Wicked Treasure (Treasure Chronicles Book 3) Page 11

  Jas, the expert card shark. Clark couldn’t trust him.

  “Mother,” Jas said, “you keep our guests company. I’m going to show Clark the back porch.”

  Clark glanced over his shoulder. Amethyst’s lower lip trembled. He had to believe they would be safe with Jas’s mother in that parlor with stifling potpourri.

  “Yeah, right.” Clark allowed Jas to lead him to the door.

  Clark had left them. Amethyst plucked at her silk skirt. Her husband had walked off with the prince who he somehow knew from out west.

  They needed Clark. He wouldn’t hesitate to shoot anyone who tried to hurt them. She could just picture her brothers fumbling with their pistols.

  The queen clasped her hands in front of her chest. “Now, I believe we are here to thank Johnny Mitchells for saving my son’s favorite manservant.”

  This was the queen? Amethyst had imagined someone… more regal, someone who could stand up to the socialites of New Addison City. This woman had rosy cheeks and a tan, despite the huge white silk hat.

  Amethyst stood and curtsied low enough that a curl from her chignon brushed the area carpet. Chairs scraped the hardwood floor as the others followed suit.

  “Your majesty, I am honored to meet you.” Amethyst smiled.

  The queen laughed. “My dear, I don’t think you’re Johnny Mitchells.”

  “I’m, um, Johnny.” Zachariah coughed. Again. Did he have to keep sounding so insecure?

  “Thank you.” The queen rushed toward Zachariah, her brown floral skirt swishing with each step. “My son just adores all of his servants. He would be lost without one of them, bless the steam. Is this your little one?”

  The hairs rose along Amethyst’s arms as the queen tickled beneath Jolene’s chin.

  “Um, ye-yes,” Zachariah stammered.

  “Your majesty,” Amethyst sang. “How did you ever come by such a wonderful plantation? It is breathtaking.”

  “My goodness, dear, wouldn’t you know this was owned by my own darling grandfather? I stayed here every summer with him and couldn’t love the area more.”

  “Oh yes.” Amethyst had never heard the queen hailed from the south. “Please, won’t you tell us about how you met your husband, the late king?”

  “May the steam bless him,” Alyssa cut in.

  From the corners of Amethyst’s eyes, Jeremiah ground his jaw, as if the last thing he wanted to do was hear an elderly woman prattle.

  The queen spread out her skirts as she sat in one of the chairs. “My father was an ambassador, so I had met the king many times in my youth. He was twenty years older than me, you know…”

  Clark propped his elbows against the porch railing to appear relaxed. “You’ve got to tell me how I never knew you were the prince.”

  Everyone had secrets.

  Jas laughed, folding his arms to lean his hip against the same railing. “Got to admit I was angry when the government tossed out my father. Then my father’s dead and we’re moving down south. Sure, I’d visited here with my mother, but I missed everything about my old home. No more lessons at the university. No more overseas trips.” He laughed harder. “Guess you could call me spoiled.”

  “You could still go to a university.” Jas had to have money, judging by the amount of servants and the plantation.

  “Oh sure, but it was the principle, Clark. I’d always expected to someday be the king, and then I had nothing. I’m considered a wealthy landowner, but that as a job… it sucks.” He spit out the last word. “Not much of a profession if you ask me. I heard all about the people heading west to work in the mines, and I decided to take my shot at it, too. Only, I could see the government getting all riled over that. I had to be in one place. Safe, you know, out of their way. I went out west as Jasper instead of Prince Jacob. Jasper’s my middle name.”

  “And you became Jas,” Clark said when the prince paused.

  “Yeah, I became Jas.” The prince tipped his face toward the ceiling. “I heard you did well for yourself, Clark. I watched you in the newspapers. You got the girl.” His grin turned lopsided. “You got the wealth and everything.”

  You got the girl. Did Jas recognize Amethyst even with her darker, dyed hair? “Yeah.” A noncommittal answer. “How about you, Jas. Look at everything you’ve got here.”

  “I came back here after I heard about you. The west wasn’t working for me. I was running with gangs and working odd jobs. At least here…” He tapped his gloved fingertips against the railing. “Here I can look after my mother.”

