Page 91 of Miss Beresford and the Beast

Magnus scowled. “You might have helped her.”

“I would have done if my back wasn’t playing up,” Turner said. “My bones are a clutter of grievances when the weather turns.”

“The weather hasn’t turned.”

Turner continued eating.

With a muttered curse, Magnus gathered up an armful of heavy sacks and tinned goods and carried them out of the larder. The pantry closet was located on the opposite side of the kitchen. He hadn’t been inside it himself. It was Turner who generally saw to their provisions.

Opening the door, Magnus beheld a deep, shelved room. It was dark, with a musty odor about it. “Bring a lamp, would you?”

“What’s that, my lord?” Turner questioned.

“I can’t see a thing in here,” Magnus said.”

At length, Turner brought him a small oil lantern. Magnus lit it, turning the flame up to illuminate the empty, dust-covered shelves that lined the cobweb-strewn pantry walls. Only one small space was occupied. Charlotte had placed two bags there, and several boxes.

Magnus set the lamp down beside them.

Turner moved to leave.

“Bring me the rest of the dry goods in the larder,” Magnus said.

Turner pulled a face. He nevertheless obeyed.

Magnus spent the next hour filling the pantry with their provisions. He cleared the dust and the cobwebs, and wiped down the questionable stickiness from the shelves. Anything to distract himself from the thought of Charlotte.

Yet, this was about Charlotte too. It was she who had directed him here. She’d wanted to put him and his house in order. Something Magnus should have long done himself. In some small way, stocking the pantry shelves was his way of honoring her.

It was only when he’d finished his project and was, at last, picking up the lantern to leave that the light flashed across the back wall of the pantry, casting a sudden glow over a suspicious crack in the vertical plank paneling.

Magnus’s heart stopped.

Returning to the back of the pantry, he raised the lantern to examine the crack more closely.

But it wasn’t a crack at all.

The paneling had been sawn at one point. A square had been cut out and then set back into the wall. Its borders were quite distinct. Magnus might have spotted them sooner if not for the shelves that had been positioned in front of it.

He cleared away the goods that he’d just placed there and, one by one, removed the shelves. When he’d finished, he again raised the lantern. “Turner!”

“What’s that, my lord?”

“Where’s my chisel?”

“Eh?”

Magnus strode back into the kitchen to look for it himself. “My chisel,” he repeated.

Turner was at the table again, having resumed eating his meat and bread. “Don’t rightly know, my lord,” he replied. “But mine’s in the larder.”

Magnus stifled an oath. Was everything in the benighted larder?

Retrieving Turner’s chisel, Magnus returned to the pantry. Pulse pounding in his ears, he forced the chisel into the seam that surrounded the square of paneling and pried the sawn wood loose. It wasn’t difficult. The cuts were relatively recent. Within the last year, unless Magnus was mistaken. Made by his own father on his final visit to Yorkshire.

Magnus set down the chisel. He removed the piece of paneling from wall. He was almost afraid to look behind it. This was closest he’d yet come to finding his fortune.

He lifted the lantern to peer inside the wall. The light flashed on a glimmer of something white. Magnus stepped closer to get a better look. There was a scrap of paper affixed to the wall’s timber frame.