the role of dozens of Wynchesters. Family was also a normal getting-to-know-you topic between new friends.

It was just that… Elizabeth never made new friends, if she could help it. She had her family, and they were enough. Opening herself up to potential rejection when she'd first met them over twenty years ago had been traumatic enough to last a lifetime.

She was a berserker. Berserkers weren't friendly. Extreme and unapologetic unfriendliness was a berserker's very essence. No one expected a berserker to sit down with a plate of tea cakes and tell charming stories about their berserker family.

No one except Stephen Lenox, apparently. He was smiling at her encouragingly, as if whatever tale she might impart would be a totally normal response.

There was nothing totally normal about Elizabeth. She doubted she was even fifteen percent normal. She was fine with that. She nurtured her oddness. But she wasn't certain she was ready to share her full self with anyone else. Peeling personal details out of her throat felt like trying to remove a suit of armor that had rusted shut.

But she could not sit here forever, poking at her bread crumbs. A berserker did not dither, and neither did a Wynchester.

They faced all challenges head-on, no matter the peril it placed them in.