  With a huge plantation and servants, she didn’t seem to need care.

  “You’re name wasn’t on the guest list,” Jas said. “Why are you here, Clark?”

  Jas knew who he was. If he’d kidnapped Jolene, then he knew that, too.

  “My daughter was stolen from me.”

  Jas didn’t blink, but a muscle twitched near his mouth. “I read about that, but why are you here? The police would help more than I would. You didn’t even know who I was until just now. Why are you here?”

  Clark shifted his stance to rest his hands on the pistols beneath his suit jacket. “I have reason to believe you orchestrated her kidnapping.”

  as lowered his chin. “That so. What’s got you thinking that?”

  Not a denial, but men like Jas never made committed answers. Clark lifted his eyebrows. “Word of mouth and a letter of communication.”

  “Seems to me a lot of people say a lot of things about me. You can’t always trust word of mouth. You should know that, Clark.”

  Sometimes word of mouth kept a man alive. Outcasts from society spread the word about who to avoid and who to trust, but then he knew how the government painted undesirables. A man ticked off a sheriff and suddenly he’d robbed a bank, when all he’d done was travel from the store to his farm.

  “Who says stuff about you?” Clark drawled.

  “People who think I should have been executed,” Jas said. “There were revolutionaries who hated my mother and me. They wanted the royal family gone.”

  The revolutionaries would have needed to know Clark knew Jas, and vice versa… no, they needed to know Jolene’s kidnapping would spread across the country. People who loved the Treasures and Grishams, people who had witnessed Clark escape from the army, they would all jump on Jas if it came out that he’d done it.

  “You need help finding her?” Jas asked. “Out west, you don’t leave a buddy lying down. Don’t know how much help I can be, but I’ll do what I can. What leads do you have?”

  Clark relaxed his arms enough to display his pistols, and didn’t miss Jas’s sharp intake. “My leads all point right to you, Jas.”

  “I’m a prince and a farmer and a poor lost soul. I don’t kidnap babies.”

  What could Jas gain by stealing Jolene? He already had wealth. It could be a framed job, but what would that gain someone? Facts wouldn’t create a solid picture of Jas’s guilt if they weren’t there.

  “She was stolen from her nursery by a clockwork lion.” Clark studied Jas’s expression; the man’s mouth and eyes melted into what might have been sympathy, or it could have been acting skills. “We tracked her back to a circus.”

  “You need me to go with you to a circus?” Jas wiped his hand over his mouth. “Look, Clark, I’ll help you like I said, but you know I wasn’t all that great out west. I can play a hand of cards until my opponents weep and I can shoot just as good as the others, but that’s it. I was terrible at mining and I don’t know my way around a ranch all that well. To be honest, my mother runs this plantation. She’s the one that grew up with farming knowledge.”

  Clark ran his fingertip over the trigger on his pistol. Jas had never been the type to play up drama, never stirred up conflicts, but he played them through. He also played cards, and Clark’s mother had always told him not to trust a fellow with a poker face.

  “I’ve got her,” Clark said. “Went to the circus and got Jolene back.”

  “She’s safe?” The light on his
face seemed genuine enough. “Good job, Clark. You never left a mission unfinished, huh? Is that you’re little girl back there in the parlor?”

  Clark shifted his weight to avoid answering. “I still don’t know why she was taken, and that’s something I need to make sure doesn’t happen again. You don’t know anything?”

  “Not a thing.” Jas lifted his hands in innocence. “Wish I did. I feel bad for you, Clark. I know the importance of family. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You thought it was me, the prince, who did it and you wanted to hunt me down.” Jas whistled. “Don’t get on your bad side.”

  “Jas,” Clark drawled, “I need to understand why Jolene was kidnapped, and the only clues I have led to you.”

  Jas grinned. “Then it’s time we went over those clues again.”

  lark kept his hands on his pistols. It calmed him, that action, helped him think. His mind danced in different directions, peaking high like an eagle before crashing like a falling boulder. The facts didn’t make sense.

