Chapter Forty-Two

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

JULIET 2018

Juliet woke up in a strange bed and had one moment's disorientation before memory flooded in: Duncan , blizzard , ghost , tunnel , bones . Sinking back against the comfortable pillows, she remembered it all.

After her ghostly guide had so inconveniently vanished, Juliet had made her careful way back through the tunnel, keeping both hands on the narrow walls and her head stooped so low that her neck was killing her this morning. The worst part had been navigating her way up the tight, steep steps in the dark and moving aside the hollowed-out grave slab—all the while wondering exactly what awaited her above.

The answer had been the muffled stillness of a landscape covered in two feet of snow. The wind had dropped, and the clouds drifted enough for a shaft of moonlight to reflect off the snow, providing an eerie light. Juliet edged her way along the wall and peered out to scan the back courtyard and the house.

Only then did sound return to the world: the rumble of a tractor engine, Duncan's familiar voice raised in complaint, and another voice that Juliet was not expecting.

"Swear at me one more time, and I'll fire this shotgun over your head. It won't kill you, but the buckshot will sting." Rachel Bennett sounded like an actor in a Western—the righteous sheriff facing down the outlaw.

Duncan never did learn. "Bitch."

Juliet broke into motion and rounded the outside walls of the chapel in time to see the aftermath of Noah's punch. Duncan had fallen to his knees and was spitting blood onto the white snow. It looked as though he'd been tying Duncan's hands with a rope that Juliet could only assume had been in the Bennett tractor.

"Use that word again," Noah said, with no trace of amusement, "and I'll let my sister shoot you. Now for the last time—where is Juliet?"

Things got a little blurry after that. Juliet throwing herself into Noah's arms, Rachel finishing the job of tying up Duncan, the arrival of the police. The officers took statements from both Bennetts and Juliet, and arrested Duncan for breaking and entering and carrying an illegal firearm. Juliet might almost have been sorry for him if he hadn't looked up at her from the back seat of the police car and said, "It's your fault things came to this."

The police officer had obligingly slammed the car door. Then Noah and Rachel bundled Juliet into the cab of the tractor and carried her off to the farm, where she'd been sent to bed.

"Good morning." Noah spoke from the open door. When she looked between him and the empty space next to her in what was properly his bed, he laughed. "You were absolutely exhausted. I bunked in with the boys."

"What am I wearing?" Juliet examined the oversized flannel shirt as she swung her legs out of bed.

"Don't get up," Noah said. "Stay cozy. We'll talk here. The minute you emerge from this room you'll be swarmed by concerned adults and curious children."

He settled on the double bed, leaning against the headboard. Juliet curled up next to him and sighed when his arm came around her shoulders. "They can't be happy about the danger you and Rachel were in."

"Danger? Please," said Noah. "He wasn't going to shoot us. Even if he'd wanted to, he clearly didn't know what he was doing with that gun."

"Speaking of guns, does your sister often drive around the farm with a shotgun in hand?"

"I'll tell you a secret, if you like—it wasn't loaded. Yes, we keep a shotgun in the tractor. Very occasionally there will be animals you need to frighten off. But since the boys came to live at the farm, the shotgun shells are kept locked up in a safe." His arm tightened around her. "I'm not trying to make light of this. I'll admit that finding an American waving a gun around and yelling your name scared the hell out of me. I didn't know if he'd lost you or killed you. What made you think of hiding in the tunnel?"

Juliet closed her eyes and leaned her head on his chest. "You're the only one who will believe me."

She began with the moment the lights went out and she'd made her dash downstairs. She left nothing out—the ghostly woman, the urgent beckoning, the light that allowed her to follow her guide through the tunnel, the pale, pointed finger directing her attention to the collapsed wall and the bones within. The bones were one thing she'd managed to explain last night, though Noah had kept the questions to a minimum.

"I phoned Daniel Gitonga this morning and told him what you'd found," he said. "I imagine he's already at the police station making sure amateurs don't go messing around in a possible archeological site. They'll have to make sure the bones are truly old before releasing them to the historians—"

"They are," Juliet said, remembering the fragile, flaky feel beneath her fingertips. And one thing more … She extended her left hand and showed Noah the ring she had pulled from the dirt. She had ever so gently cleaned it before collapsing into bed last night, torn between treating it as a proper historical artifact and the driving need to examine it.

"You found this in the tunnel?" Noah asked.

Juliet removed it from her finger and allowed him to hold it up to the light.

"I think that dark stone might be a garnet," she said. "It's obviously real gold. And there's an inscription."

Noah squinted, turning the ring to try and catch the light at the right angle. "Daniel's going to need a magnifying glass for this."

When Juliet said nothing, he shot her a sharp glance. "Unless … do you know what it says?"

She did know. Despite the faintness of the engraving and the unfamiliar spelling, Juliet was certain she knew. Because, as she'd attempted to decipher each individual letter last night, words had floated into her mind and imprinted themselves with surety.

"It reads, My Loyalty Is Fixed ." Juliet said, pointing to the tiny letters on the inside of the gold band. "And there's a name. A name from more than five hundred years ago."

"Let me guess—Edward the Fourth?"

It was a decent guess, considering everything else they'd learned and especially considering that Edward's royal livery badge had been found deeper in that same tunnel a hundred years ago. But Juliet shook her head. "The letters are a capital e and a lowercase d , and with another one of those little d 's attached. That abbreviation might mean ‘Edward,' but it could also mean ‘Edmund.' And the next word is not a name, it's a title: Rutland."

When Noah continued to look at her blankly, Juliet said, "I only know this because of the reading I've been doing, following Clarissa Somersby's interest in the Wars of the Roses. See, before Edward the Fourth was king, he was Edward, the Earl of March. And he had a brother—not George, who Shakespeare killed off in the butt of malmsey, and not poor Richard. A brother who was only one year younger than the future king." Juliet touched the ring in Noah's hand and said softly, "Edmund, the Earl of Rutland. He died with his father at the Battle of Wakefield at the age of seventeen, three months before Edward won his crown."

Yes, the ring would have to be dated, and experts would be called in to examine the engraving, and then historians like her would argue for years over its meaning and why it had been found in an obscure Northumberland tunnel … but Juliet knew she was right—because her ghostly guide had known.

No, be brave , Juliet thought. Give the guide her proper name: Ismay .

It would never be more than conjecture, of course. It was far too long ago, and the written records too few for anything like proof.

Noah returned the ring to her finger for safekeeping. "So what are you going to do now?" he asked casually.

"I still have three months of winter to sit through at Havencross. I'll get started on my dissertation about the flu and probably annoy your friend Daniel with constant questions about what they'll do with the bones from the tunnel. Let the police handle Duncan however they want. I'd be fine just to let him go back to the States. He has enough trouble to face there."

"And when spring arrives and you're no longer needed at Havencross? I suppose you'll go straight back to the States and another university job." He said it without looking at her, as though determined not to influence any possible answer.

"Do you know," she said, snuggling closer to him, "that I never wanted to teach college students in the first place? I always wanted to teach high school kids, or even middle school. But that wasn't prestigious enough for Duncan. I suppose even England might need teachers in … what do you call them here? Secondary schools?"

She felt a slight tremor run through his arm. "If you're teasing, tell me now," he warned her.

Juliet turned her face up to his, Noah's lovely hazel eyes wide with appeal. "I'm not teasing," she said, and kissed him.