‘Why not?’ Tug. ‘I thought—’ tug ‘—that it would be good inspiration.’ Tug.
‘Because it might be worth a fair bit of money?’ Summer replied without looking up from the mounds of paper she had spread out on the table in front of her. Skye winced at the sound of the gilt frame scraping against the wooden floor as Star shoved it up against one of the many bookcases in the room.
‘There. The last time the diamonds were seen. Catherine Soames’ wedding portrait.’
All three of the girls repressed a shiver at the thought of their great-great-grandmother being forced to marry her cousin. Elias’s research had been surprisingly detailed. Then again, four generations of Soames men had been looking for the diamonds ever since they’d gone missing from Duke Anthony Soames’s private chambers two nights after the painting had been finished.
‘Well, they weren’t in the west wing, just like they weren’t in the east wing,’ Skye said, filling them in on the results of her searches. ‘Though, from the damage I’ve seen, I think Elias thought they were hidden in the walls because there are huge holes knocked into them, dust and plaster and God knows what else all over the place. Honestly, it looks as if Elias went at them with a sledgehammer.’
‘Perhaps he was mad and that’s why Mum didn’t want to talk about him?’ Star wondered out loud.
‘Perhaps it ran in the family. According to the notes here, after Anthony had his valet arrested and imprisoned for the theft, he then decided that Catherine had hidden them, even if he couldn’t prove it, or even understand how she might have done it,’ Summer said, looking up from the file that seemed to be permanently glued to her hands.
‘I hope she did hide them. He sounds like a miserable creature.’ Smiling at Star’s unique description, Skye flipped on the light switch. Although the library was a great place for them to gather, she didn’t like how dark it always was.
Sinking down into one of the leather armchairs, she struggled to remain optimistic. Taking up the terms of the will had given them purpose, a goal, something to work towards for their mother. But two weeks in and it was beginning to seem hopeless. Not that she’d ever say as much to Star and Summer. They relied on her, they needed her to be the one to spur them on.
‘I think we should move to another room,’ Star said, the floaty material of her wide-armed shirt hanging low as she reached out to touch the old leather spines of the books. ‘It makes me feel...hinky.’
‘Hinky?’ Summer asked with a laugh.
‘Yeah...just wonky, somehow.’
Skye frowned. She’d never really noticed it before but, now that Star had said it, she knew what her sister meant. Skye tried to look at the room with fresh eyes, rather than ones that had seen it for more hours than she would have wished. The little library, the women’s library, Catherine’s library. The room had more names for it than any other in the entire estate and, even though it paled in comparison to the Duke’s library, all of the sisters had preferred it here, despite the darkness which, now Skye was looking at it, must have had something to do with the—
‘The windows!’ Summer exclaimed, at the exact moment Skye had realised the same thing. ‘The shelves on the left-hand side... I think...’ Her words were cut off as Star ran out of the room into the hallway, peering back into the library, then disappearing off to the next room along and reappearing again.
‘The room—it’s smaller than it should be!’ Star practically screamed and Skye tried to suppress uncharitable frustration at the sister who had most definitely taken after their mother in her sense of both romance and adventure. Skye felt a painfully familiar sense of longing that she was ashamed of. A longing to be more like them, a longing to join in with the fun. But then she would be even less like her father, whose serious, quiet, non-confrontational nature was so very different to Mariam. And she clung to whatever she could of her father because when he’d remarried he’d just seemed to get further and further away from her.
Pushing aside the stab of pain brought by her train of thought, Skye focused on what Summer was doing—pulling out some of the ancient tomes lining the left-hand shelves and piling them up on the floor.
‘Skye, can you—’
‘Coming,’ she said, leaning into the thrill of possibly finding the jewels as a distraction.
‘Star, these books are hundreds of years old, please don’t just—’
The thwack of another large tome hitting the floor made Summer wince.
‘Sorry, it’s just so...’
‘Exciting, yeah we get it,’ Skye mumbled under her breath. Surely if this was the final resting place of the jewels someone would have found them by now?
Two shelves cleared, Summer was running her hand underneath the wooden shelves when all the girls heard a click. The central panel of shelves shifted forward. A streak of lightning-quick excitement shot through Skye and she could see it reflected on her sisters’ faces.
Had they found them? Could it be that simple?
Pulling hard, the central block of shelves swung away from the wall to reveal a secret recess illuminated in the light from the window. Dust particles danced and swirled in the air, disturbed by the quick breaths of Skye and her sisters.
Summer reached in to retrieve a large bundle wrapped in an old leather sack, dark with age and slightly moth-eaten. As she carefully placed it on the large table the sisters each took a step back, watching it as if it were an unexploded bomb.
Star and Summer looked to Skye, who released the breath she’d been holding, shifted forward and parted the edges of the leather, revealing the contents concealed within.
Disappointment and guilt hit her hard and fast and Skye was instantly reminded of Christmases when her mother’s gifts had seemed to be for anyone other than her. But as she looked at the pile of leather-bound books she was crushed that they weren’t the jewels that would have made everything so much easier.
Summer took the top one in her hands, carefully, lovingly opening the cover.
‘They’re journals,’ she said, a trace of awe in her voice.