  Jas paced across the drawing room floor, his boot heels clinking the polished wood. The story he told, a time back in Hedlund when he’d outsmarted a horse thief, might have the others enraptured, but it didn’t help them.

  Not everyone swallowed up the prince’s words. Amethyst frowned at Clark while she stroked their daughter’s back. Jolene lay against her mother’s bosom, her eyes closed as if asleep, but Clark had a feeling the baby still heard every word of the story.

  “I don’t see how this is relevant,” Jeremiah grumbled.

  At least he and Jeremiah had that in common.

  “I had him blocked off.” Jas jumped into position, his legs wide and his hands lifted as if to catch an oncoming object. “That old miner had everything he owned in those saddlebags. That thief wasn’t taking off with a single bit of it.”

  “Weren’t you scared?” Alyssa breathed. She sat in the chair beside Amethyst, Jeremiah behind her, one hand on her shoulder and the other gripping a wineglass.

  Clark hadn’t accepted the offered drinks. He needed his mind and hands clear. Glasses got in the way. If you had to draw your weapon, you wanted nothing but a leather glove between your palm and the deadly metal.

  “Me?” Jas swaggered back on one leg and laughed. “You can’t get scared when you live that kind of life, darling. I stared him down and told him to get here. If he wanted to play rough, I’d be the one to take on, not some old prospector. You remember that thief, don’t you, Clark? He called himself Big Gut because of the way…” Jas trailed off into a whistle.

  “What?” Clark blinked.

  “Never were one for stories, huh?” Jas scooped his wineglass off the desk behind him and took a swig. “Looks like we have to get down to business.”

  “Someone kidnapped Jolene,” Jeremiah jumped in. “If it wasn’t you, then who? This wasn’t some random kidnapping. It was calculated.”

  Clark studied the damask drapes pulled over the floor to ceiling windows. They knew those facts. “Maybe it wasn’t calculated.”

  “It wasn’t me.” Jas held up his hand as if Clark hadn’t spoken. “Like I told Clark, I’m in this to help you. Whatever you need, I’m there.”

  “You’re a wonderful friend,” Alyssa said.

  Clark shifted his gaze to Zachariah, who’d swallowed the story with as much rapture as Alyssa. If Zachariah were going to kidnap someone, he wouldn’t do it on his own. He would get the army, or his family, to do it for him. He might try to join in, but that wouldn’t be a guarantee.

  That sort of thinking had led them to Jas. The kidnapping had an orchestrator or Horan had done it, and Clark had a strong feeling it wasn’t Horan, the same kind of gut feeling that had kept him alive out in Hedlund.

  “What enemies do you have?” Jas asked.

  “What enemies don’t we have?” Jeremiah snorted. “Half of the country loves us and the other half hates us. We’re power and you know how people fear that.”

  Jas sighed. “I know that well. It’s what did my father in. It’s what has me trapped on this plantation.”

  “Whoever ordered the clockwork lion to take Jolene,” Clark said, “knew we would see it at the fair. They knew we would trace it back to the circus and then to you.”

  “I think you’re giving someone an awful lot of credit.” Jas finished his glass. “They were just plain stupid in that aspect.”

  “No,” Clark murmured. If the culprit was like Zachariah, then they would have gotten someone else to do it, and that someone else wouldn’t have let that slip up, and if the culprit was more like Clark or Jeremiah, they wouldn’t have risked any chances.

  Whoever it was had displayed the clockwork lion for them… and maybe they had gotten the fortuneteller to play along. His being there still struck Clark as odd.

  “I don’t like the fortuneteller,” he voiced. “He has more to do with this than we give him credit for.”

  “He wanted us to find Clara Larkin,” Amethyst said.

  “Who?” Jas frowned.

  “She was this ghost,” Amethyst began, but Jas shook his head, pulling out the stopper on his wine bottle and refilling his glass.

  “More for anyone else?” He held up the bottle.

  Jas cared, but then he didn’t care, just like how he’d acted back in Hedlund. He scraped by on a grin.

  “No thanks,” Clark said. They didn’t need alcohol. Too many men wound up dead thanks to that stuff when they needed to be alert.

  Jas took a gulp. “Here’s my plan. Whoever wants Jolene must still want her. We make it known you all are here and we’re best friends, and all that, and out they’ll come. You’re all safe here. I’ve got loyal servants and guards aplenty out in the fields. We trap them the next time they try something and we’ve got our answer.”

  “Yeah.” Jeremiah lifted his drink. He would like that, a chance to roll right over the villain.

  The plan didn’t suck. It might work. Clark’s brain just wouldn’t stop nagging.

  “Clark?” Amethyst bit her lower lip.

  “Good plan.” He walked over to shake the prince’s hand. It was a good plan considering they didn’t have anything else.

  “All right, love.” Amethyst turned away from the window overlooking one of the manicured gardens. “Tell me true. What do you think of Jasper?”

  Clark stepped out of the closet attached to their suite and ran his fingers through his unbound hair. She shouldn’t want to suck on the blond strands, she really shouldn’t, but her nipples tightened beneath her chemise.

  “I couldn’t find any secret passages in the closet.” He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall. “It should be safe for Jolene to sleep in there. We have the windows and door locked, and those are the only entrances to here. I’ll have my pistols and you have your derringer.”

  She crossed to run her fingertips up his chest and locked her hands behind his neck. “We’re safe here, Clark. I trust you to protect us.”

  “I didn’t before.” A muscle twitched in his neck.

  She kissed the spot. “I love you, Clark. Jolene loves you. Your new best friend Jasper loves you.”

  He opened his eyes and turned his head down to stare at her.

  “You know. Jasper. The prince. Your childhood companion.” She laughed, but the noises sounded too girlish and she winced. Silence slid over the room. After a heartbeat, a cricket chirped outside.

  Clark pecked her lips before pulling the closet door shut, keeping the area quiet and dark for Jolene. The small crib wouldn’t have been Amethyst’s choice for Jolene, but it beat the dresser drawer Clark had claimed he’d used as a baby.

  “Jas,” Clark whispered. “I always called him Jas.”

  “He asked us to call him Jasper, so that’s what I’ll do.” Amethyst tugged at the knot on her husband’s cravat. He still stared down at her, so she caught the loose end of it in her teeth to pull it off. Growling, she shook her head, the silk slapping her cheeks.

  He almost smiled
. That didn’t count.

  Amethyst sashayed backward to the bed and sat, the cravat dangling down the front of her chemise. She lifted her legs, her skirt slipping down her thighs, and leaned forward. “Don’t you want it back?” The words became muffled as she tried not to drop the cloth.

  Clark chuckled, unbuttoning the front of his shirt and tossing it onto the floor in front of the door. Right, they were supposed to heap things there to help block intruders and alert the sleepers.

  Her husband probably wouldn’t sleep. Most nights, Amethyst would stir to find him sitting up or watching the ceiling.

  Clark pushed against her with his chest to lean her back against the wall, his hands on either side of her shoulders. The tingle began in her belly and she closed her eyes, a moan slipping from her. The scent of him could replace oxygen.

  He slid his thumb over her lower lip as he peeled his cravat free. “Naughty girl. Isn’t this mine?”

  “Bite me,” she breathed. Her body needed the sharpness to keep her grounded, to let her know she would never break.

  “Why don’t you try being a good girl and not make a sound until I allow it?” He pressed the cravat into her mouth and tied it in a knot behind her head. “Be a good girl, remember?” He shoved his lips against hers, licking at them, biting her cheek, her neck, and her shoulder. His hand tangled in her hair to tip her chin up, allowing him better access to the tender point near her chemise’s tie.

  His other hand traced circles up her thigh.

  Bloody gears could take being quiet. She moaned.

  “It is in the papers.” The queen flicked her wrist toward the stack on the dining room table. “Our publicist performed well. The country knows that you,” she beamed at Jas, “and Clark have reunited.”

  “Here, here.” Jas stabbed a hunk of ham off his plate with his fork.

  Clark reached for the top paper, and when no one said anything, he slid into his seat with it. Jas had always acted carefree, but Clark had pictured the royals as being more aloof. At breakfast, mother and son laughed; dishes clanked and orange juice sloshed.